Global Research

Five years after Japan’s natural and nuclear disasters of March 11, 2011 (3-11), few observers can find a positive legacy among the irradiated ruins. Fukushima rightly remains an icon of the folly of building fragile large-scale power and other lifeline systems in the face of patent threats. Indeed, Japan has become a byword for failure, whether at Fukushima or in its “Abenomics” growth strategy.

But in point of fact, 3-11 has made Japan a world leader in building resilience – in critical energy, water, transport and other lifeline infrastructures – against increasingly frequent disasters confronting Japan, the Asia-Pacific and the world. Though little known, even in specialist circles, Japan’s deeply institutionalized and well-funded programme of “National Resilience” (kokudo kyoujinka) is far more advanced than its counterpart initiatives in North America, the EU and elsewhere. As we shall see below, Japan’s resilience programme, including both public and private sector spending, totaled over JPY 24 trillion (USD 210 billion) in 2013 and is projected to grow dramatically by 2020. Moreover, Japan’s disaster resilience centres on renewable energy, storage and efficiency, and has become a core element of Abenomics.

Japan’s National Resilience

First, let us present the evidence. The governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politicians and disaster-resilience technocrats in the Cabinet Secretariat’s National Resilience Council (hereafter, NRC)¹, the Association for Resilience Japan (hereafter, ARJ)², and other new institutions are building an economic paradigm based on National Resilience. As part of the resilience project, the NRC undertook a survey of private-sector firms’ current and projected spending in late 2015. The survey determined that private-sector spending on resilience was about JPY 11.9 trillion (USD 105 billion) in 2013. That total can be broken down into “core” market segments (goods and services) that are directly focused on resilience, and “related” market segments (again, goods and services) that address aspects of resilience. The survey found that the core markets totaled roughly JPY 8 trillion (USD 71 billion) and the related markets a further JPY 4 trillion (USD 35 billion). (Note that as of this writing, JPY 1 trillion=USD 8.78 billion.)

The NRC’s analysis also estimated that the core and related markets would likely double in size by 2020.³ As can be seen in the figure “Japan’s Private-Sector Spending in Core and Related Resilience Markets, 2013-2020,” the three biggest (core and related) sectors are:

1) electric vehicles, at JPY 2.6 trillion in 2013 and projected to be JPY 6.13 trillion in 2020

2) renewable energy (solar), at JPY 2.26 trillion in 2013 and JPY 3.88 trillion in 2020 (high estimate)

3) power generation and transmission bolstering, JPY 958 billion in 2013 and JPY 1.02 trillion in 2020

The figure shows that if one excludes electric vehicles and other “related” market segments, then renewable energy is the largest market in Japan’s private-sector spending. And renewable energy-related spending is even larger than the solar numbers indicate. This is because the JPY 2.26 trillion spent on solar systems in 2013 was accompanied by JPY 59.5 billion on biomass, JPY 23.5 billion on geothermal, and JPY 22.3 billion on wind power, for a total of JPY 2.37 trillion on renewable energy generation systems. In addition, batteries and other energy storage equipment totaled just over JPY 103 billion, while efficiency-enhancing energy management systems amounted to just under JPY 334 billion.

Moreover, using the NRC’s high estimate of JPY 3.88 trillion for the solar market in 2020, Japan’s total resilience-centred renewable market is projected to increase to JPY 4.04 trillion by 2020. In addition, the markets for batteries and other storage equipment are slated to expand to JPY 469 billion. And spending on energy management systems is expected to grow to just under JPY 570 billion.

In other words, Japan’s total private-sector investment in disaster-resilient renewable energy, storage and energy management is estimated to be a JPY 4.92 trillion market by 2020. That figure is likely to be an underestimate, in light of global trends, but even so it is an impressive increase from the JPY 2.81 trillion in 2013. Note also that the NRC also projects that the core market in National Resilience will total between JPY 11.8 and 13.5 trillion in 2020. Thus, renewable energy generation, storage and management are estimated to be between 36% to 42% of core markets in Japan’s private-sector expenditures on National Resilience by 2020.

The NRC’s documents also reveal that public-sector spending on National Resilience totaled JPY 12.4 trillion in 2013, or slightly more than the JPY 11.9 trillion in private sector investment. Much of the public-sector investment was also devoted to renewable-energy generation, transmission and storage, in Japan’s profusion of smart communities, disaster-relief shelters, and other applications.⁴ It is therefore clear that in post 3-11 Japan, building resilience in both the public and private sectors has become explicitly and powerfully linked to renewable energy systems and their enabling storage and transmission technologies. Indeed, Furuya Keiji, the LDP’s first cabinet minister of National Resilience and Disaster Reduction (2012-2014) devoted an entire section of his June 2014 book on National Resilience to renewable energy.⁵

Returning to the attached figure on private-sector National Resilience spending, we can see that other core markets include earthquake-proofing of building and equipment, reinforcement of transport systems (roads and railroads), disaster-relief robotics, communications resilience, and training of specialist leadership. In addition to electric vehicles, the related markets include insurance, information security, and the linear bullet train (in development). It is debatable that the latter will bolster disaster resilience, but the LDP’s rationale for including it is that it encourages the distribution of people and facilities away from the undeniably excessive over-concentration of population and core business and government functions in Metropolitan Tokyo, perhaps the most disaster-threatened megacity on the planet.⁶ In any event, apart from the linear bullet train and several roads and seawalls, most of the rest of the investment does appear likely to increase resilience in the face of disasters and other patent threats (such as cyber-attack or supply shocks of energy and other materials).

Fiji After Cyclone Winston

Notes

¹See the Cabinet Secretariat’s National Resilience Council’s website.

²See the Association for Resilience Japan website.

³See (in Japanese), “Concerning the size and estimates for the private-sector market in national resilience,” February 1, 2016, Cabinet Secretariat’s National Resilience Council, p. 5.

⁴On the public-sector spending, see Andrew DeWit, “Japan’s “National Resilience Plan”: Its Promise and Perils in the Wake of the Election”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 51, No. 1, December 22, 2014.

⁵See (in Japanese), Furuya Keiji, “National Resilience: the Challenges of Transitioning to a Resilient Society,” June 2014, PHP Books, pp. 157-70.

⁶For a comparison the scale of the threats confronting Tokyo, see the last section of Andrew DeWit, “Japan’s Resilient, Decarbonizing and Democratic Smart Communities”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 50, No. 3, December 15, 2014.

⁷See “Fiji and UN appeal for $38 million to relieve ‘catastrophic loss’ after Cyclone Winston,” UN News Centre, March 4, 2016.

⁸See Valerie Volcovici, “Florida mayors press presidential debate moderators for climate airtime,” Reuters, March 4, 2016.

⁹For example, building resilience was a key theme for subnational governments. See “Cities and Regions Launch Major Five-Year Vision to Take Action on Climate Change,” UNFCCC Newsroom press release, December 8, 2015.

¹⁰See Oliver Cann, “What are the top global risks for 2016?” World Economic Forum, January 14, 2016.

¹¹See “The Triple Dividend of Resilience,” The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, World Bank Group, 2015.

¹²See the relevant section in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 “The Green Investment Report”.

¹³For example, see (in Japanese) “PM Abe’s Big Treat to his Region,” Sentaku, March 2013.

¹⁴For an overview, see Andrew DeWit, “3.11 and Japan’s Shift to Smart, Distributed Power,” Asia Policy 17, January 2014.

¹⁵See, for example, Michael Puckett “Financing the Next Generation of Resilient Power,” Clean Energy Finance Forum, November 25, 2014.

¹⁶One example was the August 20, 2014 mudslides in Hiroshima, which were part of a protracted period of very unusual rainfall. See Andrew DeWit, “Hiroshima’s Disaster, Climate Crisis, and the Future of the Resilient City”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 35, No. 2, September 1, 2014.

¹⁷See “Role of Critical Infrastructure in National Prosperity: Shared Narrative,” Public Safety Canada, October 15, 2015.

¹⁸The list of the Association for Resilience Japan’s 16 working groups, their membership, and related information, is available (in Japanese) here.

¹⁹A list of the February 2 event’s panels (in Japanese).

²⁰Information on the event (in Japanese) is here.

²¹See, for example, Andrew DeWit, “Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience as Structural Reform in Abenomics,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 1, No. 3, January 5, 2015.

²²See “Japan Revitalization Strategy,” Japan Cabinet Office, June 14, 2013.

²³One recent example is the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) May 30, 2014 discussion (in Japanese) of its “Distributed Energy Infrastructure Project”.

²⁴For example, see the fiscal and other data in Andrew DeWit,

But unlike America’s in Iraq, Russia actually has accomplished its mission. In what appears to be another carefully planned masterstroke vis-a-vis the US, NATO, and its Persian Gulf allies upon and around the Syrian battlefield, Russia has announced that it is withdrawing its forces after its 5 month long intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in Damascus.

The BBC reported in its article, “Syria conflict: Russia’s Putin orders ‘main part’ of forces out,” that:

In a surprise move, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to start withdrawing the “main part” of its forces in Syria from Tuesday.

He said the Russian intervention had largely achieved its objectives.

The comments come amid fresh peace talks in Geneva aimed at resolving the five-year Syrian conflict.

In a hamfisted attempt to mitigate the impact of Russia’s statement, US analysts and commentators among many prominent Western news outlets have attempted to frame the announcement as a ‘cut and run’ move made by Moscow after decimating US-backed “moderate rebels,” and leaving the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) mainly intact.

Andrew Peek, a former strategic adviser to the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, admitted in his NY Daily News op-ed titled, “Why Putin’s pulling out of Syria: He got what he wanted — which is not what he said he wanted,” that ISIS has lost some 25% of its territory during the Russian intervention.

It should be noted that Russia’s intervention had begun and ended in a fraction of the time the US has been “fighting” ISIS. The US intervention – a much more lengthy military campaign – had overseen not a reduction in ISIS territory, but the vast and otherwise inexplicable expansion of the terrorist organization before Russia’s arrival in Syria.

West Claims That Russia is out of Money 

Another attempt by the West to frame Russia’s announcement as a “failure” for Moscow includes claims that Russia can no longer sustain its operations. Upward estimates of the cost of Russia’s operations in Syria ranged between 1-2 billion USD per year – approximately 1/50 of Russia’s overall annual defense budget.

Again, Western commentators and analysts, in their haste to frame Russia’s latest move as a “failure,” directly contradict their own analysis months ago. Reuters in their article, “U.S. sees bearable costs, key goals met for Russia in Syria so far,” admitted that:

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts say.

Indeed, according to RT itself, Russia’s defense export agency Rosoboronexport alone pulled in over 15 billion USD in 2015, with another 15 billion planned for 2016. While Russia is undoubtedly feeling the pressure of sanctions and the West’s manipulation of energy markets, providing air support to the Syrian Arab Army was – and still is – a very sustainable undertaking.

What Really is Happening

To truly put this announcement in proper context, it helps to understand just what the battlefield looked like in Syria before Russia’s entry into the war and how it looks now.

In approximately mid 2015, it was clear that US-backed terrorists were openly coordinating with groups including Jubhat Al Nusra, a US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization. Furthermore, this new combined front, primarily operating in northern Syria from Turkish territory, appeared to be coordinating with ISIS in the east.

In fact, a coordinated offensive in the north where logistical lines were shorter and easier to maintain put significant pressure on Damascus to redeploy troops to this front. At the same time, ISIS surged toward Palmyra from the east. Both operations were large enough to implicate significant planning and staging, perhaps even months head of the coordinated, two-front offensive.

Russia intervened at the height of this shift in which Damascus found itself forced to make a series of strategic withdrawals. While the force Russia brought was relatively small compared to typical Western military interventions, operations were intense and undoubtedly effective. Virtually all of the  terrorist gains made during the mid-2015 offensive were rolled back or significantly contested, while logistical lines feeding Western terrorist proxies from Turkey were exposed and destroyed.

With the tide clearly turned, the bulk of necessary combat missions for Russia are indeed over. What is left is monitoring  the ceasefire, continued strikes against ISIS, and the ability if necessary to strike logistical lines leading into Syrian territory if they are reestablished.

But because Russia has announced its withdrawal, and because of the West’s eagerness to pounce on acknowledging it, if only to condemn it as a sign of weakness and failure, the West itself will now have great difficulties if it tries to further perpetuate hostilities on the ground.

Of course, the West fully intends to continue training and equipping terrorists along Syria’s borders and sending them into the country – US generals before the US Congress have recently testified saying as much – and of course Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other US allies in the region plan to continue supporting terrorist groups already operating in Syria – but they all do so in the aftermath of a grand gesture of deescalation by Russia.

And while Russia and even the West have framed this latest move as a “withdrawal,” the reality is that Russia will be maintaining the only two military installations it ever had in Syria.

Russia will continue to maintain enough of a presence to respond effectively to any shift back in favor of the West’s proxies – proxies who are supposed to be observing a ceasefire, and who – if they violate it now in the belief that Russia will no longer respond – will not only expose their own treachery and that of their Western sponsors, but will justify a wide range of retaliatory actions to be taken by Syria and its allies – including Russia.

Russia’s grand gesture is made with the sure knowledge that whatever forces it leaves behind in Syria will be more than adequate to support Syrian troops who are now making huge gains on the battlefield. The initial force needed to reverse the immense, nationwide coordinated offensive undertaken by Western backed terrorists in 2015 is no longer necessary.

Russia will be cutting back on an already cost-effective military campaign, while providing itself and its allies additional credibility during the ceasefire and ahead of peace talks. All the while, it will still be more than capable of responding to any conceivable threat posed to its allies in Damascus.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

While some have become skeptical, there are those – from The Nation via Politico and Tom Cahill (U.S. Uncut) to Robert Reich – who are now saying that this is not the end of the line for Bernie Sanders U.S. presidential bid.

And it is indeed true that we should remind ourselves that ever since the 1980s the Democratic party leadership has scheduled the primary season in ways that voters in more conservative states would go to the polls first in order to prevent leftist grassroots candidates from challenging the neoliberal party establishment. Keeping that in mind, it’s also true that pretty much all the upcoming states are way more favorable to Sanders than most of the ones that have already voted.

And it’s also true that only those will now despair who had somewhat unrealistic hopes with regard to what was actually possible Tuesday night. After all, despite all the Sanders momentum etc., another historic upset like the one in Michigan was unlikely.

Regardless of how critical one is of how the corporate media prefers to talk about polls and electability instead of about actual political issues, regardless of how the 2016 U.S. presidential election is taking place in a highly dynamic and ultimately unpredictable “populist moment” and regardless also of how incredibly wrong therefore FiveThirtyEight and other influential polling institutions were when it came to predicting Michigan, one must admit that the FiveThirtyEight predictions have been quite accurate in most of the previous states so far. And despite the come-from-behind momentum resulting from the Michigan boost, one could simply not expect another upset in the states that voted Tuesday night.[1] FiveThirtyEight’s predictions of Sanders victories, just based on their polls, were <1% in Florida, <10% in Illinois, <1% in North Carolina, only 3% in Ohio and 46% in Missouri. So in a way, it was rather surprising that Sanders even came so close to winning Illinois and Missouri, beating the delegate goals of the Clinton campaign.

End of the Firewall?

All in all, Sanders’ lost by big margins only in the two states where everyone knew he would. And although those two states increase Clintons’ lead by more than 70 delegates, Reich and others are correct when they note that the Democratic primary scheduling “firewall” for Clinton has now come to an end. In the upcoming states the situation looks much better for Sanders with FiveThirtyEight suggesting a Sanders win probability – based on the previous primary elections – of 40% in Arizona, 75% in Idaho, 82% in Utah (March 22), 91% in Alaska, 81% in Hawaii and 85% in Washington (March 26), 61% in Wisconsin (April 5), 80% in Wyoming (April 9) etc.

In other words, unless the corporate media message according to which the presidential bid of the leftist candidate – against whom both the New York Times and the Washington Post have been fighting tooth and nail all along – ended last night leads to disillusionment, even lower millennial and working class voter turnout in the upcoming states etc., a Sanders comeback, which equals a continued presence of his extremely popular left social-democratic message, is not that unlikely and can and should be fought for. And Reich and others are right to point out that the majority of delegates are still in play – with big prizes like California (548 delegates) and Wisconsin (96 delegates) still to come. And if the momentum is back and the movement behind Sanders continues to further effectively deconstruct Clinton’s faux progressivism, “faux feminism”[2] and her zombie-ish electability myth (polls show that the probability of a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz presidency is much higher with a Clinton nomination), etc. then also the super-delegates will find it harder to support Clinton against the popular vote. And the left may find comfort in the fact that Sanders is actually still doing better than he ought to be doing according to at least one of the comprehensive three Sanders victory scenarios outlined by DailyKos last month.

Nevertheless, yesterday obviously made things more difficult. Sanders’ come-from-behind momentum appears to have taken a brunt. And gone is the message that Clinton can only win the solid South (which – with maybe a few exceptions like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina – Democrats are bound to lose in the federal election anyway…) but hardly anywhere else, especially not in the Midwest/rust belt hard-hit by the highly unpopular free-trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and TPP which Clinton embraced until she suddenly and without further explanation changed her mind on the trade issue in a blog post(!). So a successful Sanders nomination as the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential elections has become even more unlikely last night, for sure.

However, here’s why beyond this type of reasoning leftists should not be disillusioned. In the very narrow sense of success, i.e. a successful Democratic nomination, a Sanders victory was extremely unlikely from the get-go. No one, not even the wildest optimists among us, expected Sanders to even get this far last year. And this also appears to have been one of the reasons why many of his radical left-wing supporters today were initially very critical of his campaign when it started, not just because of some controversial foreign-policy stances or because of real “social-democratic illusions” (especially with regard to finance and banking reform) but especially because he was considered a catalyst of left-wing, anti-neoliberal grassroots mobilization for an eventual neoliberal Clinton presidential bid.

And even when the campaign developed what Loren Balhorn would have called Sanders’ “WTF?! dynamism” (if only the German publisher had let him get away with that), only the boldest (or most clueless) leftist observers ended up saying last week that they would once and for all declare Sanders to become the Democratic party nominee. Of course, we all have hopes and dreams. We would not be leftists if we didn’t believe in the possibility of sudden unexpected change. If history was left to the pollsters and ‘pundits,’ the October Revolution would never have happened. Still, we must remember that only an incredible mass movement can/could bring Sanders even close to winning the Democratic nomination.

Why Should the Left Rejoice?

First of all, in terms of the narrow question of a presidential bid, there is the fact that because of the far-reaching popularity of his unique left-wing social-democratic message there’s still hope to be generated from the fact that, as the polls show, Sanders still has the capability of building majorities both within the Democratic primary as well as in the federal elections in November. And even though he has commented that he wouldn’t run as an independent candidate because of how it would split the vote and possibly hand the election to the GOP, it is still a possibility. A possibility which presumably would depend on a mixture of how the dynamism plays out in both parties’ primary elections over the course of the next months and maybe also who is pushing Sanders in which direction. Generally speaking, with Trump having moved one step further in the direction of a Republican nomination Tuesday night by winning Florida (albeit losing in Ohio against the establishment’s new favorite candidate, John Kasich, as opposed to the tea party government shutdown leader Ted Cruz…) and with the Republican party establishment apparently being dead set on preventing Trump at whatever political cost, we might even see four presidential candidates in November. And obviously such a split in both parties would be highly beneficial to such a Sanders presidential bid, because otherwise the Ralph Nader 2000 trauma would be reawakened and it would be all Clinton vs. Trump.

However, the point why the global left should rejoice is, secondly, that all of these ifs-and-buts questions are really not even the most important ones. The main reason why the global left should rejoice is because the left in the U.S. will not only have won in case Sanders eventually wins, against all odds, the nomination and the 2016 presidential election (which, given the popularity of his message and the widespread hatred of Trump, he then probably would). The American left has already won no matter what happens next! It has won by how the Sanders campaign politicized the usually completely depoliticized American presidential elections of neoliberal candidates of various shades vaguely promising ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and ‘conservative values’. It has won by enforcing a debate about capitalism and its surface symptomology income and wealth inequality. It has won by pulling it out into the open how this obscene inequality is corrupting liberal democracy, how it has created an oligarchic power structure and how only a comprehensive strategy of conflict-oriented social movements at all levels – the workplace, the street, and the political/parliamentary system, i.e. a revolutionary realpolitik (Rosa Luxemburg) inside and against the state, which is aimed at shifting the balance of forces between capital and labour, can undo it. And it has won by clearly demarcating the divide between the left in the U.S. and the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Despite Sanders’ recent claim that he ran as a Democrat because it would give him greater media exposure and because they had an existing institutional structure, he clearly also did so to drive home just how neoliberal Clinton was and to reveal how a left Democrat could run. A very strong reason to keep hope alive in the Sanders camp is because of how he will continue to reveal this divide in the party. It is a real victory of this campaign in exposing what Sanders, based on decades of dealings with the party knows: that the DP is the main barrier to leftward movement in the U.S. and the true source of the neoliberal hegemony. By showing that it is possible to run as a socialist Democratic candidate and have a chance, Bernie has opened up future possibilities by exposing the rift in the party. In fact, we quite possibly will look back at this as the moment of the break with neoliberalism of the party. And Sanders’ run has also put the left on solid footing of attack if Hillary becomes the president. Again, this will take future work but it will be much harder to pass off future rightward drift as inevitable or just Democratic party business-as-usual with the divide in the party exposed. The background noise of future politics will always be: we had another path but chose this one. Conversely if Trump wins the left will also have a solid foundation to argue that his victory was due to the neoliberal drift of the Democratic Party and only a left Democrat could’ve/can stop the hard right in the future.

And finally, and this may be the most remarkable achievement, the American left has won by establishing Sanders’ concrete left-wing social-democratic and/or transformative transition demands in the American political landscape and imagination: single-payer health care, free public education, a federal living wage of $15/hour, the Workplace Democracy Act facilitating unionization, fundamental banking reform (even if focused on dismantling instead of socialization…). Hence, the American populace is now much more aware about the real tertium-non-datur alternative: A left-wing Social Green New Deal as a general, inclusive and solidarity-based high-road exit strategy from the crisis, which would re-shift the relationship of forces between capital and labour and could function as the most coherent entrance project to a post-capitalist future, or the global neoliberal unity coalition’s low-road exit strategy of austerity with further immiseration, nationalist exclusion and destruction of the public good.

All of this will not go away. Or rather, beyond carrying on the Sanders presidential campaign, the American left now has the opportunity (and, we think, obligation) to not let the Sanders mobilization eventually dissolve but integrate the millions of enthused, but often – not least because of their extremely young age – politically inexperienced Sanders supporters into (the already existing) social movements mobilizing around those concrete demands of “Medicare for all,” “Fight for 15 and a union” etc.

And in all of that, the Sanders movement is also a historic victory not only for the American left. Rather, the American left has given the world the greatest gift. And that is that, because of U.S. hegemony, the entire world has been watching how the anti-neoliberal left is now suddenly capable of building majorities around transformative transition programs. We cannot overestimate and should take pleasure in how this fact would send shivers down the spines of current and former third way social-democratic party leaders all across the core capitalist countries if only the Clintons, Blairs, Schroeders, Jospins, Zapateros, Hollandes, Gabriels, Renzis and Sánchez’ had spines. Yes, the entire world is watching how the anti-neoliberal left is now suddenly even moving into the direction of once again and realistically posing the question of (political) power – and not only in the “imperialist chain’s weakest links,” i.e. economically devastated peripheries with very, very little room for maneuvering such as Greece, but also in the very heart of the core capitalist countries and the American Empire.

Thus, the SYRIZA-Corbyn-Sanders freedom train continues zooming down the tracks. Its path is bumpy. To every up-hill there’s a down-hill. But it’s moving forward, and, despite it all, it’s moving forward fast. •

Brad Bauerly has his Ph.D. from York University and is an instructor in Political Science at SUNY Plattsburgh. His book on agriculture and U.S. state building will be out this summer.

Ingar Solty is a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory and a Fellow at the Institute for Social Analysis at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His most recent books are The USA under Obama: Charismatic Leadership, Social Movements and Imperial Politics in the Global Crisis (Argument Verlag, 2013), New German Foreign Policy, the Crisis and Left-Wing Alternatives (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2016) and Aesthetics in a Changing Capitalism: Studies on the Politics of Culture in Fascism, Fordism and Neoliberalism (forthcoming, Argument Verlag, 2016 – all in German).

Notes:

1. It is also unclear what impact the recent violence at Trump rallies had in the primaries outcomes. While those on the left would like to believe that seeing protesters take on and challenge the xenophobic and racist atmosphere of those events we should also be mindful that many would see that violence and the potential for more in the future and run back into the arms of the neoliberal Democrats who they see as able to protect them.
2. Liza Featherstone, Ed., False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Verso Books, London/New York 2016.

The EUropean Union – a criminal?

The EU that has peace as it’s top goal and received Nobel’s Peace Prize? The EU with Schengen and Dublin? The EU with “European” values, humanism and mission civilisatrice that tells others how to live in accordance with international law and in respect for human rights?

We live in times where little shall surprise us anymore. The answer to the question – will EU become a criminal in international law terms? – will be answered on March 17 and 18 when the EU Council meets to decide whether or not to carry through the agreement with Turkey about how to handle refugees.

Amnesty International knows what it is all about. AI uses words such as “alarmingly shortsighted”, “inhumane”, “dehumanising”, “moral and legally flawed” and “EU and Turkish leaders have today sunk to a new low, effectively horse trading away the rights and dignity of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

And “By no stretch of imagination can Turkey be considered a ‘safe third country’ that the EU can cosily outsource its obligations to,” says Iverna McGowan, Head of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

When Amnesty International expresses itself this way, we should listen very very carefully. I do and I’ve signed Amnesty’s Open Letter to Swedish prime minister Löfvénprotesting that Sweden too may join this inhuman and law-violating agreement with Turkey. Hurry up, it is tomorrow!

Behind every refugee stands an arms trade, stands militarism.

A huge majority of the refugees have fled the wars conducted by irresponsible and narrow-minded EU leaders who, thereby, have already violated international law. They continue to do so – Denmark being the latest to join the tragedy.

EU countries combined make up the largest economy in the world. How bizarre that the EU has the resources to fight one war after the other, has huge military budgets and nuclear weapons and puts unlimited resources into wars against terror (that is, to a large extent, a response to U.S./NATO/EU foreign policies) but cowardly believes it can’t find the resources to care for 1,2 million seeking refuge among its 500 million, i.e. 0,24%!

Precisely because EU countries have caused a major part of the refugees to flee, we have a special moral obligation to a) receive them and b) learn to not start wars just like that on somebody else’s territory.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Will the EU anything good, the time is now.

There is no refugee crisis in the EU. There are several other crises: 1) A crisis caused by years of militarism; 2) A crisis of crisis management; 3) A crisis of leadership – or, with the exception of Chancellor Merkel – no leadership for common policies at all; and 4) A crisis of solidarity, humanity and ethics.

You may add a 5) the Euro-racism expressed as Islamophobia. I am pretty sure that the EU would have acted differently if there had been a huge natural catastrophe or a nuclear power plant meltdown in Israel and 1,2 million Jews had come to Europe or if an EU country had experienced something like that in its own midst.

If on March 16-17, 2016, the EU decides to implement this immoral and law-violating agreement with increasingly authoritarian, war-fighting, terror-supporting and refugee-unsafe country Turkey, the moral decay of the Western world will be obvious. If not to itself, then to the 92% of the world’s people living outside it.

And the EU will deserve nothing better than it own dissolution. Because it wasn’t for a better but for a worse world. And technically – what is left when the asylum right, the Schengen and Dublin conventions etc. will be violated by the Council itself?

Either the EU is for a better world or it’s time for another Europe after it!

There is an undercurrent that links both the conservatives and some on the left who have been keen to see states such as Greece, and more lately Britain, flee the chains of EU financial administration.  “The alternative to remaining in a structurally unsafe building is, of course, walking out,” suggests Daniel Hannan in that long time organ of conservative commentary, The Spectator.[1]

The curious position for such opposition to the Eucrocrat position lies in the fact that Greece was pilloried when it could just as well have undergone a dramatic, albeit painful “de-linking” process.  This could have led to a range of debilitating yet emancipating consequences, though it is hard to see how the country, given its size and vulnerability, could have gone far without eventually falling into further catastrophe.  The tragic result has been capitulation and economic occupation, one that is hardly going to abate till the next round of measures comes up for debate.

The British financiers were hardly the ones to accept that a Greek exit might be warranted to preserve sovereignty and any remote semblance of independence.  The banks needed their greed-induced fill, and the opposition to the EU by their defenders was not based on the prospect of social justice but economic bank balances.

Having said that, a leaked account last year revealed how Britain’s David Cameron had suggested to another EU counterpart that Greece’s exit from the Eurozone “might be better” to enable it to order its own finances.

In the words of the note, “On Greece, the PM wondered if it was wise for Angela Merkel to allow the discussion with Greece to take place at PM level and mused that it might be better for Greece to leave the Eurozone in order to sort its economy out – though also accepted that there were major risks in that too.”[2]

Cameron’s views made sense in the jockeying he was engaged with at the time, hoping to win a more favourable position with Brussels over the issue of renegotiating Britain’s obligations with the EU.  As The Independent noted last July, “officials in London and Brussels believe a Greek exit from the single currency could strengthen Mr Cameron’s hand in his negotiations on new membership terms ahead of the in/out referendum he has promised by 2017.”[3]  The Greeks, in other words, would be the valuable guinea pigs.

Prejudice is, after all, sovereign when it comes to determining such matters.  Britain, suggested Douglas Murray, “should pity most of the other European countries, because they are losing control not just of their borders but of their civilization and culture – the whole caboodle.”[4]  Keep the borders closed to asylum seekers; tighten, if not scupper the humanitarian agenda.  Now, it is Britain which finds itself in a situation Greece did in all its desperation, one that was debated but ultimately ignored: the prospect of leaving the structured, bureaucratic family known as the EU.

Irrespective of whether it is economic pillage or refugee woes, the arguments between Greece and Britain throw up a stock number of points.  The EU cannot be trusted. Its institutions are not accountable.  Sovereignty, if not dead, is at grave risk.

Commentators like Hannan are all too aware about the techniques being deployed by the European establishment.  Fear is fundamental to avoiding change. “Europhiles know that most referendums go the way of the status quo, which is why their campaign is based around conjuring inchoate fears of change.”

Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, had gone to some lengths to appropriate every position of fear he can to convince British voters about impending problems should a pro-exit vote result.  In his budget speech, he cited worries from the Office for Budget Responsibility that “a vote to leave in the forthcoming referendum could usher in an extended period of uncertainty”.

In actual fact, the OBR’s report cited by Osborne is clear that negative or positive outcomes on growth might result.  It notes a study by a think tank, Open Europe, which used  modelling “in which the UK leaves the EU in 2018 and found that GDP could be 2.2 per cent lower or 1.6 per cent higher by 2030, depending on the arrangements for trade and regulation that follow ‘Brexit’.”[5]

The authors of the report do the wise thing and also concede that various “uncertainties” do underlie “our central fiscal forecast”.  Any economic forecast of any quality is bound to be as unreliable, if not more so, than meteorological prediction.

Similarities between the debates on Grexit and Brexit, to that extent, do surface, though they fail to meet at one vital juncture: the central human crisis that Greece faced because of bankster-directed imposition.  Britain, if anything, wishes to avoid the prospect of dealing with any human crisis, notably the refugee one, engulfing Europe.  The sceptred isle wishes to go ostrich on that score, while Greece lacks that luxury.

By way of contrast, Britain advertises itself as a financial centre, when it is no more than a clearing house for various instruments of the economy that have done little for welfare and everything for the creation of fictional wealth. The country that created the National Health Service and Attlee’s post-World War II welfare state has moved somewhat away from a model that places the person before the bank transaction.  But in that discussion lie smidgens of bull dog persuasiveness that may convince other countries that exiting a failed, and crumbling system, may be the first step to reforming it.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email:[email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/what-brexit-would-look-like-for-britain/

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/26/cameron-told-eu-leader-greek-exit-from-euro-may-be-best-option

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grexit-could-boost-david-camerons-efforts-to-win-better-deal-for-uk-from-eu-say-diplomats-10358940.html

[4] http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/europes-folly-has-made-it-a-civilisation-under-siege/

[5] http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.org.uk/March2016EFO.pdf

Only three days after massive street demonstrations calling for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, and less than two weeks after his legally dubious four-hour detention for questioning, former Brazilian President Lula is about to spectacularly re-enter the Brazilian government as a Minister, actually a Super-Minister.

This is Rousseff’s one and only chess move left amidst an unprecedented political/economic crisis. Predictably, she will be accused on all fronts – from comprador elites to Wall Street – of having abdicated in favor of Lula, while Lula will be accused of hiding from the two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation.

Lula and his protégé Dilma had two make-or-break, face-to-face meetings in Brasilia, Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, discussing the detailed terms of his re-entry. At first, Lula would only accept a post in government if he becomes Government Secretary – in charge of political articulation; he would then be part of the hardcore hub that really decides Brazilian policy.

But then, according to a government minister, who requested anonymity, surged the suggestion of Lula as Chief of Staff – the most important ministry post in Brazil.

What’s certain is that Lula is bound to become a sort of ‘Prime Minister’ – implying carte blanche to drastically change Dilma’s wobbly economic policy and forcefully reconnect with the Workers’ Party’s large social base, which is mired in deep distress under massive cuts in social spending. If Lula pulls it off – and that’s a major “if” – he will also be perfectly positioned as a presidential candidate for the 2018 Brazilian elections, to the despair of the right-wing media-old elite-economic complex.

Lula’s next role, institutionally, will combine coordinating measures to re-start Brazil’s growth while at the same time realigning the government’s base in Brazil’s notoriously corrupt Congress. He will be immune from the Car Wash investigation – but he can still be investigated by the Brazilian Supreme Court.

The comeback kid?

Lula’s task is nothing short of Sisyphean. How much political capital the former most admired politician in the world retains (Obama: “That’s the guy”) is open to serious questioning. Even a whiff of the prime ministerial possibility being floated early in the week was enough to plunge the Sao Paulo stock market and drive the US dollar up again. His fight with the Goddess of the Market will be classic High Noon.

Lula always privileged balanced budgets and the government’s credibility. For instance, as he ascended to power way back in 2003, he placed former BankBoston ace Henrique Meirelles at the Central Bank and immediately went for a fiscal adjustment, sanitizing expenses and taming inflation.

Lula is not against a fiscal adjustment per se – which Brazil badly needs; the problem is Dilma’s own, bumbled adjustment went really hardcore on the Brazilian working classes and lower middle classes, including a raid on unemployment insurance. Lula is essentially against the working classes being excessively punished – which will only depress the economy even further. The proof that what he did in 2003 was the right thing – and was part of a calculated long game – is that Brazil was growing at 7.5 percent a year in 2010.

A media beast as effective as Bill Clinton in his glory days, Lula will also switch to non-stop PR offensive – something that the Dilma administration simply does not master. When in power, he always explained his policies in layman’s terms, for instance exhorting people to go shopping and to use the credit his administration was providing. But these were the good old times; now it’s a toxic environment of no consumption, no investment, and no credit.

Still, Lula is bound to bring Meirelles – a Wall Street favorite – back to the Central Bank. Meirelles has already advanced deeply unpopular reforms are essential if Brazil wants to regain its competitiveness.

All eyes on the Supreme Court

The Lula game-changer is not about to turn the whole complex chessboard upside down; it will instead make it even more unpredictable. The hegemonic judicial-politico-media-old elite-economic complex was screaming for Rousseff’s impeachment as late as last weekend. Yet now nobody knows what post-impeachment Brazil would look like.

Under the current juncture, a Rousseff impeachment – who has not been formally accused on any wrongdoing – translates as a white coup. One of the first acts of ‘Prime Minister’ Lula, a master negotiator, as he seizes the chessboard, will be to offer a – what else – negotiated solution to the crisis, which will imply this administration stays on, including Vice President Temer, whose political party is the PMDB, currently allied with the Workers’ Party.

In parallel, the Brazilian Attorney General has already collected information on the notorious coke snorting loser of the last presidential elections, right-wing opposition leader Aecio Neves, who among other feats maintains an illegal bank account in Liechtenstein under his mother’s name. He’s bound to be fully investigated.

The attorney general – based on the former government leader in the Senate ratting out a smatter of notables – actually is gearing up to investigate a cast of thousands, from Lula and Dilma’s current Vice President Temer to Neves and the current Education Minister.

At the same time the heavily politicized, Hollywood-worthy Car Wash investigation will keep firing on all cylinders even as the chief targets – Rousseff impeached and Lula in chains – become more elusive. Their key strategy is clear; to intimidate virtually everybody. The federal prosecutors behind Car Wash want to blow up any possibility of a political agreement in Brasilia – even at the price of plunging Brazil into civil war mixed with further economic depression.

It’s also clear that without the Brazilian Supreme Court effectively policing the myriad excesses of the Car Wash investigation, there is zero possibility of Brazil emerging from its dire politico-economic crisis.

And all this while impeachment enters ‘Walking Dead mode’. Institutionally, an impeachment fast track could last only 45 days. That’s all the time Lula would have to sew up a grand bargain by proving to the PMDB party that the Rousseff administration has become economically viable.

Before the Lula game-changer, referring to the offensive against Lula, Dilma and the Workers’ Party, crack historian Paulo Alves de Lima told me,

“We’re on the verge of a new stage of a rolling counter-revolution, of an even more restricted democracy, unbearably pregnant with arrogance and institutional violence. We’re closer to Pinochet, to the ideal state enshrined by Friedmanesque neoliberalism. We’re on the verge of mass fascism, which is a big novelty in Brazil.”

The Pinochet specter, of right-wingers seizing power just like in Brazil in 1964 and Chile in 1973, may be partially exorcized – for now. But make no mistake: the next few days are bound to be epic. Judge Moro, Car Wash’s Elliot Ness, allied with the Globo media empire, will go no holds barred to prevent any possibility of a political agreement in Brasilia brokered by Lula. Because this would mean Lula not only as Prime Minister, but as President – again – in 2018. Total war starts now.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. 

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred about U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, and particularly Honduras, during the debate in Miami, Florida.

In other debates, they have discussed the Middle East, Libya, Egypt, Russia, China and North Korea, but not Sub-Saharan Africa. Their most noted remarks about that part of the world have been about Rwanda and the so-called U.S. failure to intervene to stop the massacres of 1994. Both echo then Sen. Obama in a 2008 presidential debate with Sen. John McCain:   

If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in. If we could have stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act.   So, you know, when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us. So I do think we have to consider it as part of our interest, our national interest.   But understand that there’s a lot of cruelty around the world. We’re not going to be able to be everywhere all the time. That’s why it’s so important for us to be able to work in concert with our allies.

Hillary Clinton claims that she urged her husband to intervene in Rwanda, and he backs her up in that claim. Daily Kos writer Shane Hensinger accuses Clinton of lying and cites her White House schedule from the first week of April to mid-July 1994 as evidence.  He says that during the key moments at which U.S. and U.N. policymakers discussed the crisis in Rwanda, First Lady Hillary Clinton was meeting Princess Margaret and attending a Royal Ballet gala, brunching with King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan, attending the DNC gala, etcetera, etcetera. Hensinger does not question the narrative about failure to intervene in Rwanda.

In 2015, Vox interviewer Ezra Klein asked Bernie Sanders whether the US should have intervened to stop the Rwandan Genocide.  Sanders responded, ““Yes, but it’s not just America. This is the problem that we face. We are spending more money on the military than the next nine countries behind us. Where is the U.K.? Where is France?   Germany is the economic powerhouse in Europe. They provide health care to all of their people; they provide free college education to their kids. You know what? Germany and France and the U.K. and Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, all of us have got to work together to prevent those types of genocide and atrocities, and we have to strengthen the United Nations in order to do that.”

U.S. policymakers and pundits have repeatedly invoked Rwanda and U.S. responsibility to stop genocide and mass atrocities to justify the U.S./NATO bombing in Libya and Syria. As the U.S. and NATO’s war on Libya began, Pakistani writer Tariq Ali wrote in the Monthly Review,

“The sheer cynicism is breathtaking. We’re expected to believe that the leaders with bloody hands in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are defending the people in Libya. The fact that decent liberals still fall for this rubbish is depressing.”

On the fifth anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ali wrote, in one of 90 statements published by the Brussels Tribunal,

“The human cost of this war would, if some other country were doing it, be labeled genocide.”

Writers including Robin Philpot, author of “Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa,” and Ed Herman and David Peterson, authors of “Enduring Lies: Rwanda in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later,” argue that the story of the U.S. and U.N. failure to stop the mass killing in Rwanda is a lie because the U.S. and U.K. in fact supported Gen. Paul Kagame’s invasion to seize power in Rwanda, which included the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians.

Any business expert will tell you that marketing is not an exact science. The same is true in politics, and even more so in this historic election season.

As the polls closed yesterday, Republican candidate and US Senator Marco Rubio took to the podium to announce he was finally bowing out the GOP presidential primary race. Front runner Donald Trump nearly swept the board starting with Rubio’s home state of Florida, followed by Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri and in US territory Mariana Islands, while Ohio governor John Kasich took the remaining contest winning his first primary in his home state.

With 99 delegates at stake in a winner take all contest, Florida was meant to be Rubio’s gallant last stand. Even though the polls showed Rubio trailing in double digits before Tuesday, Rubio still insisted he was going to win, and even go on to win the nomination too.

Critics blasted Rubio’s ‘plastic’ smile.

“Quite frankly, I think a lot of people are going to be embarrassed tonight and are going to want refunds from the money they spent on those polls because we’re going to win Florida,” said Rubio. “We feel very optimistic about that.”

When it was all said and done, Trump beat Rubio 46% to 27% in Florida. A blow out.

By the end of his long drive, Rubio had only managed to win one state caucus in Minnesota, leaving him with no real primary victory. To his investors, the truth of matter might be almost too painful to comprehend – that beyond all the hype, their man was really a bottom tier candidate.

Super Tuesday’s humiliating loss was indicative of a Rubio rise… that never rose. Before Tuesday’s defeat, no matter how poorly Florida Senator Marco Rubio showed in previous primary elections, and no matter how badly he was polling in his home state of Florida – the media, led by CNN and FOX News, still covered his campaign like he was winning the election. Clearly, there was a concerted and well-coordinated effort by the Republican establishment and major broadcast media outlets to promote Rubio’s candidacy well above the actual candidate’s weight division.

Three weeks ago, in a last-ditch effort to elevate his poll numbers, Rubio tried to out-Trump Trump, by unleashing his own round of back-ally personal verbal insults at the front runner in the hope of pulling The Donald back down to earth. Rubio began publicly calling Trump a “con man” and asserted that Trump had not achieved anything in his business career and along with fellow competitor Ted Cruz, inferred that the billionaire property and entertainment mogul Trump had inherited $200 million dollars from his late father and therefore was not deserving of any accolades. When Trump would joke about Rubio’s lack of height (Rubio is 5’8″ and Trump is 6’2″), Rubio hit back joking, “look how small Donald’s hands are, and you what they say about men with small hands..” to his crowds roaring with laughter before the Texas primary three weeks earlier.

Trump finally hit back with a moniker that Rubio could never shake, renaming him “Little Marco.”

LITTLE MARCO: Trump’s crude deconstruction of Rubio delivered the final blow.

Although their cage match pulled more TV airtime and attention away from a Trump-obsessed media, in the end it backfired horribly for Marco, as America got an uncomfortable snapshot of a nasty and desperate Rubio – hardly the look of stability, moderation and “unity” that Rubio marketeers were trying to project, and hardly presidential either.

What was most telling about Rubio’s response to a situation, partly of his own making, was that Rubio shirked any responsibility for ratcheting-up the rhetoric, and instead tried to blame Trump for the degrading ‘tone’ of the election:

“This is a frightening, grotesque and disturbing development in American politics,” Rubio said of the violence. “We are being ripped apart at the seams now,” he continued. “I’m sad for this country. This is supposed to be the example to the world of how a republic functions and instead people are watching third-world images last night coming out of Chicago.”

It was too late. The damage was already done. Some pundits were calling it “political suicide” by Rubio – a gross error of political miscalculation on his part. But this would be missing the point because in reality, beyond all the incredible marketing hype, Rubio’s campaign never achieved any serious market penetration to begin with.

It’s important to remember that the establishment firmly believed, and still to this day, that Marco Rubio could be the Republican Party’s answer to the marketing sensation that was Barack Obama in 2008. By capitalizing on his youth and his Latino profile, the GOP elite saw this as a ‘turn-key’ marketing solution. Just like a soda pop brand, party and media operatives believed that by positioning Rubio’s brand in a highbrow market tier, voters would make the necessary connections and move to act by casting their vote for him.

DETATCHED: Darryl Issa throws himself under the bus,, desperate to inflate Rubio before Super Tuesday.

On Super Tuesday, the transmission truly fell out of the Rubio marketing machine. After months of boasting about how he would win his home state, Rubio plugger and California Congressman Darryl Issa (R), insisted that, “Marco is leading in early (voting) returns in Florida.”

Seriously, Congressman Issa?

Issa appeared to be carrying water for the GOP establishment by doing the last minute media rounds for kingmaker Mitt Romney, who weeks earlier dropped the gauntlet down on the Trump train during a speech at the University of Utah. Romney,  the former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor implored his GOP herd to join forces and stop Trump by splitting the votes by voting for Kasich in Ohio, and for Rubio in Florida. Romney’s hoped  that his divide and conquer strategy would rob Trump of the delegate majority needed to secure the GOP nomination before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio this July.

JET-SET: Rubio taking instructions from elite off-shoring corporate raider Mitt Romney.

Clearly, Romney had staked his claim behind Marco Rubio then, which means that Rubio’s collapse in Florida has half deflated Romney’s Revolt.

Romney continued to dig a hole for himself in Florida before Super Tuesday by recording an automated “Robo-call” used to phone prospective Marco Rubio voters in Florida, nearly begging voters to cast ballots for, “a candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton and who can make us proud.”

The recorded message went on: “If we Republicans were to choose Donald Trump as our nominee, I believe that the prospects for a safe and prosperous future would be greatly diminished — and I’m convinced Donald Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton.” 

Making Robo-calls for a candidate who people were already calling “a Robot”, wasn’t exactly a smart move by Romney.

Far from swinging the election towards Rubio, what Mitt Romney really proved was that money and power can’t buy common sense.

Ghost Run

For anyone who actually bothered to look close enough, hints of Rubio’s collapse were everywhere, but you wouldn’t know if from media coverage over the last two months. If not for favorable network face-time on the GOP TV debates, along with Rubio’s elite financier backers like billionaire Paul Singer and Cayman hedge fund raider Romney, it’s safe to say that Rubio’s numbers might had been well below those of his fellow non-starter, Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Rubio-linked multi-million dollar Super PAC funds pulled out all the stops against Trump too, launching a social media tidal wave of anti-Trump messages before the Florida primary:

If every Rubio supporter makes 1 phone call #MarcoRubio will win! Convince 1 voter to vote for Marco! #CallForMarco pic.twitter.com/d8wOKZWFA4

— Stop Trump PAC (@StopTrumpPAC) March 15, 2016

Last Wednesday, Rubio hired out a football stadium to stage a homecoming rally in his own state. Unfortunately, no one showed up. TV cameras had to be moved forward into a tiny area around the field’s goal posts in order to make the rally look as if more than a few hundred people bothered to show up. Far from jovial and inspirational, the atmosphere was that of deflation and despondency. It was tragic.

Rubio stadium event in Hialeah. Stands empty; crowd in one end zone. pic.twitter.com/9zj0xslwSA

— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 9, 2016

And when the cameras zoomed-in, it looked like this:

The crowd in Hialeah is fired up for @marcorubio tonight! #FLforMarco #FLPrimary pic.twitter.com/e34GsoWWwH

— Team Marco (@TeamMarco) March 9, 2016

CNN had dispatched one of its intrepid city-dwelling reporters, Jason Carroll, out to Hialeah, Florida to  cover the event. Carrol tried be nice about it, describing the event as “much, much smaller” than a ‘normal’ Rubio event. So much for Marco’s homecoming, and so much for Mitt Romney’s plan to have Marco win his home state to force a brokered convention in July.

If Romney’s revolt was ever going to happen, it wasn’t going to be in Florida. You’d think Mitt’s people would’ve figured that one out, but there you go (millions are beginning to understand now why Romney performed so poorly in the 2012 election).

Jason Carol’s cameraman delivered a dim shot of the rally. If there was a church BBQ down the road, it would have drawn a bigger crowd than this.

After this debacle last week, Rubio still found the gumption to go on national TV and more or less instruct his supporters to cast their vote for John Kasich in the Ohio primary. Never before in modern American history have we seen presidential candidates instructing their supporters to vote against them in order to derail the party frontrunner in the hopes of triggering a brokered Republican National Convention in July.

In reality, a brokered convention means that even if Donald Trump wins the popular votes and the collects the most delegates in the GOP primaries – the Republican Party will call for a vote on the convention floor asking for all delegates to vote again, which in this case would mean that if the combined delegates of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich exceeds that held by Donald Trump, then Trump would be dumped by his own party’s establishment insiders at the convention – in favor of another yet to be determined party elite selection. Most likely this would be Mitt Romney’s former running mate, House Speaker Paul Ryan, or one of the other three aforementioned candidates.

Great on Paper

Before he was cast-off by the Tea Party purists in favor of Cruz, Rubio had positioned his brand as one of insurgency, but the crowd didn’t buy it. So the brand was repositioned as a “safe” choice for voters.

When the Rubio vs Trump mêlée first started, I had said that this was the inevitable result of the Republican establishment who were, “going for the mathematical and demographically pragmatic option – which would be Marco Rubio, with Wisconsin’s Scott Walker throwing early innings in the bull pen. Orthodox RNC thinking last spring believed that Rubio, with less than one term in Senate and no leadership experience, would somehow repeat the ‘Obama effect’ of 2008, and finally usher their party into the 21st century. Things looked very different for Hillary last spring too, where she seemed invincible on the Democrat side as well as in national polling. On paper at least, it seems that Rubio would “tick all the right boxes” for the GOP elite presiding over a party in decline and disarray – young (44 years old, although you’d put him at a decade his junior), and even more importantly, Latino, giving the GOP a shot at pulling in a crucial trilateral voter compliment: Hispanic-American, independents and moderate Democrats. On paper this all makes perfect sense, but running for President in the United States of America isn’t simply a case of what looks logical on paper. Case and point: Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson and, of course, Donald Trump.

It was a truly devastating moment for the Rubio campaign who had raised no less than $70 million so far as part of a desperate establishment bid to market the ‘Rubio brand’. According to a chief strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Rubio has been “more hyped than Crystal Pepsi,” in reference to Pepsi’s 1992 marketing flop.

“Sen. Rubio has been more hyped than Crystal Pepsi, but he has flopped even worse,” said Weaver last week.

“Even a well-conceived, high-financed marketing campaign won’t work if people don’t want to buy the product. That’s the Rubio campaign’s problem…. Behind the nice packaging, voters are discovering there is little substance.”

Not surprisingly, I don’t really like Crystal Pepsi. No one does. But everyone remembers when Coca Cola tried to inflate Coke Zero before it completely flopped. Millions were wasted in vain, and it seems that the only people who really benefited from this exercise in hype were the advertising agencies and the production companies who produced them – and also the media networks who sold the ad space to Coca Cola.

The same could be said with Rubio, and of course with Jeb Bush and a few others, although Rubio may still live to run another day. Even Coke Zero can become a Hero (well, according to Coca Cola, anyway) after years and years of marketing capital is invested into that product which no one was really interested in to begin with.

Billionaire Boys Club

Billionaires love to gamble, especially in politics – and they gambled heavily – and lost, on Marco Rubio. One might question the establishment’s efficacy in leaving an invisible Rubio in a primary race where he’s taking votes away from a more promising challenger in Texas Senator Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz. Ditto with Kasich.

Maybe it’s the egos, or maybe Trump is actually pulling the master strings. Either way, the establishment’s anti-Trump obsession is tearing the Republican Party apart.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more like a true life black comedy, all three desperate GOP challengers found themselves courting the endorsement of election dropout and former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, on the Thursday before the CNN debate began.

As sexy goes, this endorsement hardly registers outside of a few select country clubs. If it were an endorsement from 90 year old Barbara Bush then it might mean something.

So poor was Jeb’s showing in the primary contest – even after burning through over $100 million in campaign donations (he raised over $150 million) and received around 7% of the vote – it’s difficult to see why anyone among Rubio, Cruz and Kasich would be offering a stump for Mr. Excitement, a “low energy” dynastic nonstarter.

On balance, this endorsement would probably garner less votes than an endorsement from David Duke. Such is the bizarre and sideshow-like nature of this 2016 presidential election.

A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: Rubio uses Neocon’s PNAC and ‘Israel-first’ old marketing slogan.

Why the Elite Loved Rubio

Like his globalist colleague Kasich, and despite his evasive comments on the campaign trail, Rubio seems very committed to Wall Street and Bilderberg principles regarding corporate-brokered trade pacts like TPP, TTIP, GAT, and the WTO.

On foreign policy, Rubio is a pro-war Republican, calling for regime change in Syria, and even made the incredible comment during one of the GOP’s February debates that, “We didn’t overthrow Gaddafi, the Libyan people did…”, having not realized that months of US air bombardment, as well as arming and working with Islamist militants on the ground is what toppled the Libyan state in 2011. Many of these same militants packed up and moved the roadshow to Syria in late 2011 and early 2012. The CIA were active and involved in the repatriation of fighters to Syria and the trafficking of weapons into Syria after the fall of Gaddafi. It would be shocking if Rubio wasn’t aware of any of this, especially if he wants to be president of the United States.

The other obvious, if not bizarre indicator that the globalists’ billionaire, military industrial class are firmly backing Rubio was hidden in plain sight. His campaign slogan was “A New American Century”, and of course, the significance of this was completely lost on the mainstream media. It seemed that Rubio had stolen his campaign slogan from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton (and Jeb Bush, who also signed the PNAC pledge in 1998) whose neoconservative pro-war think tank, Project for A New American Century (PNAC) was arguably the architect of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. PNAC was also an extension of Israel’s foreign policy too, which makes sense considering how aggressively Rubio advocates for Israeli interests.

When you actually look at Rubio’s record during his time in the Florida legislature, it does not paint a pretty picture at all.

Without too much effort, any member of the media, including CNN’s Don Lemon, Jake Tapper or Anderson Cooper, could find a substantial trail of dirt behind the young Senator – if only for the fact that Rubio’s record seems to be off limits by the media and newspapers like the New York Times – all of whom are devoted to only running critical exposes on Donald Trump. Rubio’s dubious track record of scandals and other pieces of corruption are well-known in his home state, but almost invisible nationally. Top of that list might be one David Rivera, a long-time political ally and close friend of Marco Rubio – who also happens to be under investigation by the FBI.

That’s only the beginning. One of the most telling scandals involved Rubio selling his home to a lobbyist, and getting way over the asking price. On The Issues reports:

“Rubio’s personal finances were questioned because he made a $200,000 profit selling a house he owned to the mother of a chiropractor who was lobbying for a change in state insurance rules. Rubio had been a holdout, but removed a block on the measure shortly after the home sale and voted for it. Rubio was criticized for failing to disclose a home equity loan he received from US Century Bank, whose chairman, Sergio Pino, was a political supporter. The house had been appraised for $185,000, more than the purchase price just 37 days after he bought it. Rubio’s staff said the value jumped because he’d locked in a lower preconstruction price and made improvements. US Century Bank–a large recipient of federal bank bailout money–denied making a sweetheart deal.”

There are a number of other sketchy scandals linking Rubio to Florida’s organized crime syndicates, ponzi schemes, including shady deals involving cash payouts and dodgy lobbyists, some of which can be read here.

Then there’s the business of Rubio’s “sugar daddy”, Jewish billionaire and Israeli luminary Norman Braman. Not only is Braman bank-rolling the Rubio political machine (in return for…?), but Brahman’s ‘charity’ foundation also employs Marco’s wife Jeanette Rubio too.

ON BOARD: Rubio with Israeli luminary Shimon Peres.

Brahman is also Rubio’s entrée into the Israeli Lobby. It was Brahman who flew Marco and his family to Israel in 2010 to be inducted into the Israeli mind-set. This is also evident through Rubio’s pro-Israeli rhetoric, where during one debate he proudly announced, “There can be NO negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians right now…”

In another recent speech, Rubio took things a step further by insinuating that anyone who criticizes Israel is racist, insisting that, “All of this anti-Israel action going on globally, it’s anti-Semitism.”

He could easily be speaking as an Israeli envoy, speaking straight off of the lobby’s talking script.

That’s just a snapshot of what sort of political animal Marco Rubio is – not unlike the rest of the pack, and perhaps a lot more shrewd, pushy and cunning that many others. You wouldn’t expect anything less by anyone who believes that they deserve to be elected President of the United States having served less than one term in the US Senate at the age of 44.

It’s not certain yet whether or not Rubio will be able to retain his Florida US Senate seat after announcing he would be campaigning for president last year. Maybe a run for governor in Florida is in the cards.

One thing is certain though, at his young age and with powerful backers like the Israeli Lobby – we have not seen the last of Marco Rubio. His talent and ability as a speaker and his potential for a broad-based appeal is undeniable and you can be certain he will remain a key tool for the establishment for many years to come.

Just like Coke Zero, with enough marketing muscle and money injected into it, every brand can have a second life.

Putin’s Monday statement that he has ordered majority of Russia’s assets in Syria back home came as a huge surprise to most everyone including myself and has typically been described as a “shock announcement”. In my mind there is little doubt that Putin cherished the shock the announcement caused and certainly staged it in such a way to maximize that effect.

That said can we really let ourselves get off that easy? After all if memory serves the Russians when they announced the (equally surprising) military intervention in Syria clearly and unambiguously said it would only be of a very limited duration.

Reuters: Russian air strikes in Syria to last three-four months: Putin ally

“There is always a risk of being bogged down but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months,” Alexei Pushkov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told French radio station Europe 1. He added that the strikes were going to intensify.

Sputnik:

“My words were taken out of context as I wanted to say that the American military operation in Syria has been going on for more than a year. In regard to the Russian military operation, I meant that it would be limited in time and would have a fully defined timeframe.

And when exactly would they cease the combat operations they had now undertaken? When Russia’s intervention had done enough to “stabilize” the Syrian government and “create conditions for a political compromise”:

The aim of the Russian military operation in Syria – is the stabilization of the legitimate authority in the country, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Our task is to stabilize the legitimate authority and create conditions for a political compromise”, – he said in an interview with the program “Sunday Night with Vladimir Solovyov” on TV channel “Russia-1”.

Since the Damascus government is now no longer losing ground but expanding instead, and there are peace talks that have already produced a partial ceasefire that has held better and longer than anyone expected at its inception the criteria for Russian withdrawal was met.

So why was Monday such a surprise? Because most everyone had refused to take seriously Kremlin’s words that this is a strictly time-limited as well as a goals-limited operation.

These included both those who hoped Russia would become stuck in a quagmire, and those who hoped Moscow would do more to help Syrians defeat the Saudi/Turkish/CIA-backed jihad in their country.

The lesson: If Russians say they’ll do something – they might.

In a Rose Garden ceremony Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama announced his nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief judge on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Antonin Scalia’s sudden death on February 13. If confirmed, Garland would become the 113th Supreme Court justice, bringing the membership to its traditional number of nine.

As expected, within minutes of Obama’s announcement, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, reiterated his earlier vow that there would be no Senate vote on any Obama Supreme Court nominee prior to the presidential election in November.

Because there are not likely to be any Senate confirmation hearings before Obama’s term expires, Garland’s selection is being viewed in large measure as a political maneuver to bolster the Democrats’ electoral fortunes by exposing Republican obstructionism. Obama has named an individual, previously backed by leading Republicans as well as Democrats, who has qualifications and politics that in previous periods would have ensured speedy confirmation by the Senate.

More immediate electoral calculations aside, the choice underscores the essentially right-wing orientation of the Democratic White House.

Garland, 63, is both the oldest and most conventional of those said to have been on Obama’s “short list” to replace Scalia. A descendant of Jewish immigrants from Russia who settled in Chicago, Garland graduated at the top of his class at both Harvard University and Harvard Law School.

He first clerked for federal appellate Judge Henry J. Friendly of New York and then for Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., both appointees of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower during the late 1950s who became noted liberals while on the bench.

Garland spent his first two years in practice as a special assistant to the Carter administration’s last attorney general, Benjamin Civiletti. With the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981, Garland left the government to join Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., which was then growing into one of the largest law firms in the world by representing corporate clients, including Philip Morris Company, sued for covering up the health consequences of smoking cigarettes.

During his eight years with the firm, Garland represented various business interests and became a published authority on antitrust law. He left private practice in 1989 to spend four years as a federal prosecutor. After rejoining Arnold & Porter briefly, Garland became an official in the Clinton administration’s Department of Justice, where he supervised several high-profile “domestic terrorism” investigations and prosecutions, including those of the “Unabomber” and Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh.

President Bill Clinton nominated Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1995, but Republican opposition to filling the seat delayed Garland’s confirmation until 1997, when he was finally approved by a vote of 76-23, with 32 Republicans voting in his favor.

For the last 19 years, Garland has been a judge of the DC Circuit, the court of appeals responsible for reviewing a high percentage of cases involving federal criminal prosecutions and disputes with federal regulatory agencies. As a result of a rotation based on seniority, Garland is now the Circuit’s chief judge.

Garland’s reputation is as a polite and skilled judicial “moderate,” which in today’s skewed political terms puts him far to the right of his mentors Friendly and Brennan. Garland’s rulings have evinced some sympathy for civil rights and environmental concerns, and he has not been a knee-jerk defender of corporate interests in regulatory disputes, but he is perceived as tending to side with the prosecution in cases relating to the rights of people accused of crimes.

Preliminary examinations of Garland’s judicial record have provided little indication of how he might vote on so-called hot-button issues such as abortion and affirmative action that have attracted much attention on the Supreme Court over the last several years.

In one notorious case, Garland joined with two other DC Circuit judges to deny habeas corpus to prisoners detained by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That decision was later reversed by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court. In other cases, however, Garland wrote decisions slamming the Central Intelligence Agency for refusing to confirm that it had records of drone assassinations, and ordering the release of an ethnic Uighur from military detention.

In his Rose Garden remarks announcing the appointment, Obama placed heavy emphasis on Garland’s years as a prosecutor and repeatedly referred to past praise lavished on Garland by right-wing Republicans such as Utah Senator Orin Hatch. There was no attempt to portray the nomination as an effort to shift the Supreme Court in the direction of defending democratic rights.

In one particularly telling moment, Obama, rather than referring explicitly to Garland’s tenure with Judge Brennan, who was perhaps the most outstanding judge on the liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren Court of the 1960s, said only that Garland had clerked for “a Republican-appointed Supreme Court judge.”

In January Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, congratulated the country on surviving its first winter without buying Russian gas. It had instead bought European gas which, as Poroshenko pointed out proudly, was 30% more expensive.

This sums up the core problem facing the Ukrainian economy. It is not corruption, a serious issue about which little can be done in the short term, but the ideologically driven choice to sever all ties with Russia, the country that has historically been its major trading partner and chief investor.

In little over a year, living standards in Ukraine have fallen by half, the value of the currency has slumped by more than two-thirds, and inflation has skyrocketed to 43%. Yet, even as the economy has collapsed, the government has insisted on economic policies that can only be termed suicidal.

By tearing up contracts with Russia in 2014, Ukraine’s defence and aviation industries lost 80% of their income. Once the pride of Kiev, airline manufacturer Antonov went bankprupt and rocket engine producer Yuzhmash is now working just one day a week.

By severing banking ties with Moscow, Kiev has denied itself investment and a vital economic lifeline – the remittances sent back home by zarobitchane, Ukraine’s migrant workers. Up to seven million Ukrainians have sought work in Russia, sending back $9bn in 2014 – three times the total foreign direct investment Ukraine got last year.

Reckless government borrowing has exacerbated the problem. The government was able to write off 20% of its Eurobond debt last October, allowing it to negotiate for the next IMF loan tranche which was expected in December but still not been received.

But the draconian terms imposed for this small beer are often overlooked. Ukraine will be repaying this debt until 2041, with future generations giving western creditors as much as half of the country’s GDP growth, should it ever reach 4% a year.

There is a common thread that links the government’s irrational economic behavior – the understandable desire to spite Vladimir Putin. Alas, it is the average Ukrainian citizen who pays the price.

There can also be no doubt that Poroshenko approves of this approach. In his first speech of 2016 he announced new priorities for the Ukrainian economy. The government intends to end subsidies to manufacturing and industry, and instead promote investment in information technologies and agriculture.

It is not at all clear, however, where he will sell this produce, since by signing a free trade agreement with the EU, Ukraine lost its preferential access to its largest market, Russia.

Meanwhile, EU rules restrict Ukraine’s exports to Europe, which fell 23% in 2015 despite the preferential tariff regime that was in place for most of last year. For example, only 72 Ukrainian companies are allowed to export food of animal origin to the EU: 39 of the licences are for honey. While that may sound like a lot of honey, Ukraine exported its yearly quota for honey in the first six weeks of 2016. A similar story holds for other commodities.

Nor is it clear how Poroshenko plans to make Ukrainian agriculture globally competitive when, as his own agriculture minister points out, four out of five state-owned agricultural companies are bankrupt. It is also unclear who will pay for agricultural machinery, 80% of which is imported.

Such policies have led to a steady erosion of government popularity, with 70% of Ukrainians saying the country is on wrong track and 85% say they do not trust the prime minister. Poroshenko’s popularity is now lower than that of his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, on the eve of the Maidan rebellion that ousted him.

But while less than 2% describe the country as “stable,” a new revolt does not seem imminent. So far, the regime has been able to provide explanations that deflect attention away from its own role in Ukraine’s economic demise.

The first is Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the rebellion in the east, which are commonly cited as reasons for the fall in GDP. While it’s true that these caused significant economic damage, it has been exacerbated by the government’s own policies which, despite insisting Russophone eastern regions are part of Ukraine, has cut them off from economic ties and punished the population for siding with Russia.

Another favourite argument of the current government is that Ukraine simply has no choice but to respond to Russian aggression by imposing its own sanctions. The beauty of this argument is that, while it may not make economic sense, it makes a great deal of political sense for those now in power.

The destruction of Ukraine’s industrial base, which is heavily concentrated in the east, shifts the balance of economic and political power to the western regions, permanently marginalising opposing political voices. The advantages are clear. Fostering a sense of perpetual crisis allows the current government to argue that it must remain in power, to see its policies through. The only uncertainty is whether such a strategy can bear fruit before the country’s economy collapses.

This is not a policy that the west can endorse. Regardless of political sympathies, no western government should tolerate the deliberate impoverishment of the population for political gain. The risks of Ukraine becoming a failed state, and adding millions more to Europe’s burgeoning refugee crisis, are simply too high.

The best way to avoid such an outcome is to recognise that Ukraine’s economic survival depends not on western bailouts but on the renewal of Russian investment there. Western policymakers should insist that economic rationality take precedence over economic nationalism, and make that a condition of assistance.

Until that happens, it is hard to imagine anyone investing in Ukraine’s future, including its own people.

Nicolai Petro is an academic specialising in Russian and Ukrainian affairs, currently professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. He spent 2013-2104 as a US Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine

Did you know that if a given political party already has an incumbent in a particular political post, it’s standard practice in the United States for a political party to prohibit its voter-list to be purchased by anyone who’s not an incumbent office-holder in that party — including by someone who wishes to challenge or contest within that party the incumbent, in a primary election?

Only incumbents have access to that crucial list — crucial for any candidate in a primary election (unless there is no incumbent who is of that party).

Here’s an example:

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a long-time unquestioningly loyal operative of Hillary Clinton, was selected by the Democratic President Barack Obama (though she had condemned Obama while he was running against Clinton in 2008) to run the Democratic National Committee, so that Obama’s Administration will be continued with little change by his (chosen) successor (just a change of the President’s name, and only a bit more of a neo-conservative on her foreign policies than he was). However, Ms. DWS has a very low approval-rating from her constituents, and a Bernie Sanders supporter wants to contest against her in a Democratic primary. But, he says:

Last week, I called the Florida Democratic Party to request access to the voter file database and software known as VAN that is routinely used by Democratic candidates across the country.

I was told that our campaign would be denied access to this database because I am running against an incumbent Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I was also told that any Democratic candidate running against an incumbent Democrat would be denied access.

A reader-comment there was:

I’ve learned that this is standard practice in most states, to block challengers from the same party going up against incumbents.

I think it’s bu…hit. I’ve asked people to give me some good reasoning why this is a standard practice, and *crickets*.

In other words: Politicians campaign hypocritically saying they favor ’term-limits’ but universally support the real  reason (which isn’t the lack of term-limits; it’s the lack of fairness, such as this) why even the most vile incumbents get re-‘elected’ time and again: this thuggish custom of the Democratic and Republican political Parties, which blocks challengers from having access to the most crucial tool for becoming a Party’s nominee: the list of that Party’s registerd voters. Only the existing incumbent can buy that list. (Of course, if the ‘opposite’ Party has the incumbent in the contest, then the DNC/RNC will sell the person that list in order to yank the seat to their Party. The most-rigged part of American ‘democracy’ might be primary elections, not  general elections — which is what politicians most discuss in public as being rigged, such as especially both of GWB’s Presidential ‘wins’, which were exceptionally scandalous.)

Among the many ways in which the United States is not a democracy, the operation of primaries by Parties which actually represent their incumbents and not at all the public, is an important one. And the incumbent politicians never publicize it. Only a few aspiring challengers ‘complain’ about it — and the public never likes a ‘complainer.’

What this means is that, if an incumbent serves well the donors who financed his/her campaign, then that person will almost certainly not be effectively challenged in a primary by someone else from that party, because that prospective challenger won’t even have access to the list of registered voted in that party. The only significant chance that the incumbent will be replaced (unless he/she quits and, say, becomes a lobbyist for those donors) is if the ‘opposite’ party can find a suitable person to run against him/her (by serving donors to the ‘other’ party — which donors might also be donors to both parties).

In other words: the political Establishment consists of the aristocracy and its servants — within both parties. Both parties serve the aristocrats, sometimes even the same aristocrats, but, in other matters, serve the agenda that’s shared among the richest people in both parties.

The only scientific study that has been done of the net results from such a system was described and linked-to here. It found that in the U.S., the aristocracy rule; the public do not. And here is a recent former U.S. President saying that his own experience and analysis of the U.S. political system is in accord with those findings.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The US Federal Reserve said Wednesday it would keep interest rates on hold and scaled backed forecasts for how rapidly it will lift them for the rest of the year. When the Fed increased its base rate in December last year it appeared to be on course for four rate rises over the next 12 months.

On this occasion, the median projection of participants in the Federal Open Market Committee for the movement of interest rates, comprised from the so-called “dot plot” predictions of individual members, saw the Fed base rate at 0.875 percent by the end of the year, compared to the present level of 0.5 percent. The projection was below earlier forecasts and implied no more than two increases this year.

While it had been expected there would be no rate rise this meeting, it was still thought the Fed could move to tighten rates in June. That may still take place, but its probability has been lowered with the timeline for further rate rises pushed out to September or even December.

While last December’s rise of 0.25 percentage points proceeded with little disturbance, in the first two months of this year markets fell sharply and there was criticism that the Fed’s move to higher rates was out of line with what was being revealed by the gyrations of the financial system.

Consequently, yesterday’s indication that four interest rate hikes for this year had been taken off the table was broadly welcomed, though there was one dissenting vote from a member of the FOMC who wanted to see an immediate rate increase.

The overall response to the decision was that the Fed, in the words of one analyst on the CNBC business channel, had moved “to where the market wants it to be.”

A financial analyst cited by the Wall Street Journal remarked: “The Fed and the market being on the same page is somewhat of a relief. It removes one of the tangles we’ve had this year.” Another commented that the announcement “gives some investors a sense of security that they didn’t have.”

In other words, the flow of cheap money, used to finance share buybacks, mergers and acquisitions and other forms of financial speculation is going to continue. The markets duly showed their appreciation as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has continued to rise in the past month on the growing belief that the Fed would pull back on interest rate rises, closed up 74 points to reach its highest level for the year so far.

This was another expression of the perverse logic which dominates the markets, namely, that bad news on the real economy is good news for finance.

The Fed statement said economic activity in the US had been expanding at a “moderate pace”, which it expected to continue, with the housing sector on the improve and labour market indicators strengthening. “However, global economic and financial developments continue to pose risks,” it continued.

The statement also noted that “business fixed investment and net exports have been soft.”

The former is significant because investment in new plant and equipment, building and construction is the key driver of the real economy. Exports are also crucial because they comprise a major component of the bottom line for major global US corporations. American firms have been experiencing tougher international market conditions because of the rise in the value of the dollar relative to the value of the currencies of their competitors in Europe, Japan and Korea.

It was not referred to in the FOMC statement, but no doubt one of the factors in the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates on hold and slow the pace of further rises was the fear that a move towards tightening would push up the value of the dollar against both the euro and the yen, worsening the position of US firms.

In their recent decisions, both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have pushed interest rates to negative levels and increased the supply of cheap money under their respective quantitative easing (QE) programs.

The lowering of currency values is not a stated aim of European and Japanese QE—all countries maintain an official stance against the launching of currency wars—but both the ECB and the BoJ want to see a reduction in the value of the euro and the yen. That has not taken place in the recent period, largely because of the expectation that the Fed would not raise rates on this occasion. However, had it not indicated a shift away from future rate tightening, the dollar may have resumed its rise, and impacted on the position of US firms in increasingly competitive global markets.

The official statement on the international situation was formulated in bland language with the Fed saying that future assessments would be based in part on “readings on financial and international developments.” No doubt behind closed doors, some more pointed language is being used.

The Fed would clearly like to return the US interest rate regime to something resembling what were once regarded as “normal” conditions. But it has been pushed away from that objective by the policies of other major central banks, which are moving further from that situation with expanded financial asset purchases and the introduction of negative interest rates.

In its decision on Tuesday, the Bank of Japan did not further ease its monetary policy, following its surprise decision at the end of January to introduce negative rates. But it did indicate it may go further in that direction later in the year. In his press conference, BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda claimed the bank’s policy was working but then gave a downbeat assessment of the future. He said that the pick-up in exports had paused while public expectations of future inflation have “recently weakened.”

As the Financial Times noted: “That language raises the chance of further easing because the BoJ pays close attention to expectations.”

Significantly, for the second time in a row, the Fed did not provide a risk assessment in its official statement. Its omission points to the fact that US and other financial authorities have no idea of where the financial system is heading. After welcoming the relatively calm in response to last December’s decision, they were totally blindsided by the market turbulence in January and February and clearly fear another round of volatility could take place at any time.

Their decisions are being made in a situation where the policies of the key central banks are on diverging paths and there is an undeclared currency war between the major economic powers, official denials notwithstanding.

Today, the city of Najaf is a religious tourism hub for Shiites around the world. The city is home to the sacred shrine of Imam Ali ibn Abi-Talib — the fourth of the Rashidun Caliphs — built nearly 700 years ago, and hosts the highest Shiite religious authority in the Muslim world. In this overwhelming Islamic presence, scarce other religious representation can be found in the city, as Muslim clerics ban non-Islamic symbols in holy cities like Najaf, including Mecca and Karbala, where the building of other kinds of places of worship such as Christian churches is prohibited. This is an old phenomenon that emerged with the rise of Islam during the seventh century forbidding the existence of multiple religions in the Arabian peninsula.

However, recent archaeological discoveries following excavation works in 2008 show that this conservative Islamic city so averse to churches is one of the oldest Christian cities in the world. The remains of a church and a monastery are believed to be the oldest Christian monuments in Iraq, dating back to the year 270.

Members of the German Archaeological Institute take part in an excavation in the area of al-Hirah outside the holy Iraqi city of Najaf during a mission to search for Christian artifacts, Oct. 10, 2015. (photo by HAIDAR HAMDANI/AFP/Getty Images)

Although Najaf province contains over 30 historic Christian sites excavated by American and German expeditions as well as the Najaf Antiquities Inspectorate between 2007 and 2011, for ideological reasons, this research has failed to promote any tolerance of non-Islamic religious rituals and events that celebrate its ancient history.

For example, in December, Sheikh Ibrahim Saffar, a professor at the Najaf seminary, demanded that a man who wore a Santa Claus costume in Najaf face criminal charges.

In contrast to this rejection of any non-Islamic culture in Najaf, historians highlight the presence of both Christianity and Islam in Najaf. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Najaf history teacher Abd-al-Husayn Ali explained, “This kind of religious extremism toward other religions is limited to a minor social group,” asserting, “The discovery of Christian monuments in famous Islamic cities like Najaf is an example of the shared history of Iraqi Muslims and Christians, proving that Christianity is no stranger to Iraq and Iraqis’ conversion to Islam should not obscure the fact that many of their ancestors were Christians. This [recognition should] promote interactions between Muslims and Christians at a time when the country is facing a fierce sectarian conflict.”

The predominance of Christianity in Najaf before Islam was further supported by the department of antiquities’ discovery of the ruins of a 1,700-year-old monastery in 2012, linked to the Christian monk Abdul-Masih bin-Boqila. The monk’s tomb was found inside the monastery, with an epitaph written in ancient Arabic reading, “May God have mercy on Abdul-Masih.”

Al-Monitor visited the site with Makki Sultani, a writer and researcher specializing in Najaf’s history. During the tour, Sultani told Al-Monitor about a “plan set up by civil activists, academics and volunteering researchers to form a popular committee with the aim of preserving the monuments and heritage of this ancient city, home to several Christian and Islamic sites.”

While taking pictures of this Christian monument reduced to crumbling ruins, blown by the wind and disappearing under the sand, Sultani said, “We rely on activists in the cultural and historical fields to save these important historical edifices that are gradually disappearing and constantly in danger of destruction due to official negligence and individuals’ ignorance of the historical significance of these sites.”

According to Sultani, “The most imminent danger to these historical ruins is the lack of funds to sustain them. And even when they are available, bribery results in corrupt contractors with no experience in preserving historical sites looking to embezzle the money allocated for the efforts through shoddy renovations.”

While guiding the way around the ruins of the monastery, Sultani revealed, “The monastery was turned into a gas station through negligence and corruption.”

Sultani pointed out a Christian cemetery, surrounded by sand and groundwater and left vulnerable to pillagers. He said, “People living in neighboring areas rummage these monuments looking for valuable collectibles like gold coins and ancient artifacts.”

Sultani led us to a Babylonian temple, where he said, “This was authenticated by an inscription that was traced back to Nebuchadnezzar [605-562 BCE]. It was carved in brick, which was stolen by the inhabitants of the area to use in building their houses.”

In another example of the degree of negligence that has befallen these great monuments, Sultani guided our group to a barren area where the ancient city of Al-Hira is believed to have prospered. The site, dating back to the third century, is dotted with holes from illegal excavation work. There were dozens of graves in which dirt and garbage bags have piled up after looters dug into them and left them open.

Next to this lot stands a residential neighborhood. Sultani said, “These houses were built on top of the ruins of the historic al-Sudair castle, erected by al-Numan ibn al-Mundhir between 403 and 430 CE.” The area is covered with hills believed to be remnants of the surroundings of the Castle of Khawarnaq, which was excavated by a British expedition from Oxford University in 1931.

A notable example of Iraq’s Christian religious heritage, this Christian historic site in Najaf is of even greater significance amid a wave of religious extremism fueling violence and threatening coexistence. Just as Muslims enjoy a strong presence in Iraq, these Christian monuments found in an Islamic city stand as an indisputable proof of the shared history of the people of Mesopotamia. Both Muslims and Christians have to work hand in hand to rebuild these sites and promote religious tourism that would attract Muslim and Christian pilgrims from around the world.

As part of a step to rehabilitate these religious and historic sites, in 2012, Iraq’s Endowments of the Christian and Other Religions Divan unveiled a plan to reconstruct historic churches in Baghdad and other provinces. Although a long time has passed since this plan was announced, there are no signs of rehabilitation or reconstruction at Najaf’s historic sites.

Translated by: Mohammad Khalil

Wassim Bassem is an Iraqi journalist who tracks social phenomena in investigations and reports for various media outlets, including Al-Esbuyia, Bab Nour and Elaph.

America is learning that the South China Sea is called the South “China” Sea for a reason, despite patriotic efforts in various nations to rename it the “West Philippine Sea” or “East Vietnamese Sea”.

At his press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress, PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared:

China was the first to discover, name, develop, and administer the various islands of the southern seas. Our ancestors have tilled those fields and toiled there amid hardships for generations. We know this place and love this place better than anyone else, and more than any other people we wish for the peace and stability of the southern sea and freedom of navigation.

Wang Yi’s flowery rhetoric about China’s sole historical claim to all the islands of the southern seas and their development is ahistorical nonsense.

But the second part, about the PRC’s paramount interest and growing predominance in the South China Sea is closer to the truth. This is because the PRC is spending a lot of money, effort, and diplomatic capital to make it true.

The People’s Republic of China sails through the South China Sea, flies through it, fishes in it, erects towns and airfields, sends in cruise ships and commercial jet liners on regular schedules, patrols it with an armada of coast guard and naval vessels, maintains forward military bases in it, builds faux islands in it, occasionally prospects with in it with its massive semisubmersible drilling rig, dots it with radar stations and lighthouses, relies for it as a vital energy corridor…

For the United States, the South China Sea seems to exist as a blank slate upon which the US seeks to project its narratives amid an intensifying geostrategic competition with the PRC.

Take the immense uproar in January-February 2016 over the PRC placing surface to air missiles “in the South China Sea”. The report was floated by a source at the Department of Defense through Fox News, endorsed by a spokesman for Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, and was the impetus for a global round of hysterics predicated on the claim that the PRC was repudiating Xi Jinping’s pledge not to militarize islands in the South China Sea and was escalating “tensions” in the SCS.

As it transpired, the surface to air missiles (whose deployment the PRC never confirmed) were sighted on Woody Island. Woody Island is a real island in the Paracels, an archipelagic cluster near Hainan seized from Vietnam in 1974. There’s been an airfield on the base for decades, the PRC expanded it in the last year to host fighter jets on cyclical deployments (permanent basing perhaps exposes the airframes to too much salt-air corrosion) and, indeed, the Admiral of the US Pacific Fleet acknowledged that the PLA put surface to air missiles on Woody Island at least two times previously without the US government raising any objections.

The PRC will never enjoy legal sovereignty over the Paracels since Vietnam will never formally cede them, but Vietnam has swallowed its choler enough to explore joint demarcation marine boundaries with the PRC that de facto acknowledge that the PRC has got the Paracels and isn’t giving them back.

And, when Xi Jinping visited the US in September 2015, he stated China “did not intend” (something less than a pledge, despite some misreporting of his remarks) to militarize the Spratlys, which is the collection of virtually uninhabitable sandbars, reefs, and atolls whose sovereignty is claimed and disputed by almost all countries neighboring the South China Sea and serves as the focus of the PRC’s island-building outrages. He made no pledges, statements of intent, or other representations about the Paracels.

Woody Island is a good 500 miles from Fiery Cross Reef, the enhanced atoll in the Spratlys whose PRC-constructed airfield has occasioned so much dismay and concern.

Indeed, it transpired that the Obama administration was aware of the distinction, as the National Security Council’s Dan Kritenbrink, Senior Director for Asian Affairs, tacitly acknowledged when he subsequently urged extension of the non-militarization pledge to cover the entire South China Seas as well as the Spratlys. The Pentagon, I suspect, was aware of the distinction but not particularly interested in respecting it, particularly if floating the missile story served to diminish the stature of President Obama’s ASEAN summit and the relatively conciliatory diplomacy that underpinned it.

Therefore, PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi understandably responded to the surface-to-air missile frenzy by chastising the media for hyping the story. Unspoken was the PRC’s bemusement that the Western media had, out of ignorance or malice, run with this tale and the Obama White House, blindsided by the Pentagon, had let the firestorm rage instead of knocking it down.

The lesson of this affair is that the South China Sea is a remote body of water that Americans know little about and understand less. US China hawks have exploited this information deficit ever since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rolled out the “pivot to Asia” in 2010, justifying the US injection into the South China Sea issue as a matter of ensuring freedom of navigation in a vital commercial sea lane in the global commons.

It is taken as self-evident that the South China Sea is indispensable to world commerce because “over $5 trillion dollars” worth of goods, including the bulk of Japanese energy supplies, pass through the SCS.

Admiral Harris invoked the $5 trillion dollar figure in his recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Western media reports reproduce it almost as a mandatory piece of journalistic boilerplate when covering the South China Sea.

However, the awkward fact is that the only major power with a vital strategic interest in Freedom of Navigation in the South China Sea is the People’s Republic of Chinna.

The website of Marine Traffic, provides some interesting perspective with its mapping of real time and historical ship movements.

Here is the “density map” displaying aggregate movements along the busiest shipping routes (green lines) and in the busiest ports (red blobs) in and around the South China Sea:

Third, the rest of the traffic that transits the SCS pretty is headed for Japan and South Korea. This would seem to support the perception that the economies and national security of Japan and South Korea, core US allies, require assurances against Chinese interdiction of their energy supplies in the South China Sea.Note several features of the marine traffic in the South China Sea. First, much of it goes, unsurprisingly, to the Peoples Republic of China and Hong Kong. Second, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines are largely served by coast-hugging routes outside the PRC’s dreaded Nine-Dash-Line.

Not quite.

The strategic insignificance of the South China Sea to Japan and the Republic of Korea has been well known since the 1990s, when “energy security” became an explicit preoccupation of Japanese planners.

In 2005, Australian security analyst Euan Graham addressed the issue in his Japan’s Sea Lane Security: A Matter of Life and Death?

The cost to Japan of a 12-month closure of the South China Sea, diverting oil tankers via the Lombok Strait and east of the Philippines, has been estimated at $200 million. A Japanese estimate puts the cost as basically the same to that imposed by a closure of the Malacca Strait, requiring 15 additional tankers to be added to the route, generating an extra $88 million in shipping costs. This is roughly corroborated by the reported findings of a joint study conducted by the JDA and the Indonesian authorities in the late 1980s, which put the number of extra tankers required to divert around the South China Sea via Lombok and east of the Philippines at 18.

…The volume of oil shipped to Japan from the Middle East is evenly split between Lombok and the Straits of Malacca…

What does two extra days on the water mean? In his book, Graham provides a dollar figure:

…Based on an oil import bill of $35 billion in 1997, [a cost of $88 million for diverting through Lombok] accounts for 0.3% of the total.

To update these figures, in an environment of crashing oil prices and spiking shipping rates (as importers rush to obtain cheap supplies and even store them on tankers until onshore facilities open up), assume $30/barrel crude plus $3/barrel shipping costs. Japan imports about 2 billion barrels per year. That’s $6 billion dollars. If we assume the Lombok route adds 10% or $0.30/barrel to the shipping cost, that’s another $600 million dollars against $60 billion in total crude costs. 1%. By coincidence, $600 million is also about 1% of the annual Japanese defense budget. Japan’s GDP: $4 trillion dollars.

So is the threat of closure of the South China Sea an existential threat to Japan requiring a military response? One Japanese authority doesn’t believe so.

CSD [Collective Self Defense] will not allow minesweeping ops in SCS/Malacca Strait as unlike Hormuz there are alternative routes.

That’s a statement that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo made in the Diet, as reported on Corey Wallace’s Twitter feed.

Republic of Korea imports less than 1 billion barrels per annum. Cost of the Lombok detour: maybe $270 million.

In summary, the Malacca/South China Sea route from the Persian Gulf to Japan and South Korea is preferred as the straightest, cheapest, route for crude oil. In fact, ship owners looked at the economics and decided to defer construction of “postMalaccamax VLCCs” (Very Large Crude Carriers) in favor of smaller tankers in order to preserve the option of going through the Malacca Strait and South China Sea.

But if the South China Sea route is obstructed, they can always go via Lombok and the Makassar Sea. Its just a little bit more expensive.

So, the South China Sea is not a critical sea lane for our primary North Asian allies Japan and the Republic of Korea.

As for Australia, the fourth point (together with Japan, India, and the United States) in the emerging Asia Pacific security “diamond”, Graham stated in his book:

Iron ore and coke shipments from Australia account for most of the cargo moved through the Lombok Strait…Lombok remains the principal route for bulk carriers sailing from Western Australia to Japan.

Australian resource exports bypass the South China Sea already.

As to the South China Sea factor, Sam Bateman, a retired Royal Australian Navy commodore now working in a think tank in Singapore, debunked claims of the crucial strategic character of the South China Sea to Australia:

Bonnie Glaser has recently claimed that approximately 60 per cent of Australia’s seaborne trade passes through the South China Sea…

When measured by value, the figure of 60% of our seaborne trade passing through the South China Sea is way off the mark. Based on the latest data for Australia’s overseas trade, it mightn’t even be half that-and about three-quarters of it would be trade to and from China. Thus the notion of a threat to our seaborne trade from China is rather a non sequitur.

In other words, approximately 7.5% of Australia’s total seaborne trade by value passing through the South China Sea isn’t going to the PRC. That represents perhaps A$40 billion, about half of which is back and forth with Singapore, which could be end-arounded by entering the Malacca Strait from the west and avoiding the South China Sea completely. So perhaps A$ 20 billion is theoretically at risk in the unlikely event that the PRC decided to close the SCS completely to Australian shipping. By contrast, Australian two way trade with the PRC is A$152 billion.

It should be clear by now that the South China Sea as a commercial artery and as an energy import channel matters much more to China, than it does to Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the United States. Indeed, the primary global strategic significance of the South China Sea is not as a vulnerable artery for global commerce; it is as a vulnerable bottleneck for Chinese energy imports.

America’s interest in confronting the PRC in the South China Sea predates any Xi Jinping-related arrogance, expansionism, and island-building, indeed it predates the appearance of any PRC Navy worthy of consideration. It can be traced to the Office of Net Assessment’s 2004 report prepared via Booz, Hamilton for Donald Rumsfeld, Energy Futures in Asia. As I do not believe that report has been declassified, interested readers can check a 2010 paper from the US Naval War College titled China’s Oil Security Pipe Dream.

The PRC has been aware of the US government’s interest in the possibility of interdicting PRC energy imports at the Malacca Straits/South China Sea chokehold for many years, and has poured billions of dollars into establishing less vulnerable alternatives for meeting its requirements, through the filling of strategic oil reserves, its ongoing pipeline projects with Russia and energy producers in Central Asia, initiatives to diversify supply lines for Gulf oil with oil and gas pipelines from Burma to Yunnan, and the risky bet on a “China Pakistan Economic Corridor” keyed to the port at Gwadar and crossing the Himalayas to Kashgar

As these massive and risky alternative expenditures by the PRC-and the complete absence of plausible threats to Japan, South Korea, and Australia interests-indicate, the only genuine role the South China Sea played as a strategic chokepoint worthy of US interest is against the PRC.

The PRC has accused the United States of maliciously meddling in the South China Sea not to secure and stabilize an important global commons but to polarize relations between the PRC and its neighbors and create an opening for strategic military cooperation with the Philippines and Vietnam, a point of view I am inclined to agree with.

This state of affairs is probably better appreciated by China’s local trading partners in Australia, South Korea, and Japan than it is in the United States, and governments there are faced with the awkward question of how far to go with “upholding international norms” and “alliance service”, i.e. supporting a U.S. containment strategy by antagonizing the PRC over the South China Sea, a body of water whose control is not a matter of existential interest to them, but is to China.

As the PRC responds to US opposition and ASEAN anger and dismay not by retreating, but by accelerating its development of civilian and dual use infrastructure on its holdings and ramping up its naval and coast guard presence, the realization of the situation seems to be sinking in in the US public sphere as well.

If anybody entertained the wishful thinking that the PRC would respond to the widely expected ruling against its Nine Dash Line at arbitration in The Hague by rolling over for the Philippines and the United States, those dreams are pretty much over.

At his press conference, Foreign Minister Wang Yi employed a litany of pejoratives to characterize the Philippines–“unlawful, unfaithful and unreasonable”-the role of the (unnamed) United States-” behind-the-scenes instigation and political maneuvering”-and the arbitration process itself-” tainted and gone astray, and China is not going to humor it”.

Separately and perhaps significantly, Wang addressed the most contested issue in the South China Sea-the Spratly Islands-by drawing the PRC’s line in the sand:

The Spratly Islands are China’s inseparable territory. Descendants of the Yellow Empire all have the duty to protect this land.

Wang concluded with the statement “The PRC has never and will not make any new territorial demands”. Beyond the unfortunate echoes of Neville Chamberlain, I believe Wang’s words may have been intended as a signal that the PRC regards it infeasible to try to assert an extremely unpopular claim to exclusive sea rights in the contested regions of the SCS if, as expected, the cartographic embarrassment of the Nine Dash Line is declared invalid, especially since hawks in the United States Navy dream of standing between the PRC and the UNCLOS victors seeking to reap the bounty of their expansive South China Sea EEZs.
The PRC can insist on its territorial claims to the various natural and man-made islands and LTE (low tide elevation i.e. covered at high tide) features that it holds or desires, leaving no recourse for other claimants short of military action to evict China from them.If the PRC focuses on asserting its territorial (as opposed to maritime) position in the South China Sea, it will have ample resources for mischief even if the international consensus to order the South China Sea maritime domain on the basis of UNCLOS prevails.

UNCLOS does not cover disputes over sovereignty of islands and indeed there is no accepted international treaty or mechanism for resolving these disputes. And once sovereignty is asserted, even over uninhabitable features, territorial seas can be claimed and sometimes Exclusive Economic Zones as well to a ridiculous degree. The most notorious instance of this practice is Okinotorishima Island, a tiny above-water lump of coral in the Pacific that Japan secured at the cost of over half a billion dollars, and, on this basis, claimed a 200 nautical mile EEZ.

If the PRC inserts fresh territorial, territorial sea, and EEZ claims into the dispute, maps of the South China Sea, which were never particularly straightforward to begin with, are going to get even more complicated.

A current concern is that the PRC may punish the Philippines for any UNCLOS setbacks by developing and permanently occupying the Scarborough Shoal as an island feature. The shoal is a rich fishing ground that is well within any conceivable Philippine EEZ demarcation and is far away from the PRC. Access to the fishing grounds within the shoal is currently controlled by PRC vessels provoking great anxiety and nationalist resentment in the Philippines.

The Chinese government is perhaps looking at the Aegean Sea dispute between Greece and Turkey-a largely frozen conflict that has persisted for forty years-as a precedent for a disputed but de facto functional maritime regime in the South China Sea.

PRC strategists are probably well aware that switching to a territorial instead of maritime focus threatens to dash the hopes of US Navy hawks hoping to force the PLAN into a humiliating confrontation that directly repudiates grandiose PRC claims to sovereignty within the Nine Dash Line.

The US Navy already had its work cut out for it on maritime matters since UNCLOS allows for no enforcement mechanism and, even if the United States wanted to step up and enforce the judgment in its role as benevolent hegemon, it is not even a signatory to the treaty it would be purporting to enforce.

As for territorial disputes, the United States has a long-standing policy, which is close to iron-clad, of not taking positions on sovereignty disputes. Indeed, the default preference of the United States is to “preserve the status quo”, which would make evicting the PRC from the islands and structures it currently occupies extremely awkward, if not impossible.

The combination of PRC actions, investment, and rhetoric, and an apparent local unwillingness to walk the walk on confronting the PRC in the SCS, seems to be convincing US observers that the PRC isn’t going anywhere.

A recent New York Times article was titled: South China Sea Buildup Brings China Closer to Realizing Control. It concludes:

The Obama administration has struggled, however, to come up with a policy to slow or stop what it has called China’s militarization of the South China Sea…

In recent months, the Pentagon has also stepped up “freedom of navigation” patrols in the South China Sea, sending United States warships and aircraft into territory claimed by Beijing to assert Washington’s view that these areas remain international waters and airspace.

But China has responded by using the patrols to argue that it is the United States that is militarizing the South China Sea – and by continuing to build.

“China was the first country to discover, name, develop and manage the South China Sea islands,” the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told a news conference on Tuesday. “History will prove who is a mere guest and who is a real host.”

Of course, the US Navy isn’t going anywhere either.

If the US wishes to evict the PRC from the South China Sea, it will have to consider stronger, more dangerous, and politically and diplomatically less palatable measures-and a more convincing menace than an imputed PRC threat to commercial freedom of navigation, or even as antagonist to the international norms and laws represented by the UNCLOS ruling.

The US military is now shifting the terms of debate from the shaky premise that the PRC presence in the South China Sea is a threat to global commerce and the world order to a somewhat more realistic anxiety that the PRC will, in the near future, possess sufficient military assets in the South China Sea to challenge and in theory impede or deny military maritime and aviation traffic by other nations.

This strategy is encapsulated in the continued alarms that the PRC is “militarizing” the South China Sea, an accusation that the PRC, particularly after the US Navy sailed a carrier battle group through the SCS in early March 2016, is not inclined to take seriously.

The focus on “militarization” is exemplified by warning the PRC not to announce a South China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ, which would require aircraft flying near and toward the PRC (including its contested SCS facilities) to identify themselves and state their intentions. To knock down a frequently stated canard, an ADIZ is not a declaration of territorial airspace and the ADIZ of various nations can overlap, as the PRC and ROK ADIZs overlap in the East China Sea. One might think that the SCS, with growing military traffic by hostile powers, sorely needs an ADIZ to prevent misunderstandings, incidents, and escalation, but China hawks will try to advance the argument that in this case, as in many matters involving the South China Sea, ordinary logic simply doesn’t apply.

The Free Syrian Army’s ‘spy chief’ told Le Monde his agents had been gathering intelligence from within Islamic State’s ranks since its emergence, but the CIA largely ignored data that could have helped suppress the terror group from the outset.

The Free Syrian Army’s spymaster, code-named “M”, in an exclusive to Le Monde, told the newspaper he had been sending “very detailed reports” on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), based on field data from his agents, to his CIA contacts for two years.

The intelligence gave critical insight into IS’ pivot to Iraq and Syria, and included GPS coordinates, maps, photographs, phone numbers and even IP addresses, “M” said.

“From the moment Daesh (an Arabic pejorative acronym for IS) had 20 members to when it had 20,000, we have shown everything to the Americans. When we asked them what they did with this information, they always gave evasive answers, saying it was in the hands of decision-makers.”

The FSA’s intelligence chief, “trained abroad” according to the newspaper, had recruited thirty trusted men, who were inserted into IS-held cities in Syria, including Raqqa, Al-Bab, Tel Abyad and others. To finance operations, the spy chief requested $30,000 per month from the Americans, but he says he only received $10,000.

One of M’s most valuable agents was a mole inside Islamic State’s financial unit in Manbij near the Turkish border. A report from him, seen by Le Monde, described payments of $74,000 (€67,000) from a former parliamentarian called Radwan Habib to his brother Ali – an IS “emir” in Maskaneh in Aleppo governorate.

FSA agents and informants conducted various operations, often risky ones. One photo “M” shared with the newspaper showed a training camp north of Latakia province frequented by foreign IS fighters. “Naturally I transmitted this to my Western contacts with the GPS coordinates but got no response,” he was cited as saying.

“My agents also managed to get hold of phone numbers of IS officials, serial numbers of [their] satellite equipment and IP addresses. But once again, zero response.”

Another FSA document accessed by the French newspaper included an order of battle designed to expel IS from Aleppo province in summer 2014. Postponed several times by the Americans, the attack was eventually torpedoed at end of 2014 by a surprise counterattack by Al-Nusra Front.

The Free Syrian Army was founded by a group of deserters, including officers and soldiers from the Syrian Army, in July 2011. It received substantial military aid from the US and Britain for its anti-Assad stance.

In June 2012, the CIA was involved in clandestine operations along the Turkish-Syrian border, according to a Wall Street Journal report. They were identifying rebel groups to give military aid to. CIA operatives also helped opposition forces develop supply routes and provided communications training. Agents also reportedly distributed assault rifles, anti-tank rocket launchers and other ammunition to the Syrian opposition.

Throughout 2013 and 2014, the CIA was said to be training “moderate” Syrian opposition fighters at Jordanian special forces’ bases in anticipation of President Assad’s fall. By 2015, Washington had scaled down most programs to train and equip Syrian rebels.

However, other secret and significantly larger programs run by Langley still continue despite significant cuts, the Washington Post reported.

For a month now, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been engaged in hosting forces from 20 allied states in what it has dubbed a Saudi-led Islamic Coalition.  Its formation was announced last December in boastful fashion, though the Kingdom’s officials were careful to exclude Shia states from the equation of security.  They were not part of their Islamic world.

In December, the language used was that of an “Islamic Coalition” in the making.  “It is time,” claimed Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, “that the Islamic world take a stand, and they have done that by creating a coalition to push back and confront the terrorists and those who promote their violent ideologies.”[1]  Who those terrorists were was always the open question.

The announcement could barely be taken seriously.  Here, another coalition of the daft and brutal had been created, a situation the Middle East has become accustomed to since President George W. Bush led his charges and satraps (or at the very least pretended to direct them) into the bloody desert sands of Iraq in 2003.  The issue of who was causing the greatest mayhem was in no doubt then, just as it now.  When states band together to bomb in the name of higher values, the bloody muck comes to the surface.

According to Riyadh, this latest massive drill constitutes the largest concentration of military forces in the area since the Desert Storm campaign of 1991 mounted against the Iraqis.  “We are testing our infrastructures, our airports, our seaports, our airbases, to make sure we can host such a coalition,” claims Brig Gen. Ahmad al-Assiri.

The figures for this celebrated coalition vary, though one of 350,000 keeps coming up, a magic reiteration that serves no purpose other than to inflate and confuse.  At no point have massed infantry formations been noted on a scale to justify such a figure, though there is a general sense that the air component is serious enough, backed by tanks and infantry, should the need arise.

According to BBC reporter Frank Gardner, “I watched squadrons of Egyptian, Jordanian and Bahraini F16 warplanes, along with Qatari Mirage jets, training alongside Saudi Typhoons and F-15s [near the town of Hafr Al-Batin].”[2]

As ever, this ramshackle coalition is only as coherent as its objectives, which is, from appearances, one directed at the enemies of Sunni states.  So far, targeting Yemen has been high on the list, with Saudi Arabia taking the main line given its fears about Iranian-sponsored encirclement.  No one can dispute that the Kingdom and its allies have been effective in Yemen, in so far as killing civilians is concerned.  To date, 6,000 people (the Worth Health Organisation figure is 6,200) have perished, a point that made the European Parliament vote by a large majority to apply an EU-wide arms embargo on the Kingdom.

The resolution makes for harrowing reading, noting “multiple reports that airstrikes by the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen have hit civilian targets, including hospitals, schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a camp for displaced persons, severely damaging essential infrastructure for the delivery of aid and contributing to the severe food and fuel shortages in the country”.[3]

A report yesterday claims that over 40 civilians were killed in a strike on a market place in northern Yemen in yet another Saudi-led strike.  Notwithstanding this, a billion dollar arms purchase by Riyadh is set to take place, one that will involve the sale of over 18,000 bombs and 1,500 warheads.

The targeting of Islamic State targets in Syria is, in the scheme of things, tokenistic despite the group’s various efforts to target the Kingdom.  On that score, the United States retains the lion’s share of that other coalition, though it has been Russian initiatives that have borne more fruit.

This Islamic coalition is also being led by a state in crisis.  Oil prices have slumped, with Saudi Arabia still insisting on glutting the market. The effects at home have been telling, with reductions in hiring and contract deals.  Coffers are emptying rapidly.

Nor is Riyadh particularly thrilled with remarks that have come from the White House of late.  President Barack Obama has been pressing for something of a “Syrian-styled” peace deal in Yemen, an approach met with less than a warm response in Saudi Arabia.  This was further aggravated by observations by the President in the Atlantic Magazine that “free riders” irritated him, suggesting that certain coalition partners were not pulling their weight.[4]

Senior Saudi royal Prince Turki al-Faisal, in a letter published across Saudi media channels, felt that the US had accused the Kingdom of “fomenting sectarian strife in Syria, Yemen and Iraq” while also “adding insult to injury in telling us to share our world with Iran, a country that you describe as a supporter of terrorism and which you promised our king to counter its ‘destabilizing activities’.”[5]

As is ever with such complex, ghastly and distorted relationships, Prince Turki ended the letter on a moderate note. Having issued a tongue-lashing, a conciliatory conclusion was in order.  “We will continue to hold the American people as our ally and don’t forget that when the chips were down” Saudi and US soldiers “stood shoulder to shoulder”.  A fine summation of Saudi foreign policy in script and action.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Notes:

1. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/saudi-arabia-forms-muslim-anti-terrorism-coalition-151215035914865.html
2. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35785416
3. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P8-TA-2016-0066+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=ENhttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
4. http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160315/1036351332/saudi-yemen-bombings-market.html

The Israeli government is having to plan how to deal with a Trump presidency and the loss of $6bn a year in US military equipment, arms, loans, grants and gifts from an AIPAC-led Congress.

Just as Binyamin Netanyahu is wondering how to replace the EU, his primary trading market, in the event that Europe decides to implement sanctions against his continued illegal occupation of Palestinian land, he now faces the possibility of having to deal with a Republican President who will certainly not be a ‘patsy’ in a lobby-controlled White House.

The current global attitude to Israel’s continued illegal settlement policy has now hardened into one of angry impatience at Netanyahu’s obstructive tactics in regard to the establishment of an independent state of Palestine to accommodate a dispossessed, indigenous people of over 5 million.

Also, as a consequence of Israel’s six year blockade of essential medical, food and building supplies into Gaza in close co-operation with the Egyptian dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, 1.8 million civilians are still living in a bombed-out enclave reduced to rubble, and with only enough food to keep the entire population at just above subsistence level: atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli government.

However, there now appears to be the possibility of a consensus for a UN resolution to force Israel to comply with international law and for the imposition of a deadline for compliance, failing which, US and EU bilateral trade with the Israeli state could be drastically restricted.

That there needs to be a paradigm shift in the international attitude towards Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, is an essential factor in Middle East politics and future peace, and with a Trump Presidency, that will almost certainly become a priority for the United States and for the European Union.

Of course, in the unlikely event of a Clinton presidency, the reverse would be true and we would see the frightening prospect of team ‘Binyamin and Hillary’ running the White House. Heaven forbid!

(C) EUnewsdesk London. 2016

[email protected]

Washington will not lift the sanctions imposed after the reunification of Crimea with Russia until Moscow decides to “return Crimea to Ukraine,” the spokesman for the US State Department said.

Crimea, which has a predominately ethnically-Russian population, seceded from Ukraine to rejoin Russia two years ago following a referendum on March 16 in which over 96 percent of voters supported the move.

“We will not accept the redrawing of borders by force in the 21st century. Sanctions related to Crimea will remain in place as long as the occupation continues. We again call on Russia to end that occupation and return Crimea to Ukraine,” John Kirby [left image] said in a statement Wednesday.

He added that Washington remains committed to “a united, sovereign Ukraine.”

In 2014, the United States, the European Union and some of their allies imposed a series of economic sanctions targeting key Russian sectors as well as a number of individuals and entities over Russia’s reunification with Crimea and its alleged interference in the conflict between Kiev and independence supporters in eastern Ukraine, denied by Moscow

With the recent announcement by Vladimir Putin that Russia is beginning a withdrawal of specific military personnel and equipment from Syria on Tuesday, March 15, the Western corporate media has been on fire with speculation that Russia is evacuating the country, retreating, and giving up on its military objectives. Indeed, the Western press is presenting the Russian announcement as a total withdrawal and a quick move out the exit door.

Those who are both pro-Assad and anti-Assad have all shared their opinions, with many even on the pro-Assad/pro-Russian side opposing the Russian scale down of military involvement out of fear that the Russians are abandoning Assad. At the crux of this opposition to the Russia move, of course, is the fundamental misunderstanding of what the “withdrawal” actually is.

The Withdrawal

Despite the presentation of the Russian announcement as a total pullout from Syria, coming with everything except pictures of Syrian civilians hanging on to helicopters and airplanes being dumped at sea, the “withdrawal” is merely the reduction of specific military personnel and equipment. The withdrawal is not really a withdrawal in the sense that most readers would understand it. Instead, it is being presented as such by Western press outlets for propaganda purposes.

Remember, Putin has made it clear that the Tartus port will remain open and that the airbases Russia has previously established and operated from will remain functional. Russia is also continuing to drop bombs on ISIS positions. Indeed, on the night before the “withdrawal” was scheduled to begin, Russian planes obliterated a number of ISIS strongholds near Palmyra.

Thus, it should be understood that the Russian “withdrawal” is not a retreat, but simply a scale down of specific forces and readjustment of strategy.

It should also be pointed out that Russian objectives were never to seize and hold Syrian territory as an occupying force. That was the plan of the Americans. Russian objectives were to disrupt and defeat ISIS and shore up the Assad government. Russia has done that and is continuing to do it.

The Reason For The Withdrawal Announcement

So why would Putin announce a partial “withdrawal,” especially since we can presume that he would be well aware of the way in which he would be represented in the Western press? Why would Putin feel the need to make the announcement public at all? Why not simply make the directive, allow it to be carried out, and maintain the public perception that Russia is still fully involved in Syria?

Most likely, the Russian announcement was more politically based than anything else. For instance, one aspect of the announcement, particularly since it coincides with the new “ceasefire” agreement and the United Nations “peace talks,” is that it allows Russia to appear as the most rational actor in the fight and the side most committed to actual peace in Syria. This has been Russia’s methodology since the beginning of its involvement in the crisis where the United States – when forced to go toe to toe with Russia politically – has ended up with egg on its face every time.

Remember, when the U.S. wanted to invade Syria under the pretext of chemical weapons usage, the Russians swooped in and negotiated a deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. Many had valid arguments against the disarmament, but, politically speaking, Russia came away looking diplomatic and peaceful while the West, especially the U.S., came away looking like the bloodthirsty warmonger that it is.

On numerous occasions, when the U.S. was screaming at the top of its lungs that peace could only come from “rebel” victory or the removal of Assad, the Russians came in and organized “peace talks” of their own. These talks ultimately failed but the result portrayed the Russians as the side leaning toward peace and diplomacy while the U.S. was bent on bloody warfare. Russia has been incredibly shrewd and effective on the political front as well as the military front, and the recent announcement seems to be one more aspect of that strategy.

The second aspect is that, domestically, Russia is now able to tout a “mission accomplished” moment, a sort of victorious military triumph, without actually landing on an aircraft carrier and declaring the mission officially over while troops are engaged in a bloodbath on the ground. Putin is able to have his cake and eat it too by pointing out that some military objectives have been achieved but still not claiming the mission is over and leaving Assad to the wolves. It is both an international stance toward peace and a domestic stance toward victory even if for no other reason than public relations.

Image Credit

Going Forward

As mentioned earlier, Russia has reaffirmed that not only is the airbase in Latakia and the naval facility in Tartus continuing to operate, but that it will continue air operations against ISIS forces in Syria. Only a day after Putin’s announcement, Russian Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov stated that

“Certain positive results have been achieved. A real chance has emerged to put an end to this long-running standoff. But it is still early to talk about victory over terrorism. The Russian aviation group has the task to continue carrying out strikes on terrorist facilities.”

So with the ceasefire agreement barely holding on, the “peace talks” taking place at the United Nations, and the threat of a Turkish/GCC invasion of Syria looming in the background, the question now is whether or not the situation will gradually trend toward peace and de-escalation or whether it will in fact escalate to a wider war between the opposing forces in Syria as well as other interested international actors.

After all, Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for the Syria crisis, has already described the talks as essentially the only thing holding back an even wider full-scale war in Syria. While he made no effort to clarify what he meant by comment, the world outside of the Western countries are generally aware of the American agenda in Syria. Informed observers generally recognize that the NATO bloc, along with Israel and the GCC, are not content to simply admit they have been routed, pick up their ball, and go home. They continue to adapt their own methods in much the same way as the Russians and will respond as soon as they have surveyed the chessboard and have selected their next move.

An adjustment of strategy can take many forms but the most concerning is the possible NATO commitment to some type of gamble where it is believed or assumed that the Russians will indeed retreat instead of fight back in the event of a direct military invasion by the regional players and/or the United States.

If such a catastrophic military move ever happens, it will be one that affects every human being on the planet as it would pit two nuclear powers in conflict with one another.

Conclusion

Regardless, the manner in which the Russian announcement has been portrayed in the corporate Western press has served only to stir up a number of panicked responses from confused onlookers while, at the same time, providing a complete mystification of the true situation on the ground. Thus, it will become even more confusing to any casual observer attempting to gain any accurate representation of the Syrian crisis.

Unfortunately, what makes a leader look weak in the eyes of many Americans may very well make him look honorable in the eyes of the rest of the world, particularly those parts of it continuing to suffer under American imperialism, war, and destabilization.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Five Years ago Daraa, mid-March 2011.

“I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents” – Jesuit priest Father Frans Van der Lugt, January 2012, Homs Syria

“The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been going on virtually since the beginning.” – Professor Jeremy Salt, October 2011, Ankara Turkey

“The protest movement in Syria was overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011” – Human Rights Watch, March 2012, Washington

Professor Tim Anderson’s book. Click image to order directly from Global Research 

A double story began on the Syrian conflict, at the very beginning of the armed violence in 2011, in the southern border town of Daraa. The first story comes from independent witnesses in Syria, such as the late Father Frans Van der Lugt in Homs. They say that armed men infiltrated the early political reform demonstrations to shoot at both police and civilians. This violence came from sectarian Islamists. The second comes from the Islamist groups (‘rebels’) and their western backers, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. They claim there was ‘indiscriminate’ violence from Syrian security forces to repress political rallies and that the ‘rebels’ grew out of a secular political reform movement.

Careful study of the independent evidence, however, shows that the Washington-backed ‘rebel’ story, while widespread, was part of a strategy to delegitimise the Syrian Government, with the aim of fomenting ‘regime change’. To understand this it is necessary to study the outbreak of the violence in Daraa, in March 2011. Central to that insurrection were shipments of arms from Saudi Arabia to Islamists at the al Omari mosque.

In early 2011 Syrians were well aware of a piece of history few western observers would remember: a strikingly similar Islamist insurrection took place in the town of Hama, back in 1982. Yet this was crushed within weeks by the Syrian Arab Army. Reviewing this conflict is useful because of the myths that have grown up around both insurrections.

US intelligence (DIA 1982) and the late British author Patrick Seale (1988) give independent accounts of what happened at Hama. After years of violent, sectarian attacks by Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, by mid-1980 President Hafez al Assad had ‘broken the back’ of their sectarian rebellion, which aimed to impose a Salafi-Islamic state. One final coup plot was exposed and the Brotherhood ‘felt pressured into initiating’ an uprising in their stronghold of Hama. Seale describes the start of that violence in this way:

‘At 2am on the night of 2-3 February 1982 an army unit combing the old city fell into an ambush. Roof top snipers killed perhaps a score of soldiers … [Brotherhood leader] Abu Bakr [Umar Jawwad] gave the order for a general uprising … hundreds of Islamist fighters rose … by the morning some seventy leading Ba’athists had been slaughtered and the triumphant guerrillas declared the city ‘liberated’ (Seale 1988: 332).

However the Army responded with a huge force of about 12,000 and the battle raged for three weeks. It was a foreign-backed civil war, with some defections from the army. Seale continues:

‘As the tide turned slowly in the government’s favour, the guerrillas fell back into the old quarters … after heavy shelling, commandos and party irregulars supported by tanks moved in … many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up, whole districts razed’ (Seale 1988: 333).

Two months later a US intelligence report said: ‘The total casualties for the Hama incident probably number about 2,000. This includes an estimated 300 to 400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite ‘Secret Apparatus’ (DIA 1982: 7). Seale recognises that the Army also suffered heavy losses. At the same time, ‘large numbers died in the hunt for the gunmen … government sympathizers estimating a mere 3,000 and critics as many as 20,000 … a figure of 5,000 to 10,000 could be close to the truth’ He adds:

‘The guerrillas were formidable opponents. They had a fortune in foreign money … [and] no fewer than 15,000 machine guns’ (Seale 1988: 335). Subsequent Muslim Brotherhood accounts have inflated the casualties, reaching up to ‘40,000 civilians’, and attempting to hide the vicious insurrection by claiming that Hafez al Assad had simply carried out a ‘civilian massacre’ (e.g. Nassar 2014). The then Syrian President blamed a large scale foreign conspiracy for the Hama insurrection. Seale observes that Hafez was ‘not paranoical’, as many US weapons were captured and foreign backing had come from several US collaborators: King Hussayn of Jordan, Lebanese Christian militias (the Israeli-aligned ‘Guardians of the Cedar’) and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (Seale 1988: 336-337).

The Hama insurrection helps us understand the Daraa violence because, once again in 2011, we saw armed Islamists using rooftop sniping against police and government officials, drawing in the armed forces, only to cry ‘civilian massacre’ when they and their collaborators came under attack from the Army. Although the US, through its allies, played an important part in the Hama insurrection, when it was all over US intelligence dryly observed that: ‘the Syrians are pragmatists who do not want a Muslim Brotherhood government’ (DIA 1982: vii).

In the case of Daraa, and the attacks that moved to Homs and surrounding areas in April 2011, the clearly stated aim was once again to topple the secular or ‘infidel-Alawi’ regime. The front-line US collaborators were Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The head of the Syrian Brotherhood, Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa, issued a statement on 28 March which left no doubt that the group’s aim was sectarian. The enemy was ‘the secular regime’ and Brotherhood members ‘have to make sure that the revolution will be pure Islamic, and with that no other sect would have a share of the credit after its success’ (Al-Shaqfa 2011). While playing down the initial role of the Brotherhood, Sheikho confirms that it ‘went on to punch above its actual weight on the ground during the uprising … [due] to Turkish-Qatari support’, and to its general organisational capacity (Sheikho 2013). By the time there was a ‘Free Syrian Army Supreme Military Council’ in 2012 (more a weapons conduit than any sort of army command), it was two-thirds dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood (Draitser 2012). Other foreign Salafi-Islamist groups quickly joined this ‘Syrian Revolution’. A US intelligence report in August 2012, contrary to Washington’s public statements about ‘moderate rebels’, said:

‘The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISIS] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria … AQI supported the Syrian Opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media’ (DIA 2012).

In February 2011 there was popular agitation in Syria, to some extent influenced by the events in Egypt and Tunisia. There were anti-government and pro-government demonstrations, and a genuine political reform movement that for several years had agitated against corruption and the Ba’ath Party monopoly. A 2005 report referred to ‘an array of reform movements slowly organizing beneath the surface’ (Ghadry 2005), and indeed the ‘many faces’ of a Syrian opposition, much of it non-Islamist, had been agitating since about that same time (Sayyid Rasas 2013). These political opposition groups deserve attention, in another discussion. However only one section of that opposition was linked to the violence that erupted in Daraa. Large anti-government demonstrations began, to be met with huge pro-government demonstrations. In early March some teenagers in Daraa were arrested for graffiti that had been copied from North Africa ‘the people want to overthrow the regime’. It was reported that they were abused by local police, President Bashar al Assad intervened, the local governor was sacked and the teenagers were released (Abouzeid 2011).

Pro-Government Rally 2014

Yet the Islamist insurrection was underway, taking cover under the street demonstrations. On 11 March, several days before the violence broke out in Daraa, there were reports that Syrian forces had seized ‘a large shipment of weapons and explosives and night-vision goggles … in a truck coming from Iraq’. The truck was stopped at the southern Tanaf crossing, close to Jordan. The Syrian Government news agency SANA said the weapons were intended ‘for use in actions that affect Syria’s internal security and spread unrest and chaos.’ Pictures showed ‘dozens of grenades and pistols as well as rifles and ammunition belts’. The driver said the weapons had been loaded in Baghdad and he had been paid $5,000 to deliver them to Syria (Reuters 2011). Despite this interception, arms did reach Daraa, a border town of about 150,000 people. This is where the ‘western-rebel’ and the independent stories diverge, and diverge dramatically. The western media consensus was that protestors burned and trashed government offices, and then ‘provincial security forces opened fire on marchers, killing several’ (Abouzeid 2011). After that, ‘protestors’ staged demonstrations in front of the al-Omari mosque, but were in turn attacked.

The Syrian government, on the other hand, said that armed attacks had begun on security forces, killing police and civilians, along with the burning of government offices. There was foreign corroboration of this account. While its headline blamed security forces for killing ‘protesters’, the British Daily Mail (2011) showed pictures of guns, AK47 rifles and hand grenades that security forces had recovered after storming the al-Omari mosque. The paper noted reports that ‘an armed gang’ had opened fire on an ambulance, killing ‘a doctor, a paramedic and a policeman’. Media channels in neighbouring countries did report on the killing of Syrian police, on 17-18 March. On 21 March a Lebanese news report observed that ‘Seven policemen were killed during clashes between the security forces and protesters in Syria’ (YaLibnan 2011), while an Israel National News report said ‘Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed … and the Baath party headquarters and courthouse were torched’ (Queenan 2011). These police had been targeted by rooftop snipers.

Even in these circumstances the Government was urging restraint and attempting to respond to the political reform movement. President Assad’s adviser, Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, told a news conference that the President had ordered ‘that live ammunition should not be fired, even if the police, security forces or officers of the state were being killed’. Assad proposed to address the political demands, such as the registration of political parties, removing emergency rules and allowing greater media freedoms (al-Khalidi 2011). None of that seemed to either interest or deter the Islamist insurrection.

Several reports, including video reports, observed rooftop snipers firing at crowds and police, during funerals of those already killed. It was said to be ‘unclear who was firing at whom’ (Al Jazeera 2011a), as ‘an unknown armed group on rooftops shot at protesters and security forces’ (Maktabi 2011). Yet Al Jazeera (2011b) owned by the Qatari monarchy, soon strongly suggested that that the snipers were pro-government. ‘President Bashar al Assad has sent thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Derra for an operation the regime wants nobody in the word to see’. However the Al Jazeera suggestion that secret pro-government snipers were killing ‘soldiers and protestors alike’ was illogical and out of sequence. The armed forces came to Daraa precisely because police had been shot and killed.

Saudi Arabia, a key US regional ally, had armed and funded extremist Salafist Sunni sects to move against the secular government. Saudi official Anwar Al-Eshki later confirmed to BBC television that his country had sent arms to Daraa and to the al-Omari mosque (Truth Syria 2012). From exile in Saudi Arabia, Salafi Sheikh Adnan Arour called for a holy war against the liberal Alawi Muslims, who were said to dominate the Syrian government: ‘by Allah we shall mince [the Alawites] in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs’ (MEMRITV 2011). The Salafist aim was a theocratic state or caliphate. The genocidal slogan ‘Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave’ became widespread, a fact reported by the North American media as early as May 2011 (e.g. Blanford 2011). Islamists from the FSA Farouq brigade would soon act on these threats (Crimi 2012). Canadian analyst Michel Chossudovsky (2011) concluded:

‘The deployment of armed forces including tanks in Daraa [was] directed against an organised armed insurrection, which has been active in the border city since March 17-18.’

After those first few days in Daraa the killing of Syrian security forces continued, but went largely unreported outside Syria. Nevertheless, independent analyst Sharmine Narwani wrote about the scale of this killing in early 2012 and again in mid-2014. An ambush and massacre of soldiers took place near Daraa in late March or early April. An army convoy was stopped by an oil slick on a valley road between Daraa al-Mahata and Daraa al-Balad and the trucks were machine gunned. Estimates of soldier deaths, from government and opposition sources ranged from 18 to 60. A Daraa resident said these killings were not reported because: ‘At that time, the government did not want to show they are weak and the opposition did not want to show they are armed’. Anti-Syrian blogger, Nizar Nayouf, records this massacre as taking place in the last week of March. Another anti-Government writer, Rami Abdul Rahman (based in England, and calling himself the ‘Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’) says:

‘It was on the first of April and about 18 or 19 security forces … were killed’ (Narwani 2014). Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad, himself a resident of Daraa, confirmed that: ‘this incident was hidden by the government … as an attempt not to antagonize or not to raise emotions and to calm things down – not to encourage any attempt to inflame emotions which may lead to escalation of the situation’ (Narwani 2014).

Yet the significance of denying armed anti-Government killings was that, in the western media, all deaths were reported as (a) victims of the Army and (b) civilians. For well over six months, when a body count was mentioned in the international media, it was usually considered acceptable to suggest these were all ‘protestors’ killed by the Syrian Army. For example, a Reuters report on 24 March said Daraa’s main hospital had received ‘the bodies of at least 37 protestors killed on Wednesday’ (Khalidi 2011). Notice that all the dead had become ‘protestors’, despite earlier reports on the killing of a number of police and health workers.

Another nineteen soldiers were gunned down on 25 April, also near Daraa. Narwani obtained their names and details from Syria’s Defence Ministry, and corroborated these details from another document from a non-government source. Throughout April 2011 she calculates that eighty-eight Syrian soldiers were killed ‘by unknown shooters in different areas across Syria’ (Narwani 2014). She went on to refute claims that the soldiers killed were ‘defectors’, shot by the Syrian army for refusing to fire on civilians. The Washington based group Human Rights Watch, referring to interviews with 50 unnamed ‘activists’, claimed that soldiers killed at this time were all ‘defectors’, murdered by the Army (HRW 2011b). Yet the funerals of loyal officers, shown on the internet at that time, were distinct. Even Rami Abdul Rahman, keen to blame the Army for killing civilians, said ‘this game of saying the Army is killing defectors for leaving – I never accepted this’ (Narwani 2014). Nevertheless the highly charged reports were confusing, in Syria as well as outside.

The violence spread north, with the assistance of Islamist fighters from Lebanon, reaching Baniyas and areas around Homs. On 10 April nine soldiers were shot in a bus ambush in Baniyas. In Homs, on April 17, General Abdo Khodr al-Tallawi was killed with his two sons and a nephew, and Syrian commander Iyad Kamel Harfoush was gunned down near his home. Two days later, off-duty Colonel Mohammad Abdo Khadour was killed in his car (Narwani 2014). North American commentator Joshua Landis (2011a) reported the death of his wife’s cousin, one of the soldiers in Baniyas.

Al Jazeera, the principal Middle East media channel backing the Muslim Brotherhood, blacked out these attacks, as also the reinforcement provided by armed foreigners. Former Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem was one of many who resigned from the Qatar-owned station (RT 2012), complaining of deep bias over their presentation of the violence in Syria. Hashem had footage of armed men arriving from Lebanon, but this was censored by his Qatari managers. ‘In a resignation letter I was telling the executive … it was like nothing was happening in Syria.’ He thought the ‘Libyan revolution’ was the turning point for Al Jazeera, the end of its standing as a credible media group (Hashem 2012).

Provocateurs were at work. Tunisian jihadist ‘Abu Qusay’ later admitted he had been a prominent ‘Syrian rebel’ charged with ‘destroying and desecrating Sunni mosques’, including by scrawling the graffiti ‘There is no God but Bashar’, a blasphemy to devout Muslims. This was then blamed on the Syrian Army, with the aim of creating Sunni defections from the Army. ‘Abu Qusay’ had been interviewed by foreign journalists who did not notice he was not Syrian (Eretz Zen 2014).

Journalist Nir Rosen, whose reports were generally against the Syrian Government, also criticised the western consensus over the early violence:

‘The issue of defectors is a distraction. Armed resistance began long before defections started … Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation … Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters but … described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces … and every day members of the Syrian Army, security agencies … are also killed by anti-regime fighters’ (Rosen 2012).

A numbers game was being played to delegitimise the Syrian Government (‘The Regime’) and the Syrian Army (‘Assad loyalists’), suggesting they were responsible for all the violence. Just as NATO forces were about to bomb Libya and overthrow the Libyan Government, US voices began to demand that President Assad step down. The Brookings Institution (Shaikh 2011) claimed the President had ‘lost the legitimacy to remain in power in Syria’. US Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman said it was time ‘to align ourselves unequivocally with the Syrian people in their peaceful demand for a democratic government’ (FOX News 2011). The big powers began to demand yet another ‘regime change’.

In June, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton dismissed the idea that ‘foreign instigators’ had been at work, saying that ‘the vast majority of casualties have been unarmed civilians’ (Clinton 2011). In fact, as Clinton knew very well, her Saudi Arabian allies had armed extremists from the very beginning. Her casualty assertion was also wrong. The United Nations (which would later abandon its body count) estimated from several sources that, by early 2012, there were more than 5,000 casualties, and that deaths in the first year of conflict included 478 police and 2,091 from the military and security forces (OHCHR 2012: 2; Narwani 2014). That is, more than half the casualties in the first year were those of the Syrian security forces. That independent calculation was not reflected in western media reports. ‘Watchdog’ NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, along with US columnists (e.g. Allaf 2012), continued to claim, well into 2012, that Syrian security forces had been massacring ‘unarmed protestors’, that the Syrian people ‘had no choice’ but to take up arms, and that this ‘protest movement’ had been ‘overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011’ (HRW 2011a, HRW 2012). In fact, the political reform movement had been driven off the streets by Salafi-Islamist gunmen, over the course of March and April.

In June reporter Hala Jaber (2011) observed that about five thousand people turned up for a demonstration at Ma’arrat al-Numan, a small town in north-west Syria, between Aleppo and Hama. She says several ‘protestors’ had been shot the week before, while trying to block the road between Damascus and Aleppo. After some negotiations which reduced the security forces in the town, ‘men with heavy beards in cars and pick-ups with no registration plates’ with ‘rifles and rocket-propelled grenades’ began shooting at the reduced numbers of security forces. A military helicopter was sent to support the security forces. After this clash ‘four policemen and 12 of their attackers were dead or dying. Another 20 policemen were wounded’. Officers who escaped the fight were hidden by some of the tribal elders who had participated in the original demonstration. When the next ‘demonstration for democracy’ took place, the following Friday, ‘only 350 people turned up’, mostly young men and some bearded militants (Jaber 2011). Five thousand protestors had been reduced to 350, after the Salafist attacks.

After months of media manipulations, disguising the Islamist insurrection, Syrians such as Samer al Akhras, a young man from a Sunni family, who used to watch Al Jazeera because he preferred it to state TV, became convinced to back the Syrian government. He saw first-hand the fabrication of reports on Al Jazeera and wrote, in late June 2011:

‘I am a Syrian citizen and I am a human. After 4 months of your fake freedom … You say peaceful demonstration and you shoot our citizen. From today … I am [now] a Sergeant in the Reserve Army. If I catch anyone … in any terrorist organization working on the field in Syria I am gonna shoot you as you are shooting us. This is our land not yours, the slaves of American fake freedom’ (al Akhras 2011).

Notes:

Abouzeid, Rania (2011) ‘Syria’s Revolt, how graffiti stirred an uprising’,Time, 22 March

Al Akhras, Samer (2011) ‘Syrian Citizen’, Facebook, 25 June, online:https://www.facebook.com/notes/sam-al-akhras/syrian-citizen/241770845834062?pnref=story

Al Jazeera (2011a) ‘Nine killed at Syria funeral processions’, 23 April, online:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/04/20114231169587270.html

Al Jazeera (2011b) ‘Deraa: A city under a dark siege’, 28 April, online:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/04/2011427215943692865.html

Al-Shaqfa, Muhammad Riyad (2011) ‘Muslim Brotherhood Statement about the so-called ‘Syrian Revolution’’, General supervisor for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, statement of 28 March, online at: http://truthsyria.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/muslim-brotherhood-statement-about-the-so-called-syrian-revolution/

Allaf, Rime (2012) ‘This Time, Assad Has Overreached’, NYT, 5 Dec, online:http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/02/06/is-assads-time-running-out/this-time-assad-has-overreached

Blanford, Nicholas (2011) ‘Assad regime may be gaining upper hand in Syria’, Christina Science Monitor, 13 may, online:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0513/Assad-regime-may-be-gaining-upper-hand-in-Syria

Chossudovsky, Michel (2011) ‘Syria: who is behind the protest movement? Fabricating a pretext for US-NATO ‘Humanitarian Intervention’’, Global Research, 3 May, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-who-is-behind-the-protest-movement-fabricating-a-pretext-for-a-us-nato-humanitarian-intervention/24591

Clinton, Hilary (2011) ‘There is No Going Back in Syria’, US Department of State, 17 June, online: http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/06/166495.htm

Maktabi, Rima (2011) ‘Reports of funeral, police shootings raise tensions in Syria’, CNN, 5 April, online: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/04/05/syria.unrest/

Crimi, Frank (2012) ‘Ethnic Cleansing of Syrian Christians’, Frontpagemag,29 March, online: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/ethnic-cleansing-of-syrian-christians/

Daily Mail (2011) ‘Nine protesters killed after security forces open fire by Syrian mosque’, 24 March

DIA (1982) ‘Syria: Muslim Brotherhood Pressure Intensifies’, Defence Intelligence Agency (USA), May, online: https://syria360.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dia-syria-muslimbrotherhoodpressureintensifies-2.pdf

DIA (2012) ‘Department of Defence Information Report, Not Finally Evaluated Intelligence, Country: Iraq’, Defence Intelligence Agency, August, 14-L-0552/DIA/297-293, Levant report, online at:http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/

Draitser, Eric (2012) ‘Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood: Syria, Egypt and beyond’, Global Research, 12 December, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/unmasking-the-muslim-brotherhood-syria-egypt-and-beyond/5315406

Eretz Zen (2014) ‘Tunisian Jihadist Admits: We Destroyed & Desecrated Mosques in Syria to Cause Defections in Army’, Youtube Interview, 16 March, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ8awN8GLAk

FOX News (2011) ‘Obama Under Pressure to Call for Syrian Leader’s Ouster’,29 April, online: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/29/obama-pressure-syrian-leaders-ouster/

Ghadry, Farid N. (2005) ‘Syrian Reform: What Lies Beneath’, Middle East Quarterly, Vol 12 No 1, Winter, online: http://www.meforum.org/683/syrian-reform-what-lies-beneath 

Haidar, Ali (2013) interview with this writer, Damascus 28 December. Ali Haidar was President of the Syrian Social National Party (SS NP), a secular rival to the Ba’ath Party. In 2012 President Bashar al Assad incorporated him into the Syrian government as Minister for Reconciliation.

Hashem, Ali (2012) ‘Al Jazeera Journalist Explains Resignation over Syria and Bahrain Coverage’, The Real News, 20 March, online:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8106

HRW (2011a) ‘We’ve never seen such horror: crimes against humanity by Syrian Security Forces’, Human Rights Watch, June, online:http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/06/01/we-ve-never-seen-such-horror-0

HRW (2011b) Syria: Defectors Describe Orders to Shoot Unarmed Protesters’, Human Rights watch, Washington, 9 July, online:http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/07/09/syria-defectors-describe-orders-shoot-unarmed-protesters

HRW (2012) ‘Open Letter to the Leaders of the Syrian Opposition, Human Rights Watch, Washington, 20 March, online:http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/20/open-letter-leaders-syrian-opposition

Jaber, Hala (2011) ‘Syria caught in crossfire of extremists’, Sunday Times, 26 June, online: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/world_news/Middle_East/article657138.ece

Khalidi, Suleiman (2011) ‘Thousands chant ‘freedom’ despite Assad reform offer’, Reuters, 24 March, online: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/24/us-syria-idUSTRE72N2MC20110324

Landis, Joshua (2011a) ‘The Revolution Strikes Home: Yasir Qash`ur, my wife’s cousin, killed in Banyas’, Syria Comment, 11 April, online:http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-revolution-strikes-home-yasir-qashur-my-wifes-cousin-killed-in-banyas/

Landis, Joshua (2011b) ‘Syria’s Opposition Faces an Uncertain Future’, Syria Comment, 26 June, online: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/syrias-opposition-faces-an-uncertain-future/

MEMRITV (2011) ‘Syrian Sunni Cleric Threatens: “We Shall Mince [The Alawites] in Meat Grinders”’, YouTube, 13 July, online:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwz8i3osHww

Nassar, Jessy (2014) ‘Hama: A rebirth from the ashes?’ Middle East Monitor,11 July, online: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/12703-hama-a-rebirth-from-the-ashes

Narwani, Sharmine (2012) ‘Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List”, 28 Feb, online: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/questioning-syrian-%E2%80%9Ccasualty-list%E2%80%9D

Narwani, Sharmine (2014) Syria: The hidden massacre, RT, 7 May, online:http://rt.com/op-edge/157412-syria-hidden-massacre-2011/

OHCHR (2012) ‘Periodic Update’, Independent International Commission of Inquiry established pursuant to resolution A/HRC/S – 17/1 and extended through resolution A/HRC/Res/19/22, 24 may, online:

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/PeriodicUpdate24May2012.pdf

Queenan, Gavriel (2011) ‘Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings torched in protests’, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21

Reuters (2011) ‘Syria says seizes weapons smuggled from Iraq’, 11 March, online: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/us-syria-iraq-idUSTRE72A3MI20110311?hc_location=ufi

Rosen, Nir (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera,13 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

RT (2012) ‘Al Jazeera exodus: Channel losing staff over ‘bias’’, 12 March, online: http://rt.com/news/al-jazeera-loses-staff-335/

Salt, Jeremy (2011) Truth and Falsehood in Syria, The Palestine Chronicle, 5 October, online: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17159

Sayyid Rasas, Mohammed (2013) ‘From 2005 to 2013: The Syrian Opposition’s Many Faces’, Al Akhbar, 19 March, online: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/15287 

Shaikh, Salman (2011) ‘In Syria, Assad Must Exit the Stage’, Brookings Institution, 27 April, online: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/04/27-syria-shaikh

Sheikho, Youssef (2013) ‘The Syrian Opposition’s Muslim Brotherhood Problem’, Al Akhbar English, April 10, online: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/15492

Truth Syria (2012) ‘Syria – Daraa revolution was armed to the teeth from the very beginning’, BBC interview with Anwar Al-Eshki, YouTube interview, video originally uploaded 10 April, latest version 7 November, online:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoGmrWWJ77w

Seale, Patrick (1988) Asad: the struggle for the Middle East, University of California Press, Berkeley CA

van der Lugt, Frans (2012) ‘Bij defaitisme is niemand gebaat’, from Homs,13 January, online: https://mediawerkgroepsyrie.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/bij-defaitisme-is-niemand-gebaat/

Wikstrom, Cajsa (2011) Syria: ‘A kingdom of silence’, Al Jazeera, 9 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/201129103121562395.html

YaLibnan (2011) ‘7 Syrian policemen killed in Sunday clashes’, 21 March, online: http://yalibnan.com/2011/03/21/7-syrian-policemen-killed-in-sunday-clashes-report/

Today’s geopolitical struggles entail widespread use of psychological warfare against national elites, even from allied countries. This survey examines psychological techniques, including the use of informal NGO channels, which have been dubbed “organizational weapons.”

Psychological attacks attempt to take the target into veritable “pincers.” They are effective because the target, in the form of a national government, is subjected to pressure from both legitimate and “shadowy” actors, attacking from both above and below.

In order to carry out a pincer attack, the attacker must satisfy five conditions:

1. Establish a psychological pressure environment.

It entails two sets of activities. The first is establishing the pressure from above, in the form of planting “agents of influence” into the government and into associated organizations dealing with analysis and information dissemination, and pressure from below by creating a range of legal and shadowy societal and organization organizations to influence public opinion, organize mass protests, and  coordinate anti-government activities.

2. Implementing the “pressure from below” scenario.

The objective is to provoke mass displeasure with the government through the formation of public opinion by emphasizing government’s failures, including imagined ones. This information campaign then leads to protests, civil disobedience, and other measures to provoke the government into suppressing the demonstrations through the use of violence, which in turn will persuade many individuals to demand the government’s resignation. The goal is to place the government into a stressful situation in which it has to make snap decisions in order to stabilize the political situation and to lessen the psychological assault.

3. Organizing “pressure from above”

This includes using agents of influence to lobby the government to adopt certain decisions. The lobbying accomplishes two things:

The target government leaders are flooded with false information on the unfolding events, with suh information coming from trusted and close sources including even relatives and good friends.

It impresses upon government members the unavoidability of adopting proposed measures.

4. Making the political decision.

Given growing pressure from above and below, the government falls under a psychological sense of emergency, in which it feels it has to make hasty decisions. If the decision does not satisfy the organizers, they step up the level of pressure. Once the government makes the expected decision, the organizers move to the next step.

5. Removing the pressure. Once the decision satisfies the organizers, its widespread and enthusiastic acceptance is organized. The situation returns to normal as the level of organizing activity drops off.

The pincer mechanism works on many levels. It assumes the use of internal and external political forces to exert pressure. It can work on three levels at once—international, internal elite, and regional elite.

The psychological pressure’s effectiveness depends on several factors:

• Actual social conditions, including mass expectations;
• The population’s specific psychological factors which are being manipulated;
• The level of cohesion and professionalism displayed by the “from below” pressure team exerting pressure on the region’s population.

The three-level pressure system includes the following:

a) The official international relations, including the totality of bi- and multi-lateral contacts which the state’s foreign policy organizations maintain, and which can be used to pressure the country’s highest officials responsible for national security and the military, through diplomatic notes, official statements, etc.

b) The “transnational geopolitical pluralism system”, consisting of:

– The global specialized network of international foundations, banks, and humanitarian organizations which provide an appearance of pluralism. This is initiates psychological pressure.

– Multi-national corporations which have offices in most countries.

– Transnational NGOs and unofficial political entities, such as the Trilateral Commission.

– International organized crime and terrorism.

– Interpersonal relations among senior government officials, or the so-called “social network of world elites.”

c) The global public opinion-forming system, including:

– International media and news agencies;

– National media and news services aimed at foreign audiences;

– The Internet.

This system can offer moral support to the protesters and separatists and also pressure national leaders by helping form a corresponding international public opinion.

The internal elite groups exerting psychological pressure include:

• Members of the ruling elite;
• The political anti-elite consisting of people who want to join the elite and change the country’s political, financial, legal policies;
• The political sub-elite, or secondary groups within the elite who are not happy with their status and want to move up.

External forces are far more effective at interfering in domestic politics under conditions of globalization. Terms such as “economics without borders” or “freedom of the press” assumes not only complete freedom for legitimate economic and media actors, but also for shadowy entities which can render financial and moral support of the anti-elites and sub-elites in their confrontation against the ruling elites.

The media play a key role in ensuring the “pincer”. They are used to magnify the political pressure on the leaders and to provide psychological support for the protesters.

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets in England has risen by 30 percent in a single year, according to a new report from Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people.

The numbers of people making presentations as homeless across the UK has risen by 4 percent in the last year, with annual acceptances by local authority housing departments standing at 54,000. Since 2009/2010 this equates to an increase of 36 percent. The Homeless Monitor concludes that homelessness has worsened considerably in the last five years they have been producing reports.

The numbers of people that are included as part of informal homeless prevention and relief—including statutory homelessness acceptances dealt with by local authority case actions—stands at 275,000 for 2014/2015, a rise of 34 percent since 2009/2010. A third of all local authorities in England have reported an overall service demand for 2014/2015.

According to figures released at the end of February by the Department for Communities and Local Government, there were an estimated 3,569 rough-sleepers on any given night in autumn 2015. This is an increase of 825 people per night since the same period in 2014.

London is particularly affected, with rough-sleepers in the capital constituting 26 percent of the country’s total. Although this is down 1 percent as a proportion of the overall figure for England, in real terms London has seen a 27 percent rise in rough-sleeping, rising from 742 people per night in autumn 2014 to 940 per night in autumn 2015. The London Borough of Westminster is the area with the highest rough-sleeping count of the whole country, at an estimated 265 people. According to the figures, London had 0.27 rough-sleepers for every 1,000 households, compared with a rate of 0.14 per 1,000 in the rest of England.

It is likely that these figures severely underestimate the total number of homeless people sleeping in the streets. The figures are disputed, with the UK Statistics Authority concluding that the official Homelessness Prevention and Relief and Rough-sleeping statistics do not currently meet the required standards of trustworthiness, quality and value to be designated as National Statistics.

In its report, Crisis recognised stagnant real wages, soaring housing prices—particularly in the capital—and government welfare cuts as the principal causes of this dramatic upsurge in numbers of rough-sleepers.

Citing cuts to in-work and housing benefits, the Conservative government’s much-hated “Bedroom Tax” policy and welfare benefit sanctions as the main factors pushing vulnerable people onto the streets, the report is an indictment of years of relentless, vicious austerity measures carried out by successive Labour and Tory governments.

Crisis noted that with the reduction of the total welfare benefit cap introduced in the 2015 budget—to £23,000 a year in London and to £20,000 in the rest of the country—many families will find that “affordable” housing, both privately rented and social, is far beyond their means.

The new Universal Credit benefit system to be rolled out across the UK is expected to further increase homelessness, affecting those tenants in the private sector who have their rent benefits paid directly to them.

The problem of finding affordable accommodation is further aggravated by the government’s social housing privatisation policy. This has set into motion the forced sale of many high-value council properties, the long-term loss of properties via the government’s “Right to Buy” scheme and the reduced investment in new social housing. As indicated in the report,

“While the Government has stated ambitions for this diminished stock to be targeted on those in greatest need, the interaction of their rent-setting and welfare policies runs directly counter to this aspiration.”

Labour’s shadow housing minister, John Healey, posturing as an opponent of the government’s housing policy and the homelessness crisis, said of the figures, “People will find it extraordinary that in England in the 21st century the number of people forced to sleep rough is going up.”

This is pure hypocrisy. Labour has been entirely complicit in imposing the Tory government’s austerity measures across the country, with the Labour-dominated local councils in Bristol, Brighton and Hove and Manchester reporting the second, third and fourth highest rough-sleeping counts after Westminster, at 97, 78 and 70 rough-sleepers per night respectively.

Even these shockingly high figures are a gross underestimation of the number of people actually affected by homelessness. Many people have been forced out of their own homes due to skyrocketing living costs and welfare cuts, but have so far avoided being driven onto the streets. According to Crisis, the vast majority of homeless people do not fall within the government’s narrow classification of being homeless. Many exist out of sight in bed and breakfasts and squats, or are concealed in the households of friends and family members, on the floors or sofas of these often overcrowded homes. Crisis calculates that approximately 2.35 million households in England contain concealed single persons in this way, and that an estimated 3.1 percent of households are overcrowded.

Many other homeless people can fall under the radar and not be included in official estimates, as it is common for rough-sleepers to conceal themselves as a matter of personal security. Rough-sleepers often fall victim to physical, verbal and sexual abuse if they spend the night in visible and exposed locations and so many choose to shelter themselves in places such as commercial recycling bins.

The number of homeless people found spending the night in commercial bins has risen dramatically, according to waste management firm Biffa. In the 12-month period between March 2014 and March 2015, the company found people sleeping in their bins on 93 separate occasions, up from 31 in the previous year. In the current year, which runs to the end of March, the figure already stands at 175.

Sleeping in recycling bins can have grave consequences. Spending the night in a commercial bin can lead to serious injuries and fatalities when the bins are emptied into collection trucks and the waste is crushed. According to the Environmental Services Association, there have been at least 11 fatalities since October 2010 as a result of rough-sleepers sheltering in commercial bins. Such gruesome deaths, allied with prolonged period of sleeping in the cold and damp and enduring a poor diet, are central factors in the average age of death for rough-sleepers being just 47.

Extra precautions have been implemented by many waste management companies in an attempt to prevent these tragic deaths. Most collection lorries now contain cameras inside their compactors that allow the driver to see what is being tipped into them; waste collectors are instructed to bang on the side of recycling bins to alert any rough-sleepers inside and to double-check the contents before allowing the bin to be emptied. Businesses and shops have a responsibility to lock their bins overnight and could be taken to court if they do not. Despite the terrible risks, the relative warmth and security of recycling bins can still be attractive to many rough-sleepers.

The Homeless Monitor report can be accessed here.

On March 14, so-called proximity talks began in Geneva, pro-Western Syria envoy Steffan de Mistura acting as go-between for opposing sides, not meeting face-to-face, likely to resolve little or nothing.

How long talks continue remains to be seen. They’re scheduled for 10 days. US/Saudi-backed terrorist groups comprise opposition elements, their demands unacceptable.

They want puppet governance replacing Syrian sovereign independence, the nation federalized as a step toward partitioning it into easily controllable mini-states.

Israel wants a regional rival removed, Iran isolated. Longstanding US plans call for regime change, replacing Syrian and Iranian independence with pro-Western proxy states.

The Middle East remains a cauldron of endless wars, violence and chaos. Peace and stability defeat Washington’s agenda.

What strategy is planned to continue Obama’s war on Syria remains to be seen. Imagine the horrors next year if neocon Hillary Clinton becomes America’s 45th president, committed to endless imperial wars, unchallenged US global dominance, more aggressive than any of her rival aspirants.

Russia’s military success in Syria elevated its geopolitical influence, stature and importance. At the same time, US hostility remains unchanged.

State Department spokesman admiral John Kirby reiterated hardline US policy, saying Washington “will not accept the redrawing of borders by force in the 21st century.”

“Sanctions related to Crimea will remain in place as long as the occupation continues. We again call on Russia to end that occupation and return Crimea to Ukraine.”

No occupation exists. Crimeans overwhelmingly voted by national referendum to return to Russia, correcting a historic mistake.

Self-determination is a universally recognized right. Crimeans won’t tolerate foreign interference. The Republic of Crimea is one of nine Russian Federation districts, including the federal city of Sevastopol, home to Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet.

Washington wants all sovereign independent nations replaced by US controlled vassal states, notably Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran and Syria – wars or color revolutions (aka coup d’etats) its strategies of choice.

US and Israeli policymakers want the Middle East map redrawn. The road to Tehran runs through Damascus. Replacing Assad with pro-Western governance isolates Iran, turning a Syrian ally into an enemy.

What’s ahead in Syria remains to be seen. Russia maintains a reduced military involvement, hopefully enough by Putin’s calculation to assure important won gains aren’t lost. Syria is in the eye of the storm. Its liberating struggle remains far from over, conflict resolution nowhere in sight.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

The Israeli violations practiced against the Palestinian educational process had notably increased in 2015.

Official statistics, according to a report issued by Quds Press, revealed that 53,998 Palestinian male and female students and 3,840 Palestinian male and female teachers, as well as a number of the staff of the Palestinian Ministry of Education and its institutions, were subjected to attacks by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) during the last year; these attacks included killing, wounding, arrests and detentions, as well as house arrests, restriction of movement at checkpoints and denial of safe access to schools.

According to a report from the Yemeni media network “Al-Jabhah News”, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) has been fighting alongside the Saudi-led Coalition and their mercenaries against the Houthi forces and Yemeni Army in the provincial capital of the Ta’iz Governorate.

ISIS and Al-Qaeda reportedly have a small presence inside the provincial capital; however, they can only be seen fighting against the Yemeni Army’s Republican Guard and their popular committees (including the Houthis).

While the West was applying pressure on Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear programme, the Saudis were buying the atomic bomb from Israel or Pakistan. From now on, to everyone’s surprise, the Near East has become a nuclear zone, dominated by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In 1979, Israel completed the final adjustments to its atomic bomb, in collaboration with the apartheid régime of South Africa. The Hebrew state has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has always avoided answering questions about its nuclear programme.

Every year since 1980, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a consensual resolution to make the Near East a region free from all nuclear weapon. This resolution was aimed at encouraging Israel to give up its bomb and to ensure that other states would not enter into an arms race.

Under the Shah, Iran also had a military nuclear programme, but it was pursued only marginally after the revolution of 1979, because of the war started by Iraq (1980-88). However, it was only after the end of war that ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini opposed weapons of mass destruction, and consequently prohibited the fabrication, possession and the use of atomic weapons.

Negotiations then began for the restitution of the 1,180 billion dollars of Iranian investment in the Eurodif complex for the enrichment of uranium at Tricastin. However, the question was never resolved. As a result, during the dissolution of Eurodif in 2010, the Islamic Republic of Iran still owned 10% of the capital. It is probable that it still holds a part of the company for uranium enrichment at Tricastin.

From 2003 to 2005, the negotiations relative to the nuclear litigation were presided for Iran by Sheikh Hassan Rohani, a religious leader close to Presidents Rafsandjani and Khatami. The Europeans demanded the introduction of a passage stipulating that Iran dismantle its system for the teaching of nuclear physics, so as to ensure that they would be unable to relaunch their military programme.

However, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a partisan for the relaunching of the Khomeinist Revolution – came to power, he rejected the agreement negotiated by Sheikh Rohani and dismissed him. He restarted the teaching of nuclear physics, and launched a research programme which was aimed, in particular, at finding a way of producing electricity from atomic fusion and not nuclear fission, which is currently used by the United States, Russia, France, China and Japan.

Accusing President Ahmadinejad of «preparing the Apocalypse to hasten the return of the Mahdi» (sic), Israël launched an international Press campaign intended to isolate Iran. In reality, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not share the Jewish vision of an evil world which has to be destroyed and then rebuilt, but that of a progressive maturation of collective awareness until Parousia, the return of the Mahdi and the prophets. At the same time, Mossad busied itself with the assassination, one by one, of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. From their side, the Western powers and the UN Security Council adopted ever more restrictive sanctions until they had completely isolated Iran at the economic and financial level.

In 2013, the Guide of the Revolution, ayatollah Ali Khameinei, agreed to a round of secret discussions with Washington, in Oman. Persuaded that he had to loosen the constraints which were suffocating his country, he considered a provisional ten-year agreement. After a preliminary agreement, Ahmadinejad’s candidacy for the Presidential election was not authorised, and Sheikh Hassan Rohani was elected. He restarted the negotiations that he had abandoned in 2005, and accepted the Western conditions, including the ban on enriching uranium at 20%, which put an end to the research on nuclear fusion.

In November 2013, Saudi Arabia organised a secret summit which brought together members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the friendly Muslim states [1]. In the presence of delegates from the UN General Secretariat, Israeli President Shimon Peres joined them by video-conference. The participants concluded that the danger was not the Israeli bomb, but the bomb that Iran might one day possess. The Saudis assured their interlocutors that they would take the necessary initiatives.

Military cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a new phenomenon, but the two countries have been working together since 2008, when Riyadh financed Israel’s punitive expedition in Gaza, known as «Operation Cast Lead» [2].

The 5+1 agreement was not made public until mid-2015. During the negotiations, Saudi Arabia multiplied its declarations that it would launch an arms race if the international community did not manage to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear programme [3].

On the 6th February 2015, President Obama published his new «National Security Strategy». He wrote – «Long-term stability [in the Middle East and North Africa] requires more than the use and presence of US military forces. It demands partners who are capable of defending themselves by themselves. This is why we invest in the capacity of Israel, Jordan and our Gulf partners to discourage aggression, while maintaining our unwavering support for the security of Israel, including the continued improvement of its military capacities» [4].

On the 25th March 2015, Saudi Arabia began its operation «Decisive Tempest» in Yemen, officially aimed at re-instating the Yemeni President, who had been overthrown by a popular revolution. In fact, the operation was the implementation of the secret agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia for the exploitation of the Rub’al-Khali oil fields [5].

On the 26th March 2015, Adel Al-Jubeir, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, refused to answer a question from CNN concerning the project for a Saudi atomic bomb.

On the 30th March 2015, a joint military Staff was set up by Israel in Somaliland, a non-recognised state. From the first day, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan participated under Israel command.

Two days later, on the 1st April 2015, during the Charm el-Cheick summit, the Arab League adopted the principle of a «Joint Arab Force» [6]. Officially, this was to implement the Arab Defence Treaty of 1950 to fight against terrorism. De facto, the League had validated the new Arab military alliance under Israeli command.

In May 2015, the Joint Arab Force, under Israeli command, used a tactical atomic bomb in Yemen. It may have been used in an attempt to penetrate an underground bunker.

On the 16th July 2015, intelligence specialist Duane Clarridge affirmed on Fox Business that Saudi Arabia had bought the atomic bomb from Pakistan.

On the 18th January 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry affirmed on CNN that atomic weaponry can not be bought and transferred. He warned Saudi Arabia that this would constitute a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the 15th February 2016, Saudi analyst Dahham Al-’Anzi affirmed in Arabic on Russia Today that his country has been in possession of an atomic weapon for two years, in order to protect Arabs, and that the major powers know this.

The declarations of Saudi analyst Dahham Al-’Anzi, on the 15th February 2016 on Russia Today – which were immediately translated and broadcast by the Israeli service Memri – raised a considerable echo in the Arab world. However, no international political leader, not even Saudi, made any comment. And Russia Today has erased them from its Internet site.

The declarations of Dahham Al-’Anzi – an intellectual close to Prince Mohamed ben Salman – lead us to think that he was not speaking of a strategic atomic weapon (A-bomb or H-bomb), but a tactical bomb (N-bomb). Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine how Saudi Arabia could «protect Arabs» from the Syrian «dictatorship» by using a strategic nuclear bomb. Moreover, this corresponds to what has already been observed in Yemen. However, nothing is certain.

It is obviously unlikely that Saudi Arabia had built this kind of weapon itself, since it is absolutely bereft of scientific knowledge in the matter. On the other hand, it is possible that it bought the weapon from a state which has not signed the NPT, Israel or Pakistan. If we are to believe Duane Clarridge, it would have been Islamabad which sold its technology, but in this case, the weapon could not be a neutron bomb.

Since Saudi Arabia signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (TNP), it did not have the right acquire the weapon, whether it be a tactical or a strategic bomb. But it would be enough for King Salman to declare that he bought the bomb in his own name to avoid being concerned by the Treaty. We know that the state of Saudi Arabia is the King’s private property, and that his budget only represents a part of the royal coffers. This would mean that we have entered a phase of the privatisation of nuclear weapons – a scenario which until now had been unthinkable. This evolution must be taken most seriously.

Finally, everything leads us to believe that the Saudis acted within the framework of US policy, but that they overstepped themselves by violating the NPT. By doing so, they have laid the foundation for a nuclearised Near East in which Iran could no longer play the role that Sheikh Rohani had hoped to recover, that of «regional police force» for the benefit of his Anglo-Saxon friends.

Thierry Meyssan, French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.” — Adolf Hitler

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” — Adolf Hitler

“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” — J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI and co-conspirator in the JFK and MLK assassinations, as well as other acts of extra-judicial violence.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” – William Colby, CIA head during the Nixon and Ford administrations, quoted by David McGowan, in his book Derailing Democracy (2000)

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923

“The fascist state must not forget that all means must serve the ends; it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called “freedom of the press”…it must make sure that (the media) is placed in the service of the state.” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” – Jay Gould, one of the richest capitalists in America (actually a railroad robber baron), as he hired strikebreaker “scabs” (and armed Pinkerton detectives) to defeat a Texas railroad labor union strike over fairer wages, shorter hours and safer working conditions.

“You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are (CIA) Agency people at the management level.” — William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein

“The Agency’s relationship with the (New York) Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials.  (It was) general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.” – From The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein

“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power” — Benito Mussolini

“It is not necessary to bury the truth.  It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.” —  Napoleon Bonaparte

“First we will kill all the subversives, then we will kill their collaborators, then…their sympathizers, then…those who remain indifferent, and finally, we will kill the timid.” — Iberico Saint Jean (1977), right wing governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, threatening those who failed to show the necessary enthusiasm for Argentina’s newly formed but un-elected government that gained power by coup d’etat.

“Altruism is a great evil…while selfishness is a virtue.” — Ayn Rand, atheist author of Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead and The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand is thehero of the American Libertarian Party, Tea Party, Republican Party, as well as several ex-presidential candidates such as David H. Koch, Bob Barr, ex-US House member Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, and GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.*

*      *      *

Back in 2000 or 2004, when George W. Bush was campaigning in Duluth, the local police, presumably with the help of the US Secret Service, patrolled the area surrounding the venue where Bush was to speak, identifying those that looked like anti-war or anti-tyranny protesters (and who wished to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech) and escorted them to a place where they could not be seen or heard. In a gleefully sarcastic tone, the authorities called the fenced-in area a “Free Speech Zone”. I don’t recall hearing any local thought-leaders in the press expressing any outrage at the outrageous nti-constitutional characterization.

There are a lot of ways that bullies, tyrants, corporate CEOs, militarists, authoritarian clerics and other assorted sociopathic types through history have silenced the pesky whistle-blowers, truth-tellers and altruistic protesters. Here are just a few that come to mind:

Examples of “Free Speech Zones” Thru History – as Defined by Cynical Tyrants

• The torture and crucifixion of resisters that were opposed to cruelty, violence, tyranny and militarism during the heyday of the Roman Empire;
• the hunting down and executions of “witches” by the Roman Catholic church during the Dark Ages. (“Witches” were mainly wise women who had the courage to express unwelcome truths exposing the evils of the male dominated societies of the time.);
• the guillotining, during the French Revolution, of the oppressed victims of the over-privileged aristocratic and clerical tyrants that were friends of the court of King Louis XV1. (Shortly thereafter some of the same revolutionaries were guillotined by their very leaders.)
• the genocidal massacres and starvations of aboriginal peoples of North, South and Central America during the governmental/corporate-ordered, church-ordained and military-inflicted theft of their native lands during the 500 years since Columbus and the assorted sociopathic, gold-hungry conquistadors (both ancient and modern day);
• the lynching of African-Americans during the 300 years of their existence in America;
• the silencing of anti-slavery abolitionists in the Deep South in the lead-up to the Civil War;
• the backlash against the “suffragettes” prior to the granting of voting privileges to women;
• the mental hospital imprisonment and torturing of psychologically- and sexually-traumatized female “hysterics” during the darkest parts of the past history of psychiatry (prominent aspects of which still survive today);
• the backlash against antiwar activists prior to every regrettable immoral or illegal war in history;
• the book-burnings and censorship in fascist and fascist-leaning nations;
• the concentration camp imprisoning of dissidents during America’s war between the states, Nazi Germany’s wars against union organizers, Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, gypsies and other dissidents, Stalinist Russia’s wars and the most recent incarnations at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the CIAs secret torture sites;
• and solitary confinement as practiced in the prisons and mental institutions in every developed and developing nation around the world.

These evils mentioned above are all examples of “free speech zones” as cynically defined by some of our right-wing political leaders. These zones are places where nobody can hear the protester who is speaking out in opposition to the tactics of sociopathic, anti-democratic, police state-supported tyrants that somehow have the legal right to silence dissidents in any way possible. America decried it when it happened in Nazi Germany or the USSR, but looks the other way when it happens here.

“Trump may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS”

With the generous help of the media, the corporate perpetrators of what Bernie Sanders calls the “rigged economy” can easily drown out or shout down (a la Donald Trump & Company) the voices of courageous, idealistic protestors. The corporate-owned and CIA-dominated major media (re-read the quotes above) decide what coverage of vital issues will be published or broadcast – or down-played or censored-out – during the next 24 hour news cycle.

The biggest media franchises make a lot of money from exorbitant campaign advertising fees. Therefore the media tries to make every political campaign an exciting horse race to the finish line. No revenue-squashing landslides are permitted even if there is a hopeless candidate and an obstructionist, proto-fascist political party (a la George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the right-wing radicals in the GOP) that wouldn’t be good for America. Photo finishes make the most money for corporate media elites.

Here is a recent example of how Big Media thinks first about its profits and last about the well-being of America and its easily fleeced people:

At a Morgan Stanley investors’ conference recently, CBS’s CEO, Les Moonves, said: “It (Donald Trump’s candidacy) may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” He called Trump‘s presence in the race a “good thing.” “They’re not discussing issues, they’re throwing bombs at each other.”

What the CEO meant was that the increased ad revenues and increased viewership good for business; to hell with the public good. One only has to consider the viewership that is generated whenever there is a close horse race, an over-hyped Super Bowl game or a Trump campaign rally brawl.  In 2003, Moonves said something similar about Super PACs: “ they may be bad for America, but they’re good for CBS!”

In other words typical profit-driven Big Businesses like CBS ignore the destructive, retaliatory dead-locked partisanship in Congress despite the dire problems that may doom the planet and need action (global warming, racism, perpetual war, combat vet suicidality, America’s over-vaccination and over-drugging problems, torture and mass slaughter by the US military overseas, police brutality, poverty, starvation and refugee crises).

“This time we can’t just call up the police ‘cause the criminals got all the cops on a leash” – Songwriter Ethan Miller

In our heart of hearts, we all know that modern day corporate (criminal?) bullies of the wealthy One Percenter persuasion have been dominating America for generations – in one iteration or another – with essential help from the FBI, the Secret Service, the Pinkerton’s, or privatized contract killer/assassin groups like the CIA-affiliated private security corporation, Blackwater. (To learn more than most patriots would want to acknowledge, google “Jeremy Scahill and Blackwater” to learn more about the subject and his ground-breaking book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

It might be helpful to categorize the various groups that comprise the anti-democratic One Percenters that are so ruthlessly controlling America’s political, civil, cultural, financial, nutritional, entertainment and media realities – and therefore us easily brain-washable sheeple, whose spending and voting habits are being manipulated daily by the various wealth extractors listed below.

Here are some suggested groupings that might help clarify the dilemma we all know we are mired in. I left out authoritarian religions, which are surely an important part of the problem. The entities mentioned here are all “too big to fail or jail”, and there is considerable overlap in this admittedly incomplete list.

The Ruthless One Percenters

1. Corporate [Big Media, Big Advertising, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Chemistry, Big Food, Big Agribusiness and their Lobbyists and legislation-writers];
2. Financial [Wall Street, Big Banks, the Gambling Industry and their Lobbyists];
3. Political [Congress, Supreme Court, Executive Branch, Super PACS and their Lobbyists)
4. Military [War Street, the Pentagon, the weapons manufacturers and their Lobbyists] and
5. Police state [CIA/FBI/NSA, private security companies (Ex Blackwater} and their Lobbyists]

The Rigged Economy and Organized Crime

Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate with the fewest fascist traits (in fact, he has none), is an outspoken opponent of the Rigged Economy and its evil twin, Organized Corporate Crime. Every Republican presidential candidate exhibits a number of protofascist traits. (Google “American Friendly Fascism and Gary Kohls” for some of my articles on fascism.)

Singer-songwriter Ethan Miller powerfully fleshes out that reality of the rigged economy and organized crime in his great pro-labor union protest song, Organized Crime. Here are the lyrics:

Organized Crime, by Ethan Miller and Kate Boverman:

“Behind every great fortune, there is a crime” – Balzac

We’ve all seen the movies ‘bout gangsters and thugs
About cunning mob bosses and the lords of the drugs
But listen here closely if you’ve got the time
‘Cause I’d like to tell you ‘bout organized crime

Well the old mafiosos and cinema crooks
They may sport the pinstripes and sinister looks
But you’ll have to look elsewhere if you’d like to find
The real perpetrators of organized crime

So raise up your hands now if you’ve got a job
Making shit wages working until your head throbs
They’re making a profit by robbing you blind
They say it’s just business, but it’s organized crime

And the more the rich got then the more the rich get
While everyone else lives on toil and sweat
The boss makes ten dollars, you just make a dime
It’s not fair compensation, it’s organized crime

Well the tide of prosperity lifts every boat
They say as you fall down and drown in their moat
It’s a game of roulette that you’ll lose every time
This economy’s nothing but organized crime.

Tell me who are the crooks and who’s just getting by?
Who’s doing honest work; who’s working lies?
The real crooks go free while the poor folk do time
If you’re not angry you should be; it’s organized crime

But this time we can’t just call up the police
‘Cause the criminals got all the cops on a leash
We’ll have to take things in our own hands this time
If we’re going to shut down their organized crime

So come on now friends, are you ready to fight?
They’ve stolen our power like it was their right
Let’s take it all back from those blood-suckin’ slime
The real perpetrators of organized crime

Now talk to your neighbors and talk to your friends
Turn off the TV and start organizing
We won’t let them get off so scot-free this time
When we topple their empire of organized crime.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his family practice career. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Many of Dr Kohls’ columns are archived here 

Heavily redacted notes from the hospital bed interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were released at the end of February. Most media reports about the documents focus on portions that portray Dzhokhar as having played an active role in building and detonating the bombs that exploded on Boylston St.

But a closer read of the FBI’s summary of Tsarnaev’s statements to his interrogators raises questions about key details of the bombing and its execution.

First off, it is important to note that the interview notes are heavily redacted and therefore incomplete. But some of the things the FBI says Dzhokhar told his interrogators indicate a level of confusion or ignorance, or both, about important facts. They also raise questions about why the FBI has been selectively vague about key details of the case.

Photo credit: FBI

Black/Brown/White Backpack?

According to the interrogation notes, “Jahar carried a brown backpack [emphasis added] while his brother’s backpack was black. After parking, they walked…”

Now the backpack is brown?

The indictment, which was written a month and a half after the bombing, states that both bombs were concealed in black backpacks.

Boston Bombing black shredded backpack
Photo credit: FBI

In a photograph of the shredded backpack lying in Boylston Street released by the FBI, it does indeed look black.

However, many observers have pointed out that, in surveillance photos, the backpack Dzhokhar can be seen carrying does not look black — or brown for that matter — but mostly white or light gray.

Photo credit: FBI

Why the discrepancy? Did the interviewing agent challenge him on this detail? Why is there so much ambiguity around such an important detail?

And there’s another problem: The “smoking gun” video that supposedly proves Tsarnaev placed an explosive laden backpack on Boylston Street. It actually shows very little. His actions are obscured by the crowd of people.

Shouldn’t the government be obliged to prove unequivocally that the exploded backpack found at the scene was at least the same color as the one Dzhokhar was carrying that day?

Strange Redaction Regarding Explosive Powder

Also according to the FBI agent’s notes, Tsarnaev ”stated that he and his brother Tamerlan built two explosive devices in his brother’s home at 410 Norfolk…”

This implies that Dzhokhar took a more active role in constructing the bombs than has been previously described.

But, Dzhokhar’s lawyers showed at trial that none of his fingerprints were found on any of the bomb or bomb-making materials. Tamerlan’s fingerprints were, however.

Dzhokhar also told agents, apparently, that the powder came from $200 worth of fireworks that he and Tamerlan had purchased in New Hampshire about a year prior. But that’s when Tamerlan was in Russia — January to July 2012. Considering Tsarnaev was being interrogated April 21 and 22 , 2013, the time-line can’t be accurate.

Fireworks found in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory room.
Photo credit: FBI

At which store, or exactly when these particular fireworks were purchased, is not clear.  But since the bombing, law-enforcement and media reports have consistently referenced a $200 purchase made by Tamerlan at Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, New Hampshire two months before the bombing. Nothing about Dzhokhar buying fireworks was ever made public.

Most notably, that particular purchase would only constitute a small fraction of the amount of explosive powder needed to produce all the bombs the Tsarnaevs are accused of making and detonating.

According to the owner of Phantom Fireworks, the brothers would have been able to harvest, at most, 1.5 pounds of explosive powder from the $200 purchase.

On the other hand, each pressure cooker bomb that exploded on Boylston Street probably contained anywhere from 8 to 16 pounds of explosive powder, according to testimony from Special Agent Edward Knapp.

The pressure cooker that exploded in Watertown probably contained another 4 to 8 pounds. And in Watertown, three more pounds of powder were found in a Tupperware container, along with a number of pipe bombs each containing yet more powder. That means the Tsarnaevs would have had to collect between 23 and 43 pounds of explosive powder — or more.

Either they made numerous purchases of fireworks or they got explosive powder from another source.

At the very least, Tsarnaev’s statement that they got the explosive powder from $200 worth of fireworks shows his ignorance regarding what it actually took to make them. Either that or he did discuss the provenance of the rest of the explosive powder with his interrogators — was that information in a redacted part?

Why does the FBI continue to withhold information on where the explosives came from?

All of this reveals either a marked level of ignorance or confusion by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev about details of the bombs’ construction — even the color of the backpack. Or, it reveals that the government is still withholding key details about how the bombs came to be. Why is anyone’s guess.

But why do any of these small details matter? Because, as we all know, the devil can be found in the details. And the outcome of a life-and-death prosecution can sometimes hinge almost entirely on such seemingly small details.

Painting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the planning, preparation and execution of the violence that erupted in Boston was critical to the government’s goal of winning the death penalty against the sole surviving brother.

But when close scrutiny has been applied to the government’s case, we continually find troubling inconsistencies that hint at a prosecution hell-bent on winning the case — damn the specifics of who did exactly what and when.

Why Details Matter: See for Yourself with One Click

For instance: in our past reporting we showed how the government claimed Tamerlan drove as Dzhokhar was sitting menacingly behind Dun Meng, the carjacking victim, as they circled around greater Boston in Meng’s stolen Mercedes SUV. But when we see the Mercedes pull up to the gas pump where Meng ultimately gets away, Dzhokhar appears to get out of the front seat — not the back.

As we reported previously:

Officially, by the time the Mercedes SUV can be seen pulling into the Shell station on the video in question, Tamerlan was driving, Danny was in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar was sitting in the backseat.

In the video, we see the SUV pull up to one of the gas pumps and stop. Strangely, we see Dzhokhar emerge from behind the gas pump, obscuring the front passenger door before he makes his way into the store.

Strange because we were told he was sitting in the backseat. Yet we don’t see Dzhokhar get out of the rear door. Neither do we see him walk from the other side of the SUV.

Did they edit that out? Why?

Was the “escape” story embellished? After all, what cold-blooded criminals would allow a carjacking victim to sit in the back seat to make an easy escape? Or did they let him go? In fact, the carjacking victim’s account changed significantly early on until it finally solidified into what sounded most damning.

Other Little “Details”

And the government’s glossing over of its pre-bombing relationship with the Tsarnaevs, who hail from a geopolitical hotspot on Russia’s southern flank, strongly hints that Tamerlan in particular may have been a pawn in some tangled international intrigue with Russia.

We still don’t know why the family was granted asylum and yet freely returned to the Caucasus region — a reality that has experts scratching their heads.

Instead, what we witnessed was a theatrical effort on the part of the government to portray Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a cartoonish fanatical monster — the enemy of you and me and our way of life. Whipped up into a vengeful frenzy, the public is far less likely to ask questions.

Notably, the caricature of Dzhokhar as a crazed Jihadi fell apart under a mild cross-examination of his twitter feed. The government’s examples of Islamic religious fanaticism turned out to be run-of-the-mill song lyrics that any 19-year-old would be familiar with.

The no-holds-barred prosecution of Tsarnaev looked more like an effort to disguise the backstory of how and why this happened, than an effort to find the truth.

For an intriguing, sinister, and even likely explanation for what that backstory was really about — please go here.

In the newly released transcript of Sirhan Sirhan’s parole hearing on February 10, we discover why— at nearly 72 years of age — the convicted murderer of Bobby Kennedy “continues to pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society or a threat to public safety and is therefore not suitable for parole.”

Since its landmark opinion in the Lawrence case in 2008, the California Supreme Court has required the parole board to provide “some evidence” that a prisoner is “currently dangerous” when denying parole. This, and pressure to reduce prison overcrowding, has seen parole grant rates for “lifers” jump from 8 percent in 2008 to 33 percent in 2014.

A Stanford Law School study in 2011 found that, of 860 murderers paroled in California since 1995, only five reoffended and none were convicted of another murder.

But, as we’ll see, the tortured logic used by one of the commissioners to compute Sirhan’s current threat level gives him little hope of freedom anytime soon.

As described in my previous piece, the hearing was hotly contested. On one side, David Dahle, representing the L.A. County District Attorney’s office, called Sirhan a “terrorist.” On the other, Sirhan’s attorney William Pepper and shooting victim Paul Schrade called him “a political prisoner” and condemned his inhumane treatment.

In his victim impact statement, Schrade criticized Dahle for his “venomous” attack on Sirhan, saying the assassination was a political crime but it’s “also a political crime keeping him in prison.”

Pepper and Schrade were both close to Bobby Kennedy and invoked his name in calling for Sirhan’s release. Pepper, who was Citizens’ Chairman for Kennedy’s Senate run in 1964, said:

If Bob Kennedy were alive and were viewing [the available evidence, he] would urge this Panel to finally grant this man parole.

Schrade apologized to Sirhan for not coming to earlier hearings and presenting evidence “that shows that Sirhan couldn’t and didn’t shoot Robert Kennedy.”

The parole panel normally bars any attempt to “retry” the case but Schrade’s victim rights gave him carte blanche to put the key evidence of a second gun on the record — arguing that the witness testimony, the autopsy report and the only audio recording of the shooting prove an unidentified second shooter killed Kennedy.

Panel members acknowledged that the evidence submitted did raise “provocative questions regarding what exactly transpired” on the night of the shooting, but said they are bound to accept the facts of Sirhan’s conviction.

Sirhan Sirhan Photo credit: California State Archives

Sirhan has always said he cannot remember the shooting, and his attorneys claim he was in a hypnotic trance at the time. While Schrade stopped short of saying Sirhan was hypnotized, he does believe Sirhan didn’t know what he was doing and should not be held fully accountable for shooting him and other bystanders, or attempting to shoot Robert Kennedy:

I believe you should grant Sirhan Sirhan parole…in the name of Robert F. Kennedy and in the name of justice…I wanted you to know from me, Sirhan, that I forgive you for shooting me [and] that you did not shoot Robert Kennedy. And you’re being mistreated so long. And I should have been here long ago. And that’s why I feel guilty of not being here to help you and to help me understand what happened.

Sirhan Sirhan June 5, 1968  Photo credit: California State Archives

While Schrade found the proceeding “very abusive,” Sirhan was surprised and thankful that he was treated more respectfully than at his last parole hearing five years ago, when he felt he was “abused” by the commissioners. According to his attorney, he was physically sick after the experience.

This time, the panelists commended Sirhan for being “very cooperative and very restrained.” They also praised his clean disciplinary record and history of positive work evaluations in prison jobs including clerk, yard crew, tram worker, part cleaner, tailor, laundry worker, porter and cook.

Discredited Testimony Resurrected

When it came to recalling the crime itself, Sirhan seemed a little weary of repeating himself, 47 years after the event. He has always claimed he cannot remember the shooting and when the panel resurrected long-discredited claims from convicted burglar Carmen Falzone and trash collector Alvin Clark, Sirhan denied ever telling anybody he had deliberately shot Robert Kennedy.

Falzone had sold a story to Playboy in 1977 in which he claimed Sirhan confessed his guilt about the Kennedy murder and conspired with him to smuggle plutonium to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This unlikely plot was used as evidence by the state in its successful attempt to rescind Sirhan’s parole date in 1982.

Hopeless Catch 22 Situation

When the panel asked Sirhan why he pleaded guilty at trial, Sirhan repeatedly answered that while he had no memory of the shooting, his trial attorneys had told him that he had been the gunman.

“So what do you take responsibility for, sir?” asked Commissioner Brian Roberts.

“Whatever I’m guilty of in this case…[but] not murder”, replied Sirhan, adding it was for prosecutors to determine what he was guilty of:

“If you don’t believe you’re responsible for shooting somebody…tell me what you think you’re responsible for?”

“It’s a good question. Legally speaking, I’m not guilty of anything…I’m responsible for being there…”

“Anything else that you’re responsible for other than being there?”

“Knowing what I know now about the case, no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That I did not commit the crime.”

Sirhan said he had remorse “as far as I am criminally responsible” but seemed to imply that, as he was in a dissociated state at the time, he wasn’t criminally responsible for anything. He later clarified that statement:

I would say that I’m not guilty of murder…I feel that if I had a proper defense at the time that the results would have been quite different than what happened. My trial attorney did not conduct a crime scene investigation. He never really examined any of the witnesses. He conceded everything before even examining the bullets…there was hardly anything that he did other than concede my guilt. And he said that numerous times. And he convinced me of it. He made me guilty without even knowing that I am guilty.

Sirhan expressed “extreme remorse” for the death of Robert Kennedy and “for his family’s loss and for the country’s loss.” In the past, before he knew of evidence exonerating him, he “did take full responsibility” for the murder even though he couldn’t remember the crime:

I thought I was guilty, you know, and it bothered me. And it still bothers me now because I’m still a part of this scene, of this situation. But I don’t really know how to prove [my remorse] to you. It’s too abstract. It’s an internal thing…How do you manifest the illustration of it?…If you want a confession, I can’t make it now.

Sirhan Sirhan with his attorney William Pepper at the 2011 hearing
Photo credit: e2filmsrevolution / YouTube

Sirhan’s attorney William Pepper tried to make sense of the fragmented testimony by summing up his client’s dilemma:

The problem that he faces is, he legitimately does not recall what happened. And if he doesn’t recall what happened, he cannot say that he was accountable and legally responsible and therefore he is remorseful. He’s remorseful about what happened to Robert Kennedy.

Pepper quoted Dr. Daniel Brown’s report, which notes Sirhan was in a dissociated state “at the time of the assassination, [so] it should not be assumed at the parole hearing that he should manifest either knowledge or remorse for, or a clear memory for, an event wherein his behavior was likely compulsively induced involuntarily and for which he still has little memory.”

If paroled, Sirhan said he just wanted to “live out my life peacefully and in harmony with my fellow man…[and] I daresay, with respect, that you guys are the obstacle to [those] aspirations.”

Asked for a final comment, Sirhan said: “I think I’m way overdue for parole.” And his closing statement at the end of the hearing was brief and to the point: “Please let me go home. Thank you.”

“However…”

In its decision, the panel acknowledged there were positive factors showing Sirhan’s suitability for parole. He had no criminal record prior to the murder of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and has broken no serious prison rules since 1972.

Sirhan’s age “reduces the probability of recidivism” and he had “made realistic plans for release” and “developed marketable skills” to gain employment and support himself. There is an immigration hold on Sirhan, so, if paroled, he would probably be deported to Jordan, where he has family and is a citizen.

However, the panel continued:

Those positives are far outweighed by other circumstances that tend to show unsuitability for parole and suggest that if released that you would pose a potential threat to public safety.

Chief among these were the “particularly heinous and atrocious and offensive manner” of the murder and the “magnitude of the crime”:

The Supreme Court has ruled that after a long period of time, immutable factors often are no longer relevant. However in your case we believe that the crime committed in this offense is one of a very few and falls into the category that remain relevant today…It was a political assassination on a very viable presidential candidate. It was an attack upon the Democratic system that we reside in and it actually clearly affected the potential of this nation and it remains relevant today.

But, as In re Lawrence notes, “evidence of the inmate’s rehabilitation and suitability for parole” can override “the gravity of the commitment offense” by “indicating the conduct is unlikely to recur.” So Sirhan’s suitability for parole really hinges on his insight into why he committed the crime and here, the panel found him lacking:

Insight is specifically critical in cases such as this where an individual has no prior propensity towards violence…It is critical to have a significant understanding as to why he would resort to violence in this case. While anger appears to be at the core of it, [Sirhan] has yet to make the necessary connections between his anger and his violence… Absent sufficient insight, he cannot develop the necessary or requisite coping mechanisms or skillsets that would assist him in abating this very specific mindset [in the future].

As noted in my preview of the hearing, this presents a number of Catch 22 scenarios for Sirhan: How can you show remorse and insight into the crime when you can’t remember what happened? And how can you accept full responsibility for the crime when you’re still contesting the case — and the courts refuse to hear new exculpatory evidence that supersedes the state’s version of events?

The panel did not find Sirhan’s “claim of memory loss to be credible, given his other testimony, his other recall and the testimony of others”:

We feel that you failed to [show] adequate signs of remorse and to accept full responsibility for your criminal actions. Perhaps you did better at the last hearing. I read in the last hearing you at least accepted responsibility for the shooting of the other victims. And today you didn’t even do that. Today you indicated you were not responsible for anything. And we know those who don’t take full responsibility for their criminal acts and those who do not show adequate signs of remorse, these people are likely to recidivate. And that makes you a current danger to the public safety.

Doctors: Low Risk for Future Violence

The panel considered psychological evaluations from Dr. Daniel Brown and Dr. Nameeta Sahni, who spoke with Sirhan for three to four hours last October.

Dr. Sahni concluded Sirhan did not meet the diagnostic criteria for substance abuse or personality disorder and that his impulsivity had declined with age. And like Dr. Carrera in 2010 and Dr. Brown, she concluded Sirhan had a low risk for future violence.

She felt the most relevant clinical risk was “in the area of a lack of insight and understanding of his crime”:

While he raises points that are the basis for legal appeals and arguments and may be compelling to the court, his perspective also lacks a willingness to take responsibility for any aspect of the crime. He fails to address why he was in possession of a gun at the time of his life crime, why he fired his weapon regardless of his belief that bullets fired from his weapon were not those that killed the victim or why he would have initially entered pleas of guilty when he was arrested if he did not commit the crime.

When asked about these inconsistencies he remained cooperative and willing to discuss the issues but ultimately never presented a reasonable alternative explanation. Known circumstances that would point to his guilt or some culpability for the crime were met with answers from the inmate of, ‘I don’t know.’ He continued to offer a dual perspective on the crime and that encapsulates both guilt and innocence reflecting that he has not truly explored the issue on an emotional level but continues to focus on an intellectual understanding of the crime and his legal pursuits.

However, to his credit he has repeatedly talked about the loss of human life and the impact of the victim’s death on his own family, and on the extended Kennedy family given the loss of the victim’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, several years prior due to an assassination, as well as how the country at large experienced the death of the victim in the controlling offense.

As William Pepper noted at the hearing, this analysis does not factor in Sirhan’s dissociated state at the time of the shooting and his subsequent amnesia for the crime, so extensively explored by Dr. Brown.

While the panel noted that Dr. Sahni’s report “does generally support release”, they gave the issues she raised about “lack of insight and only intellectualized remorse…a different weight than she does”:

It is the Board’s job to assess dangerousness. And in this case, despite Dr. Sahni’s risk assessment, the Panel does not find significant evidence of positive rehabilitation that convinces us that if released Mr. Sirhan would not pose a potential threat to public safety.

Panel’s Lack of Insight

Deputy Commissioner Keith Stanton, a 20-year veteran of lifer hearings, then explained his reasons for voting against Sirhan’s release. He commended Sirhan for remaining disciplinary-free and for “a pretty good work record” and admitted “there’s a lot of controversy regarding evidentiary matters in this [case]”:

But there are a lot of undisputed facts. And that’s where my issues lie for the most part…and that’s what bothered me…in terms of risk to the community if you’re released. And so I looked at the documents that you presented and I thought, well, okay, even if I were to accept that you were not guilty of the murder of Robert Kennedy, there are a couple things that are undisputed.

First of all you were present and you had a gun. According to the witnesses you pulled out the gun and you aimed it at Mr. Kennedy and you shot it multiple times. And you injured multiple people. So at a minimum there was at least an attempt to kill him.

Stanton considered the “question of whether you knew what you were doing, the memory issue and whether you were under coercion or maybe if there was a conspiracy or maybe there was hypnosis involved” and had this exchange with Sirhan during the hearing:

“So you lost your memory sometime probably after having the Tom Collins and then your memory came back at the time that you were being held down and choked. Why do you think your memory came back at that particular moment?”

“Well, I needed to breathe. They almost killed me that night.”

“And was your memory pretty detailed after that from that time on?”

“It’s all vague now. I’m sure you have it all in your record. I mean I can’t deny it or confirm it, you know. But I just wish this whole thing had never taken place.”

Stanton seemed unaware of clear evidence in the record that Sirhan was in a dissociated state in the hours after the shooting. Audiotapes of Sirhan’s first hours in custody clearly establish this, as he asks police officers where he is and why he’s there.

Explaining his vote for denial, Stanton said he accepted “some memory loss possibly from the alcohol” but “there are too many things for me to accept that you would have been hypnotized.”

He was disturbed by the “inordinate amount of time” (six hours) Sirhan spent on a firing range on the day leading up to the shooting; that “the incident took place on the anniversary of the Arab and Israeli war” and that there was such a strong motive — Sirhan’s “deep-seated anger…over Mr. Kennedy’s promise to aid Israel with jets that could attack Palestine”:

You went to the pantry and asked if Kennedy was going to come through the pantry. You were there for, I believe, like a half an hour. The way that you shot, according to what I read, you made a gesture to shake his hand and then pulled out the gun and started shooting and you continued shooting. Your explanation to the doctors was ‘I don’t know why I did it.’

I just personally don’t believe that you were hypnotized. And if you were, I don’t believe it was by someone else. I know from your testimony…that you joined the Rosicrucians and you practiced a lot of self-hypnosis. So there was a lot of evidence that if you were hypnotized it was by yourself. I didn’t see anything that would indicate to me you were hypnotized by another party or someone else that had plans of assassinating Robert Kennedy.

So now I’m thinking, well, okay, if I don’t believe you were hypnotized or intoxicated then you had to know what you were doing…I understand there’s a lot of experts — but I’m not that convinced that you didn’t know or that you don’t remember, to be honest with you.

So if you weren’t hypnotized and if you knew what you were doing and you made an attempt to kill Senator Kennedy, how much different is it whether you’re the person who shot him or not? If you went there with the intent to kill him and you pulled out a gun and shot at him, I don’t really see the big difference in my mind as far as your dangerousness.

Commissioner Roberts pointed out this was carried out in an exceptionally cruel and callous manner. Because this was intended to be an execution that would…cause harm to millions. And you would have known that going in there. So to me, that’s evidence of exceptionally callous disregard for the suffering of countless people.

The overwhelming opinion of the psychologists who have worked most closely with Sirhan over the years is that he was in a hypnotic state at the time of the shooting and that his amnesia for the shooting is genuine. Sirhan consumed four Tom Collins cocktails and the prosecution could never prove he wasn’t intoxicated because LAPD failed to check his blood alcohol level. Stanton blithely dismissed all this.

The last three psychological reports on Sirhan agree he presents a low risk of violence, if paroled. Stanton dismissed those, too, going back 10 years to to a report by Dr. Kuberski, which “put it about as well as I could and maybe better”:

In estimating the risk for violent recidivism in the community, it’s important to recognize that the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy was a politically motivated assassination and terrorist act. Sirhan was interested in changing the course of history and avenging the honor of his people by murdering a man he considered a Hitler for Arabs…If involved in politics, [Sirhan would] be an enormously motivating presence for terror.

Stanton failed to mention that Sirhan had refused to speak to Dr. Kuberski, so the terrorist narrative in Kuberski’s report was entirely based on secondary sources and the prosecution’s reading of the case.

Stanton took it even further:

I’m not surprised at all you do well in prison. Why wouldn’t you? There’s no point in being violent here… it’s like someone who’s going after the head of a snake. Why nip at the body? It’s not going to have any effect…you don’t have a gun and a lot of guys out here are a lot bigger than you…So it’s no surprise to me at all that you do well in prison…I don’t perceive you as someone who’s just a violent person. My perception is someone who is on a mission however long it takes.

So while Stanton agrees Sirhan is low-risk within the structured setting of a prison, if released, he implies Sirhan may resume his life’s mission as a political assassin and go after another head of the snake. It’s frightening to think that this kind of logic has been determining prisoner’s fates for 20 years. He continues:

I don’t see an individual who’s changed or rehabilitated. I see someone who has sat in prison for a long time but is still basically saying I don’t remember, in fact, at this point I don’t even think I did it, I’m not legally responsible for anything. Those are your words not mine. And if that’s the case then you remain as dangerous as the day you came to prison.

I don’t believe that you didn’t know what you were doing at the time. And if you did know what you were doing and you still have the same present state of mind then you really haven’t changed. And to me, then you’d be just as dangerous as when you came to prison. And that’s the reason I didn’t vote for a date. So two reasons, the magnitude of the crime and your present attitude towards the crime, to me, indicate a current dangerousness.

Stanton’s stereotyping of Sirhan as a terrorist on a lifelong mission, dormant in jail but ready to reload at 72 years old if released from prison, betrays the very narrow view of Sirhan’s case taken by those who sit in judgement on him. His opinion is at odds with virtually all psychological reports ever written on Sirhan, most of which argue he has changed significantly and has been rehabilitated.

Dr. Sahni presented a measured account of the serious issues around Sirhan’s insight into the crime that must be weighed by the parole board but Stanton’s opinion showed that no matter how many psychologists recommend Sirhan for release, the parole commissioners or governor can always overrule. In their eyes, as long as he refuses to remember or confess, Sirhan today is the same devious assassin he was 47 years ago.

If Bob Kennedy were alive and were viewing [the available evidence, he] would urge this Panel to finally grant this man parole.

Sirhan’s five-year denial could have been as long as 15 years, but his age, good disciplinary record, family support and parole plans counted in his favor.

The panel recommended that he stay disciplinary-free and engage in self-help programs in anger management and alcohol use, as requested by the previous panel. The Stanford study found a strong correlation between grant rates and inmates participating in a “twelve-steps” program:

159 inmates were asked whether they could identify one or more of the 12 steps. Of the 56 inmates who failed to correctly answer the commissioners’ question, only one was paroled. By contrast, 37 of the 141 who correctly responded to commissioners’ queries received parole — a grant rate double that of inmates who were not asked about their treatment program.

Sirhan’s claim that he didn’t need anger management classes because he had learned to walk away in provocative situations, and his pledge to simply avoid alcohol in the future were not enough:

You were unable to identify skillsets and coping mechanisms…that you could or would use should you find yourself in similar circumstances such as anger and being in a place where alcohol is being used…And absent those skillsets and coping mechanisms we feel you are a current risk of danger to public safety because you are likely to react as you have in the past.

Sirhan can request an earlier hearing within three years if “there’s been a change of circumstance or new information that establishes a reasonable likelihood that you don’t require additional incarceration.”

Sirhan’s attorneys are now taking his case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. One month after the hearing, L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has still not responded to Paul Schrade’s request for a meeting and a new investigation into the case. Her office declined to comment for this piece.

Read the full transcript of Sirhan’s parole hearing here.

Shane O’Sullivan is an author, filmmaker and researcher at Kingston University, London. His work includes the documentary RFK Must Die (2007) and the book Who Killed Bobby? (2008). He blogs on the Sirhan case at http://www.sirhanbsirhan.com

A critical difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is their position on whether children who fled violence in Central American countries, particularly Honduras, two years ago should be allowed to stay in the United States or be returned.

Sanders states unequivocally that they should be able to remain in the U.S.

Clinton disagrees. She would guarantee them “due process,” but nothing more.

In 2014 Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “It may be safer [for the children to remain in the U.S.],” but “they should be sent back.”

By supporting the June 28, 2009, coup d’état in Honduras when she was secretary of state, Clinton helped create the dire conditions that caused many of these children to flee. And the assassination of legendary Honduranhuman rights leader Berta Cáceresearlier this month can be traced indirectly to Clinton’s policies.

Hillary Clinton speaking during a campaign event at Hillside High School in Durham, N.C., last week. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)

During the Feb. 11 Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Clinton said that sending the children back would “send a message.” In answer to a question by debate moderator Judy Woodruff of PBS, she said,

“Those children needed to be processed appropriately, but we also had to send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.”

Sanders retorted, “Who are you sending a message to? These are children who are leaving countries and neighborhoods where their lives are at stake. That was the fact. I don’t think we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do the best we can to help them get their lives together.”

In the March 9 debate in Miami between the two Democratic candidates, Sanders accurately told moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision, “Honduras and that region of the world may be the most violent region in our hemisphere. Gang lords, vicious people torturing people, doing horrible things to families.” He added, “Children fled that part of the world to try, try, try, try, maybe, to meet up with their family members in this country, taking a route that was horrific, trying to start a new life.”

The violence in Honduras can be traced to a history of U.S. economic and political meddling, including Clinton’s support of the coup, according to American University professor Adrienne Pine, author of “Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras.”

Pine, who has worked for many years in Honduras, told Dennis Bernstein of KPFA radio in 2014 that the military forces that carried out the coup were trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly called the U.S. Army School of the Americas) in Fort Benning, Ga. Although the coup was supported by the United States, it was opposed by the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS). The U.N. and the OAS labeled President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster a military coup.

“Hillary Clinton was probably the most important actor in supporting the coup [against the democratically elected Zelaya] in Honduras,” Pine noted. It took the United States two months to even admit that Honduras had suffered a coup, and it never did admit it was a military coup. That is, most likely, because the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits the U.S. from aiding a country “whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”

Although the U.S. government eventually cut nonhumanitarian aid to Honduras, the State Department under Clinton took pains to clarify that this was not an admission that a military coup had occurred.

“Hillary Clinton played a huge role in propping up the coup administration,” Pine said. “The State Department ensured the coup administration would remain in place through negotiations that they imposed, against the OAS’ wish, and through continuing to provide aid and continuing to recognize the coup administration.”

“And so if it weren’t for Hillary Clinton,” Pine added, “basically there wouldn’t be this refugee crisis from Honduras at the level that it is today. And Hondurans would be living a very different reality from the tragic one they are living right now.”

In her book “Hard Choices,” Clinton admitted she helped ensure that Zelaya would not be returned to the presidency. She wrote,

“In the subsequent days [following the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”

American presstitutes, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, expressed surprise at Russia’s support for the Syrian ceasefire, which Russia has been seeking, by Putin’s halt to attacks on the Islamic State and a partial withdrawal of Russian forces.  The American presstitutes are captives of their own propaganda and are now surprised at the failure of their propagandistic predictions.  

Having stripped the Islamic State of offensive capability and liberated Syria from the Washington-supported terrorists, Putin has now shifted to diplomacy.  If peace fails in Syria, the failure cannot be blamed on Russia.  

It is a big risk for Putin to trust the neocon-infested US government, but if ISIS renews the conflict with support from Washington, Putin’s retention of air and naval bases in Syria will allow Russia to resume military operations.  Astute observers such as Professor Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research, Stephen Cohen, and The Saker have noted that the Russian withdrawal is really a time-out during which Putin’s diplomacy takes the place of Russian military capability.

With ISIS beat down, there is less danger of Washington using a peace-seeking ceasefire to resurrect the Islamic State’s military capability.  Therefore, the risk Putin is taking by trusting Washington is worth the payoff if the result is to enhance Russian diplomacy and elevate it above Washington’s reliance on threats, coercion, and violence.  What Putin is really aiming for is to make Europeans realize that by serving as Washington’s vassals European governments are supporting violence over peace and may themselves be swept by the neoconservatives into a deadly conflict with Russia that would ensure Europe’s destruction.

Putin has also demonstrated that, unlike Washington, Russia is able to achieve decisive military results in a short time without Russian casualties and to withdraw without becoming a permanent occupying force.

This very impressive performance is causing the world to rethink which country is really the superpower.

The appearance of American decline is reinforced by the absence of capable leaders among the candidates for the Republican and Democratic party nominations for president.  America is no longer capable of producing political leadership as successive presidents become progressively worse.  The rest of the world must be puzzled how a country unable to produce a fit candidate for president can be a superpower.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

This past week, the Pew Research Centre released the results of a massive poll of Israeli public opinion — focusing on their attitude towards religion, identity, values and political issues facing their country.

In the days that followed the release, a number of articles appeared in Israel and the US commenting on the study’s findings.

The strangest and most troubling of them was the piece titled “Deep Rifts Among Israeli Jews Are Found in Religion Survey”, printed in the New York Times on March 8, 2016.

Written by Isabel Kershner, the article was a transparent effort to combine straight reporting with tortured apologia.

Kershner began the piece with a simple recitation of a few of the poll’s findings: “A majority of Israeli Jews marry within their own religious or secular groups” and the different sub-groups “largely separate social worlds” and have “starkly contrasting positions on many public policy issues”, like whether West Bank settlements contribute to Israel’s security.

Kershner’s straightforward reporting ended, however, when she came to one of the poll’s more disturbing findings: “nearly half of Israeli Jews said that Arabs should be expelled of transferred from Israel”.

Unable to allow that result to stand on its own, in the same sentence, Kershner added “although Israeli pollsters found the wording of the question problematic”.

The addition of that phrase was a classic example of deflection — a device often used in New York Times’ articles to sow doubt or confusion among readers so as to soften the blow of facts that are damaging to Israel.

Here’s how it works: first the “fact” is stated; then it is quickly followed (usually in the same sentence) by an unsubstantiated remark that questions the “fact”.

The reader is then left confused.

Kershner did not get around to explaining exactly what was “problematic” about the wording of the poll question until she meandered for several paragraphs discussing other results from the poll.

Then she returned to the “transfer” issue, devoting the last full one-quarter of her piece to quotes from Israeli pollsters telling us that “the phrasing of the question is very blunt” or that it is possible that Israeli Jewish respondents may have understood the question to imply that Arabs would “voluntarily” leave or be compensated for leaving [as if that would somehow make it better!].

Kershner quoted another pollster who agonised over the transfer question, saying: “I would feel uncomfortable incriminating the Israeli public based on one question,” adding her fear that this “one question” would “be used as a weapon’ by Israel’s critics”.

Actually, the question was quite clear. And it was not the only question in the poll in which Israelis displayed troubling views.

And, while I might quibble with the term “weapon”, it would be irresponsible not to raise serious questions about what this poll reveals about racism in Israel.

First, let’s look at the “problematic” question and ask whether it was too vague, too blunt or too unclear.

Here is what Israelis were asked: do you agree or disagree with this statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel?”

In response to this direct question, 48 per cent of Israeli Jews agreed, while 46 per cent disagreed.

Among Israelis who are religious and those who received a Jewish education, two-thirds agreed with the idea that Arabs should be expelled or transferred.

This is not the only disturbing finding in this poll.

Israeli Jews were also asked if they agreed with the statement “Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel”; 79 per cent agreed — including well over 95 per cent of those who are religious and those who received a Jewish education.

The bottom line is that Israel’s political culture has become increasingly intolerant.

With eight in ten Israeli Jews supporting preferential treatment for themselves at the expense of the 20 per cent of the population that is Arab, and with almost one-half of Israeli Jews calling for Arab citizens to be expelled or transferred, one can only conclude that this is a society and a political culture that is in trouble.

This dangerous reality needs to be confronted honestly and directly. Whitewashing the situation only allows the danger to grow.

The Times has done Israelis, Palestinians and its readers a disservice.

Bread for All, Anywaa Survival Organisation, Inclusive Development International, Oakland Institute, GRAIN

One year after their arrest on March 15, 2015, three food, land, and human rights defenders continue to languish in an Ethiopian jail. After several court hearings, the prosecution has yet to present any evidence to support the spurious charge of “terrorism” under Ethiopia’s controversial counterterrorism law. A March 1 hearing was once again adjourned and rescheduled for March 15, due to the failure of witnesses to appear in court.

On March 15, 2015, Omot Agwa Okwoy, Ashinie Astin, and Jamal Oumar Hojele were arrested on their way to a food security workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. The event was organized by the NGO Bread for All, with support from GRAIN and Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO). The three food, land and human rights defenders were detained for nearly six months without charge and denied access to legal representation. On September 7, 2015, they were charged under Ethiopia’s draconian counterterrorism law.

According to Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, Ethiopia’s counterterrorism law is a tool used to silence its critics: “It criminalizes basic human rights, like the freedom of speech and assembly; its definition of ‘terrorist act,’ does not conform with international standards and defines terrorism in an extremely broad and vague way, providing the ruling party with an iron fist to punish words and acts that would be legal in a democracy.”¹

Over the past few years, Ethiopian government repression against journalists, bloggers, activists, political opposition members, students, and indigenous people has reached crisis proportions. The government has leased millions of hectares of land nationwide to international and national investors—much of it in indigenous areas such as Gambella and the Lower Omo Valley, which many have termed a massive “land grab.” A 2013 complaint to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel documented widespread human rights abuses and forced displacement as part of the country’s “villagization” program and large-scale industrial agriculture projects in Gambella.² Under these conditions, it is clear that Ethiopia’s rapid economic growth has come at the cost of increasing repression and the erosion of democratic freedoms. While the Ethiopian economy is praised by some as “Africa’s lion,” its new wealth has not benefitted the majority.³And those such as Omot, Ashinie, and Jamal, who dare to criticize the development model that has been supported by foreign governments and international financial institutions are silenced and criminalized.

From March 14 to 18 the World Bank is holding its annual conference on “Land and Poverty: Scaling up Responsible Land Governance.” The World Bank has yet to take responsibility and actively engage in the protection of people affected by World Bank- funded projects as well as the groups and individuals working the protect the food, land and human rights of their communities, such as Omot, Ashinie, and Jamal.

We demand that the Ethiopian government drop all charges against the detainees and ensure their immediate release and safety. We urge the governments of the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, EU, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank—all of which financially support the government of Ethiopia—to speak out against the Ethiopian government’s jailing of human rights defenders, including Omot Agwa Okwoy, Ashinie Astin, and Jamal Oumar Hojele. Defending human rights and protecting the environment is not a crime!

Free Omot, Jamal, Ashinie and all political prisoners in Ethiopia! #FreeOmot

Media contacts:

Nyikaw Ochalla, Anywaa Survival Organisation, UK (English, Amharic)
Tel: +44-79-39389796 | Email: [email protected]

Devlin Kuyek, GRAIN, Canada (English, French)
Tel: +1-514-571-7702 | Email: [email protected]

Anuradha Mittal, Oakland Institute, US (English)
Tel: +1-510-469-5228 | Email: [email protected]

David Pred, Inclusive Development International, Cambodia (English)
Tel: 1-917-280-2705 | Email: [email protected]

Tina Goethe, Bread for All, Switzerland (English, German, French)
Tel: +41-76-516 5957 | Email: [email protected]

Notes

¹ Anuradha Mittal, “Time to Repeal Anti-Terrorism Law in Ethiopia,” Oakland Institute, January 26, 2016, http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/time-repeal-anti-terrorism-law

² Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2015: Ethiopia” https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/ethiopia

³ David Smith, “Ethiopia hailed as ‘African lion’ with fastest creation of millionaires” The Guardian, December 4, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/ethiopia-faster-rate-millionaires-michael-buerk

Very few US official figures are known for their sense of irony, least of all the Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, and it is unfortunate that he and others lacking appreciation of unintentional absurdity would be unable to find dark amusement in the contrast between two recent parallel events.

On February 25 the Defence Secretary and his uniformed glove puppet, Air Force General Breedlove, appeared in front of the House Appropriations Committee to provide justification for spending as much on military affairs as the next eight nations in the world. It is likely he chose Breedlove to accompany him rather than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking Pentagon officer, because Breedlove is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe – the man responsible for carrying out the policy of confrontation with Russia.

Carter is the man who declared last year that

«the US military has helped to maintain peace and stability in [Asia] for 70 years», having had a slight lapse of memory about the US war in Vietnam from 1955 to 1973 in which 58,220 members of its military forces lost their lives while hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam and its unfortunate neighbours died in merciless US bombing onslaughts. Countless thousands of children were sentenced to infirmity and grotesque deformity by Washington’s use of hideous poisons intended to destroy trees other vegetation.

As for the glove puppet, Germany’s Der Spiegel recorded a year ago that

«General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington [and said] that Putin had once again ‘upped the ante’ in eastern Ukraine – with ‘well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery’ having been sent to Donbass. ‘What is clear,’ Breedlove said, ‘is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.’ German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander…»

This was not surprising – because there was not a word of truth in any of his wild assertions.

At the very time Carter and Breedlove were speaking to the ever-receptive «support our troops» Congressional Committee («under your leadership, the men and women who serve in the US military answer the call time and again to leave their loved ones, put themselves in harm’s way, and execute challenging missions abroad») the count-down to test-firing a US Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was under way.

The defence secretary told the American public that «It’s a competitive world out there. We compete with China, we compete with Russia, we compete with terrorists. And we have to win». 

Minuteman missiles have nuclear warheads and are manufactured by the Boeing Company which is proud that

«the Minuteman program established Boeing as a leader in large-scale system integration. Today, the combined heritage of the Minuteman programs of Boeing and Autonetics continues as Boeing Strategic Missile Systems (SMS), supporting the Air Force with system evaluation, testing, training and modernization».

The US arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons includes 450 Boeing ICBMs, each having an explosive power of 475 kilotons (Kt). The US bombs that totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 Kt.

On February 25 Boeing’s shares opened at 116.35 and went to a high of 117.60. Next day they reached 119.45. In early March they had increased to 123.49. It seems they’re taking off with comparable velocity to their Minuteman missiles, boosted by statements on the part of the military and their legions of supportive politicians that China and Russia are threatening the United States.

Washington fails to realise – simply refuses to understand – that the only thing wanted by Russia and China is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of other nations’ affairs that do not concern it. Secretary Carter states that militarily «We compete with China, we compete with Russia» – but Russia and China don’t want to compete with the United States. They just want to progress and develop economically and socially and stay in their own backyards, with secure borders, while trading with as many countries as possible.

Neither Russia nor China has 700 military bases in over 40 countries round the world. Neither Russia not China attempts to vastly expand military alliances specifically designed to threaten the United States. Neither Russia nor China possess nuclear-armed Carrier Strike Groups or Amphibious Ready Groups of the type and strength that the US deploys threateningly around the coasts of sovereign nations who prefer to mind their own business.

The latest US move to threaten China is deployment to the South China Sea of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. They and their many escort vessels arrived off China on 4 March to join the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and its fleet of ancillary ships.

In another wonderfully ironic episode, just as this mighty US attack fleet was arriving to menace China, Defence Secretary Carter announced to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that «China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea». Mystically, he observed that 

«Specific actions will have specific consequences» and when asked what these might be, he «told reporters the US military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were affected by China’s actions».

With good historical justification, China maintains that most of the islet chains and groups in the South China Sea are its sovereign territory, although some areas are claimed by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The United States has got nothing to do with these disputes. Washington has no treaties with any of these nations that would require military intervention in the event of one of them having a disagreement with another country.

The United States has no territory of its own closer than the Pacific island of Guam, where, according to the US Congressional Research Service,

 «Since 2000, the US military has been building up forward-deployed forces… to increase US operational presence, deterrence, and power projection». In other words, the US build-up is intended to confront China, which is now, understandably, being forced to increase its own military forces to be prepared for what might happen as a result of US «power projection».

Complementing the US muscle-flexing in the South China Sea, the indefatigable Breedlove explained why Washington is indulging in similar antics in Europe. Ignoring the fact that the insurgency against Syria’s government was energetically supported by the US, in training and equipping what it absurdly called «moderate rebel forces», thus contributing to massive destruction and creating a dire refugee problem, Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the refugee crisis in Europe is all the fault of Russia. «Together», he declared, «Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration… to break European resolve».

In a fit of fantasy Breedlove announced that Russia has «chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat» to the United States and its allies, and emphasised that the Supreme Allied Command Europe, «is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary».

The US is deliberately and most aggressively threatening China and Russia. Its military representatives are making belligerent statements that are intended to implant fear in Moscow and Beijing.

But the immature bluster and bravado of such as Breedlove and Carter do not create fear in those they seek to intimidate. They create determination in such countries – the resolve to stand up to the menace presented by the incessant deployment of military force against them.

This is exactly what is happening at the moment, and the US may be in for some nasty surprises.

Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered on Mar.14 the partial withdrawal of the Russian military from Syria, starting from March 15.

The Russian support has given the Syrian government has reversed the militants’ momentum. Now, the pro-government forces have the advantage. Nonetheless, militants haven’t been defeated.

They are still able to counter-attack and repeal the government troops advance’s using a mobile defense. Considering this, a significant drawdown of Russian forces could weaken the Syrian government’s efforts on the ground.

However, it is important to remember that the Russian military facilities and limited military contingent including an advisory mission are staying in Syria. Supplies of arms and military equipment have been continuing. Moreover, Iranian support for the Syrian government and Hezbollah involvement in the conflict can’t also be ignored.

With its actions in Syria, Russia has demonstrated its improved military capabilities and some new weapons which will contribute to arms sales, for sure. Russia has also achieved its goal of weakening ISIS including an impulse which the Russian invasion has gave to the U.S.-led coalition and the Kurdish units. Washington hasn’t been able to continue a low intensity campaign or ignore ISIS targets amid the Kremlin actions. Even if ISIS isn’t entirely defeated, the terrorists in Syria and Iraq are much weaker than they were five months ago, the main sources of their funding are publicly revealed and damaged. The stability of the allied Syrian government has also been ensured with pinpoint efforts.

According to the information received by SouthFront from a source close to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia in international relations is continuing to show a fundamentally different approach than the US and the West.

The decision on the partial withdrawal of its military from Syria is a move that clearly shows the commitment of the Russian leadership to the sequence of actions aimed at a comprehensive settlement of the crisis by peaceful means.

Russia is not looking for an opportunity to gain a colonial resource-rich territory or create puppet regimes, but only provides the necessary and sufficient assistance in the fight against terrorism and extremism seeking to avoid escalation of the conflict and to minimize civilian casualties.

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With foresight and analysis, this incisive article written more than three years ago in January 2013  provides an understanding of unfolding events in Syria.

Since the kindling of the conflict inside Syria in 2011, it was recognized, by friend and foe alike, that the events in that country were tied to a game plan that ultimately targets Iran, Syria’s number one ally. [1] De-linking Syria from Iran and unhinging the Resistance Bloc that Damascus and Tehran have formed has been one of the objectives of the foreign-supported anti-government militias inside Syria. Such a schism between Damascus and Tehran would change the Middle East’s strategic balance in favour of the US and Israel.

If  this cannot be accomplished, however, then crippling Syria to effectively prevent it from providing Iran any form of diplomatic, political, economic, and military support in the face of common threats has been a primary objective. Preventing any continued cooperation between the two republics has been a strategic goal. This includes preventing the Iran-Iraq-Syria energy terminal from being built and ending the military pact between the two partners.

All Options are Aimed at Neutralizing Syria

Regime change in Damascus is not the only or main way for the US and its allies to prevent Syria from standing with Iran. Destabilizing Syria and neutralizing it as a failed and divided state is the key. Sectarian fighting is not a haphazard outcome of the instability in Syria, but an assisted project that the US and its allies have steadily fomented with a clear intent to balkanize the Syrian Arab Republic. Regionally, Israel above all other states has a major stake in securing this outcome. The Israelis actually have several publicly available documents, including the Yinon Plan, which outline that the destruction of Syria into a series of smaller sectarian states is one of their strategic objectives. So do American military planners.

Like Iraq next door, Syria does not need to be formally divided. For all intents and purposes, the country can be divided like Lebanon was alongside various fiefdoms and stretches of territory controlled by different groups during the Lebanese Civil War. The goal is to disqualify Syria as an external player.

Since 2006 and the Israeli defeat in Lebanon in that year there was renewed focus on the strategic alliance between Iran and Syria. Both countries have been very resilient in the face of US designs in their region. Together both have been key players for influencing events in the Middle East, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Their strategic alliance has undoubtedly played an important role in shaping the geo-political landscape in the Middle East. Although critics of Damascus say it has done very little in regard to substantial action against the Israelis, the Syrians have been the partners within this alliance that have carried the greatest weight in regards to facing Israel; it has been through Syria that Hezbollah and the Palestinians have been provided havens, logistics, and their initial strategic depth against Israel.

From the beginning the foreign-supported external opposition leaders made their foreign policy clear, which can strongly be argued was a reflection of the interests they served. The anti-government forces and their leaders even declared that they will realign Syria against Iran; in doing so they used sectarian language about returning to their “natural orbit with the Sunni Arabs.” This is a move that is clearly in favour of the US and Israel alike. Breaking the axis between Damascus and Tehran has also been a major goal of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Arab petro-sheikhdoms since the 1980s as part of a design to isolate Iran during the Iraq-Iran War. [2] Moreover, the sectarian language being used is part of a construct; it is not a reflection of reality, but a reflection of Orientalist conjecture and desires that falsely stipulate that Muslims who perceive themselves as being Shia or Sunni are inherently at odds with one another as enemies.

Among the prostrating Syrian opposition leaders who would execute the strategic goals of the US has been Burhan Ghalioun, the former president of the Istanbul-based and foreign-sponsored Syrian National Council, who told the Wall Street Journal in 2011 that Damascus would end its strategic alliance with Iran and end its support for Hezbollah and the Palestinians as soon as anti-government forces took over Syria. [3] These foreign-sponsored opposition figures have also served to validate, in one way or another, the broader narratives that claim Sunnis and Shiites hate one another. In synchronization the mainstream media in the countries working for regime change in Damascus, such as the US and France, have consistently advertized that the regime in Syria is an Alawite regime that is allied to Iran, because the Alawites are an offshoot of Shiism. This too is untrue, because Syria and Iran do not share a common ideology; both countries are aligned, because of a common threat and shared political and strategic objectives. Nor is Syria run by an Alawite regime; the government’s composure reflects Syrian society’s ethnic and religious diversity.

Israel’s Stake in Syria

Syria is all about Iran for Israel. As if Tel Aviv has nothing to do whatsoever with the events inside Syria, Israeli commentators and analysts are now publicly insisting that Israel needs to deal with Iran by intervening inside Syria. Israel’s involvement in Syria, alongside the US and NATO, crystallized in 2012. It was clear that Israel was working in a conglomerate comprised of the US, Britain, France, Turkey, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon’s minority March 14 Alliance, and the NATO-supported usurpers that have taken over and wrecked the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.  

Although it should be read with caution, it is worth noting the release of the hacked correspondence of Strategic Forecast Incorporated’s Reva Bhalla to her boss, George Friedman, about a December 2011 meeting in the Pentagon between herself (representing Stratfor), US, French, and British officials about Syria. [4] The Stratfor correspondence claimed that the US and its allies had sent in their military special forces to destabilize Syria in 2011 and that there actually were not many Syrian anti-government forces on the ground or, as Bhalla writes, “there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army to train.” [5] The Daily Star, which is owned by Lebanon’s Hariri family which has been involved in the regime change operations against Syria, soon after reported that thirteen undercover French officers were caught by the Syrians conducting operations inside Homs. [6] Instead of a categorical no to the information about the captured French officers, the French Foreign Ministry’s response to the public was that it could not confirm anything, which can be analyzed as an omission of guilt. [7]

Days earlier, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar station revealed that Israeli-made weapons and supplies, ranging from grenades and night binoculars to communication devices, were captured alongside Qatari agents inside the insurgent stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs towards the end of April and start of March. [8] An unnamed US official would later confirm in July 2012 that the Mossad was working alongside the CIA in Syria. [9] Just a month earlier, in June, the Israeli government began publicly demanding that a military intervention be launched into Syria, presumably by the US and the conglomerate of governments working with Israel to destabilize Syria. [10]

The Israeli media has even begun to casually report that Israeli citizens, albeit one has been identified as an Israeli Arab (meaning a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship), have entered Syria to fight against the Syrian Army. [11] Normally any Israelis, specifically those that are non-Jewish Arabs, which enter Lebanon or/and Syria are condemned or prosecuted by Israeli authorities and Israeli news reports focus on this aspect of the story. Yet, it has not been so in this case. It should also be mentioned that the Palestinian opponents of Israel living inside Syria are also being targeted, just as the Palestinians living in Iraq were targeted after the US and UK invaded in 2003.

Syria and the Objective of Making Iran Stand Alone

The journalist Rafael D. Frankel wrote a revealing article for the Washington Quarterly that illustrates what US policymakers and their partners think about in Syria. In his article Frankel argued that because of the so-called Arab Spring that an attack on Iran by the US and Israel would no longer trigger a coordinated regional response from Iran and its allies. [12] Frankel argued that because of the events inside Syria an opportunity has been created for the US and Israel to attack Iran without igniting a regional war that would involve Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. [13]

Frankel’s line of thinking was not lost on circles in either NATO or Israel. In reality his line of thinking springs forth from the views and plans of these very circles. As a psychological enforcement of their ideas, his text actually found its way to NATO Headquarters in Brussels in 2012 for reading material. While the latter, Israel, released its own intelligence report about the subject.

According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the intelligence report by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has concluded that Syria and Hezbollah will no longer be able to open a second front against Israel should it go to war with Iran. [14] During the Israeli report’s release, one senior Israeli official was quoted as saying “Iran’s ability to harm Israel in response to an attack on our part declined dramatically.”[15]

Many news wires, papers, and writers with hostile positions towards both Syria and Iran, such as The Daily Telegraph, immediately replicated the Israeli report’s findings about Iran and its regional allies. Two of the first people to reproduce the findings of the Israel report, Robert Tait (writing from the Gaza Strip) and Damien McElroy (who was expelled from Libya in 2011 by that country’s authorities during the war with NATO), summarize how significant the findings of the report are by effectively outlining how Iran’s key allies in the Levant have all been neutralized. [16]

The Israeli report has triumphantly declared that Syria has turned within and is too busy to join ranks with its strategic ally Iran against Tel Aviv in a future war. [17] The ramifications of the Syrian crisis have also placed Iran’s Lebanese allies, particularly Hezbollah, in an unsteady position where their supply lines are under threat and they have been politically damaged through their support of Damascus. If anyone in Lebanon should side with Iran in a future war the Israelis have said that they will invade through massive military operations on the ground. [18]

The new Egyptian government’s role in aiding US objectives under President Morsi also becomes clear with what the Israeli report says about his supportive role: “The foreign ministry report also predicted that Egypt would stop Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, from helping Iran by launching rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.” [19] This adds credence to the view that Morsi was allowed by the US and Israel to broker a peace between the Gaza Strip and Tel Aviv, which would prevent the Palestinians there from standing with Iran during a war. In other words the Egyptian truce was setup to bind the hands of Hamas. The recent announcements about moves by Morsi’s government to engage Hezbollah politically can also be scrutinized as an extension of the same strategy applied in Gaza, but in this case for unbinding Iran from its Lebanese allies. [20]

There is also clamouring for steps to be taken to de-link Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, from its Christian allies in Lebanon. The German Marshall Fund showcased a text essentially saying that the Lebanese Christians that are allies to Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran need to be presented with an alternative political narrative to replace the one where they believe that Iran will ultimately run the Middle East as a great power. [21] This too is tied to further eroding Iran’s alliance system.

Mission Accomplished?

The conflict in Syria is not merely an Israeli affair. The slow bleeding of Syria has other interested parties that want to smash the country and its society into pieces. The US is foremost among these interested parties, followed by the Arab dictators of the petro-sheikhdoms. NATO has also always been covertly involved.

NATO’s involvement in Syria is part of the US strategy of using the military alliance to dominate the Middle East. This is why it was decided to establish a component of the missile shield in Turkey. This is also the reason that Patriot missiles are being deployed to the Turkish border with Syria. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue are components of these plans too. Additionally, Turkey has ended its veto against the further integration of Israel into NATO. [22]

NATO has been reorienting itself towards asymmetrical warfare and greater emphasis is now being put on intelligence operations. NATO strategists have increasingly been studying the Kurds, Iraq, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians. In the scenario of an all-out war, NATO has been preparing itself for overt military roles in both Syria and Iran.

Iraq is being destabilized further too. While Iran’s allies in Damascus have been weighed down, its allies in Baghdad have not. After Syria, the same conglomerate of countries working against Damascus will turn their attention to Iraq. They have already started working to galvanize Iraq further on the basis of its sectarian and political fault lines. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are playing prominent roles in this objective. What is becoming manifest is that the differences between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims that Washington has cultivated since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 are now been augmented by Kurdish sectarianism.

It appears that many in the Israeli political establishment now believe that they have succeeded in breaking the Resistance Bloc. Whether they are correct or incorrect is a matter of debate. Syria still stands; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (which was by far the most active Palestinian group fighting Israel from Gaza in 2012) and other Palestinians will side with Iran even if Hamas will have its hands tied by Egypt; there are still Tehran’s allies in Iraq; and Syria is not the only supply line for Iran to arm its ally Hezbollah. What is also very clear is that the siege against Syria is a front in the covert multi-dimensional war against Iran. This alone should make people reconsider the statements of US officials and their allies about having concerns for the Syrian people merely on the basis of humanitarianism and democracy.

NOTES

[1] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, “Obama’s Secret Letter to Tehran: Is the War against Iran On Hold? ‘The Road to Tehran Goes through Damascus,’” Global Research, January 20, 2012.

[2] Jubin M. Goodarzi, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp.217-228.

[3] Nour Malas and Jay Solomon, “Syria Would Cut Iran Military Tie, Opposition Head Says,” Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2011.

[4] WikiLeaks, “Re: INSIGHT – military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces,” October 19, 2012: <http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/209688_re-insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html>.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Lauren Williams, “13 French officers being held in Syria,” The Daily Star, March 5, 2012.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Israa Al-Fass, “Mossad, Blackwater, CIA Led Operations in Homs,” trans. Sara Taha Moughnieh, Al-Manar, March 3, 2012.

[9] David Ignatius, “Looking for a Syrian endgame,” The Washington Post, July 18, 2012.

[10] Dan Williams, “Israel accuses Syria of genocide, urges intervention,” Andrew Heavens ed., Reuters, June 10, 2012.

[11] Hassan Shaalan, “Israeli fighting Assad ‘can’t go home,’” Yedioth Ahronoth, January 3, 2013.

[12] Rafael D. Frankel, “Keeping Hamas and Hezbollah Out of a War with Iran,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 4 (Fall 2012): pp.53-65.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Weakened Syria unlikely to join Iran in war against Israel: report,” The Daily Star, January 4, 2013.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Damien McElroy and Robert Tait, “Syria ‘would not join Iran in war against Israel,’” The Daily Telegraph, January 3, 2013.

[17] “Weakened Syria,” The Daily Star, op. cit.

[18] “Syria and Hezbollah won’t join the fight if Israel strikes Iran, top-level report predicts,” Times of Israel, January 3, 2013.

[19] McElroy and Tait, “Syria would not,” op. cit.

[20] Lauren Williams, “New Egypt warms up to Hezbollah: ambassador,” The Daily Star, December 29, 2011.

[21] Hassan Mneimneh, “Lebanon ― The Christians of Hezbollah: A Foray into a Disconnected Political Narrative,” The German Marshall Fund of the United States, November 16, 2012.

[22] Hilary Leila Krieger, “Israel to join NATO activities amidst Turkey tension,” Jerusalem Post, December 23, 2012; Jonathon Burch and Gulsen Solaker, “Turkey lifts objection to NATO cooperation with Israel,” Mark Heinrich ed., Reuters, December 24, 2012; “Turkey: Israel’s participation in NATO not related to Patriots,” Today’s Zaman, December 28, 2012.

Since the Zika virus has been declared an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization, we’re revisiting a U.S. Army report detailing the military’s interest in the weaponization of mosquitoes.

So let the conspiracy theories fly.

The March 1981 report on “entomological warfare” was prepared following research at the Dugway Proving Ground, the sprawling Utah facility where the Army tests biological and chemical weapons systems.

The report examined the methods by which U.S. military members and civilians could come under attack by mosquitoes infected with yellow fever. The report notes that, according to U.S. intelligence information, Warsaw Pact nations “have attempted development of an EW capability.”

Along with cost estimates for possible EW attacks–which seem remarkably affordable and cost effective–the report estimated that upwards of 40 percent of those bitten by infected mosquitoes would die.

The Army report also summarizes prior U.S. research into the possible battlefield use of fleas and mosquitoes (which are referred to as “arthropod vectors”).

“Operation Big Itch” revealed that fleas could be dropped in munitions from airplanes with “little or no die-off.” The insects, researchers found, “were successful in acquiring hosts but were not active longer than 24 hours.”

In “Operation Big Buzz,” the Army placed more than 300,000 uninfected mosquitoes in munitions that were dropped from military aircraft. The mosquitoes, dropped “without mortality,” were “dispersed by the wind and their own flight.”

The female mosquitoes were “active in seeking blood meals from humans and guinea pigs,” according to the report, which notes that some mosquitoes were collected as far as 4/10 of a mile from the “target release site.”

The Army report also contains a section on “Operation Drop Kick,” but the description of that program is redacted in its entirety.

In case of an EW attack on an American city, the report recommends that citizens should be warned to remain indoors. For those who “must venture outside,” they are advised to wear “mosquito netting over face and neck” and use mosquito repellant. (10 pages)

Imperialism via Data: The Digitization of Human Behavior, “Social Radar”, Sensors and Neuroscience

By John Stanton, March 13 2016

UK Bill Hands Vast Surveillance Powers to Police and Intelligence Agencies

By Barry Mason, March 14 2016

On March 1, Home Secretary Theresa May published the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB), known by critics as the “snooper’s charter”.

Former Agent of Swedish Security Police Dictated Amnesty Sweden’s Stance against Julian Assange

By Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli, March 14 2016

In December 2010 a close collaboration between Sweden and the CIA and FBI was exposed in the international media: an intelligence collaboration between Sweden and US agencies that was kept secret from the Swedish public…

Money, Power and Oil. Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails

By Ellen Brown, March 14 2016

Jeffrey Goldberg’s newly published book-length article on Barack Obama and the Middle East includes a major revelation that brings Secretary of State John Kerry’s Syrian diplomacy into sharper focus: it reports that Kerry has sought on several occasions without success over the past several months to get Obama’s approval for cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government.

That revelation shows that Kerry’s strategy in promoting the Syrian peace negotiations in recent months was based on much heavier pressure on the Assad regime to agree that President Bashar al-Assad must step down than was apparent. It also completes a larger story of Kerry as the primary advocate in the administration of war in Syria ever since he became Secretary of State in early 2013.

Goldberg reports that “on several occasions” Kerry requested that Obama approve missile strikes at “specific regime targets,” in order to “send a message” to Assad – and his international allies – to “negotiate peace.” Kerry suggested to Obama that the U.S. wouldn’t have to acknowledge the attacks publicly, according to Goldberg, because Assad “would surely know the missiles’ return address.”

Goldberg reports that Kerry had “recently” submitted a “written outline of new steps to bring more pressure on Assad.” That is obviously a reference to what Kerry referred to in Senate testimony in February as “significant discussions” within the Obama administration on a “Plan B” to support the opposition that would be more “confrontational.” Kerry made no effort in his testimony to hide the fact that he was the chief advocate of such a policy initiative.

Image: Secretary of State John Kerry arriving in Paris on Jan. 12, 2014, for diplomatic meetings on the Middle East. (State Department photo)

But Goldberg’s account makes it clear that Obama not only repeatedly rejected Kerry’s requests for the use of force, but also decreed at a National Security Council meeting in December that any request for the use of military force must come from his military advisers in an obvious rebuff to Kerry. Immediately after Kerry had suggested that a “Plan B” was under discussion in the administration, it was a senior Pentagon official who dismissed the idea that any confrontational move was under consideration, including the well-worn idea of a “no-fly zone.”

Kerry’s campaign for cruise missile strikes actually began soon after he became secretary in February 2013. At that point Assad was consolidating his military position, while al-Nusra Front (Al Qaeda’s affiliate0 and its extremist allies were already in a dominant position within the armed opposition, according to U.S. intelligence. It was hardly a favorable situation for trying to build an opposition force that could be the instrument of the negotiated settlement he had in mind.

At Kerry’s urging Obama signed a secret presidential “finding” in May 2013 for a covert CIA operation the objective of which was to provide enough support to the rebels so they wouldn’t lose, but not enough so they would win. But that was a compromise measure that Kerry believed would be inadequate to support a negotiated settlement.

He wanted much more, an urgent program of aid to the opposition, and he resorted to a shady bureaucratic tactic to advance his aim. Beginning in March 2013 and throughout that spring, the armed opposition accused the Assad regime of using Sarin gas against opposition population centers on several occasions. The evidence for those accusations was highly doubtful in every case, but Kerry seized on them as a way of putting pressure on Obama.

In June 2013, he went to the White House with a paper assuming the truth of the accusations and arguing that, if the United States did not “impose consequences” on Assad over his supposed use of chemical weapons, he would view it as “green light” to continue using them. At a National Security Council meeting that month, Kerry urged shipments of heavy weapons to the rebels as well as U.S. military strikes, but Obama still said no.

After the Aug. 21, 2013 Sarin attack in the Damascus area, Kerry was the leading figure on Obama’s national security team arguing that Obama had to respond militarily. But after initially agreeing to a set of U.S. missile strikes on regime targets, Obama decided against it. One of the reasons was that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged to him privately that the intelligence was not a “slam dunk,” according to Goldberg’s account.

In lieu of a missile strike, however, Obama agreed in October 2013 to a very risky major escalation of military assistance to the Syrian opposition. That fall the Pentagon sold 15,000 U.S. TOW anti-tank missiles to the Saudis, and throughout 2014, the Saudis doled them out to armed groups approved by the United States. Dispensing anti-tank missiles was a reckless policy, because it was recognized by then that many of the groups being armed were already fighting alongside Nusra Front in the northwest. The missiles were crucial to the capture of all of Idlib province by the Nusra-led “Army of Conquest” in April 2015.

Kerry was ready to take a risk on Nusra Front and its allies becoming unstoppable in order to jump-start his strategy of diplomatic pressure on Assad. But Kerry overplayed his hand. The Assad regime and Iran feared that the newly strengthened military force under Nusra Front control might break through to take over the Alawite stronghold of Latakia province. They prevailed on Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene with Russian airpower.

As the Russian campaign of airstrikes began to push back the extremist-led military forces and even threaten their lines of supply, Kerry’s strategy to pressure the Assad regime to make a major diplomatic concession became irrelevant.

Kerry’s demands for U.S. cruise missile strikes became even more insistent. Without them, he argued, he couldn’t get the Russians to cooperate with his peace negotiations plan. Goldberg quotes a “senior administration official” as saying, “Kerry’s looking like a chump with the Russians, because he has no leverage.”

Obama, who had already succumbed in 2014 to domestic political pressure to begin bombing the Islamic State, saw no reason to get into even deeper war in Syria in support of Kerry’s plan – especially under the new circumstances. Assad was not likely to step down, and in case, the war would only end if Nusra Front and its Salafist-jihadi allies were no longer able to get the heavy weapons they need to fight the regime.

The real origin of the present Syrian peace negotiations is thus Kerry’s ambition to pursue the illusory aim of winning a diplomatic victory in Syria by much greater pressure on the Assad regime. Ironically, in setting in motion the military build-up of an Al-Qaeda-dominated armed opposition, Kerry sowed the seeds of the military reversal that ensured the failure of his endeavor. As a result he became the rather pathetic figure shown in Goldberg’s account pleading in vain for yet another US war in Syria.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.[This article originally appeared in Middle East Eye at http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/kerry-sought-missile-strikes-force-syrias-assad-step-down-1087172884#sthash.oK5k5IX9.dpuf]

An Al-Qaeda branch has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 16 people at the Grand-Bassam beach resort on Cote d’Ivoire, which is known for being popular with Westerners.

Reports claim that four of the victims are Europeans.

Two gunmen opened fire on a beach, injuring several people, a local tourist guide told France24. According to Reuters, there were four gunmen involved in the attack.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for the assault, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

Six assailants have been neutralized in the police operation so far, Cote d’Ivoire’s Interior Ministry said.

“Three hotels in Grand Bassam were attacked this Sunday by armed men. Security and defense forces intervened immediately and were able to neutralize six terrorists. The clean-up operation is under way,” Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said on state television.

The assailants, who were “heavily armed and wearing balaclavas, fired at guests at the L’Etoile du Sud (Southern Star), a large hotel which was full of expats in the current heatwave,” a witness told AFP.

A combined total of sixteen people, including fourteen civilians and two soldiers, were killed in the attack, Cote d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara said. “Six attackers came onto the beach in Bassam this afternoon … We have 14 civilians and two special forces soldiers who were unfortunately killed,” said Ouattara, who visited the site where the assault took place.

A police source told Reuters earlier that there were “four Europeans” among the victims.

Earlier, another witness told Reuters that he saw at least seven corpses.

“I saw seven dead that I filmed. There were four attackers. I was swimming when it started and I ran away,” said the witness, who managed to shoot a video at the site.

One person killed in the shooting was a French citizen, according to France’s Foreign Ministry.

“France will bring its logistical support and intelligence to Ivory Coast to find the attackers. It will pursue and intensify its cooperation with its partners in the fight against terrorism,” French President Francois Hollande said.

A video reportedly shot at the scene and posted on Facebook shows people fleeing from the beach through the territory of one of the hotels.

Graphic images of people covered in blood and lying on a beach have been posted on social media.

The total number of casualties is still unclear.

The attackers were reportedly armed with machine guns and had a significant number of grenades, according to photos witnesses posted on Twitter.

Grand-Bassam is located in the south-east of Cote d’Ivoire, lying 40km from the main city of Abidjan. In 2012 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. The resort is popular with Westerners, according to AFP.

For centuries American film has been one of the most important apparatus used for perpetuating American white supremacy and justifying American military adventures.

Racism in film and white supremacy are so intricately interwoven into the fabric of America that they have become virtually undetectable, much like carbon monoxide, until the deadly damage has occurred. Film is a reflection of society and society in turn is influenced by film.

Ever since the Lumiere brothers first developed film in 1896, it has been an astoundingly effective racial propaganda tool. As the first universal mass medium it efficiently utilized high drama through the fixation of emotional sequences. Put simply, effective propaganda starts precisely where critical thinking ends.

To create drama, particularly in action and war movies, Hollywood needs bad guys, and through the consistent use of racial stereotypes these enemies have included the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, the Russians throughout the Cold War, Muslims during the ongoing War on Terror and the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

In American film and media, during the Yellow peril the widespread image of the Japanese as sub-human created an emotional context which formed a justification for the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that instantly slaughtered 140,000 innocent people, as well as the establishment of concentration camps for Japanese-Americans on US soil.

The first group in Hollywood history to have been depicted as dangerous savages is Native Americans.

The gross misrepresentation of Native Americans has been a longstanding problem for American film makers ever since the rise of 19th-century Western frontier literature, which portrayed pioneers as struggling with restless natives, without acknowledging the genocide committed by white men.

Despite vast evidence of Native American technological advances and complex civilization, Hollywood films depict native culture as a “blanket ethnicity,” thereby pigeonholing the various groups and cultures into one group defined by stereotypical tropes.

To this day white actors portray Native Americans using “Redface”, which is the practice of wearing feathers, war paint, etc. by non-natives, which propagate American Indian stereotypes. Johnny Depp recently wore Redface in the movie the Lone Ranger. Disturbingly, but hardly surprisingly, the movie won an Oscar nomination for “Best Makeup and Hair Styling”.

According to a recent YouGov survey, “make believe” childhood games like Cowboys and Indians are more popular amongst children than video games from the $60 billion gaming industry. One may ask oneself if the popular American childhood game of Cowboys and Indians is essentially the cultural equivalent of Germans playing a game with the same rules that might be called Nazis and Jews? Why then should we tolerate one and not the other, if not for a deep seeded racism towards Native Americans that we too are unwilling to acknowledge?

Most Hollywood financiers, directors and Oscar voters are rich, old white men. As in pretty much all facets of American capitalism, minorities are underrepresented in every stage of film and television production; from writing to directing to acting to producing.

Racism towards Blacks in American mass entertainment spans centuries.

This discrimination began during the minstrel era of 1830 to 1890. Minstrel shows were comprised of various skits, music and comedy that revolved around the ugliest stereotypes of Blacks. The stereotypical Black characters of the minstrel shows have played a large part in spreading racist images and perceptions across the world.

For half a decade, minstrel shows were the most popular form of entertainment in the United States.

The term Jim Crow is named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that caricatured African Americans. “Jim Crow” eventually came to represent the brutal system of state-sanctioned apartheid and racial oppression in America.

The American minstrel show was effectively dead by WW1, and it was replaced by Hollywood’s Blackface later in vaudeville, Broadway, silent movies, and eventually talking pictures and film.

Historian Ken Paget notes that one of the first Blacks to perform in Blackface for white audiences was the man who invented tap dancing, William Henry Lane, aka Master Juba. Lane’s talent and skill were extraordinary and ultimately he became famous enough that he was able to perform in his own skin.

Early film rose with the dissemination of racial stereotypes to large audiences across the world. Early silent movies such as The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon in 1904, The Slave in 1905, The Sambo Series 1909-1911 and The Nigger in 1915 perpetuated negative depictions of Blacks through an exciting new mass medium.

Throughout Hollywood’s history Black entertainers and directors have always been ghettoised and segregated from mainstream film. Northern Blacks resorted to making silent movies of their own known as “Race movies” that were highly critical of American racism. To this day, Black narratives are ghettoised within a separated Black films industry. In America, Black is not merely a skin color it is also a movie genre, for films made by Blacks for Blacks because the understanding is that whites could not possibly be interested in movies with Black characters.

Mr. Paget illustrates how between 1930 and 1950, animators at Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, MGM, Looney Tunes, and many other independent studios, produced thousands of cartoons that unashamedly perpetuated the same old racist stereotypes. This period is now known as the golden age of animation, and right up until the mid 1960s, cartoons were screened before all feature films.

Up to the mid twentieth century in Hollywood, Blackface was used in well over 90 instances. There eventually was a transition from Blackface to whitewashing, which marked the simultaneous, and intertwined persistence of white supremacy and so-called present day post-racialism. Whitewashing, whereby white actors depict characters of color without the use of Blackface is the poster-child of post-racialism: the idea that America is devoid of racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice. On the contrary, post-racialism is in fact the new racism. Post-racialism pretends that there is equal opportunity while ignoring the institutional and economic racism that infects inner cities and fills prisons.

The majority of people in America are minorities and yet this year every single Oscar nominee was white and ninety five percent of Oscar voters where white. It is hard for Black actors and actresses to gain prominence when white people are playing their roles.

For instance, the past year alone has seen the Scotsman Gerard Butler play the Egyptian God, Set, in Gods of Egypt, Emma Stone played an Asian American woman in Aloha, and Ridley Scott cast white actors in Exodus: Gods and Kings, the movie based on Moses.

Director Ridley Scott explained why Hollywood engages in the practice of whitewashing:

“I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up”.

Perhaps, nothing shows Hollywood’s racial insensitivity quite like the recent casting of actress Zoe Saldana in Blackface as Nina Simone in the upcoming biopic Nina. Nina Simone was one of the Black is beautiful movement’s most powerful historical figures.

The light skinned Saldana appears in Blackface. Ms. Saldana’s skin has been darkened, her hair has been made to look more ethnic, and prosthetics have been used to widen out her nose, alter her features and give her buck teeth.

Nina Simone made it very clear that her “job as a singer is to tell Blacks that Blackness, Black power and Black culture are from civilizations of unmatched beauty but we just don’t know it, and I will educate Blacks by whatever means necessary”.

The very darkness of Simone’s skin and her distinctly African features defined both her music and her politics. Therefore, to portray her in this way is nothing short of criminal, it is a tone-deaf gross whitewashing of unapologetic Blackness.

Nina Simone is part of a small group of women who came from being considered the least valuable human beings in all of the United States, a dark-skinned Black woman from Jim Crow South, and who became a music icon whose insistent Blackness has inspired generations.

Today’s generation of Muslims depicted in cinema are virtually limited to terrorists and national security threats, which serves to justify a dangerously oversized military abroad and unprecedented surveillance and erosion of civil liberties at home.

For many millennial Americans, the first exposure to Muslim “others” was the 1992 Disney classic Aladdin, in which most good characters were Westerners and the savages where invariably dark skinned. The children’s movies song lyric is instructive:

I come from a land, from a faraway place where the caravan camels roam / Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face / It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.

Ever since Aladdin, there have been a litany of propaganda films that lionize American military aggression across the Middle East. Hollywood’s Islamophobia operates in the service of American militarism and American militarism in turn operates in service of Hollywood. The U.S. military has had a dominant presence in Hollywood since the early 1900s through the Pentagon’s Film Liaison Office. The Liaison Office’s propaganda mission is clear: review American war movie scripts and decide whether to offer them support depending on if they conform with the interests of the country’s military leaders. In short, the Pentagon only supports Hollywood’s pro-war propaganda films.

America’s war on terror has cost Americans trillions of dollars and Arabs millions of lives and Hollywood has pumped billions of dollars into creating movies that endorse America’s disastrous foreign policy. In a single year at the Golden Globes, there were awards for Argo, where a bearded CIA hero saves American hostages from Iranian hordes; and Zero Dark Thirty, depicting the heroic hunt for Bin Laden; and President Obama’s favorite TV show Homeland, showing courageous Americans battling endless Muslim jihadis at home and abroad.

Then of course there is American Sniper, the highest grossing war film in US history. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported a spike in Islamophobia and hate crimes after the release of American Sniper which culminating in the recent slaying of three young Muslims in North Carolina who were shot in the head sniper execution style.

Despite the fact that the FBI confirms that white supremacists commit far more acts of domestic terrorism than their Muslim counterparts, Hollywood’s penchant for white supremacy continues to depict Muslims as sinister and exotic brutes incompatible with American civility, rather than portraying the full spectrum of human density of their lives.

White terrorism founded America, built the nation through slavery, and continues to be the nation’s largest domestic terrorist threat. From Redface, to Blackface, to Yellowface, to Brownface, Hollywood’s long and torrid history of white supremacy through their depiction of other races as dangerous or inferior has been a pillar of American racism at home and an integral weapon for American militarism abroad.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

Last week, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi announced a much bigger and wider-ranging stimulus package than anyone had expected. Unfortunately, the ECB’s bond buying program will have no impact on employment, business investment, inflation, lending or growth. It will, however, create a temporary incentive for corporations to buy back more of their own shares while providing more cheap cash for banks to roll over their prodigious pile of debt which otherwise would have dragged them into default. All in all, Draghi’s turbo-charged QE should do largely what it was designed to do, shift more cash into overpriced financial assets while perpetuating the illusion that the EU banking system is still solvent.

The size and scale of Draghi’s massive giveaway is impressive by any standard. He increased his purchases of financial assets by a hefty €20 billion per month (from €60 billion to €80 billion), pushed interest rates lower into negative territory (by 10 basis points), improved financing for the banks, and announced his intention to buy investment grade corporate bonds. The announcement that the ECB planned to enter the bond market was warmly received on Wall Street where giddy traders bought up everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground. The Dow logged another triple-digit day while the S&P and Nasdaq followed close behind.

In theory, the ECB’s buying of corporate bonds will lower funding costs for corporations which will then trickle down to working people through increased investment, more hiring, and eventually higher wages. That’s the theory at least. But after seven years of similar QE-iterations, we can safely say the theory does not jibe with reality. What actually happens is that the money stays largely in the financial system where it ignites more reckless speculation that leads to even bigger asset-price bubbles. There’s an excellent article on Yahoo Finance which shows the effect that QE has had on stock prices. The article is aptly titled “The Fed caused 93% of the entire stock market’s move since 2008”. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-fed-caused-93–of-the-entire-stock-market-s-move-since-2008–analysis-194426366.html# According to economist Brian Barnier, principal at ValueBridge Advisors, current stock prices do not reflect fundamentals nor are they the result of market forces. Equities are high because, in his words, “the Federal Reserve took to flooding the financial market with dollars by buying up bonds.” Now that the Fed has turned off the liquidity spigot, stocks are circling the plughole.

Can Draghi’s latest monetary infusion reverse the trend?

Temporarily, perhaps, but long term, no way. Keep in mind, earnings have been steadily declining for more than two quarters, which is why Draghi and his fellows have swung into action. The CBs are attempting to extend the business cycle in order to shore up flagging earnings and keep stocks airborne for a little while longer.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Ostensibly, Draghi’s plan to buy corporate bonds is an attempt to reduce financing costs for European companies.

Why? Aren’t financing costs low already?

Yes they are, extremely low. But, once again, we have to refer to the theory, and the theory states that if financing costs are reduced, then corporations will expand their operations, hire more workers, and invest in the future. That, in turn, will stimulate more growth and strengthen the recovery.

The problem is, the theory is flawed. Corporations don’t expand their operations or hire more workers when demand is weak. And demand IS weak mainly because central banks have worked with their government counterparts to keep it weak by slashing deficits and intensifying austerity.

Draghi knows this just like he knows that consumption in the Eurozone is shrinking not expanding. And the reason its shrinking is because Draghi and his ilk want unemployment to remain high in order to keep inflation low. As long as inflation stays low, Draghi can continue to provide cheap money to his crooked friends on Wall Street, which is the real objective.

What this tells us is that Draghi’s QE is not really “stimulus” at all, but a form of upward distribution concealed behind public relations sloganeering.

But why is Draghi targeting corporate bonds?

Well, it’s another way to give the big corporations more money through stock buybacks. Here’s how it works: The ECB announces it will purchase investment grade bonds which is a signal to Wall Street to increase its issuance of bonds in Europe, so they can take the proceeds, stick them in their pocket via stock buybacks, and trundle off to their vacation villas on the Amalfi Coast. Do you think I’m kidding? Check out this clip from the Wall Street Journal:

“The ECB’s largess in lowering the overall cost of borrowing in Europe has led to a rush of euro-denominated bond issuance by U.S. companies. Last year, they accounted for nearly a quarter of issuance and so far this year for a third, Société Générale SCGLY 4.33 % notes. Some of the ECB’s efforts may just contribute to more debt building up on U.S. investment-grade balance sheets.”
(Never Mind the Euro: Here’s the New Test of ECB Success, Wall Street Journal)

Wait a minute, so Draghi’s corporate bond buying program is actually another handout for Wall Street?

You bet it is. Take a look:

“Conditions for financing are extremely attractive, given the European Central Bank’s ultra-loose monetary policy. While credit spreads are wider than pre-crisis, yields are at historically low levels. Investors are willing to buy long-dated bonds like never before.

But it is U.S. companies that are taking advantage of this appetite: as of May 22, the U.S. was the single-largest source of bond sales this year, accounting for 28% of investment-grade issuance, versus 17% in the whole of 2014, according to Société Générale.” (Europe’s Economies Must Match Capital Market Progress, Wall Street Journal)

Can you believe it, Wall Street “was the single-largest source of bond sales this year” in the EU??

What the heck?? Did we mention that Draghi used to work for Goldman Sachs?? Of course, that couldn’t possibly effect his decision to set up a program that primary benefits the speculator cutthroats on Wall Street, could it?

Right. Here’s more from another article in the WSJ:

“The ECB buying corporate bonds is “very significant,” said Marilyn Watson, a senior bond strategist at BlackRock Inc… “Everyone is trying to assess the impact on financials and nonfinancial corporates.”…Strategists at Citigroup Inc…estimate there is about €500 billion in corporate debt that the ECB could buy…

Buying high-grade debt will push down yields on these bonds and that should encourage investors to shift into riskier bonds. That means the benefits of the program should trickle down to the junk-bond market, according to strategists at Citigroup Inc.” (European Corporate Bonds Are Clear Winners After ECB Move, Wall Street Journal)

Yipee! Another half trillion in free money for Wall Street! And look; the buying frenzy could even trickle down to junk bonds which have been flashing red for months signaling the end of the credit cycle. That should help to extend the 7-year rally for few months longer postponing financial Armageddon to sometime by mid summer. Who said Draghi wasn’t a great guy?

Of course there could be a few glitches in Draghi’s plan, mainly that ECB bond purchases could reduce market liquidity which would make it harder for bondholders to sell without sending prices off a cliff. But why worry about trivialities like that when there’s money to be made.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Isn’t that the way Wall Street sees things?

You know it is. Thanks to Draghi’s QE, US corporations will issue more debt (bonds) in the EU. They’ll take the money they borrowed from gullible Mom and Pop investors in Europe and use it to repurchase shares in their own companies which will boost executive compensation packages and keep voracious shareholders happy. The money will not be used to invest in the future growth of their companies (since consumer demand is weak) or to create the future revenue streams needed to pay back their debts, but to enrich wealthy CEOs who see stock manipulation as a perfectly reasonable way to boost profits.

Got that?

Now take a look at this eye-popper from Bloomberg:

“Standard & Poor’s 500 Index constituents are poised to repurchase as much as $165 billion of stock this quarter, approaching a record reached in 2007. The buying contrasts with rampant selling by clients of mutual and exchange-traded funds, who after pulling $40 billion since January are on pace for one of the biggest quarterly withdrawals ever….

Should the current pace of withdrawals from mutual funds and ETFs last through the rest of March, outflows would hit $60 billion. That implies a gap with corporate buybacks of $225 billion, the widest in data going back to 1998.” (There’s Only One Buyer Keeping S&P 500’s Bull Market Alive, Bloomberg)

$165 billion of stock this quarter, translates into $660 billion per year. That’s a boatload of money and enough to drive the market higher unless retail investors call it a day and bail out.

Well, guess what? It looks like retail investors are calling it “quits” and cashing in. Here’s the scoop:

“Demand for U.S. shares among companies and individuals is diverging at a rate that may be without precedent….While past deviations haven’t spelled doom for equities, the impact has rarely been as stark as in the last two months, when American shares lurched to the worst start to a year on record as companies stepped away from the market while reporting earnings. Those results raise another question about the sustainability of repurchases, as profits declined for a third straight quarter, the longest streak in six years.” (Bloomberg)

So even though US corporations are allegedly flush with cash, “other trading clients have been net sellers, with hedge funds leading the pack, dumping $3.5 billion.”

“Corporate buybacks are the sole demand for corporate equities in this market,” David Kostin, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in a Feb. 23 Bloomberg Television interview.” (Bloomberg)

“The sole demand”? You mean the only one buying stocks is the companies buying their own lousy shares?

Indeed, and here’s something else that’s worth considering: “In a market where everyone else is selling, the ebb and flow of corporate actions have amplified volatility. The S&P 500 slumped 11 percent in the first six weeks of the year before staging a rebound that has since trimmed the drop to about 1 percent.”

So, there you have it. The reason stocks have been bouncing around like crazy is because investors are bailing out while corporations are loading up. Those competing forces have triggered unprecedented volatility that will probably intensify as uncertainty grows.

Obviously, CEOs believe they can force the market higher by issuing more debt and buying more shares, (Otherwise, they wouldn’t have spent another $165 billion this quarter) but retail investors are not as sanguine.

Why?

Two reasons:
1–Because the Fed is indicating that it wants to hike rates.
2–Because “profits are poised for a fourth quarter of declines.”

Profits and rates. Rates and profits. That’s what drives the markets, not China, not emerging markets, not oil, not demand, not employment, not anything. Money and the price of money, that’s it.

Bottom line:

“During the last two decades, there have been two times when earnings contractions lasted longer than now. Both led companies to slash buybacks, with the peak-to-trough drop reaching an average 62 percent.” (Bloomberg)

So it doesn’t matter how determined these greedy CEOs are to manipulate their stock prices higher. When profits fall, stocks follow. End of story.

One last thing: Negative rates (the likes of which Draghi increased on Thursday) are a real headache for the banks who end up having to pay a small fee on excess reserves. (that they can’t pass on to their customers) What most people don’t know, however, is that Draghi’s new targeted lending program, known as TLTRO II, is going to provide another €700 billion of four-year funding to back up their loans to companies and consumers. According to the Wall Street Journal:

“At most this will cost banks nothing. But if they have grown lending by 2.5% by the end of January 2018, the interest rate they pay could drop to the ECB’s deposit rate at the time the funding was taken. That was cut to minus 0.4% on Thursday…

This funding is a cheap option to replace banks’ maturing bonds with more than €500 billion due for repayment in the next two years, according to Standard & Poor’s, as well to refinance existing ECB money. The lower costs would add a net €3 billion, or up to 2.5%, to annual earnings, according to Deutsche Bank…” (How the ECB Woke Up to Banks’ Profits Nightmare, Wall Street Journal)

The ECB is going to roll over a half a trillion in debt for nothing???

What a complete fucking outrage! This excerpt really explains how badly we are all getting reamed by these thoroughly-odious and despicable Central Banks. Why is the ECB providing a safety net for insolvent banks that are unable to roll over their own stinking debtpile? These malignant institutions should be dragged into the backyard and euthanized now so we can be done with them once and for all. Instead, Draghi plans to provide billions more in free money so they can continue to bilk the public with their toxic assets, their heinous bunko operations and their endless Ponzi swindles.

Where’s the justice?

Crowds estimated in the millions demonstrated in cities across Brazil Sunday demanding the ouster of the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores-PT) government and the country’s President Dilma Rousseff.

The largest of the rallies took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s financial and industrial capital, where the city’s security office put the number of demonstrators, who filled the entire length of the central Avenida Paulista, at 1.4 million. Instituto DataFolha, a prominent polling institution, put them at 450,000, while organizers claimed an improbable 3 million.

Fueling these rallies, which were substantially larger than similar demonstrations held a year ago, was anger over the ever-widening political bribes and kickbacks scandal that has siphoned billions of dollars from the state-run energy conglomerate Petrobras, as well as growing frustration over the precipitous decline of Brazil’s economy into its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

They were further driven by the demand of state prosecutors in Sao Paulo to place Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former president and founder of the PT, in “preventive custody” in connection with their charges that he concealed ownership of a seafront apartment built for him by a construction firm that was a major contractor with Petrobras.

Demonstrators chanted, “Down with the PT,” “Dilma out” and “Stop the corruption.” A significant minority within the rallies raised banners and signs calling for the Brazilian military to intervene, reprising the right-wing 1964 coup that plunged Latin America’s largest nation into 21 years of brutal military dictatorship.

Unlike the rallies held a year ago, Sunday’s demonstrations enjoyed the open support of the right-wing bourgeois parties opposed to Rousseff and the PT, as well as that of the leading employers and business associations such as FIESP (Federation of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo). Free metro transit fares were offered in Sao Paulo to boost participation.

Surveys indicated that, while larger than last year, the rallies were once again dominated by sections of the middle class. A survey done by a leading polling company found that 63 percent of the protesters had incomes equal to at least five times Brazil’s minimum wage.

While the predominant political orientation of the protests was right-wing, attempts by the PT’s right-wing political opponents to capitalize on them were met with angry hostility toward all politicians and parties.

Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin and Senator Aécio Neves, who was narrowly defeated by Rousseff in the 2014 election, both of the right-wing PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), were quickly escorted out of the Sao Paulo protest by their security guards after crowds surrounded them chanting, “You’re next,” and denouncing them as “opportunists” and “crooks.” In other cities attempts to address the crowds by right-wing politicians were drowned out by boos and chants of “no parties.”

The leadership of the Workers Party called off rallies in support of Lula and Rousseff that had been called for the same day, citing fears of violent confrontation. It is also undoubtedly the case that the those who would come into the street in defense of the PT would be heavily outnumbered by the party’s opponents.

PT President Rui Falcão used his Facebook page Monday to call for rallies on Friday March 18 “in defense of democracy and presidents Lula and Dilma, against the coup and for changes in the economy.”

This last slogan is meant to cast the PT as being an opponent from the “left” of the very policies that are being pursued by the PT government itself. Rousseff has responded to Brazil’s deepening economic crisis with the attempt to push through a “fiscal adjustment” program aimed at slashing pensions, wages and workers’ benefits, while assuring that fully 20 percent of the federal budget goes to service Brazil’s debt to Wall Street and the international banks.

These economic austerity measures serve to exacerbate the crisis of Brazilian workers under conditions in which layoffs have reached 100,000 a month and the inflation rate has topped 10 percent.

In a further sign that the economic crisis is only deepening, Brazil’s Central Bank reported Monday that economic activity had fallen by another 0.6 percent in January, confounding economists’ predictions of a very slight increase for the month.

Despite the indices of economic decline, the value of Brazil’s currency has risen by 10.8 percent over the past month, while its stock and bond markets have also risen substantially over the past week. As the Financial Times noted, the impetus to the market rally has “come from the political sphere.”

“The detention of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and its implications for his protégé and current leader, Dilma Rousseff, have raised hopes among investors that the barriers to political change may be overcome sooner than expected,”

the newspaper reported.

Jefferson Luiz Rugik, who heads the Correparti brokerage in Sao Paulo, told the paper,

“Everything that is against the current government and President Dilma is favourable for the real . . . it raises the possibility that we would have another government with more credibility.”

For more than a dozen years, the PT has served as the principal party of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, serving its interests, while promoting limited social welfare programs aimed at dampening the class struggle, even as social polarization between a narrow financial elite and masses of workers and poor continued to deepen.

Now, dominant layers within the Brazilian ruling class have decided they need a new kind of government, of an openly right-wing and potentially dictatorial character, to carry out drastic attacks on the living standards of the working class. This is the driving force behind the campaign to impeach Rousseff.

The betrayals carried out by the PT, and particularly by an array of pseudo-left groups that promoted it as a substitute for the building of a revolutionary party of the working class, are responsible for the present political situation, which confronts Brazilian workers with grave dangers.

The president of the House of Deputies in the Brazilian Congress, Eduardo Cunha, of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), an erstwhile ally of the Rousseff government, has called for members of the body to remain in Brasilia through Friday in anticipation of the country’s Supreme Federal Tribunal responding to questions on the rules governing impeachment, allowing the process to begin.

Cunha, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, is charged by federal prosecutors with receiving as much as $40 million in Petrobras-linked bribes for himself and his political allies, using an evangelical mega-church to launder the money. He is accused of personally socking away $5 million in bribe money in secret Swiss bank accounts.

As of Friday March 4^th, democracy ended in Turkey, but you’d hardly have known it by reading the international ‘news’ at the major (and at most of the minor) US-based ‘news’ sites, as of around 4PM Eastern time in the US, nearly a day after the event.

The New York Times World News section online buried nearly a third of the way down the main page, “Turkey Seizes Newspaper, Zaman, as Press Crackdown Continues», immediately below «Gunmen Kill 16 at Nursing Home in Yemen». The news report didn’t even mention that the government-seizure of Turkey’s largest newspaper and its associated equivalent of America’s AP news-service constitutes the signal event in Turkish President Erdogan’s ending of his country’s democracy. It’s like: when did the NYT ever report that George W. Bush had lied about the evidence he had regarding «Saddam’s WMD»? Never.

Nonetheless, that page’s box which was headlined «Most Emailed» showed: «1. Turkey Seizes Newspaper Zaman, as Press Crackdown Continues». No matter how much the Times’ management wanted to downplay the event and its significance, readers still were emailing it more than any other story in the entire section. Apparently, reader-interest is one thing, but what the management want the readers to be informed about is something quite different (and that’s not even talking about accuracy, but deception is rampant in America’s mainstream and almost all of its non-mainstream ‘news’ reporting). Perhaps the corporation makes up for it in advertising-income from their major advertisers, who don’t want the public to have their eyes focused on certain things (such as that NATO, and Turkey’s being in NATO, aren’t about ‘American values’ nor ‘US national security’, but about ultimately conquering Russia). And people still subscribe to it? Yes, they do; they pay their good money for that bad ‘journalism’; after all, that’s ‘journalism’ which wins lots of US national awards (not that that’s any authentic indication of the newspaper’s quality – it’s not.)

By contrast: Britain’s Independent came closer to the mark of reality, placing the story front and large on its homepage as the top news-story of all, which it actually is: «Seizure of Newspaper Could Cost Turkey Its Place in Europe, Warns EU Official». (But, maybe not its place in the American-run NATO – after all, the US aristocracy needs Turkey for things like shooting down Russian bombers that are killing jihadists who want to replace Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad’s secular, non-sectarian, government, which the US has long been trying to overthrow.)

The Huffington Post’s homepage had as its lead headline, «155 Delegates at Stake», and 20% down the page headlined «Turkish Police Fire Tear Gas At Newspaper As EU Officials Lament Press Record». That news-report was from Reuters, not HuffPo, and the headline was rather ho-hum and certainly ignored the real story here, but having to go 20% down the homepage to find it isn’t quite so terrible, even if that’s not where it belongs – it belongs at the very top of the homepage (and with a headline like «Democracy Ends in Turkey», which fairly represents both the event and its significance.)

Meanwhile, HuffPost’s Worldpost section itself also didn’t lead with this story, but instead with, «A Dangerous Country for Women: The Shocking Reality Of The Sexual Violence In Papua New Guinea» – a tragic cultural reality there, but no actual news-story, much less a news-story that will possibly affect the future history of the entire world. Then, was shown as only an AP headline, down below all of the featured stories (the ones that had pictures there), down in the lower portion of HuffPost’s Worldpost section, was this: «Protestors Met With Tear Gas After Turkey Seizes Control Of Newspaper». That’s even worse than the NYT. However, unlike the NYT, a reader’s access to all of HP is free; so, readers’ pocketbooks aren’t being charged to read whatever it is.

Why one would pay for any ‘news’ medium, in the US, is a problematic question, given the almost uniformly low quality of the news-service they’re all providing to their readers.

Has the US aristocracy’s manipulation of its ‘news’ ‘reporting’ ever been more blatant than is the case today? Not only does the ‘news’ lack the important relevant historical, cultural, and political, context, in order for it to be able to be at all accurately interpreted and understood by readers, but the news-placement is obviously driven by other considerations than to serve the readers’ needs – such as the readers’ needs for the most-significant stories to be in the most-prominent positions.

Ulterior motives drive America’s ‘news’ media. To call that a ‘free’ press is to beg the question: Who owns the press, and whose interests are the employees of ‘news’ organizations (the reporters and the editors) actually being hired to serve? The advertisers’? The owners’? Surely not the subscribers.

If America’s ‘news’ media aren’t trusted, there’s very sound reason for that: they shouldn’t be; and that’s because there’s no intelligent reason for the public to trust them. None.

Abbiamo un nuovo  Comandante supremo alleato in Europa: il generale Curtis Scaparrotti dell’esercito degli Stati uniti. Scelto secondo la procedura democratica della Nato. Il presidente Obama – che è allo stesso tempo capo di stato, capo del governo e comandante in capo delle forze armate – ha nominato il generale Scaparrotti comandante del Comando europeo degli Stati uniti, carica che gli dà diritto di assumere contemporaneamente quella di Comandante supremo alleato in Europa. Il Consiglio Nord Atlantico, composto dai rappresentanti dei 28 Stati membri, ha quindi approvato la nomina.

Prosegue così la «tradizione» secondo cui il Comandante supremo in Europa deve essere sempre un generale o ammiraglio degli Stati uniti, i quali possono in tal modo controllare la Nato attraverso la propria catena di comando. Sono in mano agli Stati uniti anche gli altri comandi chiave. In Afghanistan, il generale Usa Nicholson ha assunto il comando della missione Nato «Appoggio Risoluto», sostituendo il generale Usa Campbell.

Contemporaneamente la Nato ha firmato col Kuwait l’«Accordo sul transito», che permette di creare il primo «hub» (scalo aeroportuale di transito) della Alleanza atlantica nel Golfo. Esso servirà non solo ad accrescere l’invio di forze e materiali militari in Afghanistan, ma anche alla «cooperazione pratica della Nato col Kuwait e altri partner Ici (Iniziativa di cooperazione di Istanbul), come l’Arabia Saudita».

Partner sostenuti segretamente dagli Usa nella guerra che fa strage di civili nello Yemen. In base a un piano del Pentagono approvato dal presidente Obama – riporta il New York Times (14 marzo) – è stato costituito un gruppo di pianificazione composto da 45 ufficiali Usa, agli ordini del generale Mundy dei marines: esso fornisce all’Arabia Saudita e ai suoi alleati informazioni, raccolte con droni-spia,  sugli obiettivi  da colpire nello Yemen, e addestra con forze speciali unità anfibie degli Emirati per uno sbarco nello Yemen.

In tale quadro assume particolare importanza la decisione del presidente Obama di mettere il generale Joseph Votel, capo del Comando delle operazioni speciali, alla testa del Comando centrale Usa, nella cui «area di responsabilità» rientrano il Medio Oriente, l’Asia centrale e l’Egitto. Ciò conferma – come sottolineava il Washington Post nel 2012 – «la preferenza della amministrazione Obama per lo spionaggio e l’azione coperta piuttosto che per l’uso della forza convenzionale».

È lo stesso Presidente degli Stati uniti – riportava nel 2012 il New York Times in una inchiesta, confermata da una successiva del 25 aprile 2015 – ad approvare la «kill list», aggiornata di continuo, comprendente persone di tutto il mondo che, giudicate nocive per gli Stati uniti e i loro interessi, sono condannate segretamente a morte con l’accusa di terrorismo.

Anche se con l’intervista a The Atlantic Obama si è tolto dei sassolini dalla scarpa, restano i macigni che pesano sulla sua amministrazione, come sulle precedenti. Tra questi, come emerso dalle mail della Clinton, l’autorizzazione segreta di Obama per l’operazione coperta in Libia, coordinata con l’atttacco Nato dall’esterno. Il cui scopo reale era bloccare il piano di Gheddafi di creare una moneta africana, in alternativa al dollaro e al franco Cfa, che avrebbe danneggiato le multinazionali e i gruppi finanziari occidentali.

L’ordine di demolire lo Stato libico è venuto, prima che dal presidente degli Stati uniti e dalla gerarchia dei suoi alleati, dalla cupola del potere economico e finanziario, di quell’1% che arriva a possedere più del restante 99% della popolazione mondiale.

 Manlio Dinucci

We live in a world where the difference between assets and liabilities has been blurred. In the old days, an asset was something you “owned” while a liability was something you “owed”. Over the years as everything became securitized, someone else’s liability is now routinely someone’s asset but ONLY thought of as an asset. It has always been this way but in the past what used to be seen as “someone’s liability” is now ONLY seen as “someone’s asset”.

In an article peened by Doug Short last week we can see how far this anomaly has gone

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/03/11/uncle-sams-largest-asset-student-loans-haunt-us-for-years/ .

Looking at the asset side of federal government “total financial assets” we can see how crazy this concept has become.

THE LARGEST financial asset held by the federal government is “student loans” making up 45% of the pie. I am sure you see the problem with this but I think it needs to be spelled out because it is the core of how far down the rabbit hole we have gone!

I would ask, how is this an asset? We are talking about a $1 trillion yoke around the necks of our youth. Can this generation pay it off? College kids are getting out of school (with or without a degree) and entering a labor market where jobs are simply not available. I would contend this student loan bubble is no “asset” at all, it is a liability to those who owe it and a liability to the government at the same time. It will be seen as a liability to the government when they are forced to “foreclose”. Written into law now is the fact that this debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The only way this can be seen as an asset is the “control” it will afford over the future lives of an entire generation!

Stocks (equities) have always been seen as an asset. It turns out now however that the ONLY buyer of significance recently have been the corporations themselves

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-14/bloomberg-stumbles-only-one-buyer-keeping-bull-market-alive .

Corporate America has gone on a borrowing binge, ruined their balance sheets (again) and used this debt to purchase their own shares. This has been the “support”. Once this process slows (or stops), will corporations be able to pay this debt back by selling their shares? We already know GAAP earnings per share are shrinking even with less float outstanding combined with bloated balance sheets, will these truly be seen an asset in a bear market?

Real estate is another area seen as a traditional asset. The fact that real estate is taxed each year may end up changing this view. Many older people who bought their homes 25 years ago or more are seeing the taxes (and annual repairs) absolutely dwarf what they originally had to pay for their property. “Expenses” to the point they may not even be able to afford a home that is “owned” free and clear of all debt!

The classic asset is “money in the bank”. Here we have a twofold problem. First, legally your “deposit” is no longer a deposit, it is a “loan”. With the new bail in legislation, when you “put” money in the bank you immediately become a “creditor” of the bank. The bank is not “holding” your money for your benefit, you are in fact lending money to the bank and become an unsecured lender …at the VERY BOTTOM of the totem pole. In fact, the derivatives owned/owed by your bank has leaped to the very top of the creditor list and will be paid first when the banks fail.

The second problem is the most significant and probably least seen of all, “what” is it exactly your bank “owes you”? They owe you a currency whether it be dollars, euros, yen, francs or pounds. And what are these exactly? …The liabilities of another country or another people. For simplicity let’s just look at dollars. What exactly is “a dollar” (federal reserve note). The simple answer is “not what it used to be”. A dollar today cannot actually be defined and I challenge anyone to answer with other than what the Constitutional definition is. The only way to bring dollars into existence is via “debt”, someone must “borrow” in order to create new dollars. It doesn’t matter whether it is you, me, a corporation or the U.S. Treasury, new dollars cannot be created unless someone “borrows” them into existence.

All currencies today are thus, they are ALL liabilities of the issuer yet considered an asset by the holder. In other words, the “wealth” of anyone holding a currency depends on the “performance” of the borrower (the issuing sovereign). The problem is obvious, there are virtually NO ASSETS today where an investor/saver can place their capital that is not someone else’s liability … except physical gold or silver (or other unencumbered God created asset such as diamonds).

This problematic situation to this point has yet to be understood because the credit Ponzi scheme has continued to work and has veiled the reality. Globally and systemically the world has arrived at “debt saturation” which obviously spells the limit to the Ponzi scheme. Debt growth cannot continue and thus can no longer feed the Ponzi scheme. In other words, we are facing a credit contraction where the world will be shown their assets in reality were nothing more than someone else’s failed and devalued liabilities.

It is this very simple core reason that gold (and silver) which are no one else’s liability will be seen for what they truly are. Real money, the ultimate in real assets and no one else’s liability! There is a very big difference between an asset and a liability, the world is about to be “schooled” on this fact!

If ever there was a situation where everyone would lose, some more heavily than others, it would be a plebiscite about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights on the marriage equality issue. 

Australia is facing that very point, with a conservative government keen to force the matter after pressure from various circles, not least of all its leadership’s refusal to permit party members a free vote on the subject.  The Australian Christian Lobby has similarly been pressing for such action, as have been a few marriage equality groups keen to provide some political ballast.  Such a political move risks becoming political dynamite, a point already being made by a few election watchers.

Certain moral and ethical questions should never be put to the vote.  To have a plebiscite, for instance, on the death penalty, would be unthinkably foolish.  Given the right circumstances, a vengeful vote is always possible. Questions can be shaped, as can their responses.

Groups such as Australian Marriage Equality have opposed the plebiscite move, largely because Parliament is already capable of enacting such legislation.  “Even if Australians overwhelmingly vote for marriage equality, it will still lie in the hands of politicians to actually change the law.”[1]

Such plebiscites, the group argues, are not compulsory, and tend to be “open to political manipulation because it isn’t regulated by strict rules like a referendum or an election.”

Even some government figures have expressed the view that such a plebiscite will not be binding.  A reactionary Eric Abetz, for one, has argued that every Coalition MP, notwithstanding the results, will still be allowed to cast their vote on same-sex marriage.  “I would have to determine whether [the plebiscite] really is an accurate reflection [of the national view], whether it is all above board or whether the question is stacked, whether all sides received public funding.”[2]

The legal evolution towards the concept of single-sex unions has been evident in a spate of decisions in Australian law. But the High Court has generally preferred legislative intervention on the issue, accepting in 2013 that the Australian Commonwealth has the power to legislate on marriage, whatever its form.  Judges have been shown to be cognisant of the fact that the nature of unions has changed.

Politicians in Australia have, by way of contrast, stalled on the issue, with the main parties reluctant to take a strong legislative stance and tamper with a constitutional provision that is silent on the issue of what modern unions tend to look like.  It is false to assume, on that score, that Australia’s Parliament is hamstrung on the issue as its Irish counterpart, which could only pass a law on same-sex marriage after constitutional tinkering via a referendum.

The Irish constitution of 1937 reads like a sociological document in time, noting how a woman’s role is “within the home… without which the common good cannot be achieved,” while also affording recognition of “the family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of society”.  There is no such equivalent provision in Australia, which has retained a rather dull language for most of its constitutional provisions.

Instead of taking the high ground and assuming that such silence would have easily allowed for legislative change, it has been left to the states to develop the law on civil-unions and registered partnerships.

Those familiar with the Australian constitution will just as well know that the marriage power was purposely inserted to allow the Commonwealth power to prevent various unions from being recognised in the first place.  A favourite target in 1901, rather than being same-sex unions, were the polygamous alliances of Mormons. It was always assumed that Parliament could alter the constitution of marriage at any given time to reflect the community expectations of the day.

It would, however, take the Howard government, fearing the erosions posed the evolution of family, to define the content of marriage as being between a man and a woman to the exclusion of others.  This incorporated at once the common law definition of marriage, a definition that looks mustier with each passing year.

The situation has not been helped even in the supposed left of the political spectrum.  Social conservatives in the Australian Labor Party have previously baulked at the issue of removing gender from the issue of determining what a marriage might be.  Legislative bills have tended to float around in Parliament without resolution, becoming moribund.

Then there is a pure economic issue at stake. Plebiscites cost far more than a parliamentary vote.  The costs gauged by a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) comes to a figure of $525 million. (Running the 1999 referendum cost $66.8 million.)  $280 million in lost productivity is also factored into this amount.  Increased anxiety from members of the LGBTI community, seen as a measure of stresses on mental health, and a range of other losses, are also considered.

The most impressive point against such a plebiscite lies in its estranging value.  As the veteran constitutional lawyer George Williams explains, “In putting a yes/no proposition to the community, referendums necessarily polarise debate.  As a result, even if the referendum did succeed, it may leave bitterness and division in its wake.”[3]  Such a move is ultimately set to alienate, and this is a point the Australian Christian Lobby know only too well.

Notes:

1. http://www.australianmarriageequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AME-Fact-Sheet-Plebiscite.pdf
2. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jan/27/eric-abetz-coalition-mps-will-not-be-bound-by-plebiscite-on-marriage-equality
3. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/samesex-marriage-five-reasons-why-a-plebiscite-is-a-dud-idea-20150812-gix5xx.html

Modern state-corporate capitalism is stripping the environment bare through unsustainable levels of consumption. It is legitimised by a deceitful ideology that attempts to justify and sell a system which by its very nature is designed to benefit a minority at the expense of the majority.

This model thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment by powerful transnational corporations. Look no further to see how intellectual property rights and agricultural subsidies and the WTO serves the interests of these corporations, for instance, or the roles that ‘free trade’ agreements,’structural adjustment‘ and the undermining of non-compliant governments play. Moreover, economic neoliberalism strides the world hand in glove with militarism. The outcome is a programme of endless destabilisations, conflicts and wars over finite resources to enrich elite interests.

In the area of food and agriculture, there has been a programmed eradication of indigenous, productive farming across the planet. This dovetails with an urban-centric model of ‘development’ underpinned by ‘free trade’ and the appropriation of wealth by a select number of individuals and powerful private corporations, on the one hand, and increasing hardship, austerity and poverty for the rest of the population on the other. These corporations, with the full backing of the state (we are not talking about some notional form of ‘free market’ capitalism), seek to mould the very essence of existence, from cradle to grave and from patented genetically modified seed to plate.

All this is sold to the masses as the part of the ongoing quest to achieve human well-being, measured in terms of endless GDP growth. It’s based on an ideology that conveniently associates such growth with corporate profit, boosted by stock buy-backs, financial speculation and bubbles, massive arms deals, colonialism masquerading as philanthropy, manipulated and rigged markets, corrupt and secretive trade deals, outsourced jobs, job automation and a resource-grabbing militarism. That such a parasitical system could ever bring about a ‘happy’ human condition for the majority is unfathomable. Yet state-corporate capitalism’s great con-trick is to fool people that it can.

Happiness and well-being

It is interesting to note that 10 years ago, the first ever ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81^st, Japan 95^th and the US 150^th. The index was based on consumption levels, life expectancy and reported happiness. Although Vanuatu was top, it only ranked 207^th out of 233 economies when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2009, Costa Rica topped the list of the World Happy Planet Index.

This is not to imply that material wealth does not impact well-being or feelings of happiness. Many other surveys indicate it does. However, less wealthy countries often do well in these types of surveys because in these societies (and certain surveys) cultural priority is placed on family and friends, on social capital rather than financial capital and on social equity rather than corporate power. This might explain why nations such as the US and UK, which are highly unequal and are the drivers of neoliberalism, don’t always fare too well in such surveys when compared to other rich nations.

According to the UN World Happiness Reports of both 2013 and 2014, Denmark was the planet’s happiest country. Denmark is not just wealthy, but its people feel safe because emphasis is placed on social equality and robust welfare policies. Indeed, Scandinavian countries usually come out near the top of quality of life and well-being surveys.

Over the last 60 years, material living standards in the West have improved, but how wealth is distributed is what really matters. For example, take the case of the UK. Much of manufacturing has been outsourced to cheap labour economies; welfare, unions and livelihoods have been attacked; massive levels of tax evasion/avoidance persist; neoliberal policies have resulted in privatisation, deregulation and national and personal debt spiralling; the cost of living has increased as public assets have been sold off to profiteering cartels; taxpayers’ money has been turned into corporate welfare for the banks; and the richest 1,000 families in the UK have seen their net worth more than double since 2009, in the worst recession since the Great Depression, to £547bn, while ‘austerity’ is imposed on everyone else.

Wealthy Western elites use up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources and become richer, but many citizens who live in Western nations live in misery. And this is not even accounting for the tens of millions elsewhere who in places like Libya, Syria or Iraq whose countries were thrown into conflict and chaos by the designs of a US-Anglo elite for the sake of pipelines, resources or geopolitical motives.

Self-interest or public good?

It is clear whose happiness and well-being matters most and whose does not matter at all. Consider the following extract from an article by Andrew Gavin Marshall:

“At the top of the list of those who run the world, we have the major international banking houses, which control the global central banking system. From there, these dynastic banking families created an international network of think tanks, which socialised the ruling elites of each nation and the international community as a whole, into a cohesive transnational elite class. The foundations they established helped shape civil society both nationally and internationally, playing a major part in the funding – and thus coordinating and co-opting – of major social-political movements.”

While mouthing clichés about ‘democracy’, ‘growth’ and individual ‘freedom’, just who actually controls the world (and for what purpose) is not an issue the mainstream media and mainstream politicians like to raise. In 2008, David Rothkopf published his book ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making’:

“The superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet–flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid… They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, nongovernmental organizations, spiritual leaders and other shadow elites.” Project Censored (‘Exposing the transnational ruling class’)

These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. They decide which wars are to be fought and why and formulate global economic policy.

In India, in a headlong rush to urbanise (under the advice of the World Bank), its cities are increasingly defined by their traffic-jammed flyovers cutting through fume choked neighbourhoods that are denied access to clean drinking water and a decent infrastructure. Privatisation and crony capitalism are the order of the day.

For all the talk of India’s high GDP growth in recent years, India has slipped down the World Happiness Index from 111^th in 2014 to 117^th in 2015. Again, the Nordic countries were at the top but with Switzerland having displaced Denmark for first place. The index takes into account not just economic measures, but also social and cultural capital, including positive social relations, characterized by values such as trust, benevolence and shared social identities that contribute positively to economic outcomes as well as delivering happiness directly.

Away from the cities, the influence of transnational agribusiness and state-corporate grabs for land are leading to violent upheaval, conflict and ecological destruction, all to fuel a model of development which effectively such the lifeblood from rural communities and drive an unsustainable ‘nine-day wonder’ (how Gandhi described it) model of ‘development’.

The links between the Monsanto-Syngenta-Walmart-backed Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the associated US sanctioning and backing of the opening up of India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests have shown what the models of ‘development’ being pushed onto people really entails, not least in terms of the powerful corporate interests that really benefit and the ordinary people that lose out [see this and this].

But we are told that this is ‘development’ and ‘good’ for ‘the country’. It depends on just ‘who’ the country is meant to be and therefore whom all this turmoil (development) happens to be good for. Aside from transnational corporations, we know who it is good for: the combined wealth of India’s richest 296 individuals is $478 billion, some 22% of India’s GDP. This is larger than the GDPs of the UAE, which stood at $402 billion, South Africa ($350 billion) and Singapore ($308 billion).

The model of neoliberal state-capitalist development being imposed on the world (under the benign title ‘globalisation’) serves the vested interests of an increasingly globalised and integrated elite.

Could GMO help?

There is much rhetoric about a brave new world of crops engineered to eradicate disease, boost yields, fight pests and adapt to climatic conditions (etc), but the reality is hundreds of thousands of farmers in India have killed themselves as a result of economic distress. Many of these suicides are directly linked to GM, while many are also associated with wider issues, such as the growing of cash crops for export and the exposure to international markets and trade rules which serve the interests of global agribusiness.

The reality of GM is also ‘ecocide’ and ‘genocide’ in South America. The reality is a flawed technology that might appear to work in some respects within the controls and confines of a laboratory but which is pushed by an industry and powerful think tanks that drive a global GMO agenda (both commercial and geopolitical) by infiltrating research institutes, trade deals and public bodies, corrupting practices and manipulating data and by employing rhetoric about ‘feeding the world’, which disregards the actual evidence pertaining to the root causes of poverty and hunger.

This technology is integral to a model of food and agriculture controlled from laboratory to plate by a group of major transnational seed, pesticide, food processing and food commodity trading companies and giant retailers. This group is tied to and fuels a system of export-oriented, urban-focussed agriculture, underpinned by trade rules, deals and agreements that major members of this cartel help draw up.

And science is pressed into serving this agenda. Many molecular biologists make an excellent living on the back of lavish career-building funding by touting the supposed virtues of GM. And they too often like to promote the technology on the basis of uniformed personal opinion. Like the companies themselves, these figures also have a vested interest in expanding the use of this technology.

We constantly hear about how GM and the company and scientists behind it are serving the public good, as if science and GM exist in a political and economic vacuum. But any talk about funding, power relations and the ownership and control of this technology is to be dismissed with shouts of ‘conspiracy theory’ or some tirade of smear-ridden abuse.

Could GM (or even synthetic biology for that matter) ever be a viable addition to the food and agriculture? Possibly, if it were ever to be shown that it had no adverse environmental, ecological and health impacts and could perform better than non-GM; and only if it were not to be used as a strategy to sideline the need to tackle poverty, hunger, inequality and the undermining of food security by eradicating a globalised system of food and agriculture controlled by large corporations that fuel and benefits from that system.

GMO and the bottom line

Unfortunately, GM is being used to reinforce the status quo. As it currently stands, it is a political and ideological device: a bogus techno quick-fix being promoted by vested interests that neatly diverts attention from the need to address the structural factors that drive inequality, poverty and food insecurity and which those interests profit from and helped to create.

And the aim is not just to reinforce the status quo but to extend it further: to bring nations under the control of a few corporations by getting countries to rely on their patented seeds and chemical inputs: for instance, read this on Monsanto in Ukraine, this about US aid and El Salvador and this about Zimbabwe.

Insert a gene into an already high-yielding conventionally bred seed and patent it and get a country to plant it and rely on it, and you insert a (financially lucrative) mechanism of political leverage over that country. Because what is the purpose other than that, given GM currently provides no discernible, sustainable benefits when compared to non-GM options?

The GM project and the model of ‘development’ it is tied to a mindset that regards other (non-westernised) social systems as deficient because they do not comply with Western notions of what life is and how it is to be lived – or, more specifically in this case, what food is and how it should be grown. Highly productive smallholder farming, organic agriculture, agroecology and a locally grown nutritious, diverse range of food crops are to be cast aside in favour of a ‘superior’ system based on petrochemical-intensive industrial farms and agribusiness supplied and processed junk food. Throughout the world, ‘corporate America/Europe’ is conveniently on hand to destroy the former and impose the latter all under the banner of ‘progress’ with devastating effects.

As with much of this ‘development’ strategy, GM is not being done for the public good, despite what its supporters say. The development of agribusiness is not the same as developing agriculture, despite what Bill Gates or the industry might like to think.

Consider that Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant brought in just under $12m in 2015, and Vice-President Rob Fraley brought in just under $3.4m. That’s some income for two individuals who are not even the main shareholders. In January 2015, Monsanto reported a profit of $243m (down from $368m the previous year).

Consider too the following quote from this piece on the Bloomberg website in 2014:

“Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core U.S. market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent.”

In the same piece, “Glyphosate really crushed it,” Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co stated: meaning the sales of glyphosate were a major boost.

The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation – and the unflinching defence of glyphosate, no matter how carcinogenic to humans it is and, more to the point, how much Monsanto knows itis and has known it for years.

Noam Chomsky underlines the commercial imperative:

“… the CEO of a corporation has actually a legal obligation to maximize profit and market share. Beyond that legal obligation, if the CEO doesn’t do it, and, let’s say, decides to do something that will, say, benefit the population and not increase profit, he or she is not going to be CEO much longer — they’ll be replaced by somebody who does do it.”

Technology in itself is neither good nor bad. What determines its impact depends on how it is used, who controls that use and the economic system within which it operates.

“American foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural exports, not on industrial exports as people might think. It’s by agriculture and control of the food supply that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.” Professor Michael Hudson

Despite the promise of the green revolution, hundreds of millions still go to bed hungry, food has become denutrified, functioning rural economies have been destroyed, diseases have spiked in correlation with the increase in use of pesticides and GMOs, soil has been eroded or degraded, diets are less diverse, global food security has been undermined and access to food is determined by manipulated international markets and speculation – not supply and demand.

Food and agriculture has become wedded to power structures that have restructured indigenous agriculture across the world and tied it to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for a manipulated and volatile international market and indebtedness to international financial institutions.

In itself, technology is neutral. But to understand how technology is used in the real world we must appreciate who owns and controls technology, whose interests it ultimately serves and how it is forced onto the market and functions in an economic system driven by profit and geopolitics and the compulsion to capture and control markets, while all the time hiding behind an ideology of ‘free choice’ and ‘democracy’.

Berta Cáceres was an award-winning land activist, a leader in her community and a mother of four. She was shot four times while in bed, at 1am on 2 March. As a founding member of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Cáceres fought against logging, hydro-power and mining projects threatening indigenous people in Honduras. Her death has exposed the poor judgement of “impact investor” bank FMO, the bully tactics of mining corporations, and ‘murky situations‘ from Clinton’s time as Secretary of State.

Amnesty International and COPINH have already raised concerns about the investigation into Cáceres’ murder. Mexican activist Gustavo Castro Soto survived the killing by playing dead and was later detained by police. He was not treated well. The Mexican Ambassador almost got him on a flight to safety but ‘thugs’ at the airport dragged him back into custody.

Honduras: Deep failures in investigation into #BertaCaceres killing put many at riskhttps://t.co/Wh6zypbktg pic.twitter.com/1TUyFCp7xp

— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) March 8, 2016

Berta Cáceres was remarkable for her dedication to many environmental campaigns. Since the coup in 2009, corporate interests have led to land disputes, with the army siding with logging and mining companies over local populations. Hydroelectric projects were and are pushed forward to provide power for these industries. Local communities do not do well when mining comes to town, and have fought against an increasingly aggressive state to protect their land and way of life. Berta Cáceres dedicated her life to that struggle. Her success in preventing the Agua Zarca dam earned her the Goldman Environmental Prize, but it may have cost her her life.

FMO – the ‘entrepreneurial development bank’

A petition has been launched on sumofus.org to persuade Dutch investment bank FMO to withdraw from the hydro project still planned for Agua Zarca. In FMO’s defence, they have moved the project downstream (where the river is less sacred?) and it will no longer be a dam, but a wier re-channeling the water to power turbines – and no flooding.

The bank responded to news of Berta Cáceres’ murder by writing a letter to the President of Honduras, Don Hernández Alvarado, expressing their regret and supporting her freedom of speech. It is a pity they did not do so before her death. The bank confirmed to The Canary that they have been involved in the project since 2013. This was the same year that then COPINH leader, Tomas Garcia, was shot dead by the Honduran army during a peaceful protest. FMO explained that they have had direct contact with the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), several times:

various colleagues, including our Environmental & Social Specialist on the project had several meetings with COPINH representatives.

So, why didn’t they listen when the people said ‘NO’?  It’s true that FMO is far more socially aware than other banks, describing itself as an “impact investor” with a goal of “creating sustainable economic growth”. But there is a disconnect between ‘quality of life’ in material terms, and as defined by the local communities battling for years to protect their sacred river. Could it be that the darn natives just don’t know what’s good for them? Furthermore, investment commenced in 2013, the same year in which Berta Cáceres said:

The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top. I want to live, there are many things I still want to do in this world. I take precautions, but in the end, in this country where there is total impunity I am vulnerable. When they want to kill me, they will do it.

However, the flexibility that FMO has already demonstrated, by changing the location and design of this hydro project, puts them in a better light than some of the mining interests involved in Honduras. NB: No still means no.

Mining interests

A Council of Hemispheric Affairs overview of mining reform in Honduras by Dr. Lynn Holland found that:

The devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 made it possible to change mining law to more decisively favor mining companies. With public attention focused on recovery and reconstruction, Honduran Congress was able to slip the General Mining Law through just four weeks after the hurricane hit. Much of it had been written by elements of the mining industry itself.

Canada‘s major role in Honduran mining is underappreciated. The biggest gold miners in Honduras are Canadian and operate with backing from the World Bank, to condemnation from COPINH. Mines have been closed after pollution events, but prosecution rarely occurs. A Report from MBendi (investor intelligence) lists several active gold opportunities in Honduras, and mentions other mineral deposits of commercial interest.

Mining in Honduras is not new, and ‘artisanal mining’ has supported local communities for many years. But Canadian and US mining outfits have displaced traditional workers and often operate with a heavy military presence.  A bunch of new mining concessions have recently come up for grabs in Honduras – just when activism was making some headway.  Director of the Honduran Mining institute, Agapito Rodríguez, boasted that investment would hit $2bn (unlikely) in 2015, because they had “laid the foundations and freed up a little more than 250,000ha with the objective of attracting fresh investment” in 2014. It could well be that the murder of Berta Cáceres heralds a new onslaught against the Honduran people and their land. Honduras is already the most dangerous place on earth for environmental activists. Certainly the breezy phrase “free-up” is gravely at odds with an illegitimate ‘democracy’ where thugs remove anyone who gets in its way.

The coup and the Clinton connection

The military coup in 2009 did nothing to protect Honduran land or people. President Manuel Zelaya had moved towards grassroots social movements, “the kinds of social reforms that the United States has always opposed” (Chomsky), and deals with Venezuela. The military kidnapped President Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country in his pyjamas. This was certainly a coup d’etat and was defined as such by the UN, the EU and other Latin America nations and dictionaries everywhere.

As Obama’s Secretary of State, Clinton refused to call what had happened a ‘coup’ in public. Doing so would have automatically cut off US non-humanitarian aid to Honduras. Members of Clinton’s own party wrote to Barak Obama about the outrage. But Hillary did not relent, despite being informed that the coup question was an “open and shut” case in US embassy cables.

In Clinton’s memoir, she admits that

In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico…We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.

Clinton’s emails revealed that she played a crucial role, delaying any action that could quickly restore Zelaya. Grahame Russell from Rights Action is not alone in describing the coup as “US and Canadian-backed“. Media Lens has bemoaned the under-reporting of Hillary Clinton’s connection to the state of affairs in Honduras in the US print media, as has FAIR. But it is online. The Nation ran an article titled, The Clinton-backed Honduran Regime is picking-off indigenous leaders the day after Cáceres’ murder.

The Clintons have a great ally in Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra. Along with media outlets, Giustra has gold mining interests in Africa. He is known in the industry as a ‘mining promoter’ and presumably connects investors and miners. Although Bill and Frank like to fly around Latin America, and do philanthropic work together, Bill did bump into Frank in Kazakhstan when Frank was doing a spot of uranium shopping.

The Clintons’ connection with the Canadian mining magnate is labeled a threat to her campaign by Bloomberg Politics. Certainly, The Clintons’ ties to big business have dogged her campaign, and many democrats are uncomfortable with her performance as Secretary of State. Revelations about the Clinton Foundation do little to dispel the image of Hillary as an entrenched member of the establishment – let alone the oligarch hegemony. Given that her nomination looks increasingly insecure, Cáceres’ murder is untimely for them both.

Thousands turned out for Berta Cáceres’ funeral and she will be profoundly mourned by the community, and country, for which she did so much. One can imagine that to the gunmen who fired their weapons, she was just a loud-mouthed woman who needed to be silenced. But the truth is that Berta Cáceres’ fight connected her to international organisations and international politics still reeling from post-internet accountability. They would have done better to let her live.

Get involved!

• Sign the petition to FMO Bank calling them to disinvest in the Agua Zarca project
• Support and follow the work of COPINH
• Learn how to protect your community from mining (and fracking) here
• Take action against mega-mining
• Support The Canary 

On March 14th, Iran announced that it will never pay the $10.5B that a U.S. court demanded it pay for the 9/11 attacks.

The same Bill-Clinton-appointed judge who had ruled, on 29 September 2015, that Saudi Arabia has sovereign immunity for 9/11 and so can’t be sued for it, ruled recently, on March 9th that Iran doesn’t have sovereign immunity and fined Iran $10.5 billion to be paid to 9/11 victims and insurers; but, on March 14, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Iran won’t pay, because, as the Ministry’s spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari put it, “The ruling is ludicrous and absurd to the point that it makes a mockery of the principle of justice while [it] further tarnishes the US judiciary’s reputation.”

The United States is allied with Iran’s enemy Saudi Arabia, the largest purchaser of U.S.-made weapons, and also the top influence in the Gulf Cooperation Council of Arabic oil royal families regarding where they buy their weapons. Those purchases, which are crucial to the stockholders in Lockheed Martin and other U.S. weapons-makers, are determined basically by the Saud family, the owners of Saudi Arabia. The Sauds, as the owners of the leading fundamentalist-Sunni country, including sole ownership of the world’s largest oil company Aramco, also own Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, and are therefore the leaders of Islam worldwide, because all Muslims (not only fundamentalist Sunnis) are required to bow down in prayer five times every day facing Mecca — facing the Saud family and the clergy that authorize continued ownership of Saudi Arabia by the Saud family: the Wahhabist clergy. Back in 1744, the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad Ibn Wahhab, and the founder of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Saud, jointly swore an eternal oath that Saud’s descendants would own the country, and that Wahhab’s clergymen would grant them God’s approval of their ownership and of their right to conquer other lands to expand the faith. (Religions throughout history have mainly been spread by conquest.)

Part of that oath was also that the Sauds would exterminate Shia Muslims, so as to unify Islam worldwide as fundamentalist Sunnis, in order to enable a unified (100% Sunni) faith to take over the entire world. Iran is the center of Shia Islam, and so is especially the target of the Sauds to conquer and ‘convert’ the world to Wahhabism — which is called “Salafism” outside Saudi Arabia, and which is known outside Islam as simply fundamentalist Sunni Islam. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other global-jihadist groups, all are Salafists; they’re all Sunni fundamentalists. Shia Islam has no real equivalent to this “global Caliphate” idea, the goal of conquering the world to ‘convert’ all lands someday to Islam. Jihadism, in that sense, doesn’t exist, except in the Sunni variant of Islam. Perhaps this is what Mr. Ansari meant by calling that judge’s verdict “ludicrous and absurd.” (However, Shia Islam tends to be more anti-Israeli  than does Sunni Islam; but, again, that’s no sort of global  aspiration; it’s strictly  Middle-Eastern.) (And, of course, historians, and the U.S. government, know these things, even if the U.S. public don’t — especially because it would be inconvenient for the U.S. government if the U.S. public knew what’s actually driving this nation’s foreign policies.)

According to the evidence (or alleged evidence) that the judge in this case, George B. Daniels, cited in his “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law”  — in this case called “Fiona Havlish v. Usama Bin Laden”:

Iran has been waging virtually an undeclared war against both the United States and Israel for thirty years. …Iran wages this undeclared war through asymetrical, or unconventional strategies and terrorism, often through proxies such as Hizballah, Hamas [which is actually “a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization” and as such is devoted to the destruction of Shiite Iran as well as Jewish Israel], Al Qaeda [which is likewise Salafist], and others  [all of which are Salafist]. …

For more than two decades, the IRGC [Islamic Republican Guard Corps, run by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameni] has provided funding and/or training for terrorism operations targeting American citizens, including Hizballah and Al Qaeda. [Hizballah has targeted American citizens who are serving in the U.S. military in Lebanon, because Hizballah is anti-Israeli, not because they are anti-American; and the U.S. military protect Israel. However, Al Qaeda targets non-Sunnis everywhere, and this also means that Al Qaeda is anti-Shia and aims to conquer Iran too: Al Qaeda is Salafist, dedicated to the conquest of all non-Sunni nations. Iran doesn’t fund or train its own enemies, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.] … The factual reality — as found by the 9/11 Report — is that ’the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation between terrorist organizations.’ … While Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were headquartered in Sudan in the early 1990s, Hassan al-Turabi fostered the creation of a foundation and alliance for combined Sunni and Shi’a opposition to the United States and the West, an effort that was agreed to and joined by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leaders of Al Qaeda, and by the leadership of Iran. … Thereafter, senior Al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. … In 1993, in a meeting in Khartoum, Sudan, arranged by Ali Mohamed, a confessed Al Qaeda terrorist and trainer now in a U.S. prison, … Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri met directly with Iran’s master terrorist Imad Mughniyah and Iranian officials. [Wikipedia’s article on that witness, Ali Mohamed, says: “Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, is a double agent who worked for both the CIA and Egyptian Islamic Jihad simultaneously, reporting on the workings of each for the benefit of the other.” He would tell U.S. interrogators whatever they wanted to hear — such as that Iran was significantly involved in the 9/11 plot.]

Iran’s news-report on March 14th summarizes that U.S. court decision by saying:

The court ruling is based on the 9/11 Commission Report which stated that some attackers moved through Iran and did not have their passports stamped.

The verdict comes as none of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Iranian citizens. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, while two from the United Arab Emirates [another Salafist-run country] and one each from Egypt and Lebanon [Salafists from each].       

That alleged permission for “some attackers” to move freely through Iran instead of requiring them to use other countries to transit, is the basis of the court’s blaming Iran for 9/11, even though nothing is alleged in the court’s findings, that Iran participated in the 9/11 attacks, and also despite the following being noted even in the judge’s findings: “Although Al Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh (now Guantanamo detainees) denied any reason, other than Iran’s refraining from stamping passports, for the hijackers to have traveled through Iran or any relationship between the hijackers and Hizballah, … their denials are not credible. … The actions of Iranian border authorities in refraining from stamping the passports of the Saudi hijackers vastly increased the likelihood of the operational success of the 9/11 plot.”

 Therefore, the U.S. government blames 9/11 on Iran, and only  on Iran (not at all on the Sauds and their Salafist friends). However, according to the bookkeeper and bagman for Al Qaeda — the man who travelled to collect in cash each one of the multi-million-dollar donations to Al Qaeda, with which donations the organization paid, as he said, the “salaries” of all of the fighters, including all of the 9/11 hijackers — almost all of the donors were members of the Saudi royal family, and a few of their friends.

Among the named multimillion-dollar donors were: Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Prince Waleed bin Tallal al-Saud, Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, and Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud. Furthermore, he delivered sealed letters back-and-forth between bin Laden and Turki as well as “Abdullah, Fahd, okay, Salman [the present King], Waleed bin Talal, Bandar, Turki of course, and … Shaykh Bin Baz, Shaykh Uthaimeen, Shaykh Shehri, and Shaykh Hammoud al-Uqlaa.” Bin Laden was advising them on whom the next Saudi King should be. He also advised, on that, “Halad or Shaykh Abu Hasan, Shayk Mujahideen, Shaykh Aman, and Shaykh Abul Sef … they want to know who they should support.” However, ultimately, the deciders on whom the next King should be were “Ulema [the Wahhabist clergy], essentially they are the king maker, … the people who … certify the Islamic legality of the jihad of Osama bin Laden.” He explained that the royals donated to bin Laden because he was spreading the faith and was therefore important to the Ulema — the clergy.

That’s why they funded Al Qaeda — to spread the faith. For example, “Prince Nawaf” (bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud), even though he, like “all the Prince(s), they were giving money” to Al Qaeda, was rejected  by the Ulema, “because Nawaf was known as a(n) extremely anti-Islamic person, okay, Sul — Sultan was being seen as a sodomite.” So, the ultimate people behind 9/11 were not only the Saud Princes but the Ulema — the kingmakers (who, however, are required to select the King only from among the Saud Princes).

But, like the Sauds, and their lesser royals (all of them likewise Salafist) who rule the other Arabic oil-kingdoms, the U.S. government wants to conquer (yet again, after the first  time, the 1953 coup) Iran; so, the U.S. court-system, in this decision, is declaring the Iranian government to be not just a cause, but — in effect — the sole cause, of 9/11. It’s a way to squeeze Iran, to keep it down until another ‘revolution’ there (hoped to be by the CIA, like the first one was).

And, as far as the 9/11-victim families are concerned: the U.S. government, obviously, has higher priorities than to be concerned about any sort of real “justice” for them. Punishing Iran (until it breaks, ‘America’s’ way) is far more important, to the powers-that-be in America. The victim-families can find their ‘justice’ only in heaven — if ever. (And, of course, the Salafists — including the 9/11 perpetrators — would have a different opinion regarding which individuals go to heaven, and which to hell.)

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

US special interests have been pursuing a decades-long regional agenda in Southeast Asia in an attempt to create a united supranational front with which to confront Beijing.

Exposed first in the “Pentagon Papers” in the 1970’s, it was revealed that three fronts existed along which the US sought to “contain” China; the Japan-Korea front; the India-Pakistan front; and the Southeast Asia front.

America’s military occupation of Afghanistan, Japan, and South Korea, along with the South China Sea confrontation it is cultivating against Beijing illustrate how from the 1970’s to today, the US is still actively trying to contain China along precisely these fronts.

On Monday, Palestine was awarded a full membership in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, after 57 countries votes in favor, 24 abstained and zero voted against.

The Palestinian application was filed to Holland on January 29, 2015, officially requesting membership with the International Court of Arbitration, but the United States led a strong opposition, and managed to get the court’s leadership to postpone the vote, until a special committee reviewed the application.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it send a strong letter to its Dutch counterpart, demanding that the government of Holland, which houses the court at The Hague, to revoke his decision to suspend the application, and threatened to take the case to specialized international courts.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki also held a meeting with his Dutch counterpart, on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council sessions, and asked him to find a solution to the issue, and the later promised to help in resolving it.

On its part, the Palestinian Mission in Holland also held talks with various countries, members of the court, and managed to come up with a coordinated position, before asking for a date for discussing Palestine’s full membership.

The United States, Canada and Israel strongly opposed the move, and presented a number of proposals that were meant to obstruct the vote under various “justifications,” including the claim that membership with this court requires a full membership with the United Nations.

The majority of world countries rejected those claims, and affirmed the Palestinian right to become a member with the court.

In its statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said that countries around the world strongly supported a vote on the matter, despite the fact that it is the first time since this court was established, a country is recognized as a member by voting.

The Ministry added that most world countries wanted to overcome the Israeli, American and Canadian opposition by holding a vote on Palestine’s membership.

“The United States knew very well it would be among the tiny minority that stood against Palestine’s membership with the Court; it knew that the vote would not be in its favor,” al-Maliki said, “When the US failed in preventing the vote, it withdrew from the session, while some countries abstained citing procedural justifications.”

He added that Israel, Canada and the United States abstained from the vote, citing the same procedural justifications, yet, neither Canada nor Israel actually withdrew from the session while the United States did.

After the vote, Palestine’s Ambassador in Holland, Nabil Abu Zneid, assumed his position as the official representative of Palestine, and thanked all countries that stood for Palestine and its legitimate right to become a member.

The shockingly brutal Saudi air campaign in Yemen has been led by American-made F-15 jet fighters.

The indiscriminate bombing of civilians and rescuers from the air has prompted human rights organizations to claim that some Saudi-led strikes on Yemen may amount to war crimes. At least 2,800 civilians have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the United Nations — mostly by airstrikes. The strikes have killed journalists and ambulance drivers.

The planes, made by Boeing, have been implicated in the bombing of three facilities supported by Doctors Without Borders (Médicins Sans Frontières). The U.N. Secretary General has decried “intense airstrikes in residential areas and on civilian buildings in Sanaa, including the chamber of commerce, a wedding hall, and a center for the blind,” and has warned that reports of cluster bombs being used in populated areas “may amount to a war crime due to their indiscriminate nature.”

Bombs dropped by fighter jets are pulverizing Yemen’s architectural history, possibly in violation of international humanitarian law.

A few years earlier, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfer to the Saudi government a “top priority,” according to her closest military aide.

And now, newly released emails show that her aides kept her well-informed of the approval process for a $29.4 billion sale in 2011 of up to 84 advanced F-15SA fighters, manufactured by Boeing, along with upgrades to the pre-existing Saudi fleet of 70 F-15 aircraft and munitions, spare parts, training, maintenance, and logistics.

The deal was finalized on Christmas Eve 2011. Afterward, Jake Sullivan, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and now a senior policy adviser on her presidential campaign, sent her a celebratory email string topped with the chipper message: “FYI — good news.”

The email string was part of a new batch of emails from Clinton’s private server, made public on Friday evening as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

One American official, whose name is redacted in the emails, said he had just received confirmation that Prince Salman, now the king of Saudi Arabia but at the time the senior Saudi liaison approving the weapons deal, had “signed the F-15SA LOA today” and would send scanned documents the following day.

“Not a bad Christmas present,” he added.

Another official, whose name is also redacted, confirmed that a Saudi general who had been working with U.S. officials was “pleased, as are all of us,” and said he would soon contact executives at Boeing.

The congratulatory tone continues through the email chain with other officials, also with redacted names, calling the weapons deal “Great news!”

On December 26, Jeremy Bash, then-chief of staff at the Pentagon, sent the email string, titled “F-15SA Christmas Present,” to Sullivan, who sent it to Clinton with his own note at the top.

David Sirota and Andrew Perez have previously reported for the International Business Times that Clinton’s State Department was heavily involved in approving weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. As weapons transfers were being approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Boeing made donations to the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Post revealed that a Boeing lobbyist helped with fundraising in the early stages of Hillary Clinton’s current presidential campaign.

Jeremy Bash is now managing partner at Beacon Global Strategies, a consulting firm that provides advice to Clinton on foreign policy while providing paid advice to the military contracting industry.

Lee Fang can be reached via twitter (@lhfang) or [email protected]