Aid-Money Laundering as an NGO Racket. Haiti

February 1st, 2016 by Dady Chery

It took the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti to expose the rot in the world’s charities. Well-meaning people and their governments donated about $12 billion dollars of emergency aid, virtually none of which reached individual Haitians. The funds that were delivered went mostly to enrich the donor countries’ government agencies, aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO), and the vast majority of the pledged funds were never delivered at all. Some of this disappeared money was embezzled. Two criminal cases in 2015 give a glimpse into the use of NGOs by criminal networks to launder embezzled aid money.

Aid, Mediterranean style

Rafael Blasco, one of Spain’s longest-lived and most indestructible politicians, became the first person to serve time for stealing Haitian reconstruction funds when he began a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence on June 15, 2015 for committing embezzlement of public funds, administrative prevarication, and forgery while he was the Director of the Aid Ministry in Valencia’s regional government. Although the English-language press ignored this news, in Spain, the “Aid Case” was a major scandal that the media followed for three years, until the Spanish Supreme Court denied Blasco’s final appeal for clemency in May 2015.

According to a Valencia High Court and the Spanish Supreme Court, Blasco received his sentence for running a criminal ring that had syphoned off all but 3 percent of a $2 million aid package that should have brought water and sustainable food to two poor rural areas of Nicaragua. This was only one part of the three-part Aid Case, which involved a total of $10 million and irregularities in 30 humanitarian projects in Central America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Another important part of the Aid Case was the planned construction of a hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake for $5.1 million, but it turned out that there was sufficient evidence in the Nicaragua part to convict Blasco.

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To solicit and syphon off the funds, Blasco formed and ran a criminal ring composed of members of Valencia’s Aid Ministry and various NGOs. In the Nicaragua part of the Aid Case, the NGO was called the Cultural and Social Studies Foundation (Fundación CYES). Its president, Marcial Lopez, and his wife, Maria Jose Cervera, were both convicted. Other members of this crime ring included the businessman Augusto Cesar Tauroni, who was sentenced to six years in prison; the former Secretary General of Valencia’s Aid Ministry, Agustin Sanjuan, who was also sentenced to six years in prison; and the former Under Secretary of the Aid Ministry, Alejandro Catala, who was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

The criminal conduct began in August 2010 when Rafael Blasco, as the Director of Valencia’s Aid Ministry, pressured a committee to grant the $2 million development subsidy to CYES despite the NGO’s application being previously rejected. Shortly thereafter, two members of the committee who had opposed the grant were fired, and 25 percent of the amount of the grant was paid to the middleman Augusto Tauroni, for “advisory services, consulting, and engineering.” A court investigation could account for virtually none of the disbursed aid funds. Invoices were presented that were unrelated to the project, and in one case the salaries of Nicaraguan workers were changed to euros instead of the local currency, in which they were paid, so as to justify a monthly payroll of $5,100 instead of $71. In the end, 97 percent of the $2 million humanitarian aid to Nicaragua was laundered through CYES and then syphoned off into real-estate purchases in Spain’s Mediterranean region of Valencia.

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Details of the Haitian part of the Aid Case have not been made public, although it is known that the NGO associated with that particular case was called the Hemisphere Foundation (Fundación Hemisferio de la Comunidad Valenciana). It was directly run by Augusto Tauroni and received $225,000 from Valencia’s Department of Technical Advice. The Hemisphere Foundation has produced a quite polished Vimeo to promote the bogus modular hospital in Belle Anse, in southeast Haiti. It is a masterpiece of manipulation that discusses “the poorest country” and shows plenty of earthquake rubble, disconsolate adults, hungry children, and a Blasco speech (find link to video under Notes).

Rafael Blasco, who is nearly 70 years old, has been barred from holding office for 20 years, and this is prudent. Over the years, Blasco had been remarkably creative in keeping high office despite accusations of corruption. He began his political career as a leftist in 1983, but he switched to the right-wing party (Partido Popular, PP) after he was expelled from Spain’s Socialist Party in 1990 under suspicion that, as Minister of Planning, he had accepted bribes from real estate developers to reclassify some lands. In PP, he became a close adviser to three successive regional presidents; he also served as the speaker of the regional parliament and the director of the Aid and Justice Ministries. Although he lost his position as speaker of the parliament when the Aid Case broke in 2012, he managed to keep his seat by becoming an Independent. It took the convictions from the Valencia High Court in 2014, and the Supreme Court decision to uphold them in 2015, to end Blasco’s career in crime and politics.

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Humanitarian soccer

In the US, the case that caught the media’s attention was the accusation that the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) former official Jack Warner had diverted $750,000 donated to Haiti for earthquake relief by FIFA and the Korean Football Association. This allegation was not new. It had first been made by the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation in 2012 and then detailed in a 144-page Integrity Report by the regional soccer federation (CONACAF) in 2013. What made it mainstream news headlines in December 2015 is that an official US government source had repeated it. Specifically, after Warner’s close FIFA associate Jeffrey Webb pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy in December 2015, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a new series of FIFA indictments at a press conference. One part of the indictment said that “certain of the defendants and their co-conspirators, including the defendant Jack Warner and Jeffrey Webb, took advantage of these opportunities and embezzled or otherwise personally appropriated funds provided by FIFA, including funds intended for natural disaster relief.”

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Like Blasco, Jack Warner is a government official: the representative for Chaguanas West in Trinidad and Tobago’s parliament. To continue the analogy to the Blasco case, the NGO here would be FIFA, which is not renowned for its virtue. Warner has denied the charges against him, and he seems certain that the case will go his way. After all, it does not only involve funds for Haiti. It is part of a larger probe that alleges the receipt of bribes from various governments and syphoning off of more than $10 million of funds from FIFA. Talk of Warner being extradited to the US quieted completely after he began to cooperate with the investigation and threatened to implicate his own government. It is likely that the part of the case that involves Haiti will never come to light. The US is more keenly interested in former FIFA President Sepp Blatter and what he has to tell them about the corruption of high-level officials in the world, particularly those in governments that are cool toward the US.

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Digging out the truth

The mainstream press could have quoted any number of accusations against Warner involving a lot more money than disappeared from the donation to Haiti, but Haiti served it well in this case. The Haitian aid fiasco has become a button that can be pushed at any time to elicit anger from Americans about those who abuse their goodwill and steal emergency aid funds. There has never been any real interest from the law in exposing or punishing those who have allegedly enriched themselves and their friends with aid money from Haiti. If there had been, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), a group of businessmen led by Bill Clinton who forced a state of emergency on Haiti and managed the country’s supposed reconstruction for the 18 months immediately after the earthquake, would have got the attention of the US Justice Department by now. So much for the mainstream. One might also ask why the US alternative press, which makes a yearly ritual of searching through Haiti’s rubble for the country’s reconstruction funds on the earthquake anniversaries, has been mum about Rafael Blasco and Jack Warner. Generous explanations are earthquake fatigue and the US elections, but one should consider that this could be a matter of professional courtesy: the US alternative press is made up mostly of NGOs that depend on aid agencies and large charities.

Opening session of the International Donors' Conference towards a "New Future for Haiti".

 

Dr. Dady Chery is a Haitian-born poet, playwright, journalist and scientist. She is the author of the book “We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.” Her broad interests encompass science, culture, and human rights. She writes extensively about Haiti and world issues such as climate change and social justice. Her many contributions to Haitian news include the first proposal that Haiti’s cholera had been imported by the UN, and the first story that described Haiti’s mineral wealth for a popular audience. Haiti  Chery | Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. | Hemisphere Foundation Vimeo (Blasco speech at 9:10 min)| Video of Blasco entering prison

| Image one from Antonio Marin Segovia; photographs two by Zoriah, three to five by Claudio Cesarano, six and seven from BBC World Service, eight from UNDP.

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The Bernie Campaign: The Democratic Party’s Biggest Insurrection in Decades

February 1st, 2016 by Norman Solomon

Forty-eight years ago, a serious insurrection jeopardized the power structure of the national Democratic Party for the first time in memory. Propelled by the movement against the Vietnam War, that grassroots uprising cast a big electoral shadow soon after Senator Eugene McCarthy dared to challenge the incumbent for the Democratic presidential nomination.

When 1968 got underway, the news media were scoffing at McCarthy’s antiwar campaign as quixotic and doomed. But in the nation’s leadoff New Hampshire primary, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote while President Lyndon B. Johnson couldn’t quite get to 50 percent — results that were shattering for LBJ. Suddenly emboldened, Senator Robert Kennedy quickly entered the race. Two weeks later, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election.

Although the nomination eventually went to Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey — a supporter of the war who was the choice of Democratic power brokers — the unmasking of the party’s undemocratic process led to internal reforms that aided the Democratic Party’s second modern insurrection. It came four years later, when Senator George McGovern won the presidential nomination, thanks to grassroots movements involving young people and activists of color. But any sense of triumph disappeared in the wake of President Nixon’s landslide re-election in November 1972.

The third major insurrection came in 1988, when Jesse Jackson led a dynamic, multiracial “rainbow” campaign for president that had major impacts on the national stage. (His previous campaign, in ’84, had been relatively weak.) The 1988 primaries and caucuses were hard-fought, state by state, with rainbow activists working shoulder-to-shoulder, whether focused on issues of class, race or gender. (Back then, Jackson was a gutsy voice for social justice, for human rights and against war — much more willing to confront the Democratic Party establishment than he is now.) At the contentious Democratic National Convention that summer in Atlanta, where Jackson delegates were highly visible as 30 percent of the total, the old guard closed ranks behind nominee Michael Dukakis.

Now, as February 2016 gets underway, we’re in the midst of the first major insurrection against the Democratic Party power structure in 28 years. The millions of us who support the Bernie Sanders campaign — whatever our important criticisms — should aim to fully grasp the huge opportunities and obstacles that await us.

Of the three previous insurrections, only one gained the nomination, and none won the presidency. Corporate capitalism — wielding its muscular appendage, mass media — can be depended upon to take off the gloves and pummel the insurrection’s candidate to the extent that the campaign has gained momentum. That happened to McCarthy, McGovern and Jackson. It’s now happening to Sanders.

The last days of January brought one big-daily newspaper editorial after another after another attacking Bernie with vehemence and vitriol. The less unlikely his winning of the nomination gets, the more that mega-media assaults promoting absurdities will intensify.

Meanwhile — at least as long as her nomination is threatened from the left — Hillary Clinton will benefit from corporate biases that wallpaper the mass-media echo chambers. The Sunday New York Times editorial endorsing Clinton could hardly be more fanciful and hagiographic if written by her campaign.

Many of the same media outlets and overall corporate forces that denounced Eugene McCarthy in 1968, George McGovern in 1972 and Jesse Jackson in 1988 are gunning for Bernie Sanders in 2016. We shouldn’t be surprised. But we should be ready, willing and able to do our own messaging — widely and intensely — in communities across the country.

At the same time, we should not confuse electoral campaigns with long-term political organizing. Campaigns for office are quite different matters than the more transformative task of building progressive infrastructure — and vibrant coalitions — that can endure and grow, year after year.

Genuinely progressive candidates can inspire and galvanize — and sometimes they can even win. But election campaigns, especially national ones, are almost always boom/bust. Sometimes they can help to fuel movement momentum, but they aren’t the engine.

Election campaigns are distinct from movements even if they converge for a while, no matter what pundits and campaign spinners say. Candidates often want to harness social movements for their campaigns. But our best approach is to view electoral campaigns as — at best — subsets of movements, not the other way around.

The Bernie campaign could be a watershed for progressive organizing through the rest of this decade and beyond. That will largely depend on what activists do — in the next weeks, months and years.

Norman Solomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org.

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Jeremy Corbyn and Britain’s Trident Nuclear Missile Question

February 1st, 2016 by Lesley Docksey

All anti-nuclear campaigners in Britain knew that Jeremy Corbyn wanted rid of Trident, the UK’s nuclear missile; he’s been at the forefront of anti-nuclear campaigning for longer than quite a few British MPs have been alive.  And we all, left and right, knew that Trident missiles would become an issue when Corbyn became leader of the UK Labour party, because both the Conservatives and those Labour MPs who love the idea of having nuclear missiles use his anti-nuclear stance as another stick to hit him with.               

But, with another debate on whether Trident should be replaced coming up in Parliament sometime this year, and with many Labour MPs in favour, why aren’t Corbyn’s team and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) using the many good reasons available to make a strong case against replacing Trident nuclear missiles?  Why stick yet again with the cost of replacement, and what the money saved could be spent on?

True, the cost is horrendous because it isn’t just a new missile system that is planned; the aging nuclear submarines are also being replaced.  Each year the cost increases by billions, often because of design faults which should have been foreseen.  But the Ministry of Defence procurement system is notorious for its mistakes and has wasted billions of taxpayers’ money.

We have known for years that the military (excepting the Navy) think Trident is completely useless.  It hasn’t stopped the UK from being embroiled in what sometimes seems like non-stop wars.  It won’t prevent terrorist attacks.  Nor did it prevent Argentina from moving in on the Falkland Islands.  And using it would be judged illegal under international law, not that a succession of UK governments have ever respected such laws.

We have known for years that the first of the new submarines, HMS Astute, was beset with problems and costing a fortune.  But then, the new ‘state of the art’ aircraft carrier has a similar history.  Quite frankly, the endless catalogue of poor design and engineering has made the UK a laughing stock.

We know that Astute ran aground in familiar waters; that previous nuclear submarines had been involved in the sinking of fishing vessels; that a major nuclear incident involving the submarines at Devonport was only just averted in 2012.

We knew that where two nuclear submarines out of four used to be at sea, it is now only one, and that the Navy has for some time struggled to recruit enough submariners.  This was highlighted again by the whistle-blower McNeilly last year.  He cast doubts on whether the nuclear missiles could be launched at all, so broken is the whole system.

We also know that submarines will be not just threatened but beaten by modern technology – their ‘secrecy’ under the waves will be located by the rapidly developing technology for underwater drones.  Would anyone, even those who support the UK having nuclear missiles, feel safe trusting such horrendously dangerous weapons to an insane basket-case of a submarine fleet?

For all the reasons above, Corbyn’s recent throw-away remark on the Andrew Marr show that ‘the submarines could go to sea without the missiles’ should have been treated as just that.  But no.  The media went wild making fun of his ‘nuclear’ policy.

Yet there is one argument that could make Trident and its submarines dead in the water that Labour and CND are not using.   Nor is it mentioned by the media.  It is certainly not brought up by the government, except when voicing objections in the UN General Assembly.

An unprecedented series of intergovernmental and civil society conferences has laid the foundation for a political process that could finally ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.  It would become illegal not just to use them, but to possess, make, store, transfer, sell or, indeed, to have anything at all to do with or connected to nuclear weapons.  All of them.

Following the Oslo Process which successfully brought about the Conventions banning landmines and cluster munitions, and basing their deliberations on the dire humanitarian consequences of even one missile being used, Norway hosted the First Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons (HINW) in March 2013 in Oslo. A follow-up second conference was held in Mexico in February 2014. An all-important third conference was held in Vienna in December 2014, out of which came the Humanitarian Pledge.

It demonstrates the commitment of much of the world towards ending the threat of nuclear weapons that three international conferences should be held in the space of 21 months.

In May 2015, the latest RevCon (Review Conference on nuclear non-proliferation) took place.  It was a failure.  At the same conference nations were signing up to the Humanitarian Pledge, despite cries of horror and backroom bullying by nuclear states.

Bear in mind that there are 196 countries in the world.  By the start of the 2015 RevCon 159 non-nuclear states had signed up to the Pledge and the endorsing states numbered 76 (read the full story here).  No wonder the Permanent 5 members of the Security Council were getting worried!

To clarify: those states that have signed the Pledge support its aims.  Those states that have endorsed the Pledge will be committed to ratifying any resulting Treaty.  121 nations have now formally endorsed the Pledge.

Last December the UN General Assembly voted to set up a new UN ‘working group’ which will start the process of writing a treaty making all nuclear weapons illegal.  In November, prior to that vote, the P5 (US, UK, France, Russia and China) issued a statement on why they opposed such a move: setting up a ban on nuclear weapons ‘would undermine the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) regime’.

They would have ‘preferred a working group bound by strict consensus rules’.  Well, of course they would.  It would have allowed them to block any progress.  Try as they might, they are finding it near impossible to stop this flood of nations moving to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

On 28 January ICAN  made this announcement:

“Today in Geneva, the ‘Open Ended Working Group’ is meeting to develop “legal measures, legal provisions and norms” for achieving a nuclear-weapon-free world. This new UN body has the backing of 138 nations.

“Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, says: ‘It is time to begin the serious practical work of developing the elements for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The overwhelming majority of nations support this course of action.’

ICAN UK adds: It’s important that this international perspective informs the UK debate on Trident renewal, so please help to share this information.

Civil society representatives, including people from ICAN, will be assisting the working group.  But has Labour thought of sending anyone along?  And why aren’t Jeremy Corbyn and his team flagging this up as a major argument against replacing Trident?  After all, why replace something that in a year or three could be completely and utterly illegal?

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You Won’t Believe What Former US Ambassador Robert S. Ford Said About al-Qaeda’s Syrian Allies

February 1st, 2016 by Daniel McAdams

Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government.

Ford assured us that those taking up arms to overthrow the Syrian government were simply moderates and democrats seeking to change Syria’s autocratic system. Anyone pointing out the obviously Islamist extremist nature of the rebellion and the foreign funding and backing for the jihadists was written off as an Assad apologist or worse.

Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. Witness this incredible Twitter exchange with then-ex Ambassador Ford:

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Then late last year the McClatchy News Service ran an article in which Ambassador Ford admitted that his “moderates” regularly collaborated with ISIS and al-Qaeda to the point where he no longer thought the US government should be arming them.

So those who pointed out that the rebellion in Syria was foreign-driven and jihadist from the start were no longer crazy conspiracy theorists, but were rather conspiracy factists.

Did that stop Ford from pushing radicals, though? Hardly!

As the Syria peace talks are scheduled to begin within days in Geneva, with a main sticking point being whether to admit groups that have allied with al-Qaeda to the negotiating table as potential leaders of “new Syria,” it is extremely instructive to recall what Ambassador Ford said about one such group, Ahrar al-Sham, to a BBC interviewer last October.

Ahrar al-Sham, according to experts including those at Stanford University, “was founded by members of Al Qaeda and maintains links to AQ’s core leadership.” The group vigorously rejects the notion of an elected government in Syria after the overthrow of Assad, instead calling for:

…a Divine system prescribed for his Caliph and slaves… It is the system where the rule is for the pure Islamic law. Allah’s law is complete, and you need only consider the texts and derive rules.

Ahrar al-Sham has been reported by Christian rights groups in Syria to have executed Christians in Idlib, Syria, after they captured the town last year. The Christians committed the “crime” of not following Sharia law.

Sounds like a pretty bad group, but nevertheless it still has its Western cheerleaders…including Ambassador Robert Ford!

Here’s Ford in an interview with the BBC last October about Ahrar al-Sham (emphasis added):

Stephen Sackur BBC: “Ok, let me ask bluntly, Ahrar al Sham (The Free Men of Syria) group, one of the most powerful groups you would call “moderate”, is it really moderate when a group like that proclaims its desire to see Sharia as the driving force of a “future Syria”.. which clearly makes comments which suggest that Alawites and Christians would find it very difficult to find a place in their Syria…. Are these moderate?? You regard this as moderation?”

Robert Ford: “This is how I define as a moderate in the Syrian context, Stephen; a moderate is a group that accepts there has to be a political negotiation and there has to be a political process after a transition government is set up.. a political process to determine the future permanent government of Syria.. That there must be pluralism in that process… and it’s one that works with other groups/ factions in a pluralistic setting… I don’t agree at all with Ahrar al Sham’s desires to set up an Islamic State (in Syria).. but I have to admit that they accept the needs to be a political negotiation.. I have to admit they’re willing to work with other groups and they do on the ground with great effect…This is one of the reasons, they’re strong as they are, as you mentioned… It’s not a group I ever want my daughter to marry into… I don’t agree with their vision of society…but I would not call them Jihadis, they’re not looking to impose an Islamic State at sword point… Different, they’re therefore, from alQaida… Different therefore from the Islamic State..And they’re willing to accept even such things as Parliament…and some kind of government institutions… So, yes they want Sharia … but the kind of Sharia they want may in fact, in the end, not look like the kind of Sharia the “Islamic State” already imposing over most of central and Eastern of Syria…”

Is it any surprise that Syria is in the current disastrous state, where hundreds of thousands have died in a war instigated by those who knew from the beginning would only benefit radical Islamist extremists? Is there no justice for those who push such murder and mayhem on such a grand scale? Today, as civilized people recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is Nuremberg dead?

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Laos: The New Cold War Battleground You Don’t Know About

February 1st, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

The “New Cold War” could be a potential description for the unfolding geopolitical lay of the planet as Russia reemerges as a world power, and China rises as a new one in the face of a prevailing Wall Street-Washington-London international order.

The most obvious battlegrounds taking shape in this “New Cold War” are Ukraine, Syria, and the South China Sea. Perhaps not as high-profile but no less important are the ongoing conflicts in and around Libya, the proxy war being waged across Yemen, and America’s enduring occupation of Afghanistan in Central Asia.

However, there are other struggles taking place that go virtually unseen by the general public, or are briefly mentioned – out of context in the news – before being quickly forgotten.

Laos – A Pivotal Battleground 

For the Southeast Asian state of Laos, this is not the first time it has played a pivotal role in the ongoing struggle between East and West. It was bombed during the Vietnam War by the United States and according to the UN-funded Washington-based “Legacies of War” organization:

 …from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.

Even as US diplomats find themselves today posing for photo opportunities in Laos’ capital, Vientiane, nearly 100 people a year are still killed or injured across the country from unexploded US ordnance.

Today, Laos serves as more than a mere extension of the Vietnam War’s battlefield and subsequent legacy. Bordering Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, it is a crossroads between much of Southeast Asia as well as the gateway into East Asia.

Though landlocked, Laos possesses immense hydroelectric potential – potential that has been incrementally developed through cooperation with Beijing. Not only do dam projects help manage water resources and provide electricity for the people of Laos, it has allowed Laos to become an increasingly important source of alternative energy for its neighbors as well.

In developing Laos’ potential as a gateway between Southeast Asia and East Asia, China has undertaken or begun planning several massive infrastructure projects across its territory including highways and railways. Thailand has also played a role in developing Laos’ infrastructure. It has invested in a China-Laos-Thailand highway connecting the three nations, as well as constructed Laos’ first rail station across the border from Nong Khai, Thailand.

In the capital Vientiane itself, one will find both Chinese and Thai businesses investing in the city. And because Thailand and Laos share linguistic similarities, much of the media consumed in the capital is streaming directly from Thailand.

It would seem then, despite the destruction it suffered at the hands of the United States decades ago, it is slowly on its way back up, and thanks to strengthening ties with its neighbors.

America’s Proxy War with China 

While called the “Vietnam War,” in reality, Washington’s war in Vietnam was but a part of a larger proxy war aimed at encircling and containing China. Exposed in the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970’s, three important quotes from these papers would reveal this strategy.

It states first that:

…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.

It also claims:

China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30′s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.

Finally, it outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time by stating:

…there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere. This includes all of Southeast Asia today, with US attempts to put in place client regimes in Myanmar through Aung San Suu Kyi’s political front, Anwar Ibrahim’s in Malaysia, Thaksin Shinawatra’s in Thailand, continued subjugation of the Philippines which had existed as a US territory for nearly half a century (1898-1946), and of course, through more subtle political subversion in Vietnam itself.

Target Laos 

What will strike any visitor to Laos’ capital of Vientiane is not just the incremental progress being made by Chinese and Thai development, or the expansion and evolution of Laos state enterprises, but also the vast number of Western-funded NGOs present. Besides their numerous offices, SUVs with NGO logos affixed to the doors, and scheming agents muttering in the corners of Vientiane’s many cafes, there is no actual evidence of any positive impact they are making.

The role of these NGOs besides building networks and cultivating collaborators, is to leverage social and environmental facades to oppose the construction of infrastructure across the country – especially dams and transportation projects. The goal is to cut off China and preserve Laos’ natural and human resources for development by Western corporations who, so far, have been late to the game.

A similar formula has been used in Myanmar, where NGO opposition to dams in conjunction with armed groups attacking construction sites helped delay or cancel many projects that may have transformed Myanmar for the better. The war on Laos has gone from mass bombing to mass propaganda, with US-backed NGOs coordinating activities both in Laos and in neighboring countries pressuring the government in Vientiane to delay or cancel dams that were to be built in cooperation with Beijing.

Protesters paradoxically claim that the dams will disrupt both the environment and traditional fishing communities along rivers downstream from dams. Traditional fishing communities, however, are generally synonymous with both unsustainable environmental destruction and poverty. Conversely, environmental impacts by dam construction can be mitigated through careful planning, while working to lift surrounding communities and the nation as a whole from poverty through improved infrastructure and cheaper and more accessible energy.

Protesters are not campaigning for careful planning, or better oversight of projects, they are campaigning instead for arrested development for Laos and its people – the sort of campaign only Wall Street and Washington could benefit from.

Strangling Development 

The impact China and Thailand have had on Laos is self-evident. The roads under ones feet were put there by Chinese construction firms, power running through the wires fed by dams built by joint Lao-Chinese ventures, and a burgeoning economy built upon closer cooperation between Laos and its neighbors, particularly China and Thailand. What the US and those nations in Southeast Asia it is slowly turning against Beijing have done for Laos is more difficult to enumerate – perhaps because there is nothing to enumerate.

A recent article published by The Diplomat titled, “Leadership Change in Laos: A Shift Away From China?,” attempts to frame recent political developments in Laos as a potential shift in influence away from Beijing and in favor of Vietnam as well as the international community (read: the West). In reality, the author fails categorically to enumerate what influence Vietnam has in Laos and through which vectors other than speculative political affiliations of outgoing and incoming politicians in the Laotian government, that influence moves.

The Diplomat claims:

Analysts said the changes will give Vietnam an edge in its dealings with Laos. Hanoi has been angered by Thongsing’s plans for massive dam construction projects across the Mekong River and its tributaries which scientists say will impact badly on fish production and food security.

“That new slate at the top of the secretive one-party state are all viewed to be pro-Hanoi while those who are exiting have been allied with the Chinese,” RFA said in its dispatch.

Speculation is also rife that the Mekong River Commission (MRC) – which has lost the support of many international donors – will be forced to relocate out of Laos after claims the government had abused its base in Vientiane to push for the widely unpopular dam construction program.

It appears, at least from a Western point of view, that it is hoped Laos’ government will move away from not only its ties to China, but away from all development driven by these ties as well.

However unlikely that is to happen, understanding the role NGOs play in arresting, not catalyzing development, and the role they play in a wider US strategy to encircle and contain China – at the expense of the nations it plans on using as proxies to execute containment – is key to exposing them and flushing them out of Southeast Asia.

China is an immense nation with equally immense potential. It plans on escaping Western containment policies aimed at it for over a half century by bringing the rest of Asia up with it as it rises as incentive for cooperation against containment. To combat this, the US and its NGOs are determined to cut the ropes China has lowered down to its neighbors – while providing no viable alternative for Southeast Asia to hold onto except for domineering “free trade agreements,” entangling and costly military alliances, and perpetual political meddling within each respective state.

Considering the lopsided nature of incentives to cooperate with China versus US attempts to dissuade cooperation, and despite the wishful thinking exhibited by publications like The Diplomat, it is no wonder that despite penning a containment policy as early as the 1940’s, the US has failed to impede China’s progress or effectively create a united front against China in Southeast Asia.

For readers, the next time anti-dam protests make the headlines, they will know who is behind them, and why.

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

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Is it Zika ‘Virus’ or Pesticides and Birth Defects?

February 1st, 2016 by Cal Crilly

“Although a causal link between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly has not, and I must emphasize, has not been established, the circumstantial evidence is suggestive and extremely worrisome,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said, reported by Reuters. “An increased occurrence of neurological symptoms, noted in some countries coincident with arrival of the virus, adds to the concern.”

Pesticides in Brazil and Pernambuco state are more likely to be the cause of microcephaly and birth defects than Zika virus and the links below speak for themselves.

“The farmers of Brazil have become the world’s top exporters of sugar, orange juice, coffee, beef, poultry and soybeans. They’ve also earned a more dubious distinction: In 2012, Brazil passed the United States as the largest buyer of pesticides.

This rapid growth has made Brazil an enticing market for pesticides banned or phased out in richer nations because of health or environmental risks.”

Why Brazil has a big appetite for risky pesticides

“According to the latest figures available from Brazil’s health ministry, published on 20 January, 3,893 cases of microcephaly have been recorded since the start of 2015. Pernambuco accounts for 1,306 of those, around a third of the total. In 2014, there were 150 cases across the whole of Brazil.” [1]

City at centre of Brazil’s Zika epidemic reeling from disease’s insidious effects

The most obvious cause of birth defects in this area is direct contact and absorption of pesticides.

“A study of pesticide use on tomatoes in the Northern State of Pernambuco, Brazil, indicates high exposure to pesticide workers and poor application methods which threaten the ecology of the area.”

“Women washed the pesticide application equipment, generally in the work environment, without protective clothing or without observing the recommended three-fold washing process. [2]

Poisoning assessment

Many of the pesticides used were hazardous organochlorine and OP insecticides. Of the workers interviewed, 13% suffered some type of acute poisoning that required first-aid treatment; 28% reported nausea during application of pesticides; and the majority experienced some symptoms immediately after exposure. 36% reported health problems related to the immune system (frequent itching of skin, eyes, and nose; or fever); 36%, skeletal/muscular problems (pains in joints); 33%, central and peripheral nervous system problems (dizziness, numbness in superior limbs, alterations in sleep patterns, and vomiting); 28%, digestive system problems; 25%, sensory organ problems; 18%, cardiovascular problems; 13%, respiratory system problems; and 11%, with urinary-genital system problems

Reproductive effects

Of the women workers, 32% reported being pregnant more than five times, 53% reported having prenatal examinations, 97% reported that they were not poisoned by pesticides during pregnancy. Almost three-quarters of the women (71%) reported miscarriages, and 11% reported having mentally and/or physically impaired offspring.

Neuro-psychological symptoms

Symptoms of minor psychiatric disturbances were observed in 44% of women and 56% of men surveyed (in the general Brazilian population, the prevalence is 5% to 15%)”

“The results of the laboratory analysis showed the maximum residue limits (MRLs) are regularly exceeded: methamidophos in 25% of the samples, and ETU in 78%. ETU can cause goitres (a condition in which the thyroid gland is enlarged), birth defects and cancer in exposed experimental animals. ETU has been classified as a probable human carcinogen by the US EPA. The organochlorine insecticide, endosulfan, which is banned for use on tomatoes was detected in 28% of samples at levels of up to 510 parts per billion.”

“It is important to introduce education on the hazards of pesticides and good agricultural practices in the school curriculum as many children accompany their family members into the fields”

Tomato production in Brazil:  Poor working conditions and high residues threaten safety

“Pesticides were found in the milk from 11 farms and one milk cooler (Fig.1), totalizing 12 positives milk samples. The main pesticide was fenthion, detected in four samples of 12 (33.33%), followed by dimethoate (25%), coumaphos (8.33%) and malathion (8.33%). In CB group, the pesticides detected were carbofuran (25%), aldicarb (16.67%) and carbaryl (8.33%). In some samples, two or more active principals were detected, what explains percentages over 100%. The frequency of pesticides found in this study is in agreement with Araújo et al. (2000) that noted that the most pesticides commonly used in Pernambuco are from OP class, followed by CB and pyrethroids.” [3]

Organophosphorus and carbamates residues in milk and feedstuff supplied to dairy cattle

“It is very well known that acute or chronic increase of retinoic acid (RA)levels leads to teratogenic effects during human pregnancy and in experimental models.

The characteristic features displayed by RA embryopathy in humans include brain abnormalities such as microcephaly, microphtalmia and impairment of hindbrain development; abnormal external and middle ears (microtia or anotia), mandibular and mid facial underdevelopment, and cleft palate. Many craniofacial malformations can be attributed to defects in cranial neural crest cells.” [4]

Pesticides Used in South American GMO-Based Agriculture

“There has been ongoing controversy regarding the possible adverse effects of glyphosate on the environment and on human health. Reports of neural defects and craniofacial malformations from regions where glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH)…” [5]

Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling

“The report says that national consumption of agrochemicals is equivalent to 5.2 litres of agrochemicals per year for each inhabitant. Agrochemical sales increased from USD 2 billion in 2001 to 8.5 billion in 2011. The report names GM crops as a key cause of the trend: “Importantly, the release of transgenic seeds in Brazil was one of the factors responsible for putting the country in first place in the ranking of agrochemical consumption – since the cultivation of these modified seeds requires the use of large quantities of these products.” [6]

The report continues:

“The cropping pattern with the intensive use of pesticides generates major harms, including environmental pollution and poisoning of workers and the population in general. Acute pesticide poisoning is the best known effect and affects especially those exposed in the workplace (occupational exposure). This is characterized by effects such as irritation of the skin and eyes, itching, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, spasms, breathing difficulties, seizures and death.

“Already chronic poisoning may affect the whole population, as this is due to multiple exposures to pesticides, that is, the presence of pesticide residues in food and the environment, usually at low doses. Adverse effects of chronic exposure to pesticides may appear long after the exposure, and so are difficult to correlate with the agent. Among the effects that can be associated with chronic exposure to pesticide active ingredients are infertility, impotence, abortions, malformations, neurotoxicity, hormonal disruption, effects on the immune system, and cancer.”

Brazil’s National Cancer Institute Names GM Crops as Cause of Massive Pesticide Us [7]

Health information systems and pesticide poisoning at Pernambuco [8]

Most of this is not new, with Pernambuco it’s just concentrated.

The Long Battle Over Pesticides, Birth Defects and Mental Impairment

There may be links with mosquitos and Zika virus but time will tell, if they manage to reduce the mosquito problem with more insecticides that may be a good thing but if birth defects keep rising in these areas it will be the pesticide use to blame.

If that happens we might have to start thinking about what on earth we are doing?

TAGS:undefined

 

Notes:

1. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/brazil-pesticides/

2. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/25/zika-virus-mosquitoes-countries-affected-pregnant-women-children-microcephaly

3. http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Issue/pn46/pn46p12.htm

4.  http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0100-736X2011000700009&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en

5. http://www.academia.edu/5023929/Pesticides_Used_in_South_American_GMO-Based_Agriculture_A_Review_of_Their_Effects_on_Humans_and_Animal_Models

6. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx1001749

7. http://sustainablepulse.com/2015/04/10/brazils-national-cancer-institute-names-gm-crops-as-cause-of-massive-pesticide-use/#.VqyuxVmoS2W

8. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1415-790X2015000300666&script=sci_arttext

9. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/24/the-long-battle-over-pesticides-birth-defects-and-mental-impairment/

 

 

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The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself

February 1st, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

I, Michael Hudson, John Perkins, and a few others have reported the multi-pronged looting of peoples by Western economic institutions, principally the big New York Banks with the aid of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Third World countries were and are looted by being inticed into development plans for electrification or some such purpose. The gullible and trusting governments are told that they can make their countries rich by taking out foreign loans to implement a Western-presented development plan, with the result being sufficient tax revenues from economic development to service the foreign loan.

Seldom, if ever, does this happen. What happens is that the plan results in the country becoming indebted to the limit and beyond of its foreign currency earnings. When the country is unable to service the development loan, the creditors send the IMF to tell the indebted government that the IMF will protect the government’s credit rating by lending it the money to pay its bank creditors. However, the conditions are that the government take necessary austerity measures so that the government can repay the IMF. These measures are to curtail public services and the government sector, reduce public pensions, and sell national resources to foreigners. The money saved by reduced social benefits and raised by selling off the country’s assets to foreigners serves to repay the IMF.

This is the way the West has historically looted Third World countries. If a country’s president is reluctant to enter into such a deal, he is simply paid bribes, as the Greek governments were, to go along with the looting of the country the president pretends to represent.

When this method of looting became exhausted, the West bought up agricultural lands and pushed a policy on Third World countries of abandoning food self-sufficiency and producing one or two crops for export earnings. This policy makes Third World populations dependent on food imports from the West. Typically the export earnings are drained off by corrupt governments or by foreign purchasers who pay little while the foreigners selling food charge much. Thus, self-sufficiency is transformed into indebtedness.

With the entire Third World now exploited to the limits possible, the West has turned to looting its own. Ireland has been looted, and the looting of Greece and Portugal is so severe that it has forced large numbers of young women into prostitution. But this doesn’t bother the Western conscience.

Previously, when a sovereign country found itself with more debt than could be serviced, creditors had to write down the debt to an amount that the country could service. In the 21st century, as I relate in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, this traditional rule was abandoned.

The new rule is that the people of a country, even a country whose top offiials accepted bribes in order to indebt the country to foreigners, must have their pensions, employment, and social services slashed and valuable national resources such as municipal water systems, ports, the national lottery, and protected national lands, such as the protected Greek islands, sold to foreigners, who have the freedom to raise water prices, deny the Greek government the revenues from the national lottery, and sell the protected national heritage of Greece to real estate developers.

What has happened to Greece and Portugal is underway in Spain and Italy. The peoples are powerless because their governments do not represent them. Not only are their governments receiving bribes, the members of the governments are brainwashed that their countries must be in the European Union. Otherwise, they are bypassed by history. The oppressed and suffering peoples themselves are brainwashed in the same way. For example, in Greece the government elected to prevent the looting of Greece was powerless, because the Greek people are brainwashed that no matter the cost to them, they must be in the EU.

The combination of propaganda, financial power, stupidity and bribes means that there is no hope for European peoples.

The same is true in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK. In the US tens of millions of US citizens have quietly accepted the absence of any interest income on their savings for seven years. Instead of raising questions and protesting, Americans have accepted without thought the propaganda that their existence depends upon the success of a handful of artificially created mega-banks that are “too big to fail.” Millions of Americans are convinced that it is better for them to draw down their savings than for a corrupt bank to fail.

To keep Western peoples confused about the real threat that they face, the people are told that there are terrorists behind every tree, every passport, under every bed, and that all will be killed unless the government’s overarching power is unquestioned. So far this has worked perfectly, with one false flag after another reinforcing the faked terror attacks that serve to prevent any awareness that this a hoax for accumulating all income and wealth in a few hands.

Not content with their supremacy over “democratic peoples,” the One Percent has come forward with the Trans-Atlanta and Trans-Pacific partnerships. Allegedly these are “free trade deals” that will benefit everyone. In truth, these are carefully hidden, secret, deals that give private businesses control over the laws of sovereign governments.

For example, it has come to light that under the Trans-Atlantic partnership the National Health Service in the UK could be ruled in the private tribunals set up under the partnership as an impediment to private medical insurance and sued for damages by private firms and even forced into abolishment.

The corrupt UK government under Washington’s vassal David Cameron has blocked access to legal documents that show the impact of the Trans-Atlantic partnership on Britain’s National Health Service. [1]

For any citizen of any Western country who is so stupid or brainwashed as not to have caught on, the entire thrust of “their” government’s policy is to turn every aspect of their lives over to grasping private interests.

In the UK the postal service was sold at a nominal price to politically connected private interests. In the US the Republicans, and perhaps the Democrats, intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security, just as they have privatized many aspects of the military and the prison system. Public functions are targets for private profit-making.

One of the reasons for the escalation in the cost of the US military budget is its privatization. The privatization of the US prison system has resulted in huge numbers of innocent people being sent to prison, where they are forced to work for Apple Computer, IT services, clothing companies that manufacture for the US military, and a large number of other private businesses. The prison laborers are paid as low as 69 cents per hour, below the Chinese wage.

This is America today. Corrupt police. Corrupt prosecutors. Corrupt judges. But maximum profits for US Capitalism from prison labor. Free market economists glorified private prisons, alleging that they would be more efficient. And indeed they are efficient in providing the profits of slave labor for capitalists.

Here is a news report on UK Prime Minister Cameron denying information about the effect of the Trans-Atlantic partnership on Britains’ National Health:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/26/anger-government-blocks-ttip-legal-documents-nhs-health-service

The UK Guardian, which often has to prostitute itself in order to maintain a bit of independence, describes the anger that the British people feel toward the government’s secrecy about an issue so fundamental to the well being of the British people. Yet, the British continue to vote for political parties that have betrayed the British people.

All over Europe, the corrupt Washington-contolled governments have distracted people from their sellout by “their” governments by focusing their attention on immigrants, whose presence is a consequence of the European governments representing Washington’s interests and not the interest of their own peoples.

Somthing dire has happened to the intelligence and awareness of Western peoples who seem no longer capable of comprehending the machinations of “their” governments.

Accountable government in the West is history. Nothing but failure and collapse awaits Western civilization.

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.

Notes:

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/cameron-desperate-to-stop-scandal-as-secret-plans-to-sell-the-national-health-service-are-discovered/5504306

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36 Children Die in War-torn Syria from UN Measles Vaccines; Government claims vaccines were intentionally sabotaged

February 1st, 2016 by J. D. Heyes

It isn’t as if the current civil war in Syria has not already taken a ravenous toll on the Middle Eastern country’s children, but so, too, has a recently administered measles vaccine that the Assad government claims was sabotaged.

According to a mid-September report by Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, at least 36 children were recently reported to have died “excruciating deaths” after being given what Damascus says were “tainted” vaccines via a United Nations-sponsored program in the rebel-held northern part of the country.

The deaths caused UN health officials to suspend the vaccination program, especially following reports that the vaccines were sabotaged. The effort in Syria to provide care for the civil war’s victims is a high-profile affair, and the UN vaccination effort was ostensibly premised on a desire to prevent an outbreak of measles.

Consistent ‘with poisoning’

The Telegraph further reported:

Doctors in clinics in the towns of Jirjanaz and Maaret al-Nouman in the north-eastern province of Idlib said children started falling ill soon after the doses were administered.

Relief organisations just over the border in Turkey said the loss of life was extensive, rising as high as 36, with more than a dozen other children in a serious condition.

“It’s very bad. The figures of dead go into the 30s. Children are dying very quickly,” Daher Zidan, the coordinator of the medical charity UOSSM (Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations), said, as quoted by the news site. “We think it will get worse.”

A Syrian opposition coalition consisting of rebels controls the area of Idlib province. The coalition had been administering the immunization project.

“The Syrian interim government’s health ministry has instructed a halt to the second round of the measles vaccination campaign, which began [recently]… following several fatalities and injuries among children in vaccination centres in the Idlib countryside,” said a coalition statement, The Telegraph reported.

The site went on to report that “medical experts” opined that the children’s deaths were most likely caused by a contaminated batch of measles vaccine.

The vaccination program was being managed and administered by the UN’s World Health Organization, which launched the drive to vaccinate 1.6 million Syrian children. At press time, The Telegraph reported, WHO officials were still trying to confirm reports of the deaths and vaccine contamination but had no information on casualty figures.

A number of sympathizers with the Syrian opposition had circulated images on social media sites of children allegedly dying from the vaccine. Many of them hinted that perhaps agents working on behalf of the Assad regime had contaminated the vaccines with cyanide.

Idlib is one of only a few rebel strongholds — rebels who are generally backed by Western governments — but their gains have been thoroughly eclipsed by both the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. Most of Syria remains contested three years into the civil war.

More deaths feared

The Telegraph said the manner in which the children died were consistent with some sort of substance poisoning:

Mohammad Mowas, a Syrian doctor working in Turkey, said the reported symptoms were a gradual slowdown in the heart rate as the infants turned blue, which were consistent with cyanide poisoning.

“This looks like a deliberate attempt to spike the vaccines,” he said.

Officials with WHO and the UN, as well as Syrian opposition members, feared that the final death toll would be higher, especially because the region is isolated.

Each bottle of measles vaccine reportedly contained 40 doses; medical personnel said they believe that at least two of the bottles may have been tainted.

“WHO have sent an investigation team to the area and they will be coming back, we hope very very fast, on some answers on how exactly this terrible incident occurred,” Simon Ingram, regional chief of communication for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa, told Newsweek.

Subsequent reports claimed that at least some of the children were given a muscle relaxer by mistake, which is what caused their deaths.

Notes:

http://www.watoday.com.au

http://www.theguardian.com

http://www.newsweek.com

http://www.aljazeera.com

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Why Anti-Refugee Policies in Denmark?

February 1st, 2016 by Jan Oberg

Part 3/4

But why?

One can point to many reasons for such a tragic development in an otherwise decent, wealthy and hitherto well-respected country.

  • It’s become too easy to go to war. The generation of politicians who might have a sense of war are long gone. If you take property owned by people who have fled thousands of kilometres because their life opportunities have been smashed and who carry just what they could grab in a hurry and carry – you simply have no idea of what life is like in a war zone. Neither do you see any need for advisers.
  • Only a small percentage of Danish politicians have any international experience, no special competence, in international affairs – in sharp contrast to the 1970s-80s.
  • Knowledge, broad civic education and cultured manners have been replaced by marketing consultants, styling experts, and fast politics salesmanship.
  • Politics nowadays attract a different kind of people than before. They fight more for their power positions than for an ideology, values, norms or a vision of a better world – all of which is totally outdated in today’s politics.
  • Politics is a job or profession, not a calling based on deepy held individual values and visions about a better society for all.
  • Anyone mentioning ethics or existential responsibilities would be ridiculed. And neither do media people raise such dimensions. An expert in ethics is hardly ever invited to the TV debates.
  • Since the end of the Cold War, there has been no international balancing factor to take into account – the US/NATO and EU could do virtually what they pleased, riskfree violations of all good norms and international law – and implicit if not intended humiliation of Russia.
  • The social democratic party developed from a working class solidarity movement to a middle class power elite losing on the way all ideals, ideology and solidarity with disadvantaged domestically and internationally. It lost its narrative and party identity as a social transformation agent for the better sometime in the 1980s.
  • Earlier politicians relied to some extent on knowledge and expert analyses on subject matters. Today the budget for these kinds of things are spent on ‘styling’, public relation, ads and video promotions as well as marketing companies who sell politics as if it was fashion clothes.
  • Today’s European leaders are not even pale copies of former leaders like Adenauer, de Gaulle, Brandt, Finnbogadottir, Kreisky, Kekkonen, etc. They are not copies of anyone, no comparison possible. To future historians Angela Merkel may be the only great European leader – but she is being squeezed constantly by lesser minds from all sides, her crime being that she is decent, uncorrupted, principled and compassionate and knows, indeed embodies, history.
  • The Danes have lived a very good material life, expecting it to become more and more luxurious by the year – totally unaware there in their idyllic parish pump what life is like where their F16s bomb. Today many seem unable to distinguish between happiness-seekers and asylum-seekers. And the more you own, the more you have to feel threatened that somebody will one day come and steal it. Thus the propensity to turn off people at the borders.
  • Turning their backs to the world out there and having a nice cosy time with themselves – to “hygge sig” – is a well-known characteristics of what some stupid ranking index has called the world’s happiest people. Other people’s unhappiness doesn’t throw a shadow over the Danes’ happiness.
  • In today’s Denmark, you get neither the political nor the media ear if you tell the truth – namely that behind every refugee stands an arms trader and war-making government. Connecting the dots in general and between warfare and refugees is a taboo. Complex issues cannot be explained in soundbites of 30 secs.
  • The Danes see themselves as innocent victims and shy away from recognising that, like other NATO/EU countries, Denmark with its war participation is a refugee-creating country. It refuses to carry its burden of the consequences. “We stretched out our hand but…”
  • The Nordic countries in general have thrown the welfare state and solidarity thinking over board; neo-liberal, profit-making economy, not a mixed economy or new economies, are in vogue. Paradoxically, the more globalised the world gets, the more growing segments of the people have turned inward.
  • So too the news media. Compared with, say, 20 years ago, there is simply much less global stuff in the news relative to domestic issues – also in the public service media. The Danish Broadcasting Corporation relies on much fewer permanent correspondents stationed over long time in one place than earlier – the rest is stringers and cutting Western news bureau telegrams, re-editing them here and there – little research, if any.

The myth that justifies: Denmark and Europe as generous

Enigmatically Denmark still sees itself as a generous country and people. And, yes, it has received comparatively many refugees per capita. That ought to be a proud measuring rod for the future too, not a reason to egoistically pass the buck to neighbouring countries who will be forced to do the same and thus eventually harming millions of people in existential need.

Here a few facts from UNHCR, IOM and others reliable sources:

  • Russia is the European country that has received most asylum applications. Secondly, it is the developing countries that host more than 86% of the world’s refugees compared to 70% ten years ago – and often internally displaced persons too.
  • Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon host 30% of the world’s 15 million refugees.
  • The EU is 503 million people and the reachest region on earth. It can’t do better when 1,2 million people – 0,2% – knock on their doors? If there is a will – and some leadership – there is a way. Not directly comparable of course, Europe could handle 582 million tourists in 2014.
  • In addition, due to demographic trends all the European countries need – or will need – to import labour of various kinds to not sink hopelessly back in the future world economy. Here a lot of qualified people turn up at our shores (albeit for the wrong reasons) and Europe turns them off. How short-sighted!

The fourth and last article in this series begins with a few observations about Sweden – and ends with why one must still see hope.

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Hillary Clinton Brags about Getting Her Marching Orders from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

February 1st, 2016 by Brandon Turbeville

For those who may be unaware, the Council on Foreign Relations is essentially a sister organization to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of the primary Anglo-American policy developers, and functions as one of the most effective direct control mechanisms in the world in regards to government-based decisions and governmental policy. It is from the RIIA and the CFR, as well as the other relevant sister organizations set up in nations all across the world, that the direction in which the world will go is decided and implemented through a number of other front organizations, conferences, publications, foundations, and NGOs.

Politicians – Senators, Congressmen, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Parliamentarians – all attend their relevant organization’s functions, participate in “discussions” and hold memberships in their CFR-related clubs for the purposes of receiving their “marching orders” from their bosses. As one might suspect, this is no different for Hillary Clinton.

While a list of members and participants of the CFR would be far too exhaustive a list to reproduce during the course of this study, it is nevertheless important to point out that not only is Dick Cheney a member of the organization, he was actually a director for a period of time.[1]

In fact, David Rockefeller was Chairman of the CFR until Peter G. Peterson, banker, hedge fund hyena, and Rothschild associate, took over the position.[2] [3] Robert Rubin later took the post but David Rockefeller has remained an honorary chairman ever since.[4]

While Clinton herself is not an official member of the CFR, her affiliations with the organization are abundantly clear as she herself admits. On July 15, 2009, Clinton spoke to the Washington DC satellite facility of the CFR where she stated,

I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department.

We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.[5]

(Clinton’s speech.)[6]

Clinton’s speech then went on to address the “global agenda,” “global consensus,” and “global architecture” of the coming years.

Despite her own lack of official membership with the CFR, an invited address to the organization often functions as a means of acceptance into the group. In other words, it should be understood as a de facto membership.

Nevertheless, both Clinton’s husband and daughter are indeed official members of the CFR.[7]

When Hillary was appointed as Secretary of State, her own first appointment to the agency was George Mitchell, not only a member of the CFR but also a former director.[8] Mitchell owed the jumpstart of his political career to Jimmy Carter, another member of the CFR.[9]

Clinton’s ties to the Council on Foreign Relations are solid and her foreign policy as well as her domestic policies should serve as ample evidence that the agenda of the CFR and the agenda of Hillary Clinton are one in the same.

Brandon Turbeville 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 1andv olume 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 dealing 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.

Notes:

[1] “Cheney On CFR, Council On Foreign Relations.” Youtube. Posted by Nick McNulty. December 6, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOAk-7F1EVU Accessed on September 3, 2015. Dick Cheney speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations regarding his prior directorship.

[2] “Peter G. Peterson.” Public Intelligence. May 26, 2009. https://publicintelligence.net/peter-g-peterson/ Accessed on September 3, 2015. “

[3] “Board” and “Honorary Directorships.” Peterson Institute For International Economics.http://www.piie.com/institute/board.cfm#627 Accessed on September 3, 2015.

[4] “David Rockefeller.” Council On Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/staff/b987 Accessed on September 3, 2015.

[5] “Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations.” July 15, 2009. U.S. Department of State website. http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2009a/july/126071.htmAccessed on September 3, 2015.

[6] “Hillary Clinton Admits The CFR Gives The Orders.” Youtube. Posted by FreeThinker2012.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba9wxl1Dmas Accessed on September 3, 2015.

[7] “Membership Rostere (as of September 3, 2015).” Council On Foreign Relations.http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=C Accessed on September 3, 2015.

[8] “Continuing The Inquiry – Historical Roster of Directors and Officers.” Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/appendix.html Accessed on September 3, 2015.

[9] Ray, Mitchell. “George Mitchell.” Encyclopedia Britannica.http://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Mitchell Accessed on September 3, 2015.

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Saudi Arabia Bombs Day Care Centre for Blind Children in Yemen, U.S Silent

February 1st, 2016 by Ollie Richardson

Saudi Arabia continues to shock the world with its crimes against civilians in Yemen. On this occasion, the Saudi-led coalition attacked the day-care centre for blind children, located in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a.

Whilst exact information about the victims of the air raid are not confirmed, it has been reported at least 3 are dead. The blow to the Yemeni civilians was inflicted at a time when they were all sleeping. This explains the complete lack of reaction to a war crime by the USA, European countries, as well as the so-called “human rights” organizations who like to talk about non-existent victims of the Russia, Syria and other undesirables to the West countries.
Crocodile tears – 1 week prior to this tweet, US finalised a $3bn deal to replenish Saudi munitions.

The same question was asked by the Deputy Manager of the struck centre. “These blind children are made to be the target of airstrikes? Where are the NGO’s? Where is the UN?”, he said in comments to RT. It should be noted that Saudi Arabia have committed dozens of war crimes on the territory of Yemen. For example, only recently Saudi warplanes have attacked schools, hospitals, roads where there were no military targets, factory of Coca-Cola, a dairy farm, and 2 industrial enterprises. However, is it any wonder that this kind of behaviour is coming from a state who arranges mass executions on its own territory?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ. 6th January, 2016
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Israel Launches Electronic War Against ‘Global Boycott Movement’

February 1st, 2016 by Middle East Monitor

The Israeli government has vowed to launch an “electronic war” against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, including monitoring, tracking and thwarting their activities in cyber space, as well as attacking it with “special sophisticated tools”.

Israel Hayom newspaper reported:

“Israel is facing a campaign to de-legitimise it. It penetrates into a certain extent; up to the secretary-general of the United Nations,” noting that it is a new battle in its “own stadium: the cyber space”.

It quoted the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, as saying that the statements of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, during which he called for ending the occupation of the Palestinian territory, contributes to “distorting Israeli image globally”.

During the Cyber Tech Conference 2016, held in Tel Aviv, Erdan added: “BDS should be forced to defend themselves and not to attack Israel,” noting that his government has allocated more than 100 million shekels ($25 million) for its “electronic war”.

The head of the Institute for National Security Studies, General Amos Yadlin, said: “The most dangerous country in the Middle East is the state of Facebook.”

“Those who will lead the United States in 20 years’ time are learning today in universities where anti-Israel propaganda exists.”

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¿Dónde estallará la próxima crisis económica mundial?

February 1st, 2016 by Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Un temblor financiero provocó que el club de Davos se hundiera en el pesimismo. Los más de 2.000 empresarios y líderes políticos que se reunieron en Suiza (entre el 20 y 23 enero) ya no saben cómo convencer a la población mundial de que la economía está bajo control. A tan solo unos días de llevarse a cabo la XLVI edición del Foro Económico Mundial, los inversionistas entraron en pánico: a lo largo de las primeras tres semanas de enero las diferentes bolsas de valores sumaron pérdidas por 7,8 billones de dólares, de acuerdo con las estimaciones de Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Un empleado de la fábrica de producción de acero en Kaohsiung, China.

China toma la delantera ganando miles de millones de dólares con la caída de precios del crudo

Para el banco de inversión de origen estadounidense este mes de enero será recordado como el momento más dramático para las finanzas desde la Gran Depresión de 1929. Los circuitos financieros internacionales son cada vez más vulnerables. Y el desplome de la confianza empresarial parece irreversible. La consultora PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) publicó recientemente los resultados de una encuesta que recoge la opinión de 1.409 presidentes ejecutivos de empresas (CEO, ‘Chief Executive Officers’) de 83 países sobre el panorama económico: el 66% de los entrevistados considera que sus organizaciones corporativas enfrentan mayores amenazas hoy que hace tres años y, únicamente, el 27% piensa que el crecimiento global mejorará.

La incertidumbre es tal que durante la cumbre de Davos no hubo consenso entre los gigantes empresariales sobre dónde estallará la próxima crisis. Con todo, la prensa occidental no se cansa de señalar a la desaceleración de China como la causa principal de las turbulencias de la economía mundial. De hecho, el especulador George Soros (quien tumbó a la libra esterlina en la década de 1990) sostuvo en Davos que un aterrizaje violento de la economía china es “inevitable”; sin lugar a dudas fue una afirmación exagerada. A mi juicio hay una campaña de propaganda dirigida contra Pekín que pretende ocultar las graves contradicciones económicas y sociales que persisten en los países industrializados (Estados Unidos, Alemania, Francia, el Reino Unido, Japón, etc.).

A pesar del triunfalismo de la presidenta del Sistema de la Reserva Federal (FED), Janet Yellen, en las últimas semanas la economía de Estados Unidos ha vuelto a mostrar signos de debilidad. El sector manufacturero acumuló en diciembre pasado dos meses de contracción: el nivel más bajo de los últimos seis años. Asimismo, el derrumbe de los precios de las materias primas (‘commodities’) ha apuntalado la apreciación del dólar y, con ello, vuelve más complicado para el Gobierno norteamericano enterrar el peligro de la deflación (caída de precios). El horizonte ahora es más sombrío luego de que la cotización de referencia internacional del petróleo cayó por debajo de los 30 dólares por barril. Todavía peor, el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) disminuyó de nueva cuenta sus perspectivas de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) mundial para este año, del 3,6 a 3,4%.

La verdad es que las políticas de crédito barato impulsadas por los bancos centrales de los países industrializados tras la quiebra de Lehman Brothers provocaron enormes distorsiones en los mercados de crédito y ahora todo el mundo está pagando la factura. Según los cálculos del fondo de inversiones Elliot Management (dirigido por Paul Singer), los bancos centrales de las grandes potencias han inyectado a la economía global un aproximado de 15 billones de dólares desde la crisis de 2008 mediante la compra de bonos de deuda soberana y activos hipotecarios. Lamentablemente esta estrategia no sentó las bases de una recuperación estable, sino por el contario, incrementó la fragilidad financiera.

¡Vamos a venderlo todo!: Inversores entran en pánico ante la repetición de la crisis del 2008

La Zona Euro todavía no consigue salir de las bajas tasas de crecimiento económico. La crisis ya no golpea únicamente a países como España y Grecia; el mismo núcleo de Europa se ha visto envuelto en severas dificultades: la deflación ya amenaza de cerca a Alemania, luego de darse a conocer que los precios al consumidor avanzaron apenas 0.3% en promedio durante 2015, la cifra más débil desde la recesión de 2009, cuando el PIB germano se contrajo 5%; y el presidente de Francia, François Hollande, recién anunció “estado de emergencia económica” ante el elevado desempleo y la debilidad de la inversión.

Esto tiene muy preocupado al presidente del Banco Central Europeo (BCE), Mario Draghi, quien se ha visto obligado a considerar la ampliación de las medidas de estímulo para el próximo mes de marzo. Y lo mismo sucede en los casos del Banco de Inglaterra y el Banco de Japón: a pesar de haber colocado en un nivel mínimo la tasa de interés referencia y lanzado agresivos programas de inyección de liquidez, todavía no consiguen sacar a sus respectivas economías del atolladero ni incrementar de modo sustantivo la inflación, que se mantiene muy alejada del objetivo oficial del 2%.

Con todo, la aplastante dominación del dólar en el mercado global de capitales le atribuye a Estados Unidos un papel decisivo en la determinación de la política monetaria de los demás países. No cabe duda de que la FED se equivocó al elevar la tasa de interés de los fondos federales (‘federal funds rate’) en diciembre pasado. Simplemente no había elementos suficientes que permitieran llegar a la conclusión de que la recuperación de la economía de Estados Unidos era sólida y sostenida. Ahora que la situación ha empeorado es casi seguro que en sus próximas reuniones el Comité Federal de Mercado Abierto (FOMC, por sus siglas en inglés) de la FED no solamente no aumentará el costo del crédito, sino que incluso es probable que reduzca la tasa de interés de referencia.

No obstante, el gran problema es que nadie sabe a ciencia cierta cómo van a reaccionar los mercados financierosante el más ligero movimiento de la FED ¿Las caídas sucesivas de Wall Street detonarán una recesión en escala mundial? ¿Será finalmente herida de muerte la hegemonía del dólar ante la venta masiva de bonos del Tesoro de Estados Unidos? ¿Hasta qué punto resistirán China y los países emergentes? La crisis que viene es un enigma para todos…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

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German Parliament Backs New Military Intervention in Mali

February 1st, 2016 by Johannes Stern

The return of German militarism is assuming ever greater dimensions. Last Wednesday, German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen declared that Germany would spend an additional €130 billion on the military by 2030. Just one day later, parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to send an additional 650 troops to Mali and increase the number of German troops in northern Iraq to 150.

According to an official German army (Bundeswehr) report, the first soldiers will arrive in their areas of deployment over the coming days. Under the heading “Quickly, effectively and securely deployed,” an official Bundeswehr web site stated that the first soldiers will be deployed to Mali at the beginning of February. From April, “the comrades from the Netherlands will be gradually withdrawn, until by June the entire unit will fulfil its role.”

By the summer, close to 1,000 German soldiers will be stationed in the geopolitically important, resource-rich country in West Africa. For two years, Germany has contributed 350 soldiers to a European Union “training mission” in the relatively quiet south, based in the capital Bamako. The troops now being sent will be part of the UN’s Minusma mission and will be deployed to the city of Gao in the more dangerous north.

A report in Die Welt under the revealing headline “Bundeswehr begins its ‘Afghanistan 2.0’ mission,” provides some detail on the German army’s fourth and most dangerous mission, following Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria.

Unlike the deployment of aircraft in Syria, the Bundeswehr is not intervening “from a safe distance” in Mali, Die Welt wrote, “but with ground troops.” What this signifies was recently indicated in a report by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the article went on. According to this report, attacks using explosives against international troops are on the order of the day, clashes are frequent, and UN bases are often fired upon with rockets. In the estimation of the conservative newspaper, “Operation Minusma is the most dangerous UN mission worldwide; no other has registered as many attacks and casualties.”

The Bundeswehr and its European counterparts will emerge as military occupation forces. According to the text of the mandate, the Bundeswehr is explicitly allowed to employ military force to protect Bundeswehr soldiers and Minusma forces, and to use force in response to emergency situations. The units involved in the deployment are heavily armed.

Even as the debate in parliament was proceeding, soldiers of Reconnaissance Battalion 6, the Air Force’s object protection regiment, and Tank Grenadiers 41 showed off their equipment at a so-called “media day” in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein. The show included various models of unmanned reconnaissance drones, handheld weapons of varying calibres, and the Fennik armoured reconnaissance tank.

Prior to the vote in parliament, Von der Leyen made clear that the German troops had to prepare for a long and dangerous mission. “The north of Mali is very unstable, and the mission for our soldiers is correspondingly dangerous,” she stated. “We are participating there in one of the most dangerous United Nations missions. We shouldn’t underestimate that,” she added.

She went on to say the government anticipated a long mission and cautioned about the need for patience. Saying the goal was to put Mali in a position where it could resist terrorism and the breakdown of the state and stand alone, she warned, “That will take time.”

The claim that Western military interventions are aimed at combating terrorism and the collapse of states turns reality on its head. It was precisely the NATO-led war against Libya in 2011 that destabilised Mali. Tuareg rebels and Islamist militias that were previously engaged in Libya launched a rebellion against the government in Bamako in early 2012.

After the Malian army lost control of the north of the country following heavy fighting and a military coup in March 2012, France initiated Operation Serval with the support of the United States in early 2013 to reconquer the lost territory. The mission was described as an anti-terror mission. In reality, it was a component of the imperialist powers’ efforts to re-colonise Africa.

Unlike with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the attack on Libya in 2011, Germany was a warring party from the outset. Immediately after the French intervention, the then-Christian Democratic-Free Democratic Party coalition government declared its support and made available transport aircraft for moving troops, equipment and munitions to Mali.

The latest expansion of the mission had long been prepared behind the backs of the population and is a part of the foreign policy conspiracy carried out by President Joachim Gauck and the German government. Almost exactly two years ago, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declared at the Munich Security Conference that Germany had to be ready “to intervene earlier, more decisively and substantially in foreign and security policy.” In the list of countries that German imperialism views as part of its sphere of influence, Steinmeier at the time named Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Mali.

Significantly, Von der Leyen last week linked her rearmament plans with the assertion of German great power interests in Africa and the Middle East by military means. On ARD’s “Morgenmagazin” program she stated that as a country of great economic and political significance, Germany “must and will bear responsibility” in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Africa.

The speeches in the parliamentary debate on Thursday left no doubt that the Bundeswehr is intervening in Mali to defend German imperialism’s economic and geopolitical interests. The foreign policy spokesman for the SPD, Niels Annen, declared to the applause of the coalition parties,

“The north is under-financed, the state structures are extremely weak, unemployment, a lack of perspective and corruption are rampant, and also the drug trade has consolidated itself there. This contributes to the destabilisation of Mali. But if you look at the trade routes through the Sahel region and Sahara, it will quickly be realised how strategically important the north of Mali is for the entire region.”

Mali itself, he continued, was

“a country with great potential, particularly in the area of agriculture, which is not being sufficiently exploited. There are also large deficits in the education sector. I could go on. German experts can and will do important work there to help Mali further on its way.”

Agnieszka Brugger, the foreign policy spokeswoman for the Green Party, which has become one of the most aggressive war-mongering parties since its support for the bombing of Yugoslavia, declared her support for the military intervention, saying,

“After the previous German contribution to Minusma was symbolic and disappointing, existing in part only on paper, the German government has decided with the new mandate to make a substantial contribution, particularly in the area of reconnaissance, including 650 soldiers and technical capabilities such as reconnaissance drones. With that, the government is responding to the call of parliament. And we support that explicitly.”

The deputies of the Left Party fraction, the only one to vote against the intervention, did not do so as principled opponents of German militarism and imperialism, but rather as its concerned supporters. The defence policy spokeswoman for the Left Party, Christina Buchholz, who accompanied Von der Leyen to visit troops in Mali in early 2014, warned that “with the expansion of the German intervention to Gao … the danger [exists] that the German army’s presence will be difficult to distinguish for the residents of northern Mali from the military intervention of the former colonial power, France.”

She added, “Only a third of Malians believe that Minusma is carrying out its tasks satisfactorily or to some extent,” and “many Malians are hostile to the troops and have lost all trust.”

The German government’s plan “to invest €130 billion in military rearmament over 15 years,” was, according to Buchholz, “crazy.” She warned the assembled deputies, “What you are undertaking here has nothing to do with securing peace and stability.”

Buchholz and the Left Party are increasingly concerned that German imperialism is giving up its humanitarian pretensions too quickly, and that in Mali, and especially in Germany, a movement against war will develop that they will no longer be able to control.

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US Congress Quietly Enables Funding for Ukrainian Neo-Nazi-led Azov Regiment

February 1st, 2016 by David Levine

The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law by US President Barack Obama late last year, did not include a previously expected ban against the funding of the Azov Regiment, a military organization that originated as a volunteer militia in May 2014 and was subsequently incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine.

The Azov Regiment is notorious for the openly white supremacist and anti-Semitic views of its members, and its use of the Wolfsangel, a swastika-like symbol once used by certain divisions of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, as well as its leading role in the Battle of Mariupol in May-June 2014. The regiment’s leader is Andriy Biletsky, a current member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) and also leader of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly. In a characteristic statement, Biletsky was quoted by the UK Telegraph last August as stating, “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

The 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act includes a section entitled “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative,” which appropriates $250 million “to provide assistance, including training; equipment; lethal weapons of a defensive nature; logistics support, supplies and services; sustainment; and intelligence support to the military and national security forces of Ukraine.. .” Additionally, the US is to spend at least $658.2 million on “bilateral economic assistance,” international security assistance,” “multilateral assistance,” and “export and investment assistance” for Ukraine in 2016. All this follows nearly $760 million in “security, programmatic, and technical assistance” and $2 billion in loan guarantees that the US has provided Ukraine since the February 2014 Maidan coup.

In June last year, the House of Representatives voted to amend the 2016 Department of Defense Appropriations Act so as to include the text, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Representative John Conyers, Jr. (Democrat-Michigan) had introduced this proposal, pointing out that the magazine Foreign Affairs as well as other leading media organizations characterized the Azov Battalion as “openly neo-Nazi” and “fascist,” and arguing that “these groups run counter to American values.”

According to the Nation, the Defense Department subsequently began exerting pressure on the House Defense Appropriations Committee to withdraw the proposed amendment, arguing that the restriction was redundant. According to this specious line of reasoning, funding of the Azov Regiment should already be prohibited by the Leahy Law, which establishes that “No assistance shall be furnished … to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

The Department of State explains on one of its official web sites that it

“vets its assistance to foreign security forces, as well as certain Department of Defense training programs, to ensure that recipients have not committed gross human rights abuses. When the vetting process uncovers credible information that an individual or unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, US assistance is withheld.”

Reports published by Amnesty International in 2014 and 2015 gave evidence of widespread torture and summary executions in Ukraine but did not specifically name the Azov Regiment or its members as suspects. The UN also issued a report in 2014 accusing both sides of the Ukrainian civil war of committing acts of torture and attacks on civilian targets.

While Conyers’ amendment was widely reported in the media when it passed the House of Representatives in June last year, it was never subject to a vote in the Senate. The 2016 Department of Defense Appropriations Act was incorporated into the 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which became law on December 18. The absence of the prohibition on funding for the Azov Regiment was first noted in the media by the Nation on January 14.

Even without the intervention of the Department of Defense and the Senate’s rejection of the proposed amendment, the prohibition in question was a red herring and a fraud from the beginning. While the Azov Regiment and its leader have gained notoriety for the peculiarly repugnant, intensely hateful political positions of its leader and members, those positions distinguish them only superficially from the rest of the officers, special forces operatives, volunteers and mercenaries who have been leading Kiev’s war against the people of eastern Ukraine.

The fact that the Azov Regiment’s leader and at least some of its members participate in neo-Nazi politics does not apparently impede their ability to fight alongside other far-right Ukrainian nationalists who do not identify specifically as “fascist” or “neo-Nazi” but are nevertheless rabidly anti-Russian and generally identify with the political legacy of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which collaborated with the Nazis in World War II against the Soviet Union and took part in mass killings of civilians, including Jews and Poles. Such extreme nationalists represent the prevailing political tendency in the Ukrainian government today, and particularly its military leadership.

The Azov Regiment, which has approximately 1,000 members, is one of many subdivisions of the Ukrainian National Guard. The Ukrainian National Guard was re-established in March 2014, consists currently of approximately 60,000 servicemen, and has played a key role in the ongoing Ukrainian civil war.

In addition to the Azov Regiment, there are at least thirteen other special forces units of the Ukrainian National Guard, including Alfa, Bars, Donbas, Hepard, Kobra, Lavanda, Omeha, Skat, Skorpion, Tin, Tyhr, Veha, and Yahuar; as well as over 30 special forces units of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, of which the National Guard is itself a subdivision. There are also over 40 volunteer territorial defense battalions operating within the Ministry of Defense.

Among the various units and organizations participating in Kiev’s war should also be counted the Right Sector Volunteer Ukrainian Corps, which operates as an independent militia not subordinate to any branch of government; as well as mercenaries, special agents, advisers, and “instructors” from foreign countries.

According to an article published in the Daily Beast last July, in an interview for that publication, Sgt. Ivan Kharkiv of the Azov battalion “spoke about his battalion’s experience with US trainers and US volunteers quite fondly, even mentioning US volunteer engineers and medics that [were] still currently assisting them.”

Yaryna Ferentsevych, Press Officer of the US Embassy in Ukraine, also told the Daily Beast that “as far as we know,” there were no members of the Azov Regiment being trained by US forces. She explained,

“Whether or not some may be in the lineup, that is possible. But frankly, you know, our vetting screens for human rights violations, not for ideology. Neo-Nazis, you know, can join the US army too. The battalions that are in question have been integrated as part of Ukraine’s National Guard, and so the idea is that they would be eligible for training, but in all honesty I cannot tell you if there are any on the list we train. There were not any in the first rotation as far as I am aware.”

Capt. Steven Modugno, US Army Public Affairs Officer from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which trains Ukrainian forces in Yavoriv, also told the Daily Beast that he didn’t know whether they had trained any members of the Azov Regiment, but that they had trained the Hepard (“Cheetah”) and Yahuar (“Jaguar”) regiments, which also belong to the Ukrainian National Guard.

The United States has been supplying military hardware to Ukraine since last March, and US instructors have been training Ukrainian National Guard units since April last year. As of December 2015, approximately 400 American military instructors, as well as military instructors from Canada, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, were training Ukrainian military servicemen at the Yavoriv Training Center in Lviv Region. American instructors are also teaching Ukrainian special operations forces in Khmelnytsky Region. Instructors from the United States have also been sent to Ukraine to train special police units analogous to US SWAT teams. NATO troops have been participating in joint military exercises in Western Ukraine. And, according to “hacktivist” organization Cyber-Berkut, American specialists have been sent to Kiev to train their Ukrainian counterparts in methods of psychological warfare and disinformation.

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US Responsibility for Iraq’s Devastating Humanitarian Crisis

February 1st, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Decades of US-led aggression raped and pillaged Iraq, killing millions of its people, creating dystopian conditions for survivors.

Humanitarian crisis conditions are deplorable, exacerbated by endless US aggression, using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists as imperial foot soldiers, along with low oil prices complicating things further.

Iraq needs over $1.5 billion in aid this year alone. Baghdad called for international community help, its migration and displacement minister Jassim Mohammed al-Jaff, saying:

“With the expanding needs, the allocation through the federal budget will not be sufficient. We expect that the highly prioritized (UN) Humanitarian Response Plan will help cover part of the gap,” whether forthcoming in any amount remains to be seen.

Western and rogue regional state budgets prioritize war-making and state-terrorism, not providing aid for desperate people – victims of their ruthlessness.

Iraq’s long nightmare includes Jimmy Carter’s orchestrated war with Iran, Operation Desert Storm, years of genocidal sanctions, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and ongoing raging violence and chaos – one of history’s great crimes showing no signs of ending, six US presidents responsible for destroying the cradle of civilization, replacing it with dystopian harshness.

Iraqi 2015 humanitarian efforts fell way short of what’s needed. This year won’t be easier. Millions of internally and externally displaced refugees struggle to survive, deplorably little help forthcoming.

Without it, countless numbers may perish, victims of US imperialism – a universal scourge vital to eliminate, threatening humanity worldwide.

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 

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Burundi Unbowed Despite US Interventionism in Central Africa

February 1st, 2016 by Ann Garrison

The tiny East African nation of Burundi remains unbowed despite pressure from Western officials.

Transcript:

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Sharon Sobotta: Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, speaking to the press yesterday, remained firm in his rejection of a proposed African Union peacekeeping force in his country. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

President Pierre Nkurunziza, center, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to his left, Angolan Ambassador to the UN Ismael A. Gaspar Martins to his right Photo: Reuters

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza told a visiting delegation of the UN Security Council that the African Union “must respect Burundi as a member state, and we must be consulted.” In mid-December last year, the African Union Peace and Security Council voted to deploy 5,000 peacekeeping forces in Burundi without the government’s consent.

Burundi borders Rwanda to the north, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Tanzania to the east. UN officials and the NGO Refugees International have documented Rwanda's recruitment of Burundian refugees into a new rebel army.

Burundi borders Rwanda to the north, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Tanzania to the east. UN officials and the NGO Refugees International have documented Rwanda’s recruitment of Burundian refugees into a new rebel army.

However, international law prohibits the deployment without a two-thirds vote of African Union member states, and the approval of the UN Security Council, whose five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, have veto power. The Burundian government was no doubt encouraged by remarks of the Russian and Chinese Ambassadors on the importance of protecting Burundi’s national sovereignty.

UN Ambassador to the US Samantha Power expressed her disappointment. In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.

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You Have Now Landed in Geneva, Syria

February 1st, 2016 by Pepe Escobar

The alleged Syrian peace process now enters its Geneva charade stage. This could last months; get ready for lavish doses of posturing and bluster capable of stunning even Donald Trump.

The notion that Geneva may be able to impersonate Damascus in a suit-and-tie pantomime is ludicrous to begin with. Even the UN envoy, the sartorially superb Staffan de Mistura, admits the Sisyphean task ahead – even if all relevant players were at the table.

Then we have Syrian “opposition figure” George Sabra announcing that no delegation from the Riyadh-based High Negotiations Committee will be at the table in Geneva. As if Syrians needed an “opposition” instrumentalized by Saudi Arabia.

U.N. mediator for Syria Staffan de Mistura © Denis Balibouse

U.N. mediator for Syria Staffan de Mistura © Denis Balibouse / Reuters

So in the interest of providing context, here’s an extremely concise recap of recent, crucial facts on the Syrian ground which the “new capital” Geneva may ignore at its own peril.

Let’s start with last summer, when Iranian Quds Force superstar commander Qasem Soleimani laid down the law, in person, in Moscow, establishing without a doubt the grim situation across the Syrian theater of war.

Essentially Soleimani told the Kremlin and Russian intelligence that Aleppo might be about to fall; that Jabhat al-Nusra was at the doors of southern Damascus; that Idlib had fallen; and Latakia – home to Russia’s naval base at Tartus – would be next.

One can imagine the effect of this jolt of realpolitik on President Putin’s mind. That clinched his resolution to stop the fall of Syria, and prevent it from becoming a Libyan remix.

The Russian Air Force campaign turned out to be the ultimate game-changer. It is in the process of securing the Damascus-Homs-Latakia-Hama-Aleppo network – the urban, developed Western Syria that holds 70 percent of the country’s population. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and/or Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria, have zero chances of taking over this territory. The rest is mostly desert.

Jaysh al-Islam – a motley crew weaponized by Saudi Arabia – still holds a few positions north of Damascus. That’s containable. The country bumpkins in Daraa province, south of Damascus, could only make a push towards the capital in an impossible 1991 Desert Storm context.

“Moderate rebels” – that Beltway concoction – did try to hold Homs and Al-Qusayr, cutting off the resupply of Damascus. They were repelled. As for the gaggle of “moderate rebels” who took all of Idlib province, they are being pounded mercilessly for four months now by the Russian Air Force. Aleppo’s southern front is also being secured.

Don’t bomb “our” rebels

It’s easy to pinpoint who’s livid with all the Russian action: Saudi Arabia, Turkey and – last but not least – the ‘Empire of Chaos’, all at the table in Geneva.

Jabhat al-Nusra – remote-controlled by Ayman al-Zawahiri – is intimately linked to a gaggle of Salafi-jihadists in the Saudi-sponsored Army of Conquest, as well as tactically allied with myriad outfits nominally grouped in the nearly extinct Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The CIA, using the Saudis for plausible deniability, fully weaponized “vetted” FSA outfits, which received, among other things, TOW anti-tank missiles. Guess who “intercepted” virtually all the weapons: Jabhat al-Nusra.

The follow-up was nothing short of hilarious: Washington, Ankara and Riyadh furiously denouncing Moscow for bombing their “moderate rebels” and not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

Slowly but surely, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), parallel to the Russian offensive, retook the initiative. The “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran (Special Forces, many of them from Afghanistan), Iraq, plus Hezbollah – started coordinating their efforts. Latakia Province – which hosts not only Tartus but the Khmeimim Russian airbase – is now under total control by Damascus.

And that brings us to Ankara’s nightmares. Russian Air Force smashed most of Ankara’s Turkmen proxies – heavily infiltrated by Turkish fascists – in northwest Syria. That was the key reason for Sultan Erdogan’s desperate move of shooting down the Su-24.

It’s by now clear that the winners, as it stands, on the ground, are the “4+1”, and the losers are Saudi Arabia and Turkey. So no wonder the Saudis want at least some of their proxies at the negotiating table in Geneva, while Turkey tries to change the subject by barring the Syrian Kurds: these are accused of being terrorists, much more than ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

  Exit Geneva, enter Jarabulus

As if this was not messy enough, US ‘Think Tankland’ is now spinning there is an “understanding” between Washington and Ankara for what will be, for all practical purposes, a Turkish invasion of northern Syria, under the pretext of Ankara smashing ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in northern Aleppo.

This is utter nonsense. Ankara’s game is three-pronged; prop up their heavily battered Turkmen proxies; keep very much alive the corridor to Aleppo – a corridor that crucially includes the Jihadi Highway between Turkey and Syria; and most of all prevent by all means necessary that YPG Kurds bridge the gap from Afrin to Kobani and unite all three Syrian Kurd cantons near the Turkish border.

None of this has anything to do with fighting ISISL/ISIL/Daesh. And the nuttiest part is that Washington is actually assisting the Syrian Kurds with air support. Either the Pentagon supports the Syrian Kurds or Erdogan’s invasion of northern Syria; schizophrenia does not apply here.

A desperate Erdogan may be foolish enough to confront the Russian Air Force during his purported “invasion”. Putin is on the record saying response to any provocation will be immediate, and lethal. To top it off, the Russians and Americans are actually coordinating airspace action in northern Syria.

This is bound to be the next big thing, fully eclipsing the Geneva pantomime. The YPG and its allies are planning a major attack to finally seize the 100-kilometer stretch of the Syria-Turkey border still controlled by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh – thus reuniting their three cantons.

Erdogan was blunt; if the YPG pushes west of the Euphrates, it’s war. Well, looks like war then. The YPG is getting ready to attack the crucial towns of Jarabulus and Manbij. Russia most certainly will aid the YPG to reconquer Jarabulus. And that will directly pit – once again – Turkey against Russia on the ground.

Geneva? That’s for tourists; the capital of the Syrian horror show is now Jarabulus.

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. Born in Brazil, he’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of “Globalistan” (2007), “Red Zone Blues” (2007), “Obama does Globalistan” (2009) and “Empire of Chaos” (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is “2030”, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.

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Conflicting Reports on Farcical Syrian Peace Talks

February 1st, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Holding them is a waste of time. Abandoning them makes more sense. Negotiating with terrorists won’t succeed. Diplomacy is doomed to fail.

Instead the US/Saudi/UN-orchestrated charade continues, conflicting reports on whether opposition groups comprised of terrorists intend showing up muddy things further.

Syria’s UN envoy/chief government negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari correctly said “any political solution to the (ongoing) crisis…can’t be achieved without the presence of a serious party to the dialogue process.”

He justifiably accused opposition terrorist groups of “lack(ing) seriousness and responsibility,” intending to undermine talks before they begin.

“We have proved our good intentions and the government’s positive attitude towards any international UN effort to find a solution, but the problem has always been with the other party,” he explained.

He spoke forthrightly and honestly, what’s sorely lacking in Geneva under the best of conditions.

On January 31, two days after talks were scheduled to begin, he said “(n)o one…knows who the other party is, and there hasn’t been a final list of participants so far,” likely to change any time after talks begin.

“When the Security Council resolution (2254) states that the broadest possible spectrum of the position be brought together by the Syrians themselves, and this resolution is being violated, then it means that there are some who want to impose a fait accompli by selectivity and double standards,” assuring failure, not success.

Jaafari justifiably blamed Washington and Riyadh without naming them – because they’re “not neutral.” Spokesman for the US-Saudi-backed terrorist groups, Salem al-Mouslad, said his side is ready to start talks without preconditions, after earlier stressing the opposite – imposing demands impossible for Syria and Russia to accept.

Syrian Judas Riyad Hijab is coordinator for the Saudi-formed High Negotiations Committee (HNC), comprised entirely of anti-Assad terrorists, cutthroat killers responsible for gruesome atrocities, wanting him removed, all Shias and Alawites genocidally eliminated.

He issued a statement, saying “(i)f (Damascus insists on continuing to commit these crimes (code language for responsible self-defense against invading terrorists), then the HNC delegation’s presence in Geneva will not be justified.”

“The delegation will inform (UN envoy/anti-Syrian/pro-Western moderator Staffan) de Mistura (of) its intentions to withdraw its negotiating team if the UN and world powers” don’t enforce its demands.

It’s unclear what’s coming next. Involvement of terrorists in talks assures failure, a combination of tragedy and farce. Syria’s conflict will be resolved militarily or not at all.

Russia’s formidable air power allied with government ground forces continuing to batter ISIS and other terrorist groups is the only effective way to weaken and eliminate them to a shadow of their current strength.

Relying on Geneva talks to resolve things assures failure, endless conflict, Washington’s objective. Peace and stability defeat its agenda – what Western media never explain.

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 

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Western Media Ignores Putin’s Progress in Syria

February 1st, 2016 by Mike Whitney

The UN-sponsored Syrian peace talks, which began on Friday in Geneva, will be boycotted by the main Syrian opposition group which has insisted that Russia stop bombing its positions while negotiations are conducted. To appreciate how ridiculous these demands are, one would have to imagine a similar scenario taking place in the United States. Let’s say, for example, that Ammon Bundy, the crackpot leader of the armed militia that seized the federal wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, demanded that the FBI and all other federal agents vamoose while the UN convened negotiations between his representatives and the Obama administration for the establishment of a transitional government that would remove Obama from power after 18 months while rewriting the constitution so it better reflected the far-right political and religious convictions of Bundy and his gaggle of ne’er-do-well followers.

Does that seem like a reasonable proposition to you?

This is the context in which the current “talks” are being held. Is it any wonder why Moscow doesn’t take this charade seriously? It’s a joke.

In what other country are armed militias allowed to occupy cities, kill civilians, destroy critical infrastructure, create total mayhem and threaten to overthrow the elected government?

None. And yet, the Obama team thinks this is a perfectly acceptable way for citizens and even non citizens (most of the ‘rebels’ are foreign nationals or jihadis) to act, provided their political objectives coincide with those of Washington. Which they do. From the very beginning, Washington’s sole aim has been to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad so the oil fields and pipeline corridors could be secured by the western oil giants and protected by new US military bases sprinkled across the country. This has been the basic gameplan since Day 1, and this is why Obama and Co are so eager to slow the Russian-led offensive by any means possible even if it means engaging in meaningless negotiations that have no other purpose than to implement a ceasefire so these same US-backed terrorists can regroup and fight at some future date when they are better prepared.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sees through this ruse but–all the same–he’s dispatched diplomats to Geneva to play along and go-through-the-motions. But will he cave in and agree to a ceasefire so Obama’s “rebels” can live to fight another day? Don’t bet on it.

What Americans are not reading in the western media is that, after months of slow but steady progress, the Russian-led coalition (Syrian Arab Army, Iranian Quds Forces, and Hezbollah) has broken through the sluicegate and is advancing on all fronts while enemy positions are crumbling. Key cities and towns in Latakia province along the Turkish border that used to be jihadi strongholds have buckled under Russia’s relentless bombing raids and been liberated by the Syrian Army. Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city to the north, has been surrounded by loyalist forces that have cut off supplylines to Turkey leaving fighters from Salafi groups like Ahrar al Sham, Jabhat al Nusra, Jaish al Islam, ISIS and the other al Qaida-linked groups to either surrender or hunker down while they await the final desperate confrontation. The momentum has shifted in favor of Assad’s forces which now clearly have the upper hand. What the western media characterizes as a “quagmire” has all the makings of a stunning victory for the Russian-led coalition that is gradually reestablishing security across Syria while sending the invaders running for cover. This is from Reuters:

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.

That assessment comes despite public assertions by President Barack Obama and top aides that Putin has embarked on an ill-conceived mission in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it will struggle to afford and that will likely fail…

since its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering the operation’s cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a year. The war is being funded from Russia’s regular annual defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official said…

QUAGMIRE?

An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work,” (President) Obama said on Oct. 2. On Dec. 1, he raised the prospect of Russia becoming “bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict.

The senior administration official denied any contradiction between Obama’s statements and private assessments that Russia’s campaign has been relatively effective so far.

I think the president’s point has been…it’s not going to succeed in the long run,” the official said. The Russians “have become bound up in a civil war in a way that’s going to be extremely difficult to extricate themselves from.….

Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based analyst, said the war is not financially stressing Russia.

All the available data shows us that the current level of military effort is completely insignificant for the Russian economy and Russian budget,” said Kashin, of the Center for Analyses of Strategies and Technologies. “It can be carried on at the same level year after year after year,” he said.
(U.S. sees bearable costs, key goals met for Russia in Syria so far, Reuters)

Americans are so conditioned to believe that every military intervention ends in a quagmire that they are surprised when the outcome is different. That’s understandable given the fact that the so called “best military on earth” has been unable to defeat a ragtag collection of goat-herding fundamentalists for more than 15 years. (Afghanistan) No wonder Americans expect failure. The fact is, however, that Putin has no intention of getting “bogged down” in Syria for a decade or two.. What he plans to do is to defeat the enemy and move on. Recent reports from the frontlines suggest that that is precisely what he is doing. This is from a post at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The Fall of Salma”

Things had started to move early last week, when the SAA (Syrian Arab Army), NDF (National Defense Force) and local militias moved into Salma, the rebel stronghold that was key to defensive positions South of the M4 highway linking Latakia to Idlib. After weeks of preparations and softening up defences, R+6 finally moved in and there was not much the various rebel groups could have done at that point to stop or reverse this trend…

… Once the strategic breaking point is reached though, the side having gained the upper hand usually pushes through, which results in the opponent’s posture crumbling under the pressure. This is what happened with Salma, a former mountain resort North-East of Latakia… When R+6 went for their final assault, Salma had already become untenable. Its loss meant that the whole defensive line South of the M4 highway was compromised and both SAA advances and “tactical” retreat by the rebels made for a very quick correction of the frontline in the area…

The inroads made by the SAA… again proved decisive against a rebel frontline that had already been destabilized by the loss of Salma and the prospect of being cut off from their LOCs with Jisr al-Shughur.” (Rebel Defences Crumbling In Latakia Province, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Get the picture? The jihadi misfits are getting the holy hell beat out of them by a superior army that is recapturing critical cities and strategic territory along the Turkish border and across the southern and eastern parts of the country. As a result, Assad will not be removed from office nor will the country become a “Salafi-jihadi principality” governed by Islamic freaks who rule through terror.

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of potential pitfalls ahead. There are, in fact there’s a situation developing right now that could explode into a regional conflict involving Turkey, NATO, the US and Russia. You see, Russia plans to use its Kurdish allies in the YPG to seize a stretch of land along the Syrian side of the Turkish border to reestablish Syria’s territorial sovereignty and to stop the flow of terrorists from Turkey into Syria. Turkish President Erdogan has promised that if the YPG pursues that course, Turkey will invade, in which case, Putin will come to the defense of the Kurds. There’s no telling how this powderkeg situation will play out, but there’s no doubt that the next few weeks are going to be extremely tense as the main players rattle sabers and jockey for position while edging closer to a full-blown conflagration. Will cooler heads prevail?

I can’t answer that, but I can tell you that Washington has already backed off its “Assad must go” campaign and moved on to Plan B, which is seizing territory and establishing bases in Northeastern Syria that the US plans to occupy for as long as they can. Check it out from South Front website:

As SouthFront: Analysis and Intelligence predicted month ago the NATO allies are urgently trying to implement a new plan to hold control at least of the northern oil corridor from Iraq and try to take advantage of this opportunity to involve Russia in a long expensive war. This plan includes an occupation of the crucial infrastructure including oilfields by the NATO contingent and establishing of anti-government, meaning anti-Russian and anti-Iranian, forces in parts of divided Syria.

Implementing of this plan could easily lead to a global war launched by military escalation over the Syrian crisis. The stakes of the global geopolitical standoff have been raised again. (Escalation in Syria, South Front)

So even though Washington has scrapped its plan to topple Assad (temporarily), it has deepened its commitment to creating Sunnistan, a new state comprised of eastern Syria and western Iraq controlled by US-clients who will allow western oil giants to connect the pipeline grid from Qatar to Turkey in order to replace Russia as the EU’s primary supplier of natural gas. It’s all part of the imperial strategy to “pivot” to Asia by controlling vital resources and making sure they remain denominated in US dollars. It’s an ambitious plan for global rule that is now being openly challenged by Russia, the emerging power that threatens to derail the lethal US juggernaut and put an end to the malign unipolar world order.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Historic Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners

February 1st, 2016 by Lesley Docksey

The PM is right to draw a line in the sand, to protect the freedom with which the military has to operate…

— General Lord Dannatt, ex-Chief of Staff

Prime Minister David Cameron is getting himself all wound up about the nasty slurs on ‘our brave boys’; ‘our brave servicemen and women who fought in Iraq’; ‘the people who risk their lives to keep our country safe’; the veterans of Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq.  Of course, they must ‘act within the law’ etc…  Except they didn’t.

The said ‘brave servicemen’ are in danger of being taken to court over their abusive treatment, and in some cases murder, of Iraqi detainees during the invasion of Iraq.  Hundreds of complaints have been lodged with the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) which was investigating between 1300-1500 cases.  Many are simple complaints of ill treatment during detention, but some are far more serious:

  • Death(s) while detained by the British Army
  • Deaths outside British Army base or after contact with British Army
  • Many deaths following ‘shooting incidents’

According to Cameron, ‘Our armed forces are rightly held to the highest standards…’  One wonders what standards he’s thinking of, seeing that it has been proved more than once that the UK military has not complied with international humanitarian law.  Britain has a long and ignoble history of practicing torture, as documented by Ian Cobhain in his book Cruel Britannia.

Curiously, or perhaps not, just two days after Cameron launched his assault, IHAT announced it was dropping no less than 58 inquiries into unlawful killings by army veterans.  And while so many rushed to the defence of the soldiers accused of abuse, absolutely no one has mentioned another example of the culture of violence within the armed forces which resurfaced just a few days earlier: the ‘notorious’ Deepcut Barracks.

The two law firms pursuing the claims on behalf of Iraqis and their families, Public Interest Lawyers, and Leigh Day, have been labelled ‘ambulance chasers’ and ‘tank chasers’ by much of the loud, right-wing media.  Other insults include ‘money-grubbing or grabbing lawyers’.  Naturally, goes the refrain, they want to get as many cases into court as possible so they can make a fortune in lawyers’ fees.  It’s what you do if you’re defending humanitarian law.

One of the law firms involved, Leigh Day, is now the subject of an intended action by the government, who want to sue it for failing to supply documents to the al-Sweady inquiry, documents which ‘proved that alleged innocent victims (of abuse by UK armed forces) were actually enemy insurgents.’

But Cameron, like other occupants of Number 10, refuses to acknowledge that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was illegal.  And as UK armed forces were in Iraq illegally, any Iraqis who fought them were not ‘enemy’ insurgents, but citizens legally resisting the invaders of their country.  Thus, ‘enemy insurgents’ could be, and in this case were, also innocent victims of illegal treatment, treatment that did not comply with international law.

International law covering ‘enemy’ soldiers (in uniform) or insurgents (in any old clothing) ensures proper, humane treatment of any prisoners.  No beating, no slapping about,  no prevention of sleep by using loud noise, no withholding of food or water, no forced stress positions, no sandbags over their heads, no deliberate extremes of temperature, all techniques which British soldiers were witnessed employing.

Even worse, despite these practices having been banned more than once by Parliament, they were, as evidence at the Baha Mousa inquiry demonstrated, being taught to soldiers and encouraged to use them in Iraq by the Ministry of Defence. Only one soldier ended up with any kind of a sentence after the killing of Baha Mousa (Corporal Donald Payne, one year in prison and dismissal from the Army), but when the inquiry into Mousa’s death was held the evidence that came out was utterly damning.

General Lord Dannatt, once Chief of Staff, is one of those backing Cameron’s stance.  Appearing on the BBC’s Today programme on January 22, he defended the high standards of our wonderful army, and spoke of the greed of “lawyers with less integrity than others”.  Of course, British forces should “act within the law”, he said, but many of these claims are “spurious and cannot be substantiated”.  Not, of course, until they have been tested in court, a point that seems to have escaped the noble lord.

One lawyer with real integrity defending the legal action being taken on behalf of abused Iraqis is Lt Colonel Nick Mercer who, at the time of the invasion, was the Army’s chief legal officer in Iraq.  He was out in Basra, he saw the abuse, he complained to his superiors and he gave strong and disturbing evidence to the Baha Mousa Inquiry. As he said, “It was my job to protect British commanders and make sure they kept to the right side of the law.”  But the MoD was ‘resistant to human rights’.

The MoD’s view was that the government position prevailed over Mercer’s interpretation of international law.  In 2009 the Supreme Court ruled that the advice he had tried to give the MoD in 2003 was correct.  But it was not until 2010 that UK military intelligence interrogators were trained in international law and human rights.  Whether that has made any real difference to their standards of practice is as yet unknown.  In 2011 the MoD was hit by more claims of mistreatment, when Iraqi victims won the right to an inquiry in the Court of Appeal.

Again and again the MoD had tried to gag Mercer, threatening to report him to the Law Society, and in 2007 he was suspended for conducting a case in Cyprus in a way that disagreed with MoD views.  He has now left the Army and is an Anglican priest, his principles and defence of the law as strong as ever.  He has come out fighting in defence of Leigh Day and Public Interest Lawyers, saying it was beyond doubt that British soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners.

He emphasises that he and others raised their concerns at the time the mistreatment of prisoners was going on; that the International Committee of the Red Cross had raised their concerns with the government; that the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights has also raised its concerns – with the International Criminal Court.  This is not just about ‘money-grabbing lawyers’ against the rest of the nation.  There are too many others who were and are concerned about the abuse that have no financial motives, says Mercer, and it was wrong to try and polarise the debate in this way.

He points to the fact that the MoD has already paid out £20 million in compensation for 326 cases.  “Anyone who has fought the MoD knows they don’t pay out for nothing, so there are 326 substantiated claims with almost no criminal proceedings to accompany that.  And you have to ask why.”

Lord Dannatt said that only 3 of all these cases have been proven – another point he seems to have missed: that the MoD paying compensation prevented the cases coming to court.  Dannatt’s version of this is that the MoD “opted on the side of generosity rather than try to fight these cases in court”.

Cameron says these allegations of abuse are ‘spurious legal claims’ that must be stopped, ‘spurious’ being a word that is now used by all those on the MoD’s side.  Cameron is a master of spurious claims.  He produces one or two almost every week in Parliament, during Prime Minister’s Questions.  A recent example, which earned him a great deal of ‘non-credibility’, came during the parliamentary debate on whether the UK should bomb Syria.

He said that there were 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria – a claim that the MoD reportedly asked to have removed from his statement.  His ministers are masters of the spurious as well, constantly being corrected for their statements that the government has done this or that, given extra funding for this or that, when, for instance, the ‘extra funding’ turns out to be less than the amount they cut a Ministry’s budget the year before.

But Britain has to face the fact that not only do we have a spurious* government, but that ‘our brave soldiers’ have consistently broken both UK and international law, have been encouraged to do so by their masters and that the government will fight tooth and nail to prevent them being taken to court.  For the sake of all of those abused, here and abroad, it is time there was a full and independent inquiry into the MoD’s non-compliance with international humanitarian law.

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The New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton with a Banner Ad from Citigroup

February 1st, 2016 by Pam Martens

Today’s digital edition of The New York Times captures the essence of the cancer eating away at our democracy: a leading newspaper is endorsing a deeply tarnished candidate for the highest office in America while a major Wall Street bank that has played a key role in her conflicted candidacy runs a banner ad as if to salute the endorsement. The slogan on Citigroup’s ad, “cash back once just isn’t enough,” perfectly epitomizes the frequency with which the Clintons have gone to the Citigroup well.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, among the top five largest lifetime donors to Hillary’s campaigns, Citigroup tops the list, with three other Wall Street banks also making the cut: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. (The monies come from employees and/or family members or PACs of the firms, not the corporation itself.)

The New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton with a Banner Ad from Citigrorup

Hillary Clinton famously told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2014 that she and Bill Clinton left the White House after his second term “dead broke.” But apparently, Citigroup felt they were a good investment. According to PolitiFact, Citigroup provided a $1.995 million mortgage to allow the Clintons to buy their Washington, D.C. residence in 2000. That liability does not pop up on the Clinton disclosure documents until 2011, showing a 30-year mortgage at 5.375 percent ranging in face amount from $1 million to $5 million from CitiMortgage. The disclosure says the mortgage was taken out in 2001.

Citigroup has also committed $5.5 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, a charity run by the Clintons. It has also paid enormous speaking fees to Bill Clinton.

What has Citigroup gotten from its outsized support of the Clintons? Bill Clinton is the President who repealed the most important investor protection legislation of the past century, the Glass-Steagall Act, an outcome heavily lobbied for by Citigroup. Hillary Clinton has signaled to Wall Street that she will not push to have the Glass-Steagall Act restored while her leading opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, vows to restore it and return sanity to America’s financial system.

Just nine years after Bill Clinton signed this massive deregulation of Wall Street and gave Citigroup’s Sandy Weill a souvenir pen from the signing, the U.S. financial system collapsed in the greatest implosion since the Great Depression.  Two years before the collapse, Sandy Weill had exited Wall Street as a billionaire as a result of this deregulation, while Citigroup became a penny stock in the crash and a ward of the government in the greatest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.

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Selected Articles: UN Security Council, President Obama Involved in Potential Israel Boycott

January 31st, 2016 by Global Research News

Netanyahu‘There is no excuse for terrorism’ Netanyahu tells the UN

By Anthony Bellchambers, January 27 2016

In response to world condemnation of his decision to authorise yet more illegal houses for Israelis on Palestinian land, Netanyahu strikes out against the severe criticism by the UN Secretary General.

1-Netanyahu-NaziUN Security Council to Consider defining all Israeli Settlements in Occupied Territories as Illegal

By Anthony Bellchambers, January 29 2016

Binyamin Netanyahu is the leader of Likud: the successor to the Irgun Zvai Leumi movement that consisted of political militants who carried out the first major terrorist bombing in the Middle East in which 92 innocent people were murdered.

Laurent-FabiusFrance Ready to Recognise a Palestinian State as Israel Refuses Co-Operation

By Anthony Bellchambers, January 30 2016

France’s Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, has warned that letting the status quo continue, risks killing of a two-state solution and playing into the hands of ISIS, the Islamic State militants.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. © Ammar Awad / ReutersBehind Israel’s Campaign to Vilify Peace Groups

By Jonathan Cook, January 30 2016

Far-right activists spying on Israeli human rights community received hidden funds from Netanyahu government Israeli government funds have been secretly transferred to far-right organisations leading a smear campaign against groups opposed to the occupation, a series of investigations show.

Obamapressconfer-510x340Obama Joins Israel Boycott? Labels West Bank Goods

By Jordan Schachtel, January 30 2016

In a step towards joining an Israel boycott, the U.S. is now requiring goods originating from the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria) to be labeled separately from products from the rest of Israel, following the European Union’s crackdown on products from the disputed territories.

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Dangerous Weaponry Used on Refugees with No Legal Status in Calais

January 31st, 2016 by Anna Feigenbaum

The chemical compound contained in expired weapons may no longer be approved, write Anna Feigenbaum and Vyvian Raoul.

Infamous street-artist Banksy made headlines again this week with his latest illicit artwork. The piece, which was painted opposite the French Embassy in London, features a crying Cosette from Les Miserables, her tears the result of a cloud of gas that engulfs her. Like his recent pieces on the edge of The Jungle camp and around Calais, it’s another comment on the refugee crisis. This piece takes a pop at the French government’s handling of the situation – and, in particular, their use of public order weaponry against the people that live in the makeshift encampment.

29.01.16-Banksy-590.jpg [Related Image]In a first for the elusive street artist, his piece featured a code. By scanning the code with a QR reader, viewers were linked to a Youtube video of , rubber bullets and concussion grenades being fired indiscriminately into the camp, which is situated on dunes on the outskirts of the Port au Calais. Despite video evidence, just last week police spokesman Steve Barbet issued a denial against such tactics: ‘It’s not in our interest to use teargas unless it’s absolutely necessary to restore public order, and it is never used in the camp itself,’ he told the Guardian.

Banksy has another link to The Jungle: when his Dismaland exhibition was dismantled after its five week summer run, the artist sent leftover materials to the camp to be turned into shelters. The materials were accompanied by Dismaland crew members, who have so far constructed 12 dwellings, a community centre and a children’s play area, in a project that has become known as ‘Dismalaid’.

When the crew visited, they found evidence everywhere of weapons being used inside the camp. An anonymous member of the of the Dismalaid crew told us: ‘It’s impossible to walk from one end of the camp to the other without stumbling upon various bits of depleted weaponry – from canisters to rubber bullet casings to spent cartridges, they’re all over the place. And everyone you speak to has stories of the Gendarmes firing them indiscriminately into the camp – seemingly with little reason, very often.’

And when crew members used Riot , a civic forensics project designed to help civilians identify riot control weapons, they found out that the weapons being used were not designed for shooting at people at close range or in confined spaces likes tents, lorries, tunnels and fenced in border zones. Impact munitions like rubber bullets have strict guidelines on distance and angles for firing. Likewise, how ‘safe’ or harmful tear gas is depends on the amount of chemicals released, how close you are to where it is discharged, as well as on how much air is moving through the area. Because refugee camps like The Jungle are overcrowded and heavily secured with fencing, razor wire and guards, when tear gas is set off, no one can escape very far.

Being trapped by tear gas can lead to serious injuries and even to death, as the killing of a 20-year-old Eritrean woman in Calais last July made clear. The young woman was hit by a car while fleeing from tear gas fired at close range by the police into the back of a lorry.

Not only are the French security forces shooting people with riot control weapons at close range, almost all the tear gas casings the Dismalaid crew found were identified as out-of-date. Like other chemical products, tear gas expires, becoming dangerous for a number of reasons. For one, the mechanism that sets off the canister or grenade can become faulty. This can lead to injury for anyone handling them. It can also make the devices more likely to cause fires – especially when lodged into enclosed spaces like tents or lorries. This dangerous police behaviour can be deadly.

In addition, the chemical compound contained in expired weapons may no longer be approved according to the most recent safety tests and certificates. But perhaps most ominously, expired riot control casings are very difficult to trace back to the point of sale – allowing both weapons manufacturers and governments to evade blame.

One can imagine the thinking behind using out-of-date, potentially illegal weaponry on people with no legal status: has someone in a police station somewhere in Calais taken the decision to use up old stock on those with no right to complain? Perhaps they gambled no one will find out and, even if they did, that no-one will care anyway. But more and more people are becoming sympathetic to the plight of the refugees perched on that small patch of land in the Port au Calais. And by using Riot , the crew in Calais were able to identify tear gas casing as products of French manufacturers Alsetex, Nobel Sport Securite and Verney-Carron, as well as -based Combined Tactical Systems. These companies are industry leaders that export around the world – in the Port au Calais they’re profiting from the repression of refugees.

Riot is a project from Omega Research Foundation, Bahrain Watch and Bournemouth University with Minute Works graphic design. The RiotID pocket guide is available to freely download in Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish and Turkish . Dismalaid is an impromptu anarcho-aid project run by recycled crew from Banksy’s Dismaland.

Anna Feigenbaum is a Lecturer in Media and Politics at Bournemouth University

Vyvian Raoul is a co-founder of STRIKE! Magazine and founder of Dog Section Press.

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Longstanding US-UK Spying on Israeli Military Operations. Israel Also Spies on America…

January 31st, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

It’s no surprise. Nations routinely spy on allies and adversaries. Today’s sophisticated technology makes it easier than ever.

On Friday, Israeli and Western media reported Washington and Britain accessed Israeli military aircraft video feeds – letting them monitor IDF operations in Gaza, along with watching for potential strikes on Iran.

US and UK intelligence cracked special IDF encryption years ago. They’ve been monitoring communications between Israeli warplanes, drones and military bases.

Edward Snowden-released NSA documents and photos revealed it. Israel expressed disappointment but not surprise, over-hyping what it called “an earthquake…the worst leak in the history of (its) intelligence.”

Tracking is done from a Royal Air Force installation near Mount Olympus, the highest point on Cyprus.

An anonymous Israeli official said the breach means Washington and Britain “forcibly stripped us, and, no less important, that probably none of our encrypted systems are safe from them.”

A 2008 UK intelligence (GCHQ) report called access “indispensable for maintaining an understanding of Israeli military training and operations, and thus an insight into possible future developments in the region.”

“In times of crisis, this access is critical and one of the only avenues to provide up to the minute information and support to US and allied operations in the area.”

The White House declined to comment, only saying spying is conducted for national security reasons. It’s espionage, stealing other countries’ secrets for political, economic and military advantage.

It’s not about keeping us safe. America hasn’t had an enemy since Japan surrendered at WW II’s end.

Domestic spying has nothing to do with national security. It’s for control, transforming America into a police state, its most disadvantaged citizens victimized, thousands wrongfully imprisoned for political reasons.

Earlier released Snowden documents revealed global NSA spying, at home and abroad, including on allied world leaders. Big Brother is real, no longer fiction. Privacy no longer exists.

Unconstitutional mass surveillance is standard practice. Obama escalated what his predecessors began, secretly authorizing illegal intrusions into the lives of ordinary US citizens, monitoring their electronic and telephonic communications without judicial authorization, waging war on freedom, spying more aggressively worldwide than any previous regime in history.

Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev once said “Israel does not spy on the United States of America.”

Not according to the CIA, calling Israel America’s main regional spy threat. Numerous Israeli officials are involved – with close ties to foreign military, intelligence and criminal sources.

In 2011, former CIA counterintelligence/military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi accused Israel of stealing everything it gets its hands one, including military, political, industrial, commercial, technological, economic and financial secrets.

Annual FBI reports prominently feature Israeli spying on America. Washington’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier said Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”

The Pentagon accused Israel of “actively engag(ing) in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.”

Despite longstanding close ties, past and current US national security officials consider Israel a frustrating ally, a genuine counterintelligence threat.

Its technical capability and human resources match some of America’s best – with direct access to top-level US political, military and intelligence sources, enlisting them to steal American secrets.

Israel gets virtually anything it wants from Washington, its intrusive spying overlooked.

Their imperial ties matter more, longstanding partners in naked aggression and other high crimes.

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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US-China Geopolitical Standoff: Malaysia’s Strategic Role

January 31st, 2016 by Saif Wahidov

In late April 2014, U.S. President Obama embarked on a four-nation trip to Asia namely Japan, South-Korea, Philippines and Malaysia. Malaysia was the only country on Obama’s itinerary that was not a treaty ally of the United States. The visit marks a new phase for Malaysia-U.S. ties with the upgrade of their bilateral relations to a “comprehensive partnership” thus signalling Washington’s pivot to Asia. This is seen as a major shift in Malaysia’s foreign policy which maintained a limited relationship during the tenure of former premier Mahathir Mohamad who openly opposed attempts of the West to create a unipolar world.

The comprehensive partnership promises greater collaboration on the economy, security, education, science, technology and other fields. However, the most significant dimension of this partnership is security cooperation, including antiterrorism efforts, military-to-military ties, facilities for U.S. forces, U.S. support for Southeast Asian claimants in the South China Sea disputes, and U.S. humanitarian aid. \In addition, an increased military-to-military relation, through complex joint military exercises, have been taking place ever since.

Malaysia has now successfully completed exercises codenamed: KERIS STRIKE, CARAT, GPOI CAPSTONE, DCAT, COPE TAUFAN, and MALUS AMPHEX, according to the Defence Minister ishammuddin Hussein. He also said that the Defence Ministry is mulling over the idea of adopting the U.S. Marines military model to further strengthen the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) maritime capacity. There are already reports that Malaysia has begun developing an amphibious force based near James Shoal and has partnered U.S. Marine Corps to build that capability.

In a report by Center for New American Security (CNAS), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, entitled Advancing U.S.-Malaysia Security Cooperation in a Changing Environment, “MAF’s capacity limitations could be addressed through expanded foreign military sales (FMS), including possibly unmanned vehicles to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance(ISR) through deepened defence industry cooperation”.

It is well timed to put into effect the proposed strategy with the establishment of THE Eastern Sabah Security Zone (ESSZONE) in the wake of the Lahad Datu intrusion by the Sulu separatists. Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM), a joint interagency task force consisting of the MAF, Royal Malaysian Police, and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency is the main enforcement authority for ESSZONE established by the Malaysian PM Najib Razak and chaired by the Chief Minister of Sabah Musa Aman. Its purpose is to strengthen maritime security following an incursion and prevent terrorist activities in waters of Sabah. ESSCOM receives massive funding from the government of Malaysia amounting to RM1.3 billion from to 2014 – 2016 to build its infrastructure and strengthen its military assets.

It has become a highly militarized zone with its increased military assets on land, air, and most notably sea with the conversion of a cargo vessel and a decommission oil rig into military sea bases funded by Malaysian’s national petroleum company PETRONAS. These developments in ESSZONE are followed closely by the U.S. and evidenced through frequent visits by its officials and military assistance by the means of training, assets transfer and military sales.

This is all happening against the backdrop of a growing U.S. and China role in South China Sea. It is clear as daylight the U.S. is engaged in an aggressive diplomatic offensive throughout Asia seeking to pit China against South-east Asian claimants in the South China Sea dispute. 

While the Philippines and Vietnam fully support Washington’s aggressive stance, Malaysia has traditionally been more careful about balancing its relationships with Washington and Beijing, cooperating on military matters with the former while focusing more on economic links with the latter. China is Malaysia’s biggest trading partner and seeks to deepen their defence cooperation. In September 2015, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur carried out their first joint military exercise in the Straits of Malacca which is one of the world’s busiest waterways with a geostrategic importance. This is followed by a pledge in November 2015 to deepen bilateral defence cooperation during a meeting in Kuala Lumpur between the two defence ministers.

Obviously, Malaysia is trying to play it safe by balancing its relationships with the U.S. and China. However, the western mass media machine is trying very hard to play up instances of the Chinese Navy presence around James Shoal, an Island under land-mass expansion, to provoke confrontation between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. Whether under pressure or influence, top officials of the MAF and Malaysian politicians can be seen echoing the same view in a subtle manner more recently. The U.S. has also been repeatedly playing up the South China Sea disputes between China and fellow claimants of Southeast Asian nations by referring to China’s nine-dashed line as expansive and its naval activities as coercive. While similar narrative in Europe is obvious with the U.S. anti-Russian rhetoric which saw nations like France, Germany and Turkey distancing and severing its relationship with Russia. Moreover, U.S. and NATO countries have been increasing their military build-up, and in the future plan to increase its troop deployment from the current 13,000 to 40,000 troops and place additional hardware, including tanks on the Russian borders under the pretext of “Russian aggression.”

As a result of U.S. provocations and strategy of isolating China, increased military build-up among the Southeast Asian nations and militarization of South China Sea have been taking place ever since. Malaysia has been dragged deeply into the fold of U.S. coalition against China since forging the comprehensive partnership with Washington.

Proposed closer coordination with fellow claimants the Philippines and Vietnam suggests that Washington’s diplomatic rhetoric is intent on shifting Malaysia’s stance on the dispute with China to a more aggressive one following the likes of Manila and Hanoi. Moreover, CNAS published in its report that “Because Malaysia is likely to resist formal or regular deployments of U.S. forces to Malaysian soil due both to sovereignty concerns and pressure from Beijing, the United States must be aggressive in seeking opportunities for quiet ad-hoc cooperation.” This demonstrates a subversive attempt to coax the Malaysian officials into support for Washington’s policy against China. These attempts would certainly result in a significant impact in Malaysian foreign policy given the fact that current administration is led by controversial PM Najib Razak who would do anything to stay in power amid links to murder and corruption scandal.

In July 2015, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in its report released documents exposing Malaysian PM Najib Razak in a USD $700 million corruption scandal involving the state investment fund. WSJ also reported in October 2015 that the FBI and Justice Department are examining Goldman Sachs role as adviser to the politically connected development fund that resulted in years of lucrative business, also which brought exposure to an expanding scandal. The U.S. media and financial entities are well known for their influence on U.S. foreign policy raising questions whether financial interests and involvement in the corruption scandal intends to pressure Najib Razak into reviewing its policy against China.

While the corruption scandal is drawing world-wide attention, another controversy surrounding Najib’s administration which received much less attention surfaced. Several Malaysian newspapers reported that on September 7, 2015 the High Court in Kota Kinabalu was told that Philippine and Malaysian governments conspired in Lahad Datu armed intrusion. During a trial of 30 individuals linked to the intrusion by Sulu gunmen at Lahad Datu, a communication interception processing staff from the Malaysian police special branch, who was testifying as a ‘protected witness’, said in an intercepted telephone conversation that a suspect, Basil B. Samiul was warned by a man dubbed, ‘Lelaki Sabah’ (Sabah man) to be on alert and that “we are being used”. “I don’t know who ‘we’ and what ‘the governments of Malaysia and the Philippines conspired’ meant by ‘Lelaki Sabah’,” said the witness through a court interpreter.

Eastern Sabah has seen numerous accounts of terrorist activities including kidnappings, extortion and assassination prior to the armed intrusion in 2013. Several Islamic militant groups exist in the Southern Philippines namely Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Abu Sayyaf. Abu Sayyaf who recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) is hugely responsible for the attacks. Links between IS and Abu Sayyaf is not surprising considering the fact that several reports claimed that MNLF, MILF and Abu Sayyaf was a CIA project just like Al-Qaeda initially recruited as mujahedeens to fight the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan against the Russians. They have been wreaking havoc in the Philippines and Malaysia ever since similar to the other CIA created terrorists that are operating in conflict areas around the globe.

If the allegations prove to be true, the successful establishment of ESSZONE under the pretext of preventing terrorist activities, terrorists created by the CIA and possibly still under CIA funding for covert operations as evidenced by its links with U.S. created IS, is clearly an attempt to militarize the eastern coasts of Sabah bordered by Philippines. This is convenient for further maritime, naval and military build-up through cooperation between these two countries, the U.S. and Malaysia, around the Sulu Sea which could serve as a deterrence strategy against China.

With the current leadership embroiled in controversies, the U.S. could exploit the situation through its media and influence to dictate Malaysian policy.

It is up to the Malaysian politicians to be wise in their decisions and to not fall prey to the internal and external pressure regarding their stance in the dispute. Malaysia’s sovereignty is at stake and given the fact that the U.S. desire to establish a base or at least deploy their troops on the eastern coasts of Sabah is now made possible with the existence of ESSZONE. We can expect to see Malaysia playing a more pivotal role in the ongoing standoff in the Indo-Pacific.

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Free the Move 9! NYC Stand in Solidarity in with Parole for The Move 9

January 31st, 2016 by Global Research News

NYC Stand in Solidarity in with Parole for the Move 9 – Friday Night 2/12/16

On Friday night, February 12th 2016 join the move organization along with all our friends and supporters in the NYC area for an evening of solidarity for parole for Move political prisoners.

The program will be taking place at the Malcolm X Doctor Betty Shabazz center located at 3940 Broadway @ 165th Street.

The main focus will be on the upcoming May 2016 parole hearings for Janet, Janine, and Debbie Africa.


We have a great line up on the main panel which will include:
Ramona Africa
Pam Africa
Mumia Abu Jamal
Amina Baraka
Caleb Maupin
Suzanne Ross
James McIntosh
Harabic Tubman
Iman al Talib Abdur Rashid
We will have updates on the parole campaigns for political prisoners:Jalil Muntaqim
Herman Bell
Robert Seth Hayes, and many othersThere will also be performances that night featuring:

Raw
Lc the poet
The new york city premiere of life
And some more surprise performances

We hope to see all of you in attendance on this historic evening!

Ona move
The Move organization

“The Money Mafia”

January 31st, 2016 by Hon. Paul Hellyer

Exposing perceived fault lines in our banking and financial systems and explaining how unemployment could be cut in half in two years and worldwide prosperity restored, this book argues the existence of exotic energy sources to replace fossil fuels and consequently recommends an immediate end to fracking and offshore drilling for oil. It further urges an immediate worldwide mobilization to replace the energy source in every car, truck, tractor, ship, airplane, and house on Earth in seven years in a desperate effort to save the planet from further overheating

The book blasts government secrecy, and more than 65 years of supposed lies and disinformation, and demands full disclosure of what they know about visitors from other realms and their technology and the extent of their collaboration, including any treaties that may have been signed by them.

With more than 65 years of participation in and observation of political and economic systems—beginning with the Great Depression, extending through World War II, the postwar era of hope for a better life, the Cold War, the subjugation of democracy by oligarchy, and the subtle but continuous militarization of America—Paul T. Hellyer analyzes what he believes has gone wrong with the world and its economy and suggests radical measures to introduce a universal culture of peace and cooperation.

You can buy Paul Hellyer’s book online via Amazon or via the author’s website

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Double Standards: Where Is the West’s Compassion and Condemnation Following Terror Attacks in Middle East?

January 31st, 2016 by RT

Facebook users were not instructed to do so, but may nonetheless wish to change their profile pictures in solidarity with the families and friends of victims of recent terrorist attacks.

A great many of the victims were aspiring university students, others were school teachers, children, infants, parents, and elderly. Their bodies were torn apart in the acts of violence, many unidentifiable.

Most of these innocent victims will go unnamed, their murders obfuscated, or largely unnoticed, in Western media.

Lebanese forensic police investigate the site of a twin bombing attack that rocked a busy shopping street in the area of Burj al-Barajneh, a Beirut stronghold of Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah, the day after the attack on November 13, 2015. © AFP

Lebanese forensic police investigate the site of a twin bombing attack that rocked a busy shopping street in the area of Burj al-Barajneh, a Beirut stronghold of Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah,
the day after the attack on November 13, 2015. © AFP

Consider the following cycle of carnage:

On November 12, 2015, a double suicide bomb ripped through the Bourj al-Barajneh neighbourhood of southern Beirut, killing 45 and injuring 200 more, many critically so. The terrorists attacked just before 6 pm, on a narrow and crowded residential and commercial street, ensuring maximum loss of life. More would have been murdered had not a local man, Adel Termos, tackled an approaching suicide bomber. Termos lost his life in the blast, but saved countless others with his act of courage.

Site of the December 12 terrorist car bomb explosion in al-Zahra'a, Homs. © Eva Bartlett

Site of the December 12 terrorist car bomb explosion in al-Zahra’a, Homs. © Eva Bartlett

On December 12, 2015, terrorists car-bombed, then suicide-bombed, the al-Zahra’a neighborhood of Homs, Syria, killing at least 16 civilians and injuring over 50, according to initial reports from Syrian State media (later updates noted 20 dead and over 100 injured). The deaths and destruction from the initial car-bombing—near the Ahli Hospital—was made worse since the terrorists set off their bomb next to a natural gas delivery truck. Later, a terrorist returned to the scene and detonated his explosive vest among rescuers who had come to help the injured.

This pattern repeated itself on December 28, 2015, in al-Zahra’a, where a car bomb followed by a suicide bomb, killed up to 30 civilians, and injured over 100, according to Syrian state media initial reports. Again, on January 26, terrorists car and suicide bombed al-Zahra’a, killing at least 24 and injuring over 100, many critically-so, according to Syrian state media.

The al-Zahra’a district of Homs had been terror-bombed many times prior to the December 12 attacks, as have other areas of Homs, including the Ekrama district, which suffered a school bombing on October 1, 2014. There, terrorists car and suicide-bombed next to the school, killed 45 people, mostly children and women, according to al-Masdar News. Video footage showed terrified, maimed and dead children being carried away from the school.

Zein Abudllah, 8, injured by shrapnel to his face in the December 12 terorist car bombing. © Eva Bartlett

Zein Abudllah, 8, injured by shrapnel to his face in the December 12 terorist car bombing. © Eva Bartlett

The terror attacks are not limited to Homs. Over the past 5 years of this foreign war on Syria, Western-backed militants have committed such acts of terrorism all over Syria. On December 30, 2015, members of Da’esh (ISIS) triple-bombed Qamishli, north-eastern Syria, remote-detonating explosives in three restaurants, killing at least 16 civilians. On January 24, 2016 Da’esh again terror-bombed the city, killing at least three people.

The list of terror attacks in Syria, and neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq, is an endless and long list. Yet, while the vast majority of the victims are civilians, their deaths do not merit the same front-page coverage as similar acts do in the West; the terror attacks do not merit the same statements of condemnation and outpouring of sorrow issued by Western leaders when terrorism strikes elsewhere.

Immense Suffering in Beirut and Homs

I paid a visit to Bourj al-Barajneh and al-Zahara, in November and December 2015, respectively. I witnessed firsthand their narrow roads with their destroyed buildings and homes, which emanated an immense suffering that most Western media glossed over.

The Bourj al-Barajneh tragedy occurred one day before the November 13 attacks in Paris, yet the latter attack on the French capital would make headlines for weeks following; Facebook users changed their profile photos to images of the French flag; world leaders – who were largely silent on Beirut’s tragedy the day prior, as well as the repeated terror attacks in Syria – convened in Paris to march in solidarity with the victims.

Western media’s coverage of the Beirut attack was loaded with sectarian lexicon, essentially relegating those murdered civilians as belonging to a “Hezbollah stronghold” or a “Shia neighborhood,” which to Western readers obscures the fact that – while indeed proudly supportive of Hezbollah – these are everyday humans who have been targeted by terrorism.

The Shia/Sunni Lebanese area is also home to many Christian and Palestinian residents. Visiting in the evening, as when the November 12 attacks occurred, I saw heavy pedestrian, motorcycle and automobile traffic along the narrow streets and lanes that host a number of shops and stalls.

Homes opposite the terrorist car bombing blast in al-Zahra'a, Homs © Eva Bartlett

Homes opposite the terrorist car bombing blast in al-Zahra’a, Homs © Eva Bartlett

At the site of the second explosion, residents had erected a memorial and large poster of Adel Termos, the young man who gave his own life to prevent further loss of lives. On the school door opposite, a photo of a Rawan Awad, a young teacher who was killed in the attacks. A local woman pointed to second-story windows, telling me, “the blood reached the windows up there, flesh, too. The blast was huge.” It was said to be the biggest explosion in Beirut for years.

Along the memorial were photos of other victims of these terror attacks: elderly, children, young men and women, victims of Western-backed terror and Western hypocrisy. Their lives didn’t merit worldwide sorrow and solidarity.

Je Suis… Blind and Deaf

The sting that the Lebanese people felt when the world’s attention was focused on Paris, the day after the massacre in Beirut, is a sting that Syrians have known deeply over the past five years.

Take the example of Homs’ al-Zahra’a. Any Western media reporting that does cover the repeated terrorist bombings of the neighborhood does so in sectarian and biased lexicon.

The neighbourhood is described as: “an Alawite” area; a “government-held” area (AP).

But it is not described in terms of its reality, a district comprising a majority of Alawis, but also significant numbers of Christians, Sunnis, and Shia, many of whom are Internally Displaced Syrians who have moved to this “government held”area after fleeing the terrorists’ violence in their own home areas of Aleppo, Idlib, and elsehwere.

The depiction of al-Zahra’a merely as “an Alawite” district is in line with the NATO alliance’s sectarian project, a sectarianism which the vast majority of Syrians continue to refuse. Depicting al-Zahra’a merely as a “government held” area feeds into the Western narrative of obfuscating on the vast amount of support for the Syrian president, and further confuses readers as to the civilian suffering at each terrorist attack in al-Zahra’a.

This human suffering I saw on a December 15, 2015 visit to the neighbourhood, meeting with family members of the dead.

On the second story of what was the shell of his home, teenager Yousef Abdullah walked me through the ruins of the three story home housing two families, outside of which the car bombing had occurred just days prior. It was he who carried out the body of his 17 year old cousin, Caroline, crushed under rubble on the ground level.

The small clothing shop on ground level belonged to Anaya Abbas, a 50, killed in the bombing. Her son, Alaa al-Hamwi, had only days prior returned to see his family. One of the Syrian soldiers defending the Kuweires airbase against terrorist attacks, the al-Hamwi family suffered doubly, from worry over their long absent son, and now from the murder of Anaya Abbas.

Visiting al-Zahra’a one sees a vividly different face, a tormented face, than that which the corporate media allows. Many human stories abound, if journalists care to convey them. The sad hypocrisy is that when terrorist attacks occur on Western soil, these human stories are conveyed, ad naseum.

Commerical and residential streets in the Bourj al-Barajneh area of Beirut which was double terror bombed November 12. © Eva Bartlett

Commerical and residential streets in the Bourj al-Barajneh area of Beirut which was double terror bombed November 12. © Eva Bartlett

UN Selective on Terrorism

Syria’s Foreign and Expatriates Ministry has repeatedly issued letters to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) requesting that such acts of terrorism in Syria be officially condemned, and that action be taken against those states supporting, financing, and enabling terrorism in Syria, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The letters specify that the terrorism being committed in Syria is not only by Da’esh (ISIS) but also by other terrorist groups, including “Jebhat al-Nusra, Jaish al-Islam, al-Jabha al-Islamiya, Jaish al-Fateh, Ahrar al-Cham,” and the so-called “Free Syrian Army”.

These letters are routinely ignored by UNSC and the Secretary-General, although they are based on the tenants of UN resolutions pertaining to terrorism.

It its latest letters, following the January 24, 2016 terror-bombings in al-Zahra’a, the Ministry noted the significance of their timing with respect to the upcoming Geneva talks.

Following the December 12, 2015 attacks, the Syrian Ministry sent their standard letters, requesting condemnation of the terrorism. The request was supported by Russia, with their own draft statement, which was rejected at the UNSC.

In the Face of Terror… You’re on Your Own

When the majority of the above-listed terror bombings have been claimed by Da’esh (ISIS), whom the West claims to be fighting, the glaring lack of condemnation of the Homs bombings, and the once-off condemnation of the Beirut bombings, reveals again the blatant hypocrisy of Western leaders.

In his November 13, 2015 address, President Obama, unsurprisingly, made no mention of either Beirut or Syria’s suffering under western-backed terrorists. Instead he called the Paris situation “heartbreaking” and uttered: “…we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism.”

Not to be outdone, Vice President Biden offered his “deepest condolences” and called the attacks “heartbreaking” “outrageous” and “tragic” and vowed, “We will look out for one another. We will stand together. We will never bow. We will never break. …We will respond. We will overcome. We will endure.”

In his November 21, 2015 address, Biden, in his opening remarks did actually mention the name “Beirut”, and commented,“in the face of terror we stand as one.” Yet, his address focused primarily on Paris—the “simple human acts” carried out by Parisians post Paris attack—and made no other mention of Beirut, nor the “simple human acts” carried out there. Like Beirut residents rushing to donate blood, post-attacks, for example.

Rather than addressing Beirut’s humanity, or even deigning to mention terror attacks carried out on Syrians throughout Syria, Biden used the rest of his address to talk about Syrian refugees and the “rigorous screening”, “fingerprinting” and background checks refugees go through to enter the US. In other words, he used his platform to negate true suffering in Syria, and instead subtly indoctrinate his audience into equating Syrians with terrorism.

Obama issued a proclamation “Honoring the Victims of the Attack in Paris” on November 15, 2015, ordering the US flag to be flown “at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts,”… and so on.

In a search of the Whitehouse.gov website, using key terms like: “Bourj Barajneh”, “Burj al-Barajneh”, “Beirut”, “Zahra”,“Zahraa”, “Homs” + bombing, I came up with just one match, aside from the above-mentioned November 21VP Biden’s uttering of the name “Beirut” before his ode to Paris. The entry was a Statement by NSC Spokesperson Ned Price, on the day of the Bourj al-Barajneh attacks. Neither Obama, nor Biden, deigned to personally make this statement.

One paragraph, the statement “condemns in the strongest terms today’s horrific terrorist attacks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed dozens and wounded hundreds more. We offer our deepest condolences to the families and other loved ones of those killed and injured in this violence. The United States will stand firm with the Government of Lebanon as it works to bring those responsible for this attack to justice….”

Compare the fiery rhetoric in the Paris statements with this meek Beirut statement. Little sorrow was expressed, nor unwavering solidarity, nor “fighting against extremism.”

Such is Western hypocrisy towards those murdered by Western-supported death squads.

Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist who has lived in the Gaza Strip since late 2008. She was aboard the Dignity, one of five Free Gaza missions to successfully sail to the Strip in 2008. Eva rode in ambulances during the 2008/2009 Israeli attacks on Gaza, and documented from a central Gaza hospital during the November 2012 Israeli attacks. She has worked extensively with Gaza’s fishermen and farmers, accompanying them as they come under fire from the Israeli army. She keeps a blog In Gaza.

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The Likely Monsanto-Syngenta Merger and the Chinese Factor

January 30th, 2016 by Carmelo Ruiz

Monsanto, the US-based biotech and agribusiness colossus, is seeking a merger with its European competitor Syngenta. Such a transaction would create a gargantuan corporation that would control 45% of the world’s commercial seeds and 30% of the farm chemicals market. This is a time of major mergers in the ag sector. The largest of these took place last November, when two of the largest US players, Dow and Dupont, agreed to merge. The resulting spawn of both will have no less than 25% of the world commercial seed market.

The much-talked about Monsanto-Syngenta merger is likely but not inevitable. Monsanto began 2016 with its third buyout offer to the European corporation in less than a year. Syngenta’s management announced it will not decide on Monsanto’s latest bid right away because it is considering other offers. In a conference in Switzerland in mid-January, company chairman Michael Demare said it is evaluating proposals from German companies BASF and Bayer, which are also world leaders in the agricultural biotech and pesticide sectors, and from ChemChina.

Although not very well known in North America and Europe, the Chinese state-owned ChemChina is one mammoth of a corporation. With $45.6 billion in annual revenues and some 140,000 employees, it ranks 265th in the Fortune 500 index.

shutterstock_148936832

ChemChina became a pesticide powerhouse in 2011 when its subsidiary, China National Agrochemical Corporation, acquired Makhteshim Agan Industries (Israel), the world’s 7th largest pesticide manufacturer, and became ADAMA”, said the Canada-based ETC Group. “With revenues over $3 billion in 2013, ADAMA sells generic pesticide products in more than 120 countries… ADAMA’s largest market is Europe (37%), followed by Latin America (25%). (Parentheses in original)

ChemChina’s interests go way beyond agrochemicals. Last year it acquired Italy’s Pirelli, one of the world’s leading tire manufacturers, for $7.9 billion. Its other major purchases include French firms Adisseo and Rhodia, Australia’s Qenos, Norwegian silicon maker Elkem, German machinery maker Krauss Maffee, and 12% of Swiss energy trader Mercuria.

ChemChina is headed by the flamboyant Ren Jianxin, a high-ranking Communist Youth League member who took the unusual step of going into business rather than politics. “Over three decades, Ren has led the restructuring of China’s chemicals industry, organizing more than 100 firms under the ChemChina banner into six main operating divisions, producing everything from basic chemicals to fertilizers and silicones”, said Reuters. Ren recently hired Bayer director Michael Koenig to run one of ChemChina’s subsidiaries, a move that raised eyebrows since state-owned companies very rarely ever hire foreigners to executive positions.

The company is also looking to expand its presence in the domestic market. A merger with Syngenta would turn ChemChina into the country’s top pesticide company. This is no small undertaking, given that China is the world’s third largest pesticide market, after the US and Brazil. If foreign agrochemical companies were to be interested in investing in China’s vast market they would find themselves squeezed into a minor corner by a gigantic Syngenta-ChemChina combination.

ChemChina’s ambitions are part of a larger story. Chinese food and agriculture companies are moving abroad and starting to compete toe to toe with their Western counterparts and even buying them out. In 2013, China’s Shuanghui corporation bought Smithfield, the leading US pork company, for $7.1 billion, the largest ever purchase of a US company by Chinese investors.

Another Chinese company to watch is COFCO, the country’s leading food processor, which acquired a controlling stake in the Netherlands’ agricultural commodity trader Nidera. The majority stake in Nidera would give COFCO greater control over pricing and better access to Latin America and Russia, important grain-growing regions, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014.

So what happens if ChemChina beats Monsanto to the Syngenta finish line? The Missouri-based company, which has been hitting hard times in the recent months, may end up trampled and squashed, unable to compete with a Dow-Dupont and a Syngenta-ChemChina.

According to the ETC Group: “No matter which mergers/acquisitions ultimately materialize, there’s little doubt that the infamous Monsanto name will soon be history.”

SOURCES

Owen Covington. “Syngenta board reportedly supports pursuing ChemChina deal” Triad Business Journal, January 19 2016.

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/news/2016/01/19/syngenta-board-reportedly-supports-pursuing.html

ETC Group. “Breaking Bad: Big Ag Mega-Mergers in Play” December 15 2015.

http://www.etcgroup.org/content/breaking-bad-big-ag-mega-mergers-play

http://www.feedandgrain.com/news/why-chemchina-insists-on-acquiring-syngenta

Financial Times. “ChemChina closes in on another prize purchase”

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78d04e32-c26e-11e5-808f-8231cd71622e.html#axzz3yGS3Cp7E

Sophie Song. “China State-Owned Food Giant COFCO Corporation Spends Billions Buying Nidera” International Business Times, February 28 2014.

http://www.ibtimes.com/china-state-owned-food-giant-cofco-corporation-spends-billions-buying-nidera-nv-1558616

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican author and journalist currently living in Ecuador. He directs the Latin America Energy and Environment Monitor, runs a bilingual blog on journalism and current affairs, and is a member of the directive commission of the Puerto Rico Socialist Front. His Twitter ID is @carmeloruiz.

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Obama Joins Israel Boycott? Labels West Bank Goods

January 30th, 2016 by Jordan Schachtel

In a step towards joining an Israel boycott, the U.S. is now requiring goods originating from the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria) to be labeled separately from products from the rest of Israel, following the European Union’s crackdown on products from the disputed territories.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has issued new mandates requiring that West Bank products not be marked “Israel,” citing a notice from the year 1997 that offers such instructions.

The memo from DHS, titled, “West Bank Country of Origin Marking Requirements,” reads:

“The purpose of this message is to provide guidance to the trade community regarding the country of origin marking requirements for goods that are manufactured in the West Bank.”

According to the instructions,

“It is not acceptable to mark” goods from the West Bank as having been from “Israel,” “Made in Israel,” or from “Occupied Territories-Israel.”

In its statement, U.S. Customs threatens:

“Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

“Goods entering the United States must conform to the U.S. marking statute and regulations promulgated thereunder,” the statement adds.

Groups advocating “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” (BDS) against Israel have demanded separate labeling of Israeli goods from the West Bank and the Golan Heights as a step toward a total boycott of Israeli products.

Israel maintains that under international law, the West Bank is “disputed,” and not “occupied,” since there was no legitimate sovereign in the territory when Israel took control of it in self-defense after Jordan attacked Israel in 1967.

Many of the products that will be affected are made within areas of the West Bank, such as the Etzion bloc, are likely to be part of Israel under any peace agreement.

The new instructions were published by DHS over the weekend, following complaints from Palestinian and fringe leftist outfits that the U.S. was not complying with a 1995 law that calls for the marking of goods from the West Bank, Israel National News reports.

In November, the European Union mandated the labeling of Israeli products from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Critics, including presidential candidates, have argued the labeling of products only from “Israeli areas” of the West Bank, and not Palestinian-controlled territories, is a discriminatory and anti-Semitic act.

The EU now refuses to allow the label “Made in Israel” on products made anywhere outside of the pre-1967 lines.

Following the implementation of EU labeling mandates, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the actions an “exceptional and discriminatory step.”

“This will not advance peace; it will certainly not advance truth and justice,” he added.

Last week, the State Department effectively endorsed the anti-Israel labeling measures.

On Wednesday, to mark Holocaust Remembrance day, President Obama pledged to confront worldwide anti-Semitism:

“Here, tonight, we must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it,” he said from the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.

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10 Things They Won’t Tell You about the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will.

January 30th, 2016 by Michael Moore

News of the poisoned water crisis in Flint has reached a wide audience around the world. The basics are now known: the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the free elections in Flint, deposed the mayor and city council, then appointed his own man to run the city. To save money, they decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, and instead, make the public drink from the toxic Flint River. When the governor’s office discovered just how toxic the water was, they decided to keep quiet about it and covered up the extent of the damage being done to Flint’s residents, most notably the lead affecting the children, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. Citizen activists uncovered these actions, and the governor now faces growing cries to resign or be arrested.

Here are ten things that you probably don’t know about this crisis because the media, having come to the story so late, can only process so much. But if you live in Flint or the State of Michigan as I do, you know all to well that what the greater public has been told only scratches the surface.

  1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.
  2. For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented. Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.
  3. There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.
  4. People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?
  5. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed.Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!
  6. The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.
  7. In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?
  8. Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.
  9. ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.
  10. This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them. In the richest country in the world.

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Washington has Lost the Proxy War. US Ambitions to Occupy Syria with Physical Force

January 30th, 2016 by Ulson Gunnar

Since 2011, Syria has fought desperately to hold itself together as a single, unified nation. Threatened from the beginning by the “Libya precedent,” Washington and its regional allies have openly conspired to divide up Syria as a consolatory objective upon failing to topple Damascus outright.

US policymakers, some of whom had previously played a role in laying out invasion and occupation plans for Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, have published numerous op-eds and entire policy papers regarding the planned partition of Syria.

It was hoped that the Syrian government could be pushed from Damascus and sent fleeing to Syria’s western provinces of Latakia and Tartus. From there, the US hoped to create a Saudi-Qatari-Turkish dominated central state with a Kurdish territory linked up with US-backed Kurds in northern Iraq. Forever divided against itself, Syria would never again function as a powerful ally of nearby Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Russia and distant China.

Russia’s intervention in Syria has all but prevented Damascus from falling. And while the Western media has attempted to claim the intervention has made little difference, so successful has it actually been that attempts by Turkey to establish its long-sought after “safe zone” in northern Syria have also all but evaporated.

Syrian troops backed by Russian airpower have moved from Latakia along Syria’s border with Turkey toward the now much reported-on A’zaz-Jarabulus corridor while another force pushes north from eastern Aleppo toward the Turkish border. Elsewhere, Syrian forces are securing Damascus, pushing Western-backed militants over their southernmost border with Jordan and pushing east toward Raqqa itself.

What is left? 

What has been left for the US and its regional allies is a possible attempt to invade and occupy Syria’s northeast. The US has already been allegedly carrying out ground operations in this region supposedly in support of “Kurdish” and “Arab” forces that make up what it calls the “Syrian Democratic Forces.”

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday that Russian experts had “arrived to explore” the Qamishli airport’s “readiness and to check what is needed to develop and use it” near the Turkish border. The report added that Russian warplanes were expected to use the airport in the “coming days and weeks.” Qamishli is located south of the Turkish border town of Nusaybin.

The US has even allegedly begun constructing, or rather restoring, an airstrip within Syrian territory. The BBC in its report Syria conflict: ‘US expanding air strip’ in Kurdish north claimed:

Satellite imagery appearing to show the US expanding a formerly disused air strip in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria has been seen by the BBC. 

The images, from the security analysts Stratfor, show a runway near the town of Rmeilan being extended from 700m (half a mile) to 1.3km. 

That would make it more suitable for a larger aircraft such as a Hercules. 

A spokesman for the US Department of Defence said its small team in Syria needed “occasional logistical support”.

The US inviting itself into sovereign Syrian territory and creating a military base to supply its ground forces operating there without UN Security Council approval or invitation by the Syrian government sets a dangerous and unacceptable precedent. But assuming the United States has no interest in actually upholding the very international law it attempts to justify its numerous extraterritorial adventures with, what options does Syria have to head off what is a well-documented conspiracy to strip it of its own sovereign territory and expand from there toward Damascus itself?

The answer can be found in Qamishli, Syria, teetering near the Syrian border with Turkey and only 50 miles west of the US’ alleged airstrip in Rmeilan. Qamishli is the site of what is alleged to be a growing Russian presence, including a burgeoning airbase.

The International Business Times reported in their article US Forces Setting Up Base In Northern Syria Near Russian Forces In Qamishli Airfield: Report that:

…Russian experts had “arrived to explore” the Qamishli airport’s “readiness and to check what is needed to develop and use it” near the Turkish border. The report added that Russian warplanes were expected to use the airport in the “coming days and weeks.” Qamishli is located south of the Turkish border town of Nusaybin.

It would be the check to America’s latest, and perhaps final move in an overarching game the West has been sorely losing in Syria.

Check or Checkmate?

Russian forces, if they are indeed setting up in Qamishli, will establish a permanent bastion in Syria’s northeast. When inevitably Syrian forces cut off terrorists from their foreign supply routes and reestablish control over Syria’s largest cities back west, they will be able to reenter the northeast of their nation in force with Russian backing up to and including onto the doorstep of any illegal US occupation. There would be little the US could do to stop this, and no strategic or tactical means of “holding” territory already under the control of Syrian-Russian forces.

The US in this scenario is reduced to a trespasser coming up to an occupied house, unable to do anything else but leer through the window. While the US would surely be trampling the flowerbed outside the home, it would be unable to access anything of value within it.

Syria and Russia are displacing US ambitions to occupy Syria with physical forces that once in place will be difficult to remove. The US will come to the bargaining table with its “Syrian Democratic Forces” operating at the fringe of Syrian territory, with a Russian airbase standing between it and Syria’s interior. Meanwhile, the lion’s share of military victories against both Al Qaeda forces masquerading as the West’s “moderate fighters” and the “Islamic State” (IS) itself goes to Russia and Syria, not the US.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the US and its allies to explain just what they are actually even doing in Syria besides perpetuating the war for as long as possible. It is clear that the only progress being made in Syria against the forces of extremism is being made by the long-chastised Syrian government and their Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese allies. It is also clear that remaining hurdles preventing the final restoration of peace and order in Syria is the US and its regional allies who insist on propping up armed groups opposed to the Syrian government, and direct threats and undermining by the US itself aimed at Damascus.

It should be abundantly clear that the US has lost the political war, the proxy war and now possibly checked in the “base war” as well. How much more the US wants to lose before withdrawing from yet another quagmire of its own creation depends on how much credibility the US believes it can still afford to lose as it pursues hegemony openly in front of an increasingly aware global public that has begun effectively fighting back.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Behind Israel’s Campaign to Vilify Peace Groups

January 30th, 2016 by Jonathan Cook

Far-right activists spying on Israeli human rights community received hidden funds from Netanyahu government

Israeli government funds have been secretly transferred to far-right organisations leading a smear campaign against groups opposed to the occupation, a series of investigations show.

The rightwing groups have received tens of millions of dollars in state funding, either directly from the government or via Israeli local authorities representing the settlements in the West Bank.

In three known cases, publicly funded far-right organisations launched spying operations on human rights groups.

Other state money has gone towards ad campaigns claiming to expose peace activists as “moles”, planted by foreign governments to damage Israel.

Human rights activists, the campaigns claim, are betraying their country by providing information that fuels criticism overseas of Israel and helps to bolster an international boycott movement.

That message closely echoes the justifications offered by government ministers for new legislation to weaken Israeli organisations that monitor abuses of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The United States and Europe have condemned the Israeli government’s draft bill, with the European Union describing an early version as “reminiscent of totalitarian regimes”.

“This is a campaign of intimidation and incitement, and it is being orchestrated at the highest levels of the Israeli political establishment,” said Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli military commander and co-founder of Breaking the Silence, which collects testimonies from serving Israeli soldiers that highlight abuses of Palestinians.

Netanyahu and his ministers want to shut down all voices in Israel that oppose the occupation. They are doing what fascists always do – looking to blame an enemy within.

Activist ‘moles’

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, a prominent Israeli group monitoring human rights violations in the occupied territories, agreed.

“We are seeing a general assault by the government and right-wing groups on those parts of Israeli society that are still standing up for democratic values,” she said. “The aim is to silence us.”

Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem have been the target of intense criticism from both Netanyahu’s government and far-right groups.

One, Im Tirtzu, published a report last month accusing several anti-occupation groups of being “shtulim” – the Hebrew word for “moles” – on behalf of European governments.

An associated video shows a Palestinian stabbing with a knife and suggests that human rights groups like Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem will help him to evade justice.

Illustrated with face shots of four leading peace activists, it concludes: “While we fight terror, they fight us.”

“The government particularly fears Breaking the Silence because its testimonies show the army isn’t investigating evidence of brutality and wrongdoing by soldiers,” said Yossi Gurvitz, an Israeli analyst who has followed Im Tirtzu’s activities.

If soldiers are going unpunished, then that removes Israel’s basic defence against investigations from outside bodies like the International Criminal Court. It makes it more likely that soldiers will one day face war crimes trials.

Gurvitz added: “There is a clear pattern of Im Tirtzu being used as the government’s attack dog. It issues a report showing ‘traitors’ in our midst and then the government immediately announces a law to tackle the problem.”

Barred from schools

The release of Im Tirtzu’s video coincided with new government measures against Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem and other anti-occupation groups.

Last month the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, described Breaking the Silence as “malicious” and barred it from access to army activities.

Shortly afterwards Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the settler party Jewish Home, banned the group from schools.

“Lies and propaganda against the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] – not in our schools,” he said.

The justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, also from the Jewish Home party, has proposed a new bill, nicknamed the Transparency Law, that casts suspicion on Israel’s human rights community.

She has justified it on the grounds it would stop activists from “being used as a tool by foreign countries to implement their own policies”. Indicating that her goal is to muzzle such groups, she said the legislation would help to “limit the information that gets to foreign countries”.

Under pressure from the US and EU, Netanyahu insisted Shaked drop a provision that would have forced human rights groups to wear lobbyist badges on visits to the Israeli parliament.

However, the groups will still have to detail their funding sources in all reports and documents, and meetings with state officials, or face a fine.

Undercover filming

Collusion behind the scenes between far-right groups and the government has come to light in a series of investigations published in recent weeks.

Walla, an Israeli news website, published an investigation this month into Ad Kan, which recently issued video and audio recordings from spying operations on Breaking the Silence and Taayush, a loosely structured collective of anti-occupation activists.

Ad Kan is reported to have spent many months working undercover inside human rights organisations.

The group is funded by the Samaria Settlers’ Committee, which in turn is financed by the Samaria Regional Council, a large local authority for settlers living in the northern West Bank.

The council, much of whose budget comes from public coffers, includes some of the most extreme settlements in the occupied territories.

The same settlers’ committee made headlines last year when it produced an animated video that equated human rights activists in Israel with a “kapo”, a Jew who collaborated with guards in Nazi concentration camps.

This week it launched a new campaign urging Israeli Jews to boycott restaurants in Israel that abided last year by a one-day general strike called by the leadership of the country’s Palestinian minority.

Spying operation

A separate investigation this month by the liberal Haaretz daily revealed that Regavim, a state-funded group that tries to help settlers take over Palestinian land, had paid for a three-year spying operation, starting in 2010, against a prominent human rights lawyer.

Michael Sfard has been a legal adviser to several anti-occupation groups, including Breaking the Silence, Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity, and Yesh Din, which highlights violations of Palestinians’ rights.

According to Haaretz, a private detective hired by Regavim got hold of confidential documents from Sfard’s office, which eventually reached Im Tirtzu. They were later published in the Israeli media.

A newspaper article based on one document, from Yesh Din, claimed that the organisation was helping outside bodies to investigate Israeli soldiers for war crimes.

Gurvitz, who is also a researcher with Yesh Din, noted that many of the staff of the far-right groups were closely involved with government parties.

Regavim’s chief legal officer at the time of the spying operation was Bezalel Smotrich, now an MP for the governing Jewish Home party, which is pushing the legislation to weaken anti-occupation groups.

Undisclosed money

A separate investigation by Peace Now disclosed last month that nine far-right Israeli groups received income of nearly $150 million between 2006 and 2013. More than 93 per cent of the money was from undisclosed sources.

The donors, almost all from the US, are believed to include wealthy Jews, as well as Jewish foundations and fundamentalist Christian organisations that support the settlements.

However, Peace Now’s research also shows that the Israeli state funnelled some $25m into far-right organisations in that period, mostly through government ministries and local authorities. The sums were concealed under a category called “participations”.

Molad, an Israeli progressive think-tank, found in 2014 that the Netanyahu government had stepped up other forms of aid to far-right groups following the 2009 election.

The government transferred some $40m in special grants to the settlements but then required their local authorities to redirect most of the money to a private settler organisation, the Yesha Council, in apparent violation of Israeli law.

At the time of the decision, Naftali Bennett, now the leader of the Jewish Home party and the education minister, headed the Yesha Council.

Gag order

The rightwing ad campaigns, the spying operations and government and police responses have fuelled a climate of hostility towards peace activists.

Ad Kan’s footage of Taayush activist Ezra Nawi led to his arrest by police, as well as that of two other activists, an Israeli and a Palestinian. A draconian gag order meant no details of their cases could be reported for several days.

Nawi is recorded discussing how to foil an attempt by Jewish settlers to deceive a Palestinian landowner into selling his land.

In the film, he says he will report a Palestinian middleman working for the settlers to the Palestinian security forces. He adds that the man will be tortured and killed as a result.

The land seller appears to have been an impostor, part of a plot to entrap Nawi. No evidence has emerged so far that Nawi contacted the Palestinian authorities or that anyone was hurt.

According to his lawyers, he suspected a trap, but mistakenly thought he was being tested on whether he would help settlers to buy land. His statements were designed to prove his solidarity with Palestinians, they say.

This week Israeli courts ignored police requests for the activists’ continuing detention in jail and released the three men to house arrest.

Ad Kan’s other recording is of a private meeting organised by Breaking the Silence, to which a former senior Israeli diplomat, Alon Liel, was invited.

Liel tells the activists that Israel’s political establishment is a “lost cause” and recommends that they shift their struggle to international forums, such as the United Nations.

Ad Kan and other rightwing organisations have hailed the clip as confirmation that human rights groups are traitors, working with foreign powers to damage Israel.

Government officials have also drawn a comparison between human rights organisations and violent settler groups responsible for attacking Palestinians.

Bennett, the education minister, equated “radical leftists” like Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem to settlers accused of setting fire to a home in the Palestinian village of Duma last summer that killed three members of a family, including an 18-month-old baby.

He said both sides were “exactly the same” and “want to bring down the building around us”.

Death threats

Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said the group’s activists were now facing sustained harassment. “We have hate mail and there have been physical threats to people’s lives.”

Gurvitz said the many Israelis supported the government’s position, but that Im Tirtzu may have gone too far with an ad campaign this week.

It accused many of Israel’s leading cultural figures, including novelists Amos Oz and David Grossman, of also being “moles”.

Faced with a public backlash and accusations of McCarthyism, Ronen Shoval, Im Tirtzu’s founder, posted comments online defending Joseph McCarthy, the notorious US Senator who led witch-hunts against those he suspected of being Communists.

Shoval said: “The historical details revealed that in most cases, he [McCarthy] was correct.”

Netanyahu quickly distanced himself from Im Tirtzu: “I object to the use of the term ‘traitor’ for those who don’t agree with me, but at the same time I oppose Breaking the Silence that slander[s] Israel abroad.”

Im Tirtzu and Regavim were unavailable for comment.

 

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Selected Articles: Global Economic Update. “The Neo-Liberal Counter-Revolution”

January 30th, 2016 by Global Research News

central-banks-economy 2Negative Interest Rates Show “Desperation” of Central Banks

By Washington’s Blog, January 30 2016

Japan has joined the EU, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden in imposing negative interest rates.

investing economy stocksSeven Years of Monetary Quackery; Can the Federal Reserve Admit It Was Wrong?

By Mike Whitney, January 30 2016

America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come. Who are these wealthy investors? Bondholders.

The Keynesian Revolution and the Neo-liberal Counter-revolutionThe Keynesian Revolution and the Neo-Liberal Counter-Revolution

By Eric Toussaint, January 30 2016

As a result of the depression of the 1920s and 1930s, a new wave of critics tackled the neo-classical creed on a largely pragmatic basis. This new wave was international and involved political leaders and economists from differing belonging to various currents backgrounds…

By Bill Holter, January 29 2016

Every once in a while it is a good thing to review something we already know and have known for quite a while.  What we’re talking about are derivatives and the very basics of how they work… or not.

syrizaSyriza and the Greek Debt Crisis: Austerity Unbroken

By Jannis Milios and Alp Kayserilioglu, January 29 2016

Athens-based journalist Alp Kayserilioğlu recently sat down with Milios to discuss the history of Syriza, the purpose of the eurozone, and the power of the country’s domestic bourgeoisie.

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Negative Interest Rates Show “Desperation” of Central Banks

January 30th, 2016 by Washington's Blog

Japan has joined the EU, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden in imposing negative interest rates.

Indeed, more than a fifth of the world’s GDP is now covered by a central bank with negative interest rates.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

TOKYO—Japan’s central bank stunned the markets Friday by setting the country’s first negative interest rates, in a desperate attempt to keep the economy from sliding back into the stagnation that has dogged it for much of the last two decades.

BBC writes:

The country is desperate to increase spending and investment.

***

Japan has been desperate to boost consumer spending for years. At one point it even issued shopping vouchers to stimulate demand.

 

Image: MarketWatch

The New York Times writes:

Moving to negative rates reflects a measure of desperation on the part of central banks.Their traditional tools have been largely exhausted, as most countries’ interest rates have been pushed to almost nothing.

MarketWatch’s senior markets writer, William Watts, notes:

This might not be the sort of capitulation stock-market investors were anticipating.

The Bank of Japan’s surprise decision Friday to start charging depositors for parking excess reserves at the central bank triggered a global equity rally. But several monetary policy watchers and market strategists worried that the move was an acknowledgment that the world’s central banks are running out of ammunition in the battle against deflation.

“This is an interesting move that looks a lot more like desperation or novelty than it looks like a program meant to make a real difference,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics.

Kit Juckes, global macro strategist at Société Générale, underlined the moment in a note to clients:

“First of all, forget the details, feed on the symbolism. Germany, Switzerland and Japan, the three great current account powers of the post-Bretton Woods era, whose surpluses have financed the frivolity of baby boomer Anglo-Saxons, are being told in no uncertain terms to stop saving.”

Whether the strategy works or not is less important than what the decision says about global disinflationary forces, he said, which have forced the central banks to “set off on this path…following a trail of breadcrumbs as they head for the gingerbread house.”

***

But others worry that the move underlines a degree of desperation and a sense that the asset purchases at the heart of global quantitative-easing strategies are running up against some important limits.

***

Daiwa economists and others expect the Bank of Japan to remain under pressure to ease further. And when push comes to shove, the bank will be likely to push rates further into negative territory rather than ramp up asset purchases.

“Ultimately, negative interest rates from a veteran of monetary expansion such as the BOJ mark a capitulation about the effectiveness of QE alone as an inflation-targeting tool in world of lingering growth-debt imbalances and commodity price wars,” said Lena Komileva, economist at G-plus Economics, in emailed comments.

***

Banks will presumably move their deposit rates below zero in response ….

Likewise, Bloomberg previously noted of the initiation of negative rates in the EU:

Negative interest rates are a sign of desperation, a signal that traditional policy options have proved ineffective and new limits need to be explored. They punish banks that hoard cash instead of extending loans to businesses or to weaker lenders.

And negative rates will eventually come to America.

Central bankers are implementing negative interest rates to force savers to buy assets … so as to artificially stimulate the economy. Specifically:

A negative interest rate means the central bank and perhaps private banks will charge negative interest: instead of receiving money on deposits, depositors must pay regularly to keep their money with the bank. This is intended to incentivize banks to lend money more freely and businesses and individuals to invest, lend, and spend money rather than pay a fee to keep it safe.

Next up: The war on cash.

Postscript: Ironically, the Fed has gone to great lengths to DISCOURAGE banks from lending to Main Street.

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Farcical Syrian “Peace Talks”: Dead on Arrival

January 30th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Talks are orchestrated to fail. Mainstream and much alternative media misreporting continues calling five years of US naked aggression against a nation threatening no one a “civil war.”

There’s nothing “civil” about it. Syria was invaded, Washington using ISIS and other terrorist groups, enlisting fighters from scores of countries.

Obama didn’t wage war to quit. He wants regime change, Assad and loyalists around him ousted, an Israeli rival eliminated, Iran isolated, pro-Western puppet governance installed, Syria transformed into a US-controlled vassal state, likely balkanized for easier controlled, its people ruthlessly exploited.

Obama bears full responsibility for genocidal mass slaughter, horrific destruction, cities, towns and villages turned to rubble, the severest refugee crisis since WW II from all US post-9/11 imperial wars.

How can there be peace in Syria when achieving it defeats Washington’s agenda?

How is conflict resolution possible with US/Saudi-backed terrorist groups, cutthroat killers responsible for horrific atrocities, largely representing the opposition?

It’s unclear if they intend coming or if showing up will be their tactic to make nonnegotiable, impossible to agree on, demands, not engage in serious talks.

It appears Washington, key NATO partners, Israel and Saudi-led Gulf States orchestrated a farcical scenario, fantasy talks doomed to fail, Assad wrongfully blamed.

Arab League/UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura represents them. His Friday comments weren’t reassuring, saying:

The (Saudi-backed) High Negotiations Committee (HNC terrorist groups) decided to participate in the Geneva talks after receiving American and United Nations guarantees.

What precisely he didn’t explain or if “participation” means showing up to subvert talks. Security Council Res. 2254 is the agreed on format.

It calls for opposing sides to convene in January under UN auspices – initiating a political process toward establishing “inclusive and non-sectarian governance” within six months by Syrians alone.

The aim is drafting a new constitution (likely not much different from the overwhelmingly approved current one in February 2012 by national referendum), as well as holding new elections in 18 months.

Mistura saying he “has good reasons to believe (the HNC is) actually considering (coming) very seriously” to enable “discussions” to begin Sunday doesn’t indicate he’s sure of anything – let alone what’ll happen going forward under conditions as they unfold.

At best, whoever shows up (if anyone) representing the HNC won’t negotiate, only talk to UN officials – insisting Russian and Syrian anti-terrorism targeting ceases, including against towns held hostage by ISIS and other terrorist groups, demands made to subvert, not facilitate discussions.

The New York Times disgracefully characterized their demands as “press(ing) their humanitarian case to the public,” calling cold-blooded killers “moderates,” ignoring their barbarism, operating as US proxies, waging terror war, committing high crimes against peace.

US/Saudi-backed HNC terrorists are headed by Syrian traitor Riad Hijab, serving as coordinator. He lied, calling talks “a Russian and Iranian” plot, “a disaster for the region.”

Washington, Turkey and Saudi Arabia conspired to prohibit Syrian PYD Kurds from participating, their fighters playing a key role against terrorist groups in northern areas.

Russia calls restoring peace and stability to Syria impossible without their involvement, Sergey Lavrov saying:

How can we talk about political reforms in Syria, ignoring the leading Kurdish party, quite a mighty power that, by the way, actively opposes terrorism on the ground, including ISIS?

“Not inviting this group (is) a most serious mistake,” a deliberate effort to subvert talks before they begin.

De Mistura represents Western and Saudi-led regional interests, not what’s best for long-suffering Syrians.

His orchestrated talks are a prescription for failure.

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 

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“Western Insanity”: Momentum Grows to Bomb Libya Again … This Time against the “Islamic State” (ISIS)

January 30th, 2016 by Chris Cole

Despite the catastrophic effects of the 2011 military intervention, momentum seems to be growing among western governments for further air strikes in Libya, this time against ISIS.

When asked by the Telegraph last month if Libya could be the next target for British military intervention, a British Government source said: “Things are moving in that direction. We are taking it one step at a time.”  Military sources subsequently briefed the media that US and British Special Forces were in Libya gathering intelligence to prepare for a possible deployment of up to 6,000 US and European troops (this despite the oft-repeated line ‘we never talk about Special Forces’).  More recently, the New York Times reported that surveillance flights over Libya were to be stepped up and US diplomats and officials have been meeting with European and North African governments to ask them to join a new coalition against ISIS in Libya.

Unity Government

These military and diplomatic moves coincide with an international push to persuade various factions within Libya to form a new unity government.  The new government is intended to replace the two governments already vying for control: the internationally recognised government, the House of Representatives, based in Tobruk in the northeast, and the General National Congress, based in Tripoli in the northwest.  It appears that once the unity government is installed, it will call for security assistance which will then give legal cover for strikes against ISIS.

NATO bombing of Sirte, Libya in 2011

NATO bombing of Sirte, Libya in 2011

The UN-brokered deal to set up a unity government, signed at Skhirat in Morocco in December, created a Presidential Council – based in Tunisia – which will form a Government of National Accord.  However, this week the House of Representatives the current recognised government has rejected the new government put forward by the Presidential Council.  This has caused huge consternation and there will now be enormous pressure brought to bear to ensure they back down and accept a new government.

Libya_map-15b

However, even if the moves to form a new unity government fail (and there is then no subsequent call for security assistance) it is likely that US would still push for military intervention.  Last week General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated the need for “decisive military action” against ISIS in Libya.  The Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, while arguing that the forming of a unity government was still the priority, signalled that even if this failed military action should take place:

If in a few months we will sombrely have to admit that the Libyans have renounced this scenario then surely an anti-Isis coalition such as the one in Iraq and Syria will have to be formed…

Drones over Derna

Although the push for military intervention in Libya against ISIS has ratcheted up since the Paris attacks, US military operations have been on-going in Libya, with US drones flying over the country since the end of the NATO intervention.  In 2013, the Libyan government reportedly came under “intense American pressure” to allow drones strikes against Al Qaeda in the east of the country.  Although permission was refused, drone surveillance flights continued and the US has recently been seeking to locate its drones nearer to Libya so they can have even more time over the country.  Last year, photographs purporting to show a crashed Predator drone in Libya circulated on social media and US military reported one of its had drones ditched in the Mediterranean after it encountered problems flying on “a mission in Africa.”

The Italian air force have also operated its Reaper drones – based in Amendola in Southern Italy –  over Libya.  Publicly at least we know about flights during the NATO intervention in 2011 and more recently during the evacuation of the Italian embassy in February 2015.  In November 2015 the US agreed to Italy’s request to arm its Reaper drones.

Other US intervention in Libya post-2011

But it’s not just drones that have been active over Libya.  In October 2013, US Special Forces entered Libya to capture Al Qaeda suspect Anas al Libi.  He was subsequently charged with terrorism offenses but died in prison before standing trial. A few months later in June 2014, the US undertook another raid and captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, wanted in connection with the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

Last year the US launched two bombing raids in Libya to kill specific individuals.  In June, two US F-15 flew from the UK on a mission to kill Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian veteran jihadist. The F-15s dropped “multiple 500-pound bombs” on a building outside the Libyan town of Ajdabiya, reportedly killing seven men in the strike but leaving Belmokhtar alive. In November– coincidentally on the same day as the ISIS attack in Paris – a further bombing raid targeted Abu Nabil, named as the ISIS leader in Libya. In December, photographs of US Special Forces arriving at Wattiya airbase in Libya appeared. The Pentagon confirmed the deployment but stated (apparently with a straight face) that the US forces had subsequently left Libya “to avoid conflict”

Insanity

Einstein’s aphorism as to the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results undoubtedly applies to the US military interventions in Iraq and Libya. The actions to topple Saddam Hussein and Mummar Gaddafi, supposedly to enhance the safety and security of their populations and the world beyond, failed spectacularly.

Rather than accepting the failure of military intervention, it’s argued that the Iraq mission failed because western forces stayed too long, while the Libya mission failed because western forces did not stay long enough.  The denials and buck-passing by those responsible (witness the recent cross-examination of former British ministers about the 2011 Libyan intervention and its disastrous aftermath by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee) is embarrassing.

No one doubts the real threat of ISIS to the people of Iraq, Libya and beyond.  Yet no one can doubt that ISIS was in part created by the US intervention in Iraq (as even arch-military interventionist Tony Blair accepts) and had no presence in Libya before the NATO intervention of 2011.

The alternative to such military intervention is to undertake real and lasting political change that addresses the underlying problem of global political and economic inequality which feeds terrorism and insecurity. But calls for such structural changes are rejected and resisted by those who benefit from the current system, in favour of ‘bombing the bad guys’ – lidism as Professor Paul Rogers rightly describes it.  Such a strategy, as we have seen over the past 25 years does far more harm than good.  And is only likely to do so again.

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France Ready to Recognise a Palestinian State as Israel Refuses Co-Operation

January 30th, 2016 by Anthony Bellchambers

France’s Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, has warned that letting the status quo continue, risks killing of a two-state solution and playing into the hands of ISIS, the Islamic State militants.

The expansion of settlements in the Occupied Territories by Israel has already been described by U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, as “provocative acts” that highlight serious questions about Israel’s claimed commitment to a two-state solution.

Fabius has previously called for an international support group comprising the Arab League, the European Union and U.N. Security Council members that would essentially force Israel to a genuine negotiating position that would end occupation.

However, despite genuine anger in the U.S. administration over Israel’s continuing, illegal settlement policy, there is little prospect of U.S. President Barack Obama supporting any initiative that could upset the U.S. Israel lobby less than a year before a general election.

That is because it is not the White House that decides US foreign policy but AIPAC, the Zionist lobby, that has such a disproportionate in uence over Congress, that determines what action, or non-action, the President should take.

It’s called, ‘democracy American style’, whereby non-elected political activists, predominately financed by casino profits, determine what position America and the world should take regarding Israel and the Middle East.  A frightening scenario that France, for one, is determined to no longer accept.

It is to be hoped that all other 27 EU member states will follow France’s example.

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The Keynesian Revolution and the Neo-liberal Counter-revolution

January 30th, 2016 by Eric Toussaint

(Originally published in July 2009)

As a result of the depression of the 1920s and 1930s, a new wave of critics tackled the neo-classical creed on a largely pragmatic basis. This new wave was international and involved political leaders and economists from differing belonging to various currents backgrounds: enlightened bourgeois thinkers, socialists and Marxists. In a context of mass unemployment and depression, proposals came forward for major public works, for anti-cyclical injections of public money, and even for bank expropriations. Such proposals came from a wide variety of sources: Germany’s Doctor Schacht; the Belgian socialist Deman; the founders of the Stockholm School, backed by the Swedish social democrats; Fabian socialists and J.M. Keynes in Britain; J. Tinbergen in the Netherlands; Frisch in Norway; the Groupe X-crise in France; Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas (1935-1940); adepts of Peronism in the Argentina of the 1930s; US president Roosevelt (elected in November 1932) and his New Deal.

The entire range of proposals and pragmatic policies was partially summed up in Keynes’s 1936 work General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

The Keynesian revolution

The preparatory work carried out by Keynes (1883-1946), laying the groundwork for the General Theory, was fuelled by the need to find a solution to the spreading crisis of the capitalist system. Moreover, this solution had to be compatible with the continued survival of the system. The work was partially the result of a wide-ranging collective process wherein groups and individuals ended up in different Keynesian camps, often very much at odds with one another. Some leaned more towards Marxist positions, such as the Briton Joan Robinson and the Pole M. Kalecki, who had actually formulated the key components of the General Theory before Keynes. Others grew progressively closer to the very tenets of liberalism and neo-classical economics that Keynes decried.

In one of his works, Keynes pays homage to the English philosopher George Edward Moore, whom he credits with having freed him from the prevailing morality of the day and having ‘protected us all from that final reductio ad absurdum of Benthamism known as Marxism'[2].

Keynes had been politically active since the First World War. As an employee of the British Exchequer, he actively participated in negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles, which marked the end of the War in 1918. He resigned from the British delegation in protest against the scale of reparations imposed on Germany. Soon after, he wrote The economic consequences of the peace (Keynes, 1919).

In the 1926 pamphlet The end of laissez-faire, he writes: ‘It is in no way accurate to deduce from the principles of political economy that enlightened personal interest always works in favour of the general interest[3]’.

In the 1920s, Keynes condemned the policies of Winston Churchill’s Tory government. He opposed the liberal (neo-classical) policies that provoked the miners’ strike, followed by the 1926 general strike.

Thereafter, he called for a policy of major public investment. He supported the Liberal Party while maintaining friendly ties with the Labour Party. In 1929, in the wake of Tory and the liberals’ defeat, the new Labour government appointed him to the McMillan Commission on the economic situation. In 1930, he became an advisor to the same government.

The economic crisis deepened following the 1929 Wall Street crash, leading Keynes to produce an analysis of employment, interest and money which strengthened his conviction that there should be increased state intervention. To compensate for the shortfall in demand, the state should increase spending in order to give a boost to the economy and employment.

Thereafter he became involved in a major debate with Hayek. Although, like Keynes, Hayek had come to reject a number of the ideas of Smith, Ricardo, Walras and Jevons, with Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) he fashioned a set of ultraliberal ideas which fiercely opposed (standing in fierce opposition to) the main tenets of the Keynesian revolution.

Whereas Keynes and his fellow economists were convinced that the Great Depression had been caused by the collapse in investment, Hayek and his supporters saw over-investment rooted in slack monetary policies as the cause. For Keynes, consumption and investment had to be sparked by strong state intervention. For Hayek, state intervention reduced the funds available for private investment. For Keynes, wages had to be increased to stimulate consumption. For Hayek, they had to be lowered to ensure renewed full employment. The debate (polemic) hit the pages of the British press in 1932 (Times, 17 and 19 October 1932).

Keynes believed that economic policy should be geared towards reducing the high unemployment rate and distributing revenues in a more egalitarian manner. If the government did not pursue the objectives of full employment and greater equality, he argued, there was a serious danger that either fascism or Bolshevik communism would win the day. Government policy had to be aimed at reducing high interest rates, which channelled vital resources into the financial sector. By lowering interest rates, the aim was to favour the destruction of the rentier class (living on unearned income), the scourge of the capitalist system. At the same time, however, Keynes states quite clearly that the consequences of his theory are ‘moderately liberal’:

‘[…] while it highlights the vital importance of establishing certain central controls in fields that today remain completely in the hands of private initiative, it also leaves a great many fields of activity in private hands […] It does not actually call for a system of state socialism that would subject most of the community’s economic life to its control[4].

Keynes’s prescriptions were put into practice in many regions of the world right up until the 1970s. They also strongly influenced a number of economists, such as Samuelson, Galbraith, Tobin and Prebisch.

Preparing the neo-liberal counter-revolution

There was a swift reaction to the policies of state intervention aimed at boosting demand and moving towards full employment. From the beginning of the 1930s, Hayek and von Mises set out to demolish Keynes’s proposals.

‘Since 1945, in various academic and business circles, different projects have emerged simultaneously to bring together the qualified defenders of liberalism (neo-classical economics) with the aim of organising a joint response to the advocates of state intervention and socialism. Three centres where this post-War resistance was organised were: the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales (IUHEI) in Geneva, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the University of Chicago[5]’.

At the end of the Second World War, Hayek was teaching at the LSE. In 1947, he and Von Mises founded the Société du Mont-Pèlerin. The first meeting was held in April 1947 and brought together 36 liberal luminaries at the Hôtel du Parc at Mont-Pèlerin near Vevey in Switzerland. The gathering was financed by Swiss bankers and industrialists. Three major US publications (Fortune, Newsweek and Reader’s Digest) sent delegates. In fact, Reader’s Digest had just run an abridged version of one of Hayek’s main works, The Road to Serfdom. Among other things, that book said:

‘In the past, man’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market made possible the development of a civilisation which otherwise would not have emerged. It is through submission that we participate everyday in the building of something much bigger than what we can all fully understand[6]’.

Right-wing economists and philosophers from different ‘schools of thought’ participated in the gathering.

‘At the end of the meeting, the Société du Mont-Pèlerin was founded – a kind of neo-liberal Freemasonry, very well organised and devoted to the dissemination of the neo-liberal creed, with regular international gatherings[7]’.

Among the organisation’s most active members were Hayek, von Mises, Maurice Allais, Karl Popper and Milton Friedman. It became a think tank for the neo-liberal counter-offensive. Many of its members went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics (Hayek in 1974, Friedman in 1976 and Allais in 1988).

Bibliography 

Adda, Jacques. 1996. La Mondialisation de l’économie, 1 et 2, La Découverte, « Repères », Paris, 2000, 125 p. et 126 p.

Anderson, Perry. 1996. « Histoire et leçons du néo-libéralisme: La construction d’une voie unique », Page Deux, octobre 1996.

Beaud, Michel et Dostaler, Gilles. 1993. La Pensée économique depuis Keynes, Seuil, Paris, 1996, 444p.

Dewey, John. 1935. « The Future of Liberalism », The Journal of Philosophy, XXII, N°9, p. 225-230.

Friedman, Milton. 1970. The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory, London of Economic Affairs.

Greenspan, Alan. 2007. The age of turbulence: Adventures in a new world. Penguin Books Edition, 2007.

Hayek von, Friedrich August. 1944. The Road to Serfdom, Routledge Press, UK

Keynes, John. M. 1936. The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, MacMillan, London, 1964, 403 p.

Malthus, Thomas-Robert. 1798. An essay on the principle of population , J Johnson, Paris.

Marx, Karl. 1867. Capital, Volume I, Penguin Classics, 1993.

Marx, Karl. 1869-1879. Capital, Volume II, Penguin Classics, 1993. Capital Volume III, Penguin Classics, 1993.

Prebisch, Raúl. 1981. Capitalismo periférico, Crisis y transformación, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1984, 344 p.

Ricardo, David. 1817. On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1950, Cambridge University Press, London

Smith, Adam. 1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/

Tobin, J. 1978. « A Proposal for International Monetary Reform », The Eastern Economic Journal, juillet-octobre 1978.

Tobin, J. et autres. 1995a. « Two cases for sand in the wheels of internatio­nal finance », in « Policy forum: sand in the wheels of international finance », The Economic Journal, 105, janvier 1995.

Udry, Charles-André. 1996. “Los Origenes del neoliberalismo: F von Hayek : el apostol del neoliberalismo”, Desde los Cuatro Puntos, n°1, Mexico, 1997.

Zinn, Howard. 1966. New Deal Thought, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 2003, 431 p.

Translated by Vicki Briault, Francesca Denley and Raghu Krishnan.

Notes

[1] The first part of this series ‘A Glance in the Rear View Mirror to Understand the Present’ was posted on the CADTM website on 12 June 2009 under the title ‘Adam Smith is closer to Karl Marx than to those who sing his praise’
http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article4462;
was posted on June 13th under the title: “Neo-liberal ideology is a hard nut to crack”
http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article4468
the third part was posted on the 19 June 2009 : ˝The 1930s to the 1970s: liberalism eclipsed”
http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article4495;
the fourth part was posted on the 25th June 2009: “The 1970s: Liberal ideology returned with a vengeance”
http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article4508

[2] Quoted in Beaud and Dostaler, 1995, p.37

[3] Quoted in Beaud and Dostaler, 1995, p.40.

[4] Keynes, 1936, Final Notes, Spanish ed p 362

[5] Udry, 1996

[6] Von Hayek, 1944

[7] Anderson, 1996

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Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents

January 30th, 2016 by Bryce Covert

John Whitaker, executive director of Midwest Food Bank, carries a case of water that was donated to Flint residents on January 27. CREDIT: AP Photo/Darron Cummings

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget decided to haul water coolers into the Flint state building in January of 2015 out of concern over the city’s water quality, a year before bottled water was being made available to residents, according to documents obtained by Progress Michigan.

Flint switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014, which is now known to have caused lead to leach into the city’s tap water. After two boil advisories were issued in August and September of 2014, the city sent residents a notice that the level of trihalomethanes (TTHMs), which can cause liver and kidney problems, had exceed federal limits, although they were told that it was still fine to use the water and no corrective actions needed to be taken.

But concerns raised over water quality were enough for officials in the state’s capitol of Lansing to decide to give state employees the option to drink bottled water from coolers, rather than from water fountains. Coolers were placed next to the fountains on each occupied floor, according to the documents, and were to be provided “as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements.”

facility notificationCREDIT: Progress Michigan

For residents, however, it took researchers uncovering elevated levels of lead in children’s bloodstreams for a lead advisory to finally be issued in September of 2015. Residents were told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October, and Flint’s mayor declared a state of emergency in December. The National Guard was activated in January of this year to distribute water from five fire stations — a full year after water was brought in for state employees out of concern over water quality.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), whose administration some have said made the decision to switch to the Flint River, has claimed he didn’t know about the water problems until recently. But the plan to use that source was evaluated and rejected by the city’s emergency manager in 2012, according to a deposition. And while the purported reason for making the change in the first place was to save money while another pipeline was being built, leaked emails show that the city could have stayed with Detroit’s water and saved the same amount of money anyway.

 

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15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines. Native American “No-Nukes” Protests in Washington DC

January 30th, 2016 by Klee Benally

‘We are the Miner’s Canary’: Indigenous Organizations Call for Clean Up of ‘Homegrown’ Radioactive Pollution Crisis.

NOTE: The final event will be a panel discussion at Georgetown University, Friday, January 29 from 6 to 8 pm at the White Gravenor Building, Room 211. This event is free and open to the public. Georgetown University is located at 37th and O Sts NW Washington, DC.

On Thursday, January 28 at 12:30 PM, representatives of Indigenous organizations from the Southwest, Northern Great Plains, and supporters called for “no nukes” in a protest addressing radioactive pollution caused by 15,000 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) posing a toxic threat in the US. The demonstration was held at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters to call for immediate clean up of these hazardous sites, protection of Indigenous sacred areas from uranium mining, and for intervention in communities where drinking water is poisoned with radioactive contamination. The groups charged that the EPA has been negligent in addressing these toxic threats that severely threaten public health, lands, and waterways.

Protest at the EPA, Jan. 28, 2016. All photos by Eli Laliberte, Konnected.tv.

Protest at the EPA, Jan. 28, 2016. All photos by Eli Laliberte, Konnected.tv.

Charmaine White Face speaks in front of the EPA.

Charmaine White Face speaks in front of the EPA.

“Native American nations of North America are the miners’ canaries for the United States trying to awaken the people of the world to the dangers of radioactive pollution”, said Charmaine White Face from the South Dakota based organization Defenders of the Black Hills.

South Dakota has 272 AUMs which are contaminating waterways such as the Cheyenne River and desecrating sacred and ceremonial sites. An estimated 169 AUMs are located within 50 miles of Mt. Rushmore where millions of tourists risk exposure to radioactive pollution each year.

Indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted as approximately 75% of AUMs are located on federal and Tribal lands. A majority of AUMs are located in 15 western states with the potential to impact more than 50 million people.

Harold One Feather speaks at the US Forestry Service.

Harold One Feather speaks at the US Forestry Service.

Outside of the EPA headquarters the groups chanted, “Radioactive Pollution Kills!”, “No More Churchrock Spill, No More Fukushima!”, and “Clean Nuclear is a deadly lie!” in response to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan which they state promotes nuclear energy.Out of 272 AUMs in South Dakota only one, the Riley Pass Mine located on US Forest Service held lands, has been cleaned up but the process has been called inadequate and concerns were raised about the reclamation budget. “My concern is how with the balance remaining from a $179 million mine reclamation settlement, the USFS says that local affected communities will be able to use the remainder on community projects and training to replace uses of the Grand River, which flows into Missouri River. The river is destroyed through this act of radioactive genocide.” stated Harold One Feather, a member of Defenders of the Black Hills, “After discussing the $179M Tronox settlement for the Riley Pass Uranium Mine Reclamation, the US Forest Service said the affected communities can submit budgets to use up any remaining balance after mine reclamation.”

1epabanner

A massive banner stating “Radioactive Pollution Kills” with the image of a Miner’s Canary and radioactive warning symbol was dropped inside the EPA headquarters.

From January 25-28, Clean Up The Mines, Defenders of the Black Hills, Diné No Nukes, Laguna and Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment & Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, and Indigenous World Alliance, met members of congress, Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, DC.

The Clean Up The Mines! campaign is focused on passing the Uranium Exploration and Mining Accountability Act that would ensure clean up of all AUMs. The act was submitted as a draft to Congressman Raúl Grijalva (D–AZ) two years ago but has yet to be introduced to Congress.

Petuuche Gilbert speaks at the US Forestry Service.

Petuuche Gilbert speaks at the US Forestry Service.

Currently, no comprehensive law, regardless of mining era, requires clean-up of all these dangerous abandoned uranium mines allowing corporations and the federal government to walk away without taking responsibility for the continuing harms they have caused.

“This is an invisible national crisis. Millions of people in the United States are being exposed as Nuclear Radiation Victims on a daily basis.” said Mrs. White Face, “Exposure to radioactive pollution has been linked to cancer, genetic defects, Navajo Neuropathy, and increases in mortality. We are protesting the EPA today because we believe that as more Americans become aware of this homegrown radioactive pollution, then something can be done to protect all peoples and the environment. In the meetings we had in DC, not only were AUMs discussed, but we also talked about radioactive pollution from coal dust, coal smoke, and in water.Currently, no comprehensive law, regardless of mining era, requires clean-up of all these dangerous abandoned uranium mines allowing corporations and the federal government to walk away without taking responsibility for the continuing harms they have caused.

These show a need for amendments to the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.” said Mrs. White Face.

Petuuche Gilbert outside the EPA.

Petuuche Gilbert outside the EPA.

The groups addressed extreme water contamination, surface strip coal mining and power plants burning coal-laced with radioactive particles, radioactive waste from oil well drilling in the Bakken Oil Range, mill tailings, waste storage, and renewed mining threats to sacred places such as Mt. Taylor in New Mexico.

“The U.S. is violating its own Executive Orders and laws intended to protect areas sacred to Native American people on public lands by applying the General Mining Act of 1872.” Petuuche Gilbert of the Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment & President of the Indigenous World Association, “The U.S is discriminating against Indigenous peoples when it permits mining on these lands. Specifically, the U.S. is violating: Executive Order 13007, Executive 13175, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Leona Morgan of Diné No Nukes.

Leona Morgan of .

“With adherence to out-dated, racist policies promoting colonialism, such as the 1872 mining law,Indigenous peoples across the country will continue to be oppressed, and we will continue to demand that our land be returned and restored to its original condition, to that of before the colonization by the United States,” stated Leona Morgan of Diné No Nukes. “The United Nuclear Corporation mill tailings spill of 1979, north of Churchrock, New Mexico left an immense amount of radioactive contamination that down-streamers, today, are currently receiving in their drinking water. A mostly-Navajo community in Sanders, Arizona has been exposed to twice the legal limit allowable for uranium through their tap–this is criminal!” said Morgan.Diné No Nukes is a collective focused on educating the general Navajo population about the issues created by US Atomic Energy Commission, as well as ongoing and new threats from the nuclear industry.

Tommy Rock of Diné No Nukes

Tommy Rock of Diné No Nukes

Tommy Rock, a member of Diné No Nukes and graduate student from the state of Arizona stated that the water crisis in Flint, Michigan was extremely similar to a crisis near the Navajo Nation in Sanders, AZ. “The regulatory agencies are responding by sending the Army National Guard to provide bottle water for the community of Flint. However, the small community of Sanders which is also predominantly an Indigenous community that is off the reservation are not receiving the same response from the state regulatory agency or the state legislatures and the media,” stated Rock who worked on a recent study that uncovered levels of uranium in the drinking water system of residents and an elementary school in Sanders that violated the drinking water standard for uranium. Rock continues, “The same can be said about two Lakota reservations. They are Pine Ridge and Rock Creek, Standing Rock Reservation that have not received any assistance from regulatory agencies. This exemplifies the inconsistency among the US EPA regions about responding to Indigenous communities compared to non-Indigenous populations which are facing the same issue regarding access to safe drinking water.”

Mr. Rock called for the community of Sanders to be included in the second Navajo Nation 5-Year Clean-Up Plan and an amendment to the Clean Water Act. “Another issue around water is the mining industry is contaminating the rivers. They are disregarding the Clean Water Act because the act does not address radionuclides. This needs to be amended so the policy can enforce that companies be accountable for their degradation to the watershed areas. This can also be beneficial to US EPA because they do not have the funds to clean every contaminated river by the mining industry and other commercial industry,” stated Mr. Rock.

“These uranium mines cause radioactive contamination, and as a result all the residents in their vicinity are becoming nuclear radiation victims,” states Petuuche Gilbert, a member of the Acoma Nation, LACSE, MASE, and IWA. “New Mexico and the federal government have provided little funding for widespread clean up and only occasionally are old mines remediated. The governments of New Mexico and the United States have a duty to clean up these radioactive mines and mills and, furthermore, to perform health studies to determine the effects of radioactive poisoning. The MASE and LACSE organizations oppose new uranium mining and demand legacy uranium mines to be cleaned up,” said Mr. Gilbert.

The delegation was supported by Piscataway Nation and DC area organizations such as Nipponzan Myohoji Temple, Popular Resistance, Movement Media, La Casa, NIRS, & the Peace House.“In 2015 the Gold King Mine spill was a wake-up call to address dangers of abandoned mines, but there are currently more than 15,000 toxic uranium mines that remain abandoned throughout the US”, said Ms. White Face. “For more than 50 years, many of these hazardous sites have been contaminating the land, air, water, and national monuments such as Mt. Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. Each one of these thousands of abandoned uranium mines is a potential Gold King mine disaster with the greater added threat of radioactive pollution. For the sake of our health, air, land, & water, we can’t let that happen.”

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Islamic State Groups (ISIS) Preparing Terrorist Attacks inside Russia? Covertly Supported by US-Turkey

January 30th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Washington wants Russia marginalized, weakened, destabilized, contained and isolated, transformed into another US vassal state.

On Friday, RT International quoted Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee spokesman Andrey Przhezdomsky, saying:

“Russian special services have intelligence that certain IS groups are preparing terrorist attacks in Russia and European nations.”

“In particular, a battalion formed mainly from recruits from North Caucasus headed by Akhmed Chetayev, nicknamed One-Handed.”

Reportedly it includes dozens of Russian nationals, returning home after fighting with ISIS in Syria.

Russian border guards and special services aim to stem their flow through Turkey, aided by Erdogan’s regime – complicit with Washington and other rogue partners.

According to Przhezdomsky, hundreds of ISIS fighters were interdicted, scores arrested before they could join their ranks.

Twenty-two US-supported recruiters were caught. So far, terrorist attacks were averted. “Just recently, a group of hardcore militants arrived from Syria, planning to hit” a major Russian city, Przhezdomsky explained.

RT said “(t)he group entered Russia legally, found a safe house and purchased parts for making improvised explosive devices, unaware that they were being followed by Russian agents.”

“They were arrested and are awaiting trial,” Przhezdomsky said. He believes ISIS’ strength passed its peak, but remains a serious threat.

He explained “a well-developed system for trafficking IS recruits into Syria. The main route goes through Istanbul.”

“People fill in a form, write their bio, their identity is checked, their mobile phones hacked. If any suspicion comes out of it, the recruit is taken into solitary confinement and awaits punishment. Usually in the form of being shot to death.” 

Washington is waging war on Russia without declaring it, a lunatic scheme risking mass annihilation. 

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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Seven Years of Monetary Quackery; Can the Federal Reserve Admit It Was Wrong?

January 30th, 2016 by Mike Whitney

America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come.

Who are these wealthy investors?

Bondholders. And their views on the state of the economy are reflected in the yields on long-term US Treasuries. At present, the yields on long-term debt are very low which means that investors think the economy will continue to underperform while inflation remains in check.

This pessimistic outlook is not new for bondholders, in fact, yields have remained stubbornly low since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, which means that investors were never swept up in the hype about “green shoots” or an “economic recovery”. They knew it was baloney from the get-go and their opinion hasn’t changed. There’s no sign of recovery anywhere except for the fake government payroll numbers that don’t jibe with any of the other data. By any rationale measure, the economy is stuck in a long-term slump that shows no sign of relenting anytime soon. Bondholders seem to grasp that fact and have made a ton of dough betting on crappy growth and perennial stagnation, which are the logical corollaries of the Fed’s goofy monetary policies. (Stephen Roach explains low yields on 30-year USTs here.)

In any event, bond yields are a heckuva lot more helpful in forecasting the future than the cheerleading pundits on the business channel. Yields–which are the amount of return that bondholders receive for lending the government their money–reveal investors expectations of future economic activity and inflation. They are a barometer for measuring the health of the economy. If growth is strong and the future looks rosy, yields will rise as the demand for money increases and the prospects of higher inflation seem more likely. But if investors expect growth to fall-short and disappoint, then yields are going to drop reflecting lower expectations for future activity. The fact that the yields on 30-year USTs are below 3 percent at this phase of the game suggests that policymakers either don’t understand how the economy works or simply refuse to initiate the changes that will spur growth. Either way, it’s a damning indictment of the Central Bank’s role as steward of the system.

At present, (Jan 26) the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries is just a whisker below 2 percent at 1.98 percent. That means that investors will get 1.98 dollars annually per every $100 invested, which is nearly nothing. Think of it this way: Let’s say your buddy Ernie wants to borrow $5,000 to open a Gelato stand in Granite Falls. So you’re wondering how much you need to charge him above the price of the loan to be fairly compensated for the risk you’re taking. (since Ernie has had a few bad ideas in the past that blew up in his face.) If you decide to charge him 2 percent per year, then you’re barely making ends meet since inflation is currently running at roughly 1.5 percent. So you need to charge something above 2 percent or you won’t even break-even.

The point is, when you lend your money to the USG for a paltry 1.98 percent, you’re basically getting bupkis on your investment. The only upside to the deal is that you can be reasonably certain that the government will pay you back, unlike Ernie.

The focus on interest rates as the only means for fixing the economy should have run its course by now, but, of course, it hasn’t because the Big Money that runs the country likes things the way they are. Low rates and easy money mean bigger profits for Wall Street regardless of their impact on the real economy. What matters most to bondholders is not growth or inflation, but policy. That’s what keeps the boodle flowing into the coffers. Policy. And as long as they’re confident that the Fed’s “accommodative” policies are going to be coupled with fiscal belt-tightening (which has been adopted by both Dems and Republicans), then they can rest assured that the economy will continue to sputter while bonds “rip the cover off the ball”.

But the Fed’s loosey goosy monetary policies do come at a cost, and that cost is borne by businesses and working people alike. For example, there was an op-ed in last week’s WSJ about the knock-on effects of low rates on capital investment by Michael Spence and Kevin Warsh. The title of the article tells the whole story: “The Fed Has Hurt Business Investment.” Here’s an excerpt:

Extremely accommodative monetary policy, including the purchase of about $3 trillion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities during three rounds of “quantitative easing” (QE), pushed down long-term yields and boosted the value of risk-assets. Higher stock prices were supposed to drive business confidence and higher capital expenditures, which were supposed to result in higher wages and strong consumption. Would it were so.

Business investment in the real economy is weak … In 2014, S&P 500 companies spent considerably more of their operating cash flow on financially engineered buybacks than real capital expenditures for the first time since 2007 … We believe that QE has redirected capital from the real domestic economy to financial assets at home and abroad. In this environment, it is hard to criticize companies that choose “shareholder friendly” share buybacks over investment in a new factory. But public policy shouldn’t bias investments to paper assets over investments in the real economy. (The Fed Has Hurt Business Investment, Michael Spence And Kevin Warsh, Wall Street Journal)

This is a fairly typical complaint, that the Fed’s policies have lifted asset prices but hurt business in vestment which requires strong demand for their products. The fact is, businesses can’t grow unless people are employed, wages are rising, and money is exchanging hands. None of that is happening currently, in fact, according to the Atlanta Fed, the Forth Quarter (4Q) GDP is expected to come in below 1 percent. (.06 percent) which means the US economy should probably be wheeled down to the morgue ASAP so the embalming process can begin pronto. For all practical purposes, the economy is kaput.

Of course, President Obama rejects that type of negativity outright. In the State of the Union Speech in January, Obama waved his finger threateningly at the teleprompter saying: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

Fiction?? Not according to economist James Hamilton. Here’s what he said this week on the Oil Price website:

The global economy is slipping into recession. The evidence is showing up in all the usual ways: slowing output growth, slumping purchasing-manager indexes, widening credit spreads, declining corporate earnings, falling inflation expectations, receding capital investment and rising inventories. But this is a most unusual recession– the first one ever caused by falling oil prices. (Could Low Oil Prices Cause A Global Recession?, Oil Price)

And then there’s this from the Wall Street Journal:

Every U.S. recession since World War II has been foretold by sharp declines in industrial production, corporate profits and the stock market. Industrial production has declined in 10 of the past 12 months, and is now off nearly 2% from its peak in December 2014. Corporate profits peaked around the summer of 2014 and were off by nearly 5% as of the third quarter of last year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 7.6% so far this year…

unlike past declines in industrial production, today’s decline has been driven primarily by the collapse in the oil industry…. mining output has fallen over 10%, driven by a 62% decline in oil- and gas-well drilling…

“Manufacturing tends to lead the economic cycle and it tends to be an indicator of the swings,” said Thomas Costerg, senior economist at Standard Chartered. “Manufacturing is struggling.” (Recession Warnings May Not Come to Pass, Wall Street Journal)

The truth is that the economy is still very weak and the Fed’s monetary hanky-panky hasn’t produced the credit expansion that was expected. Adding excess reserves at the banks was supposed to boost lending which would lead to stronger growth, but it hasn’t happened mainly because households and consumers aren’t borrowing like they did before the crisis. Instead they’re setting more money aside and trying to pay down their debts. Take a look at the chart on bank loans which illustrates how lending is basically flatlining. (See here.)

No bank loans means no borrowing. No borrowing means no credit expansion. No credit expansion means no new activity, no new spending, no new hiring, no new business investment, no stronger growth. Nomura’s chief economist Richard Koo summed it up succinctly saying, “When no one is borrowing money, monetary policy is largely useless.”

Bingo. It is useless. We know that now. Neither QE nor zero rates promote growth. The ‘Grand Experiment’ has failed. Keynes was right and (Milton) Freidman was wrong. Here’s Keynes:

For my own part I am now somewhat skeptical of the success of a merely monetary policy directed towards influencing the rate of interest. I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investment; since it seems likely that the fluctuations in the market estimation of the marginal efficiency of different types of capital, calculated on the principles I have described above, will be too great to be offset by any practicable changes in the rate of interest. (John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, marxists.org, 2002)

Keynes is just stating the obvious, that you can’t pull the economy out of a severe slump by tinkering with interest rates or pumping up bank reserves. It doesn’t work. What’s needed is ‘good old fashion’ fiscal stimulus mainlined into the economy through ambitious federal infrastructure programs that stimulate activity, boost employment and keep the economy moving forward until private sector balance sheets are repaired and personal spending returns to normal.

The Fed has wasted the last seven years trying to reinvent the wheel when the solution was always right under its nose. Are we really going to waste another seven implementing the same failed strategy?

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Attacks on US Public Workers and Unions Intensify

January 30th, 2016 by Dr. Jack Rasmus

The destruction of unions in the US has been going on for decades, steadily intensifying since the 1970s. But recent, and pending, U.S. Supreme Court decisions are now leading a new, intensive attack on unionization in the U.S.

The latest is the pending decision by the US Supreme Court in the case, “Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association,” which targets teachers and other public workers and their unions. The decision immediately affects 10.7 million teachers in the US, and potentially a further 10 million state and local public workers who are, or might be, in unions.

The Friedrichs case is but the latest in a decades-long effort to deny unions in general – both public and private sector – necessary financial resources to effectively represent members in bargaining, and especially to undermine their ability to engage in political action like lobbying or support for pro-worker political candidates.

In the Friedrichs case, which has already heard by the US Supreme Court, with a decision coming down any day now, teachers unions won’t be allowed to use union dues or now even equivalent “agency fees” for union spending on what is the primary target of Friedrichs – i.e. political action, lobbying, candidate support, and political advocacy in general.

Teachers and other public sector unions rely heavily on mobilizing politically in support of their collective bargaining demands. They spend significant financial resources to try to elect government representatives, their bargaining partners, who are sympathetic to their interests in terms of wages, jobs, and benefits; or to defeat or remove those elected politicians who are not. They also spend heavily to lobby government and politicians after elections. Should the US Supreme Court rule in favor of Friedrichs, which is reportedly highly likely, it would mean teachers and public unions could no longer spend financial resources on such activities as they had been. They will have fewer financial resources with which to do so. And fewer financial resources translates into less political mobilizing, less political influence, and therefore less effective bargaining thereafter in the longer run.

The Friedrichs case therefore represents an important shift and intensification of anti-union efforts, this time targeting teachers and other public workers and their unions. But the attacks on private sector unions in the US have been going on for decades.

Destruction of Private Sector Unions

Since the 1970s, corporate efforts to destroy US unions have primarily targeted private sector workers and their unions in manufacturing, construction, and transport – i.e. industries where once 60-70 percent or more of the workforce were once organized before 1980 but where, today, the number of workers in the private sector in the U.S. that are unionized has declined to barely 6 percent.

The 6.7 percent unionization of private sector work force that remains in the US today represents roughly 10.5 million out of a total 157 million in the labor force in the US today. Had the percentage of unionized in the US remained the same today as it was in 1980, at 22 percent, instead of today’s 6 percent, private sector unions today would have a total membership of 35 million instead of the actual 10.5 million. Union labor has thus declined by an actual and potential 25 million members as a consequence of the corporate offensive since 1980.

The destruction of unions in manufacturing, construction, and other private sector industries has been the result of a multi-sided corporate attack on a number of fronts: virtually eliminating the right to strike, government-legal support for outright union-busting, establishing more and more obstacles to union organizing, eliminating the right to have union hiring halls, free trade and corporate tax incentives to move jobs offshore, targeting and removal of militant union leaders, allowing 40 million part time, temp, and contract workers to be exempt from union representation, expanding to 25 states what is called “right to work” laws in the US, which prevent unions from requiring workers they represent to join the union or pay any union dues.

Another element of anti-union strategy targeting manufacturing, construction and other private sector unions has been to impose more and more restrictions on how unions may spend their members’ dues and financial resources on political action and mobilizing. New rules in recent decades, for example, requires unions to “refund” back to a member his or her share of what the union would have spent on political action. That means less resources for unions to spend on bargaining or political action. Up to now, the member has had to request to “opt out” of the spending to get the dues rebated. But this too may change soon, if the Friedrichs case is approved and then is extended to the private sector unions.

All of this imposing of more limits on unions spending for political action is rather ironic, given that the US Supreme Court has been approving laws like Citizens United since 2010 allowing corporations unlimited resources to spend on political action. What’s clear is that corporate interests are increasingly developing ways to inhibit and reduce unions’ ability to engage in political advocacy and action—in both public and private sectors.

Public Workers Unions Now the Target

A key element in the Friedrichs case is this question of “opt out” or “opt in.” The case reportedly will decide whether to change the practice of ‘opting out’ where now the member has to request the union not spend a portion of his dues or agency fee on political action and return that portion to him, the member. Should Friedrichs be approved, the member will automatically “opt out” and the union has to request of him to “opt back in.” Should that rule accompany the Friedrichs decision, it will mean massive loss of dues equivalent funds for the teachers union in this case. That precedent will like quickly apply to all other teacher unions, in other states and at the college level as well, and thereafter to public workers in cities and states in general.

This precedent could well even expand to private sector unions as well. With the major “right to work” offensive gaining momentum, where in 25 states so far workers can decide to pay no dues or equivalent, the “opt in” responsibility placed on the union will almost certainly result in further loss of financial resources for political action.

Public sector unions have been under attack since 2009 in other ways as well. Conservative governors have been making public workers pay for state government deficits by cutting their pensions and health care and other benefits. This has occurred even as the same states continue to cut business taxes as their deficits grow. In other states, outright limits on collective bargaining have been imposed. The Friedrich’s case is but the latest development in what will likely mean even more new initiatives to undermine public workers unions and their members’ rights and benefits.

At the same time, the attacks continue to intensify against private sector unions. More free trade and offshoring is in the works, more categories of workers legally exempted from right to unionize (for example the “gig” or “sharing” economy job trend), and the growing “right to work” corporate funded movement at the state level all represent major initiatives ongoing against private sector unions.

What it all represents is a “legal web” has thus been woven around the Labor “Gulliver” in the US, a cocoon of laws that have been spun by corporate interests and their lobbyists, a silken coffin of the law that has virtually immobilized union labor in the U.S. To break through the web, workers in the US will have to soon start over, to rebuild their unions from the ground up. That will require a different form of grass roots organization and collective action.

Jack Rasmus is the author of the just published book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, Clarity Press, January 2016.

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Zika Outbreak Epicenter in Same Area Where GM Mosquitoes Were Released in 2015

January 29th, 2016 by Claire Bernish

The World Health Organization announced it will convene an Emergency Committee under International Health Regulations on Monday, February 1, concerning the Zika virus ‘explosive’ spread throughout the Americas. The virus reportedly has the potential to reach pandemic proportions — possibly around the globe. But understandingwhy this outbreak happened is vital to curbing it. As the WHO statement said:

“A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth malformations and neurological syndromes … is strongly suspected. [These links] have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika, from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.

“WHO is deeply concerned about this rapidly evolving situation for 4 main reasons: the possible association of infection with birth malformations and neurological syndromes; the potential for further international spread given the wide geographical distribution of the mosquito vector; the lack of population immunity in newly affected areas; and the absence of vaccines, specific treatments, and rapid diagnostic tests […]

“The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty.”

Zika seemingly exploded out of nowhere. Though it was first discovered in 1947, cases only sporadically occurred throughout Africa and southern Asia. In 2007, the first case was reported in the Pacific. In 2013, a smattering of small outbreaks and individual cases were officially documented in Africa and the western Pacific. They also began showing up in the Americas. In May 2015, Brazil reported its first case of Zika virus — and the situation changed dramatically.

Brazil is now considered the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, which coincides with at least 4,000 reports of babies born with microcephaly just since October.

zika-microcephalyWhen examining a rapidly expanding potential pandemic, it’s necessary to leave no stone unturned so possible solutions, as well as future prevention, will be as effective as possible. In that vein, there was another significant development in 2015.

Oxitec first unveiled its large-scale, genetically-modified mosquito farm in Brazil in July 2012, with the goal of reducing “the incidence of dengue fever,” as The Disease Daily reported. Dengue fever is spread by the same Aedes mosquitoes which spread the Zika virus — and though they “cannot fly more than 400 meters,” WHO stated, “it may inadvertently be transported by humans from one place to another.” By July 2015, shortly after the GM mosquitoes were first released into the wild in Juazeiro, Brazil, Oxitec proudly announced they had “successfully controlled the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya and zika virus, by reducing the target population by more than 90%.”

Though that might sound like an astounding success — and, arguably, it was — there is an alarming possibility to consider.

Nature, as one Redditor keenly pointed out, finds a way — and the effort to control dengue, zika, and other viruses, appears to have backfired dramatically.

zika

 

Juazeiro, Brazil — the location where genetically-modified mosquitoes were first released into the wild.

zika

 

Map showing the concentration of suspected Zika-related cases of microcephaly in Brazil.

The particular strain of Oxitec GM mosquitoes, OX513A, are genetically altered so the vast majority of their offspring will die before they mature — though Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher published concerns in a report in September 2010 that a known survival rate of 3-4 percent warranted further study before the release of the GM insects. Her concerns, which were echoed by several other scientists both at the time and since, appear to have been ignored — though they should not have been.

Those genetically-modified mosquitoes work to control wild, potentially disease-carrying populations in a very specific manner. Only the male modified Aedes mosquitoes are supposed to be released into the wild — as they will mate with their unaltered female counterparts. Once offspring are produced, the modified, scientific facet is supposed to ‘kick in’ and kill that larvae before it reaches breeding age — if tetracycline is not present during its development. But there is a problem.

zika-mosquito

 

Aedes aegypti mosquito. Image credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

According to an unclassified document from the Trade and Agriculture Directorate Committee for Agriculture dated February 2015, Brazil is the third largest in “global antimicrobial consumption in food animal production” — meaning, Brazil is third in the world for its use of tetracycline in its food animals. As a study by the American Society of Agronomy, et. al., explained, “It is estimated that approximately 75% of antibiotics are not absorbed by animals and are excreted in waste.” One of the antibiotics (or antimicrobials) specifically named in that report for its environmental persistence is tetracycline.

In fact, as a confidential internal Oxitec document divulged in 2012, that survival rate could be as high as 15% — even with low levels of tetracycline present. “Even small amounts of tetracycline can repress” the engineered lethality. Indeed, that 15% survival rate was described by Oxitec:

“After a lot of testing and comparing experimental design, it was found that [researchers] had used a cat food to feed the [OX513A] larvae and this cat food contained chicken. It is known that tetracycline is routinely used to prevent infections in chickens, especially in the cheap, mass produced, chicken used for animal food. The chicken is heat-treated before being used, but this does not remove all the tetracycline. This meant that a small amount of tetracycline was being added from the food to the larvae and repressing the [designed] lethal system.”

Even absent this tetracycline, as Steinbrecher explained, a “sub-population” of genetically-modified Aedes mosquitoes could theoretically develop and thrive, in theory, “capable of surviving and flourishing despite any further” releases of ‘pure’ GM mosquitoes which still have that gene intact. She added, “the effectiveness of the system also depends on the [genetically-designed] late onset of the lethality. If the time of onset is altered due to environmental conditions … then a 3-4% [survival rate] represents a much bigger problem…”

As the WHO stated in its press release, “conditions associated with this year’s El Nino weather pattern are expected to increase mosquito populations greatly in many areas.”

Incidentally, President Obama called for a massive research effort to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus, as one does not currently exist. Brazil has now called in 200,000 soldiers to somehow help combat the virus’ spread. Aedes mosquitoes have reportedly been spotted in the U.K. But perhaps the most ironic — or not — proposition was proffered on January 19, by the MIT Technology Review:

“An outbreak in the Western Hemisphere could give countries including the United States new reasons to try wiping out mosquitoes with genetic engineering.

“Yesterday, the Brazilian city of Piracicaba said it would expand the use of genetically modified mosquitoes …

“The GM mosquitoes were created by Oxitec, a British company recently purchased by Intrexon, a synthetic biology company based in Maryland. The company said it has released bugs in parts of Brazil and the Cayman Islands to battle dengue fever.”

Aedes aegypti mosquito. Image credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

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Life Sentence for Truth in Media: Turkish Journalists Face Life Sentences after Uncovering Arms Supply to Syria Terrorists

January 29th, 2016 by Alwaght

Two of Turkey’s leading journalists [ both pictured left] on Wednesday faced a possible life prison sentence after they were charged with plotting to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by reporting on secret arms shipments to Syria.

Turkish prosecutors demanded life sentences for two top journalists who reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government tried to ship arms to insurgents in Syria.

Prosecutors asked the Istanbul court to sentence Cumhuriyet newspaper’s editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul each to one aggravated life sentence, one ordinary life sentence and 30 years in jail, the Dogan news agency reported, quoting the indictment.

The report said that both Erdogan and his hugely powerful but low-profile ally, the head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Hakan Fidan, are named as plaintiffs in the indictment.

Dundar and Gul were both placed under arrest in late November over the report earlier in the year that claimed to show proof that a consignment of weapons seized at the border in January 2014 was bound for Takfiri (Al Qaeda) militants in Syria.

Since then, they have both been held in the Silivri jail on the outskirts of Istanbul ahead of their trial, whose date has still yet to be announced.

In the indictment, they have been formally charged with obtaining and revealing state secrets “for espionage purposes” and seeking to “violently” overthrow the Turkish government as well as aiding an “armed terrorist organization”, it said.

The penalties demanded by the prosecutors are significantly higher than had previously been expected.

The case has amplified concerns about press freedom under the rule of Erdogan, who had personally warned Dundar he would “pay a price” over the front-page story.

The Syrian government blames the United States along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the Israeli regime for backing terrorist groups inside the country.

 

 

 

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Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released in Brazil in 2015 Linked to the Current Zika Epidemic?

January 29th, 2016 by Reddit

This seems like a case to me where mankind’s arrogance may have backfired on us.

Here is Oxitec back in 2015 proudly announcing that their GM mosquito has decimated the local mosquito population in a field trial:

http://www.oxitec.com/press-release-oxitec-mosquito-works-to-control-aedes-aegypti-in-dengue-hotspo/

Releases of the genetically engineered Oxitec mosquito, commonly known as ‘Friendly Aedes aegypti’, reduced the dengue mosquito population in an area of Juazeiro, Brazil by 95%, well below the modelled threshold for epidemic disease transmission.

Here is a map showing where Juazeiro is located.

Here is a map showing where all the deformed babies are being born.

Zika was first confirmed in Brazil in may of 2015, but had been seen in other nations before. Question: Why didn’t it cause an epidemic of birth defects in any other countries? How exactly would you miss a tenfold increase in children born with most of their brain missing? Zika in Brazil does not seem to behave like the Zika we were familiar with before.

How could the Zika catastrophe be linked to genetically modified mosquitoes?

The OX513A strain of male mosquitoes released in Juazeiro creates larvae that normally die in the absence of antibiotics, which is supposed to help decimate wild mosquito populations when these males are released in the wild. Problem here being of course, that “life, uh, finds a way”. An estimated 3-4% of the larvae survive to adulthood in the absence of the tetracycline antibiotic. These larvae should then be free to go on and reproduce and pass on their genes. In fact, they may be the only ones that are passing on their genes in places that have their wild mosquito population decimated by these experiments.

What is the effect on these mosquitoes that grow up with a mutilated genome? It is thought that this should introduce a fitness cost, that is, they should have greater difficulty surviving. What do we know about these mosquitoes? Has adequate research ever been done on how a genetically mutilated mosquito copes with viral infections? Could the mosquito be more susceptible to certain pathogens, that it then passes on to humans?

If a pathogen like the Zika virus can thrive in the mosquito without restraint, it could evolve into something far more dangerous than its original incarnation, pulling the lever on the slot machine with every replication until it hits the genetic jackpot.

Is it too much to ask for a moratorium on these types of genetic experiments?

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CIA, Saudi Funding of Syria Al Qaeda Extremists Greater Than Previously Realized

January 29th, 2016 by Sputnik

New reports in the US media reveal that secret cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi Arabia to fund Daesh and other extreme Islamic groups in Syria was far greater than previously suspected, US scholars told Sputnik.

“The details about the Saudi funding should give very serious pause to Americans,” Middle East expert and author Helena Cobban told Sputnik.

New details revealed in a New York Times report on Tuesday indicated that the US government and its secret agencies were trying to repeat in Syria the strategy they used against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan 35 years ago, Cobban stated.

“It all looks eerily like what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s — a semi-clandestine and very hard to control CIA ‘intervention,’ backed up with huge amounts of Saudi money, and the ever-present Saudi support for the Wahhabist global agenda,” she suggested.

However, the Islamic terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, whom the CIA supported in Afghanistan during the 1980s, eventually turned on the United States with devastating consequences and the same thing could happen now, Cobban cautioned.

“What could possibly go wrong? We might ask the widows and orphans of the September 11, 2001 attack that question,” she said.The New York Times report revealed that the scale of US military and Saudi financial assistance to the Islamists in Syria was vastly greater than anything the Obama administration had previously admitted to, US author and Middle East affairs expert Dan Lazare told Sputnik.

“In the famous talk that [US Vice President] Joe Biden gave at Harvard’s Kennedy School in October 2014… he said that the Gulf states ‘poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad’,” Lazare noted.

However, according to the New York Times report, estimates have put the total cost of the arming and training effort at several billion dollars, Lazare pointed out.

“So the Saudi contribution alone was on the order of ten times greater than what Biden had indicated. That’s huge,” Lazare emphasized.

Cobban further noted that US diplomats openly fanned the flames of rebellion and civil war in Syria.

“There were the blatantly incendiary actions of Ambassador Robert Ford during the spring of 2011, when… he gave a lot of moral and political support to very activist figures in the opposition,” Cobban recalled.

According to the New York Times report, Lazare observed, the US government was well aware how much Saudi citizens continued to support terrorist groups, but maintained their close intelligence partnership with Riyadh anyway.

These were the same forces that bombed the World Trade Center in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 Americans, he concluded.

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Denmark, Decency and Decay

January 29th, 2016 by Jan Oberg

Once again Denmark appears in the international community and media for the wrong things, this time for a law package with three main, draconian anti-refugee laws. One legalises stealing – that’s what it is – valuables owned by refugees upon arrival if they exceed US$ 1450; the second cuts down on the already meagre daily benefit and the third extends the family reunion period from 1 to 3 years.

188 MPs voted yes, 108 No and 37 abstained. The main argument is that Denmark wants to “signal” that asylum seekers should go elsewhere. Otherwise marketing-conscious politicians have overlooked that there are millions upon millions out there who are not asylum seekers and they get an extremely bad impression of Denmark. Like they did when Denmark put ads in Middle Eastern newspaper some time ago to deter potential refugees.

The three laws – of which the first clearly provokes memories of what the Nazis did to the Jews – are just a peak point in a long (mal)development of Denmark’s foreign policy. It can be characterised by incremental absence of ethics, solidarity, compassion, empathy and sound human judgement – all concepts outside the domain of ‘real’ politics – combined with increased interventionism, militarism and lofty contempt for international laws.

By passing these laws, the country’s parliamentarians – with a few exceptions – have soiled the image of the country abroad even more and for a very long time ahead, one must fear.

It is not unreasonable to assume that terrorists will pay attention to this development which is de facto targetting refugees which are almost 100% Muslims.

Many Danish citizens including myself now recognise that ‘Dane’ rhymes with ‘Shame’. This trend in Danish policitics doesn’t happen in our name.

Once upon a time

Denmark used to be known and appreciated around the world as a welfare state with equality – gender and otherwise – and solidarity with the disadvantaged. Known for citizens with a diversified free education – also at people’s colleges and elsewhere where culture and good manners were taught.

Quite a lot of it was based on Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician, Grundtvig – others inspired by Kierkegaard. Out there educated people associated Denmark with composer such as Carl Nielsen, painters like Asger Jorn, entertainers like Victor Borge. It didn’t go for nuclear energy but became a major producer of windmills.

Danes were proud of being democratic and peaceful – remember the poster with the policeman who stops the cars to let some ducks pass a road? Or, say, furniture design, Carlsberg, H.C. Andersen and the Little Mermaid. Piet Hein.

It was known for rescuing 7000 Jews to safety across the Oresound to Sweden in October 1943. And known for talking about problems, not killing people.

Perhaps a bit idyllic, too good to be true? Yes, but still! There was something one culd be proud of.

Militarist and interventionist “active” foreign policy

And what’s the image the rest of the world is getting these years?

A rogue state, a warrior country any time it’s called upon by US/NATO – five wars or occupations: Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – and then Iraq again. And now special forces on their way to Syria.

When I was a member of the Danish government’s Commission on Security and Disarmament all through the 1980s no one even thought about Denmark as a war-fighting country far away. Defence, not offence, was the issue. International law was important. The Commission even produced a report on the Nordic areas as a nuclear-free zone – not bad for a NATO country. At the time there were elements of independent thinking about Denmark’s role in the world.

The first war participation – bombing Serbia two nights in 1999 – was decided by a government led by a social democratic prime minister, Nyrup Rasmussen and a foreign minister from a small historically anti-militarist, liberal party, Helweg Petersen.

They broke the traditional image of Denmark as adhering to peace and international law (the destruction of Yugoslavia had no UN mandate).

The doctrine of an active foreign policy was good in and of itself. Small countries have to be active and work together when the big ones play their games. But in Denmark’s case it was destructive – active meant joining wars, not being active in terms of early warning, conflict-resolution, mediation or any of the sort.

This was only the beginning of the road to rogueness.

2001 – the ‘war on terror’

The war on terror was initiatied after 9/11 – Afghanistan 10/7. Denmark went along without thinking. The idea came from Washington, so what was there to think about?

At the time about 400 people were killed in international terrorism per year; today the Global Terror Index informs us that 32.000 people are killed in terrorism. It must be the stupidest war in modern time and the majority of the victims are found in the Middle East, not in Europe and not in the US.

But we bomb – and create more terrorism. And more refugees. Politics having become anti-intellectual and devoid of ethical considerations, few connect the dots. Fewer see Denmark’s own co-responsibility for causing the problems and even fewer see the moral responsibility of taking care. No, steal their belongings.

Iraq

It was prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of the liberal Party, Venstre (meaning left but it’s neo-liberal right) whose government made Denmark an occupying power in Iraq over four years (2003-2007). By any standards the most serious foreign policy blunder of Danish foreign policy since 1945.

Asked recently on Danish television how he felt about the tragic situation in today’s Iraq he answered that – well, we stretched out our hand to the Iraqi people but unfortunately they didn’t take it.

No remorse there, Mr. Always Right. But quite a statement when you are a non-convicted war criminal having joined a project that killed about 1 million Iraqis during war, occupation and 13 years of sanction. The Danish politicians and people are still, it seems, unable or unwilling to understand the dimensions of this blunder – which is one reason they also don’t understand today what it means to be a refugee.

Muhamed carictures

It was under his leadership – or lack if it – the Muhamed caricatures became a diplomatic disaster. He refused to meet with Muslim leaders in Denmark and also ignored a letter of concern from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the global voice of Muslims with 57 member states and 1,6 billion people.

Probably no one in the PM’s and foreign minister’s office had a clue what the OIC was.

But he did know who Khadaffi was when later, rewarded for his good deeds by the US and catapulted to S-G of NATO, he spearheaded the coalition member states’ violation of the very limited UN mandate, their destruction of that country and the killing of Khadaffi.

A social democratic prime minister re-invents rogue Denmark

Former female prime minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt – at the time leader of the social democratic party – will be remembered for bringing Denmark into Iraq for a second time, a decision to bomb taken in less than 24 hours after Washington’s call on September 24, 2014.

She will also be remembered for three other foreign policy-related blunders:

1) Supporting without any limitations the freedom of expression after Charlie Hebdo and saying that in Denmark we shall be able to speak and write and make the any drawing we want – while Danish police arrested youngsters who had used politically incorrect words on their Facebook pages.

2) She defined a socially marginalised young Muslim’s killing of two individuals in Copenhagen in early 2015 as terrorism without the slightest evidence. 

These two tragic events brought the official Denmark to the verge of hysteria with a memorial event in a park in Copenhagen – led by the royal house, the government and military plus 40.000 Danes where a song written against the German occupation (!) was sung followed, pathetically, by Lennon’s Imagine…

3) Thorning Schmidt committed herself and Denmark to follow the US/Denmark to also bomb in Syria – a plan only prevented by Putin’s intervention and the chemical disarmament agreement with Syria.

The extreme populist People’s Party has been shaping and promoting these trends for decades with a manifest xenophobic profile that spoke, at least originally to the petty bourgeoisie.

Whatever there once was of a the genuine social democratic party and a liberal party, of socialism and liberalism, has been buried long ago. The extreme right has become mainstream – thus time to change party names to fit reality. However the right social democratic party is wrong.

The third re-invention of rogueness

The present liberal party prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s, first foreign policy action was to kill the already established commission for investigating how Denmark under the leadership of his party comrade, Fogh Rasmussen, got involved in the war on Iraq.

The possibility that Mr. Always Right should be proved just a little wrong was a risk not to be taken.

It characterises the decay of democratic politics that elites across the political spectrum have more in common with each other than each has with their voters and constituencies.

The decision to bomb Libya was a milestone in the Nordic countries in that it was the first time ever that all parties, left to right – with one exception – voted for the bombing of Libya. The exception was the far-right, xenophobic Swedish Democrats. The Nordic public opinion against war and for peace – and there are some – no longer has more than a handful of individuals that represent them.

In a TV interview in October 2015 prime minister Løkke Rasmussen advocated safe zones to be etablished in Syria for refugees. One must assume to keep them away from Europe. In his view these zones should be protected from the air by combat aircraft – deliberately omitting any mention of UN peacekeepers.

This is an indication as good as any that he has no knowledge about such matters and no advisers either. Such an arrangement would create more than one Srebrenica in a war environment such as Syria which is worse by any standards than Bosnia where there were at least some UN troops at the time.

The underlying racism embedded in the idea of gathering citizens of a country in camps because you think it is necessary to destroy their country and culture – a kind of warfare Bantustans – speak of the Zeitgeist of a Denmark inside a Western world that is in moral free fall. Decaying.

Mr. Løkke Rasmussen further maintained more than once that he could not imagine Danish boots on the ground. But that was October last year.

It took only to January 2016 when it was revealed that his government now intends to send special forces to Syria. And rest assured: before long Denmark will again be at war in a foreign country in full violation of international law and UN norms.

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Selected Articles: Surveillance, Humanitarian Interventionism, and Media Disinformation in American Politics.

January 29th, 2016 by Global Research News

surveillanceHearings in Secret: Congress, FISA and Warrantless Surveillance

By Binoy Kampmark, January 29 2016

It should seem axiomatic to Congressional credibility that the people’s representatives should have hearings about the Republic’s affairs in the open.

Flint_snyderWhile Flint Was Being Poisoned, State Workers “Quietly” Provided Water Coolers

By Common Dreams, January 29 2016

Following release of new document and emails, Gov. Snyder told he must ‘explain to the people of Flint why his administration trucked water into a state building while allowing residents to drink unsafe water’

oasOAS to Send Special Mission to Haiti Amid Political Crisis

By Ezili Dantò, January 29 2016

OAS you’re not welcome in Haiti, Haiti does not need another OAS electoral coup detat like 2010. Haiti stands as one with this one message to the new OAS mission that has invited itself  to Haiti.

Nytimes_hqMedia Disinformation and the US Heroin Epidemic

By Dr. Meryl Nass, January 29 2016

On October 30, 2015 the NY Times published an in-depth article on the heroin epidemic, focused on New Hampshire, which saw the greatest increase in deaths from drug overdoses (74%) in the US between 2013 and 2014.

Photo by Gage SkidmoreDonald Trump Wins Fox News Debate Without Showing Up

By Stephen Lendman, January 29 2016

Trump looks unstoppable, the likely Republican presidential nominee, way outdistancing other aspirants in polls consistently.

nato_libya_1Pentagon Prepares Another War in Libya

By Bill Van Auken, January 29 2016

A little less than five years after launching a war against Libya on the “humanitarian” pretext of preventing a supposedly imminent massacre, the United States and its European allies are preparing a new military assault against the oil-rich North African country under the bloodstained banner of the “war on terrorism”.

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UN Security Council to Consider defining all Israeli Settlements in Occupied Territories as Illegal

January 29th, 2016 by Anthony Bellchambers

Binyamin Netanyahu is the leader of Likud: the successor to the Irgun Zvai Leumi movement that consisted of political militants who carried out the first major terrorist bombing in the Middle East in which 92 innocent people were murdered. That was at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which also housed the headquarters of the British military authorities during the Palestine mandate.

Now Netanyahu continues the tradition of violating international law by his authorisation for the building of yet more houses for  Israelis on Palestinian land in a further attempt to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with the will of the United Nations.

The UN Security Council is now considering a resolution by President Abbas of the PA that will define all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories as illegal under international law and to make the Israeli state subject to sanctions.

Such a resolution is many years overdue.

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“Al Qaeda Rebels Encircled”: Syrian Arab Army Continues to Liberate Parts of Syria

January 29th, 2016 by South Front

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have encircled the militants in Darayya, striking several neighborhoods under the control of Ajnad Al-Sham and Al-Nusra.

Meanwhile, the SAA’s Brigade 105 of the Republican Guard conducted a devastating tunnel attack on Jaish al-Islam headquarters in the town of Jobar destroying this large building located near the Tayba Mosque. The government forces have reportedly seized a number of building blocks near the 4 Seasons Hotel and are advancing West of the Masjid Bilal Al-Habshi in the Darayya Association District.

Ajnad Al-Sham and Al-Nusra are surrounded by the Syrian forces at both Darayya and Mo’adhimiyah, with no roads linking these two towns together. Thus, the militants aren’t able to maneuver and to exchange supplies and reinforcements. Meanwhile, the Syrian forces proposed to the militants of Ajnad Al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army in Mo’adhimiyah to lay down arms and surrender peacefully. The militants have 4 days left to accept the terms.

Following the firece clashes with militants, the Syrian troops were able to liberate the town of Bluzah in Aleppo province. The loyalists’ forces have been making steady gains in Northwestern parts of Syria, being able to drive the militant groups back from more territories in the region.

A coordinated assault on the Al-Rawad Hill in the Al-Baqaliyeh district of the Deir Ezzur province was launched by the militant groups on Thursday. However, the militants’ offensive actions were rebuffed due to the strategic airstrikes conducted by the Russian and Syrian air forces. During the current week, ISIS launched a series of assaults on Al-Baqaliyeh District to seize the Al-Rawad Hill from but it failed.

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Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction (WMFD)

January 29th, 2016 by Bill Holter

Every once in a while it is a good thing to review something we already know and have known for quite a while.  What we’re talking about are derivatives and the very basics of how they work… or not. 

We have seen massive volatility since the Fed raised rates last month. 

The humor (tragedy), admitted to yesterday by the Fed, the 4th quarter saw slowing economies all over the world and “Nobody Really Knows Anything Right Now” !  

I say “humor” because the Fed tightened rates just as the economy was weakening again.  Many have said the Fed raised rates at “exactly the wrong time”.  History may agree with this, I do not.  In fact, there has not been one single day since the end of 2008 the Fed “should have” raised rates simply because of the massive debt embedded in the system and those pesky weapons of mass financial destruction called DERIVATIVES!  Higher rates will only serve as a “margin call” in a system with no margin left!

First, derivatives are generally a zero sum game contract between two parties “betting” on something.  They can be looked at as a speculation, a hedge, or even “insurance”.  For this missive, let’s look at the “insurance aspect” of derivatives as literally $10’s of trillions in gains and losses have occurred just this month alone worldwide.

For example and as you know, the price of oil has collapsed.  Ignoring the gains and losses directly on oil, let’s look at companies who’s business is oil.  Whether it be production, exploration, transport or even “trading”, huge sums of money have been gained or lost depending on which way your bet was.  Many oil related companies have CDS (credit default swaps) written against their debt.  These contracts have been rising and rising in value as oil has dropped and the possibility of bankruptcies have risen.  Huge gains by owners and losses by the “writers” of CDS have accrued. 

This is just ONE AREA as derivatives are everywhere and written just as bookies would regarding almost anything.  In fact, CDS is even written on the debt of sovereign governments …including the U.S. Treasury. 

Please think this through for a moment, who, or what “company” could possibly perform and payout the “insurance” to someone who bet (and won) the U.S. Treasury would default?  Would anything even be open?  If the U.S. Treasury defaulted, would stock or bond markets be open?  How about your bank?  How about ANYTHING (including your local Walmart)!  Do you see where we are going here?

Now lets talk for a moment about “collateral” as presumably this is what needs to be used or “put up” by the issuers of CDS if their exposure begins to broaden if the contract goes against them.  I have spoken many times in the last few years about collateral and specifically the LACK of collateral. 

Whether it be QE in the U.S. or Europe soaking up too many sovereign bonds or systemically nothing left to borrow against, the lack of collateral is a direct problem for derivatives.  You see, as a contract moves one way or the other, theoretically the party who is losing needs to post more collateral.  It was this inability to post collateral in 2008 by Lehman Bros. that kicked off the problem.

From a broad perspective, everyone is running down the street naked while assuring everyone else they are “insured”.  Greece was even aided into the ECU because they claimed their derivative positions “erased” much of their debt, fat chance! 

In the end, “losers” must pay winners.  If losers lose so big as to bankrupt them, the winners will not get paid.  Both sides are losers.  When this happens on a grand scale, it will be the entire financial system and thus “us” who are the ultimate loser. 

I have a topic to finish with but want to make a statement, then ask a couple of questions first.  Someone recently said to me regarding the trek from 2008 to present, “the only thing that has changed since 2008 is that nothing has changed”.  I would pretty much agree with this, the policies in place that put us on our knees are still in place, only being implemented with more force.  I would also say the biggest change is we now have more debt, more derivatives and much more money supply. 

Please remember, the Fed took all sorts of substandard paper (mortgage backed securities) on to their balance sheet.  What has happened to all of this paper?   Much of it is non performing but sitting in a dark corner and being ignored …because it HAS TO BE!  What would happen if the Fed ever sold any of this paper for a true market value?  Banks would have to mark their portfolios down, that’s what!  One last question, if this “bad paper” amounts to more than $100 billion in losses (it does, probably by many multiples), what would it mean if the loss was greater than the Fed’s “equity” reportedly now less than $50 billion?  Just because the Fed does not ‘fess up to the losses on their books …does not mean the losses do not exist.  Going one step further in this thought process, if the Fed admitted to these losses, they would be admitting to a negative net worth!  Would you accept an IOU from someone you knew for fact had a negative net worth?  I hate to state the obvious but, you do this every single day when you accept dollars for payment!

One last topic and I’m not 100% positive what it means.  Silver flash crashed last night and the morning fix came in .84 cents below where spot was quietly trading on the LBMA  http://www.bulliondesk.com/silver-news/update-silver-market-disarray-after-benchmark-priced-far-below-spot-rate-108129/ !  My initial reaction was someone needed to “settle” a trade and the price had to be below $14 in order to not trigger something.  In fact, it is being said that this anomalous “fix” will not be reversed but will instead stand.  Why would this be?  Why, if it was a “mistake” would it not be fixed?

After a five mile afternoon ride to ponder this, I can only come up with two viable  scenarios.  Scenario A. as I just mentioned above, it is possible some bank, broker or other entity needed to “settle” some sort of contract UNDER $14.  It is possible this fishy fix enabled someone to close a short without any pain.  It may have been an “accommodative” trade so to speak.  Scenario B. this may have been “margin liquidation” meaning someone was long silver but received a margin call from another market that needed to be met and very sloppily liquidated all at once.  This is not normally how trades are done but if it was a forced sale, the action is possible.  We have had huge volatility in so many other markets, it is certainly possible this was a forced sale.  The one thing I am quite sure of since backwardation now rules the day in London, this was not a “cash” fix.  I am quite sure it was a paper contract “fix”.  Why else is China so hell bent on creating a “cash only” exchange?  Because China knows!

It is important to understand we will see things going forward we never expected or ever dreamed of.  What started to happen in 2008 where counterparties lost trust in each other is exactly where we are headed again.  Central banks stepped in to restore trust, I am not so sure they have enough credibility or goodwill left to turn a far larger credit tsunami than 2008.  The credit bubble is again unwinding like 2008 with no White Knights large enough or credible enough to restore confidence once broken.  All I can say is “gee, what rocket scientist could have figured out the greatest credit boom in the history of history would begin to unwind after an interest rate increase”? 

  Standing watch,
  Bill Holter,  Holter-Sinclair collaboration,  Comments welcome!  [email protected]
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Donald Trump Wins Fox News Debate Without Showing Up

January 29th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Trump looks unstoppable, the likely Republican presidential nominee, way outdistancing other aspirants in polls consistently.

He withdrew from Thursday’s Fox News debate in Des Moines, Iowa, ahead of Monday’s state caucuses, over animus toward moderator Megyn Kelly, demanding she be replaced – accusing her and Fox of “toy(ing) with me like they toy with everybody else.”

Trump didn’t miss a beat boycotting Thursday’s debate. He won without showing up, maintaining daily publicity by holding his own solo act in Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium.

Around 700 supporters showed up. Millions watched on cable TV. The event saluted veterans, featuring theater without substance – the standard formula for all US political “debates.” Why anyone wastes time watching them, they’ll have to explain.

Rival candidates on Fox News beat up on each other without Trump’s help. Closest rival Ted Cruz took a beating, responding to questions with evasive answers. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and others fared no better, unimpressive like earlier.

Republican and Democrat presidential aspirants look more like an FBI most wanted list than legitimate candidates.

They represent big money-controlled duopoly power, dirty business as usual. Don’t let their deceptive rhetoric and phony promises fool you. They’re all cut out of the same cloth.

The late Gore Vidal explained, saying by the time a politician “gets to be presidential material,” he or she has “been bought ten times over.”

 

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.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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Hearings in Secret: Congress, FISA and Warrantless Surveillance

January 29th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It should seem axiomatic to Congressional credibility that the people’s representatives should have hearings about the Republic’s affairs in the open.  If they are put there by citizens to represent citizens, the all seeing eye of the sovereign public should be present to oversee their performance.

Not so, it seems, regarding certain areas of policy deliberation.  On the subject of gathering intelligence, the shroud of secrecy comes down heavily, ensuring that deliberations are away from public scrutiny and critique.

This issue is of particular interest given the hearings the House Judiciary Committee will hold next week on two of the NSA’s programs that featured in the range of disclosures by Edward Snowden in June 2013.  Their names have been assimilated into the argot of popular discussion: Upstream, and in particular, PRISM.

Keeping such hearings secret has angered a range of institutes and organisations who wish to keep an eye on how discussions will unfold.  These are critical, given that s. 702, in its legal force, lapses next year.  Will this provision be allowed to disappear into oblivion?

On Wednesday, the 26 organisations, including the heavy hitting American Civil Liberties Union and the persistently present Human Rights Watch, waded in with an angry note to Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte and Ranking Member John Conyers.

The undersigned groups were initially appreciative about the decision to hold hearings on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, believing “that robust congressional oversight of the implementation of this statute, which is used to acquire the communications of Americans and people around the world alike without a warrant, is critical.”[1]  Surprise, however, was expressed at holding the hearing “in a classified format, outside the public view.”

Holding such a hearing in secret “neither fully satisfies the promise to hold hearings nor permits the public debate that this nation deserves.  Rather, it continues the excessive secrecy that has contributed to the surveillance abuses we have seen in recent years and to their adverse effects upon our civil liberties and economic growth.”

Hearings on FISA – notably the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – have been held in open session on no less than six occasions since its creation.  Implementing the statute has been a point of open discussion, with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board publishing an unclassified report on the subject.  Not even that has prevented the slide into an ever intrusive, and unaccountable state of surveillance.

Section 702 remains one of the most troubling sections in the intelligence armoury, largely because it is used as the legitimising basis for such programs as PRISM.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence insists on a rather bland reading of the provision, suggesting that it facilitates “the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-US persons located outside the United States, creating a new, more streamlined procedure to collect the communications of foreign terrorists.”[2]

Such a reading seems discriminating and strategic, picking targets accurately. Targeting cannot take place without an appropriate, documented, foreign intelligence purpose, and the foreign target must reasonably be believed to be outside the United States.  The provision supposedly does not apply to US citizens.

In practice, it has given the NSA an elastic reach, prompted as much by laziness as executive greed for identifying a whole spectrum of potential threats. It has also been helped by a compliant FISA Court reluctant to interfere with the wisdom of such collecting, and the nature of technology that makes distinctions between US and non-US citizens redundant.

The court’s role is also limited to approving various “targeting” procedures and “minimization” procedures – collection in principle does not require individual judicial orders.[3] Even with these lax provisions, the court has periodically noted the problems of accidental capture of data, something which bypasses judicial scrutiny to enable searching by NSA operatives.

A glance at what the programs actually do should serve to dispel any notions about proportionality and discrimination.  Technology, in this specific sense, makes a mockery of sober legal limits.  Section 702 is a hoovering provision, gathering up millions of online messages and voice communications across a range of platforms, including Skype and Facebook.  PRISM gathers its trove from the technology giants: Yahoo, Apple and Google, while Upstream “siphons it off from major internet cables owned by the big telecom companies.”[4]

As Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., noted in a statement to The Intercept, “Reports indicate that FISA Section 702 authority has been used by the NSA to search Americans’ photographs, emails, and other communications without warrant or probable cause.”[5]

The principle outlined in the collectively signed letter – that congressional hearings “should be conducted in accordance with this country’s highest principles of transparency and openness” is sound enough.  But the practice of the republic has followed different rationales and principles, deliberating about the effects of s. 702 without actually altering it dramatically.  Transparent governance has become the rhetoric of false practice, and NSA programs such as PRISM and Upstream its scolding and repudiating children.

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

Notes:

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While Flint Was Being Poisoned, State Workers “Quietly” Provided Water Coolers

January 29th, 2016 by Common Dreams

Image: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder speaks during a news conference in Flint, Mich., in this Jan. 11, 2016, file photo. (Photo: Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP, File)

A newly obtained document and related emails released on Thursday show that while the residents of Flint, Michigan were slowly being poisoned by lead-contaminated water last year, the offices of state officials in the city were “quietly” outfitted with water coolers by Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.

The emails—obtained by Progress Michigan and posted online here (pdf)—reveal an exchange between employees of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) and other state officials regarding in-house “concern about Flint’s WQ [water quality]” that occurred at a time in 2015 when many residents still had no idea there was a problem with the city’s public water and more than ten months before Gov. Rick Snyder ultimately declared a state of emergency over the crisis. The document at issue—dated January 7, 2015—is an administrative order showing the state had decided to provide bottled-water coolers “positioned near water fountains” in state offices so that workers could “choose which water to drink.”

Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said the emails and document offer new evidence of the Snyder administration’s indifference towards the people of Flint.

“It appears the state wasn’t as slow as we first thought in responding the Flint Water Crisis,” said Scott in a statement.

“Sadly, the only response was to protect the Snyder administration from future liability and not to protect the children of Flint from lead poisoning. While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building.”

The governor, continued Scott, should immediately “explain to the people of Flint why his administration trucked water into a state building while allowing residents to drink unsafe water.”

In addition to adding to the enormous available evidence revealing the Snyder’s administration lackluster (if not criminal) response to the water crisis in Flint, Scott said the documents also make it plain just “ineffective” and “unequal” the state’s handling of the situation has been.

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Cameron’s Attack on Migrants Spearheads Appeal to Far Right in the UK

January 29th, 2016 by Julie Hyland

UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s attack on refugees in Calais and Dunkirk, France as a “bunch of migrants” during Prime Minister’s Question Time in parliament Wednesday was deliberately inflammatory.

Some 9,000 people—most fleeing wars and instability instigated and fanned by British imperialism in their home countries-are currently trapped in the French ports. Refused entry to France and Britain, many live in make-shift shanty towns, eking out an existence on “charitable” handouts, or trying to make often life-claiming attempts to cross the Channel to the UK.

In the furore that followed Cameron’s comment, many pointed to the fact that it was made on January 27, Holocaust Memorial Day, as if it were an unfortunate coincidence. It is nothing of the sort.

Just as in the 1930s, capitalism in crisis threatens to drag humanity into a new and even greater catastrophe, poisoning the atmosphere with nationalist and racist filth in order to legitimise the turn to war and dictatorship.

Cameron’s remark must be placed in the context of the demand of European governments for the sealing of borders with armed guards, and the resort to other police-state measures. Only last week, under the banner of clamping down on migration and tackling “extremism”, Cameron announced that he intended to introduce a “language test” for all migrants and said that Muslim women should be forced to remove face veils, like hijabs and niqabs, when asked by public officials.

Cameron presented this as less draconian than the blanket ban enforced in France, but this week the chief inspector of schools announced that schools could be marked as “inadequate” if they allow staff or pupils to wear veils in the classroom. This induces head teachers to implement a ban, lest their school be penalised and placed in special measures.

As for Cameron’s reference to the Calais migrants, he is known to prepare carefully with a team of advisers for Prime Minister’s Question Time every Wednesday at midday, with his responses scripted to achieve the maximum effect.

All of which makes the full content of his response politically revealing.

Cameron was answering a question from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the tax settlement reached by Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs (HMRC) with Google. Seven years after HMRC began investigating its complex tax arrangements, the internet giant has agreed to pay a paltry £130 million on years of back taxes.

At the equivalent of a 3 percent tax rate, the deal has been condemned by other European governments who regard it as proof that the UK is setting itself up as a tax haven.

More fundamentally, the arrangement has caused public anger after seven years of government-mandated austerity that includes savage cuts in vital social and welfare provision. On the same day as Cameron’s questioning, a legal challenge in the High Court to the “bedroom tax”–the withdrawal of housing benefit for those deemed to have “too many” bedrooms–exposed how people face losing their homes as a consequence.

In parliament, Corbyn cited a question from “Geoff, a working man over the age of 30” who wanted to ask the prime minister if “there is a scheme that I can join that has the same rate of tax as Google?”

Criticising HMRC for failing to get a better deal, Corbyn went on, “Many people will say this: ‘Why is there one rule for big multinational companies and another for ordinary self-employed people and small businesses’?”

Refusing to answer the question, Cameron retorted instead, pointing at Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, that the

“idea that those two right honourable gentlemen would stand up to anyone in this regard is laughable. Look at their record over the last week.

“They met with the unions and gave them flying pickets. They met with the Argentineans, they gave them the Falkland Islands. They met with a bunch of migrants in Calais, they said they could all come to Britain. The only people they never stand up for are the British people and hardworking taxpayers.”

Cameron’s answer makes plain that anti-immigrant propaganda is an integral part of his government’s defence of corporate interests based on austerity and militarism. In bringing together in one attack the “hot button” issues of the far right, he underscored that these interests are inseparably bound to the mobilisation of the most reactionary social layers. And, in raising the spectre of “flying pickets”, last seen in Britain in the 1984-85 miners’ strike, he exposed the secret fear of the bourgeoisie–an insurrectionary movement of the working class.

All of which makes Labour’s mealy-mouthed protestations over the prime minister’s remarks even more pathetic.

Yvette Cooper, who leads Labour’s taskforce on refugees, complained that Cameron’s lack of “statesmanship like language” risked undermining “cross party consensus on such a sensitive issue.”

This consensus only exists because, outside of rhetoric, little separates Labour’s policy on migration from that of the Tories. The policy of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and organisations such as Save the Children, is to pressure Cameron to allow just 3,000 unaccompanied children to be admitted to the UK.

In fact, visiting the French camps at the weekend, Corbyn pointedly refused to put a figure on the number of refugees he believed should be admitted to the UK. While arguing for politicians “to be a bit more human,” he said only that Britain should do more to process the asylum claims of those with a British family connection.

Corbyn’s actual statement on “flying pickets” is also a fudge. Cameron was referring to the Labour leader’s remark that he would repeal aspects of the anti-trade union legislation first introduced under the Conservative-administration of Margaret Thatcher should Labour win office. Corbyn said that “sympathy” strike action should be allowed, while stating that a Labour government would leave “closed shop” laws—where every worker must be a union member—in place. Asked if he would support the use of flying pickets as a part of this sympathy action, Corbyn avoided answering directly, implying that the issue was irrelevant as “the number of strikes [is] actually very small.”

Pressed on whether he would support other workers in the National Health Service joining the junior doctor’s strike—currently suspended—the Labour leader again refused to be drawn.

As for the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, which Thatcher went to war over in 1982, Corbyn has merely called for “dialogue” with Argentina over their fate–suggesting a “Northern Ireland-style power-sharing deal” that would supposedly accommodate the interests of all sides.

Such pronouncements make clear the dangers posed to working people by the claim—promoted by the pseudo-left—that Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party provides a means of defending workers’ interests.

While the bourgeoisie determinedly marshals its resources, Corbyn—in the rotten time-honoured tradition of the Labour “left”—acts to demobilise workers and youth by concealing the real state of class tensions beneath soothing homilies of how everything can be resolved peacefully and to the satisfaction of all if only notions of “human decency” and wiser heads can prevail.

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Pentagon Prepares Another War in Libya

January 29th, 2016 by Bill Van Auken

A little less than five years after launching a war against Libya on the “humanitarian” pretext of preventing a supposedly imminent massacre, the United States and its European allies are preparing a new military assault against the oil-rich North African country under the bloodstained banner of the “war on terrorism.”

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook confirmed Wednesday that Washington is “looking at military options” in relation to Libya and acknowledged that US special operations troops are operating on the ground there in a bid to “get a sense of who the players are, who might be worthy of US support and support from some of our partners as we go forward.”

The Pentagon spokesman’s remarks echoed earlier comments by the US military’s senior commander. “It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] in conjunction with the political process” in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last Friday. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

As for the presence of special operations troops, that story too was no secret, though largely blacked out by the corporate media. A photograph posted on the Facebook page of the Libyan air force last month showed about 20 American commandos dressed in civilian clothes and carrying automatic weapons. According to the caption that accompanied the photograph, the Libyan forces in charge of the air base “refused their intervention, disarmed them and forced them off Libyan lands.”

Pentagon officials confirmed the incident, while telling NBC News that similar US units have been “in and out of Libya” for “some time now.”

The “human rights” pretext foisted on the public in 2011 and the “terror” pretext being employed today are equally fraudulent. They are both designed to conceal the predatory objectives of military interventions carried out with the aim of imposing US semi-colonial hegemony over countries and regions sitting on top of vast energy resources—in Libya’s case the largest oil reserves on the entire African continent.

It is, however, a measure of the uninterrupted growth of American militarism and the corresponding degradation of American democracy that, while in 2011 Obama delivered a televised speech to the nation providing his phony justifications for the war and then secured a UN Security Council resolution as a legal fig leaf for naked aggression, in 2016 a Marine Corps general casually remarks that he has the authority to launch a new war whenever he sees fit.

In 2011, the story was put out that Libya’s longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, was on the brink of carrying out a wholesale massacre of “peaceful political protesters” in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Only Western intervention could save lives, Obama and his NATO allies insisted, and there was no time to waste.

These assertions were echoed and amplified by an entire coterie of pseudo-lefts. Some of them, like the French New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) embellished upon the arguments of the imperialist powers, insisting that the defense of the “Libyan revolution” was the paramount issue. In the words of the NPA’s prominent spokesman, academic Gilbert Achcar, “You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.”

Similarly, the University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, whose “left” credentials stemmed from his rather qualified opposition to the Iraq war, declared, “To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions.” For emphasis, he added, “If NATO needs me, I’m there.”

With such support, US imperialism and its European allies, invoking the neocolonialist doctrine of “R2P” (responsibility to protect), turned the UN’s resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to prevent the bombardment of Benghazi into a carte blanche for a war for regime change that saw massive US-NATO bombardments, the deaths of some 30,000 Libyans and the lynch mob torture and murder of Gaddafi in October 2011.

After it was all over, NGOs and human rights groups like the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International acknowledged that there were no factual grounds for claiming that Benghazi had been threatened with a “massacre.”

In the five years that have followed, however, the Libyan people have been plunged into a real and hellish humanitarian catastrophe. As many as two million Libyans, roughly a third of the prewar population, have been forced into exile in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. Those who remain face catastrophic conditions, with hundreds of thousands internally displaced by the fighting that has raged between rival militias ever since the toppling of Gaddafi.

Human Rights Watch, which supported the US-NATO war of 2011, reported this month that the militias that rule the country have “indiscriminately shelled civilian areas, arbitrarily seized people, tortured and looted, burned, and otherwise destroyed civilian property in attacks that in some cases amounted to war crimes.” It adds that these forces “attack, abduct and disappear, and forcefully displace people from their homes,” while “[t]he domestic criminal justice system collapsed in most parts of the country, exacerbating the human rights crisis.” Thousands of Libyans, as well as foreigners, are imprisoned without charges or trials, many since 2011, in a system of militia-run jails where torture is endemic.

No one, of course, is invoking “R2P” today, under conditions that are indescribably worse than what existed in March of 2011. On the contrary, the pretext for the war now being prepared is combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has established a stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte, the former hometown of Gaddafi that was largely demolished in a protracted siege in 2011.

Those within the political establishment and the media who bother connecting the growth of ISIS in Libya to the US-NATO intervention of 2011 habitually present the matter as a sin of omission: Washington and its allies failed to follow up the bombing campaign with a “nation-building” occupation.

This is, of course, a deliberate cover-up for very real crimes that were committed. ISIS is not some accidental beneficiary of chaos in Libya. Its own growth and development were intimately bound up with the US-NATO war, in which similar Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias were lavishly armed and funded to serve as ground troops.

After the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi, these same elements, along with vast quantities of arms looted from Libyan government stockpiles, were funneled into Syria as part of a CIA-orchestrated effort to stoke a war for regime change in that country. This operation greatly strengthened ISIS and similar outfits, while Libyans who had been sent to fight in Syria returned home, resulting in the Islamist group’s spread along Libya’s northern coastline.

Thus, the source of the supposed ISIS terrorism threat in Libya—which is the pretext for yet another war—is the endless and escalating succession of military interventions by US imperialism itself, which have plunged the entire region into bloodshed and chaos, while threatening to ignite a global conflagration.

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Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliated “Opposition” Boycotts Peace Talks in Geneva

January 29th, 2016 by nsnbc international

Featured image: Riad Hijab, the coordinator of the so-called High Negotiations Committee ©AFP

The Syrian “opposition’s” High Negotiations Committee (HNC), announced from the Saudi capital Riyadh that it would not participate in the peace talks in Geneva on Friday. The announcement came as the Syrian government reasserts sovereignty over large swaps of territory previously held by various foreign-backed insurgencies. The HNC is an umbrella organization for a number of political and militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda franchises. 

It is the second time within a week that the HNC boycotts the talks in Geneva. On Monday, January 26, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced “from Laos” that the talks scheduled for Monday had been delayed. Kerry said that a new date would be announced within 24 – 48 hours.

The boycott of the talks in Geneva on January 29 sabotages the first attempt within two years to find a political settlement to the five-year-long war.

Making an announcement from the Saudi capital Riyadh, the HNC stressed that it would certainly not attend any talks before it had seen “signs of goodwill”; That is, an end to airstrikes, blockades, as well as a number of other guarantees. The HNC had among others “expected” U.N. guarantees of steps including a halt to attacks on civilian areas, a release of detainees, and a lifting of blockades.Syria_Destroyed tank_2015_NEO

These steps have been stipulated in UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2254 (2015) adopted on December 18, 2015. Late Thursday George Sabra, a member of the HNC, said:

“For certain we will not head to Geneva and there will not be a delegation from the High Negotiations Committee tomorrow in Geneva.”

Other HNC members noted that the HNC could be ready to attend talks within three or four days after its demands had been met.

Realities on the Ground make it impossible to meet HNC Demands

The realities on the ground in Syria are making it impossible to meet the HNC’s demands. The HNC demands an end to the bombing of and siege against civilian areas. Meanwhile, insurgents associated to the HNC continue launching attacks from civilian areas. This includes the shelling of residential areas of Damascus and other cities. Weapons, munitions, insurgents and other material continues to flow across the Jordanian, Turkish and Iraqi border, necessitating air strikes. Weapons, logistics and fighters also flow into Syria via the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan.

Air strikes and other operations are also necessary to stop the trafficking of Syrian oil. Stolen oil is either smuggled directly to Turkey or “laundered” via the semi-autonomous northern Iraq. It is noteworthy that the European Union’s decision on April 22, 2013, to lift the ban on the import of Syrian oil from “rebel-held territories” continues to “fuel the war”. The current conditions are making it virtually impossible for the Syrian government to implement a ceasefire without risking that Al-Qaeda and ISIL linked brigades assert control over large swaps of territory.

The HNC’s decision to boycott the talks in Geneva until all of the conditions outlined in UNSC Resolution 2254 (2015) plus additional demands have been met increase the likelihood that the war will continue and will have to end with a military solution. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) supported by National Self Defense Units, Lebanese Hezbollah units, Iranian “advisers” , Russian Air Forces and according to some well-informed local sources known to nsnbc some Russian special forces, continue regaining control over previously “opposition” held territories. Last week the SAA recaptured the strategically important cities of Rabia and Salma in Latakia, from Jabhat Al-Nusrah and Free Syrian Army units. Rabia is no more than 13 kilometers from the Syrian – Turkish border.

HNC and Jaysh Al-Islam – Foreign-backed Mercenaries in New Drag

Special U.N. Envoy De Mistura described the HNC’s boycott of the talks as “a bitter blow”. De Mistura expressed his hope that the talks could be launched within the next few days. The HNC represents political and armed groups including the Islamist Jaysh al-Islam. Jaysh al-Islam is an umbrella for, among others, the Syrian Al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat Al-Nusrah. Jaysh al-Islam also absorbed Liwa-al-Islam, which was responsible for carrying out the chemical weapons attack on Eastern Ghouta in August 2013. The HNC also represents the remnants of the largely defunct Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The majority of FSA fighters have, over the last years, either joined Jabhat Al-Nusrah, ISIL, and other Islamist brigades. Some former FSA fighters, including officers, have reconciled with the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army after it became obvious that regional and international players aimed at the long-term destabilization of the region with radical Islamist mercenaries.

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