Global Research

They are returning, Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully looking somewhat well preserved, and a greyish David Duchovny as Fox Mulder.  The FBI duo, dynamic or otherwise, mining the consciousness of conspiranoia, tapping into the perennial scepticism about official accounts, standard narratives, the truth dictated as gospel from the powers that be. They were always meant to know better, even if more questions than answers were found.

Chris Carter was eager to draw from the well of X-File mania to give the series a new six-episode run.  But the supplementary soil, in terms of events, has been fertile.  “We deal with fear in a lot of different ways… The fact that we’re being spied on and don’t seem to be raising any protest is a frightening prospect for me.”  Carter’s points of reference? WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, and whistleblower Edward Snowden.[1]

Carter is by no means the only one to share this view.  According to Evan Valentine, “Honestly, our present society and time is probably a much better fit for the X-Files than it was during the era when it first debuted.”  Why? “Questioning authority has become part of the course,” a point the creators took to heart in resurrecting Mulder and Scully.[2]

The America of the 1990s from which the X-Files issued forth was, tritely put, another country.  But it did have its weekly digest of tabloid alien abductions, unexplained sightings, and millenarian terrors.  Given the absence of a politicised global Yeti or Big Foot in the form of the Soviet Union, people just had to make do with other backyard, paranormal findings.

Even as the series limped into oblivion in 2002, the arsenals of delusion were being readied for their catastrophic release in 2003.  Call them aliens, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists – everyone had to have something to believe, their conspiracy to treasure.  The events of September 11, 2001 were already sowing seeds of suspicion; the invasion of Iraq on specious, concocted grounds (the WMD conspiracy) added to the ledger of speculations.  The tree of conspiracy began to flower; there were false flags everywhere.  The “truthers” had arrived in numbers.

These days, it would fair to say that the truther pedigree has become so distorted the very idea of seeking something remotely factual, history exactly as it was, is becoming a challenge.  There are Ted O’Malley (the host of the Conservative talk show “Truth Squad with Ted O’Malley”) types in abundance.  The conspiracy market is teeming with contenders, and even presidential candidates of varying quality have decided to purchase a share of it. This is the were-monster as invisible hand, haunting the US electoral landscape.

Duchovny hazarded his own view about the X-Files’ spawning legacy.  Without the Carter’s creation, “you don’t have shows like ‘Lost’ or ‘Heroes’ or even ‘Bones’.”  Out of the river that was the X-Files came “tributaries”, a veritable “Cosmic Con-ization of the world.”[3]

The guardians of quality assurance – or discouragement – were already out warning eager viewers that the return of such a program from the “televisual mausoleum” would not end happily.  Carter’s efforts in the filmic versions – The X-Files from 1998 and 2008’s The X-Files: I Want To Believe – were hardly stonking successes.    The sense that the series was working on a tired autopilot of dreary seriousness, with an actor such as Anderson obviously more talented than her FBI cut-out would permit her to be, was hard to avoid.  The air had gone out of the balloon.

The new series embraces the old themes with gusto, though with current twists.  Human-alien hybridisation nods to previous episodes, but there are nuclear weapons, weather distortions, the use of the Patriot Act, and the muscular actions of the police state.  Reviewers tend to confine themselves to familiar terrain. Kaly Soto prefers those “stand-alone story lines as opposed to the mythology arcs” (New York Times, Jan 25). Some people just love their monsters.

Series with the X Files profile would have little purchase were it not for the fact that secrecy accompanies government functions, lacing it with a covering deemed necessary for public order.  Do they govern for us, or in their own name and interest?

All shades of government seem to endorse that view: secrecy is essential; transparency, an unfortunate wickedness that can be managed carefully through limited freedom of information regimes. Governments do conceal, deceive and dissimulate. The public’s continued response to that approach bears all kinds of fruit – and they continue to vary in taste and colour.  “Conspiracy sells,” Mulder suggests regarding O’Malley’s credibility. “It pays for bulletproof limousines.”

If anything, the X Files risks diminishing that brand of deception, propelling officialdom’s mendacity, and own conspiracies, into the realm of ET.  The supernatural dimension detracts from, in Ed Power’s words, “real government skulduggery”, a point that is transcendent of the “extra-terrestrials-in-the-warehouse” notion.[4]  Whether it is hybrid alien projects or the XKeyscore surveillance program, the point is clear enough, though the latter poses a far greater problem than the former.

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

Notes:

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1fb1945d9fca41d692dfe0b285ab947a/scully-mulder-paranoia-return-x-files-reboot

[2] http://collider.com/x-files-reboot-review-new-york-comic-con-2015/

[3] http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/tv/article56331960.html

The British government, whose foreign policy is overtly hostile to their Russian counterpart, declared last week that their investigation into the killing of a former Russian intelligence agent in London nearly a decade ago concluded there is a “strong probability” the Russian FSB security agency was responsible for poisoning Alexander Litivenko with plutonium.

They further declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably approved” of the act. The British investigation, which was likely politically motivated, seemingly raised more questions than it answered. But American corporate media were quick to use the accusations against Putin to demonize him, casting him as a pariah brazenly flaunting his disregard for international conventions.

The Washington Post (1/23/16) editorial board wrote that:

“Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination… Mr. Owen found (Andrei) Lugovoi was acting ‘under the direction’ of the FSB in an operation to kill Mr. Litivenko – one that was ‘probably approved’ by the director of the FSB and by Mr. Putin.”

Actually, Owen did not find that former KGB operative Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB to kill Litivenko. He found there was a “strong probability” this was the case. This means that even in Owens’s view, there is not near certainty, which would meet the legal standard of reasonable doubt that would preclude a guilty judgement. There is even more doubt that even if it were the case the FSB ordered the murder, they did so on Putin’s orders.

The New York Times editorial board (1/21/16) finds the investigation’s results “shocking.” For the Times, this confirms a pattern of Putin’s rogue behavior. They claim Putin’s “deserved reputation as an autocrat willing to flirt with lawlessness in his global ventures has taken on a startling new aspect.”

Both of the prestigious and influential American newspapers argue that the British findings impugn Putin’s respectability in international affairs. The Times says:

Mr. Putin has built a sordid record on justice and human rights, which naturally reinforces suspicion that he could easily have been involved in the murder. At the very least, the London inquiry, however much it is denied at the Kremlin, should serve as a caution to the Russian leader to repair his reputation for notorious intrigues abroad.

The more hawkish Post says: “This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Mr. Putin as if he is just another head of state?”

Putin’s alleged “sordid record on justice and human rights,” which is taken for granted without providing any examples, is seen as bolstering the case for his guilt in the case of the poisoning death of Litivenko. This, in turn, adds to his “notorious” reputation as a violator of human rights.

The Post draws a line between the lawless Putin and the respectable Western heads of state, such as Obama. Though they frame their call to treat Putin as an outcast as a question, it is clearly intended as a rhetorical question.

It is curious that The Post draws a contrast between Putin and Obama, whose government is supposedly above such criminality. The newspaper does not mention the U.S. government’s drone assassination program, which as of last year had killed nearly 2,500 people in at least three countries outside of declared military battlefields. Estimates have shown that at least 90 percent of those killed were not intended targets. None of those killed have been charged with any crimes. And at least two – Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdul Rahman – were Americans.

Obama himself is personally responsible for those killed by missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over the skies of sovereign countries. Several news reports have indicated that Obama is presented in meetings each week by military and national security officials with a list of potential targets for assassination. Obama must personally approve each target, at which point they are added to the state-sanctioned “kill list.”

The British government has also assumed for itself the power to assassinate its own citizens outside a declared battlefield. Last fall, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the deaths of two British citizens in Syria, who were subsequently disposed of in a lethal drone strike.

The Washington Post editorial board (3/24/12) claimed that Obama was justified in carrying out lethal drone strokes that kill American citizens “to protect the country against attack.” Their lone criticism was that “an extra level of review of some sort is warranted.”

After it was revealed that an American hostage was inadvertently killed in a drone strike in Pakistan, The Post (5/1/15) said that the issue of whether the American government continues to conduct drone strikes should not be up for debate. “(T)here is little question that drones are the least costly means of eliminating militants whose first aim is to kill Americans,” they wrote.

While they tacitly accept the legal rationale for Obama’s assassination program, the New York Times editorial board at least demonstrated some skepticism. In “A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings” (6/23/14), they called the memo “a slapdash pastiche of legal theories – some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law – that was clearly tailored to the desired result.” They say that “the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care.”

Yet they do not chastise Obama for his “intrigues abroad” nor do they condemn this as an example of his “sordid record on justice and human rights,” language they used for Putin. The idea that relying on what are transparently inadequate legal justifications for killing an American citizen without due process would merit prosecution is clearly beyond the limits of discussion for the Times.

Recently Faheem Qureshi, a victim of the first drone strike ordered by Obama in 2009 (three days after his induction as President), who lost multiple family members and his own eye, told The Guardian that Obama’s actions in his native lands are “an act of tyranny. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program.”

Surely both The New York Times and Washington Post disagree with Qureshi, because they believe the U.S. government is inherently benevolent and its motives are beyond reproach. But based on their editorials about the British investigation of the Litivenko poisoning, if Putin was responsible and was described by Qureshi in the same way, they would wholeheartedly agree.

The U.S. government and its allies in NATO, like Great Britain, have a clear agenda in vilifying Russia and its President. The US-NATO alliance supported the government that came to power in Ukraine in 2014 through a coup. After provinces in Eastern Ukraine – the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking – refused to recognize the NATO-backed coup government in Kiev, the Russian government supported them.

It should be easy to see how, from Russia’s perspective, the Ukranian conflict can be understood as an extension of NATO encroachment towards Russia’s borders that has continued unabated since James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 NATO would move “not an inch east.”

“We’re in a new Cold War,” Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and politics, told Salon.

“The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia’s borders, within its own civilization: That’s dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules.”

Additionally, Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 throughout that country’s civil war, and more recently its direct military intervention in the conflict that has turned the tide against US-backed rebels, has strongly rankled Washington.

The language used by top government officials to describe Russia has been astoundingly combative. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the man in charge of the entire US military, claimed Russia is responsible for aggression and is “endangering world order.”

The U.S. government’s hyping of the Russian “threat” has been used to justify massive spending on the U.S. space program and other military expenditures, such as the $1 trillion to upgrade nuclear weapons,

One could even argue that the narrative of an aggressive and belligerent Russia is the principal justification for the continued existence of the NATO itself, two and a half decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The alliance allows the US military to be stationed in hundreds of bases throughout Europe under the guise of a purely defensive organization.

The U.S.’s most prominent media organizations should demonstrate the strongest skepticism towards the policies and actions of their own government. At the very least, they should hold their own country’s leaders to the same standards as they do others. But time and again, the media choose to act as a mouthpiece to echo and amplify Washington’s propaganda. They do the government’s bidding, creating an enemy and rallying the public towards a confrontation they would otherwise have no interest in, while allowing the government to avoid accountability for its own misdeeds.

With Syria “peace talks” ostensibly set to begin in Geneva today, Washington has ratcheted up threats of US military escalation throughout the region. In the past few days, top US civilian and military officials have declared that they are prepared to seek a “military solution” in Syria, put “boots on the ground” in Iraq and launch another US-NATO war in Libya.

The talks themselves, which are being convened under the auspices of the United Nations, are not expected to begin as scheduled because of continuing sharp differences over what forces will be invited to attend and how the proposed agenda for a “political transition” will affect the future of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.

The US and its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are insisting that the delegation representing the Syrian opposition be limited to a so-called High Negotiations Committee, an alliance dominated by Islamist militias that was formed under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy.

Russia has opposed the participation in the talks of Salafist militias linked to Al Qaeda, which Washington and its allies have attempted to pass off as “moderate rebels.” It has also backed the participation of the Kurdish YPG militia that has seized substantial territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which all sides claim to be fighting.

Meanwhile, Turkey has indicated that it will boycott the talks if the Kurds are allowed to participate.

Underlying the bitter disputes over who will attend the so-called peace talks are the sharply divergent interests of the US, which, together with its regional allies, has backed the Islamist militias with arms and funding in a bid to topple the Assad government, and Russia, which counts this government as its principal ally in the Middle East. For its part, Turkey, while claiming to oppose ISIS, is principally concerned with overthrowing Assad and quelling the rise of a Kurdish territory on its southern border.

The Obama administration is determined to use the talks as an instrument for furthering its goal of regime change in Syria and, more broadly, the assertion of US imperialist hegemony throughout the Middle East. It insists that any political transition must include the speedy removal of Assad.

It faces being thwarted in these efforts, however, by Russia’s military intervention. The bombing campaign initiated by Moscow has begun to produce significant military gains by the Syrian army and allied militias against the Islamist forces backed by the US and its allies.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian government troops and local militias Sunday took back the strategic city of Rabia in western Latakia province, which had been under control of so-called “rebels,” including the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, since 2012. The Syrian army has been making major gains as well in the north of Latakia, near the Turkish border, where Turkey staged its shoot-down of a Russian warplane. These advances threaten to cut off a principal supply route for the Western-backed Islamists.

The US has responded to the events in Syria with a flurry of visits to its closest regional allies and key sponsors of the Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria, along with a steady drumbeat of threats.

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Riyadh over the weekend, barely three weeks after the Saudi monarchy sparked international outrage and revulsion with the mass beheadings of 47 prisoners, including Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. Uttering not a word of criticism of the savagely repressive and viciously sectarian absolute monarchy, Kerry declared that the US maintained “as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had.”

Vice President Joseph Biden, meanwhile, visited Turkey where he solidarized himself with the brutal crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the country’s Kurdish minority that has seen tanks firing on neighborhoods and has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians.

Biden declared that Washington and Ankara were engaged in a “shared mission on the extermination of” ISIS. In reality, the Turkish government has been one of the main pillars of support for ISIS and other Islamist militias. It has directed its fire principally at Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria, the same forces that the US has employed as proxy ground troops in its air war.

Biden said that Washington was determined to press ahead with the talks in Geneva, adding, “But we are prepared if that is not possible to having a military solution to this operation.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that the Pentagon is also preparing an escalation of its military intervention in Iraq, declaring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the US is “looking for opportunities to do more, and there will be boots on the ground—I want to be clear about that—but it’s a strategic question, whether you are enabling local forces to take the hold, rather than trying to substitute for them.”

The Obama administration had repeatedly foresworn US “boots on the ground” in the region, referring to the deployment of large numbers of combat troops. Now it is deliberately employing the same phrase to justify the steady escalation of the deployment of “advisers” and “trainers” who are becoming ever more directly involved in combat operations.

At the same time, the US military is preparing to invoke the spread of ISIS as the pretext for intervening for the second time in less than five years in Libya.

“It’s fair to say that we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process” in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. “The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

In other words, President Barack Obama, has, without a word of warning to the American people, handed the Pentagon brass authorization to launch “decisive military action,” i.e., yet another war, whenever it sees fit.

The growth of ISIS in Libya, as in Iraq and Syria, is a direct product of US imperialist interventions in the region that have claimed over a million lives and turned millions more into refugees.

The US-NATO war in Libya toppled and murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, smashed the country’s governmental and social infrastructure, and triggered a protracted civil war between the various Islamist militias—including those now affiliated to ISIS—that the US used as proxy forces in the 2011 war.

These same Libyan Islamist elements were funneled, together with large Libyan arms stockpiles, into Syria to wage the US-orchestrated war for regime change in that country. Now many of them have returned, bringing with them thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

Another war by the US and the European powers in Libya will not be aimed at smashing ISIS, any more than the last one was directed at defending “human rights” and “democracy.” Its principal objective will be the imposition of a puppet regime that will place the country’s huge oil reserves firmly under Western control.

Behind this region-wide eruption of American militarism there exist sharp differences within the US ruling establishment and Washington’s sprawling military-intelligence apparatus. The conflict is between those demanding a major new escalation in the Middle East and those opposing a large commitment of troops and materiel, insisting instead on a “pivot” to confront US imperialism’s major strategic rivals, principally China and Russia.

In the end, however, American imperialism is driven by its crisis to attempt to assert its control over the entire planet, and the so-called war against ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa becomes indissolubly linked with the buildup toward war with Russia and China. The increasingly frenetic interventions in Syria, Iraq and Libya could provide the spark for a global conflagration.

Seventeen years after Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s President for the first time, the supporters of his Bolivarian Revolution, now led by President Nicolás Maduro, suffered their first major defeat in a national election in the December 6 elections to the country’s parliament, the National Assembly.

Coming only two weeks after the victory of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, it was a stunning setback to the “process of change” in Latin America that Chávez had spearheaded until his premature death from cancer in 2013. The opposition majority in the new parliament threatens to undo some of the country’s major social and economic advances of recent years as well as Venezuela’s vital support to revolutionary Cuba and other neighboring countries through innovative solidarity programs like PetroCaribe and the ALBA fair-trade alliance.

The election result is an important gain for Washington as it mounts renewed efforts to restore neoliberal hegemony in Latin America and fracture the new continental alliances (UNASUR, CELAC) that Chávez was instrumental in initiating as alternatives to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS).

A Decisive Majority for the Opposition Rightists

Under Venezuela’s mixed electoral system, which combines direct election of deputies with proportional representation of parties, the right-wing opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD, by its Spanish acronym), with 56.2% of the popular vote, won 109 seats. With the support of three indigenous deputies, elected separately, the MUD could have a two-thirds majority in the 167-seat unicameral Assembly.

The vote for President Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV), which campaigned in alliance with smaller parties in the Gran Polo Patriótico Simón Bolívar (GPP), was 5,622,844, just under 41% of the total. The GPP won a total of 55 seats: 52 for the PSUV plus 3 for its allies, including 2 for the Communist party.[1] (After the election, Venezuela’s Supreme Court (TSJ) suspended the swearing in of four incoming legislators – three opposition, one PSUV – pending investigations of voting irregularities in Amazonas state. More on this below.)

With a “super majority” of two-thirds of the seats, the opposition MUD has the constitutional and legislative power to, among other things:

• Block government spending and ministerial appointments;
• Unseat Supreme Court justices;
• Remove the Vice-President;
• Convene a National Constituent Assembly, and initiate a recall referendum for President Maduro (although under article 72 of the Constitution, a call for a referendum to remove a public official from office requires the signatures of 20 per cent of the electorate);
• Submit international treaties, conventions or agreements to referendums; and
• Pass or modify any draft organic law (laws enacted to develop constitutional rights, which serve as a normative framework for other laws, or which are identified as such by the Constitution).

In short, writes Lucas Koerner in Venezuelanalysis.com,

“a two-thirds majority gives the opposition all of the institutional weapons necessary to reverse many of the key transformations of the Venezuelan state achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution over the last seventeen years.”

They will now be empowered to revoke critical revolutionary legislation such as the Organic Law of Communes, the Organic Work and Workers’ Law (LOTTT), among numerous others, repeal international treaties such as the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, as well as pack the Supreme Court with an eye toward impeaching President Nicolás Maduro.

Why the Opposition Victory?

Whether the MUD will do all or any of these things, of course, depends on a number of factors that are not necessarily within its control – above all, how the social and class forces in Venezuela react in the changed political landscape. The MUD itself is not a cohesive political party, and has many divisions among its components. It is composed of 18 parties, 13 of which are now represented in the National Assembly! They are united primarily by their opposition to Chavismo, the spirit and program of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chávez and his successors. But can the election result be interpreted as a vote against Chavismo as such?

With a voter turnout of 74.5% (up from 66.4% registered in the previous legislative election, in 2010), the PSUV gained more than 350,000 votes over its result in 2010. However, it lost almost 2 million votes from the more than 7.5 million for Nicolás Maduro, the PSUV candidate in the 2013 presidential election. Where were those losses registered? Gabriel Hetland, a U.S. professor specializing in Venezuelan politics and a first-hand observer of the election, notes that the opposition vote in affluent districts “was nearly identical to what it was in the 2010 National Assembly election.” It is clear, he writes in The Nation,

“that the MUD’s overwhelming victory was due to widespread support among popular sectors that have traditionally favored Chavismo. The MUD won 18 of 24 states, including Hugo Chávez’s home state of Barinas and erstwhile Chavista strongholds in Caracas such as 23 de Enero, Catia, and Caucaguita, a very poor district that abuts Petare, one of the largest barrios in Latin America.”[2]

Hetland reports on his conversations with voters on election day:

“In the popular-sector voting centers I visited I encountered numerous people planning to vote for the opposition. In one barrio in the city of Porlamar… only two of the 18 people I spoke with planned to vote for the PSUV. None of the voters supporting the opposition mentioned liberty or democracy as a reason for doing so. All of them said they were supporting the opposition because of the material difficulties they faced. ‘I want change,’ a woman told me. Pointing to the baby she was holding she said, ‘I can’t buy formula, and my father, who is 60 years old, had to go to another country for medical treatment’ because the medicine he needed was unavailable in Venezuela. Over and over I was told of people’s frustrations with long lines and shortages of food and basic goods. Another young woman holding a baby said, ‘I get up at 4 am to stand in line and I can’t even buy food. I want change.’ As she said this, the women standing next to her nodded their heads vigorously.”

Hetland concludes:

“The sentiments expressed by these voters suggest that it’s more accurate to think of the election result less as a victory for the opposition and more as a rejection of the government.”

As Hetland indicates, voter disaffection with the PSUV reflected the harsh effects of the country’s current economic crisis on the conditions of ordinary Venezuelans, including many who in the past have voted by large majorities in support of the Chavista government. It was a “voto castigo,” a punishment vote.

Economic Crisis

The shortages of basic goods, the high inflation, and the currency devaluation now afflicting millions of Venezuelans are directly linked in one way or another to the country’s dependency on hydrocarbons production. Oil accounts for more than 95 per cent of Venezuelan exports, and almost half of its fiscal income. High oil prices made it possible for the government to invest heavily in social programs, education and efforts to diversify the economy.

However, the international price of oil has dropped precipitously in recent years with the outbreak of the global capitalist crisis in 2008 and the recent exponential increase in North American production as a result of new, environmentally disastrous techniques like fracking and tar sands production. The increase in U.S. production alone has drastically cut the demand for foreign oil by the world’s biggest consumer – and now biggest producer – of petroleum. The dependent oil-producing countries have failed to develop a common strategy in response – Saudi Arabia, fearful of losing market share, has rejected pressure from Venezuela and others to raise prices – and OPEC, revived in 1999 by Hugo Chávez, has ceased to be a serious player in international markets.

The drop in the international price – from $100 (U.S.) or more per barrel to less than $30 today – has cut deeply into Venezuelan state revenues. Although the government has maintained spending on social programs and continued to provide inexpensive oil to its Caribbean neighbors, it has had to borrow to cover budget deficits; its total foreign debt increased from 10% of GDP in 2006 to 25% of GDP in 2014 (although this is still a relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the rest of Latin America).

When the government curtailed access to dollars at the official exchange rate,[3] the black market exchange rate shot up, increasing exponentially in 2014-15. While the official rate has been fixed at 6.3 bolivars to the dollar since 2013, by the end of 2015 the black market was offering 800 bolivars to the dollar. This in turn played havoc with the price controls the government had imposed for most essential goods in order to counter retailers’ tendency to sell at the black market rate instead of the official rate. This meant that over time more and more products were priced far below the price they could obtain in neighboring countries.

More and more Venezuelans will acquire dollars at the official rate, purchase goods at the subsidized prices for many necessary products, then export them across the border for an enormous profit. Some major companies, writes Telesur correspondent Gregory Wilpert,[4] are involved in this process too, “claiming that they need to import essential goods, and then either not importing these or re-exporting them to acquire dollars. In mid-2014 Maduro estimated that up to 40 per cent of all goods imported into Venezuela (at the official exchange rate) were smuggled right back out again.”

The state has found itself forced to use its dollar currency reserves to import massive amounts of basic products, which it then sells at subsidized prices through state-owned distribution channels. This allows Venezuelans access to a limited amount of basic foodstuffs at low prices. But since these products are scarce, the black market increases exponentially and prices reach many times the regulated price.

“The situation has now become truly untenable,” writes Jorge Martin. “Ordinary working people are forced to queue for hours on end to be able to access small amounts of products at regulated prices in the state-owned supermarkets and distribution chains, and then pay extortionate prices to cover the rest of their basic needs.”

Martin notes that Venezuela’s GDP contracted 4% in 2014, and is forecast to fall by a further 7% to 10% in 2015. “President Maduro has said that inflation this year will be 85%, but many basic products have already risen by an annual inflation rate of over 100%. The IMF forecasts an inflation rate of 159% for the whole year in 2015.”

Corruption and Inaction

While oil income from royalties and taxes has until recently brought extraordinary state revenues, also extraordinary are the amounts that are effectively embezzled through the joint collaboration of corrupt Venezuelan capitalists and a section of the state bureaucracy, often linked together through interlocking directorships in banks, insurance companies, firms that contract with the state, and even family members located abroad, using a variety of techniques: import fraud, speculative manoeuvres with sovereign debt certificates, negotiation in marginal markets of currencies and debt certificates of the state oil corporation PDVSA, etc.

In one of a series of in-depth exposés of this process, which it describes as a “mafia-like accumulation of capital,” the left pro-Chavista tendency Marea Socialista has documented net capital flight by the “Boliburgesía” (the new “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie) of almost $260-billion (U.S.) between 1998 and 2013 alone. This, it notes, is equivalent to 25 times the cost of Brazil’s World Cup expenditures, 10 times the fall in state income caused by the anti-Chávez oil industry shutdown in 2002-03, the construction of 6 million new homes under the government’s current housing mission, or 37 times the difference between subsidized gasoline sales prices and the cost of production.[5]

There were of course other reasons for the government defeat, as TeleSUR correspondent Tamara Pearson explains: among them, disinformation by the opposition media (still predominant in Venezuela); recent setbacks for the left elsewhere in Latin America themselves linked to the global capitalist crisis; and the alienation of many younger voters who “don’t remember what it was like in Venezuela before Chávez was elected in 1998.” But she notes as well that

“while the opposition has attracted some of the less politically aware social sectors to its anti-Chavismo discourse, the government has also lost some ground from conscientious and solid revolutionaries, partly due to its lack of a solid response to the opposition’s ‘economic war.’ Although it’s easier said than done to combat a rentier state, capitalist system, historical corruption, and big business’s campaign of economic sabotage, Maduro has only announced things like national commissions to deal with the situation.

“While people spend up to seven hours a week lining up for food, and while many of them understand that the government isn’t directly responsible for the situation, the lack of a serious response and significant measures hasn’t helped support for the government.”

Further, says Pearson,

“while the government clearly sides with the poor, for multiple reasons including more right-wing attacks, it has becoming increasingly distanced from the organized grassroots…. [W]ith the way the government communicates with the people, the way it gets information out and involves people in serious decision making – there has been a step back in recent times. This aspect of the Bolivarian revolution is perhaps the most important, so the significance of it and its impact on people shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Some Immediate Responses to Election Verdict

President Maduro promptly accepted the official election results but pledged to continue defending the progressive laws and social programs adopted and implemented during the last decade and a half. A new stage is opening in the Bolivarian Revolution, he said in his election night address, a stage in which the central task is to deepen the revolution by building the country’s productive capacity at all levels – “communal, communitarian, industrial and regional.” Venezuelans, he added, should see the current difficulties in the oil industry as “warnings… and as opportunities to replace the rentist petroleum system with a self-sustaining, self-sustainable productive economic system.”

(This would require some major changes in the present program of the PSUV, the Plan de la Patria or Plan for the Fatherland. Although it lists as one of its five major historical objectives “going beyond the capitalist petroleum rentist model,” it also calls for doubling Venezuelan oil production from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2014 to 6 million in 2019.)

Following Maduro’s election night speech, hundreds of Chavista activists from various popular movements marched in solidarity the next morning through the streets of Caracas to the presidential palace (Miraflores). Maduro invited the crowd to send in representatives to meet with him to discuss the next steps. In this and two subsequent meetings, 185 voceros or spokespersons of communes, commandos, brigades, etc. hammered out some lengthy documents outlining what they considered key objectives to be pursued in the coming months.[6] In addition to proposals for greater government control over foreign trade, banking and finance, more effective tax collection and a sustained fight against bureaucracy and corruption, a central theme was the need to strengthen the role and productive capacities of the communal councils and communes, the territorially based grassroots organizations that the Chavistas see as the foundational units for the eventual creation of a “communal state” of direct democracy “from below” to replace the top-down bureaucratic administration of the capitalist state.[7]

A theme heard more and more in the extensive public debate now underway in radio and TV, on web sites and in the social media is the need to move toward nationalization of the major banks and financial institutions, and possibly to establish a state monopoly over foreign trade – essential measures, in my view, if Venezuela is to establish public control over the speculators and protect itself from the worst vagaries of uncontrollable world prices.

Maduro has established work teams to systematize these and other such grassroots proposals in a “central document of the Bolivarian Revolution” as a guide to action in its new stage. And he has convened an organizing committee to meet January 23 to prepare a “Congress of the Fatherland,” although providing few details on what he has in mind.

Communal Parliament

On December 15 Diosdado Cabello, PSUV deputy leader and president of the outgoing National Assembly, presided over the first gathering of the National Communal Parliament. This legislative body was provided for in the Organic Law of Communes, adopted in 2012, but it was only recently that there was a sufficient critical mass of municipal and regional communes to convene it. The communes had begun electing delegates (voceros) to this body in August 2015. It was originally intended that it would function as an adjunct to the National Assembly. “Now it’s up to you in the National Communal Parliament, to discuss and present proposals that you consider necessary to help President Nicolas Maduro,” Cabello told the delegates. He said this grassroots parliament would help to shield the country’s laws of Popular Power from right-wing attempts to rescind them in the new National Assembly.

The Communal Parliament has met several times since, and in early January announced that its voceros from Venezuela’s 24 states would meet February 4 to adopt their internal rules of functioning, which will then be published in a new monthly publication, the Gacetas Comunales.

In a parallel development, the outgoing National Assembly hastily adopted in late December a spate of pending legislation that was promptly ratified by Maduro in accordance with the Constitution. A major one, the Law of Presidential Councils of the People’s Power, will provide a means for direct citizen input in decision-making by the government (in this case, the President). The purpose, as the introduction to the law proclaims, is “to strengthen the System of Popular Government” by establishing a basic network that “addresses in a profound way the concrete problems of the population through policies, plans, programs and projects for sectoral development… based on the principles and values enshrined in the Constitution….”

Also adopted was a ground-breaking Anti-GMO and Anti-Patenting Seed Law, the result of an ongoing grassroots campaign by environmental and campesino social movements over the past two years. “The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty,” write the authors of the linked article, “because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization.

“The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy – the people as legislator – in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions.”

The new opposition-dominated National Assembly may very well attempt to reverse some or all of these legislative gains, of course. However, PSUV deputy Diosdado Cabello, the former Assembly president, notes that the Constitutional Division of the Supreme Court may disallow national laws “which are in conflict with this Constitution, including omissions… in failing to promulgate rules or measures essential to guaranteeing compliance with the Constitution.”[8]

On January 6 President Maduro reshuffled his cabinet and created several new ministerial departments as part of an “economic counter-offensive.” He said the new leadership team would prioritize agricultural production as part of a plan for economic recovery.

MUD Aims for Destabilization – and Overthrow of Maduro

Maduro was scheduled to present a detailed report on his plans to the new National Assembly on January 12, although he acknowledged that there was no assurance it would accept them.

However, on January 12 the Assembly session was adjourned in confusion, followed soon after by a humiliating backdown by the MUD majority. As mentioned earlier, three of the MUD deputies had been suspended by the Supreme Court for alleged irregularities in their election. However, when the new Assembly first met, the MUD swore in the three, in defiance of the Court. The Court responded by declaring that the Assembly proceedings would then be of no force or effect. Now, with the PSUV absent and only a handful of MUD deputies present, the Assembly president Henry Ramos Allup (himself an old-line politician[9] elected president in a private session of the MUD, contrary to Assembly rules) then found there was no quorum and adjourned the proceedings.

However, amidst the ensuing public outcry at these shenanigans, the three suspended deputies wrote to the leadership of the Assembly asking that their swearing-in be reversed. The next day, Ramos Allup called the Assembly to order, had the Supreme Court ruling read aloud, then stated that the Assembly leaders would “abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court.” But Maduro has yet to give his promised report.

The opposition’s climbdown probably reflects strategic divisions within their ranks between a relatively moderate faction led by Henrique Capriles, which is said to favour posing as a credible alternative to the government with proposals to solve the economic crisis, and a more confrontationist faction, apparently dominant, which is led by virulent opponents of the government. Its main leader is Leopoldo López, currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for his involvement in the guarimba street protests in 2014 that resulted in 43 deaths, as well as other violent actions. Both Capriles and López have links to the coup plotters of 2002.

The opposition’s initial defiance of the Supreme Court underscored its determination to steer toward an outright confrontation with President Maduro, with the goal of destabilizing his government as much as possible. Ramos Allup says he hopes to prepare Maduro’s ouster within the next six months. Another primary goal is passage of an amnesty law to free what the opposition terms “political prisoners,” that is, all those who have been involved in violent protests (including Leopoldo López).

Among other promised or rumoured measures favoured by the anti-government majority in the Assembly, writes Greg Wilpert, are a law

“to give ownership titles to the beneficiaries of the housing mission. Over the past five years the government has constructed one million public homes, which it has essentially leased to families in perpetuity, but without giving them a title that can be bought and sold. The reasoning behind this is to avoid the development of a speculative housing market of homes built with public funds. The opposition is betting that most public housing beneficiaries would prefer a saleable ownership title, so that they can sell the home and thereby possibly make a profit from it.

“… a rumored project to dollarize the economy. It is obvious to everyone in Venezuela that the current economic situation of high inflation, frequent shortages of basic goods, long lines at supermarkets, and a massive black market for price-controlled products, is not sustainable. One ‘solution’ to these problems that some opposition leaders have favored it to simply get rid of the local currency, the bolivar, and base the entire economy on dollars, just as Ecuador did in 2001. Aside from undermining the country’s economic sovereignty, such a move would also almost definitely mean major painful displacements for economy, leading to increased inequality and unemployment. …

“Other major projects on the opposition docket,” reports Wilpert, “include the repeal of a wide variety of progressive laws that were passed during the Chavez and Maduro presidencies, beginning with the land reform, [and including] re-privatization of key industries and the dismantling of price controls, among other things.”

Capriles has also proposed a “padlock law” to “put an end to oil diplomacy” and “stop the government from giving away and wasting the country’s resources” – a threat clearly aimed at the PetroCaribe initiative that has provided Caribbean countries including Cuba with much-needed oil at preferential repayment rates.

Needless to say, little of this was mentioned in the MUD election platform.

Basically, the virulence of the opposition majority in the legislature – they have even removed portraits of Hugo Chávez (and Simón Bolívar!) from the Assembly precincts – reflects the visceral determination of the class they represent to avenge and reverse not only the laws but the very foundations of the Bolivarian regime initiated by Chávez and his original Movement for the Fifth Republic. No wonder this opposition holds the 1999 Constitution and its institutions in such contempt. That Constitution effectively terminated the institutional setup underlying the rule of the bourgeois elites who had monopolized political power for generations, characterized by the sham alternance of two similar capitalist parties cemented in the infamous “Punto Fijo” accord. In its place the new Constitution outlined the creation of a real sovereign democracy in which the great mass of the population were to be the “protagonists,” the living actors, of their destiny as implemented through a variety of grassroots-operated institutional forms that are only now beginning to become reality.

A New Stage – and a Challenge

Apart from the role of the Supreme Court (itself threatened by the opposition-dominated National Assembly) in trying to restrain the Assembly within constitutional limits, there are now three powers contending in this conflictual context: the President, head of state and supported by the military, who have confirmed their loyalty to the Constitution and the Bolivarian Revolution; the National Assembly, at loggerheads with the President and determined to replace him and all he stands for as soon as possible; and what is commonly referred to as the People’s Power, the grassroots mobilizations of ordinary citizens organized territorially in communal councils and communes or politically in support of the “process of change” – a force that is diffuse and still lacking a coherent structured national leadership. It is unclear at this point what role this relatively new force can play in helping to overcome the current economic and political crisis. The governing party, the PSUV, is largely an electoral machine and somewhat discredited by the implication of some leaders in corruption and bureaucratic manoeuvres. It needs a fundamental overhaul.

There is much talk among Chavistas of answering the crisis by “deepening the revolution,” taking a “qualitative leap” as Chávez himself advocated in his Golpe de Timón speech.

In a remarkable essay, Venezuelan militant José Roberto Duque of Misión Verdad issues a challenge. If, he says, the Presidency and the Assembly are determined to prevent each other from fulfilling its role, “then it will be technically and procedurally impossible to to legislate (the Assembly’s mission) or to govern (the executive’s mission) in Venezuela.

“As such, we will be on the threshold of a situation in which a third actor, the most important and decisive amongst state subjects (popular power, citizens, you and I) must take a position with respect to the legitimacy of the actions of our representatives….

“Today we Chavistas unanimously support the ‘Communal State’ project proposed by Chávez. How many of us are prepared to keep building that Communal State even when the National Assembly eliminates the Law of Communal Councils and the Law of the Communes in one foul stroke? Will we have the stamina to keep building the other society clandestinely and illegally? Or will we submit to bourgeois laws that order us to give the entire productive apparatus up to private business?”

Duque explores these and related questions and concludes:

“The communes should be structures that are capable of surviving at the margins of the state and government, even functioning as areas of rearguard and resistance at the moment of an institutional collapse – when the Bolivarian government ceases its functions because of either legal or illegal means.

“We must be capable then of creating and consolidating self-sustainable and self-sufficient structures. We are in a very early stage of our communard history, and that is the reason why a ministry still exists that is in charge of financing the launch of productive projects in the communes. But in the future it would be an aberration for the communes and other organisations and means of production to continue to be dependent on state financing and other entities.”

I think this is the fundamental challenge facing the Bolivarian Revolution in the coming period. But it must be accompanied by measures at the level of the existing state to overcome the economic crisis – through implementation of an emergency program that can provide immediate relief to the masses of Venezuelan workers and campesinos. •

Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of the Socialist Project. This article first appeared on his blog Life on the Left.

Notes:

1. Elecciones parlamentarias de Venezuela de 2015, Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.

2. The End of Chavismo? Why Venezuela’s Ruling Party Lost Big, and What Comes Next, The Nation, December 10, 2015.

3. Capital controls were first imposed in 2002-03 in order to stabilize the currency and stop a flight of capital resulting from a bosses’ shutdown of the oil industry in the wake of their failed attempt to oust Chávez in a coup.

4. Wilpert is the author of an excellent book on the Chávez years: Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007).

5. See, for example, Sinfonía de un Desfalco a la Nación: Tocata y fuga… de Capitales.

6. See El sacudón electoral del 6D como crisis revolucionaria y motor de saltos cualitativos hacia el Socialismo Bolivariano, www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283366.html and www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283410.html.

7. There are now more than 45,000 communal councils and 1,430 communes established throughout Venezuela. Most of the communes have been established since Hugo Chávez’s famous speech to his cabinet El Golpe de Timón just after his election in 2012 and shortly before his death in March 2013, in which he urged his ministers to prioritize the construction of communal democracy.

8. Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, art. 336. Here is an English translation.

9. A leader of Acción Democrática, he is also vice president of the Socialist International!

A recent bribery conviction may lead to the U.S. Supreme Court further corrupting the U.S. political system.

How does one even get convicted of bribery in a system that has legalized it to the extent that ours has? Look at Congress members’ and other federal office holders’ actions and their sources of funding. There is debate only over whether they are bribed to act or rewarded for having acted, but the correlation between action and funding is undisputed, and the sources of funding unrestricted. A headline like “Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department” raises a few eyebrows but no indictments.

The correlation is even more strongly documented between funding and gaining access to Congress members, and the general trend so clear that an academic study has identified the U.S. form of government as an oligarchy. Many political observers now think of elections as a corrupting influence, which no doubt fuels a taste for pseudo-solutions like term limits and billionaire politicians who don’t have to sell out.

And yet, two U.S. state governors have recently been convicted of taking bribes: Alabama’s Don Siegelman and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell. Siegelman has been in prison for over four years though he was targeted by politically motivated prosecutors and was never accused of any personal gain. McDonnell was bribed with a Rolex watch, plane tickets, dinners, trips, loans, catering, golf bags, and iPhones, and, according to his successful prosecutors took official actions in his capacity as governor to benefit the person bribing him within minutes of receiving various loot. The U.S. Supreme Court has kept McDonnell and his wife (also convicted) out of prison as it considers his case. A bipartisan collection of 113 current and former state Attorneys General urged the Supreme Court to correct the injustice to Siegelman, and it declined to consider it.

The U.S. Supreme Court was uninterested in a bribery case like Siegelman’s that involved no bribery. What’s frightening is its interest in a case like McDonnell’s. His lawyers will argue that while he and his wife clearly benefitted, he didn’t know everything his wife had promised in return for the bribes, nor did he agree to it, nor did he deliver on it. There is clearly the potential that the new standard in U.S. politics going forward will be that you can give luxury toys and personal bribes directly to an office holder, as long as he or she fails to deliver the public policy you asked for, or as long as he or she doesn’t try very hard to deliver it.

Such a standard would open the door to direct bribery of politicians in a new way not achieved by Citizens United and related rulings that facilitate bribery through campaigns and PACs and foundations. As long as the two parties are discreet, who will be able to prove that the favor your politician did your corporation was actually in response to the Mercedes you gave him?

If you imagine the Supreme Court’s interest is in correcting injustice, as opposed to expanding the legalization of bribery, have another look at the Don Siegelman case. Siegelman was by far the most successful Democratic politician in an overwhelmingly Republican government in Alabama. When he won reelection as governor in 2002, the election result was reversed after Republican officials in a single county waited until the Democratic officials had gone home, then recounted the votes and determined that there had been an error. Despite Democrats’ objections of impropriety and pointing out that the voters whose votes were switched away from Siegelman didn’t — as one would have expected — have their votes similarly “corrected” in other races, the Republican Attorney General of Alabama upheld the result and forbid any manual recount to verify it.

Republican lawyer Jill Simpson describes “a five-year secret campaign to ruin the governor,” during which Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s senior political advisor, asked her to “try to catch Siegelman cheating on his wife.” Rove associate Bill Canary, she says, told her that his wife Leura and friend Alice Martin, both federal prosecutors, would “take care of” Siegelman. When Siegelman began running to win his office back two years after losing it, the U.S. Justice Department took him to trial alleging a Medicaid scam, but the judge listened to the opening argument and then threw out the case as worthless.

The “Justice” Department kept trying, and finally got Siegelman on bribery. His offense? He was not alleged to have pocketed a dime or to have received any support through any foundation or committee. Rather, he re-appointed a man to a board who had been appointed to the same position by the previous three governors, a man who made contributions to a state lottery to pay for college scholarships for poor kids. Yes, Siegelman’s idea to help poor people with a lottery seems to have missed the fact that lotteries are taxes on poor people. But does that make him guilty of bribery or justify prosecutors targeting him?

The star witness in the Siegelman case claimed that Siegelman met with this man and emerged from the meeting with a check in hand talking openly about the quid pro quo. In reality, the check was written days after that meeting, and the star witness was facing 10 years in prison and had cut a deal with the prosecutors to reduce his sentence.

A U.S. House Committee investigated the Siegelman case and asked Karl Rove to testify. He declined. And the committee declined to hold him in contempt or to use inherent contempt. He was simply allowed to refuse. Now Siegelman’s son, attorney Joseph Siegelman, has filed suit seeking documents from the U.S. government. I asked him what he hopes to find.

“Every stone that gets overturned ends up showing something negative,” he said. As an example he pointed to the Justice Department’s description of an email from a prosecutor of Siegelman to the campaign manager of his main Republican opponent, a description of an email that didn’t become public until years after Siegelman’s trial. “We don’t know what else they have to hide,” said Joseph Siegelman.

I asked Joseph Siegelman about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear McDonnell’s case and not his father’s, and he exclaimed, “How can our system of justice be so skewed?”

The worst of it may be that a ruling in favor of McDonnell and the inherent right to accept Rolexes from lobbyists could leave Siegelman sitting in prison. He never accepted any Rolex. And he did re-appoint that healthcare professional to that healthcare board.

Should the Supreme Court further legalize bribery, the people of the United States should send Benjamin Franklin a note informing him that we were not able to keep a republic after all. Or they should rise up and compel the Congress, or compel the states to go around the Congress in amending the Constitution, to end all forms of bribery, ban all private election spending, create free and equal media air time on our airwaves for all qualified candidates, provide public financing for campaigns, and for god sake free Don Siegelman.

The question of the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands) remains one of those unresolved disputes in international politics which seldom receives much attention from the world community.   This is a pity since the United Nations has for the last 50 years called upon the two parties to the dispute — Argentina and Britain — to negotiate a peaceful solution through bilateral negotiations.

The call from the UN is embodied in a General Assembly Resolution — Resolution 2065 (XX) — adopted on the 16^th of December 1965. It invites the Governments of Argentina and Britain “to proceed without delay with the negotiations recommended by the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with a view to finding a peaceful solution to the problem, bearing in mind the provisions and objectives of the Charter of the United Nations and of  General Assembly resolution 1514(XV) and the interests of the population of the Falkland Islands ( Malvinas).”

Argentina has all along expressed a readiness to negotiate. Initially, Britain had also agreed to open talks on the dispute. Its Foreign Secretary, on a visit to Argentina in January 1966, expressed this view.  In paving the way for bilateral negotiations the two governments agreed to cooperate on specific matters related to air and maritime services, and postal and telegraphic communications.

However, London made negotiations on the dispute difficult when it embarked upon exploration of natural resources in the Malvinas, thus contravening the spirit of the UN Resolution. This forced the UN General Assembly to adopt yet another Resolution — Resolution 31/49 — in December 1976 requesting both parties to the dispute “to refrain from adopting decisions that entail the introduction of unilateral modifications to the situation while the islands are going through the process recommended” by UN Resolutions.  102 states voted in favour of the Resolution, 1 (Britain) voted against it while 32 abstained. Britain ignored the stand of the vast majority of nation-states.

It was partly because of British intransigence that the military junta ruling Argentina at that time decided to invade the Malvinas in April 1982 to re-assert Argentinian sovereignty over the islands. It is of course true that the transfer of power from one military dictator to another, economic stagnation and a degree of civil unrest in Argentina were even more prominent factors in the decision to go to war. Argentina’s defeat in the 10 week war emboldened the British elite to strengthen its grip upon the Malvinas. London was even less prepared now to negotiate with Buenos Aries.

But the UN has stood by its decision that there must be direct bilateral negotiations between the two countries to find a peaceful solution to the territorial dispute. The UN does not recognize any British claim to suzerainty over the Malvinas and the surrounding islands. Regional groupings in Latin America and the Caribbean such as ALBA and CELAC also support the Argentinian position. So do most of the non-aligned nations who regard British control over the Malvinas as a vestige of the colonial era.  Argentina for its part has since 1994 incorporated its claim of sovereignty over the Malvinas into its national constitution.

What civil society should do is to endorse the UN call for negotiations. Many more civil society voices should be raised on behalf of bilateral talks as the only feasible way of finding a peaceful solution to a dispute that goes back to the early decades of the 18^th century. Civil society groups in Britain in particular should speak up.  They have a moral responsibility to do so.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Deflation Threatens to Swallow the World

Many high-powered people and institutions say that deflation is threatening much of the world’s economy …

China may export deflation to the rest of the world.

Japan is mired in deflation.

Economists are afraid that deflation will hit Hong Kong.

The Telegraph reported last week:

RBS has advised clients to brace for a “cataclysmic year” and a global deflationary crisis, warning that major stock markets could fall by a fifth and oil may plummet to $16 a barrel.

***

Andrew Roberts, the bank’s research chief for European economics and rates, said that global trade and loans are contracting, a nasty cocktail for corporate balance sheets and equity earnings.

The Independent notes:

Lower oil prices could push leading economies into deflation. Just look at the latest inflation rates – calculated before oil fell below $30 a barrel. In the UK and France, inflation is running at an almost invisible 0.2 per cent per annum; Germany is at 0.3 per cent and the US at 0.5 per cent.

Almost certainly these annual rates will soon fall below zero and so, at the very least, we shall be experiencing ‘technical’ deflation. Technical deflation is a short period of gently falling prices that does no harm. The real thing works like a doomsday machine and engenders a downward spiral that is difficult to stop and brings about a 1930s style slump.

Referring to the risk of deflation, two American central bankers indicated their worries last week. James Bullard, the head of the St Louis Federal Reserve, said falling inflation expectations were “worrisome”, while Charles Evans of the Chicago Fed, said the situation was “troubling”.

Deflation will likely nail Europe:

Research Team at TDS suggests that the euro area looks set to endure five consecutive months of deflation, starting in February.

***

The further collapse in oil prices and what is likely spillover into core prices means the ECB’s 2016 inflation tracking is likely to be almost a full percentage point below their forecast of just six weeks ago.

(Indeed, many say that Europe is stuck in a depression.)

The U.S. might seem better, but a top analyst said last year: “Core inflation in the US would be just as low as in the Eurozone if measured on the same basis”.

The National Center for Policy Analysis reported last week:

Medical prices grew 0.1 percent, versus a decrease of 0.1 percent for all other items, in December’s Consumer Price Index.

In addition:

Trucking freight in the U.S. is in steep decline, with freight companies pointing to a “glut in inventories” and a fall in demand as the culprit.

Morgan Stanley’s freight transportation update indicates a collapse in freight demand worse than that seen during 2009.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of global freight rates and thus a measure of global demand for shipping of raw materials, has collapsed to even more dismal historic lows. Hucksters in the mainstream continue to push the lie that the fall in the BDI is due to an “overabundance of new ships.” However, the CEO of A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, put that nonsense to rest when he admitted in November that “global growth is slowing down” and “[t]rade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.”

Indeed, shipping seems to have totally collapsed, and Bloomberg notes that “hiring a 1,100-foot merchant vessel would set you back less than the price of renting a Ferrari for a day.”

And the velocity of money has crashed far worse than during the Great Depression.

And see this.

Why Didn’t the Central Banks’ Pumping Trillions Into the Economy Prevent Deflation?

But how could deflation be threatening the globe when the central banks have pumped many trillions into the world economy?

Initially, quantitative easing (QE) – instituted by most central banks worldwide – actually causesDEFLATION.

In addition, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have encouraged bank manipulation and fraud to try to paper over their problems.

Why’s this a problem?

Because fraud was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and the Great Recession, but nothinghas been done to rein in fraud today. And governments have virtually made it official policy not to prosecute fraud.

Fraud is an economy-killer, and trying to prevent deflation while allowing a breakdown in the rule of law is like pumping blood into a patient without suturing his gaping wounds.

The government also chose to artificially prop up asset prices … while letting the Main Street economy tank.

Governments also pretended that massive amounts of public and private debt are healthy and sustainable … but they are not.

And the trillions in central bank money never really made into the real economy, but were handed under the table to the fatcats. For example:

• The Fed threw money at “several billionaires and tens of multi-millionaires”, including billionaire businessman H. Wayne Huizenga, billionaire Michael Dell of Dell computer, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, billionaire private equity honcho J. Christopher Flowers, and the wife of Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack

• The Fed also bailed out wealthy corporations, including hedge funds, McDonald’s and Harley-Davidson

• The Fed has been bailing out foreign banks … more than Main Street or the American people.  The foreign banks bailed out by the Fed include Gaddafi’s Libyan bank, the Arab Banking Corp. of Bahrain, and the Banks of Bavaria, Korea and Mexico

•  The Fed has intentionally discouraged banks from lending to Main Street, in a misguided attempt to curb inflation

By choosing the big banks over the little guy, the government has doomed BOTH.

In addition, bad government policy has created the worst inequality on record … and inequality is aneconomy-killer.

What Do the Economists Say?

We asked three outstanding economists why central banks pumping trillions into the world economy hasn’t worked to prevent deflation.

Professor Michael Hudson – Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and economic advisor to governments worldwide – told Washington’s Blog:

The debts were left in place in 2008 instead of being written down. So the economy is now in a classic debt deflation. QE seeks to inflate asset markets, not the real economy. The choice in 2008 was whether to bail out the banks or the economy — and the former were bailed out — the political Donor Class.

Economics professor Steve Keen – the  Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics at Kingston University in London – has previously agreed, saying:  we’ll have “a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place”.

Professor Keen tells Washington’s Blog:

The simple reason is that, with the possible exception of the Bank of England, none of the Central Banks (and very few of the private banks themselves) understand how money is created. To create money, you have to put money into bank deposit accounts–thus increasing bank liabilities–at the same time as you expand the assets of the banks. [Background.]

QE hasn’t done that.

In the USA, they’ve simply bought privately created bonds–normally MBSs–off the banks. This shuffles the asset side of the banks’s ledgers (by exchanging government-created money for overvalued private bonds) but doesn’t change the liability side directly–so no money is necessarily created.

In the UK, the CB buys those bonds off pension and insurance funds, which does create money–but it creates it in the deposit accounts of companies who are legally obliged to buy assets with that money (shares and other bonds) rather than goods and services produced by the real economy.

So QE as practised has been irrelevant to the real economy, leaving the deflationary forces created by the huge private debt bubble to rage on free.

And Professor Bill Black – Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri,  America’s top expert on white collar fraud, and the senior S&L prosecutor who put more than 1,000 top executives in jail for fraud – tells Washington’s Blog:

Everything that criminology and economics teaches is that if financial elites are allowed to cheat with impunity they will make themselves rich at the people’s expense and corrupt democratic government.

Black previously explained that we’ve known for “hundreds of years” that failure to punish white collar criminals creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future.

Endless war largely affecting Syrian civilians rages, ongoing for nearly five years, launched by Obama for regime change, wanting the Syrian Arab Republic transformed into another US vassal state.

Washington’s policy remains firm. Earlier peace talks achieved nothing. Whatever comes out of Geneva negotiations, US support for ISIS and other terrorist groups assures continued violence and chaos.

Expect Russia’s best conflict resolution efforts to fail again. Reports indicate Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry agreed on inviting two separate opposition groups to Geneva, including Saudi-backed terrorist organizations – notably Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), operating like ISIS.

It’s an extremist salafist umbrella group, representing thousands of terrorist fighters, operating in the eastern Ghouta area of Damascus – responsible for the 2013 chemical weapons attack, killing scores, injuring many others, Assad still wrongfully blamed for its high crime.

In December, Syrian airstrikes killed its leader, Zahran Alloush, an extremist wanting all Syrian Shiites and Alawites eliminated – genocide by any standard. Expect no change in the group’s hardline views in Geneva.

In return for letting it and other US-led Western/Saudi-backed extremist groups participate in Geneva talks, reports indicate Washington agreed on inviting a separate Syrian opposition delegation.

On Saturday from Riyadh, meeting with his Saudi and other rogue Gulf States’ counterparts, John Kerry said “(w)e are confident that with good initiative in the next day or so, those (Syrian peace) talks can get going.”

UN/Arab League envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura is expected to brief reporters in Geneva on Monday, providing details on upcoming talks, according to his spokeswoman Jessy Chahine.

Some issues may remain unresolved. Russia’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t yet commented on what opposition groups will attend Geneva talks, saying only the following on Saturday:

The heads of the foreign policy authorities continued discussing the Syrian topic, and confirmed support for the efforts of the UN secretary general’s envoy for the Syrian crisis Staffan de Mistura to organise next week in Geneva, the talks featuring representatives of the Syrian government and of the opposition with the purpose to achieve political settlement in that country.

They paid special attention…to form(ing a) truly representat(ive) delegation of the opposition and to have the agenda comply with requirements of the UN Security Council’s resolution 2254, including fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, as well as respect for the right of Syrians to determine themselves the future of their country.

They have expressed the common view that in the interests of effective outer supervision of the inter-Syrian political process, it would be reasonable to continue using the format of the International Syria Support Group led by Russia, the US and UN.

We’ll learn more during Mistura’s Monday press conference. Nothing in prospect holds hope for peace in Syria any time soon.

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.

advisory to GR readers and members in Malaysia: due to a family emergency, Professor Chossudovsky will not be able to travel to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately the event is postponed/cancelled. Our apologies. We thank you for your understanding.

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.

This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.

The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.

It seems that Saudi Arabia has started to undergo the transformation various experts predicted. Those became obvious when the sitting king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud replaced his deceased elder brother Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in January 2015, and made a number of quite unusual arrangements within the ruling elite, appointing the head of the Ministry of Interior Muhammad bin Nayef from Abdullah’s clan the Crown Prince, while his 33-year-old son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saudfrom the Sudairy clan received the appointment of Deputy Crown Prince.

Even back then it was clear that within a short period of time the king would try to hand over all power in the country to his own son by sidestepping Muhammad bin Nayef, while he himself would retire due to Alzheimer’s disease, becoming sort of a “king-father” with no real power, but with the right to an advisory vote on important decisions. Needless to say, it’s a direct violation of the tradition of succession to the throne from brother to brother that has been in place in Saudi Arabia, that is going to be replaced by the father-to-son succession. To make such a transition one should be able to carry out a coup d’etat or win the approval of the succession board, which is formed according to different sources by 7 or 11 members of the Al Saud dynasty.

Now it seems that the wheels of the political machine are moving again.

Last week reports from Riyadh indicated that his disease is taking a toll on the king and he wants to renounce his reign in favor of the Crown Prince. But then neighboring states, especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, started hinting that the members of the Saudi royal family along with the sheikhs of the strongest tribes, which are the foundation of Al Saud’s rule, are extremely dissatisfied with the sharp deterioration of the economic and social situation in the country, leading to a major drop in their personal incomes.

It is no secret that Riyadh increased the volume of oil production to weaken the positions of its main competitors – Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But the kingdom had to take a punch as well, it was forced to unseal its reserve fund and cut the funding of numerous social programs.

And then came the execution of 47 Shia public figures, including the popular human rights activist Nimr Baqir al-Nimr. The executions were designed as a form of retaliation to Iran and Hezbollah for the help they have provided to the Syrian people in the fight against pro-Saudi militants. This step provoked massive unrest in the Shia areas of the kingdom, the areas that produce the better part of all Saudi oil.

The country has found itself on the brink of a civil war and a military conflict with Iran at the same time, which has also provoked major discontent in the West. After all, the West needs a politically loyal Iran, a country in which huge investments can be made, especially in oil and gas sectors, in order to push Russian out of the European gas market and the international oil markets at the same time. In this context Tehran is forced to carry on relying on Moscow in the confrontation with Saudi Arabia to ensure its safety and continue providing military assistance to Syria, Iraq and Shia rebels in Yemen.

Now the highly respected Institute for Gulf Affairs is stating that the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is preparing to renounce the throne in favor of his son Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and has since brought his country to the brink of a disaster.

It means that the 80-year-old Salman is trying desperately hard to persuade his brothers on the succession board to allow him to change the principle of succession of the Saudi throne, since he’s ready to leave, but not so ready for his nephew Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud to rule the country. What the king has been doing is allegedly done “only for the sake of the stability of the kingdom.” Although the reality of the situation is clear – should Salman retain his position, the disintegration of the kingdom is imminent, with certain Shia areas breaking away, while the regions on the border with Yemen which are mostly populated by Yemeni tribes, more than happy to return home. Moreover, the Minister of Interior used to be a habitual cocaine user, so he was only able to “produce” two daughters, and now he’s somewhat incapable of producing more children. Should the king manage to carry out the above described scheme, he will become the first Saudi monarch to leave the throne to his son.

And the fact that there’s a growing crisis in Saudi Arabia was evident from the cuts in subsidies and bonuses that king Salman started at the beginning of this year to reduce the country’s total dependence on oil. After decades of extensive use of oil revenues to subsidize companies’ payment of generous salaries and providing enormous social benefits, falling oil prices struck Saudi Arabia at its heart.

It’s enough to say that revenues from oil exports in 2015 alone dropped by half. Ultimately it’s hard to say which country suffers the most from these oil wars – Russia or Saudi Arabia, since the latter has virtually no other sectors to support the economy. Saudi economist Turki Fadaak believes that Saudi Arabia is exiting the policy of “universal welfare”, so there’s an ongoing psychological shift in the minds of the ruling elite of the state. Fadaak is convinced that the ultimate aim of king Salman’s measures is to eliminate the Saudi dependency on oil. But is it really? According to leading international experts – the answer is a resounding “no”, with all the arguments to the contrary nothing more than fantasy.

Although initially it seemed that Salman, who came to power after the death of his brother, King Abdullah, will continue his course, after assuming the throne Salman generously spent over 30 billion dollars from the budget on bonuses for civil servants, military personnel, and students. Additionally, prices for basic goods and services, including fuel, electricity and water prices were kept at extremely low levels due to government subsidies from oil revenues. However, due to falling oil prices, under the pressure of such costs the budget started to rupture.

The most important thing now for the kingdom is to execute the transition from the extremely lavish social security system to a productive economy, but then the subjects of the king will be forced to cut their costs, and it looks that they do not agree with this notion. And accusations in the imminent economic collapse will go Salman’s way, so it is better for him to leave now, before protests even start.

It is curious that Saudi Arabia has been rather realistic about its budget for the year 2016, since it was based on the average price of oil keeping at the level 29 dollars per barrel. Last year, the Saudi budget deficit amounted to almost 98 billion dollars and the costs were considerably higher than it was originally planed due to bonuses for civil servants, military personnel and retirees. In 2016 the authorities decided to put up to 49 billion dollars into a special fund to provide funding for the most important projects in case oil prices drop even further. But it was Saudi Arabia back in 2014 that proposed new tactics for OPEC, that implied that there would be no cuts in the level of production, the tactics that drove oil prices to today’s levels.

So we are to learn pretty soon should Riyadh choose the path of the utter and complete collapse of the kingdom, or the path of giving power to the young and pragmatic technocrats who are going to pursue a comprehensive oil policy. Either way, Saudi Arabia will be forced to put an end to the costly military adventures in Syria and Yemen as well as its confrontations with Russia and Iran.

Peter Lvov, Ph.D in political science, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is quite addicted to lying. However, what makes this conduct on his part especially malicious is that he lies quite knowingly, without a twinge of conscience or feeling of regret.

During his visit to a small settlement in the southern Hebron hills Monday, the Israeli premier claimed that Palestinians were revolting against Israel because they wanted to kill Jews.

As usual, Netanyahu completely ignored the decades-old military occupation by Israel of Palestine and the conspicuously criminal treatment meted out  to millions of Palestinians whose only “guilt” is their being born non-Jewish.

Netanyahu, who arrived at the settlement to show solidarity with the family of a settler woman who was killed a few days ago, allegedly by a Palestinian youngster, took advantage of the tragedy to hurl lies right and left in order to justify his intransigence and anti-peace discourse.

He overlooked the fact that since the beginning of October, trigger-happy Israeli soldiers and settlers killed more than 160 Palestinians, many in an execution style and without the slightest provocation.

According to eye-witness testimonies, Israeli soldiers and settlers on several occasions placed a knife or sharp object next to the Palestinian victim to give the impression that he was trying to stab Israelis.

More to the point, Israeli security forces made sure that Palestinians shot were left to bleed to death.

The murderous executions prompted the Foreign Minister of Sweden Krister Wickman to demand an inquiry into these crimes.

Israel, which always adopts a holier-than-thou attitude toward international criticisms, rejected the Swedish call, arguing that Israel has the right to self-defense.

Killing the two-state solution

The truth of the matter is that Israel has effectively killed any remaining prospects for a viable peace with the Palestinians by decapitating -once and for all- any remaining chances for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, thanks to the ubiquitous metastasizing of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, especially East Jerusalem.

I think all honest observers, Palestinian, Israeli and international, agree on this prognosis. Hence, it would be an expression of dishonesty or utter ignorance and naïveté to deny the obvious.

This is unless what Israel, its guardian ally, the US, and the rest of the international community have in mind for the Palestinians is an insignificant state not worthy of the name, e.g.  a state without Jerusalem, without demographic and territorial contiguity, without the right of return for the refugees, and without an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.

Needless to say, the vast majority of Palestinians would utterly reject such a deformed entity even if the entire world sang the hymns of praise for such misshapen creature.

Now Israel is facing a real dilemma, which makes Netanyahu and his ministers make nervous and totally mendacious statements almost on a daily basis.

Indeed, with the two-state solution now effectively in the belly of earth, Israel has only two alternatives left: Either one state for all- from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean-or an open-ended conflict.

But one state is impossible since it constitutes the antithesis of Zionism, and an open-ended conflict is a nightmarish scenario with unpredictable consequences.

Facing this increasingly stark dilemma (stark because there are today in mandatory Palestine as many Palestinians as there are Jews and the Palestinian population is forecast to exceed the Jewish population in a few years), Israel is now trying to effect more ghoulish tactics in the hope that more pressure on Palestinians would force them or many of them to leave their ancestral homeland.

One Israeli commentator remarked last week that if Bashar Assad could banish millions of Syrians around the world with total impunity and without incurring the wrath of the world, Israel should be able to oust some Palestinians without creating a huge international crisis.

In fact, Israel is already trying this ghoulish scenario.

Last week, it was reported that poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has reached unprecedented levels, with many Palestinians selling their assets to remain afloat.

One Palestinian economist was quoted as saying that “I wouldn’t be surprised to see starvation in some parts of the West Bank.”

Hence the alarming question: Would the loaf of bread be used as Israel’s ultimate weapon to force the Palestinians to leave their homeland, thus enabling Israel to succeed  in liquidating the Palestinian cause once and for all?
 
Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist based in Dura in Occupied Palestine

Netanyahu is well aware that although Europe is Israel’s primary trading partner, he treats the human rights provisions of the EU Association Agreement with contempt, secure in the knowledge that he can easily switch his export market to either the US or China – or so he thought until last week!

His rationale was simple: an all-powerful Zionist lobby in Washington will continue to enable him to dictate foreign policy to Congress (as well as obtaining US$6 billion annually from the US taxpayer). As for China, Israeli bilateral trade has been increasing in a market where there has never been any history of anti-Semitism.

And therein lies Netanyahu’s fatal error because although the Chinese have long admired and respected Jewish innovation and technical expertise, they refuse to subscribe to Likud’s persecution of five million Palestinians. The Chinese premier made that point crystal clear to Netanyahu last week. There must, he said, be an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

And that announcement effectively marks the end of Netanyahu’s political career and the demise of Likud’s philosophy based on the discredited colonial agenda of Revisionist Zionism.

The Israeli kid is older now and since last week, belatedly somewhat wiser as he starts to think about looking for a new job, perhaps as a travelling salesman for German-built submarines now armed with nuclear warheads?

Note

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-backs-establishment-of-independent-state-of-palestine-with-jerusalem-as-its-capital/ 5502997

Iran nuclear talks drew to a close and a historic agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1 and the deal was implemented, but the opponents, from the Israeli Prime Minister and Saudi Arabia to Iran hawks in US congress to the Iranian terrorist groups functioning unhindered in the West, went out of their ways to sabotage the agreement from the very beginning.

A Beirut-based commentator and analyst covering Middle East geopolitics says Saudi Arabia and Israel were desperate to strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’. Sharmin Narwani says the deal was also struck as the US and its allies “desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures.”

Sharmin Narwani

In the following interview with Habilian Association, Narwani speaks about those who’ve failed to influence the deal. Having a great knowledge of Iranian society, she also touches upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO) and describes them as “useful to the deal spoilers” who lacks any kind of support in Iran.

1. What is your take on the opponents of Iran nuclear deal before the agreement was reached between Iran and P5+1?

The primary opponents of the P5+1-Iran negotiations were Saudi Arabia and Israel – these two states were on the forefront of a large-scale propaganda campaign intended to derail the talks and prevent a deal from being struck. Their motivations were entirely political as both states actively seek to undermine Iranian influence in the Middle East and beyond. Both states view growing Iranian clout as a direct and existential threat to their nations, and to their ability to manipulate the region to advantage. During the one and a half years of negotiations, the Islamic Republic was in ascendency in the region, while Saudi Arabia and Israel were hemorrhaging credibility – even with their western allies. Their desperation to therefore strike a blow at Iran’s further international ‘rehabilitation’ was even more urgent than usual, and they were successful, on the surface at least, of gaining public support from at least one P5 member state, France. The French took some very hardline public postures – they managed to secure some large weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during this period – but behind the scenes and at the actual negotiating table, I am told they barely made a peep.

2. How do you assess such activities after the agreement was reached? What are their post-Iran-deal plans?

Of course the French came into line immediately post-deal, mainly to try to gain a piece of the Iranian post-sanctions-relief economic pie. I believe France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius may have even been the first P5+1 official to visit Iran. You can see from the slew of western officials and business delegations making pilgrimages to Tehran in the immediate aftermath of the Vienna deal, that commerce is of paramount importance to these states suffering from stagnant economies.

Economic considerations aside, this deal was also struck because the US and its allies desperately needed the support of rational, capable parties within the Middle East to help disentangle from their Syrian misadventures. By mid-2012, the US and its western allies suddenly realized that Syria would not be a quick ‘regime-change’ operation and were starting to grow concerned about the proliferation of jihadis and other extremists outside of their control, most of them armed, funded and supported by western allies in the Persian Gulf and Turkey. That’s when the US reached out to Iran in a secret meeting in Oman. So I think another consideration for the P5+1 is definitely to gain Iran’s assistance in helping to put out some of these fires. Iran will help, in the sense that eradicating political violence, re-stabilizing states and halting extremism is high on its priority list, but it is important to understand that western goals are not the same. The west is perfectly happy with weakened Mideast states – it just doesn’t want the extremism it has spawned to breach its own borders. At the present moment, the nuclear deal has been helpful in that the US can openly work in the same military theaters (Syria, Iraq) with Iran without a confrontation breaking out between the two. This is a direct result of Vienna.

3. Please tell me what do you think of Netanyahu’s March 2015 address to the US Congress over Iran accord?

I didn’t watch the speech – Netanyahu never has anything interesting or truthful to say. I did, however, watch the circus around it, and I have to say that if I was an American I would be seriously appalled at the pandering of my elected officials to a foreign official. I do think Netanyahu was a net loser by giving that speech. He created a contentious split in the American body politic and gained acrimony instead of galvanizing support. Clearly he lost, as the Iran nuclear agreement is a reality today. But it would be a mistake to write off Netanyahu. He – and his allies in the US and elsewhere – intend to exploit every opportunity, at every turn of this agreement, to put a wrench in the works. One way to do this is to undermine the ‘spirit’ of this deal, which we are seeing at the moment with further sanctions talk, threats about Iran’s missile program, and the ridiculous visa restriction measure that was signed into law by Obama a few weeks ago…

4. What is your opinion about the activities of Iranian groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, aka MKO) against this agreement?

I was in Vienna covering the final round of talks and there were some MEK people around with their usual stunts. I don’t really see this group as significant in any way. They are useful to the deal spoilers only insofar as they provide them with token ‘Iranians’ to parrot more anti-Iran propaganda. The MEK’s main interest is in constant demonization of the Iranian government because it enhances their funding opportunities and gives them access to some rather shifty ‘policymaking’ rooms in the west. So Vienna was a valuable platform for them – it probably earned them a few extra dollars. They make good parrots, but nothing more.

5. What is your take on the MEK which was until recently listed as a foreign terrorist organization in the US and is now functioning unhindered in the US and European countries?

Look, the MEK doesn’t really figure into any serious analyst’s calculations on anything to do with Iran. They are an extremely marginalized group within Iran – in all my visits to the country over the years, I have never heard a supportive word for the MEK from a single Iranian. On the contrary, Iranians tend to view them as traitors for fighting alongside Saddam Hussein’s military in an aggressive 8-year war that saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians die. So there is no love lost for the MEK inside Iran. Furthermore, the group’s support comes almost exclusively from foreign adversaries of Iran, which adds to the perception of MEK treachery.

Even when the organization was listed as a terrorist group in the west, it continued to function under different aliases, with the tacit approval of its western hosts. It has only ever been used as a tool by the west, to be pulled out when these states want a ‘lever’ against Iran. Look at the delisting in the US…it took place in late 2012, a few months after Washington had initiated quiet meetings in Oman with Ahmadinejad’s government which ultimately was the ‘opening’ that led to this nuclear deal. The Americans delisted MEK so they could have a pressure ‘card’ in their hand – to show the Iranians the US was willing to escalate if the Iranians didn’t fall into line. But Iran is well-versed in US tactics. I can’t imagine this bothered them much – though it did make the Americans look extremely hypocritical on their “War on Terror.” After all, the MEK had killed US citizens in Iran in the 1970s, attacked US soil in 1992, and continues to abuse its own members. This was the State Department’s very language when they delisted the group.

Listed or delisted, the MEK remains exactly the same. It always enjoyed western cover of sorts. Like many other western-groomed ‘opposition’ groups based outside the Middle East, it will be employed opportunistically by its hosts, and cut off when it is no longer of use.

China is Iran’s largest trading partner, including oil and gas, along with billions of dollars in other products and services.

On Friday, President Xi Jinping arrived in Tehran, officially welcomed by Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

The visit was the first by a Chinese head of state in 14 years, Jiang Zemin the last one in 2002, early in the post-9/11 era, featuring endless US imperial wars, along with hostile anti-Russian/anti-Chinese policies.

Presidents Xi and Rohani seek closer ties, Xi signalizing a new chapter in bilateral relations. Iran’s IRNA news agency quoted him saying:

China is seeking to improve bilateral ties with Iran to start a new chapter of comprehensive, long-term and sustainable relations with the Islamic Republic.

Notably, Xi is the first head of state to visit Iran since international sanctions were lifted on January 16. Putin visited Tehran last November, discussing enhanced bilateral ties going forward.

Accompanying Xi on his visit were three deputy prime ministers and six other ministers, along with a large delegation of Chinese business officials

He and Rohani signed 17 documents, involving mutual cooperation in economic, commercial, industrial, transportation, environmental, cultural and judicial relations, including oil and gas, peaceful nuclear energy, financing a bullet train and banking, Xi saying:

In this visit, we have struck an agreement on planning for 25-year-long strategic cooperation and are ready to develop and deepen cooperation in all the various cultural, educational, technological, military and security fields at the level of strategic partners.

Xi criticized Western powers without naming them, saying they seek hegemonic rule – calling George Bush’s “you are either with us or against us” policy “jungle rule.”

Developing economies left Western ones “bereft of their monopolized power…pav(ing) the way for the practice of independent states’ policies.”

He stressed the eagerness of China to enhance ties and cooperation with Iran. Chinese Academy of Social Science Middle East expert Yin Gang called his visit historically significant, signaling enhanced bilateral relations.

“Iran is the place to prove China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy,” said Yin. Its potential is huge.

Renmin University Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies dean Wang Wen called Iran a hub along the “New Silk Road” route – giving China’s “one Belt, One Road” strategy “solid underpin(ning).”

According to Beijing Ministry of Commerce researcher Mei Xinyu, “Iran is one of the most important players in the region and a key Chinese partner in the Middle East. (It’s) vital for China’s strategies in West Africa and North Asia.”

Besides its huge energy needs vital to its economy, Iran’s large population (nearly 80 million) offers attractive potential for Chinese exports.

In 2014, bilateral trade exceeded $50, Iranian exports totaling $27.5 billion in energy and other products. Chinese oil imports from Iran account for around 12% of its domestic needs, likely increasing ahead with international sanctions lifted.

On Saturday, Xi met with Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khomenei. “Westerners have never obtained the trust of the Iranian nation,” he said.

The government and nation of Iran have always sought expanding relations with independent and trustful countries like China.

Tehran intends increasing ties with the “East.” He praised Beijing’s “independent” stance on global issues, saying “China has always stood by the side of the Iranian nation during hard days.”

America’s approach is “dishonest” on all geopolitical issues, he stressed. Closer Iranian Eastern ties makes it less vulnerable to US-led Western hostility.

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.

On January 20th a cabal of dependencies of the United States of America, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy, met in Paris to discuss war on Syria. One of a series of such meetings with a changing list of participants, it included the defence ministers of the countries supporting various proxy forces attacking Syria, either posing as “rebels” or allied with the American created and supported force ISIS. It was in fact a meeting of conspirators planning a war of aggression. There is no other way to put it. This was a criminal act under international law and another dramatic repudiation of the United Nations and everything the United Nations Charter stands for.

One nation that was not invited was Canada, a snub that has caused consternation among the war party in Canada, but is likely the result of the new prime minister’s pledge to withdraw Canadian forces from action in Syria and Iraq. The new Canadian government has not in fact withdrawn its small forces as promised but no doubt the Americans are doubtful of the new government’s reliability as a partner in crime and wanted to slap down the new government for daring to make even a mild move towards peace in our time.

The Canadian government’s pledge to withdraw its forces was a result of campaign promises made during the October elections in Canada where these military adventures are unpopular with large sections of the population which sees them as wasting their tax money fighting wars for American interests and domination of the world. The fact that such operations are not only illegal under international law but also under Canadian law as set out in the National Defence Act, and, therefore, should never have been conducted in the first place, is, inexplicably, never mentioned by any Canadian government figure, major political party or any of the tightly controlled and coordinated media, because, of course, law means nothing to criminals.

The Paris meeting was a criminal act, a war crime in fact, since the only international body that has the right to determine if, when and how military forces is to be applied in any situation is the United Nations Security Council. Any military action taken outside the mandate of the Security Council is prohibited and the Rome Statute, the statute that governs the International Criminal Court, defines such a meeting as a conspiracy to commit aggression, the worst of all war crimes, because it leads to all other war crimes that necessarily follow an act of aggression.

But the Paris meeting is not the first step in furthering this conspiracy to commit acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria. The first act was the attack made on Syria by the United States in 2011 after it and its co-conspirators attacked and destroyed Libya using the same proxy forces, the same techniques, and the same propaganda to mislead the public. Many of the same mercenaries, and thugs that they used against Libya were quickly reassigned and sent into Syria through Turkey, and Jordan where they soon linked up with armed groups from Iraq now known as ISIS. The United States, Turkey, Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia, brag about their open support for these groups, and have confessed that they have sent in their own special forces to “train” them. This act of aggression against Syria continues to escalate and came close to succeeding until Russia, at the request of the besieged government of Syria, decided to deploy its air forces in Syria in order to crush these American and allied proxy forces.

The reaction here in the west since September when the Russians began their very effective air operations has been a seething anger from Washington, to London, from Paris to Berlin, from Riyadh to Istanbul. The failure of the American attempt to conquer Syria will mean the failure of the American plan to kick Russia out of the Mediterranean, a failure to control the land routes from there to Iran for an eventual attack on Iran itself, an operation that cannot be mounted from the Persian Gulf, and a failure to place its forces on the southern flank of Russia in preparation for a pincer thrust into Russia from the south and the western plains of Poland and Ukraine. Others cite gas pipelines and war profits as reasons, but these are secondary to the principal strategy of the domination of Eurasia by the United States and those hoping to be thrown some scraps from the spoils, like the jackals they are.

None of these countries have any legal or moral right to attack Syria under the guise of going after ISIS, or Islamic State as they now call it. To obtain that right they would first have to be asked by the Syrian government for their assistance. The Syrian government does not want their “assistance”. They do not want their war. But these criminal nations refuse to talk to the Syrian government and insist on its overthrow and they refuse to take their case before the Security Council because they know they have no case and Russia and China will oppose their criminal plans. So they evade the United Nations and once again, create ad hoc “coalitions” of the criminal minded, who have no respect for international law, their own laws, the sovereign rights of the Syrian nation, or their own platitudes about peace and “human rights.”

The criminal nature and intent of the meeting was openly declared in the press conference after the meeting by the US Defense Secretary Carter who called for more forces to be gathered to “eject jihadist fighters from their headquarters in Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq and to maintain that planned defeat.” The latter phrase must be interpreted as meaning a permanent occupation of the region by American and allied forces. To back this up the America Army’s 101st Airborne Division has been assigned the role of re-entering Iraq. It seems Iraq will have no choice in the matter as the Americans continue their drive to establish a new protectorate out of western Iraq and eastern Syria which they can then use to control the region and attack Iran. Further meetings are to be held in Brussels in a few weeks.

In the meantime Russia continues to try to achieve a negotiated resolution of the war in compliance with international law and a further meeting of the Russian and American foreign ministers will be held in Geneva to discuss it but there is little hope of those talks going anywhere since the two countries approach the problem from completely opposite positions; the Russians on the basis of the national sovereignty of Syria and the recognition of the existing government as the only legitimate government, the Americans on the basis that might makes right and Syria must submit to its will. For them, international law and national sovereignty are phrases empty of all meaning.

And once again, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court remains in her office in The Hague, completely inert as nations that are within her jurisdiction plan these crimes. She has charged several African leaders for much less but then those prosecutions serve the interests of the same powers she should be prosecuting. She doesn’t even hold a press conference condemning these meetings, actions and plans for more war and insisting that these criminals adhere to international law. Nothing is said. Nothing is done. The ICC is shown to be as useless as the Security Council.

It is the Americans and their allies who are responsible for all the dead and dying in Syria, and it is they who “brought forth the monstrous mass of earthly slime, puft up with empty wind and filled with sinful crime” that is ISIS and it is clear that they will continue to use this monster of their creation as a device to escalate the war against Syria and increase their crimes but who, aside from the Syrian people, Russia and Iran can stop them? And so, the war will continue, the misery it brings will continue, and those responsible will continue to meet in beautiful settings, enjoying the fine things their crimes bring, bragging that they are saving the people from the very “terrorists” they created and control.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On the basis of secret evidence, a UK inquiry under orders from Washington decided that the death ten years ago of a low level spy was “probably” ordered by President Putin of Russia. There is no motive whatsoever for Putin to have been concerned with the dead spy, Litvinenko. He was of no consequence or threat to Russia.

Probably, Litvinenko’s death was due to the fact that he was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials and accidently poisoned himself.

What these unsubstantiated attacks on the President of Russia are doing is elevating Russia. The non Anglo-Zionist world, which is the largest part of humanity, has lost confidence in the veracity of the West. The Western media, a collection of prostitutes, is in such lock-step mindless compliance with the anti-Russian agenda that the most implausible accusations against President Putin are reported as if they were proven fact.

Western news organizations, such as the BBC and the New York Times, once respected news organizations, are now widely regarded as government propaganda organizations that lie for their living.

Here is the report of a person who used to believe the lie until he looked into the case.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/today-assumed-putins-russia-killed-litvinenko-looked.html

As I wrote recently, all they do is to lie to us. Lies are the West’s principle weapon. As the lies wear out, the West is exposed as a liar that never can be believed about anything.

A few decades from now, will it be common knowledge that using microwave radiation to heat food is harmful to human health? It’s certainly a possibility, and information is already emerging which shows cause for concern.

Microwaves work by causing water molecules to resonate at very high frequencies, converting them into steam and thereby heating your food. While this might be a convenient way to prepare your food, using microwave radiation in this way actually changes the chemical structure of that food.

The fact that they are approved as safe doesn’t mean much these days, as we’ve seen with several other examples from Tobacco, PCBs and Asbestos and Glyphosate. Just because a government agency, like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or a government health agency approves something as safe, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe.

You might be wondering how this is any different from heating your food on the stove or steaming it, and that’s a fair question. The difference is that microwaves deform and distort the molecules in food, while conventional heating methods do not.

This is problematic in the medical field as well. We know, for example, that during blood transfusions, microwaves are often used to heat the blood before it is transferred to the patient. But using microwave radiation to this actually damages components found in blood. In fact, one woman even died after receiving a blood transfusion of microwaved blood. (source)

It is starting to look like microwaving can completely rid your food of most essential nutrients, but more research on this phenomenon needs to be done. That being said, there are some publications we can refer to if you’d like to find out more information regarding the harmful effects of microwaves on nutrients.

One example comes from 2003. A study published in The Journal of the Science of Food and Agricultureexamined what microwaves do to broccoli, finding that broccoli, after being microwaved, lost up to 97 percent of its beneficial antioxidants. By comparison, when researchers steamed broccoli, they discovered that it only lost 11 percent or fewer of its antioxidants. (source)

A study out of Australia showed that microwaves cause a greater level of “protein unfolding” than conventional heating. It found that “microwaves cause a significantly higher degree of unfolding  then conventional thermal stress for protein solutions heating to the same maximum temperature.” (source)

A study using garlic found that just 60 seconds in a microwave can render its principle active ingredient (alliinase) as useless. Microwaves have also been found to destroy immune-boosting agents that are found in breast milk. These are disease fighting nutrients which are essential to the health and development of the child. For example, one study found that microwaving breast milk caused a decrease in lysozyme activity and antibodies, and aided the growth of more pathogenic bacteria. (source) The interesting thing about this study is that the researchers found that more damage was done to the milk from microwaving compared to any other method of heating.

Microwaving appears to be contraindicated at high-temperatures, and questions regarding its safety even exist at low temperatures. (source)

A Japanese study found that only 6 minutes of microwave heating turned approximately 40 percent of the B12 found in milk dead and completely void of any nutritional value. (source)

Three recent studies of historical food composition have shown up to 40 percent declines in some of the minerals commonly found in fresh produce, and another one found the same thing for their protein source. (source)

A Scandinavian study conducted in 1999 also found that cooking asparagus in the microwave results in a reduction in vitamins. (Kidmose U and Kaack K. Acta. Agriculturae Scandinavica B1999:49(2).110-117.)

What Type of Container Are You Using To Microwave Your Food?

Not heating your food in plastic containers should be a no brainer at this point. This is precisely why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that any plastic containers should be labelled for microwave use, but even if they are labeled as safe, it’s still probably not a good idea. For more more information on what happens when you microwave your food in plastic containers, you can check out thisarticle.

Many studies have shown that multiple plastic products contain various hormone disrupting chemicals, and heat is the worst culprit when it comes to increasing the rate of chemical transfer from the container to your food.

As written in the journal Toxicology Letters:

Using a sensitive and quantitative competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, BPA was found to migrate from polycarbonate water bottle at rates ranging from 0.20 ng/h to 0.79/h. . . . At room temperature the migration of BPA was independent of whether or not the bottle had been perviously used. Exposure to boiling water increased the rate of BPA migration by up to 55-fold.

Again, heat increases chemical leaching, so be cautious of what you use to heat your food. Even plastic containers which are labelled as microwave safe (or even BPA free, which does not account for other worrisome chemicals) are still dangerous.  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “what the term ‘microwave-safe’ basically means is that any chemicals leaching from the container into food do so at levels far below those shown to have any health effects.  There is cause to be wary of this claim, however. In particular, #7 polycarbonate plastic should not be used in a microwave, even if it is labeled ‘microwave-safe,’ because it leaches hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA), especially when heated.” (source)

This may be frightening to consider, but examining the products we choose to use on a daily basis is important. We have seen many examples in recent human history of information coming to light about a product or drug which completely changes our understanding and attitude towards it. We only have to look at cigarettes to see the proof of that.

The historian Heinrich August Winkler has described the history of Germany as a “long road to the West.” By “West,” the Social Democrat means parliamentary democracy, human and civil rights—as they were defined by the American and French revolutions— class compromise and social balance.

After a long Sonderweg (special path), according to Winkler’s interpretation, Germany had finally arrived in the “West” through the Constitution of 1949, the nonviolent reunification of 1991 and the integration into the European Union, which finally led the European continent to peace.

Winkler’s conception of the “West” was always ideologically driven and involved a significant glossing over of reality. However, if recent events are assessed on the basis of his criterion, then Germany and Europe have rapidly travelled the “road to the West” in reverse over recent months. Almost overnight, the political culture has been violently transformed. The social democratic and liberal Europe has collapsed.

Everywhere, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. Chauvinism, xenophobia, militarism and the call for a strong state are on the rise. This applies not only to the emerging ultra-right-wing parties such as the French National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Hungarian Fidesz and the Polish PiS, but also for every establishment party, including those supposedly on the left.

Pseudo-left publications such as the Pabloite United Secretariat’s International Viewpoint are among the leading voices in the chorus calling for state intervention and imperialist war in the name of allegedly defending women’s rights.

In Germany, political parties and the media have sparked a campaign of racist incitement against refugees following the wildly hyped events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, reminiscent of the anti-Semitic campaigns of the Nazis. Government and opposition parties try to outdo each other in the call for more police and tougher laws, with the Left Party excelling in this regard.

In France, the Socialist Party government has imposed a permanent state of emergency and threatened to deprive convicted criminals of foreign origin of their citizenship, in the tradition of the Vichy regime.

Everywhere in Europe the borders are being imposed, and the Schengen system is as good as dead. Conflicts between EU members are escalating. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the EU “could very well break up in a very short time.” His Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte spoke of “six to eight weeks” remaining for the EU to resolve the refugee crisis. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungwrote, “Never before was the end of the EU as realistic as it is today.”

Europe’s ruling elites are agreed when it comes to increasing military capacity, waging war in the Middle East and Africa and deploying the military at home. But even here, the unity of Europe should not be taken for granted. With the growth of national antagonisms, it is only a matter of time before tanks are deployed to the borders between EU member states. Seventy years after the end of World War II, the threat of war in the heart of Europe has reemerged.

The approximately 1 million refugees who have entered Europe in the past year, about 0.2 percent of the total EU population of 508 million, are the pretext and not the cause of the political shift to the right. This shift is not the result of widespread sentiments in the general population, as the media seeks to present it, but the expression of a rebellion of the ruling elites. They are systematically fanning reactionary moods, using the media and the official parties.

The real reason for this rebellion from above is the explosive social, economic and political contradictions that have been building up since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wider Soviet bloc 25 years ago, and especially since the international financial crisis of 2008. German imperialism has played a crucial role in these developments.

Germany has ruthlessly exploited its economic predominance to force its rivals to the wall and to gain hegemony over Europe. It has used the euro in order to impose merciless austerity measures on weaker southern and eastern European countries–measures that have ruined their economies, plunged millions into misery and robbed the youth of any future.

A cursory glance at European economic statistics is sufficient to show the illusory character of the idea that Europe could be united harmoniously and peacefully on a capitalist basis.

For example, Germany’s gross domestic product, just short of €3 trillion in 2014, was more than seven times as high as that of neighboring Poland, which has nearly half as many inhabitants. Germany’s exports were seven times larger than those of Poland; the German export surplus of €220 billion alone was higher than total Polish exports of €163 billion.

Even France, which exported less than half as much as Germany in 2014 and had a trade deficit of €71 billion, and the United Kingdom, with a trade deficit of €134 billion, were cast in the shadow of Germany.

The contrast in the social statistics is even more blatant. The average monthly gross earnings of full-time workers within the EU varies between €306 in Bulgaria, €902 in Poland, €3,106 in Germany and €4,217 in Denmark.

These averages mask the huge social gulf that has opened up within the individual countries. For example, Germany owes its economic supremacy not least to its extensive low-wage sector, which resulted from the Agenda 2010 “reforms” introduced by the Social Democratic Party-Green Party government of Gerhard Schröder. Millions of workers are living on the edge of subsistence and often need two or three jobs to make ends meet.

These sharp social contradictions are the real reason for the shift to the right by the European elites. They know that below the surface, a massive social explosion is brewing and that they have little time to prepare for it. As in the 1930s, they are stirring up chauvinism and xenophobia to divert social tensions into right-wing channels, build up the police apparatus, and establish a right-wing movement to use against social protests in the same manner as they did in the 1930s with the Nazi stormtroopers (SA).

The growth of militarism serves the same purpose. There has hardly been a war in recent history that has not in part served to direct internal tensions outwards. At the same time, the conflicts between the great powers are very real. In Germany’s ruling class, the belief has long prevailed that its global economic interests can be secured only by military means. For two years, it has agitated intensively for an aggressive foreign policy under the slogan, “New power, new responsibilities.”

Currently, these missions take place in the framework of international alliances, primarily NATO. But this will not last. The conflicts of interest between the great powers are so deep that due to the crisis of the world capitalist economy they are being driven inevitably toward a Third World War.

Only the political intervention of the working class can prevent such a catastrophe. In contrast to the ruling elites, the mood among the masses is predominantly left-wing. But this sentiment finds no expression in official politics. The experiences of the past year–from Syriza’s betrayal in Greece to Germany’s Left Party supporting the call for increased state powers—have powerfully demonstrated that no opposition can be expected from the ranks of the official parties.

The fight against war, racism and social cuts, as well as the defense of refugees and democratic rights, is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism and the building of an international socialist workers’ party. This requires the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe.

The Fourth International is the only political tendency that has warned that Europe cannot be unified on a capitalist basis, and that new wars are inevitable if capitalism is not overthrown.

Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International, explained at the end of the First World War, “a halfway complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalist governments is sheer utopia.” That analysis is being confirmed today. The only possibility of uniting Europe in the interests of its peoples is in the United Socialist States of Europe.

Twenty-five years ago, David North, now the chairman of the WSWS International Editorial Board, warned in a speech on the eve of the launching of the first Gulf War by the US against Iraq, “just as World War I and World War II were preceded by bitter inter-imperialist rivalries, the ground is being prepared for World War III. The weapons which are now being used against the Iraqi people will in the future be used in even more bloody and horrific conflicts.” (1)

Since then, US imperialism and its European allies have destroyed a great part of the Middle East, which now threatens to become the source of a new world conflagration.

Note

1) “One of the great crimes of the twentieth century,” speech by David North, January 20, 1991 in New York City, in: “Desert Slaughter. The Imperialist War Against Iraq,” Detroit 1991, p. 246

Yemeni army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman said that the Saudi-led coalition hire people from around the world to fight in Yemen, among contractors there are 400 persons from US private security firm Blackwater.

CAIRO (Sputnik) — Around 400 persons from US private security firm Blackwater are fighting for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen, Yemeni army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman said Tuesday.

“They hire poor people from around the world to take part in the hostilities. Among them are Somalis and people from Sudanese tribes. However, there are also Europeans, Americans, Colombians. These are contractors from a structure known as Blackwater. This division includes around 400 people,” Luqman told RIA Novosti.

Sharaf Luqman represents Yemeni loyalists of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who are fighting alongside Houthis against the supporters of internationally-recognized President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Blackwater Security Consulting gained notoriety in 2007 after its employees gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded 20 in Baghdad during the US deployment. The incident became known as the Nisour Square massacre.

If there is any single price of any commodity that determines the growth or slowdown of our economy, it is the price of crude oil. Too many things don’t calculate today in regard to the dramatic fall in the world oil price. In June 2014 major oil traded at $103 a barrel. With some experience following the geopolitics of oil and oil markets, I smell a big skunk. Let me share some things that for me don’t add up.

On January 15 the US benchmark oil price, WTI (West Texas Intermediate), closed trading at $29, the lowest since 2004. True, there’s a glut of at least some 1 million barrels a day overproduction in the world and that’s been the case for over a year.

True, the lifting of Iran sanctions will bring new oil on to a glutted market, adding to the downward price pressure of the present market.

However, days before US and EU sanctions were lifted on Iran on January 17, Seyyid Mohsen Ghamsari, the head of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Company stated that Iran, “…will try to enter the market in a way to make sure the boosted production will not cause a further drop in prices…We will be producing as much as the market can absorb.”  So the new entry of Iran post-sanctions onto world oil markets is not the cause for the sharp oil fall since January 1.

Also not true is that oil import demand from China has collapsed with a supposed collapse of China’s economy. In the year to November 2015 China imported more, significantly more, 8.9% more, year on year, to 6.6 million barrels a day to become the world’s largest oil importer.

Add to the boiling cauldron that constitutes today’s world oil market the political risk that has been building dramatically since September, 2015 and the Russian decision to come to the call of Syria’s legitimately elected President, Bashar al Assad with formidable airstrikes against terrorist infrastructure. Add as well the dramatic break in relations between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey and Moscow since Turkey, a NATO member, committed a brazen act of war by shooting down a Russian fighter jet over Syrian airspace. All of this would suggest prices of oil should be going up, not down.

Saudi’s Strategic Eastern Province

Then, for good measure, throw in the insanely provocative decision by Saudi Defense Minister and de facto king, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to execute Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Saudi citizen. Al-Nimr, a respected Shi’ite religious leader was charged with terrorism for calling in 2011 for more rights for Saudi Shi’ites. There are approximately 8 million Saudi Muslims loyal to Shi’ite teachings rather that the ultra-strict Wahhabi Sunni strain. His crime was to support protests calling for more rights for the oppressed Shia minority, perhaps some 25% of the Saudi population. The Shi’ite population of Saudis is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province.

The Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most valuable piece of real estate on the planet, double the area of the Federal Republic of Germany but with a mere 4 million people. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company is based in Dhahran in the Eastern Province.

The main Saudi oil and gas fields are mostly in the Eastern Province, onshore and offshore, including the world’s largest oil field, Ghawar. Petroleum from the Saudi fields, including Ghawar, is shipped to dozens of countries from the oil port terminal of the the Ras Tanura complex, the world’s biggest crude oil terminal. Some 80% of the near 10 million barrels of oil a day pumped out by Saudi goes to Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf where it is loaded on to supertankers bound for the west.

The Eastern Province is also home to Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq Plants facility, their biggest oil processing and crude stabilization facility with a capacity of 7 million barrels per day. It’s the primary oil processing site for Arabian extra light and Arabian light crude oils, and handles crude oil pumped from Ghawar field.

And it also happens that the majority of oil field and refinery blue collar workers in of the Eastern Province are…Shi’ite. They are said also to be sympathetic to the just-executed Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In the late 1980’s the Saudi Hezbollah Al-Hejaz, led several attacks on oil infrastructure and also murdered Saudi diplomats. They were allegedly trained in Iran.

And now there is a new destabilizing element to add to the political tensions building between Saudi Arabia and Erdogan’s Turkey on the one side, flanked by servile Arab Gulf Cooperation Council states, and on the other Assad’s Syria, Iraq with a 60% Shi’ite population and neighboring Iran, aided presently militarily by Russia. Reports are that the instable 30-year old Prince bin Salman is about to me named King.

On January 13, the Gulf Institute, a Middle East think tank, in an exclusive report, wrote that 80-year old Saudi King Salman Al-Saud plans to abdicate his throne and install his son Mohammed as king. They report that the present King “has been making the rounds visiting his brothers seeking support for the move that will also remove the current crown prince and American favorite, the hardline Mohammed bin Naif, from his positions as the crown prince and the minister of interior. According to sources familiar with the proceedings, Salman told his brothers that the stability of the Saudi monarchy requires a change of the succession from lateral or diagonal lines to a vertical order under which the king hands power to his most eligible son.”

On December 3, 2015, the German BND intelligence service leaked a memo to the press warning of the increasing power being acquired by Prince Salman, someone they characterized as unpredictable and emotional. Citing the kingdom’s involvement in Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen, the BND stated, referring to Prince Salman, “The previous cautious diplomatic stance of older leaders within the royal family is being replaced by a new impulsive policy of intervention.”

Yet oil prices fall?

The ominous element in this more than ominous situation revolving around the center of world petroleum and natural gas reserves, the Middle East, is the fact that in the recent weeks oil prices, which had temporarily stabilized at an already low $40 range in December, now have plunged another 25% to around $29, outlook grim. Citigroup has forecast $20 oil is possible. Goldman Sachs recently came out saying that it may take lows of $20 a barrel to restabilize world oil markets and get rid of the glut of supply.

Now I have a strong gut feeling that there is something very big, very dramatic building in world oil markets over the coming several months, something most of the world doesn’t expect.

The last time Goldman Sachs and their Wall Street cronies made a dramatic prediction in oil prices was in summer 2008. At that time, amid the growing pressures on Wall Street banks of the spreading US sub-prime real estate meltdown, just before the Lehman Brothers collapse of September that year, Goldman Sachs wrote that oil was headed for $200 a barrel. It had just hit a high of $147.

At that time I wrote an analysis saying just the opposite was likely, based on the fact that there was a huge oversupply in world oil markets that curiously, was only being identified by Lehman Brothers. I was told by an informed Chinese source that Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase were hyping the $200 price to convince Air China and other big China state oil buyers to buy every drop of oil at $147 it could before it hit $200, an advice that fed the rising price.

Then by December, 2008 the Brent benchmark oil price was down to $47 a barrel. The Lehman Crisis, a deliberate political decision of US Treasury Secretary a former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulsen, in September 2008, plunged the world into financial crisis and deep recession in the meantime. Did Paulsen’s cronies at Goldman Sachs and other key Wall Street mega-banks such as Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase know in advance that Paulsen was planning the Lehman crisis to force Congress to give him carte blanche bailout powers with the unprecedented TARP funds of $700 billion? In the event, Goldman Sachs and friends reportedly made a gigantic profit betting against their own $200 predictions using leveraged derivatives in oil futures.

Killing the shale oil ‘cowboys’ first

Today the US shale oil industry, the largest source of risíng US oil output since 2009 or so, is hanging by its fingernails on the edge of a cliff of massive bankruptcies. In recent months shale oil production has barely begun to decline, some 93,000 barrels in November, 2015.

The Big Oil cartel–ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell–began dumping their shale leases onto the market two years ago. The shale oil industry in the US today is dominated by what BP or Exxon refer to as “the cowboys,” mid-sized aggressive oil companies, not the majors. Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase or Citigroup who historically finance Big Oil, as well as Big Oil itself, clearly would shed no tears at this point were the shale boom to bust, leaving them again in control of the world’s most important market. The financial institutions who lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the shale “cowboys” in the past five years have their next semi-annual loan review in April. With prices hovering at or near the $20 range, we can expect a new, far more serious wave of actual shale oil company bankruptcies. Unconventional oil, including Canada’s huge Alberta Tar Sands oil will soon be a thing of the past, if so.

That alone will not restore oil to the $70-90 levels that the big oil industry players and their Wall Street banks would find comfortable. The glut coming out of the Middle East from Saudi Arabia and her Gulf Arab allies has to be dramatically cut. Yet Saudis show no sign of doing so. This is what disturbs me about the entire picture.

Is something very ugly brewing in the Persian Gulf that will dramatically push oil prices up later this year? Is a real shooting war between Shi’ite and Saudi Wahhabi oil states brewing? Until now it has been a proxy war in Syria primarily. Since the execution of the Shi’ite cleric and Iranian storming of the Saudi Embassy in Teheran, leading to a break in diplomatic ties by Saudi and other Sunni Gulf Arab states, the confrontation has become far more direct. Dr. Hossein Askari, former adviser to the Saudi Finance Ministry, stated, “If there is a war confronting Iran and Saudi Arabia, oil could overnight go to above $250, but decline back down to the $100 level. If they attack each other’s loading facilities, then we could see oil spike to over $500 and stay around there for some time depending on the extent of the damage.”

Everything tells me that the world is in for another big oil shock. It seems it’s almost always about oil. As Henry Kissinger reportedly said back during another oil shock in the mid-1970’s when Europe and the US faced an OPEC oil embargo and long lines at the gas pumps, “If you control the oil, you control entire nations.” That obsession with control is rapidly destroying our civilization. It’s time to focus on peace and development, not on competing to be the biggest oil mogul on the planet.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

A senior Israeli rabbi says Tel Aviv should execute Palestinians instead of arresting them and “leave no one alive” in order to establish safety in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinian media report.

“Israeli army has to stop arresting Palestinians,” Shmuel Eliyahu said in a message posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, adding, “but, it must execute them and leave no one alive,” Palestine News Network reported.

As chief rabbi of the city of Safed, Eliyahu is known for his racist behavior and remarks about Arabs and Muslims. He had earlier urged the Israeli regime to take “revenge” against Arabs in order to restore what he called Israel’s deterrence.

Israeli rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu

He also described Palestinians as the enemy of Israel and claimed that they “must be destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.”

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million,” the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying in 2007.

In 2012, he was charged for making racist statements as he called the Arab culture “cruel” and accused Arabs of having “violent norms” which “have turned into ideology.”

Eliyahu alleged that Arabs steal farm equipment belonging to Jews and blackmail farmers.

“The minute you make room for Arabs among Jews, it takes five minutes before they start to do whatever they want,” he purportedly said.

However, the Israeli Justice Ministry dropped the charges against him, claiming that reporters ‘may’ have changed his statements.

Back in December, the Jerusalem Post quoted Eliyahu as saying,

“Should we leave them (Palestinians) alive in order to then free them in another gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? The fact that they still have a desire to commit … attacks shows that we are not operating strongly enough.”

On his Facebook page, he also called for the prosecution of those Israeli forces that keep Palestinians alive, saying, “We must not allow a Palestinian to survive after he was arrested. If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people… We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”

The comments come as tensions have been running high across the occupied Palestinian lands in recent months over Tel Aviv’s imposition of restrictions on Palestinian worshipers’ entry into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in August last year.

More than 160 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of last October.

In just three days, an online letter endorsing the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, circulated by Brazilian intellectuals, received 200 signatories from faculty across Brazilian universities.

According to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the letter was signed by well-known academics, including Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a popular Brazilian diplomat who served on the country’s Truth Commission on human rights abuses that took place during the era of Brazil’s military dictatorship and was the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar as well as B. Boris Vargaftig, physician, pharmacologist, and one of the most internationally quoted Brazilian academics.

According to the PNN, this campaign came right after extremely popular Brazilian congressman Jean Wyllys accepted to participate in a conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which has deep ties to human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Most of the University campus is built in the occupied East Jerusalem and, for that reason, was recently the subject of a new and influential boycott.

A letter signed by 351 international academics explains that “while all Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy.”

It goes on to highlight how “the university is complicit in the unequal treatment of Palestinians, including those who are citizens of Israel”; “restricts the freedom of speech and protest of its few Palestinian students”; and is affiliated with Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, while refusing to recognize academic credentials from the Palestinian Al Quds University.

According to The Intercept, numerous critics expressed shock and outrage that a standard-bearer of Brazil’s progressive movement would so completely break with his party’s official position in support of the BDS movement.

But Wyllys further inflamed the outrage over the next several days with a series of self-defenses, and speaking about building bridges, dialogues and expressing his position against the academic boycott of Israel.

In a video message posted on Facebook, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (one among the 200 signatories of the academic boycott), harshly criticized the congressman.

“Lamentable and deplorable, congressman Jean Wyllys’ comments about his visit to Israel reveal a crass ignorance of and total misinformation about Israel’s current human rights policies,” he said.

One example of his lack of knowledge appeared when he characterized the apartheid wall as being “constructed by Israel to impede terrorist attacks”.

Wyllys’ controversial visit to the Hebrew University and his defense of Israeli policies came at a particularly tense moment in bilateral relations between the two governments.

Brazil’s nominally leftist Worker’s Party (PT) government, led by embattled President Dilma Rousseff, has refused to accept the appointment of Dani Dayan as Israel’s ambassador to Brazil on the grounds that he is a proponent of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Under both Rousseff and her predecessor, PT’s Lula da Silva, their party has been vocally supportive of Palestinians.

PSOL positions itself as the left-wing alternative to the more moderately left PT, making Wyllys’ statements particularly surprising and shocking.

On January 24, 2016 in Moldova is expected another wave of protests against the oligarchic regime. In the video we depict the history and roots of the conflict as well as the current explosive situation in Moldova.

We appeal to all the major powers: the US, EU, Russia and the UN to pay close attention to the lawlessness spreading in the region. We call on to draw attention to the needs of millions of ordinary people, driven to despair by the feudal-oligarchic regime.

The small Eastern European country of Moldova is experiencing a profound economic and political crisis.

Mass protests began in recent days. The situation in Moldova has deteriorated over the past few years as the population grew more impoverished. The collapse began in 2009, following the “orange revolution” of April 9, when the parliament building in Kishinev was set on fire and the office of Moldova’s president, the leader of Moldova’s Communist Party Vladimir Voronin, was destroyed.

Even though the latter demonstrated loyalty to the US and to the EU bureaucracy by proclaiming Moldova’s desire to grow closer to the EU and established Moldova’s cooperation with NATO (in spite of its constitutional status as a neutral country).

Video produced by South Front

US and EU supported opposition’s protest actions as they were afraid that the formally Communist Voronin might change the country’s foreign policy direction. After the crisis caused by the inability to select the head of state, in the summer of 2009 power was assumed by an alliance of liberal democratic parties which declared themselves in favor of European integration.

Western politicians were quick to define the rule by the new “Alliance for European Integration” (Liberal-Democratic Party, Democratic Party, and Liberal Party) as a Moldovan “success story” within the Eastern Partnership project established between the EU and post-Soviet states. Since the only real aim of this project was to cut these countries’ ties to Russia, Moldova’s European overseers did not worry about monitoring the actual state of affairs in the country’s society.

Against the backdrop of the Kiev Maidan of 2013-2014 which ended with a coup d’etat and a prolonged political crisis in Ukraine and Saakashvili’s failure in Georgia, Washington and Brussels felt it important not only retain Moldova under its influence, but present it to Western societies as an example of successful implementation of “principles of liberal politics.” It ignored the absence of reforms and the catastrophic deterioration of the country’s economy accompanied by the establishment of government by oligarchy.

The most important thing was to formalize the “partnership” by signing the Association Agreement, which was done in mid-2014. After that, EU’s officials decided that the Moldovan game was over. Then the EU was afflicted by the Greek crisis and the waves of refugees, and Moldova was forgotten.

The situation in Moldova continued to deteriorate. There was an escalation of struggle between the two main oligarchic clans represented by the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova under Vladimir Filat and the Democratic Party of Moldova whose boss is oligarch Vladimir Plakhotnyuk,  who also controls the country’s prosecutor’s office and the judicial system. This competition largely took the form of financial embezzlement to the tune of about $1 billion dollars vanishing from Moldova’s banking system during 2014.

Today’s wave of protests in Kishinev was caused by the population displeasure at all the listed negative developments. The main demands put to those who are in favor of strengthening ties with Russia and the supporters of drawing closer to the EU include dissolving the illegitimate parliament and holding a special election. The protests were triggered by the parliament’s establishment, using a majority hurriedly put together by Plakhotnyuk, of a new Cabinet of Ministers without discussing its program, as the Constitution requires.

The protesters also demand investigating and holding responsible those who embezzled bank funds and dismissing Prosecutor General Korneliy Gurin who is Plakhotnyuk’s protégé. Another demand is the release of 8political prisoners, with the honorary Parliamentary Assembly of the Council o fEurope member Grigoriy Petrenko. The regime is trying to sentence them to various terms of imprisonment for their organizing a peaceful protest action in September 2015 against the unlawful actions by law enforcement.

Plakhotnyuk, who managed to get rid of his main competitor Filat and who now is the absolute ruler of Moldova, has the West’s full support. The US, through its ambassador to Kishinev James Pettit, and EU countries through their representatives, are against early elections due to concerns that they could lead to parties favoring the country’s neutrality gaining a majority in Parliament.

Moldova’s regime is currently preparing to use the army against protests in Kishinev.

In the EU’s south-east a new crisis zone is appearing, which is capable of descending into armed conflict.

Amidst a almost total western media blackout, Turkey and the US have initiated a military invasion in Syrian territory. On Wednesday evening, the Turkish army reportedly entered Syrian territory near Jarablus. US troops took control of Rmeilan airfield in Syria’s northern province of Hasakah. It’s unclear what are the real objectives for western military operations on Syrian soil According to the latest news, a major Turkish intervention is expected.

‘US troops have taken control of Rmeilan airfield in Syria’s northern province of Hasakah to support Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)”, a spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. The airfield is close to Syria’s borders with Iraq and Turkey.

Syrian Local Coordination Committees say that the US has been preparing and expanding Rmeilan airport for a while now. When asked by Al Jazeera, a US CENTCOM media operations officer did not confirm or deny the reports.

According to information received by Sputnik on Wednesday, Turkey has been amassing military units along the Syrian border. The number of troops is estimated to be around 1,000. The troops have reportedly crossed into Aleppo province, according to Hawar News, along with military vehicles, heavy equipment, and mine detection gear. Turkey has denied reports of an invasion, but reports from the ground confirm the military incursion.

Russia Insider writes, that Turkey has seized the ISIS-controlled town of Jarabulus, but faced no resistance, according to reports:

“Eyewitnesses to the incursion reported that the Turkish forces have not encountered any resistance from ISIS fighters in the area. These reports once again raise the question of possible collaboration between Turkey and ISIS aimed at halting the advance of the Kurdish militias in north Syria.”

The Turkish operation is “officially” aimed at combating Daesh (ISIS) militants, who have fortified Jarablus. But sources tell Sputnik that Ankara may be more interested in preventing the YPG from gaining a foothold in a region of strategic importance. Various reports indicate that Ankara could soon (if it has not already) launch a ground operation in neighboring Syria, confirms Sputnik on Thursday.

STRATFOR: “WARZONE IS RAPIDLY BECOMING CROWDED”

“Turkey has already begun to ramp up its artillery strikes along its border with Syria to help its rebel allies and to destroy Islamic State targets. This could indicate an effort to soften enemy defenses ahead of a Turkish ground incursion once minesweeping operations have been completed,” Stratfor explained.

“Ankara’s ground operation – if launched – could deal a blow to Daesh. But many experts and politicians have pointed out that Turkey views dealing with the Kurds, not the terrorist group, as its key priority. The offensive than “would also strengthen the [Turkey-backed] rebels in northern Syria, in turn preventing the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from expanding their reach westward,” Stratfor noted.

Turkey’s ground offensive will likely add additional stress to the already strained relations between Ankara and Moscow. According to Stratfor:

“Still, that does not mean that Ankara, with Washington’s help, is not trying to reach an understanding with Moscow, at least in terms of setting up deconfliction procedures to avoid clashing with each other in the Syrian Warzone, which is rapidly becoming crowded.”

HOW WILL RUSSIA RESPOND?

RT reports that ISIS terrorists have increased their activities ahead of next week’s inter-Syrian talks, with insurgents in the Syrian province of Aleppo receiving reinforcements from Turkey, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The much-anticipated talks between the Syrian government and different opposition groups are scheduled to take place in  Geneva on January 25.

“Unfortunately, in recent days, it’s especially noticeable that ahead of the planned start of the inter-Syrian negotiations in Geneva the activities of terrorist groups have intensified. Obviously, they’re trying to turn the tide in their favor on the battlefield,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing in Moscow.

Zakharova said that Russia is concerned over Ankara’s increased military incursions into Syria, adding that

“it cannot be ruled out that… fortifications [built by Turkey] along the Syrian-Turkish border may be used by militant groups as strongholds.”

“While all parties involved pin their hopes on the start of a meaningful and… inclusive dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition, external forces continue to help militants in Syria, including terrorist groups, providing them with arms and ammunition,” she stressed.

Notes:

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160120/1033456296/turkey-jarablus.html

https://www.rt.com/news/329675-aleppo-militants-reinforcements-turkey/

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/takes-control-rmeilan-airfield-syr…

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160121/1033489316/turkey-syria-isis-…

https://www.stratfor.com/sample/analysis/iraq-syria-battlespace-0

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/turkish-forces-moves-syria-how-wil…

Pyongyang long sought normalized relations with America and other Western nations. Washington wanting adversarial relations maintained prevents it.

A previous article explained why North Korea wants nukes. It fears America for good reason. It knows it wages endless imperial wars, raping one country after another.

Truman’s naked aggression turned most of North Korea to rubble. Millions died, mostly civilians. Pyongyang wants protection against a possible repeat of what happened earlier.

North Korea chose nuclear weapons as its strategy, for defensive, not offensive purposes.

Washington claims Pyongyang poses a nuclear threat, a pretext for greater US regional militarization, the real threat all Asian nations face.

According to US Pacific Command spokesman Capt. Darryn James, Washington may further militarize Hawaii, Guam, and continental America from (nonexistent) Pyongyang ballistic missile threats.

Kauai’s Aegis Ashore site’s “proven test capability” can be converted to a combat complex, he said.

US Pacific Command head Admiral Harry Harris “is always exploring options to forward deploy and operationalize the latest advancements in ballistic missile defense technologies in the Pacific, where we face increasingly sophisticated threats to the homeland,” according to James.

Fact: America faced no external threats since WW II ended – only ones it invents as pretexts for endless wars of aggression, deployments of US combat troops equipped with weapons of mass destruction worldwide, and homeland police state repression.

China expressed concern about possible greater US regional militarization than already, a clear threat to its national security.

“All measures seeking to increase military capacities will only intensify antagonism and will not help to solve the problem,” Beijing’s Washington embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan stressed.

America’s west coast and Alaska are heavily militarized against potential threats even though none exist.

Russia is concerned about US-led NATO’s Eastern Europe buildup, increasingly close to its borders.

It’s deploying additional forces with state-of-the-art weapons in its southwestern areas – countering US-led NATO plans to expand its Black Sea region presence, along with aiding Ukraine increase its combat readiness.

Black Sea Fleet spokesman Captain Vyacheslav Trukhachov said over 15 new Russian warships were deployed in the Black Sea in 2015.

They include two missile carriers and two nuclear submarines, equipped with state-of-the-art Kalibr-NK cruise missile systems – able to strike targets with precision accuracy up to 3,000 km away, proved effective in Russia’s anti-terrorist Syrian campaign.

Russian Northern Caucasus and Rostov region forces have warplanes able to strike targets accurately throughout the Black and Caspian Sea regions.

Its Iskander-M ballistic missiles can penetrate existing missile defense systems. Its effective range is 500 km.

Russia’s sophisticated weapons can match or exceed America’s best – why Pentagon commanders call its capability “awesome,” a force to be reckoned with.

US Air Forces in Europe commander General Frank Forenc called its aerial qualitative and quantitative capability “alarming.”

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.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair was back in Burma earlier this month for at least his fifth visit since a quasi-civilian government assumed power under President Thein Sein.

Blair, who has staked out a lucrative niche in various advisory and entrepreneurial roles since leaving office, met with outgoing Union Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann and National League for Democracy chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw on Jan. 7.

However, as in previous years, the purpose of his visit was less than clear.

A UK-based rights group, Burma Campaign UK, has consistently called on Blair to reveal the precise nature of his dealings in Burma. The group reiterated this stance in an email to The Irrawaddy on Thursday.

“Tony Blair should be transparent about what who he is working for and why he keeps visiting Burma,” said Mark Farmaner, Burma Campaign UK director.

“In other countries Tony Blair has been known to combine work with his foundations with his business interests.”

Farmaner said the advocacy group had repeatedly written to Blair’s office to seek details of his dealings in Burma, without receiving adequate clarification.

Burma Campaign UK has previously stated that Blair was believed to be advising Thein Sein in some capacity.

Blair’s former chief of staff from 1997-2007, Jonathan Powell, also has interests in Burma through his charity Inter Mediate, which works in conflict resolution.

According to informed sources, Powell helped broker a trip to Columbia in December for a delegation comprised of representatives from the Burma Army, three ethnic Karen armed groups including the Karen National Union, and the government-affiliated Myanmar Peace Center, to study the country’s peace process.

Farmaner said he wouldn’t be surprised if Blair’s recent visit was linked to Powell’s work in Burma.

“Jonathan Powell and Tony Blair are old friends from their time when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and they have both been involved in Burma in recent years,” he said.

“The problem is that their involvement seems to have been more in support of President Thein Sein’s government than being neutral or supporting civil society and the democracy movement.”

The Irrawaddy wrote to Inter Mediate for comment but was yet to receive a reply at time of publication.

Bertil Lintner, a veteran Swedish journalist and the author of several books on Burma, said there were numerous foreign organizations jockeying for involvement in Burma’s ongoing peace process.

“It is just a waste of time and money in the ‘peace-industrial complex,’” Lintner said. “There is lots of money to be made there.”

The Paris Attacks, the current flood of migration, and the incidents in Cologne on New Year’s Eve: it is hard to tell fact from fiction these days; the lines separating these incidents become increasingly blurred. What they have in common: they illustrate the supposed threat under which we all live.

The German media does not get tired of stressing and discussing the ungraspable foreign threat. However, beyond engaging in discussions deliberately inciting public fear of terror, and discussions that either condemn or romanticize the refugee, the crucial point is to see how these incidents create dynamics that will fundamentally change German society. The pattern at the basis of these dynamics: Strategies of threat-creation and othering enable a development toward an increased militarization, both in terms of foreign and domestic policy.

Let’s first look at the German reaction to the Paris terror attacks. It encompasses militarizing consequences on the foreign-policy level, and consequences heightening the threat-perception on the domestic level. In terms of German foreign policy, the Paris attacks and the way they were mediated have clearly served to publicly justify increased military engagement. Through the media, Secretary of Defense, Ursula Von der Leyen stressed the need to show solidarity to France, to help France defeat the threat of terrorism, and the need to take on responsibility in the foreign-policy realm in the form of military intervention. Consequently, it only took the government a little more than two weeks after the attacks to ratify a German military intervention in Syria.

However, helping out France in defeating the terrorist threat is only the purpose that can be sold most comfortably to the public. At the same time, there is another purpose that blurs the lines between the Paris attacks and the refugee crisis: Military intervention is focused simultaneously on the official quest to combat terror, and on enhancing the possibilities of “refugee repatriation.” According to the Spiegel International article, the strategy behind Germany’s military participation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali,and Syria seems less focused on a long term establishment of peace, stability, and order, and more focused on a short-term solution for the German refugee crisis.

The Spiegel article exemplifies this point by talking about Berlin’s primary goal in Afghanistan, which is to ensure “that at least part of the country remains safe enough that rejected asylum-seekers can reasonably be deported.” Germany is expanding its missions in Iraq and Mali, the article states, for the same reason. A mission to Libya, to secure the region and “slow the wave of refugees” is also considered. Consequently, there is a lot more to Germany’s foreign-policy militarization than the constantly mediated threat of international terror.

In terms of German domestic policy, the Paris attacks have served to further instill the fear of terror in the German population, and to militarize the German public sphere. Two personal first-hand experiences illustrate these dynamics. Nine days after the Paris Attacks, I went to a fairly small concert (maybe one- or two thousand people) in Leipzig. In order to get in, you had to take off your hat, scarf, gloves, open your jacket, and let security pat you down and look into your bag. I was very irritated by this measure since I could remember, from other such occasions, only having to let them take a look into your bag and show them the ticket. So while the security lady patted me down, I asked her: “Excuse me, is this normal now?” and she actually answered what I had expected but nevertheless hoped not to hear: “Yes, since Paris that is normal.” This was a small concert a little outside of Leipzig! To me, this is ridiculous. The point here seems to be to ensure that every individual is constantly reminded of the big, looming terrorist threat.

The same can be said about another domestic consequence: On December 20^th I went home for Christmas by train. Upon entering Leipzig main station, I immediately noticed two police officers patrolling the station. The sight itself is neither new nor troubling. However, one of them carried a machine gun at the ready, which I had never before seen anywhere in Germany. When I related my observation to friends from Stuttgart and Munich, they told me it was the same in their cities. Quite clearly, this constitutes a militarization of the public sphere and, just like the concert-incident, serves to heighten the public awareness of the looming threat.

Now, turning attention to the incidents of New Year’s Eve in Cologne and the way they are mediated, it is possible to see that they serve as a strategic continuation to further enhance the dynamics of militarizing the public and the private sphere, and of instilling fear within German society. One of the first government resolutions in response to the Cologne incidents comprises the creation of four thousand additional police positions from 2016 to 2018, three thousands of which will be deployed to secure train stations and borders. Probably, as it seems to be the new normal now, they, too, will carry their machine guns constantly at the ready. There are demands, yet to be discussed, of the SPD party to increase the number to up to thirteen thousand positions in total. The fact that police academy experts such as Professor Rafeal Behr cite studies that clearly show that more police never simply equals more safety speaks to the primary quest of militarizing the public sphere.

The constantly mediated threat of the criminal migrant that was incited by the Cologne incidents also serves to create acceptance of increased public surveillance measures. Parts of the German government demand more surveillance, as discussed in the article above. This probably also entails a further normalization of incidents like the one related at the concert, incidents that slowly but steadily infringe the citizenry’s personal rights and heighten its awareness of constantly being under general suspicion. Moreover, the recent law on data retention plays into this dynamic. In the discussion of the consequences to be drawn from Cologne, there is repeated emphasis on the fact that the German intelligence service can access the collected data, and that it can, and should, make use of its possibility to hack computers and run online searches.

Apart from the official political consequences drawn by the government, the incidents of Cologne have resulted in a militarization of the private sphere as well. According to a statement by Daniela Lindemann, spokesperson of the police in Cologne, there is a clear increase of official requests to own a weapon (you need a special firearms certificate in order to own a weapon in Germany). As of January 15^th, there have been three hundred requests, whereas there were only four hundred of them in all of 2015, she stated. Shockingly, an increasing number of the population in Cologne seems to deem it necessary to own a weapon, and consequently seems to deem the possibility of using it against another person in real life a normal measure of self-defense, which illustrates the shift toward a normalization of militarization.

Finally, the mediated process of othering the refugee is a pattern at the basis of German domestic militarizing dynamics, as it serves to create a concrete threat. It works along the lines of age-old discrimination patterns and perfectly complements the looming ungraspable threat of terrorism, in that it gives the threat a “dark face,” that is supposedly looming in front of everybody’s door, on the public spaces through which we navigate every day. Labeling all dark-skinned men existing in a status outside of mainstream white society as criminal, savage-like, rape-prone threats, especially to the white woman, does that ring a bell? In terms of historic US race relations it sure does. There is a part of the current discourse in Germany that works in exactly the same way, and therefore discriminates in the same way. The recent covers of the FOCUS magazine and the Süddeutsche Zeitung demonstrate the racist discourse on the sexualized, dark threat to the white woman most clearly. Since the discriminatory discourse implicitly stresses the urgent need to counter the threat, it crucially advances and legitimizes the agenda of domestic militarization.

There remains the question as to why these methods of militarization are created and pursued so thoroughly. What comes to mind first on the national level is of course Germany’s economic power in terms of arms exports. Although China has outrun Germany in 2015, Germany still ranks fourth on the world scale. Hence, German wealth, like that of many other countries, largely rests upon arms exports. However, Germany’s methods of militarization cannot be examined in isolation as they go hand in hand with the international dynamics of increased militarization that started after 9/11 and led up to the consequences of last year’s Paris attacks. Following the French example, the German government now wants to play its very own part in the geopolitical power plays. Therefore, public feelings and opinions are channeled in directions convenient for the overall cause, and the increasing militarization of German foreign and domestic policy generates both a slow and often unconscious intimidation from above, and a general obedience within society in regard to the international geopolitical power plays.

Elena van den Berg is currently enrolled in the American Studies Master’s program at Leipzig University. Her research interests include foreign policy, contemporary US literature, and notions of tourism in US culture.

Guantanamo is one of numerous US global black sites operating extrajudicially – torture and other forms of abuse still ongoing, major media entirely silent.

Obama could have closed all US torture prisons by executive order on day one in office. He chose to keep them operating.

His pledge to close Guantanamo during his first year in office was deliberate deception. The evidence speaks for itself.

Washington operates solely by its own rules. International, constitutional and US statute laws don’t matter.

Former Guantanamo guard Joseph Hickman believes Guantanamo officials wanted prisoners causing “problems for the command” by leading hunger strikes or other forms of resistance silenced. More on him below.

Law Professor Mark Denbeaux published numerous “GTMO Reports,” including profiles of detainees held, allegations against them, and disturbing discrepancies in government accounts, explaining reasons for reported deaths.

His earlier “Death in Camp Delta” report covered three simultaneous deaths in maximum security Alpha Block. Yassar Talal Al Zahrani, Mani Shaman Turki Al Habardi Al Tabi, and Ali Abdullah Ahmed were found dead shortly after midnight on June 10, 2006.

The Pentagon said they were found hanging in their cells, claiming a short note found on each body indicated coordinated resistance against confinement.

Denbeaux’s report found “dramatic flaws in the government’s investigation. (It) raise(s) serious questions about the security of the Camp (and) derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies,” he said.

Most likely they killed them, then whitewashed the investigation to suppress cold-blooded murder. Autopsy reports said the three men were hanging unobserved for at least two hours – despite constant round-the-clock surveillance by guards and video cameras recording everything.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) at Guantanamo require guards observe each detainee at least once every 10 minutes. Were they ordered to stay away from their cells the night of their deaths? Questions about what happened remain unanswered.

What was the time and precise means of death?

How did the three men braid nooses with torn sheets and/or clothing unobserved?

How did they make mannequins, making it look like they were asleep in bed?

Why did they stuff rags down their throats to choke?

How were they able to hang sheets to obstruct views into their cells?

How did they manage to bind their hands and feet?

How was a noose hung from the cell wall metal mesh or ceiling?

The Pentagon claimed they climbed on a sink, placed nooses around their necks, then released their weight and were strangled to death.

How did all three follow precisely the same procedure? Their cells were separated from each other. They had no direct contact. How could they have cooperatively planned anything?

How did they manage to do everything explained above unobserved for two or more hours? One victim was scheduled for release in 19 days. Why would he kill himself?

No prisoner cries were heard or unusual activity detected indicating possible suicide attempts.

Why was no serious investigation conducted? The three men in maximum security confinement died with no credible explanation why.

Were cold-blooded murders committed, whitewashed as suicides? Draw your own conclusions.

Hickman said he saw hunger strike leaders brought to a secret CIA “black site” at Guantanamo, accusing the agency of staging suicides to eliminate them.

The Defense Department claimed the three victims “killed themselves in an apparent suicide pact,” despite no credible evidence proving it.

Hickman noticed unusual activity on the night in question. “I witnessed a van. We used to call it paddy wagon. It was a detainee transport van,” he said.

It “came into the gate, backed up to Camp 1 and took a detainee out of Camp 1 Alpha Block and put him into the paddy wagon and drove” off.

The same procedure repeated two more times. “I got suspicious because there were no military commissions going on. They were taking detainees outside of Camp America,” Hickman explained.

“I was suspicious of why they were doing it and where they were going.” Vans headed for “a facility which we called Camp No” – a secret Guantanamo CIA black site.

“All three of those detainees (sent to the) CIA black site that night were (hunger strike) leaders. There were constant hunger strikes…causing a lot of problems for the command.”

At least one victim, Yassar Talal Al Zahrani, wrote his father before his death, saying camp authorities wanted to get rid of him.

After leaving Guantanamo, Hickman “went to the Justice Department once. (T)hey squashed the story because I was revealing the CIA black site and they did not want that information out,” he explained.

Human rights attorney Scott Horton’s Harper’s magazine report, titled “The Guantanamo ‘Suicides’ – A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle” discussed Hickman’s revelations in detail.

Nothing changed. His own book is due out in February, titled “Murder at Camp Delta” telling his firsthand account of things with hindsight.

The victims in question “did not commit suicide,” he said. Their deaths haunted him “until (he) came forward.”

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.

Christian refugees from Syria claim they saw a former Islamic State member living in Frankfurt, and that this is not an isolated case. Police investigated but refused to file charges because the alleged terrorist has done nothing criminal in Germany.

On his last visit to the Saarland region of Germany, on the border with France, RT’s Peter Oliver met with a group of Assyrian Christians who had been held hostage by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

They recalled that while being held in IS captivity, the only thing they prayed for was to be shot instead of being beheaded.

The same community, now living in the city of Saarlouis, say the horrors of that experience have followed them all the way to Germany, after they found out that a man they say had ties to Islamic State is living among them.

A refugee, who only agreed to speak to RT on condition of anonymity, said he is positive the man living in his town is the same member

of IS he encountered in Syria.

“He stopped me many times at the checkpoint near our village; we were even able to find him on Facebook, I go to the web page and th

ere’s this guy again,” the refugee said.

When the man first saw the jihadist in Germany, his reaction was that of panic.

“I was very scared that this terrorist is in a democratic state like Germany just living here,” the refugee told RT, adding that he does not understand how those who kept whole families hostage now have Syrian refugee status in Germany.

The Assyrian community now feels very insecure as “this was not the first case” a former IS member had been recognized, the man said. He added that some people are even considering leaving Germany, but do not know where to run to.

Community leaders say that once they were convinced the ‘refugee’ was in fact a former jihadist, they went straight to the police.

“The police have taken this very seriously, but we worry that the law cannot back this up with a strong case. They have to wait until this person does something criminal here,” Charlie Kanoun, the chairman of the Assyrian Culture Association, told RT.

“But those people were killers in Syria and fly the ISIS flag here even. Such people should have no place in Germany,” Kanoun said.

Police confirmed that an investigation is underway, but no charges relating to terrorism or any other crime have been brought.

As the investigation continues, and with the influx of refugees showing no signs of slowing, the question is being asked as to who exactly is coming to Europe.

“This is a very difficult point for our community here. Those victims of kidnapping were brought here for safety and security, and then these terrorists are here,” Kanoun said, adding that the German authorities “are being very gentle with them,” reiterating that his compatriots might have to flee again.

“This is tragic that we will again be forced to be refugees, this time in a Christian state that cannot protect us,” Kanoun said.

Last February, Islamic State kidnapped around 250 Assyrian Christians and demanded ransoms of $100,000 per person. Some have since been released but many remain in captivity.

“ISIS came to our village, they devastated our fields, burnt our churches, tore apart our lives. They kidnapped us, murdered us. We have an unbearable feeling of loss,” a former hostage told RT.

He recalled that while in captivity, he overheard a conversation between his captors, saying that “the West will belong to us and we will conquer it through Islamization.”

One of the IS militants holding Assyrian Christians captive was a German who had converted to radical Islam, the former hostage said.

The German security services are currently preparing findings on more than 790 German Islamists who have traveled to Syria, the National Police Bureau of Saarland reported.

Germany has seen increasing tensions over the migrant issue. Recently scuffles broke out between police and a group of protesters who were attempting to disrupt a right-wing rally near Berlin.

The Alternative for Germany Party was demonstrating in the city of Potsdam in support of women’s rights, following the mass sex attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

They were confronted by a counter-protest claiming the assaults are being used to incite hatred towards migrants.

Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert Parry.

In seeking to put Sen. Bernie Sanders on the defensive over his foreign policy positions, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embracing a neoconservative stance on the Middle East and gambling that her more hawkish approach will win over Democratic voters.

Losing ground in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent polls, the Clinton campaign has counterattacked against Sanders, targeting his sometimes muddled comments on the Mideast crisis, but Clinton’s attack line suggests that Sanders isn’t adequately committed to the positions of Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his American neocon acolytes.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s strategy is to hit Sanders for seeking a gradual normalization of relations with Iran, while Clinton has opted for the neocon position of demonizing Iran and siding with Israel and its quiet alliance with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states that share Israel’s animosity toward Shiite-ruled Iran.

By attaching herself to this neocon approach of hyping every conceivable offense by Iran while largely excusing the human rights crimes of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni-run states, Clinton is betting that most Democratic voters share the neocon-dominated “group think” of Official Washington: “Iran-our-enemy, Israel/Saudi Arabia-our-friends.”

She made similar calculations when she voted for and supported President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq; when she sided with the neocons in pushing President Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan; and when she instigated “regime change” in Libya – all policies that had dubious and dangerous outcomes. But she seems to still believe that she will benefit politically if she continues siding with the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” side-kicks.

On Thursday, the Clinton campaign put Sanders’s suggestion of eventual diplomatic relations with Iran in the context of his lack of ardor toward defending Israel.

“Normal relations with Iran right now?” said Jake Sullivan, the campaign’s senior policy adviser. “President Obama doesn’t support that idea. And it’s not at all clear why it is that Senator Sanders is suggesting it. … Many of you know Iran has pledged the destruction of Israel.”

Actually, the Clinton campaign is mischaracterizing Sanders’s position as expressed in last Sunday’s debate. Sanders opposed immediate diplomatic relations with Tehran.

“Understanding that Iran’s behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we’re hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable,” Sanders said. “Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should.”

Standing with the Establishment

But the Clinton campaign’s distortions aside, there is the question of whether or not the Democratic base has begun to reject Official Washington’s whatever-Israel-wants orthodoxy.

Hillary Clinton seems to be betting that rank-and-file Democrats remain enthralled to Israel and afraid to challenge the powerful neocon propaganda machine that controls the U.S. establishment’s foreign policy by dominating major op-ed pages, TV political chat shows and leading think tanks. The neocons also maintain close ties to the “liberal interventionists” who hold down key jobs in the Obama administration.

Clinton’s gamble assumes that progressives and foreign-policy “realists” have failed to develop their own infrastructure for examining and debunking many of the neocon/liberal-hawk propaganda themes and thus any politician who deviates too far from those “group thinks” risks getting marginalized.

In other words, Clinton is counting on the establishment structure holding through Election 2016 despite the populist anger that is evident from the surge of support for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders on the left and for billionaire nativist Donald Trump on the right.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential debate sponsored by CNN.

In effect, this election is asking American voters if they want incremental changes to the current system – represented by establishment candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush – or if they want to shake the system up with insurgent candidates like Sanders and Trump.

Though most neocons are supporting Republican establishment candidates who have sworn allegiance to the Israeli/neocon cause, the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio, some prominent neocons have made clear that they would be happy with Hillary Clinton as president.

For instance, neocon superstar Robert Kagan told The New York Times in 2014 that he hoped that his neocon views – which he now prefers to call “liberal interventionist” – would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration. After all, Secretary of State Clinton named Kagan to one of her State Department advisory boards and promoted his wife, neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the provocative “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014.

According to the Times’ article, Clinton “remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”

Kagan is quoted as saying: “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. …  If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Though Clinton recently has sought to portray herself as an Obama loyalist – especially in South Carolina where she is counting on strong African-American support – she actually has adopted far more hawkish positions than the President, both when she was a senator and as Obama’s first secretary of state.

‘Team of Rivals’ Debacle

Arguably, Obama’s most fateful decision of his presidency occurred shortly after the 2008 election when he opted for the trendy idea of a “team of rivals” to run his foreign policy. He left Bush family loyalist Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, retained a neocon-dominated senior officer corps led by the likes of Gen. David Petraeus, and picked hawkish Sen. Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. Thus, Obama never took control of his own foreign policy.

The troika of Clinton-Gates-Petraeus challenged Obama over his desire to wind down the Afghan War, bureaucratically mouse-trapping him into an ill-advised “surge” that accomplished little other than getting another 1,750 U.S. soldiers killed along with many more Afghans. Nearly three-quarters of the 2,380 U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan were killed on Obama’s watch.

Ironically, it was Gates who shed the most light on Clinton’s neocon-oriented positions in his memoir, Duty, written after he left the Pentagon in 2011. While generally flattering Clinton for her like-minded positions, Gates also portrays Clinton as a pedestrian foreign policy thinker who is easily duped and leans toward military solutions.

Former CIA Director (and later Defense Secretary) Robert Gates.

Indeed, for thoughtful and/or progressive Democrats, the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton could represent a step back from some of President Barack Obama’s more innovative foreign policy strategies, particularly his readiness to cooperate with the Russians and Iranians to defuse Middle East tensions and his willingness to face down the Israel Lobby when it is pushing for heightened confrontations and war.

Based on her public record and Gates’s insider account, Clinton could be expected to favor a neoconservative approach to the Mideast, one more in line with the dominant thinking of Official Washington and the belligerent dictates of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Standing with Israeli Bigots

As a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton rarely challenged the conventional wisdom on the Mideast or resisted the use of military force to solve problems. She famously voted for the Iraq War in 2002 – falling for President George W. Bush’s bogus WMD case – and remained a war supporter until her position became politically untenable during Campaign 2008.

Representing New York, Clinton avoided criticizing Israeli actions. In summer 2006, as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s bigoted Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”

At a pro-Israel rally with Clinton in New York on July 17, 2006, Gillerman proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon. “Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah.

Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

Sen. Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks, since doing so would presumably have offended an important pro-Israel constituency, which she has continued to cultivate.

In November 2006, when President Bush nominated Gates to be Defense Secretary, Clinton gullibly misread the significance of the move. She interpreted it as a signal that the Iraq War was being wound down when it actually presaged the opposite, that an escalation or “surge” was coming.

From her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton failed to penetrate the smokescreen around Gates’s selection. The reality was that Bush had ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in part, because he had sided with Generals John Abizaid and George Casey who favored shrinking the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Gates was privately onboard for replacing those generals and expanding the U.S. footprint.

On with the Surge

After getting blindsided by Gates over what became a “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, Sen. Clinton sided with Democrats who objected to the escalation, but Gates quotes her in his memoir as later telling President Obama that she did so only for political reasons.

Gates recalled a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009, to discuss whether to authorize a similar “surge” in Afghanistan, a position favored by both Defense Secretary Gates and Secretary of State Clinton, who supported an even higher number of troops than Gates did. But the Afghan “surge” faced skepticism from Vice President Joe Biden and other White House staffers.

Gates wrote that he and Clinton “were the only outsiders in the session, considerably outnumbered by White House insiders. … Obama said at the outset to Hillary and me, ‘It’s time to lay our cards on the table, Bob, what do you think?’ I repeated a number of the main points I had made in my memo to him [urging three brigades].

Hillary agreed with my overall proposal but urged the president to consider approving the fourth brigade combat team if the allies wouldn’t come up with the troops.

In Duty, Gates cited his collaboration with Clinton as crucial to his success in getting Obama to agree to the Afghan troop escalation and the expanded goal of counterinsurgency. Referring to Clinton, Gates wrote, “we would develop a very strong partnership, in part because it turned out we agreed on almost every important issue.”

President Barack Obama stands with Vice President Joe Biden in the Green Room of the White House prior to delivering a statement on the economy on Nov. 9, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The hawkish Gates-Clinton tandem helped counter the more dovish team including Vice President Biden, several members of the National Security Council staff and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, who tried to steer President Obama away from this deeper involvement.

Gates wrote, “I was confident that Hillary and I would be able to work closely together. Indeed, before too long, commentators were observing that in an administration where all power and decision making were gravitating to the White House, Clinton and I represented the only independent ‘power center,’ not least because, for very different reasons, we were both seen as ‘un-fireable.’”

Political Expediency

Gates also reported on what he regarded as a stunning admission by Clinton, writing: “The exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge in Afghanistan, Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq surge worked.’

“The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.” (Obama’s aides disputed Gates’s suggestion that the President indicated that his opposition to the Iraq “surge” was political, noting that he had always opposed the Iraq War. The Clinton team did not challenge Gates’s account.)

But the exchange, as recounted by Gates, indicates that Clinton not only let her political needs dictate her position on an important national security issue, but that she accepts as true the superficial conventional wisdom about the “successful surge” in Iraq.

While that is indeed Official Washington’s beloved interpretation – in part because influential neocons believe the “surge” rehabilitated their standing after the WMD fiasco and the disastrous Iraq War – the reality is that the Iraq “surge” never achieved its stated goal of buying time to reconcile the country’s sectarian divides, which remain bloody to this day and helped create the conditions for the emergence of the Islamic State, which began as “Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

The truth that Hillary Clinton apparently doesn’t recognize is that the “surge” was only “successful” in that it delayed the ultimate American defeat until President Bush and his neocon cohorts had vacated the White House and the blame for the failure could be shifted, at least partly, to President Obama.

Other than sparing “war president” Bush the humiliation of having to admit defeat, the dispatching of 30,000 additional U.S. troops in early 2007 did little more than get nearly 1,000 additional Americans killed – almost one-quarter of the war’s total U.S. deaths – along with what certainly was a much higher number of Iraqis.

For example, WikiLeaks’s “Collateral Murder.” video depicted one 2007 scene during the “surge” in which U.S. firepower mowed down a group of Iraqi men, including two Reuters news staffers, walking down a street in Baghdad. The attack helicopters then killed a Good Samaritan, when he stopped his van to take survivors to a hospital, and severely wounded two children in the van.

The Unsuccessful Surge

A more rigorous analysis of what happened in Iraq in 2007-08 – apparently beyond Hillary Clinton’s abilities or inclination – would trace the decline in Iraqi sectarian violence mostly to strategies that predated the “surge” and were implemented in 2006 by Generals Casey and Abizaid.

Among their initiatives, Casey and Abizaid deployed a highly classified operation to eliminate key Al Qaeda leaders, most notably the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. Casey and Abizaid also exploited growing Sunni animosities toward Al Qaeda extremists by paying off Sunni militants to join the so-called “Awakening” in Anbar Province.

And, as the Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings reached horrendous levels in 2006, the U.S. military assisted in the de facto ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods by helping Sunnis and Shiites move into separate enclaves, thus making the targeting of ethnic enemies more difficult. In other words, the flames of violence were likely to have abated whether Bush ordered the “surge” or not.

Radical Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr also helped by issuing a unilateral cease-fire, reportedly at the urging of his patrons in Iran who were interested in cooling down regional tensions and speeding up the U.S. withdrawal. By 2008, another factor in the declining violence was the growing awareness among Iraqis that the U.S. military’s occupation indeed was coming to an end. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted on – and got – a firm timetable for American withdrawal from Bush.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. (Photo credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessica J. Wilkes)

Even author Bob Woodward, who had published best-sellers that praised Bush’s early war judgments, concluded that the “surge” was only one factor and possibly not even a major one in the declining violence.

In his book, The War Within, Woodward wrote, “In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge.”

Woodward, whose book drew heavily from Pentagon insiders, listed the Sunni rejection of Al Qaeda extremists in Anbar province and the surprise decision of al-Sadr to order a cease-fire as two important factors. A third factor, which Woodward argued may have been the most significant, was the use of new highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics that allowed for rapid targeting and killing of insurgent leaders.

However, in Washington, where the neocons remained very influential, the myth grew that Bush’s “surge” had brought the violence under control. Gen. Petraeus, who took command of Iraq after Bush yanked Casey and Abizaid, was elevated into hero status as the military genius who achieved “victory at last” in Iraq (as Newsweek declared).

Buying Fallacies

Even the inconvenient truths that the United States was unceremoniously ushered out of Iraq in 2011 and that Iraq’s Shiite-Sunni divide widened into a chasm that has since spread divisions into Syria and even into Europe did not dent the cherished conventional wisdom about the “successful surge.”

Yet, it is one thing for neocon pundits to promote such fallacies; it is another thing for the alleged Democratic front-runner for President in 2016 to believe this nonsense. And to say that she only opposed the “surge” out of a political calculation could border on disqualifying.

But the pattern fits with Clinton’s previous decisions. She belatedly broke with the Iraq War during Campaign 2008 only when she realized that her hawkish stance was damaging her political chances against Obama, who had opposed the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Yet, as Secretary of State, Clinton sought to purge officials seen as insufficiently hawkish. After Obama hesitantly approved the Afghan “surge” – and reportedly immediately regretted his decision – Clinton took aim at Eikenberry, a retired general who had served in Afghanistan before being named ambassador.

Pressing for his removal, “Hillary had come to the meeting loaded for bear,” Gates wrote. “She gave a number of specific examples of Eikenberry’s insubordination to herself and her deputy. … She said, ‘He’s a huge problem.’ …

She went after the NSS [national security staff] and the White House staff, expressing anger at their direct dealings with Eikenberry and offering a number of examples of what she termed their arrogance, their efforts to control the civilian side of the war effort, their refusal to accommodate requests for meetings. …

As she talked, she became more forceful. ‘I’ve had it,’ she said, ‘You want it [control of the civilian side of the war], I’ll turn it all over to you and wash my hands of it. I’ll not be held accountable for something I cannot manage because of White House and NSS interference.’

However, when the protests failed to get Eikenberry and General Douglas Lute, a deputy national security adviser, fired, Gates concluded that they had the protection of President Obama and reflected his doubts about the Afghan War policy:

It had become clear that Eikenberry and Lute, whatever their shortcomings, were under an umbrella of protection at the White House. With Hillary and me so adamant that the two should leave, that protection could come only from the president.

The Libya Fiasco

In 2011, Secretary of State Clinton also was a hawk on military intervention in Libya to oust (and ultimately kill) Muammar Gaddafi. However, on Libya, Defense Secretary Gates sided with the doves, feeling that the U.S. military was already overextended in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and another intervention risked further alienating the Muslim world.

This time, Gates found himself lined up with Biden “urging caution,” while Clinton joined with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and NSC aides Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power in “urging aggressive U.S. action to prevent an anticipated massacre of the rebels as Qaddafi fought to remain in power,” Gates wrote. “In the final phase of the internal debate, Hillary threw her considerable clout behind Rice, Rhodes and Power.”

Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.

President Obama again ceded to Clinton’s advocacy for war and supported a Western bombing campaign that enabled the rebels, including Islamic extremists with ties to Al Qaeda, to seize control of Tripoli and hunt down Gaddafi, who was tortured and executed on Oct. 20, 2011.

Clinton expressed, delight when she received the news of Gaddafi’s murder. “We came. We saw. He died,” she chortled, paraphrasing Julius Caesar’s boast after a victory by Imperial Rome.

After Clinton’s “victory,” Libya became a major source for regional instability, including an assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel, an incident that Clinton has called the worst moment in her four years as Secretary of State. The Islamic State also gained a foothold inside Libya, chopping off the heads of Coptic Christians.

Gates retired from the Pentagon on July 1, 2011; Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Nov. 9, 2012, amid a sex-and-secrets scandal; and Clinton stepped down at the State Department on Feb. 1, 2013, after Obama’s reelection.

In 2013, with Clinton gone, Obama charted a more innovative foreign policy course, collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve diplomatic breakthroughs on Syria and Iran, rather than seeking military solutions. In both cases, Obama had to face down hawkish sentiments in his own administration and in Congress, as well as Israeli and Saudi opposition.

But the neocon empire struck back in 2014, with Assistant Secretary Nuland orchestrating a “regime change” in Ukraine on Russia’s border and with the neocon-dominated opinion circles of Official Washington placing the blame for the Ukraine crisis on President Putin’s “aggression.”

Faced with this new “group think” – and still influenced by liberal interventionist advisers such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power – Obama joined the chorus of hate-talk against Putin, ratcheting up tensions with Russia and agreeing to escalate covert U.S. support for Syrian rebels seeking the long-held neocon goal of “regime change” in Syria.

However, Obama continued to collaborate behind the scenes with Russia to achieve an agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program — to the dismay of the neocons who wanted instead to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran on their way to seeking another “regime change.”

Bashing Iran

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a hawk on the Iranian nuclear issue. In 2009-2010, when Iran first indicated a willingness to compromise, she led the opposition to any negotiated settlement and pushed for punishing sanctions.

To clear the route for sanctions, Clinton helped sink agreements tentatively negotiated with Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium out of the country. In 2009, Iran was refining uranium only to the level of about 3-4 percent, as needed for energy production. Its negotiators offered to swap much of that for nuclear isotopes for medical research.

But the Obama administration and the West rebuffed the Iranian gesture because it would have left Iran with enough enriched uranium to theoretically refine much higher – up to 90 percent – for potential use in a single bomb, though Iran insisted it had no such intention and U.S. intelligence agencies agreed.

Then, in spring 2010, Iran accepted another version of the uranium swap proposed by the leaders of Brazil and Turkey, with the apparent backing of President Obama. But that arrangement came under fierce attack by Secretary Clinton and was derided by leading U.S. news outlets, including editorial writers at the New York Times who mocked Brazil and Turkey as being “played by Tehran.”

The ridicule of Brazil and Turkey – as bumbling understudies on the world stage – continued even after Brazil released Obama’s private letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva encouraging Brazil and Turkey to work out the deal. Despite the letter’s release, Obama didn’t publicly defend the swap and instead joined in scuttling the deal, another moment when Clinton and administration hardliners got their way.

That set the world on the course for tightened economic sanctions on Iran and heightened tensions that brought the region close to another war. As Israel threatened to attack, Iran expanded its nuclear capabilities by increasing enrichment to 20 percent to fill its research needs, moving closer to the level necessary for building a bomb.

Clinton’s Course

Ironically, the nuclear deal reached in late 2013 – and solidified in 2015 – essentially accepts Iran’s low-enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes, pretty much where matters stood in 2009-2010. But the Israel Lobby quickly set to work, again, trying to torpedo the new Iran agreements by getting Congress to approve new sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani celebrates the completion of an interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program on Nov. 24, 2013, by kissing the head of the daughter of an assassinated Iranian nuclear engineer. (Iranian government photo)

Clinton remained noncommittal for several weeks as momentum for the sanctions bill grew, but she finally declared her support for President Obama’s opposition to the new sanctions. In a Jan. 26, 2014 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, she wrote:

Now that serious negotiations are finally under way, we should do everything we can to test whether they can advance a permanent solution. As President Obama said, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed, while keeping all options on the table. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that imposing new unilateral sanctions now ‘would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.’ I share that view.

One key question for a Clinton presidential candidacy has been whether she would build on the diplomatic foundation that Obama has laid regarding Iran and Russia— or dismantle it and return to a neocon foreign policy focused on “regime change” and catering to the views of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In her campaign’s latest comments, Hillary Clinton has made clear that she has little interest in deviating further from the Israeli-neocon prescribed hostility toward Iran by letting her campaign accuse Sanders of softness on Tehran.

So, with her once-solid polls numbers softening, she has decided to appeal to hawkish Democrats and the muscular support of the Israel Lobby to help her fend off the Sanders surge.

Clinton is rolling the dice in the belief that most Democrats won’t think through the fallacious “group thinks” of Official Washington – or will at least be scared and confused enough to steer away from Sanders. That way, Clinton believes she can still win the nomination.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com).

The Inquiry into the death of defected FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko concluded with a report, quoting his wife as saying that he either worked for the UK’s intelligence service MI5 or MI6. The report does not document but “implies” the direct involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other by quoting Putin as having said that those who murdered Litvinenko were not God, and that Litvinenko obviously wasn’t Lazarus. 

Alexander Litvinenko defected from Russia to the UK in 2000 after an intermediate release from prison. The former KGB, then FSB officer was arrested on 25 March 1999. He was charged and detained in the FSB Lefortovo prison in Moscow. The charges against Mr Litvinenko were of exceeding his authority by assaulting a suspect.

Litvinenko maintained that charges against him were false or trumped-up. He died in the UK in November 2006 after three weeks of illness. The cause of death was determined to have been polonium poisoning. It is noteworthy that the late Palestinian President Yassir Arafat also succumbed to polonium poisoning.

Litvinenko was one of the former KGB / FSB officers close to the Russian oligarchs who secured the re-election of President Boris Yeltsin and usurped de facto power over many of Russia’s governmental and business affairs.

Litvinenko was particularly close to the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky who also fled Russia after the election of Vladimir Putin to the presidency. Berezovsky made his first money selling cars and accumulated his first considerable “wealth” by defrauding thousands of investors in a Russian car production that never manifested. He was first introduced into the inner circle at the Kremlin during Yeltsin’s presidency, after a failed attempt on his life.

The inquiry report implies that the murder of Litvinenko may be linked to Russian legislation adopted in 2006. The first of the 2006 laws was Federal Law no.35-FZ of 2006 – On Counteraction of Terrorism. It was adopted by the State Duma on 26 February 2006, endorsed by the Federation Council on 1 March 2006 and signed into law by President Putin on 6 March 2006. The Terrorism Law runs to some 17 pages and reads as a code providing for anti-terrorism measures to be taken by Russian forces. The inquiry report states that :

One of the striking features of the Terrorism Law is that it makes provision for Russian forces to take action against terrorism beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. 5.5 The Terrorism Law contemplates anti-terrorism action being taken both by Russia’s armed forces, and also by the “federal security service – i.e. the FSB.”

The report resulting from the inquiry into Litivinenko’s death is widely criticized as being biased against Russia and Vladimir Putin. The Russian legislation is comparable to the US Presidential Order that allows the US President to sign daily “kill lists” and similar legislation in many other countries like for example Israel.

One of the most controversial accusations Litvinenko levied against Vladimir Putin was that Putin and the Russian Security Services were implicated in the bombing of apartment blocks. Bombings which were then blamed on Chechen separatists to justify the war against Chechnya and to secure Putin’s power base by distracting from domestic political issues, said Litvinenko.

The report claims that the poisoning of Litvinenko with polonium “may” indeed have been carried out on Putin’s order. The report highlights a quote according to which Putin has said that “Those who killed Litvinenko were not God, and that Mr. Litvinenko obviously was not Lazarus”. 

The inquiry report quotes Litvinenko’s wife Marina Litvinenko as saying that Alexander had been working for one of the UK’s intelligence services. She wasn’t sure whether it was the domestic intelligence service MI5, the foreign intelligence service MI6 or for both. Marina would, however, stress that he was not “an agent” but had been working for them  “as a contractor or consultant”.

The Donald shoots from the hip and changes his tune every few minutes. True. He thinks about one thing, and that reminds him of something else, and then he goes off on that. However, as he keeps talking and talking and talking, he’s deciding that some of what he’s saying makes sense. He’s firming up his belief in his own sales-pitch. He’s doubling down and getting serious.

And one of the things he’s serious about is trade deals. Bad Globalist deals. Deals that steal more American jobs. He and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t admit it, but they both agree on this general point.

In fact, a new study out of Tufts University torpedoes glowing estimates of the latest such deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The study authors predict the consequences: another 450,000 jobs will be lost in the US by 2025. Oops. Another Globalist trade treaty sucks life out of the American economy. Which is precisely why Obama is obsessed with passing it.

(The study is titled “Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.” A quick breakdown of the study is ontechdirt.com, here; free access to the full paper is on tufts.edu, here)

Bilderberg and the Council on Foreign Relations and Rockefeller Globalists are counting on the TPP. It’s one of their precious babies. They want to undermine the US economy.It’s part of their sink-America program, to pave the way for One United Planet under one management system. Not an American empire. A globalist empire.

And they don’t want some out-of-control US Presidential candidate, whose crowds and poll numbers keep swelling like a massive infection, to swipe and swipe and swipe at these trade treaties and dream up ways to bring more jobs back home. They definitely don’t want that—especially after their current marionette in the White House has done such fine work drowning the economic life of the US. The issuance of new credit cards and part-time work at fast-food joints pouring chocolate on French fries don’t equal renewed prosperity, in case you were fooled by official economic-indicator reports.

These elite Globalist don’t believe for a minute that Trump alone can turn back the clock on their ongoing destruction. But they do realize he can keep talking about it. And in doing so, he can force more people to wake up to the fact that they’re being screwed—and how they’re being screwed.

Globalism is all about allowing mega-corporations to take their factories and jobs out of the country overseas. It’s a cornerstone of every trade deal. Mega-corps can manufacture their products more cheaply in a hell hole with slave workers, and then export those products back here (and to other industrialized countries)—and pay no tariffs. How sweet (and destructive) it is.

Trump, like some swaggering cowboy, keeps shooting his six-guns at this program, even though he doesn’t apparently understand the bottom-line motivation behind it. Or who knows? Maybe he does and he’s staying silent about it.

How did this guy get in the door? Why can’t the media shut up about him? Why does every attack against him, valid or invalid, bring more supporters to his side? What happened to Globalist Jeb? Why is he curled up in fetal position in his bedroom eating Snickers and watching home movies of his family?

Hillary is on board with the Globalist program. She’s all about cold-blooded revenge against the greatest number of people possible. She eats attacks against her, and converts them into dark anti-matter.

But Trump? He’s Mr. Brassy Salesman who parlayed his con and his bankruptcies and his execrable TV show into a fortune. And then he somehow got a few actual ideas into his oversized head. How? Why? Can’t somebody put him on a no-fly list? Can’t he be declared a terrorist or at least a national security risk? Can’t the NSA cough up a few juicy tidbits about his personal life? Haven’t the FBI or the CIA already slipped a few slimeballs into his campaign? There are spies who spy on spies spying on other spies, and they can’t squeeze out one rank and repulsive fact that’ll sink Trump’s ship?

In his 2003 Memoirs, David Rockefeller wrote:

Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

Are we going to let darling David, who’s what, 175 years old now, go to his grave hearing the absurd burlesque echoes of Donald Trump ringing in his ears?

What used to be called the Eastern Establishment—Globalist Ivy League domeheads gazing at the world through the wrong ends of telescopes from Park Avenue penthouses—are in a Trump quandary. They’re disturbed. They have incipient ass-rash and stress-shingles. The natural order of things is wobbling.

Shut this Momzer up!

The permanent underclass must expand.

Economic chaos must prevail, so a new order can be instituted.

Mega-corporations must rule the world (for a while).

The Globalist hope is this: Eventually, Trump will be discredited as a goofball; and therefore, for the foreseeable future, no one else with any clout will raise the issue of trade treaties or the destruction of economies. Trump and whatever he stood for will be remembered as a flash in the pan, a one-hit wonder.

Globalism, as it moves forward, will become a forgotten word.

And the band will play on.

Understand: there are two basic stripes of Globalist. The first is America-first. They want a single managed planet, but they want the US to be the top-boss in the crime empire. The second, as evidenced by the Rockefeller quote above, and by the core international membership of Bilderberg heavy hitters, want shared leadership. The balance is delicate, and the conflict is real. As it moves forward, the last thing both types of Globalists want is some yahoo stepping into the frame and disrupting the whole show.

Trump’s qualifications for the Presidency, such as they are, are entirely beside this point. Whether he was originally put front and center to serve as a losing foil for Hillary Clintonis also, now, beside the point. He’s acquired too much support. As far as the Globalists are concerned, he is a problem.

Perhaps the polls are all wrong and the Primary season will douse the glow on his candle, and by the time the July Republican convention rolls around he’ll be back in New York wheeling and dealing real estate. They hope. There’s a chance no candidate will have enough votes for a slam-dunk nomination in Cleveland, in which case the process will be “brokered,” as they say. Jeb could then exert his power and play his cards behind the scene. But that would cause a major uproar among Trump’s supporters as they cry foul and raise hell, igniting a new nightmare.

Hillary’s inner circle might still be in the process of building up Trump, because they continue to believe he’ll be an easy mark in the election—but it seems late in the game for such a reckless assessment, given how far Trump has come in the last few months.

If some hidden ally is trying to help Trump stay afloat, he might also have non-Globalist convictions. Who, besides China (already in Trump’s crosshairs), is the biggest outsider vis-à-vis free trade? Who is angrily opposing the upcoming Globalist TTIP trade deal, which would cement tighter relations between the European Union and the US and make him even more of an outsider? Who has already expressed admiration for Trump and received kind words from The Donald? Yes, this is mere speculation, but there is one man who fits that bill:

Vladimir Putin. And Putin certainly took notice, last year, when the-hawk-Hillary compared him to, let’s see, who was that again, oh yes, Hitler.

Real estate cowboy and KGB lieutenant colonel? Different galaxies, but they have at least one thing in common: they like believing they’re the toughest guy in the room. Do they both like war too much?

As for the Republican party bosses, they’re going crazy trying to derail Trump. Their main argument seems to be: he’s not a legitimate candidate. But behind that, their actual concern comes back to their own membership in the Globalist club. By allowing Trump to maintain center stage, they’re violating every club rule. And the men who own them aren’t happy. Not happy at all. So these party big shots are backing away from Trump as far as they can, swearing loudly: “See, he’s not our man! Honest, we hate him! He’s a fiend! We want to fire him!”

But so far, Trump still has a patent on that phrase: “You’re fired!”

National politics and international politics are rigged games from top to bottom. But once in a while, a wild one turns up. That person may have started out as just another piece of the fix, but then he breaks away from the pack and stakes out his own territory. When this happens, he’s usually squelched long before he can build up a head of steam. But not now, not in this case.

The horse is out of the barn. And he’s not sprinting for the horizon. He’s prancing and dancing in the pasture. He’s rearing up on his hind legs, he’s jumping, he’s kicking up his heels. He’s doing whatever he wants to. And that’s the key, because the rest of the horses have long since been trained to act like machines. People know the difference. If given the choice, they move to the wild one. He reminds them that they, too, have been socialized to become machines. And they want out.

Yes, there is an definite upside and a downside to this shock and surprise and unpredicted circumstance. But regardless, it’s a fact. It’s happening.

People might wish the wild one was a Caruso or a Nijinsky or an Olivier or a Lincoln or a Tom Paine or a Gandhi—instead of a fast-talking self-promoting New York real estate hustler, who suddenly flips a switch and wants to go to war.

But in a machine world, strange things happen.

When the mandated pattern for all social behavior is cracked and broken and smashed, strange creatures emerge on stage, under the lights. However distorted they may seem, the audience suddenly pays attention, sniffing something they barely remember, but desperately want.

Does the creature dancing across the footlights accurately reflect the audience’s desire? It doesn’t matter to the audience. Because the thing most wished for, and most precious, is an article called freedom.

Will some people misinterpret what it means? You bet they will. They’ll say it’s license. They’ll do all sorts of crazy things with it.

When governments and corporations and media agents keep reshaping the world into new versions of locked-down conformity and robot behaviorism, the breakout will never be smooth.

—The original crime is the individual surrendering his own uniqueness, his own mind, his own imagination, his own formidable power. That’s where it started, and that’s where it comes back to.

Shrugging off inner slavery, across a whole population, and regressing in fear back to the mean, and breaking out again, are more than most people can handle.

But for those who can grasp the core of it, a new dawn rises. And things will never be the same again.

And that leaves Trump or any politician far behind.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

(For the complete Trump archive, click here.)

 “Amnesty International has determined that numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to meet minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings.” –Amnesty International [1]

“Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is only the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the enslavement and genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.”  -Mumia Abu Jamal [2]

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Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent more than half his life behind prison bars.

In 1982, he was charged and convicted on the charge of murder in the first degree over the shooting death of Philadelphia Police officer Daniel Faulkner.

At the time of his arrest Mumia Abu-Jamal was a supporter of the revolutionary MOVE organization, a former member of the Black Panther Party and a dissident radio journalist covering stories of police corruption and repression of people in the African-American community. He was president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Association of Black Journalists. His uncompromising approach to reporting cost him work for mainstream news organizations, and taking on free-lance work, supplementing his income by driving a taxi cab. [3][4]

It is widely speculated that his fearless and uncompromising journalism and truth-telling was a little too inconvenient for certain entrenched interests, providing a motive to eliminate him.

There is overwhelming evidence of irregularities in the legal proceedings which convicted Mumia. Further, it appears that police and legal officials may have conspired to frame Mumia for the murder. [5][6][7]

The apparent injustice of Mumia’s incarceration and condemnation to death inspired legions of supporters around the world to rise up and lobby on his behalf. A partial victory was finally realized on December 7, 2011 when Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced he would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal. His sentence was subsequently reduced to life with no possibility of parole. [8]

Currently, Mumia’s life is in jeopardy due to the effects of a Hepatitis-C infection believed to have been contracted from a blood transfusion he received after being shot during the ’81 encounter with Officer Faulkner. [9]

Mumia’s supporters, citing Mumia’s personal physician and esteemed medical authorities claim that the Philadelphia Department of Corrections (DOC) is deliberately withholding treatments for Hep-C from him and other prisoners suffering from the same malady. As of August of 2015, a lawsuit has been filed against the DOC demanding damages, injunctive relief and a declaration of unconstitutional denial of medical treatment in Mumia’s case. [10]

As these current events unfold, the Global Research News Hour attempts to shine a spotlight on Mumia’s situation with two guests.

Suzanne Ross is a clinical psychologist, a long-time anti-imperialist activist and representative of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She breaks down the particulars of Mumia’s case from the time of his initial arrest and sentencing to the current fight for his life.

 Glen Ford is executive editor of Black Agenda Report, an on-line resource detailing news and analysis from the black left. Ford places Mumia’s case in the context of a history of repression of the African-American population going back to the days of slavery. Ford explains how this repression escalated into a full-blown counter-insurgency starting in the late sixties, which includes the elimination of prominent black leaders like Martin Luther King, and the mass incarceration of blacks.

Listeners wishing to involve themselves in the struggle to Free Mumia are encouraged to review the following on-line resources:

FreeMumia.com

Prisonradio.org

Here is an interview with Mumia from 1996:

Guest Suzanne Ross encourages Mumia’s supporters to contact Governor Tom Wolf at (717) 728-4109 to demand Mumia’s release, and the treatment that could save his life. 

“The governor is not the worst. He actually signed a moratorium on the death penalty…in the face of the Fraternal Order of Police and the Republican Party and many other people being opposed to it, so he has some courage, some principles….continuing to focus on him, I think is strategic….to get those messages from around the world, I think is important.” – (Suzanne Ross from this week’s interview) 

Please be advised that in New York City, on Monday January 25, Suzanne Ross along with fellow supporter Pam Africa and attorney Bob Boyle will be presenting a ‘report back’ to the community on Mumia’s current situation and next steps. This event will start at 6:30pm local time at the historic Riverside Church (91 Claremont Avenue).

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

CHLY 101.7 FM in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1. USA: A Life in the Balance – The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Amnesty International, February, 2000, p.38; https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/001/2000/en/
2. Mumia Abu Jamal, 1996, p.11, “Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience” from South End Press
3. Johnson, Terry E; Hobbs, Michael A (December 10, 1981). “The Suspect – One Who Raised His Voice”. The Philadelphia Inquirer; https://web.archive.org/web/20070702232822/http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/botswana/509/inqarticles/12-10a.htm
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0GbNwKmHaE
5. Ibid
6. http://www.freemumia.com/who-is-mumia-abu-jamal/
7. USA: A Life in the Balance – The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Amnesty International, February, 2000, pg. 20-23; https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/001/2000/en/
8. Williams, Timothy (December 7, 2011). “Execution Case Dropped Against Abu-Jamal”, New York Times; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/us/execution-case-dropped-against-convicted-cop-killer.html?_r=0
9. http://www.freemumia.com/2016/01/report-on-mumias-court-hearing/
10. Ibid

Chemical, biological and radiological warfare is a longstanding US practice, used in direct and proxy wars, Syrians and Yemenis notably affected.

On January 22, the Donbass International News Agency (DINA) headlined “Deadly virus leaked from US laboratory – DPR Army and Intelligence,” saying:

“More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers have died and over 200 are hospitalized,” affected by a virus “immune to all medicines.”

Thousands of Ukrainian troops are stationed in areas bordering Donbass. Intermittent shelling continues, civilians largely threatened.

The lab in question is located in Shelkostantsiay, about 30 km from Kharkov near Donbass. “US military experts” operate there, said DINA.

Donbass Deputy Defense Minister/spokesman Eduard Basurin informed area residents of a potential epidemic.

“According to the medical personnel of the AFU units (Ukrainian troops), there were recorded mass diseases among the Ukrainian military personnel in the field,” he said.

Physicians recorded the unknown virus as a result of which the infected get (a) high fever which cannot be subdued by any medicines, and in two days there comes the fatal outcome.

Thus far from the virus there have died more than twenty servicemen, what is carefully shielded by the commandment of the AFU from the publicity.

Days earlier, DINA reported Ukrainian forces shelled Kominernovo, Zheleznaya Balka and Spartak.

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) intelligence said Ukrainian forces and heavy weapons are deployed near the contact line – indicating a “readiness of the Ukrainian power agencies to aggravate the situation in Donbass,” DINA reported.

Kiev continues violating Minsk ceasefire terms – with full support and encouragement from Washington.

According to DPR intelligence, “(i)n eight localities of the ‘buffer zone’ seized by the AFU there were registered cleansings of the local population, defiant” of Minsk.

The cleansings are carried out by the representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) with reinforcement by units of the 36th separate naval infantry brigade, by reason of the huge information leak in these areas.

In particular, about concentration of the AFU’s forbidden arms and personnel in the so-called ‘grey’ zone, and preparation by the Ukrainian power structures of provocations against civilians.

Basurin said ISIS and other terrorist elements from Syria and Iraq now operate in Donbass. In mid-January, DPR’s Defense Ministry revealed foreign mercenaries in the self-declared republic.

They conduct “recurrent attacks on our positions,” it explained. Is Ukraine a new platform for ISIS expansion? Is Washington deploying their elements there?

Addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, John Kerry turned truth on its head, claiming a safer Middle East and world today.

Conditions are graver than ever. Endless US wars of aggression rage. Kiev refused to implement Minsk I and II ceasefire terms.

Washington wants war, not peace. It wants Donbass destabilized, its freedom fighters eliminated, its democratic rights denied.

Kerry telling WEF participants “it is possible in these next months to find those Minsk agreements implemented and to get to a place where sanctions (on Russia) can be appropriately…removed” runs counter to US policy since Obama replaced democrats with fascists in Ukraine, and Russia was falsely accused of invading its territory.

Illegal sanctions were imposed for fabricated reasons, European nations pressured to go along. Conflict resolution in Donbass remains elusive.

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.

A brief selection of the fabricated pretexts for war, employed by the big power in recent decades.

This is far from a comprehensive list, just some examples to inform and remind.

Use of ‘Flames of War’ by Audiomachine is licensed.

.

Produced by Prof. Tim Anderson

The European Court of Human Rights is refusing to act on a year-old case from the daughter of a Dutch passenger killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down on July 14, 2014. Denise Kenke, daughter of Willem Grootscholten, accuses the Ukraine Government of failing its legal duty to prevent civilian aircraft from flying into the airspace Ukrainian officials knew to be dangerous. Her court papers say the claim is also founded on the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board, reported last October, that the government in Kiev had been negligent in failing to act on “sufficient reason for closing the airspace above the eastern part of Ukraine”.

Although the 11-page application was filed on November 17, 2014, the Court has imposed a secrecy blackout on all details of the case, preventing website access. After Kenke’s lawyer, Elmar Giemulla of Berlin, a leading German aviation law specialist, filed additional argument, legal precedents, and evidence from the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), the Court refu nosed to acknowledge receipt or to reply. Tracey Turner-Tretz, spokesman for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and its registrar, Roderick Liddell, a British national, said this week: “the application in question was granted confidentiality.”

Giemulla for the Grootscholten family said he had not applied for confidentiality, and was not informed by the court that it had been imposed.

“I do not know anything about ‘grant of confidentiality’ . I do not even know whether the court has ever dealt with my complaint apart from internal administrative procedures.”

When Liddell and his spokesman Turner-Tretz were asked what communication the Court has been having on the Kenke case with Ukraine government representatives, and whether Kiev had requested confidentiality, they refused to reply. A US attorney with a US and Ukraine practice says

“it’s not possible for a US court to seal a case from public disclosure without argument in court by lawyers from both sides, and without a recorded ruling.”

From Berlin, Giemulla said this morning: “Someone, I don’t know who, has decided that this case is confidential — from the plaintiff!”

Malaysian Airlines assigned Grootscholten (below, left) seat 11D on MH17. He was on his way to his Indonesian fiancé Christine (right).

For more details of Grootscholten’s life and death, see this memorial video.

His daughter’s application was submitted by Giemulla in November 2014, well within the 6-month time limit required by the ECHR between the cause of the complaint and the filing. Additional papers were filed in January 2015, and the case was assigned case number 4412/15. On March 9, 2015, Giemulla wrote the court asking for confirmation of the proceeding. He received a reply “advis[ing] me not to bother the court by phone considering its high work load. That´s all.”

If the attempt is made to search the court website, there is no trace of the case. On September 4, 2015, Giemulla (right) submitted additional evidence from the newly released DSB report, together with 7 pages of legal argument. The ECHR refused to acknowledge receipt. Last week, Giemulla wrote the ECHR again. “With urgency may I ask to be informed [by the Registrar] about the state of the present proceeding and the other steps intended by the Court.”

Giemulla is well-known in Germany as a specialist on public liability for air crashes. He is also representing kin of German passengers killed in the Lufthansa pilot suicide crash of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 in France in March 2015.

The case against the Ukrainian Government in Kiev does not depend, Giemulla has argued in the ECHR papers, on evidence or speculation about what weapon brought down MH17; who fired it; or what the cause of death for passengers and crew had been. This evidence, and the lack of it, were tested in an international court for the first time last month; that’s when a coroner’s court in the Australian state of Victoria held an inquest on the deaths of Australian passengers on MH17. For reports of that court proceeding, read this and this.

“The final report of the Dutch Safety Board from October, 2015, supports the view”, Giemulla testified to the ECHR in September, “that the government of the Ukraine bears the responsibility for the disaster because it has not closed the airspace above eastern Ukraine at the altitude of the flight plan in spite of knowledge of the circumstances.” In support, he has submitted the DSB report’s analysis of Ukrainian airspace management, military operations in the eastern region airspace, and Ukrainian government officials’ failure to protect civil aviation in the Dniepropetrovsk air traffic control area through which MH17’s flight path, L980, crossed.

Source: DSB Report of October 13, 2015:
http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation-crash-mh17-17-july-2014

The DSB report noted that airspace below the MH17’s altitude had been restricted, but that its flight path L980 at 30,000 feet was open. The DSB concluded the Ukrainian military were responsible for deciding on airspace controls, and that “the Ukrainian authorities took insufficient notice of the possibility of of a civil aeroplane at cruising altitude being fired upon… No measures were taken to protect civil aeroplanes against these weapon systems… the sovereign state bears sole responsibility for the safety of the airspace” (DSB report, page 209). The DSB also noted, without definitive conclusion, that “considerations other than those related to safety could also have played a part in Ukraine’s decision not to completely close the airspace to civil aviation, such as possible financial consequences [loss of overflight fees]. A complete closure may also have given the impression that the state had lost control over a part of its airspace.”

Published estimates from Washington indicate that before the MH17 crash, the government in Kiev was collecting $200 million per annum in overflight and air transit fees.

Giemulla has put the government in Kiev directly on trial in an international court for the first time in the MH17 case. The coronial court proceeding in Australia, and thepostponed inquests in the UK, are investigations of cause of death, and only indirectly address responsibility in Kiev. Giemulla’s written submission to the ECHR is that Kiev is now liable to pay compensation for the death of passenger Grootscholten. “The Ukrainian government was… obliged to close the airspace concerned. Contrary to its legal obligation, it has not blocked the airspace at cruising altitude. This caused, inter alia, the death of the father [Grootscholten] of the complainant [Kenke].” The actions of the Ukrainian government in not closing the airspace had been “intentional actions”, the court papers argue. “The Ukrainian government has failed to meet its legal obligation to avert an existing danger to human life by obvious and available measures.”

In a separate submission, Giemulla has also told the ECHR the Ukrainian courts and their judges are too easily subject to political intervention to provide a remedy for MH17 claims. Giemulla told the court it was not appropriate or relevant to determine who fired the weapon or what caused the crash. “It cannot be judged from the outside which is the correct one of the versions [of cause of crash] and what actually happened. Regardless, it can be understood that in this critical situation the Ukrainian courts have been reluctant to deal with the investigation of the facts and [reluctant to] condemn their government…”

In legal support, Giemulla cited the ECHR’s own rulings on the corruption and bias of Ukrainian judges. “The ECtHR has in the case of Tymoshenko v. Ukraine of 30 July 2013 (Application No 49872/11, S. 41 and 45), and with reference to the earlier case Kaverzin v. Ukraine (Application No 2389/03) adopted an exception to the requirement for exhaustion of legal remedies in the domestic courts, in accordance with Article 35, on the ground that that the available [court] remedies were not capable of ensuring effective legal protection.”

This is a reference to Yulia Tymoshenko’s claim to the ECHR that her conviction and imprisonment by the Ukrainian courts in 2011 had been politically motivated. For more on that case, read this.

Tymoshenko (above, left) as prime minister in Kiev had supervised the appointment of Ganna Yudkivska (right) to the list of ECHR judges, following political infighting in Kiev, and controversy at ECHR headquarters in Strasbourg, over manipulation of theappointment. Yudkivska has not only defended the new regime in Kiev on the court bench. She lectured at Harvard University last year on how the court is defending “democratization processes” in the Ukraine. For more on Yudkivska, read this.

ECHR documents indicate this Ukrainian judge has been involved in the MH17 case, and almost certainly that she has supported the Kiev government’s request for the blackout — the decision to issue what Registrar Liddell calls the “grant of confidentiality”.

Liddell said this week, through Turner-Tretz, that in March 2015 he had “informed the applicant [Kenke, Giemulla] by letter of the registration of the application. The letter specified in particular that the Court would deal with the case as soon as practicable on the basis of the information and documents submitted by her and that she would be informed of any decision taken by the Court. Generally speaking, it is difficult to say how long the processing of an application will take, as this may depend on a number of factors. The order of dealing with cases is governed by Rule 41 of the Rules of Court and further specified in its priority policy.”

The ECHR’s Rule 41 says: “In determining the order in which cases are to be dealt with, the Court shall have regard to the importance and urgency of the issues raised on the basis of criteria fixed by it. The Chamber, or its President, may, however, derogate from these criteria so as to give priority to a particular application.” The ECHR policy statement referred to says that “according to this Rule [41] the Court is to have regard to the importance and urgency of the issues raised in deciding the order in which cases are to be dealt with.”

In a series of email exchanges this week, Turner-Tretz refused to disclose Liddell’s name as the ECHR registrar. This was despite the publication on the court blog that his appointment commenced last month.

Through his spokesman Turner-Tretz (above, right), Liddell (left) was asked: what notification has the Court Registrar made to the Defendant, the Government of Ukraine, and on what date? What response filing has been made in the case by the Government of Ukraine? On what application, on what date, and from what source was the application for confidentiality made? What Court official authorized on what date what you report as the “grant [of] confidentiality”?

Liddell refused to answer. Giemulla suspects the Ukrainian government has been informed of the case, and is likely to have been given the case papers. He says the ECHR has withheld these communications from him, if it has made them.

Liddell has sent an email to say “please note that the case was given confidential status under Rule 33 (public character of documents) of the Rules of Court. This decision was taken by the President of the Chamber to which the case has been allocated.”

Court rules of procedure reveal that in the Chamber section which is considering the MH17 case in secret, Ukrainian judge Yudkivska is a member. Court rules of procedure say: “Chamber: composed of 7 judges, chambers primarily rule on admissibility and merits for cases that raise issues that have not been ruled on repeatedly (a decision may be made by a majority). Each chamber includes the Section President and the ‘national judge’ (the judge with the nationality of the State against which the application is lodged).”

Yesterday Liddell’s spokesman Turner-Tretz was asked to name the president of the chamber to which Liddell now admits the MH17 case has been allocated. “In normal court jurisdictions,” Turner-Tretz was told, “a ruling to seal a case file cannot be made without an application by one of the parties and a hearing before representatives of all parties; the ruling to seal cannot lawfully be taken in secret by a judge keeping his or her name secret. You will be reported by name as speaking for Roderick Liddell, your new Registrar, as confirming that the Court has communicated in secret with the Defendant in this case, and is attempting to keep every detail of the case secret.”

Liddell replied: “the decision to grant confidentiality was taken by Judge Casadevall, President of the Third Section. Subsequently, following the recomposition of the Sections with effect from 1 November 2015, the case was reassigned to a new Section, the First Section, presided over by Mirjana Lazarova–Trajkovska, judge in respect of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” The implication is that Judge Josep Casadevall — an Andorran who has served on the ECHR bench since its establishment in 1998 — was taken off the MH17 case.

Lazarova-Trajkovska was appointed to the ECHR in 2008. Before that, she had been a Macedonian Interior Ministry lawyer, then the director of the state election commission during the controversial parliamentary campaign of 2002. Then, as well as earlier in her career, she has been aided by grants from the US Government. Following the outcome of the 2002 poll, she was briefly a judge of the Macedonian Constitutional Court until the government in Skopje moved her to the ECHR.

London lawyers who follow ECHR proceedings closely don’t doubt that in the MH17 case the Registrar and the judges have been made aware of the Ukrainian government’s reaction. The sources believe Kiev officials have sought Yudkivska’s ruling, along with that of the Macedonian judge, to reject the Kenke case as inadmissible; close down the application without argument in open court; and keep this process secret. Dutch sources add that the Ukrainian government is pressuring the ECHR to block all claims from eastern Ukraine, as well as from the MH17 shoot-down. French lawyers have been attempting to file dozens of claims on behalf of victims of the Ukrainian military operations in Donbass.

A UK human rights lawyer says the ECHR has become “notorious” for its onesidedness and political prejudice. “It’s now a Star Chamber”, he said, referring to the court run by British monarchs from the 15th century until the overthrow of King Charles I in 1641. The Star Chamber operated in secret, and its name has become synonymous with politically motivated prosecution.

According to ECHR documents, “a case may be inadmissible when it is incompatible with the requirements of ratione materiae, ratione temporis or ratione personae, or if the case cannot be proceeded with on formal grounds, such as non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, lapse of the six months from the last internal decision complained of, anonymity, substantial identity with a matter already submitted to the Court, or with another procedure of international investigation. If the rapporteur judge decides that the case can proceed, the case is referred to a Chamber of the Court which, unless it decides that the application is inadmissible, communicates the case to the government of the state against which the application is made, asking the government to present its observations on the case. The Chamber of Court then deliberates and judges the case on its admissibility and its merit.”

Giemulla’s submissions make it difficult for the ECHR judges to rule that the case should go to the Ukrainian courts. His papers have also met the deadline of time set by the court. Sources close to the MH17 case in Strasbourg believe Lazarova-Trajkovska and Yudkivska have been told by Kiev that they should dismiss the case because the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of prosecutors of The Netherlands, Australia, Ukraine, Belgium and Malaysia are conducting “another procedure of international investigation”.

According to the plaintiff’s court papers, the forensic investigation of the cause of the crash and the culprits is an entirely different case, and cannot be the ground for dismissing the Kenke application. Liddell is concealing the argument on these issues between the defendant and the judges.

Liddell replied: “the case was given confidential status under Rule 33 (public character of documents) of the Rules of Court.”

The text of this rule is much more limited than Liddell’s action has proved to be. “Public access,” Rule 33 declares, “to a document or to any part of it may be restricted in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties or of any person concerned so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the President of the Chamber in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice. Any request for confidentiality made under paragraph 1 of this Rule must include reasons and specify whether it is requested that all or part of the documents be inaccessible to the public.”

Today, I want to speak about the once-in-a-generation chance we have, together, to improve the way we enhance the cause of human rights, freedom and dignity. (David Cameron. Speech on the European Court of Human Rights, 25^th January 2012.)

Last June, speaking in his official residence, No 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech on business: “Britain has huge creative clout around the world …From Asia to America, they’re dancing to our music, watching our films and wearing our designers’ latest creations”, he trilled. He omitted to say “and dying under our bombs.”

In December, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein warned, regarding the Saudi led bombing of Yemen:

“I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high a concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure – in particular hospitals and schools …”

Yemen’s Ministry of Education’s data shows more than 1,000 schools inoperable, 254 completely destroyed, 608 partially damaged and 421 being used as shelter by those displaced by the Saudi led, UK assisted onslaught. Some destroyed schools were attacked repeatedly thus they were not errors, or that obscene US dreamt up whitewash for atrocities: “collateral damage.” (1) The US also supplies “intelligence” for air strikes.

Three Medecines Sans Frontier medical facilities have also been destroyed and this month the Noor Center for the Blind was hit – twice. Abdullah Ahmed Banyan, a patient said:

“People with disabilities are being struck in their residence. Around 1.30 am, two missiles hit the live-in quarters of a home for the blind. Can you imagine they are striking the blind? What is this criminality? Why? Is it the blind that are fighting the war?” (2)

As in Afghanistan and Iraq, those other favourite targets of the US, UK and their allies, wedding parties, have again become victims. One gathering in two large tents bombed last September, killed thirty eight people, another wedding celebration attack reportedly killed one hundred and thirty. In the country’s capitol, Sanaa a wedding party hall was also destroyed – what is this criminal obsession about weddings? The Chamber of Commerce was also destroyed.

Definition of war crimes include: “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected … “ and: “Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives.” (3)

None of which deters the UK from joining in. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has confirmed to Parliament that UK troops are helping the Saudi military identify targets. He said there had been “no evidence of deliberate breach of international humanitarian law.” (4) He clearly has not bothered to do the research.

There is worse. Apart from aiding and abetting potential war crimes, the British government is profiting in eye watering sums from the human misery, deaths and destruction with arms sales to Saudi Arabia increasing by 11,000 percent in one three month period alone.

In spite of the United Nations stating that civilians are being disproportionately killed in Yemen, in one just three month period last year arms sales rose to over one Billion £s, up from a mere nine million £s from the previous three months. (5)

The exact figure for British arms export licences from July to September 2015 was £1,066,216,510 in so-called “ML4” export licences, which relate to bombs, missiles, rockets, and components of those items.

Angus Robertson, Leader of the Scottish National Party in Parliament is outraged, accusing during Prime Minister’s Questions this week, that:

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Yemen, including a large number by the Saudi air force and they’ve done that using British-built planes, with pilots who are trained by British instructors, dropping British-made bombs, who are coordinated by the Saudis in the presence of British military advisors.

Isn’t it time for the Prime Minister to admit that Britain is effectively taking part in a war in Yemen that is costing thousands of civilians lives and he has not sought parliamentary approval to do this? (Independent, 20^th January 2016. Emphasis added.)

Allan Hogarth for Amnesty International again confirmed that British advisors are: “ … actually located in the Saudi control room.”

David Cameron waffled inadequately with dismissive arrogance and supreme economy with the truth, that Britain was insuring that: “ … the norms of humanitarian law” were obeyed. Comments redundant.

Two days ago at Yemen’s Ras Isa port on the Red Sea, an oil storage facility was hit killing five people. The attack destroyed the part of the compound used to load tanker trucks with refined products for domestic distribution. So now a people, many of whom, the UN has warned are facing near starvation, will face further shortages to cook what little they have and to heat

So much for Cameron’s vow to: “improve the way we enhance the cause of human rights, freedom and dignity.”

Note

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/yemen-britain-and-saudi-arabia-shoulder-to-shoulder-in-atrocity/5502219

2. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/yemen-home-blind-bombed-saudi-led-airstrikes-intensify-against-houthi-forces-1536178

3. http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/W/WarCrimes.aspx

4. http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/news/id_11658/Britains-foreign-secretary:-UK-helping-Saudi-led-Yemen-campaign.html

5. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-arms-companies-cash-in-on-humanitarian-catastrophe-and-ramp-up-bomb-sales-to-saudi-arabia-by-a6822491.html

“Anybody who thinks they can buy me doesn’t know me.” Hillary Clinton, The Hill, Jan 22, 2016

Hillary Clinton may still win the Democratic Primary race when the final votes limp through. But if she does, negativity and evasion will be her masters. Oh, and the motor of finance.

Clinton shares with her husband an insatiable appetite for speaking fees. Her words, and presence, are up for sale, and there are organisations and companies happy to throw money the way of Clinton Inc. This is a system of collusion that seemingly has no end, but at its core is an assumption of acceptance about the role of the corporatocracy. Provided a candidate’s views are appropriate for corporate America, the invitations will come through, and the speaking circuit kept busy.

As Bernie Sanders told those present in Carroll, Iowa on Tuesday, “Goldman Sachs also provides very, very generous speaking fees to some unnamed candidates. Very generous.” He conceded that some of his opponents “are very good speakers, very fine orators, smart people. But you gotta be really, really, really good to get $225,000 a speech.”[1] In truth, not even Solomon would have commanded such fees. The value of words, and the marketplace of value, are two distinct things.

Clinton’s reaction has been one of denial – not that she has been paid such fees, but that receiving such payment implies no compromise of her views. This is tantamount to seeking another definition for bribery or corruption. The way of attacking Sanders is typical, evading any direct points, and going for his voting record regarding Wall Street regulation.

The year she focuses on is 2000, a dark one regarding corporate regulation history. When a vote went to deregulate credit default swaps and derivatives, Sanders was there to cheer. Not that he was the only one – Wall Street exerts an extraordinary pull on the American political classes. Nonetheless, for Clinton, “He’s never owned up to it, he never explained it.”

What Clinton attempts to do, instead, is suggest that you can be in and out of corporate America’s corridors and boardrooms, still maintaining independence, one’s untarnished soul, if you like, while feeding from the same trough. Much like Neo in the Waichowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy, traversing the system is a matter of being within and without it. One can still remain powerful yet independent, a non-conformist feature of society.

Clinton’s strategy, then, is to advertise her worth, that of a sage whose honeyed words are as valuable as blue stock chips. She is the grandee of product placement, and her name can be hawked about. “What they [the groups she has spoken to] are interested in were my views on what was going on in the world. And whether you’re in health care, or you sell automobiles, or you’re in banking – there’s a lot of interest in getting advice and views about what you think is happening in the world.”

Her justification also goes to defending an electoral system that accepts the view that cash and candidates are unfortunate partners in seeking office. Barack Obama, she explained, accepted large contributions from the big end of town, and so should she. Doing so does not mean that one is against corporate regulation.

Clinton’s arguments are far from plausible. Under her husband’s presidency, Wall Street proved to be one of the greatest beneficiaries, feted golden boys and girls who would propel the US into richer post-Cold War waters. As the welfare state was slashed, its recipients mocked and further reduced to a sub-stratum of US society, the corporate sector was unchained, its initiative to speculate empowered. The machinery that ultimately crashed in 2008, leading to government bank bailouts, a socialising of capitalism’s greatest losses, can, to a large extent, be attributed to the Clinton administration.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Clinton sees Wall Street as indispensable, organic to any electoral, and governing structure. In her December debate with Sanders at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, moderator David Muir noted the 2007 Fortune magazine cover that proclaimed that, “Business Loves Hillary.”[2]

A hovering Sanders saw his chance to make a point. “The CEOs of large multinationals may like Hillary. They ain’t gonna like me and Wall Street is going to like me even less.”

The words she says do not matter – her sponsors already know what they are getting, and by having her on stage, hope for a sympathetic president who, at the very least, will not rock the boat of finance. Without big business as it is so deemed, America is nothing, much like Britain without its common law. And it is business that she is hoping, at all times, to court. She may not be buyable as a political commodity, but she is certainly rentable.

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

Notes

[1] http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/266693-clinton-wall-street-cant-buy-me

[2] http://time.com/4156191/democratic-debate-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-wall-street/

Terrorism has many forms and many faces, but the most terrible of them is cold cruelty.

We are asked to believe that terrorists consist of dirty lunatics, running around with bombs, machine guns and explosive belts. That’s how we are told to imagine them.

Many of them are bearded; almost all are “foreign looking”, non-white, non-Western. In summary they are wife beaters, child rapists and Greek and Roman statue destroyers.

Actually, during the Cold War, there were some white looking “terrorists” – the left-wingers belonging to several revolutionary cells, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. But only now we are learning that the terrorist acts attributed to them were actually committed by the Empire, by several European right-wing governments and intelligence services. You remember, the NATO countries were blowing up those trains inside the tunnels, or bombing entire train stations…

It “had to be done”, in order to discredit the Left, just to make sure that people would not become so irresponsible as to vote for the Communists or true Socialists.

There were also several Latin American ‘terror’ groups – the revolutionary movements fighting for freedom and against oppression, mainly against Western colonialism. They had to be contained, liquidated, and if they held power, overthrown.

But terrorists became really popular in the West only after the Soviet Union and the Communist Block were destroyed through thousands of economic, military and propaganda means, and the West suddenly felt too exposed, so alone without anyone to fight. Somehow it felt that it needed to justify its monstrous oppressive acts in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

It needed a new “mighty”, really mighty, enemy to rationalize its astronomical military and intelligence budgets. It was not good enough to face a few hundred ‘freaks’ somewhere inside the Colombian jungle or in Northern Ireland or Corsica. There had to be something really huge, something matching that ‘evil’ Soviet “threat”.

Oh how missed that threat was, suddenly! Just a threat of course; not the danger of egalitarian and internationalist ideals…

And so the West linked terrorism with Islam, which is one of the greatest cultures on earth, with 1.6 billion followers. Islam is big and mighty enough, to scare the shit out of the middle class housewives in some Western suburb! And on top of that, it had to be contained anyway, as it was essentially too socialist and too peaceful.

At that time in history, all great secular and socialist leaders of Muslim countries, (like in Iran, Indonesia and Egypt), were overthrown by the West, their legacy spat on, or they were simply banned.

But that was not enough for the West!

In order to make Islam a worthy enemy, the Empire had to first radicalize and pervert countless Muslim movements and organizations, then create the new ones, consequently training, arming and financing them, so they could really look frightening enough.

There is of course one more important reason why “terrorism”, particularly Muslim “terrorism”, is so essential for the survival of Western doctrines, exceptionalism and global dictatorship: it justifies the West’s notion of absolute cultural and moral superiority.

This is how it works:

For centuries, the West has been behaving like a mad bloodthirsty monster. Despite the self-glorifying propaganda being spread by Western media outlets all over the world, it was becoming common knowledge that the Empire was raping, murdering and plundering in virtually all corners of the Globe. A few more decades and the world would see the West exclusively as a sinister and toxic disease. Such a scenario had to be prevented by all means!

And so the ideologues and propagandists of the Empire came up with a new and brilliant formula: Let’s create something that looks and behaves even worse than we do, and then we could trumpet that we are still actually the most reasonable and tolerant culture on earth!

And let’s make a real pirouette: let’s fight our own creation – let’s fight it in the name of freedom and democracy!”

This is how the new generation; the new breed of “terrorist” was born. And it lives! It is alive and well! It is multiplying like Capek’s Salamanders.

***

Western terrorism is not really discussed, although its most extreme and violent forms are battering the world relentlessly and have for a long time, with hundreds of millions of victims piling up everywhere.

Even the legionnaires and gladiators of the Empire, like the Mujaheddin, Al-Qaida, or ISIS, can never come close to the savagery that has been demonstrated time and again by their British, French, Belgian, German or US masters. Of course they are trying very hard to match their gurus and bread-givers, but they are just not capable of their violence and brutality.

It takes “Western culture” to butcher some 10 million people in just one single geographic area, in almost one go!

***

So what is real terrorism, and how could ISIS and others follow its lead? They say that ISIS is decapitating their victims. Bad enough. But who is their teacher?

For centuries, the empires of Europe were murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating people on all continents of the world. Those who were not doing so directly, were “investing” into colonialist expeditions, or sending its people to join genocidal battalions.

King Leopold II and his cohorts managed to exterminate around 10 million people of Western and Central Africa, in what is now known as the Congo. He was hunting people down like animals, forcing them to work on his rubber plantations. If he thought that they were not filling up his coffers fast enough, he did not hesitate to chop off their hands, or burn entire village populations inside their huts, alive.

10 million victims vanished. 10 million! And it did not take place in some distant past, in the “dark ages”, but in the 20^th century, under the rule of so-called constitutional monarchy, and self-proclaimed democracy. How does it compare with the terrorism that is ruling over the territories occupied by ISIS? Let’s compare numbers and brutality level!

And the Democratic Republic of Congo has, since 1995, lost again close to 10 million people in a horrid orgy of terror, unleashed by the West’s proxies, Rwanda and Uganda (see the trailer to my film“Rwanda Gambit”).

Germans performed holocausts in South-Western Africa, in what is now Namibia. The Herero tribe was exterminated, or at least close to 90% of it was. People were first kicked out from their land and from their homes, and driven into the desert. If they survived, the German pre-Nazi expeditions followed, using bullets and other forms of mass killing. Medical experiments on humans were performed, to prove the superiority of the Germanic nation and the white race.

These were just innocent civilians; people whose only crime was that they were not white, and were sitting on land occupied and violated by the Europeans.

The Taliban never came close to this, or even ISIS!

To this day, the Namibian government is demanding the return of countless heads severed from its people: heads that were cut off and then sent to the University of Freiburg and several hospitals in Berlin, for medical experiments.

Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable!

Local people were terrorized in virtually all colonies grabbed by Europe, something that I have described in detail in my latest 840-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.

What about the Brits and their famines, which they were using as population control and intimidation tactics in India! In Bengal at least 5 million died in 1943 alone, 5.5 million in 1876-78, 5 million in 1896-97, to name just a few terrorist acts committed by the British Empire against a defenseless population forced to live under its horrid and oppressive terrorist regime!

What I have mentioned above are just 3 short chapters from the long history of Western terrorism. An entire encyclopedia could be compiled on the topic.

But all this sits far from Western consciousness. European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about the past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working. Not because for centuries their countries have plundered and murdered, and above all terrorized the world forcing it into submission.

The elites know everything, of course. And the more they know, the more they put that knowledge to work.

Terrorist trade and experience are passed on from Western masters to their new Muslim recruits.

The Mujahideen, Al-Qaida, ISIS – on closer examination, their tactics of intimidation and terrorization are not original at all. They are built on imperialist and colonialist practices of the West.

News about this, or even about the terror that has been inflicted on the Planet by the West, is meticulously censored. You would never see them on the programs broadcast by the BBC, or read about them in mainstream newspapers and magazines.

On the other hand, the violence and ruthlessness of the client terrorist organizations are constantly highlighted. They are covered in their tiniest detail, repeated, and “analyzed”.

Everybody is furious, horrified! The UN is “deeply concerned”, Western governments are “outraged”, and the Western public “has had enough – it does not want immigrants from those terrible countries that are breeding terrorism and violence”.

The West “simply has to get involved”. And here comes the War on Terror.

It is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.

Peace would mean the West looking at its own past. It would mean thinking about justice and rearranging the entire power structures of the Planet. And that can never be allowed.

And so the West is “playing” war games; it is “fighting” its own recruits (or pretending to fight them), while innocent people are dying.

No part of the world, except the West, would be able to invent and unleash something so vile and barbaric as ISIS or Al-Nusra!

Look closer at the strategy of these group-implants: it has no roots in Muslim culture whatsoever. But it is fully inspired by the Western philosophy of colonialist terrorism: “If you don’t fully embrace our dogmas and religion, then we will cut off your head, slash your throat, rape your entire family or burn your village or city to the ground. We will destroy your grand cultural heritage as we did in South America 500 years ago, and in so many other places.”

And so on and so on! It would really require great discipline not to see the connections!

***

In 2006 I was visiting my friend, a former President of Indonesia, and a great progressive Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, (known in Indonesia as “Gus Dur”). Our meeting was held at the headquarters of his massive Muslim body Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). At that time the NU was the biggest Muslim organization in the world.

We were discussing capitalism and how it was destroying and corrupting Indonesia. Gus Dur was a “closet socialist”, and that was one of the main reasons why the servile pro-Western Indonesian “elites” and the military deposed him out of the Presidency in 2001.

When we touched on the topic of “terrorism”, he suddenly declared in his typically soft, hardly audible voice: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was done by our own intelligence services, in order to justify the increase in their budget, as well as aid that they have been receiving from abroad.”

Of course, the Indonesian army, intelligence services and police consist of a special breed of humans. For several decades, since 1965, they have been brutally terrorizing their own population, when the pro-Western coup toppled the progressive President Sukarno and brought to power a fascist military clique, backed by the predominantly Christian business gang. This terror took between 2-3 million lives in Indonesia itself, as well as in East Timor and (until now) in occupied and thoroughly plundered Papua.

3 genocides in only 5 decades!

The Indonesian coup was one of the greatest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. The rivers were clogged with corpses and changed their color to red.

Why? So that capitalism would survive and Western mining companies could have their booty, at the expense of a completely ruined Indonesian nation. So the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) would not be able to win elections, democratically.

But in the West, those 1965 intensive massacres planned by the Empire were never described as “terrorism”. Blowing up a hotel or a pub always is however, especially if they are frequented by Western clientele.

Now Indonesia has its own groups of “terrorists”. They returned from Afghanistan where they fought on behalf of the West against the Soviet Union. They are returning from the Middle East now. The recent attacks in Jakarta could be just a foreplay, a well-planned beginning of something much bigger, maybe an opening of the new “front” of toy soldiers of the Empire in Southeast Asia.

For the West and its planners – the more chaos the better.

Had Abdurrahman Wahid been allowed to stay as the President of Indonesia, there would, most likely, have been no terrorism. His country would have undergone socialist reforms, instituted social justice, rehabilitated Communists and embraced secularism.

In socially balanced societies, terrorism does not thrive.

That would be unacceptable to the Empire. That would mean – back to Sukarno’s day! The most populous Muslim nation on earth cannot be allowed to go its own way, to aim for socialism, and to annihilate terrorist cells.

It has to be at the edge. It has to be ready to be used as a pawn. It has to be scared and scary! And so it is.

***

The games the West is playing are complex and elaborate. They are murky and nihilist. They are so destructive and brutal that even the sharpest analysts are often questioning their own eyes and judgments: “Could all this be really happening?”

The brief answer is: “Yes it can. Yes it is, for many long decades and centuries.”

Historically, terrorism is a native Western weapon. It was utilized freely by people like Lloyd George, a British PM, who refused to sign the agreement banning aerial bombardment of civilians, using unshakeable British logic: “We reserve the right to bomb those niggers.” Or Winston Churchill who was in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races, like Kurds and Arabs.

That is why, when some outsider, a country like Russia, gets involved, launching its genuine war against terrorist groups, the entire West is consumed by panic. Russia is spoiling their entire game! It is ruining a beautifully crafted neo-colonialist equilibrium.

Just look how lovely everything is: after killing hundreds of millions all over the Globe, the West is now standing as the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and freedom. It is still terrorizing the world, plundering it, fully controlling it – but it is being accepted as the supreme leader, a benevolent advisor, and the only trustworthy part of the world.

And almost nobody is laughing.

Because everyone is scared!

Its brutal legions in the Middle East and Africa are destabilizing entire countries, their origins are easily traceable, but almost no one is daring to do such tracing. Some of those who have tried – died.

The more frightening these invented, manufactured and implanted terrorist monsters, the more beautiful the West looks. It is all gimmicks. It has roots in advertisement, and in hundreds of years of propaganda apparatus.

The West then pretends to fight those deep forces of darkness. It uses powerful, “righteous” language, which has clear bases in Christian fundamentalist dogma.

An entire mythology is unleashed; it feels like Wagner’s “Ring”.

The terrorists represent evil, not the enormous expenditure from the coffers of the US State Department, the European Union and NATO. They are more evil than the Devil himself!

And the West, riding on the white horse, slightly pissed on wine but always in good humor, is portrayed as both a victim and the main adversary of those satanic terrorist groups.

It is one incredible show. It is one terrible farce. Look underneath the horseman’s mask: look at those exposed teeth; that deadly grin! Look at his red eyes, full of greed, lust and cruelty.

And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!

On Jan.21, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) launched an advance towards the road that links the cities of Darayya and Moadamiya. Only yesterday, the Russian Air Force carried out 45 airstrikes to support the loyalists’ operation.

The SAA’s goal is to cut the route between the rebel strongholds in the Damascus suburbs. If this is done, it will allow the loyalists to defeat militant units in the area each after each.

According to the Syrian government’s reports, 150 militants have laid down arms and turned themselves in to the Syrian army in the Damascus province. The same reports argue that 42 wanted militants from Damascus, Damascus countryside, Tartous, Quneitra and Dara’a turned themselves in to the authorities on Jan.21.

In Sheikh Miskeen, Al-Nusra, Syrian al-Qaeda branch, and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are becoming extremely dire as the SAA is continuing the military operation in the southern district of the city. The militants issued a plea for help on a video, stating that the “moderate opposition” is losing the city because of a lack of battle tanks against the advancing armored divisions of the SAA. The video confirmed that the Syrian government’s forces liberated about 80 percent of Sheikh Miskeen.

The SAA troops are continuing to pound the militant groups’ strongholds in different parts of the Aleppo province. The clashes were observed in the villages of al-Sbeihiyeh, al-Sheik Lutfi and in the al-Rashidin area in the Southern outskirts of the provincial capital. Also, the SAA conducted military operations in Bustan al-Basha neighborhood in Aleppo.

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The year 2016 might turn out to be a decisive one in the long-running contest between the Japanese state and Okinawa prefecture over the construction of a new base for the US Marine Corps at Henoko on Oura Bay, although it seems that this is far from being the first time on which I have written of a prospective year of crisis and change in what has become known as the “Okinawa problem,” only to find as the year wore on that the crisis steadily deepened without resolution. It is clear anyway that this will be a year of elections and court proceedings, and that it will also almost certainly be one of deepening confrontation between the popular Okinawan resistance on one side and the forces of the Abe state with their monopoly of violence and growing readiness to use it on the other. ¹

It was the November 2014 victory (by 100,000 votes) of Onaga Takeshi in election for Governor of Okinawa on an explicit “everything in my power to prevent construction of the Henoko base” platform that brought the crisis to its present pitch. Once in office, Onaga appointed a “Third Party” (experts) committee to advise him on the legality of his predecessor’s sudden and unexpected decision (in December 2013) to allow the base. That Committee reported in July 2015 that it had found multiple legal flaws,² and that, in particular, the landfill permit failed to meet the criteria for “appropriate and rational use of the national land” and so violated the Public Waters Reclamation. On October 13, 2015, Onaga therefore cancelled the reclamation license, and by doing so precipitated a series of court actions and a political contest that has continued ever since.

Elections

In the year ahead, three important elections are to be held: in January for mayor of Ginowan City, in June for the Okinawan Prefectural Assembly, and in July for the upper house (House of Councillors) in the national diet.

About one quarter of the area of Ginowan City is taken up by the US Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station. US forces occupied the site around 70 years ago, when the residents of the area had been rounded up into detention centres even before the formal Japanese surrender at the end of the war, and have continued to occupy it, in breach of international law even if with the consent, or encouragement, of the government of Japan, ever since then. When the city goes to the polls on January 24 to choose a new mayor, the question of what is to be done about Futenma is a major issue, but the will of the people matters less than the will of the two faraway governments, in Tokyo and in Washington. Nothing has changed in that respect over the four decades since Okinawa nominally reverted to Japanese rule, nor can it be expected to change in 2016.

The balance is said to be delicately poised between Sakima Atsushi, the incumbent mayor who is supported by the LDP and New Komeito (and by the Abe government) and Shimura Keiichiro, a relatively unknown former prefectural official who has declared himself one of the Onaga “All Okinawa” camp.

Sakima was first elected mayor in 2012, by the narrow margin of 900 out of 45,000 votes. Facing then a well-known opponent of any base substitution within Okinawa, Iha Yoichi, (Ginowan mayor for two terms, 2003-2010), Sakima too adopted a “no Futenma substitute within Okinawa” stance. That is to say, he refsed to endorse the Henoko project as a quid pro quo for closure of Futenma. However, in 2013, he was part of the collective Okinawan “tenko” or conversion under pressure, abandoning his campaign political pledge and shifting to support the Abe government’s position, i.e. favouring construction of a major new “Futenma Replacement” US facility at Henoko. Governor Nakaima, elected in 2010 on an “anti-substitute base” platform, also surrendered, dramatically, to such pressure late in 2013, as did the LDP prefectural party organization itself, and much of its membership. Okinawan conservative ranks thus split. Those that resisted the fierce pressure from the Abe government in Tokyo to fall into line with national policy evolved the “All Okinawa” political platform, of which Onaga Takeshi, Governor from December 2014, became the principal avatar.

Incumbent Ginowan Mayor, Sakima Atsushi, January 2016	Candidate for Mayor of Ginowan, Shimura Keiichiro, January 2016

Both the Abe government and Governor Onaga insist that this election will not be decided solely on the base issue, but both attach great importance to it. The Abe government even ordered an almost four-week suspension of works at the Henoko site,³ evidently anxious to avoid attention focussing on the base issue out of fear that its preferred candidate might lose if his past reversal or his pro-base position became focus of the election.

For Onaga the election is also obviously important. A victory in Ginowan would show the strength of continuing support for his “All Okinawa” cause (currently he has the backing of only two of the prefecture’s 14 town and city mayors) and perhaps create a momentum that might flow on to the nationally important Upper House elections to be held in the coming summer.

Sakima’s strategy for the 2016 election is to call for early return of Futenma but to avoid taking any public position on Henoko. His campaign is said to have been organized and calibrated in the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo, where his success ranks high on the list of government priorities. It might be, nominally, a “local” election, but it weighed as much as a “national” one. Government emissaries (including prominent corporate sector representatives keen to promote the base project) avoided street meetings and concentrated on closed door gatherings with important sectoral groups, including the construction groups expected to profit most from Henoko construction.⁴

Sakima could boast that his city administration had won a substantial (four-fold) increase in central government subsidy, and promise on that basis benefits such as free medical care and subsidized school lunch for the city’s children, without making any point of the fact that the price paid for such largesse was submission to Tokyo’s wishes on base policy.⁵ His opponent, Shimura, based his position on support for Governor Onaga and “all Okinawa,” meaning that he stood for unconditional return of Futenma and opposed the shifting of its burden elsewhere in the prefecture (i.e. Henoko, in Nago City). In “normal” circumstances, the mayor standing for election to a second term would have a significant advantage, but the contest in Ginowan was unpredictable and the level of external interest exceptionally high. Some interpreted the rumours that circulated in the city (and beyond) of Ginowan being “rewarded” with a Disneyland project as part of a desperate Abe government effort to protect its candidate’s campaign.⁶

Prefectural Assembly elections are to be held in June 2016. For the political and judicial battle that lies ahead, the importance of Onaga’s retention of control over the Okinawan parliament, the Prefectural Assembly (where he now holds 27:21 majority support), is plain. Abe would dearly like to reverse that balance. Then in July there will be (national) Upper House elections, at which the Abe government’s Minister for Okinawa, Shimajiri Aiko, will be standing for re-election. She is a darling of the Abe government because of the role she played in 2013 in helping the national LDP win back control over the rebellious Okinawa branch. For her role in leading Okinawan LDP Diet members (and other figures such as Ginowan mayor Sakima) to abandon their public pledges of opposition to base construction, she won his deep gratitude and, as a devoted Abe follower and fierce critic of the Okinawan anti-base movement, rose meteorically within the government thereafter. Her status in the national government give her formidable patronage powers in relation to Okinawa that she will undoubtedly use to advance the Henoko cause, but her checkered political career has also won her many enemies.

Abe will do everything possible to win both the Ginowan mayorship and the Shimajiri seat in the House of Councillors, and it would be a nightmare for him to possibly lose both. As one figure connected to the government was quoted to say, “This is the most important election for determining the fate of the government.”⁷ It goes without saying that the kind of interventions Abe and his government make in Okinawan elections are anti-democratic and unconstitutional and would be unimaginable elsewhere in Japan

The Courts

In judicial terms, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide made clear even before Onaga’s October 2015 cancelation order that site works would proceed irrespective of any order from the Governor. Contracts were let, materials moved, workers hired, a momentum generated. Then came Onaga’s order, followed the next day by the complaint lodged by Okinawa Defense Bureau (OBD) with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLITT), asking it to review, suspend, and nullify Onaga’s revocation under the Administrative Appeal Act.⁸ It amounted to one section of the Abe government (the ODB, part of the Ministry of Defense) appealing to another (MLITT), so the outcome could scarcely be in doubt. ODB maintained that there were no flaws with the land reclamation approval made in late 2013 and that Governor Onaga’s revocation disposition was illegal. Onaga presented a 950-page dossier in which he outlined the prefectural case, ⁹ but, following a cabinet meeting on October 27, MLITT minster Ishii Keiichi suspended the Onaga revocation order,¹⁰ on grounds that otherwise it would be “impossible to continue the relocation” and because in that event “the US-Japan alliance would be adversely affected.” ¹¹ The government also authorized a resumption of site works, insisting there was no alternative to the Henoko project and that it amounted to a “burden reduction” for Okinawa even though plainly the new base was to be bigger, more multi-functional, more modern, and almost certainly permanent.

On October 20, 2015, a group of 12 Ginowan citizens (increased by late December to 89) launched a suit demanding cancelation of Governor Onaga’s order, complaining that the Third Party report the Governor had relied on was “biased” and “flawed” and that Onaga’s cancelation order, if implemented, would have the effect of leaving Ginowan citizens facing more-or-less permanent noise and other nuisance from Futenma.¹² This pro-government, pro-Henoko construction judicial intervention was only the first of a series that continued through the following months.

When works resumed on October 29, 2015, they government referred to them as “main works” (hontai koji), evidently in order to have them seen as a fait accompli and even though the necessary boring survey was still incomplete. On November 17 the government launched a suit in the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court under the Administrative Appeals Law demanding the Governor retract his order and submit to its authority. Abe repeatedly spoke of Futenma return, but only on condition that there be an alternative, and with the understanding that such an alternative had to be in Okinawa, and in Okinawa it had to be at Henoko.

Governor Onaga, for his part, presented the totally different story, of the inequitable and increasing military base burden on Okinawa, built upon the initial illegal seizure of Okinawan land and in defiance of the clearly and often expressed wishes of the Okinawan people. It was a burden increase, not reduction. The struggle against it was a struggle for justice and democracy and for the protection of Oura Bay’s extraordinary natural biodiversity, worthy, as the prefecture saw it, of World Heritage ranking. Onaga summarily rejected the “advice” (of October 27) and then the “instruction” (November 6) from the MLITT minister to withdraw his cancellation order.¹³

Okinawan Governor Onaga announces his Decision, October 13, 2015. (Photo: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)

On November 2, 2015, he launched a prefectural complaint against the Abe government with the rarely consulted Council for Resolving Disputes between Central and Local Governments.”¹⁴ Despite the fact that it would be hard to imagine anything that could better qualify as dispute between those two wings of government, it took barely six weeks for the Council to decide, without calling upon any evidence (and declaring its “verdict” by means of a press conference) that the complaint was “beyond the scope of matters it could investigate.”¹⁵ Okinawa prefecture soon made clear that it intended to contest this decision by appeal to the Naha District Court.

On December 25, Onaga launched a prefectural suit in the Naha court to have the October ruling by the Minister set aside. State and prefectural authorities thus sued each other (or made formal complaint in the case of the Disputes Resolution Council) over the same matters, and for the most part in the same Naha court.¹⁶ Never before had the national government of Japan faced off in the courts against any self-governing region like this.

While the prefecture insists it is a breach of its constitutional entitlement to self-government for the state to impose the Henoko construction project on it by unilateral, forceful decision, the state, for its part, argues that base matters are its prerogative, having nothing to do with local self-government, and being a matter of treaty obligations are not subject to any constitutional barrier. Onaga also pointed to what he saw, on expert advice, as fatal flaws in the land reclamation approval process. He objected to the ODB’s use of the Administrative Appeal Act, for which purpose the state was pretending to be just like a “private person” (ichishijin) complaining under a law specifically designed to allow individual citizens complaining of unjustified or illegal acts by governmental agencies to seek redress, and noted that, while the state sought relief as an aggrieved citizen it deployed its full powers and prerogatives as state under the Local Self-Government Law to sweep aside prefectural self-government and to assume the right to proxy execution of an administrative act (gyosei daishikko). The state was in his view thus adopting a perverse and arbitrary reading of the law.

The state also pressed for a “speed” trial, with no need for witnesses, while the prefecture argued that the issues were of such significance that it called for greatest care and attention to witnesses, not least the Governor himself.¹⁷ And, somewhat ominously, the court asked the Governor what would be his attitude should the court’s decision go against him.¹⁸

Onaga Takeshi thus ended his first year in office as Governor embroiled in two suits against the government of Japan, one as plaintiff and one as defendant, and committed to enter (before the end of January 2016) upon a third quasi-judicial proceeding by way of appeal against the decision of the Disputes Resolution Council.

Whatever the outcome of the various proceedings now underway, at least in the two court actions the defeated party is bound to appeal, and it will be up to the Supreme Court to make a ruling. Overall, the national government appears to be engaged on a constitutional coup: stripping the Governor and prefectural government of powers vested in them by the constitution and the Local Government Act and seeking at all costs to justify the MLITT minister’s reinstatement or “proxy execution” of the land reclamation approval.¹⁹ It is hard to imagine that any ruling, including that from the Supreme Court, will really resolve matters. It will, however, have a profound impact in determining whether Japan merits the claim made repeatedly by Prime Minister Abe to be a country ruled by law. There were grounds for thinking that, instead, it would prove to be one ruled by “men,” i.e. the government of the day.²⁰

Precedents

Judicial precedents are not encouraging for Okinawa. In December 1959, the Supreme Court held in the “Sunagawa case” that matters pertaining to the security treaty with the US are “highly political” and concern Japan’s very existence, so that the judiciary should not pass judgement on them. That ruling, on expansion of the existing US base at Tachikawa, in effect elevated the Security Treaty above the constitution and immunized it from any challenge at law, thus entrenching the US base presence. It would be surprising if the 2016 court, addressing the project to create a new base at Henoko, did not follow it.

Another precedent addresses more directly the Okinawa base issue. It is just 20 years since then Okinawan Governor Ota Masahide (Governor 1990-1998) was arraigned before the Supreme Court facing the demand by the Prime Minister that he exercise his duties of state under the Local Self-Government Law to sign the proxy lease agreements on privately owned land appropriated by the US military (which he had refused to do). Ota made an eloquent plea, but the court dismissed it, contemptuously, in a two-sentence judgement.²¹ For Ota, the Supreme Court ruling was the last word. He submitted and signed the proxy lease agreements.

In the case of civil suits too, by Okinawan citizens and civic groups against the government of Japan, the record points to similar judicial inclination to endorse the state, dismissing the Okinawan case against it. One long-running (2009-2014) suit brought by a citizen group to have the environmental impact study on Henoko reopened because of its being fundamentally unscientific was dismissed at both initial hearing and later on appeal court, the latter issuing a judgement so brief that it took just 30 seconds to read out.²² Other long-running suits have been pursued against the government over the intolerable levels of noise and nuisance emanating from the US bases. Between 2002 and 2015, courts have issued altogether seven judgements on this matter, repeatedly accepting evidence (in the words of the most recent judgement of Naha District Court in June 2015) that the 2200 plaintiffs of Ginowan City did indeed suffer “mental distress, poor sleep, and disruption to their daily lives” from “serous and widespread” violations that “could not be defended on any ground of public interest” and that they should therefore be paid 754 million yen (approximately $9 million) compensation. Courts have refused to order a stop to that nuisance. By so doing, they in effect concede that the US military is beyond and above the law, and that the government of Japan is complicit in enforcing its ongoing illegality and the accompanying suffering of its people. As Ryukyu shimpo commented, “how could a government that enforced continuing illegality upon the citizens of one of its regions be considered a law-ruled state?”²³

The base issue continues to divide Okinawa as the Abe government strives to divide and conquer it, cultivating sufficient local interest groups to accomplish its purpose. Following the pro-Abe and pro-Sakima suit launched by the 21 Ginowan citizens in late October, a group of twenty citizens living in the vicinity of the Henoko base construction site launched a fresh suit before the Naha court on December 24, 2015, seeking a cancelation of the Abe government’s base construction plans on grounds of noise and other nuisance they could anticipate that the project to bring them. Their constitutional entitlement to a peaceful existence was no less, they insisted, than that of the people of Ginowan. They made their claim out of an urgent sense of justice and entitlement, although knowing full well that justice ranked below the interest of the state in serving the US military.²⁴

Direct Action

As for how Governor Onaga would react if all Okinawan claims were simply dismissed, the Ota precedent is sobering and Onaga’s lifelong membership of the LDP makes one incline to think he would be even less inclined to resist a Supreme Court order than Ota. Yet prediction is not straightforward. Though unashamedly conservative, Onaga prioritizes his identity as Okinawan over ideology and “all Okinawa” is his core slogan. It may be only a straw in the wind but, in November 2015, Onaga’s wife, Mikiko, promised the protesters assembled at the Camp Schwab gate that if all other steps had been taken (bansaku tsukitara) and still the project had not been stopped, she and her husband would come to join them in direct action (Ryukyu shimpo, November 8, 2015). They would stop the construction at all costs, even, in other words, by civil disobedience. This, needless to say, highlights the unique and uniquely problematic nature of Okinawa within the Japanese state and the depth of the contradiction on which the relationship is built.

Coast Guard officers in daily confrontation with protesters outside Camp Schwab or on Oura Bay

Should the decision, or series of decisions, go against Okinawa, and should the Governor (and his wife) then join the direct action resistance at Henoko, the government could, if it so chose, then sweep them away from the gate of Camp Schwab, beating, arresting, and if necessary indicting them, and press ahead with construction. This is essentially what government has been doing for well over a year, though as yet on a small scale. It does so with impunity because its actions escape national media scrutiny and (on the whole) international attention. But if would be a different matter to subject the highly popular Governor in person to such measures, especially because it would mean ordering the prefectural police, who nominally are under the Governor’s command, to arrest him. Such evidence of open clash between wings of the government of Japan would weaken the US military ties that Abe is intent on strengthening, upset the Pentagon, and expose Japan to the world as an anti-democratic state that deployed violence against its own citizens.

Apart from the political and judicial contest, however, it may be that the really crucial area of confrontation is that between the forces of the Abe state and the people of Okinawa gathering every day at the gate of the Camp Schwab site to try to block construction works by direct, non-violent action. The daily gathering that Onaga Mikiko addressed in November 2015 has continued now for well over 500 days, since July 2014. The violence of riot police on land and Coastguard at sea takes its toll of the protesters, who number on a day-to-day basis between 50 and 500 or so, but their morale remains high. They believe they are currently forcing a stoppage of works on roughly one day a week, and plan to step that up to two, three, etc.

As I have noted elsewhere, the crisis today pits the “irresistible force” of the nation state against the “immovable object” of the Okinawan resistance and, in that sense, it has a certain tragic quality. Prime Minister Abe has staked so much on completing and handing over the new facility to the US Marine Corps that it is almost unimaginable that he could ever abandon it. Governor Onaga is in a similar, if opposite, position. Even if he were to submit to a court ruling, and withdraw his opposition (which, for reasons already given above, seems unlikely), far from resolving matters that would further infuriate the Okinawan people and heighten their resentment of their own government and of the base system. The supposed linchpin of the regional security system would then become its Achilles heel.

As writs were issued and injunctions sought late in 2015 and early 2016 to prevent (or to impose) base construction, Abe’s government appeared to be striving to evade any possible adverse judicial ruling by pushing the works with all possible speed beyond a point of no return. ²⁵ The government that did not hesitate in July 2014 to change its interpretation of the constitution to suit its political agenda was in 2016 manipulating the law and intervening in unprecedented ways to try to determine the outcome of a city mayoral election, to impose its will on a recalcitrant prefecture. For the Okinawan resistance to prevail against such a desperate and unprincipled state, it will have to widen the current struggle and gain the support not just of “All-Okinawa” but of an “All-Japan” citizen alliance and an accompanying global movement.

Gavan McCormack is an honorary professor of Australian National University, editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal, and author of many texts on aspects of modern and contemporary East Asian History, including Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012 (co-authored with Satoko Oka Norimatsu). His work is widely published in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, as well as English. For some of his recent essays (other than those accessible at this site), see “Okinawa as sacrificial victim,” Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2015, pp. 6-7, and “Chauvinist nationalism in Japan’s schizophrenic state,” in Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds, The Politics of the Right, Socialist Register 2016, London, The Merlin Press, 2015, pp. 231-249.

The year 2016 might turn out to be a decisive one in the long-running contest between the Japanese state and Okinawa prefecture over the construction of a new base for the US Marine Corps at Henoko on Oura Bay, although it seems that this is far from being the first time on which I have written of a prospective year of crisis and change in what has become known as the “Okinawa problem,” only to find as the year wore on that the crisis steadily deepened without resolution. It is clear anyway that this will be a year of elections and court proceedings, and that it will also almost certainly be one of deepening confrontation between the popular Okinawan resistance on one side and the forces of the Abe state with their monopoly of violence and growing readiness to use it on the other. ¹

It was the November 2014 victory (by 100,000 votes) of Onaga Takeshi in election for Governor of Okinawa on an explicit “everything in my power to prevent construction of the Henoko base” platform that brought the crisis to its present pitch. Once in office, Onaga appointed a “Third Party” (experts) committee to advise him on the legality of his predecessor’s sudden and unexpected decision (in December 2013) to allow the base. That Committee reported in July 2015 that it had found multiple legal flaws,² and that, in particular, the landfill permit failed to meet the criteria for “appropriate and rational use of the national land” and so violated the Public Waters Reclamation. On October 13, 2015, Onaga therefore cancelled the reclamation license, and by doing so precipitated a series of court actions and a political contest that has continued ever since.

Elections

In the year ahead, three important elections are to be held: in January for mayor of Ginowan City, in June for the Okinawan Prefectural Assembly, and in July for the upper house (House of Councillors) in the national diet.

About one quarter of the area of Ginowan City is taken up by the US Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station. US forces occupied the site around 70 years ago, when the residents of the area had been rounded up into detention centres even before the formal Japanese surrender at the end of the war, and have continued to occupy it, in breach of international law even if with the consent, or encouragement, of the government of Japan, ever since then. When the city goes to the polls on January 24 to choose a new mayor, the question of what is to be done about Futenma is a major issue, but the will of the people matters less than the will of the two faraway governments, in Tokyo and in Washington. Nothing has changed in that respect over the four decades since Okinawa nominally reverted to Japanese rule, nor can it be expected to change in 2016.

The balance is said to be delicately poised between Sakima Atsushi, the incumbent mayor who is supported by the LDP and New Komeito (and by the Abe government) and Shimura Keiichiro, a relatively unknown former prefectural official who has declared himself one of the Onaga “All Okinawa” camp.

Sakima was first elected mayor in 2012, by the narrow margin of 900 out of 45,000 votes. Facing then a well-known opponent of any base substitution within Okinawa, Iha Yoichi, (Ginowan mayor for two terms, 2003-2010), Sakima too adopted a “no Futenma substitute within Okinawa” stance. That is to say, he refsed to endorse the Henoko project as a quid pro quo for closure of Futenma. However, in 2013, he was part of the collective Okinawan “tenko” or conversion under pressure, abandoning his campaign political pledge and shifting to support the Abe government’s position, i.e. favouring construction of a major new “Futenma Replacement” US facility at Henoko. Governor Nakaima, elected in 2010 on an “anti-substitute base” platform, also surrendered, dramatically, to such pressure late in 2013, as did the LDP prefectural party organization itself, and much of its membership. Okinawan conservative ranks thus split. Those that resisted the fierce pressure from the Abe government in Tokyo to fall into line with national policy evolved the “All Okinawa” political platform, of which Onaga Takeshi, Governor from December 2014, became the principal avatar.

Incumbent Ginowan Mayor, Sakima Atsushi, January 2016	Candidate for Mayor of Ginowan, Shimura Keiichiro, January 2016

Both the Abe government and Governor Onaga insist that this election will not be decided solely on the base issue, but both attach great importance to it. The Abe government even ordered an almost four-week suspension of works at the Henoko site,³ evidently anxious to avoid attention focussing on the base issue out of fear that its preferred candidate might lose if his past reversal or his pro-base position became focus of the election.

For Onaga the election is also obviously important. A victory in Ginowan would show the strength of continuing support for his “All Okinawa” cause (currently he has the backing of only two of the prefecture’s 14 town and city mayors) and perhaps create a momentum that might flow on to the nationally important Upper House elections to be held in the coming summer.

Sakima’s strategy for the 2016 election is to call for early return of Futenma but to avoid taking any public position on Henoko. His campaign is said to have been organized and calibrated in the Prime Minister’s office in Tokyo, where his success ranks high on the list of government priorities. It might be, nominally, a “local” election, but it weighed as much as a “national” one. Government emissaries (including prominent corporate sector representatives keen to promote the base project) avoided street meetings and concentrated on closed door gatherings with important sectoral groups, including the construction groups expected to profit most from Henoko construction.⁴

Sakima could boast that his city administration had won a substantial (four-fold) increase in central government subsidy, and promise on that basis benefits such as free medical care and subsidized school lunch for the city’s children, without making any point of the fact that the price paid for such largesse was submission to Tokyo’s wishes on base policy.⁵ His opponent, Shimura, based his position on support for Governor Onaga and “all Okinawa,” meaning that he stood for unconditional return of Futenma and opposed the shifting of its burden elsewhere in the prefecture (i.e. Henoko, in Nago City). In “normal” circumstances, the mayor standing for election to a second term would have a significant advantage, but the contest in Ginowan was unpredictable and the level of external interest exceptionally high. Some interpreted the rumours that circulated in the city (and beyond) of Ginowan being “rewarded” with a Disneyland project as part of a desperate Abe government effort to protect its candidate’s campaign.⁶

Prefectural Assembly elections are to be held in June 2016. For the political and judicial battle that lies ahead, the importance of Onaga’s retention of control over the Okinawan parliament, the Prefectural Assembly (where he now holds 27:21 majority support), is plain. Abe would dearly like to reverse that balance. Then in July there will be (national) Upper House elections, at which the Abe government’s Minister for Okinawa, Shimajiri Aiko, will be standing for re-election. She is a darling of the Abe government because of the role she played in 2013 in helping the national LDP win back control over the rebellious Okinawa branch. For her role in leading Okinawan LDP Diet members (and other figures such as Ginowan mayor Sakima) to abandon their public pledges of opposition to base construction, she won his deep gratitude and, as a devoted Abe follower and fierce critic of the Okinawan anti-base movement, rose meteorically within the government thereafter. Her status in the national government give her formidable patronage powers in relation to Okinawa that she will undoubtedly use to advance the Henoko cause, but her checkered political career has also won her many enemies.

Abe will do everything possible to win both the Ginowan mayorship and the Shimajiri seat in the House of Councillors, and it would be a nightmare for him to possibly lose both. As one figure connected to the government was quoted to say, “This is the most important election for determining the fate of the government.”⁷ It goes without saying that the kind of interventions Abe and his government make in Okinawan elections are anti-democratic and unconstitutional and would be unimaginable elsewhere in Japan

The Courts

In judicial terms, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide made clear even before Onaga’s October 2015 cancelation order that site works would proceed irrespective of any order from the Governor. Contracts were let, materials moved, workers hired, a momentum generated. Then came Onaga’s order, followed the next day by the complaint lodged by Okinawa Defense Bureau (OBD) with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLITT), asking it to review, suspend, and nullify Onaga’s revocation under the Administrative Appeal Act.⁸ It amounted to one section of the Abe government (the ODB, part of the Ministry of Defense) appealing to another (MLITT), so the outcome could scarcely be in doubt. ODB maintained that there were no flaws with the land reclamation approval made in late 2013 and that Governor Onaga’s revocation disposition was illegal. Onaga presented a 950-page dossier in which he outlined the prefectural case, ⁹ but, following a cabinet meeting on October 27, MLITT minster Ishii Keiichi suspended the Onaga revocation order,¹⁰ on grounds that otherwise it would be “impossible to continue the relocation” and because in that event “the US-Japan alliance would be adversely affected.” ¹¹ The government also authorized a resumption of site works, insisting there was no alternative to the Henoko project and that it amounted to a “burden reduction” for Okinawa even though plainly the new base was to be bigger, more multi-functional, more modern, and almost certainly permanent.

On October 20, 2015, a group of 12 Ginowan citizens (increased by late December to 89) launched a suit demanding cancelation of Governor Onaga’s order, complaining that the Third Party report the Governor had relied on was “biased” and “flawed” and that Onaga’s cancelation order, if implemented, would have the effect of leaving Ginowan citizens facing more-or-less permanent noise and other nuisance from Futenma.¹² This pro-government, pro-Henoko construction judicial intervention was only the first of a series that continued through the following months.

When works resumed on October 29, 2015, they government referred to them as “main works” (hontai koji), evidently in order to have them seen as a fait accompli and even though the necessary boring survey was still incomplete. On November 17 the government launched a suit in the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court under the Administrative Appeals Law demanding the Governor retract his order and submit to its authority. Abe repeatedly spoke of Futenma return, but only on condition that there be an alternative, and with the understanding that such an alternative had to be in Okinawa, and in Okinawa it had to be at Henoko.

Governor Onaga, for his part, presented the totally different story, of the inequitable and increasing military base burden on Okinawa, built upon the initial illegal seizure of Okinawan land and in defiance of the clearly and often expressed wishes of the Okinawan people. It was a burden increase, not reduction. The struggle against it was a struggle for justice and democracy and for the protection of Oura Bay’s extraordinary natural biodiversity, worthy, as the prefecture saw it, of World Heritage ranking. Onaga summarily rejected the “advice” (of October 27) and then the “instruction” (November 6) from the MLITT minister to withdraw his cancellation order.¹³

Okinawan Governor Onaga announces his Decision, October 13, 2015. (Photo: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)

On November 2, 2015, he launched a prefectural complaint against the Abe government with the rarely consulted Council for Resolving Disputes between Central and Local Governments.”¹⁴ Despite the fact that it would be hard to imagine anything that could better qualify as dispute between those two wings of government, it took barely six weeks for the Council to decide, without calling upon any evidence (and declaring its “verdict” by means of a press conference) that the complaint was “beyond the scope of matters it could investigate.”¹⁵ Okinawa prefecture soon made clear that it intended to contest this decision by appeal to the Naha District Court.

On December 25, Onaga launched a prefectural suit in the Naha court to have the October ruling by the Minister set aside. State and prefectural authorities thus sued each other (or made formal complaint in the case of the Disputes Resolution Council) over the same matters, and for the most part in the same Naha court.¹⁶ Never before had the national government of Japan faced off in the courts against any self-governing region like this.

While the prefecture insists it is a breach of its constitutional entitlement to self-government for the state to impose the Henoko construction project on it by unilateral, forceful decision, the state, for its part, argues that base matters are its prerogative, having nothing to do with local self-government, and being a matter of treaty obligations are not subject to any constitutional barrier. Onaga also pointed to what he saw, on expert advice, as fatal flaws in the land reclamation approval process. He objected to the ODB’s use of the Administrative Appeal Act, for which purpose the state was pretending to be just like a “private person” (ichishijin) complaining under a law specifically designed to allow individual citizens complaining of unjustified or illegal acts by governmental agencies to seek redress, and noted that, while the state sought relief as an aggrieved citizen it deployed its full powers and prerogatives as state under the Local Self-Government Law to sweep aside prefectural self-government and to assume the right to proxy execution of an administrative act (gyosei daishikko). The state was in his view thus adopting a perverse and arbitrary reading of the law.

The state also pressed for a “speed” trial, with no need for witnesses, while the prefecture argued that the issues were of such significance that it called for greatest care and attention to witnesses, not least the Governor himself.¹⁷ And, somewhat ominously, the court asked the Governor what would be his attitude should the court’s decision go against him.¹⁸

Onaga Takeshi thus ended his first year in office as Governor embroiled in two suits against the government of Japan, one as plaintiff and one as defendant, and committed to enter (before the end of January 2016) upon a third quasi-judicial proceeding by way of appeal against the decision of the Disputes Resolution Council.

Whatever the outcome of the various proceedings now underway, at least in the two court actions the defeated party is bound to appeal, and it will be up to the Supreme Court to make a ruling. Overall, the national government appears to be engaged on a constitutional coup: stripping the Governor and prefectural government of powers vested in them by the constitution and the Local Government Act and seeking at all costs to justify the MLITT minister’s reinstatement or “proxy execution” of the land reclamation approval.¹⁹ It is hard to imagine that any ruling, including that from the Supreme Court, will really resolve matters. It will, however, have a profound impact in determining whether Japan merits the claim made repeatedly by Prime Minister Abe to be a country ruled by law. There were grounds for thinking that, instead, it would prove to be one ruled by “men,” i.e. the government of the day.²⁰

Precedents

Judicial precedents are not encouraging for Okinawa. In December 1959, the Supreme Court held in the “Sunagawa case” that matters pertaining to the security treaty with the US are “highly political” and concern Japan’s very existence, so that the judiciary should not pass judgement on them. That ruling, on expansion of the existing US base at Tachikawa, in effect elevated the Security Treaty above the constitution and immunized it from any challenge at law, thus entrenching the US base presence. It would be surprising if the 2016 court, addressing the project to create a new base at Henoko, did not follow it.

Another precedent addresses more directly the Okinawa base issue. It is just 20 years since then Okinawan Governor Ota Masahide (Governor 1990-1998) was arraigned before the Supreme Court facing the demand by the Prime Minister that he exercise his duties of state under the Local Self-Government Law to sign the proxy lease agreements on privately owned land appropriated by the US military (which he had refused to do). Ota made an eloquent plea, but the court dismissed it, contemptuously, in a two-sentence judgement.²¹ For Ota, the Supreme Court ruling was the last word. He submitted and signed the proxy lease agreements.

In the case of civil suits too, by Okinawan citizens and civic groups against the government of Japan, the record points to similar judicial inclination to endorse the state, dismissing the Okinawan case against it. One long-running (2009-2014) suit brought by a citizen group to have the environmental impact study on Henoko reopened because of its being fundamentally unscientific was dismissed at both initial hearing and later on appeal court, the latter issuing a judgement so brief that it took just 30 seconds to read out.²² Other long-running suits have been pursued against the government over the intolerable levels of noise and nuisance emanating from the US bases. Between 2002 and 2015, courts have issued altogether seven judgements on this matter, repeatedly accepting evidence (in the words of the most recent judgement of Naha District Court in June 2015) that the 2200 plaintiffs of Ginowan City did indeed suffer “mental distress, poor sleep, and disruption to their daily lives” from “serous and widespread” violations that “could not be defended on any ground of public interest” and that they should therefore be paid 754 million yen (approximately $9 million) compensation. Courts have refused to order a stop to that nuisance. By so doing, they in effect concede that the US military is beyond and above the law, and that the government of Japan is complicit in enforcing its ongoing illegality and the accompanying suffering of its people. As Ryukyu shimpo commented, “how could a government that enforced continuing illegality upon the citizens of one of its regions be considered a law-ruled state?”²³

The base issue continues to divide Okinawa as the Abe government strives to divide and conquer it, cultivating sufficient local interest groups to accomplish its purpose. Following the pro-Abe and pro-Sakima suit launched by the 21 Ginowan citizens in late October, a group of twenty citizens living in the vicinity of the Henoko base construction site launched a fresh suit before the Naha court on December 24, 2015, seeking a cancelation of the Abe government’s base construction plans on grounds of noise and other nuisance they could anticipate that the project to bring them. Their constitutional entitlement to a peaceful existence was no less, they insisted, than that of the people of Ginowan. They made their claim out of an urgent sense of justice and entitlement, although knowing full well that justice ranked below the interest of the state in serving the US military.²⁴

Direct Action

As for how Governor Onaga would react if all Okinawan claims were simply dismissed, the Ota precedent is sobering and Onaga’s lifelong membership of the LDP makes one incline to think he would be even less inclined to resist a Supreme Court order than Ota. Yet prediction is not straightforward. Though unashamedly conservative, Onaga prioritizes his identity as Okinawan over ideology and “all Okinawa” is his core slogan. It may be only a straw in the wind but, in November 2015, Onaga’s wife, Mikiko, promised the protesters assembled at the Camp Schwab gate that if all other steps had been taken (bansaku tsukitara) and still the project had not been stopped, she and her husband would come to join them in direct action (Ryukyu shimpo, November 8, 2015). They would stop the construction at all costs, even, in other words, by civil disobedience. This, needless to say, highlights the unique and uniquely problematic nature of Okinawa within the Japanese state and the depth of the contradiction on which the relationship is built.

Coast Guard officers in daily confrontation with protesters outside Camp Schwab or on Oura Bay

Should the decision, or series of decisions, go against Okinawa, and should the Governor (and his wife) then join the direct action resistance at Henoko, the government could, if it so chose, then sweep them away from the gate of Camp Schwab, beating, arresting, and if necessary indicting them, and press ahead with construction. This is essentially what government has been doing for well over a year, though as yet on a small scale. It does so with impunity because its actions escape national media scrutiny and (on the whole) international attention. But if would be a different matter to subject the highly popular Governor in person to such measures, especially because it would mean ordering the prefectural police, who nominally are under the Governor’s command, to arrest him. Such evidence of open clash between wings of the government of Japan would weaken the US military ties that Abe is intent on strengthening, upset the Pentagon, and expose Japan to the world as an anti-democratic state that deployed violence against its own citizens.

Apart from the political and judicial contest, however, it may be that the really crucial area of confrontation is that between the forces of the Abe state and the people of Okinawa gathering every day at the gate of the Camp Schwab site to try to block construction works by direct, non-violent action. The daily gathering that Onaga Mikiko addressed in November 2015 has continued now for well over 500 days, since July 2014. The violence of riot police on land and Coastguard at sea takes its toll of the protesters, who number on a day-to-day basis between 50 and 500 or so, but their morale remains high. They believe they are currently forcing a stoppage of works on roughly one day a week, and plan to step that up to two, three, etc.

As I have noted elsewhere, the crisis today pits the “irresistible force” of the nation state against the “immovable object” of the Okinawan resistance and, in that sense, it has a certain tragic quality. Prime Minister Abe has staked so much on completing and handing over the new facility to the US Marine Corps that it is almost unimaginable that he could ever abandon it. Governor Onaga is in a similar, if opposite, position. Even if he were to submit to a court ruling, and withdraw his opposition (which, for reasons already given above, seems unlikely), far from resolving matters that would further infuriate the Okinawan people and heighten their resentment of their own government and of the base system. The supposed linchpin of the regional security system would then become its Achilles heel.

As writs were issued and injunctions sought late in 2015 and early 2016 to prevent (or to impose) base construction, Abe’s government appeared to be striving to evade any possible adverse judicial ruling by pushing the works with all possible speed beyond a point of no return. ²⁵ The government that did not hesitate in July 2014 to change its interpretation of the constitution to suit its political agenda was in 2016 manipulating the law and intervening in unprecedented ways to try to determine the outcome of a city mayoral election, to impose its will on a recalcitrant prefecture. For the Okinawan resistance to prevail against such a desperate and unprincipled state, it will have to widen the current struggle and gain the support not just of “All-Okinawa” but of an “All-Japan” citizen alliance and an accompanying global movement.

Gavan McCormack is an honorary professor of Australian National University, editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal, and author of many texts on aspects of modern and contemporary East Asian History, including Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012 (co-authored with Satoko Oka Norimatsu). His work is widely published in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, as well as English. For some of his recent essays (other than those accessible at this site), see “Okinawa as sacrificial victim,” Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2015, pp. 6-7, and “Chauvinist nationalism in Japan’s schizophrenic state,” in Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds, The Politics of the Right, Socialist Register 2016, London, The Merlin Press, 2015, pp. 231-249.

James Corbett’s two documentaries are discussed, beginning with How Big Oil Conquered the World; the rise of the oiligarchy; the Yom Kippur War and subsequent 1973 oil shock; petro dollars and the monetary system; the creation of modern education, medicine, the green and gene revolution; control of the food supply, and the interrelationship of the global petrochemical industry with all of the above. 9/11 Trillions:

Follow the Money is analyzed as a crime and follows the money through the Silverstein heist, the secret heist of Marsh & McLennan, et al., put and call option insider trading on many corporations; and the Pentagon’s missing trillions.

The Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are reporting today that US troops have taken over control of the Rmeilan airfield in northeastern Syria’s Hasakeh Province, the first US military base inside Syria.

The SDF reported that the Kurdish YPG, their largest faction, previously controlled the base and handed sole control over it to the US, as a route for the US to bring them weapons and to launch warplanes from.

Rmeilan Airport is not a military airfield by design, and was primarily for crop-dusting and agriculture. It is unclear, then, the extent to which it’ll really be used by the US as a base for warplanes. The US generally launches such planes from Turkey, though Turkey has loudly objected to the US aiding the Kurds.

Some reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggest that work is underway to expand the runway, and that US attack helicopters have been seen going in and out of the base for weeks.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren confirmed that there is an operation “ongoing” in the area, but refused to discuss the matter, citing the “special nature” of the US ground troops who are deployed in Syria. Officials previously confirmed a handful of troops were sent to Syria, but never suggested they were going to establish their own bases.

The operation appears legally dicey, at best, as while the base was nominally under the control of the Kurdish YPG, who are closely allied to the US, the Obama Administration has refused all coordination with the Syrian government, and certainly doesn’t have Syrian permission to establish military bases on Syrian soil.

Among an array of deplorable Republican and Democrat presidential aspirants, Clinton stands out as the most dangerous and sinister of the bunch – an unrequited war goddess, risking nuclear confrontation if elected.

Her record in office and since leaving government shows support for imperial lawlessness, indifference to human suffering, and addiction to self-aggrandizement, along with using her high office to accumulate great wealth.

Clinton Foundation donors have direct ties to foreign nations, including a Saudi royal family member, corrupt Ukrainian oligarch/former Kiev parliamentarian, and anti-Chavista Venezuelan media mogul.

After she became Obama’s Secretary of State, over a dozen foreign influence peddlers contributed around $68 million.

When she left government, she accepted foreign government donations – including from Argentina, Bosnia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka Ukraine, and the UAE.

As a presidential aspirant, potential conflict of interests are obvious. Federal law prohibits governments, corporations, individuals and groups from contributing to US political campaigns.

Funding Clinton’s foundation buys influence. So does paying her millions of dollars for speechmaking – $2,935,000 from Wall Street banks alone from 2013 – 2015.

Husband Bill profited hugely the same way, their combined yearend 2015 net worth an estimated $111 million.

Both are walking conflicts of interests. As a presidential aspirant, Hillary’s use of public office for self-enrichment warrants close scrutiny for possible serious wrongdoing.

An unclassified January 14 Inspector General of the Intelligence Community letter revealed “several dozen (Clinton) emails containing classified information, determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET and TOP SECRET/SAP (Special Access Program) levels.”

“According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources…sworn declarations (solely for high-level government official cleared for) need-to-know” information.

Until now, only two Clinton emails were labelled “top secret.” Now it’s known there were many more. She’s been heavily criticized for using her personal server for official government business.

Key is whether she committed a criminal offense. Whether an FBI investigation proves it remains to be seen.

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.

Sunday January 24th 2016 marks the anniversary of the death of one of the most lionized leaders in the Western world: Sir Winston Churchill.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has called Churchill “the greatest ever Prime Minister”, and Britons have recently voted him as the greatest Briton to have ever lived.

The story that British schoolbooks tell children about Churchill is of a British Bulldog, with unprecedented moral bravery and patriotism. He, who defeated the Nazis during World War II and spread civilisation to indigenous people from all corners of the globe. Historically, nothing could be further from the truth.

To the vast majority of the world, where the sun once never set on the British empire, Winston Churchill remains a great symbol of racist Western imperialist tyranny, who stood on the wrong side of history.

The myth of Churchill is Britain’s greatest propaganda tool because it rewrites Churchill’s true history in order to whitewash Britain’s past imperialist crimes against humanity. The Churchill myth also perpetuates Britain’s ongoing neo-colonial and neo-liberal policies, that still, to the is day, hurt the very people around the world that Churchill was alleged to have helped civilise.

The same man whose image is polished and placed on British mantelpieces as a symbol of all that is Great about Britain was an unapologetic racist and white supremacist. “I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with a beastly religion”, he once bellowed. As Churchill put it, Palestinians were simply “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.”

In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission:

“I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

It is unsurprising that when Barack Obama became President, he returned to Britain a bust of Churchill which he found on his desk in the Oval office. According to historian Johann Hari, Mr. Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill’s watch, for daring to resist Churchill’s empire.

Apart from being an unrepentant racist, Churchill was also a staunch proponent of the use of terrorism as a weapon of war.

During the Kurdish rebellion against the British dictatorship in 1920, Churchill remarked that he simply did not understand the “squeamishness” surrounding the use of gas by civilized Great Britain as a weapon of terror. “I am strongly in favour of using gas against uncivilised tribes, it would spread a lively terror,” he remarked.

In the same year, as Secretary of State for War, Churchill sent the infamous Black and Tans to Ireland to fight the IRA. The group became known for vicious terrorist attacks on civilians which Churchill condoned and encouraged.

While today Britons celebrate Churchill’s legacy, much of the world outside the West mourns the legacy of a man who insisted that it was the solemn duty of Great Britain to invade and loot foreign lands because in Churchill’s own words Britain’s “Aryan stock is bound to triumph”.

Churchill’s legacy in the Far East, Middle East, South Asia and Africa is certainly not one of an affable British Lionheart, intent on spreading civilization amongst the natives of the world. To people of these regions the imperialism, racism, and fascism of a man like Winston Churchill can be blamed for much of the world’s ongoing conflicts and instability.

As Churchill himself boasted, he “created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon,” thereby placing many Jordanians under the brutal thumb of a throneless Hashemite prince, Abdullah. Historian Michael R. Burch recalls how the huge zigzag in Jordan’s eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called “Winston’s Hiccup” or “Churchill’s Sneeze” because Churchill carelessly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch.

Churchill also invented Iraq. After giving Jordan to Prince Abdullah, Churchill, the great believer in democracy that he was, gave Prince Abdullah’s brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert that became Iraq. Faisal and Abdullah were war buddies of Churchill’s friend T. E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Much like the clumsy actions in Iraq of today’s great Empire, Churchill’s imperial foreign policy caused decades of instability in Iraq by arbitrarily locking together three warring ethnic groups that have been bleeding heavily ever since. In Iraq, Churchill bundled together the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra that was predominantly Shiite, Baghdad that was Sunni, and Mosul that was mainly Kurd.

Ask almost anyone outside of Iraq who is responsible for the unstable mess that Iraq is in today and they are likely to say one word, either “Bush” or “America”. However, if you asked anyone within Iraq who is mainly responsible for Iraq’s problems over the last half century and they are likely to simply say “Churchill”.

Winston Churchill convened the 1912 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British Middle Eastern mandate and T.E. Lawrence was the most influential delegate. Churchill did not invite a single Arab to the conference, which is shocking but hardly surprising since in his memoirs Churchill said that he never consulted the Arabs about his plans for them.

The arbitrary lines drawn in Middle Eastern sand by Churchillian imperialism were never going to withstand the test of time. To this day, Churchill’s actions have denied Jordanians, Iraqis, Kurds and Palestinians anything resembling true democracy and national stability.

The intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict can also be traced directly back to Churchill’s door at number 10 Downing Street and his decision to hand over the “Promised Land” to both Arabs and Jews. Churchill gave practical effect to the Balfour declaration of 1917, which expressed Britain’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, resulting in the biggest single error of British foreign policy in the Middle East.

Churchill’s legacy in Sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya in particular is also one of deep physical and physiological scars that endure to this day.

Of greater consequence to truth and history should be a man’s actions, not merely his words. Whilst Churchill has become one of the most extensively quoted men in the English speaking world, particularly on issues of democracy and freedom, true history speaks of a man whose actions revolved around, in Churchill’s own words, “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”.

One such war was when Kikuyu Kenyans rebelled for their freedom only to have Churchill call them “brutish savage children” and force 150,000 of them into “Britain’s Gulag”.

Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Professor Caroline Elkins, highlights Churchill’s many crimes in Kenya in her book Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Professor Elkins explains how Churchill’s soldiers “whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects”, all in the name of British “civilization”. It is said that President Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama never truly recovered from the torture he endured from Churchill’s men.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved how in Bengal in 1943 Churchill engineered one of the worst famines in human history for profit.

Over three million civilians starved to death whilst Churchill refused to send food aid to India. Instead, Churchill trumpeted that “the famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Churchill intentionally hoarded grain to sell for profit on the open market after the Second World War instead of diverting it to starving inhabitants of a nation controlled by Britain. Churchill’s actions in India unquestionably constituted a crime against humanity.

Churchill was also one of the greatest advocates of Britain’s disastrous divide-and-rule foreign policy.

Churchill’s administration deliberately created and exacerbated sectarian fissures within India’s independence movement, between Indian Hindus and Muslims that have had devastating effects on the region ever since.

Prior to India’s independence from Britain, Churchill was eager to see bloodshed erupt in India, so as to prove that Britain was the benevolent “glue holding the nation together”. For Churchill, bloodshed also had the added strategic advantage that it would also lead to the partition of India and Pakistan. Churchill’s hope was this partition would result in Pakistan remaining within Britain’s sphere of influence. This, in turn, would enable the Great Game against the Soviet empire to continue, no matter the cost to innocent Indian and Pakistanis. The partition of India with Pakistan caused the death of about 2.5 million people and displaced some 12.5 million others.

According to writer, Ishaan Tharoor, Churchill’s own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery,  compared his boss’s understanding of India’s problems to King George III’s apathy for the Americas. In his private diaries Amery vented that “on the subject of India, Churchill is not quite sane” and that he didn’t “see much difference between Churchill’s outlook and Hitler’s.”

Churchill shared far more ideologically in common with Hitler than most British historians care to admit. For instance, Churchill was a keen supporter of eugenics, something he shared in common with Germany’s Nazi leadership, who were estimated estimated to have killed 200,000 disabled people and forcibly sterilised twice that number. Churchill drafted a highly controversial piece of legislation, which mandated that the mentally ill be forcibly sterilized. In a memo to the Prime Minister in 1910, Winston Churchill cautioned, “the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”. He also helped organise the International Eugenics Conference of 1912, which was the largest meeting of proponents of eugenics in history.

Churchill had a long standing belief in racial hierarchies and eugenics. In Churchill’s view, white protestant Christians were at the very top of the pyramid, above white Catholics, while Jews and Indians were only slightly higher than Africans.

Historian, Mr. Hari, rightfully points out, “the fact that we now live in a world where a free and independent India is a superpower eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the Kikuyu ‘savages’ is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his ugliest – and a sweet, ironic victory for Churchill at his best.”

Amid today’s Churchillian parades and celebratory speeches, British media and schoolbooks may choose to only remember Churchill’s opposition to dictatorship in Europe, but the rest of the world cannot choose to forget Churchill’s imposition of dictatorship on darker skinned people outside of Europe. Far from being the Lionheart of Britain, who stood on the ramparts of civilisation, Winston Churchill, all too often, simply stood on the wrong side of history.

Churchill is indeed the Greatest Briton to have ever lived, because for decades, the myth of Churchill has served as Britain’s greatest propaganda tool to bolster national white pride and glorify British imperial culture.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

Amid heightened tensions between Israel and Western allies, Jerusalem on Thursday confirmed a major annexation of 154 hectares (380 acres) of territory north of the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s announcement of it’s largest agricultural land seizure since 2014 has drawn harsh criticism from Palestinian and Western authorities. Palestine officials announced they would push for a UN resolution decrying Israeli settlement policies.

“Settlement activities are a violation of international law and run counter to the public pronouncements of the government of Israel supporting a two-state solution to the conflict,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

The move follows diplomatic clashes this week between Washington and Jerusalem, as US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro angered Israeli state representatives by issuing a statement that the US was concerned and perplexed by Israel’s West Bank policy.

“We believe they’re fundamentally incompatible with a two-state solution and call into question, frankly, the Israeli government’s commitment to a two-state solution,” deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday.

In a move certain to bite the hand that feeds, Israeli forces destroyed six housing structures in the West Bank that were part of a project funded by a humanitarian arm of the EU. The structures were intended for Bedouins living in an area between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, locally known as E1. Israeli construction in the area would split the West Bank, cutting Palestinians off from East Jerusalem, the city they seek to make their capital.

Israeli officials have not responded to global condemnation of the demolitions and incipient annexation, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested last week that EU construction in the area, whether humanitarian or otherwise, was not legal.

“They’re building without authorization, against the accepted rules, and there’s a clear attempt to create political realities,” he remarked to media.

To justify the seizure of land, Israel has previously used an 1858 Ottoman law stipulating that land that lies uncultivated for a specific period of time can revert to government property.

Territories that Israel intends to appropriate are part of the land Palestinians claim for the recognition of their independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem; areas Israel seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Binyamin Netanyahu had mistakenly thought that Israel’s increased trade with China would guarantee him a political advantage and support for a Greater Israel based on illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights plus his blockade of Gaza. However, this week’s pronouncement by the Chinese Premier of specific Chinese support for an independent State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital has not only thrown a bucket of iced water over the Likud leader but means his political career is now all but finished.

Now the Israeli electorate must choose a politician who is free of the narrow-minded constraints of colonial Zionism, with its ‘pricetag’ terrorism, and is prepared to drag Israel into the 21st Century and to co-operate in the long overdue establishment of a Palestinian state for five million indigenous Arabs over the whole of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

This will entail the repatriation of more than 500,000 illegal settlers and the dismantling of all settlements in the Occupied Territories in their entirety so as to revert to the 1967 borders as required by the United Nations and the international community.

This has been a long time in coming. But there is now nowhere for this Israeli-born, American-raised, anachronistic Zionist to go, except into a long-overdue retirement, together with his Likud Party.

And that can only be a move towards peace in this long and unnecessary conflict that has bedevilled the Middle East for nearly half a century.

Note

http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-backs-establishment-of-independent-state-of-palestine-with-jerusalem-as-its-capital/5502997

1. Out of the 14.2 million Jewish people in the world, (in 2016), only a minority of 43% reside in Israel.

2. Whilst 75% of Israelis are Jewish, 21% are indigenous Arabs with restricted civil rights.

3. Israel has the highest birth rate in the developed world, with an average of 3 children per woman.

4. The Netanyahu government now receives more than US$6 billion every year from the US congress/ AIPAC lobby i.e. equating to $1000 annually for every Jewish Israeli, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

5. Israel has induced over 500,000 of its citizens to illegally settle in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem in an attempt to frustrate the wishes of the UN for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state for five million indigenous Arabs.

6. Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapon state in the world with a secret stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads. It is not a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Europe, America and even Iran, are all subject to by the IAEA inspectorate of the UN.

7. Angela Merkel has unilaterally supplied Israel with a deadly ‘second strike’ nuclear capability in the form of a German-built, Dolphin-class submarine fleet that is now more powerful than anything possessed by the defence forces of France, Britain or Germany, thereby leaving all of Europe dangerously vulnerable.

8. Netanyahu, in a direct challenge to the EU, has this week authorised yet another land grab in the Occupied Territories in breach of the provisions of the Trade Association Agreement with the EU thereby inviting the imposition of tariffs against Israeli exports to the European single market.

9. According to published statistics, Israel is the most dangerous place for any Jewish person to live compared to Britain, France, United States or Canada.

10. The father of the current Israeli Prime Minister, was personal secretary to Vladimir Zhabotinsky, the founder of Irgun, a Revisionist Zionist paramilitary organisation. Two of the operations for which the Irgun is best known are the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the DeirYassin massacre, carried out together with Lehi on 9 April 1948.

* All the above factual information is verifiable and available within the public domain

Notes

http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-must-now-open-its-nuclear-program-to-iaea-inspection-or-face-sanctions/5502024

http://www.globalresearch.ca/netanyahu-to-seize-154-hectares-of-palestinian-land-in-violation-of-international-law-and-in-direct-challenge-to-eu/5502931

I’ve always assumed that Putin’s KGB (now called the FSB) killed Alexander Litvinenko.

But today’s announcement by the British that Putin “probably” approved Litvinenko’s murder made me curious enough to take a look for myself.

Initially, Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium as he sipped tea in an upscale London hotel. The report makes it sound like only Russia had access to polonium, but it’s actually available online to anyone.

Antiwar notes:

If the Russians wanted to off Litvinenko, why would they poison him with a substance that left a radioactive trail traceable from Germany to Heathrow airport – and, in the process, contaminating scores of hotel rooms, offices, planes, restaurants, and homes?  Why not just put a bullet through his head? It makes no sense.

But then conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense: they just have to take certain assumptions all the way to their implausible conclusions. If one starts with the premise that Putin and the Russians are a Satanic force capable of anything, and incompetent to boot, then it’s all perfectly “logical” – in the Bizarro World, at any rate.

The idea that Litvinenko was a dangerous opponent of the Russian government who had to be killed because he posed a credible threat to the existence of the regime is laughable: practically no one inside Russia knew anything about him, and as for his crackpot “truther” theories about how Putin was behind every terrorist attack ever carried out within Russia’s borders – to assert that they had any credence outside of the Western media echo chamber is a joke.

***

The meat of the matter – the real “evidence” – is hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Lord Owen’s inquiry was for the most part conducted in secret closed  hearings, with testimony given by anonymous witnesses, and this is central to the “evidence” that is supposed to convict Kovtun, Lugovoy, and the Russian government. Lord Owen, explains it this way:

Put very shortly, the closed evidence consists of evidence that is relevant to the Inquiry, but which has been assessed as being too sensitive to put into the public domain. The assessment that the material is sufficiently sensitive to warrant being treated as closed evidence in these proceedings has been made not by me, but by the Home Secretary. She has given effect to this decision by issuing a number of Restriction Notices, which is a procedure specified in section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005. The Restriction Notices themselves, although not, of course, the sensitive documents appended to them, are public documents. They have been published on the Inquiry website and are also to be found at Appendix 7 to this Report.

In other words, the “evidence” is not for us ordinary mortals to see. We just have to take His Lordship’s word for it that the Russian government embarked on an improbable assassination mission against a marginal figure that reads like something Ian Fleming might have written under a pseudonym.

So who killed Litvinenko ?

Well, Mario Scaramella met with Litvinenko during the meal when Litvinenko was poisoned. Scaramelladidn’t eat or drink a thing during the lunch, and then himself came down with a mild case of polonium poisoning.

La Republica (one of Italy’s largest newspapers)  wrote in 2006 (English translation) that Scaramella was a bad guy who may have worked with the CIA:

Mario Scaramella is suspected of arms trafficking. Earlier this year, the public prosecutor of Naples has written for this offense to the docket and, soon after, had to stop the investigation. [He was convicted in Italy for selling arms (original Italian).]

***

Sources found to be very credible by the prosecutor recalled that investigators suspected that Scaramella was actually in close relationship, if not actually working for, the CIA and that his ECPP could be a front company of the agency’s Langley.

Antiwar notes:

As I pointed out here:

Litvinenko was an employee of exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky – whose ill-gotten empire included a Russian syndicate of car-dealerships that had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Chechen Mafia – but was being slowly cut out of the money pipeline. Big-hearted Boris, who had initially put him on the payroll as anti-Putin propagandist, was evidently getting sick of him, and the out-of-work “dissident” was reportedly desperate for money. Litvinenko had several “ business meetings ” with Lugovoi in the months prior to his death, and, according to this report , he hatched a blackmail scheme targeting several well-known Russian tycoons and government officials.

Indeed, Litvinenko, in the months before his death, had targeted several well-known members of the Russian Mafia with his blackmail scheme. That they would take umbrage at this is hardly shocking.

Alternatively, Litvinenko may actually have accidentally poisoned himself.  Antiwar again:

Furthermore, there are indications that Litvinenko was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials. That he wound up being contaminated by the goods he was peddling on the black market seems far more credible than the cock-and-bull story about a vast Russian plot originating in the Kremlin,. Apparently Lord Owen has never heard of Occam’s Razor.

A British governmental inquiry has concluded that Russian President Putin “probably approved” the killing of Alexander Litvinenko by polonium poisoning.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44002.htm

As no evidence is provided for the surmise, we can conclude that this report on an unresolved event that happened a decade ago is part of the lies being used by the West to demonize Putin, just as the lies about MH-17 and “the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Litvinenko’s brother and father say that they “are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.” Maksim Litvinenko dismisses the British report as a smear on Putin.

https://www.rt.com/news/329804-litvinenko-brother-britain-murder/

And that is what it is.

“Our” government not only lies to us about the economy and the wars, it also lies about literally everything. For example, do you remember the Rwanda genocide? The story we were told is the exact opposite of the truth. Today the perpetrator of the genocide, Paul Kagame, is the President of Rwanda.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/rwanda-the-enduring-lies-a-project-censored-interview-with-professor-ed-herman/5502707

Western governments and media have covered up his crimes and praise him as a great humanitarian who has healed Rwanda and is totally supported by the people. The truth is that Kagame has proved himself a worse totalitarian that Hitler, Stalin, and Poll Pot combined. He has turned Rwanda into a fear-ridden psychological prison. Anjan Sundaram, a journalist who ran a journalism training school in Rwanda, describes in detail Kagame’s destruction of all truth and all independent thought in Rwanda. In his just published book by Doubleday, Bad News: Last Journalists In A Dictatorship, Sundaram gives the gruesome details of how Rwandans, with the complicity of the West, have been brought more psychologically under control than Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984.

Kagame used murder, fear, and bribes and purges of his own supporters in order to eliminate all expression of independent thought in Rwanda. Indeed, in Rwanda the individual has disappeared. People have been merged into the state. Sundaram reports his conversation with a Rwandan who is being reconstructed along the lines of Winston Smith. This person tells Sundaram: “In this kind of country we don’t know where the state ends and where we begin. And if I don’t know where I begin I’m worth nothing. I don’t have any rights. We are not individuals, we are agents of the state.”

None of the totalitarianisms that the West ranted against during the 20th century ever got this far. There was resistance everywhere. Hitler’s own top generals plotted against him. In the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, there were dissidents, including highly placed members of the Communist Party. But in Rwanda even the concept of opposition has been erased.

Reading Bad News brings to mind parallels to the US. In Rwanda sentences result not from law but from “the word of authority. Simple words had attained such power.” This reminds us of simple words from the US president that result in indefinite detention and assassination of US citizens without trials and conviction. The subservience of Western journalism has been obtained by the state similar to the suppression of independent journalism in Rwanda. Bribes are used, both monetary and access. Fear of being fired and rendered unemployable as a journalist is used. Occasionally, perhaps even murder is used as in the unresolved case of the US journalist whose car suddenly accelerated and crashed at high speed. Other American journalists have been threatened with prison sentences.

The disturbing fact that is the Anglo-Zionist Empire has supported Kagame, a genocidist who “has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin,” is perhps an indication of what the Anglo-Zionist Empire has in mind for the rest of us.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/rwanda-the-enduring-lies-a-project-censored-interview-with-professor-ed-herman/5502707

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

I presidenti del Sud America sono a un punto di svolta. Le economie dell’America Latina si sono contratte nel 2015 e, secondo varie stime, avranno crescita zero nel 2016. Nulla indica che i prezzi delle materie prime rimbalzino. Anche in questo caso il dilemma tra regolazione della spesa pubblica e prestiti degli istituti di credito surrogato del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti, si pone. Tuttavia Ariel Noyola ritiene che i leader della regione possano ancora scommettere sul rafforzamento delle fondamenta dell’architettura finanziaria sudamericana con l’attivazione della Banca del Sud, un progetto bloccato da oltre otto anni e che, data la gravità della situazione economica attuale, può impedire una seria debacle.

Di fronte alla recessione globale, è urgente che i presidenti del Sud America mettano tutte le loro energie nella costruzione di proprie istituzioni di credito e sull’utilizzo degli strumenti di cooperazione finanziaria volti a indebolire l’influenza del dollaro nella regione. Ogni volta che il governo degli Stati Uniti cerca d’imporre con ogni mezzo il predominio economico sulla regione, per i Paesi sudamericani è indispensabile avere autonomia politica dagli istituti di credito tradizionali.

Il modus operandi del Fondo monetario internazionale (FMI), Banca Mondiale e Banca Interamericana di Sviluppo (IDB) è già ben noto: l’uso del debito come meccanismo di pressione sui popoli sprofondati nell’insolvenza; imposizione di misure economiche draconiane (diminuzione della spesa sociale, tagli salariali, privatizzazione delle imprese statali strategiche, ecc.); assistenza finanziaria illimitata ai governi nati da un colpo di Stato e sostenuti dalla Casa Bianca (come in Cile a metà degli anni ’70); eccetera. Per queste e molte altre ragioni, è necessario rafforzare le fondamenta dell’architettura finanziaria sudamericana.

In primo luogo, è necessaria l’Unità monetaria sudamericana (UMS). L’UMS non è una “moneta comune”, come l’euro, ma un paniere di riferimento costituito da un insieme di valute (come i diritti speciali di prelievo del FMI). In breve, l’UMS è un riferimento dalla maggiore stabilità rispetto al dollaro, sia emettendo buoni che comparando i prezzi nella regione. In parallelo, va promosso il commercio fatturato in valuta locale.

Dal 2008 Argentina e Brasile hanno lanciato il sistema di pagamento in valuta locale (SML). E nell’ottobre 2015, Paraguay e Uruguay implementavano un meccanismo di pagamenti di questo tipo. Grazie a ciò, si è evitato di volgersi al dollaro, pagandone le transazioni, ridotte considerevolmente tra le imprese delle parti. Ora manca solo coinvolgervi Bolivia e Venezuela, favorendo così la “dedollarizzazione” dei Paesi del Mercato comune del Sud (MERCOSUR).

In secondo luogo, i Paesi del Sud America hanno bisogno di un potente fondo di stabilizzazione monetaria in grado di proteggerne la bilancia dei pagamenti dalle violente fluttuazioni del dollaro, ancor di più dopo che la Federal Reserve (Fed) statunitense ha alzato il tasso di interesse dei fondi federali (‘federal funds rateì’) nel dicembre scorso[1]. Dal 2002 al 2009 l’aumento dei prezzi delle materie prime (‘commodities’) ha favorito il massiccio accumularsi delle riserve internazionali, e tuttavia il Sud America ha continuato a finanziare i Paesi industrializzati.

Gran parte dei miliardi di dollari risparmiati dalla regione sudamericana negli ultimi anni è stata investita nei titoli del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti, piuttosto che incanalata nelle attività produttive attraverso un potente Fondo del Sud. Al momento l’unico fondo di stabilizzazione esistente nella regione è il Fondo di Riserva Latinamericano (FLAR), originariamente creato dalla Comunità andina nel 1978 sotto il nome do Fondo di riserva andino, composto attualmente da Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perù, Uruguay e Venezuela.

Tuttavia, le risorse disponibili al FLAR sono insufficienti per contenere le fughe precipitose di capitale nei momenti critici: il capitale sottoscritto è di soli 3,609 miliardi di dollari, un importo pari a meno del 15% degli stock detenuti dalla Banca Centrale della Bolivia. Il mercato del credito globale è diventato troppo volatile. Solo nel 2015 più di 98 miliardi di dollari di investimenti nei Paesi emergenti sono fuggiti, secondo le stime dell’Institute of International Finance (IIF, nell’acronimo in inglese)[2].

Pertanto, è urgente lavorare su tale pericolosa vulnerabilità. I Paesi del Mercosur hanno bisogno di un fondo di stabilizzazione che, dato l’elevato grado d’integrazione finanziaria tra Brasile e resto del mondo, conti su almeno 100 miliardi di capitale sociale, il volume delle risorse con cui avviare l’Accordo della Riserva delle Contingenze dei BRICS (acronimo di Brasile, Russia, India, Cina e Sud Africa).

In terzo luogo, i Paesi del Sud America devono liberare la Banca del Sud dal pantano burocratico e finalmente emettere i primi prestiti[3]. I dettagli tecnici sono quasi pronti: il capitale iniziale sarà di 7 miliardi di dollari e il capitale sociale di 20 miliardi di dollari; la sede sarà in Venezuela; Argentina e Bolivia ospiteranno altri due rami. Tuttavia, il suo avvio è stato rinviato più volte, tanto che, ad oltre otto anni dalla firma del documento della fondazione a Buenos Aires, la Banca del Sud non può ancora aprire i battenti[4].

Vi sono forti interessi economici che impediscono la rottura dello status quo, sia dentro che fuori la regione. Anche se in un primo momento era previsto che la Banca del Sud riunisse tutti i Paesi dell’Unione delle Nazioni Sudamericane (UNASUR), ciò sembra impossibile; Suriname e Guyana non hanno alcun interesse, mentre Cile, Colombia e Perù si accaniscono a sostenere progetti d’integrazione promossi da Washington, l’Alleanza del Pacifico e l’accordo della Partnership Trans-Pacifica (TPP, nell’acronimo in inglese).

Di conseguenza, i membri della Banca del Sud si riducono ai Paesi MERCOSUR più l’Ecuador. Inoltre, la resistenza nel blocco proviene per lo più da Itamaraty, il Ministero degli Esteri del Brasile. In Sud America l’influenza sulla Banca di Sviluppo Nazionale (BNDES nell’acronimo portoghese) del Brasile è travolgente, tanto che in alcuni anni è riuscita a superare il credito fornito da FMI, Banca Mondiale e IDB.

La BNDES non ha alcun interesse a far avanzare l’integrazione latinoamericana, infatti la sua missione è garantire l’approvvigionamento di materie prime (‘commodities’) alle società brasiliane[5]. Le risorse della BNDES sono orientate sui megaprogetti che riproducono la dipendenza dall’esportazione primaria dei Paesi sudamericani come l’Iniziativa per l’integrazione delle infrastrutture regionali (IIRSA), una rete stradale di dimensioni continentali che avvantaggia solo una manciata di società[6].

Al contrario, il denaro della Banca del Sud non andrà non solo alle infrastrutture, ma anche a una vasta gamma di programmi d’investimento connessi a istruzione, sanità, alloggi, ecc. La Banca del Sud scarterà completamente i criteri del “Washington Consensus” che hanno portato tanta miseria nelle Americhe; concederà prestiti ad interesse molto basso, dato che l’obiettivo è promuovere lo sviluppo economico generale dei popoli.

Indubbiamente, la Banca del Sud è una grande speranza in tempi di crisi. Da un lato, sarà un potente meccanismo di sollievo economico per i Paesi del Sud America vittime di gravi contrazioni. D’altro canto, sarà di aiuto cruciale nel finanziare gli obiettivi più ambiziosi dell’integrazione sudamericana: progetti scientifici e tecnologici comuni, una rete di ferrovie e altre energie, ecc.

In conclusione, i governi sudamericani devono prendere misure concrete per porre fine al restauro conservativo in corso, altrimenti precipiteranno nella debacle. Chiaramente, il governo del Brasile ha la maggiore responsabilità sulla salvaguardia della sovranità continentale. Dai vertici di Itamaraty dipenderà in ultima analisi la fine della paralisi della Banca del Sud…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Traduzione: Alessandro Lattanzio (Sito Aurora).

Fonte: Russia Today.

Os governos da América do Sul se encontram em uma encruzilhada. As economias da região latino-americana se contraíram em 2015 e, segundo diversas estimativas, terão um crescimento nulo em 2016. Nada indica que os preços dos produtos primários vão subir. De novo surge o dilema entre realizar ajustes de gasto público e solicitar empréstimos às instituições de crédito submetidas ao Departamento do Tesouro dos Estados Unidos. Contudo, Ariel Noyola considera que os mandatários da região também poderiam apostar em fortalecer as bases da arquitetura financeira sul-americana mediante a inauguração do Banco do Sul, um projeto que ficou parado durante mais de oito anos e que, frente à gravidade da situação econômica atual, pode impedir o aprofundamento da crise.

Diante do aprofundamento da recessão mundial, é urgente que os mandatários da América do Sul coloquem todas as suas energias na construção de instituições de crédito próprias e no uso de instrumentos de cooperação financeira orientados a debilitar a influência do dólar na região. Toda vez que o governo dos Estados Unidos busca impor por todos os meios possíveis sua dominação econômica na região, se torna indispensável para os países sul-americanos conquistar a autonomia política frente às instituições tradicionais de crédito.

O modus operandi do Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI), do Banco Mundial e o Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID) já é bastante conhecido: a utilização da dívida como um mecanismo de pressão contra os povos afundados na insolvência; a imposição de medidas econômicas draconianas (diminuição dos gastos sociais, cortes nos salários, privatização das empresas estatais de carácter estratégico, etc.); a assistência financeira sem limites a governos surgidos de um golpe de Estado, mas apoiados pela Casa Branca (como ocorreu no Chile na década de 1970); etc. Por essas e muitas outras razões, é necessário fortalecer as bases da arquitetura financeira sul-americana.

Em primeiro lugar, é necessário uma Unidade Monetária sul-americana (UMS). A UMS não é uma “moeda comum” como o euro, mas uma cesta de referência formada por um conjunto de moedas (como os Direitos Especias de Saque do FMI). Definitivamente, a UMS é uma referência que goza de maior estabilidade que o dólar, tanto para a emissão de bônus como para a comparação de preços dentro da região. Paralelamente, deve-se estimular que os intercâmbios comerciais sejam feitos em moedas nacionais.

Desde 2008, a Argentina e o Brasil iniciaram o Sistema de Pagamentos em Moedas Locais (SML). E em outubro de 2015, Paraguai e Uruguai implementaram um mecanismo de pagamentos semelhante. Graças a isso, evita-se passar pelo dólar, e os custos de transação foram reduzidos consideravelmente entre as empresas de ambas as partes. Agora só falta incluir a Bolívia e a Venezuela para, desta maneira, incentivar a “desdolarização” entre todos os países que integram o Mercado Comum do Sul (MERCOSUR).

Em segundo lugar, os países da América do Sul necessitam de um poderoso fundo de estabilização monetário capaz de proteger suas balanças de pagamentos das violentas flutuações do dólar, ainda mais depois que o Sistema da Reserva Federal (FED) dos Estados Unidos elevou a taxa de juros dos fundos federais (‘federal funds rate’) em dezembro do ano passado[1]. Ao longo de 2002 e 2009, o auge dos preços das matérias primas (‘commodities’) favoreceu a acumulação maciça de reservas internacionais e, apesar disso, a América do Sul continuou financiando os países industrializados.

Uma boa parte dos bilhões de dólares que a região sul-americana economizou durante os últimos anos foi usada para investir em bônus do Tesouro dos Estados Unidos, em lugar de ser canalizada para atividades produtivas mediante um fundo do Sul de grande potência. Nestes momentos o único fundo de estabilização que existe na região é o fundo Latino-americano de Reservas (FLAR), lançado originalmente pela Comunidade Andina em 1978 sob o nome de fundo Andino de Reservas, e atualmente formado por Bolívia, Colômbia, Costa Rica, Equador, Paraguai, Peru, Uruguai e Venezuela.

Contudo, os recursos à disposição do FLAR são insuficientes para conter as fugas de capitais em conjunturas críticas: seu capital subscrito é de apenas 3,609 bilhões de dólares, uma quantia que representa menos de 15% das reservas do Banco Central da Bolívia. O mercado mundial de crédito se tornou demasiado volátil. Apenas em 2015, fugiram mais de 98 bilhões de dólares dos investimentos financeiros dos países emergentes, segundo as estimativas do Instituto de Finanças Internacionais (IIF, na sigla em inglês)[2].

Portanto, é urgente pôr mãos à obra ante esta perigosa vulnerabilidade. Os países do MERCOSUL necessitam de um fundo de estabilização próprio que, dado o alto grau de integração financeira do Brasil com o resto do mundo, conte com pelo menos 100 bilhões de dólares de capital, que é o volume de recursos com o qual o Acordo de Reservas de Contingência dos BRICS (sigla para Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do sul) vai começar a operar.

E em terceiro lugar, os países sul-americanos devem tirar o Banco do Sul dos entraves burocráticos em que se encontra para que emita finalmente seus primeiros empréstimos[3]. Os detalhes técnicos estão praticamente prontos: o capital inicial será de 7 bilhões de dólares e o capital autorizado, de 20 bilhões de dólares; a sede principal ficará na Venezuela; Argentina e Bolívia terão outras duas sucursais. Contudo, o início das operações foi adiado outras vezes, tanto é que depois de mais de oito anos da assinatura de sua ata de fundação na cidade de Buenos Aires, o Banco do Sul ainda não consegue abrir suas portas[4].

Isso porque existem poderosos interesses econômicos que o impedem de romper com o statu quo, tanto dentro como fora da região. Ainda que em um primeiro momento se cogitou que o Banco do Sul iria agrupar todos os países da União das Nações Sul-americanas (UNASUR), isto parece impossível; Suriname e Guiana não têm interesse, enquanto Chile, Colômbia e Peru estão obcecados em apoiar os projetos de integração promovidos por Washington, tanto a Aliança do Pacífico como o Acordo de Associação Transpacífico (TPP, na sigla em inglês).

Consequentemente, os membros do Banco do Sul ficaram reduzidos aos países do MERCOSUL mais o Equador. Por outro lado, as resistências dentro do bloco vêm sobretudo do Itamaraty, o Ministério de Relações Exteriores do Brasil. Na América do Sul, a influência do Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) do Brasil é óbvia, a tal ponto que em vários anos conseguiu superar o crédito proporcionado pelo FMI, Banco Mundial e BID.

O BNDES não tem interesse em avançar a integração latino-americana, na realidade sua missão é garantir o fornecimento de matérias primas (‘commodities’) às empresas brasileiras[5]. Os recursos do BNDES estão orientados a megaprojetos que reproduzem a dependência primário-exportadora dos países sul-americanos, como a Iniciativa para a Integração da Infraestrutura Regional (IIRSA), uma rede de rodovias de dimensões continentais que só vai beneficiar um punhado de empresas[6].

Em contraste, o dinheiro do Banco do Sul não será direcionado unicamente a obras de infraestrutura, mas  também a um amplo leque de programas de investimentos ligados a educação, saúde, moradia, etc. O Banco do Sul descartará completamente os critérios do “Consenso de Washington”, que trouxeram tanta pobreza à Nossa América; realizará empréstimos a juros muito baixos, pois seu objetivo é estimular o desenvolvimento econômico integral dos povos.

Sem dúvida, o Banco do Sul constitui uma grande esperança em tempos de crise. Por um lado, servirá como um poderoso mecanismo de alívio econômico para os países da América do Sul que são vítimas de severas recessões. Por outro lado, será um apoio decisivo para financiar as metas mais ambiciosas da integração sul-americana: projetos científicos e tecnológicos conjuntos, uma rede de ferrovias, rede energética, etc.

Concluindo, os governos sul-americanos precisam tomar medidas concretas que parem a restauração conservadora que está em curso, caso contrário precipitarão sua queda. É evidente que o governo dos Brasil tem a maior responsabilidade de salvaguardar a soberania continental. Dos altos funcionários do Itamaraty dependerá em última instância romper a paralisia do Banco do Sul…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Fonte: Russia Today.

Tradução: João Aroldo.

Seventy-one UK doctors along with 343 academics want the Israeli Medical Association and its members expelled from the World Medical Association.

They want joint projects with Israeli universities banned. They accused Israeli doctors of “medical torture” on Palestinian patients.

Thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned solely for political reasons. Vital medical care when needed is routinely denied or inadequately provided, pain meds substituting for treatment, causing needless suffering, at times resulting in death.

In 2000, former Israeli Abu Kabir forensic institute head Dr. Yehuda Hiss accused Israel of killing Palestinians to harvest their organs.

Interviewed on Israel’s Channel 2 at the time, he said “(w)e started to harvest corneas. (What) was done was (unethical). No permission was asked from…famil(ies)” of victims.

The 1990s-aired Channel 2 report said Abu Kabir forensic specialists harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from bodies of Israeli soldiers, its citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers – without obtaining legal authorization.

UC Berkeley Professor of Medical Anthropology/Organ Watch founder Nancy Scheper-Hughes earlier said “Israeli organ harvesting – sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries – has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.”

“Israel is at the top” of the organ harvesting racket. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide…a pyramid system at work that’s awesome.”

“They have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”

“They pay “the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies” or simply take what they want from fresh corpses.”

“Body parts are commodities, to be harvested and sold to the rich, even though organ sales are prohibited in most countries, but not (under) international law.”

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime calls organ extraction for profit human exploitation. In 2008, Israel banned the practice. It still persists.

Earlier, former Council of Europe Human Dignity and Equality director Marja Ruotanen said:

“We have legislation and definitions covering the trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal, (yet) there is a legal vacuum for the traffic in organs, tissues and cells.”

Organs from perhaps thousands of Palestinian corpses were harvested, Abu Kabir forensic specialists are complicit with Israeli authorities in trafficking in human body parts.

Israeli physicians involved in medically illegal and unethical practices, along with state authorities permitting it, should be held fully accountable for their crimes.

Separately on Wednesday, the Palestinian Detainees Committee (PDC) said Israel abducted and detained 130 Palestinians in 2015 for legitimate social media comments.

Over two dozen face wrongful charges of “incitement and supporting terrorist groups.” Others are administratively detained uncharged and untried – indefinitely if Israel chooses.

PDC said:

“(s)uch arrests and violations are carried out while Israel continues to ignore racist Israeli social media posts, photos and statements by extremists who openly call for killing the Arabs, for executing them and for removing them out of their homeland.”

Anyone legitimately criticizing Israeli viciousness or expressing solidarity with Palestinian resistance for justice risks arrest, prosecution, imprisonment or assassination.

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.

China has lent its support to the establishment of the State of Palestine with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.

Chinese President Xi Jinping made the remarks during an address at the Arab League’s headquarters in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Thursday.

He said such state should be established based on the 1967 borders and enjoy full sovereignty.

That year saw Israel occupying and then annexing the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.

Xi’s remarks echoed the demands of Palestinians, who are seeking to create an independent state on the occupied territories as well as the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip.

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine’s status at the UN from “non-member observer entity” to “non-member observer state” despite strong opposition from Israel and the United States. The Palestinian flag was also raised for the first time at the UN headquarters in New York last September.

The Chinese head of state considered the issue of Palestine to be crucial to peace in the Middle East, and urged the international community to contribute to the resumption of Israel-Palestinian talks, which have been broken off due to Tel Aviv’s refusal to put a hold on its expansion of illegal settlements.

“We are in favor of putting in place a new mechanism to promote peace as to the Middle East question, and support efforts made by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation toward this end,” the Chinese president stated.

He also pledged RMB 50 million (USD 7.53 million) in aid to Palestinians

The leaders of South America are in a point of divergence. The economies of the Latin American region regressed in 2015 and, according to diverse estimations will not grow in 2016. Nothing indicates that commodity prices will rally. The dilemma between adjustments, public spending and seeking loans from credit institutions subject to the US Treasury Department remains.

Nevertheless Ariel Noyola believes that the leaders of the region can strengthen the bases of South American financial architecture through the operation of the Bank of the South, a project that has been stagnated for eight years, and that in the face of the current economic situation, could prevent the deepening of the debacle.

In the face of the deepening of the world recession, it is urgent that the South American leaders concentrate their energies in the construction of their own credit institutions and the use of instruments of financial cooperation directed at debilitating the influence of the dollar in the region. Every time that the US Government seeks to impose its economic domination in the region through all possible means, for the South American countries it has become necessary to obtain political autonomy in the face of traditional credit institutions.

The modus operandi of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is already well known: the utilization of the debt as a pressure mechanism against peoples sunk in insolvency; the imposition of draconian economic measures (lowering of social expenditures, wage cuts, privatization of strategic state enterprises, etc.); unlimited financial assistance to Governments formed by a coup d’état but supported by the White House (as happened in Chile in 1973); etc. For these and many other reasons it is necessary to strengthen the bases of the South American financial architecture.

In the first place, one needs a South American Monetary Unit (SMU). The SMU is not a “common currency” such as the euro, but a basket of reference made up of a collection of currencies (such as the Special Drawing Rights of the IMF). The SMU is a reference that enjoys greater stability than the dollar, both for the emission of bonds and the stability of prices in the region. In parallel, one must move to make commercial exchanges invoiced in national currencies.

From 2008 Argentina and Brazil established a System of Payments in National Currencies (SML). And in October of 2015, Paraguay and Uruguay implemented an analogous mechanism of payments. Thanks to this they have avoided using the dollar and the transaction costs have been reduced substantially between businesses on both sides. Now we have only to involve Bolivia and Venezuela in order to give incentive to the “de-dollarization” of all the countries that make up the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR).

In second place, the countries of South America stand in need of a powerful fund for monetary stabilization, able to protect their balance of payments from the violent fluctuations of the dollar, more than ever since the Federal Reserve System (FED) of the United States raised the federal funds rate in December of last year[1]. Over 2002 to 2009 the increase of prices of commodities favoured the massive accumulation of international reserves, but nevertheless, South America continued to finance the industrialized countries.

A good part of the thousands of millions of dollars that the region saved during these years was invested in US Treasury bonds, in place of being dedicated to productive activities through a powerful Southern Fund. At the present time the only stabilization fund that exists in the region is the Latin American Fund (FLAR) originally launched by the Andean Community in 1978 under the name of the Andean Reserve Fund and at the present time made up with Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Nevertheless, the resources at the disposition of FLAR are hardly sufficient to contain stampedes of capital in critical situations: their inscribed capital is hardly 3.609 billion US dollars, an amount that represents less than 15% of the reserves of the Central Bank of Bolivia. The world credit market has become overly volatile. In 2015 alone more than 98 billion US dollars of dollars of financial investment have fled from emerging countries, according to the estimates of the Institute of International Finance (IIF)[2].

Because of this, it is urgent to take charge of the work in the face of this dangerous vulnerability. The MERCOSUUR countries need a stabilization fund of their own, given the high degree of financial integration of Brazil with the rest of the world, they have at least 100 billion US dollars of capital inscribed, which is the volume of resources at which the Contingent Reserve Arrangement of BRICS (acronym of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

In the third place, the South American countries should rescue the Bank of the South from the bureaucratic maze in which it is found in order that it makes its first loans[3]. The technical details are practically ready: the initial capital will be 7 billion US dollars and the authorized capital of 20 billion US dollars; the principal seat will be in Venezuela; Argentina and Bolivia will host two other branches. Nevertheless, its actual functioning has been cut off several times, so much that more than eight years after the signing of the act of foundation in Buenos Aires, the Bank of the South has yet to open its doors[4].

There are powerful economic interests that prevent a breaking with the statu quo, both inside and outside of the region. Although at the time it was thought that the Bank of the South would bring together all the countries of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), this looks to be impossible: Surinam and Guyana are not interested, while Chile, Colombia and Peru are tied into backing the projects of integration promoted by Washington, both the Pacific Alliance and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

In consequence, the members of the Bank of the South have been reduced to the MERCOSUUR countries plus Ecuador. On the other hand, the resistances from within the block come above all from Itamaraty, the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Brazil. In South America the influence of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) is overwhelming, to the point that over several years it has been able to overcome the amounts of credit provided by the IMF, the World Bank and the IBD.

The BNDES has no interest in advancing Latin American integration. In reality their mission is to guarantee supplies of commodities to Brazilian enterprises[5]. The resources of BNDES are oriented to mega projects that reproduce the primary-exporting dependence of South American countries, such as the Initiative for the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA), a network of roads with continental dimensions that are of benefit only to a handful of corporations[6].

In contrast, the money of the Bank of the South will not be limited to works of infrastructure, but will also be oriented to a wide range of investment programs tied to education, health care, housing, etc. The Bank of the South will completely undo the criteria of the “Washington Consensus” that have brought so much misery to South America: it will provide loans at low interest rates, since its objective is to promote the integral economic development of peoples.

Undoubtedly, the Bank of the South constitutes a great hope in times of crisis. On the one hand it will serve as a strong mechanism of economic relief for the countries of South America that are victims of severe contractions. On the other, it will provide an important support to finance the more ambitious goals of South American integration: scientific and technological projects, a network of railways, of energy, etc.

In conclusion, the Latin American Governments need to take concrete measures to bring a halt to the conservative restoration that is now under way. On the contrary there is only a debacle. It is obvious that the Government of Brazil has a great responsibility to safeguard continental sovereignty. The high functionaries of Itamaraty will, in the last instance be responsible for breaking the Bank of the South paralysis.

Ariel N Rodriguez is an economist who graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Translation: Jordan Bishop.

Source: Russia Today.

Notes:

[1] «Fed’s rate rise could heighten problems in emerging markets», James Quinn, The Telegraph, December 18, 2015.