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1. The German Chancellor’s unilateral decision to allow Israel to obtain a fleet of Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft-built, 2000 ton, Dolphin-class submarines costing $2 billion each (having been subsidised by the current German Government apparently to assuage its misplaced guilt regarding WW2), four of which warships are assumed to have already been armed with nuclear missiles at Haifa naval base and currently secretly patrolling the Gulf, the Mediterranean and possibly the North Sea thereby giving the Israeli state a ‘second strike’ nuclear capability far in advance of that of either Britain, Germany or France and posing a potential threat to all European states.

Israel being the world’s only undeclared nuclear state and, as such, is uniquely outside of any control or inspection by the UN’s IAEA as it is not a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which all EU states are signatories.  Israel, of course, is also not subject to any EU law notwithstanding that it is estimated to hold a stockpile of between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads in its undeclared arsenal.

2. Merkel’s ‘open-arms’ migrant policy that allows a million more migrants into Germany is seen as a disaster for the EU that will indelibly change European culture.  US commentators have said that it threatens ‘not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930’s- style political violence.’ It is said that such an immigration policy is potentially disastrous for the long-term future of Germany (and other EU states) that will ensure ‘a highly skewed demographic ratio’ of young men from Syria, the Middle East and North Africa.  There follows a warning that there will likely be a deep transformation of Germany whereby in only 20-30 years, half of German society under the age of 40 will be immigrants or children of immigrants.

That is the frightening legacy of Chancellor Merkel that will conceivably have a greater long-term impact upon European society than either of the two world wars, albeit not by violence but through cultural change.

Some striking new trends emerged from the Supreme Court’s major decisions in 2015, a new report from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute finds.

The report, authored by UBC law professor and MLI Senior Fellow Benjamin Perrin, reveals several key findings:

1. The former federal Conservative government’s losing record on major cases at the Court continued in 2015;
2. The Court has overturned its own precedents in a growing number of major Charter decisions; and
3. The consensus within the Court on major decisions has not been maintained, and there are strong voices within the court itself raising the alarm that it must not intrude into Parliament’s public policy domain.

Perrin’s analysis examines the 10 most important cases the Court ruled on between Nov. 1, 2014 and Oct. 31, 2015. This includes several particularly significant cases, including decisions on: physician-assisted suicide, collective bargaining, freedom of religion, mandatory minimum sentences and damages for Charter violations.

The 2015 report is designed as a follow-up to Perrin’s 2014 MLI study, which examined the 10 most important cases of 2014.

To read the full paper, click here.

Another losing record

In 2015, Perrin found, the former federal Conservative government won in only two of the eight cases in which it participated.

This losing record is substantially worse than historical trends for Charter litigation before the Court; on average, various levels of government have historically succeeded in 59 per cent of Charter cases.

“It appears that the ability of Charter claimants to re-litigate decided constitutional cases has expanded in recent years”

It is, however, a continuation of the trend from 2014. That year, the Conservatives won only one of 10 major cases.

Included among the losses in 2015 were some major political and policy defeats. The Court helped derail the government’s agenda on mandatory minimum sentences, physician-assisted suicide, medical marijuana derivatives and labour rights.

Overturning precedents

An emerging trend is the Court’s willingness to overturn precedent established in previous decisions.

“While the Court professes to not lightly overturn its own precedents, it appears that the ability of Charter claimants to re-litigate decided constitutional cases has expanded in recent years”, Perrin writes.

This has led, Perrin finds, to some judges expressing discomfort about the Court’s willingness to turn its back on recent precedents.

A divided Supreme Court

Finally, the Court has never been so divided. Perrin finds that five out of the 10 cases examined involved judges writing dissenting opinions.

“What is even more interesting than the quantitative aspect of the rise of dissenting decisions on major cases in this year’s report is that they included at times blistered criticism of majority judges for allegedly intruding on Parliament’s policy-making domain”, writes Perrin.

This disunity was a departure from 2014, when there were dissenting opinions in only two of the 10 cases examined.

Benjamin Perrin is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He previously served as Special Adviser, Legal Affairs & Policy in the Office of the Prime Minister and was a Law Clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada. 

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is the only non-partisan, independent national public policy think tank in Ottawa focusing on the full range of issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Four people, including three Americans, have filed a civil suit against the state of Israel, seeking compensatory damages for injuries suffered during an attack aboard a U.S. ship in international waters during the year 2010.

At a Washington press conference, Tuesday, the plaintiffs said they wanted compensation for “the harm and distress, injuries and losses caused by the attack”.

Israel has refused to acknowledge responsibility and liability for the attack and is yet to pay compensation to victims aboard the Challenger I, which was part of a Freedom Flotilla set to deliver humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip, which was and still remains under an Israeli blockade.

According to the complaint, the U.S. ship has never been returned by Israel and is still being held there.

Israeli special forces stormed the ships and killed nine civilians aboard another ship in the flotilla, the Turkish Mavi Marmara. That event has since frozen relations between Israel and Turkey.

That case was referred to the International Criminal Court by the Union of the Comoros because the Turkish vessel was sailing under its flag.

The family of a 19-year old American-Turkish national, Furkan Dogan, who was killed in the Mavi Marmara raid, last October, sued former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on war crimes charges.

The latest lawsuit filed Monday is the first U.S. case brought against Israel relating to the Freedom Flotilla.

The plaintiffs and their attorneys spoke to Anadolu Agency, following a press conference that announced the suit:

“States are generally immune from suit in United States courts. But that immunity is waived in a number of circumstances. When agents of foreign governments commit wrongful acts in the United States that cause personal injury, and egregious acts against U.S. nationals anywhere in the world, they are not entitled to immunity,” said lawyer Steven Schneebaum.

He noted that both exceptions apply to the facts of Challenger I case because a U.S. flagged ship falls under U.S. jurisdiction.

The case is ground-breaking as it relies on an exception in American law that allows lawsuits to be brought against foreign states, in limited cases.

According to professor Ralph Steinhardt, a member of the plaintiffs’ legal team, Israel’s sovereignty does not allow it to attack American flagged civilian ships and attack those on it.

“The attack on Challenger I was a patent violation of international law, including the laws of war, human rights, and the law of the sea,” according to the George Washington University international law professor.

A UK-based international lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Sir Geoffrey Nice, described the case against Israel as “a real test” for the rule of international law.

“This case, alongside the others, the one in the International Criminal Court and the one in California would have the following very clear political outcome: If Israel has enjoyed special privileged status of impunity because of protection by the United State of America, then that impunity is on the way out,” he said.

One of the plaintiffs, Huwaida Arraf, said she has been intimidated by Israeli and U.S. authorities on several occasions since she began to seek redress for her grievances.

A dual U.S.-Israeli national and human rights activist, Arraf said that she was physically abused by Israeli soldiers who slammed her head against the deck of the ship, and stood on it, before they handcuffed and placed a hood over her head.

“In 2014, for example FBI came to my house while I was at work while my child and my parents were at home,” she said, noting that there was no reason for FBI agents to go to her home. She believes her activism work was the reason behind the visit.

She added that she has to endure hours of interrogation by airport officials whenever she travels to Israel.

Another plaintiff, David Schermerhorn, said the group wants “Israeli authorities to be held accountable” for what they did.

“They should not get away with needless violence against unarmed civilians and with stealing humanitarian aid and our belongings,” he said via conference call.

Schermerhorn claims he was injured when a stun grenade thrown at him exploded one foot from his head, causing permanent partial vision loss in his right eye.

Hakan Camuz of Stoke & White LLP based in London that represents the passengers on all ships in the flotilla told Anadolu Agency that he hopes the U.S. courts will uphold the case.

He implied that it would be a political decision if the court failed to uphold the case.

“The plaintiffs, like all those on the flotilla, were trying to do the right thing by bringing to the world’s attention the cruelty of the blockade and its dire humanitarian consequences for the ordinary people of Gaza,” he said.

“They wanted to bring the residents of Gaza food, medical supplies, the necessities to survive, but were stopped with unjustified, brutal force, for which we now seek a just remedy,” he added.

Here is what we are expected to believe regarding coordinated bombings and mass shootings that took place on Thursday in the capital of Southeast Asia’s nation of Indonesia – an economically and geopolitically crucial state.

We are to believe that the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) – named so because it allegedly exists and primarily operates in Iraq and Syria – is fighting the Syrian government, nonexistent moderates the US claims it is arming and funding to the tune of several billions of dollars a year since 2011, the Iraqi government, the Kurds, Russia, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Iran. And also, allegedly, ISIS is fighting the combined military power of the United States, France, England, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar.

Yet we are expected to believe that ISIS has the time, energy, resources, and inclination to attack Indonesia in a spectacular, large-scale bombing and mass shooting?

And why? Where does Indonesia fit into the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria?” According to the West’s official narrative, Indonesia doesn’t fit in at all except in the most abstract, ideological way imaginable.

But if you understand that:

1. The US and its allies created ISIS on purpose to fight its proxy wars in the Middle East, North Africa, Central, East, and Southeast Asia for it;

2. The US is NOT fighting ISIS by any means, and is only using the organization’s existence in Syria and beyond to justify extraterritorial military aggression and meddling across the globe;

3. Indonesia has been defying US pressure to join Washington’s proxy conflict with China in the South China Sea and;

4. Indonesia has been fostering closer economic and military ties instead with China itself …

…then ISIS attacking Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta makes perfect sense.

It was punitive. It was also a warning to Jakarta that it has a choice; subjugation by the West, or destabilization.

The same choice was given to Thailand in August of last year when US-Turkish-backed terrorists blew up 20 people in the heart of Bangkok. This was after it became clear that a definite and permanent shift was made by Bangkok toward Beijing, with new defense industry contracts being sought, existing ones being fulfilled, joint military exercises being organized with China to replace Vietnam-era exercises generally held with the US, and massive infrastructure projects being pursued jointly by Bangkok and Beijing.

The attack in Bangkok also took place as it became abundantly clear that US-backed political fronts in Thailand were being rooted out and denied any future opportunities to find themselves back in power.

Likewise, Indonesia – while paying lip service to Washington’s war of words with China in the South China Sea – has been growing perhaps “too close” for Washington’s liking to Beijing.

Jakarta had just signed a multi-billion dollar massive rail infrastructure deal with China. Not only does this bring Indonesia and China closer together, it  will continue to do so over many years to come. The deal also came at the expense of America’s allies and geopolitical proxies in Tokyo who also attempted to bid for expanding Indonesian rail infrastructure, but lost out to Beijing.

For now, despite the threats, attacks, and attempts to undermine and subvert Thailand for its geostrategic shift, Bangkok has decided not to capitulate to Washington. It has remained relatively un-confrontational with the US in words, but in actions, it has pivoted away from the US’ own “pivot toward Asia.”

Indonesia now has a choice. Allow the US to leverage this recent attack to reassert both its designs and ambitions upon Indonesia and give its proxy political fronts and proxies scattered across Indonesia’s political landscape, police, military, and business community, or to join Thailand and others in a long-term vision that sees Asians maintain primacy over Asia, not Washington.

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

This is the last of four articles analyzing the new US Department of DefenseLaw of War Manual. The first article was posted November 3. The second article was posted November 4. The third was posted November 5.

Pentagon embraces “just following orders” justification for war crimes

As previous segments have noted, key conceptions advanced in the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual amount to little more than a rehash of authoritarian legal theories upheld by the Nazi regime and other fascist governments.

The Department of Defense (DOD) manual’s protocols for enforcing the law of war and establishing the legality of military orders fall into this category, bearing an eerie resemblance to the doctrine asserted by the main defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunal—that they were “just following orders.” In flat contradiction to the principles upheld at Nuremberg, subordinates are instructed to “presume” that commands are lawfully issued and are granted sweeping immunity from responsibility for war crimes committed under orders from the military brass.

US military personnel are instructed and trained to regard orders emanating from the command unit as legal by default, the DOD manual states. The document states: “Subordinates, absent specific knowledge to the contrary, may presume orders to be lawful. The acts of a subordinate done in compliance with an unlawful order given by a superior are generally excused.” (P. 1,148)

“Except in such instances of palpable illegality, which must be of rare occurrence, the inferior should presume that the order was lawful and authorized and obey it accordingly,” one footnote declares, citing Winthrop Military Law and Precedents in defense of this position. (P. 1,058f)

Lt. Col. Oliver North testifying during the
Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987

In cases of ambiguity, junior officers are encouraged to concoct an “interpretation” of orders that might render them more lawful. “Commands and orders should not be understood as implicitly authorizing violations of the law of war where other interpretations are reasonably available,” the manual states.

The authors write that the law is enforced through “military instructions, regulations and procedures” issued by the Pentagon. “The implementation of law of war treaties and obligations through military instructions, regulations, and procedures has the effect of making such rules enforceable because military personnel are required to comply with duly issued instructions, regulations, and procedures,” the manual states. (P. 1,069)

These formulations point to the fact that there is no real distinction between the decrees of the Pentagon bureaucracy and the DOD “Law of War”, which, far from being actual law, is merely a special collection of military orders issued by cabals of military lawyers and career defense officials.

Planning for mass repression at home

In addition to its international significance, the Law of War Manual summarizes and integrates plans for mass repression and martial law within the US itself that have been developed since the late 1960s by the US Defense Department in direct response to the political radicalization of the working class and layers of the middle class.

The procedures governing mass detention enumerated in the Law of War Manual have already been partially worked out by numerous agencies and programs run by the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Directorate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Department of Homeland Security, which now incorporates FEMA.

The driving impetus behind these preparations has been the threat of insurrectionary struggles by the working class and the associated growth of anti-war sentiment within the population.

In the aftermath of the 1967 urban upheavals, DOD established the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations as a permanent body to oversee plans for suppression of domestic unrest by federal troops.

Beginning in 1968, US military planners developed frequent updates to the US Army Civil Disturbance Plan, codenamed “Operation Garden Plot.” Updated on an almost yearly basis since then, Garden Plot calls for the rapid deployment of federal military forces to every major city in the US, with initial contingents of troops scheduled to arrive within six hours of call-up. The plan was touted by its original architects as a “counterrevolutionary” response to the mass strikes, anti-war protests, ghetto uprisings, and radicalization of university campuses during this period.

Garden Plot operations were to be activated in response to “strikes, civil disturbances and labor disturbances which affect military installations or other strikes or labor and civil disturbances of sufficient magnitude to indicate a probable employment of Federal troops to preserve or restore order.”

The document continued:

“Civil disturbances which are beyond the control of municipal or state authorities may occur at any time. Dissatisfaction with the environmental conditions contributing to racial unrest and civil disturbances and dissatisfaction with national policy as manifested in the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam demonstrations are recognized factors within the political and social structure. As such, they might provide a preconditioned base for a steadily deteriorating situation leading to demonstrations and violent attacks upon the social order.”

Garden Plot called for “saturation of areas with police and military patrols,” continuous helicopter sorties over targeted areas, and deployment of artillery, tanks, tactical air support and psychological warfare against demonstrators in US cities.

“Disturbances requiring Federal intervention will occur simultaneously in up to 25 objective areas throughout the CONUS [continental United States], necessitating the employment in each objective area of up to five 2,000-man brigades plus supporting troops, with the exception of Washington, D. C., when forces totaling 30,000 troops may be employed,” the plan stated. (Quoted from “US Department of the Army Civil Disturbance Plan ‘GARDEN PLOT’ 10-September-1968”).

Planning for Continuity of Government (COG), a euphemism for martial law, “assumed its current shape in response to the mobilization of US Army intelligence and the CIA against left-wing Americans during the civil disorder of the 1960s and 1970s,” as Peter Dale Scott noted in his study of the growth of the military-intelligence apparatus during the postwar era (9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America, 11).

To provide intelligence for domestic counterinsurgency operations, during the 1960s and 1970s the DOD oversaw the establishment of Emergency Operations Centers (EOC), staffed by cells of federal military intelligence analysts maintaining constant communication with the Pentagon’s “domestic war room” in National Guard headquarters across the country.

These initiatives were jumpstarted in May 1971 with the establishment of the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), authorized by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. Between 1971 and May 1975, more than 4,000 officials from the National Guard, the Army, police agencies and private corporations received training in “emergency preparedness” at the CTSI in San Luis Obispo.

As the social counterrevolution gained steam after 1975, martial law planning was steadily embedded in the upper reaches on the state apparatus and institutionalized through further executive orders.

FEMA and REX 84

The past four decades have witnessed a feverish build-up of authoritarian legal and political instruments that have been entrenched as a permanent part of the executive branch. Virtually every year has seen new orders and protocols developing the scaffolding of a police state.

The duration and continuity in such planning demonstrates that it is not simply the initiative of this or that reactionary bourgeois politician, but rather something that emerges organically from class relations within the United States and the deteriorating position of American imperialism in the world.

The Law of War Manual expands upon existing DOD plans authorizing mass detention of US citizens, dating from at least the 1970s. The 1978 update of the US Army Civil Disturbance Plan called in no uncertain terms for DOD to prepare to establish detention camps in liaison with state and local agencies.

“Plans for detention assistance to civilian authorities will range from the absolute minimum, such as assisting civil police in the guarding of civilians apprehended and awaiting transfer or en route to detention facilities, to the establishment and operation of temporary detention facilities to supplement those operated by civil authorities,” the document stated.

The civilian apparatus of the US government was increasingly remodeled over decades to serve as the administrative wing of the emerging military dictatorship-in-waiting. Executive decrees issued by the Carter administration consolidated civil and military planning for “national emergencies” under the control of the newly created Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Executive Order 12148, signed by President Carter in 1979, mandated continuous joint preparations by FEMA and DOD aimed at “civil defense planning.”

The Miami Herald of July 5, 1987 documented the existence of a “parallel government behind the Reagan administration engaged in secret actions including … a contingency plan to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in the United States in case of nuclear war or national rebellion.”

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration presided over a further entrenchment of martial law planning cadres within the highest levels of the executive branch. In 1981, CTSI lead planner Colonel Louis Giuffrida was appointed “emergency czar” by President Reagan.

Giuffrida had attracted favorable attention from political forces assembled around the future President Reagan for his role in the development of the CTSI and his US Army War College thesis paper, “National Survival/ Racial Imperative,” which envisioned plans for detention of millions of “American Negroes” in “assembly centers or relocation camps.”

In December 1982, Reagan approved the formation of the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board (EMPB) to serve as a planning body for an expanded “Civil/Military Alliance in Emergency Management,” headed by FEMA and DOD.

It was while sitting as a member of the EMPB that Lt. Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra notoriety developed the REX 84 plan, a major precursor to the 2015 Law of War Manual.

As described by Alfonzo Chardy, a journalist who exposed the plans in a 1987 article for the Miami Herald, REX 84 outlined procedures for “suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments, and declaration of martial law during a national crisis.”

Public exposure of REX 84 by Chardy and its mention during a congressional hearing on the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the secret and illegal funding of the Nicaraguan Contras by the US government, did not succeed in slowing the elaboration of the legal and political foundations for direct military rule.

Expanding upon the Carter administration’s Executive Order 12171, Executive Order 12681, signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, exempted FEMA’s National Preparedness Directorate from the National Labor Relations Act, authorizing FEMA to develop forced labor programs and oversee the direct takeover of sections of the economy by the military and intelligence agencies.

The twenty-five years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union have witnessed a further intensification of preparations for military occupation of the continental United States. The Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations all oversaw large-scale mobilizations of the US military against the domestic population.

In April 1992, the Bush I administration ordered thousands of federal soldiers, Marines and intelligence agents to occupy Los Angeles in response to the riots that began on April 29. During the Republican National Convention in August of 2000, DOD placed federal military units on standby “to execute Operation Garden Plot and quell any serious civil disturbances,” according to confidential FEMA documents acquired by Wired News. (Declan McCullagh, US military poised to respond to attack on GOP convention, Wired News, August 2000)

In April 2002, the Bush administration authorized the creation of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) as part of a new “Unified Command Plan.” NORTHCOM, the first full-blown US military command focusing on the continental United States, was the descendant of military commands tasked with preparing and developing Garden Plot over the previous period. A NORTHCOM planning document leaked in 2010, titled CONPLAN 3501, showed that the command had rapidly developed a highly detailed division of labor for military occupation of the continental United States during the years following its formation.

Conclusion

The Law of War Manual is a watershed in the breakdown of American bourgeois democracy and the repudiation by the ruling elite of the democratic principles laid down in the Constitution. Outside of a brief protest by the New York Times, in a single editorial, the corporate-controlled media has said nothing about the new codification of Pentagon doctrine. Nor have any of the presidential candidates, Republican or Democratic, from the “libertarian” Rand Paul to the supposed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders.

As envisioned by the manual, the US military apparatus becomes the ultimate legal authority on the planet, making up and modifying its own “laws” in the course of military operations aimed at subjugating the entire world population to its dictates.

Rather than the outcome of megalomania on the part of US generals and officials, the manual flows from the objective logic of the development of capitalism as a world-historic social formation.

As Vladimir Lenin explained in his epochal work, The State and Revolution, beginning from the late 19th century, the development of the capitalist state in general has been characterized by the “perfecting and strengthening of the ‘executive power,’ its bureaucratic and military apparatus.”

Miltary forces doing house-to-house searches during the Boston lockdown in April, 2013 [Photo: rilymoskal7]

Despite differences in the forms of government of various capitalist nations, Lenin explained, there remains a clear universal tendency toward the increasing centralization of power in the hands of the vast and permanent bureaucracies that constitute, in every capitalist state, a veritable “permanent government” that remains in power no matter which parties or individuals have won the latest round of elections.

In another of his central works, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin identified the essential economic processes driving this development. From the 1870s onward, the growth of monopolies and the extraction of super-profits from colonial or semi-colonial countries ensured the ever-greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of financial oligarchies.

As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution, explained in the Manifesto of the First Congress of the Comintern, the major US and European finance houses integrated themselves with the military agencies of the bourgeois state during and after the First World War. “Finance capital, which plunged mankind into the abyss of war, itself underwent a catastrophic change in the course of this war,” Trotsky wrote in 1919.

“During the course of the war, the regulating-directing role was torn from the hands of these economic groups and transferred directly into the hands of the military-state power. The distribution of raw materials, the utilization of Baku or Rumanian oil, Donbas coal, Ukrainian wheat, the fate of German locomotives, freight cars and automobiles, the rationing of relief for starving Europe—all these fundamental questions of the world’s economic life are not being regulated by free competition, nor by associations of national and international trusts and consortiums, but by the direct application of military force, for the sake of its continued preservation.

If the complete subjugation of the state power to the power of finance capital had led mankind into the imperialist slaughter, then through this slaughter finance capital has succeeded in completely militarizing not only the state but also itself; and it is no longer capable of fulfilling its basic economic functions otherwise than by means of blood and iron. (The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 1, P. 46)

With these conceptions, Trotsky and the Third International had already recognized the main tendencies of imperialist development that would dominate the interwar years and reach new heights during the post-World War II era.

With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947—legislation drawn up by Wall Street’s favored law firms that created the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the US Air Force—the major US banks laid the foundations for the growth of a permanent “national security state” on a scale far beyond anything that had existed when Lenin first wrote of the “perfecting” of the bourgeois state.

The closing decades of the 20th century and the first 15 years of the 21st have witnessed an explosive growth of social inequality, as the US ruling class turned to financialization and dismantled vast sections of industry. Under these conditions, the Law of War Manual amounts to nothing less than a call for “all hands on deck” in defense of the capitalist order. Engaged in a relentless counterrevolutionary offensive that is destroying the living conditions of the vast majority of the global population, and facing an American population that is increasingly hostile towards all of the official institutions, the military chiefs in Washington and their paymasters on Wall Street are preparing to defend their privileges by means of dictatorship at home and total war internationally.

On Jan.13, the Houthi forces fired a rocket towards a Saudi military post in the Jizan region in Saudi Arabia. 4 Saudi soldiers were killed. Separately, the Houthi alliance conducted a raid in the al-Rabou’a area of the Asir region clashing with the Saudi Arabia military.

Clashes between Houthi Ansarullah fighters and the Saudi-led coalition were observed in the province of Ta’izz. 10 pro-Saudi militants were killed.

In turn, Saudi warplanes exercised air raids in the area of Sana’a killing 15 people and injuring 25 others in the village of Bilad al-Rusthe. Also, the Saudi Air Force conducted airstrikes in the Majaz district of the Sa’ada province and in the Sarwah district in the Ma’rib province.

About 800 Egyptian soldiers reportedly arrived Yemen to help the Saudi-led coalition’s forces on Jan.12. According to reports, 4 Egyptian units of 150-200 troops with tanks and transport vehicles will likely participate in military operations in the areas of Marib and Taiz.

In Aden, local security forces raided an unused warehouse near the port and found tons of weapons and ammunition apparently smuggled in by AQAP. The Hadi government calls civilians to report the suspected presence of AQAP men in the city.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen killed two traffic security officers in the city. The militants, riding motorbikes, shot and killed the two officers and their driver. The recent attacks show that the government security forces and the Saudi-led coalition can’t secure the city successfully.

AQAP imposed inspection checkpoints on the main road linking the provinces of Aden and Abyan, including one checkpoint in Dofes just outside Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan. AQAP is seeking to consolidate control in both Zinjibar and nearby Ja’ar, where it clashed with the Houthi alliance last week.

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, and any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an intensified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the United States.” – Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook

Since the deadliest terrorist attack in Asia on October 12^th, 2002 at two Bali resort nightclubs killed 202 people targeting mostly Western tourists (88 Australians and seven Americans died) followed three years later by the October 2005 Bali suicide bombings killing 23 more innocent victims at three restaurants, Indonesia has largely managed to avoid major deadly outbreaks of terrorism on its own soil. The 19^th largest geographical nation in the world comprised of more than 17,000 archipelago islands in Southeast Asia contains the planet’s fourth largest population of over a quarter billion people behind only China, India and the United States. Its current fast rising census to date is 265,278,532. With 86% of its residents identifying themselves as Muslim, Indonesia is the home of more Muslims than any other nation on earth.

More than 500 known Indonesian citizens have fought as Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria. In the face of growing terrorism around the world where typically Islamic extremists are the purported suspects, Indonesia’s national government has received international praise for its diligent efforts over the years to combat terrorism. This latest terrorist attack follows on the two-day heels of yet another ISIS terrorist act in Istanbul.

The relative calm in recent years was suddenly broken late Thursday morning when terrorist attacks in multiple locations rocked the capital city Jakarta where more than ten million Indonesians reside, marking the worst act of terrorism in Jakarta since the July 2009 bombings that killed seven people and injured fifty inside the two Western chain hotel lobbies of the Ritz Carlton and Marriot Hotels. But on Thursday the dreaded inevitability of yet more Islamic State terrorists shattered the peace carrying out a number of grenade explosions and gunfire in several locations within a busy Jakarta district.

National police spokesman General Anton Charilyan stated the overwhelming likelihood that the suspects were ISIS militants based on the simultaneously coordinated blasts being similar to last November’s Friday the 13^th attacks in Paris. He also alluded to Islamic State’s warning in late November that “there will be a concert” in Indonesia foreshadowing more ISIS attacks to come. Additionally, in December multiple Indonesian arrests were made thwarting terrorist plots two of which involved ISIS planned for the New Year’s festivities. In all 150,000 soldiers and police were on duty during the new year holiday guarding churches, airports and other public places, 9000 in Bali alone.

The Telegraph stated that a suicide bomber exploded his device at a Starbucks café in Central Jakarta shattering glass and injuring customers. This particular area of the city includes many Western chain businesses surrounded by downtown office buildings. Another blast took place outside a movie theater shopping mall. Indonesia’s Istana Negara presidential palace is but one mile down the road from where the explosions occurred with the US Embassy also nearby. There was also gunfire reported in a number of locations between the suspects and police quickly converging on the scene. It was eventually determined that five separate blasts struck busy downtown central Jakarta Thursday morning. The city was on immediate lockdown for the next several hours. An hour and a half after the first bomb went off, gunfire in the area could still be heard.

Islamic State jihadists believed responsible for today’s series of attacks made recent threats through social media to expand its worldwide terrorism campaign to include not only the usual soft target civilian population often aimed at popular Western tourist locations but also targeting airports and specifically security forces. Not surprisingly then, today’s initial blast reported by CNN took place at a police outpost where one police officer is said to have died. CNN earlier released information that the one police officer, five civilians and at least four terrorists were confirmed dead in the brazen attacks but that was subsequently changed as more information came in.

When it was all said and done, Jakarta police claimed that all five attackers were killed by antiterrorism police, two being suicide bombers and three gunmen. The police also maintain that the only other dead in the attacks were one Dutch citizen and one Indonesian citizen with an additional ten others injured (though CNN states 19 were wounded). Jakarta police spokesperson Col. Muhammad Iqbal concluded, “We believe there are no more attackers around Sarinah. We have taken control.” Despite Iqbal’s confident claim designed to quell public concern, various media outlets report that it’s still unclear if any further suspects remain at large.

What is most important in this very early aftermath is that virtually every act of terrorism committed in modern history is state sponsored by the Western intelligence community. It’s worth mentioning that the reign of terror in Indonesia brought on by the 1965 coup that overthrew then President Sukarno leading to the murderous ethnic cleansing over a half million Indonesians was the result of the CIA and America’s state sponsored terrorism. So the far bigger picture and pattern to understand here is the Hegelian do-loop of the state created crises, deep state’s reaction framed as the proposed solution that then promotes further draconian tyrannical control under the false pretense of national security and counterterrorism.

Though the actual people pulling the triggers in these terror acts may be Islamic extremists, in every case there are invisible imperialistic government forces from the West that are pulling the strings from behind the scenes, most often CIA handlers who coordinate state sponsored covert operations working directly with the alleged terrorist patsies, financing, arming and training them. Former career military intelligence and CIA officer and whistleblower Robert David Steele said:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.

Though Thursday’s terrorism in Jakarta right now is too fresh to broadcast any overtly emerging anomalies that invariably surface soon after such events, if it’s like every other major act of terrorism this century, it will not be long before they do. The global pattern of terrorist attacks particularly in recent years maintains a constant thread of continuity that smacks of New World Disorder’s increasing reign of terror designed only to further consolidate and centralize the ruling elite’s power and control over every corner of the globe to in turn further enslave the entire human population.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/

The renewal and increase of the American and European “sanctions” against Russia, and the threat of new “sanctions” against Iran, a weapon long used by them against any nation that does not obey their diktats, from Cuba, to China, from Zimbabwe to Venezuela, is yet another slap across the face of the Russian and Iranian peoples. False hopes raised in some quarters that the American vassal states in Europe would act independently and favour more cooperation with Russia and Iran have once again been shown to be so much wishful thinking, based on a false assessment of the extent of the unhappiness in some business sectors with the effect of the “sanctions” on European economies.

It is no doubt correct that various sectors of those economies are suffering due to this economic warfare but the Washington regime and its dependent regimes in Europe are casting for bigger fish and are willing to tolerate certain inconveniences. The bigger fish is, of course, total control of the resources of Russia and Iran and of all Eurasia. They hope to achieve this by undermining the governments of the targeted countries and replacing them with completely docile puppets so they can exploit those resources, as they will. But if that does not work, the plans for war are drawn up and, as all can see, are steadily being put into effect.

The Americans are engaging in a “fight and talk” strategy, appearing from time to time to be open to cooperation but always using negotiations to set up the next stage of aggression. They have done this with Russia multiple times, and succeeded in forcing Iran to surrender some of its sovereignty regarding its civilian nuclear development in return for a promised lifting of this state of economic war. But Iran is learning, as Russia, and as Cuba, so well know, that the Americans can never be trusted and they always have an aggressive agenda beneath their platitudes.

With respect to Russia, every domain has been used to inflict pressure on the nation from the western snub of the Moscow Victory Parade, in a fit of pique because the Red Army won the Second World War in Europe, to the smearing of Russia and its athletes in the lead up to the Football World Cup, to the continual personal insults directed at President Putin, to the shoot down of a Russian jet bomber, and the murder of its pilot by Turkey and the American approval of this crime, to the latest farce of CIA-MI6 linked groups like Amnesty International and the Syrian Observatory making claims that Russia is using cluster bombs in Syria against civilians. Russia denies it and the US has been forced to admit it has no evidence to support these stories but the hypocrisy is stunning since NATO used cluster bombs and all sots of banned weapons in the thousands when they attacked Yugoslavia and during their other wars around the world. Their client state Israel has used them and there are reports of Saudi Arabia using them in Yemen.

That the Russian government can remain as outwardly calm, professional and diplomatic as it does is remarkable considering that the sanctions put in place are designed to try to cripple key sectors of the Russian economy.

The expressed reason for continuing and increasing the economic aggression against Russia is that the Minsk Agreements will not be fully implemented by the end of the year. But it is the Kiev junta in Ukraine and their EU and US counterparts that have refused to implement key provisions of those Agreements, not Russia which has bent over backwards to make them work. Of course there are no corresponding sanctions against the Kiev regime for its continual warfare on its own people, its destruction of democracy and free political debate in Ukraine, its easy tolerance of openly fascist groups and para-militaries while suppressing the Communist Party,its refusal to comply with the terms it agreed to at Minsk. No. Only Russia is hit.

Of course, the Minsk issue is just an excuse. This is revealed by the American threat that unless Crimea is returned to the control of the Kiev regime, the “sanctions” will not be withdrawn. Since they know this will never happen, this means the “sanctions” will be permanent. This shows that the real objective is to find any reason whatever to continue the west’s economic aggression against Russia in order to achieve the greater strategic objective.

The same logic applies to Iran. No matter how much it bends its principles in order to avoid war, it will never be enough so long as Iran tries to act as an independent country. The economic warfare will continue for as long as the Americans have the power to wage it. In the case of Cuba it has been 55 years.

The excuse will vary with the time and circumstance but the strategy will remain. This is war, illegal and immoral, against an entire people, for the private gains of the elites in the west whose only concern is to make profit at the expense of everyone else.

I have used the word “sanction” in parentheses because the word, “sanction,” means the provision of rewards for obedience, along with punishment for disobedience, to a law. There are other meanings for the word but they all define the same condition-obedience to a master by his vassal, to a monarch by his subject, to a warden by his prisoner. The condition necessarily implies that the person applying the sanction is legally in a superior position to the person being sanctioned, that he has the right to apply the sanction and that there exists a system of laws in which the use of sanctions is permitted and agreed upon.

This is the definition yet every day we hear of the “sanctions” imposed on Russia and Iran or Cuban and Venezuela for reasons that everyone knows are false, based on authority that does not exist, based on laws that have never been created, and by national governments that have only arrogance to support their grand presumption; that their nations are superior to others, that there is no equality or sovereignty of peoples, that their diktats are orders that must be obeyed by those who inferior to them.

Since the economic restrictions on banking, finance and trade set up against Russia and Iran by the United States and its subject states in the NATO alliance do not comply with the definition of sanctions, we have to use the correct term in describing these restrictions. There is only one word, and that word is, war and, since this form of warfare is not permitted by international law as found in the United Nations Charter they are economic war crimes, economic aggression for which a reckoning will one day have to be paid, one way or another.

It is in Chapter VII, Article 41 of the Charter that the power to completely or partially interrupt economic relations exists and only the Security Council can use that power. Nowhere else does this power exist.

Once again the issue comes back to the word war. It is clear that the attempted economic strangulation of Russia and Iran is an attempt to “punish” them for supposed crimes concerning the defence of their strategic positions and their sovereignty. It is also a strategy meant to weaken both nations, as forces of resistance to NATO aggression generally. The United Nations has been completely bypassed and, in effect, might as well not exist.

Once a war has started it can only proceed to its logical end. Since the economic war on Russia has not brought about Russia’s capitulation in its defence of the peoples of Crimea, the Donbass, and Syria, there can be little doubt that the economic aggression will escalate until logic requires open war and the risk of nuclear annihilation. Turkey, acting as the cats paw for Washington, has already attacked Russian forces in Syria. Russia responded with restraint to this act of war, limiting its response to the economic domain, a legitimate expression of its right to defend itself. But the economic warfare conducted by the west is unprovoked, a violation of international law, imperialistic in nature and is clearly without limits.

President Putin in several of his speeches has called for nations to adhere to international law and for the need to re-establish international law. He is right but it remains to be seen what form a new international system of law would take and how it could be implemented. During the Soviet period one could talk of “international law” but though there existed generally agreed upon principles of law, a set of desiderata, its existence outside of power politics is difficult to see. The empty shell that international law really was fell apart quickly after the fall of the Berlin wall and all we have left are fine parchments, high sounding words and genuine but frustrated hopes.

Law reflects the economic, social and political structure of the society that creates it and we can see that international law, in a world in chaos, has become the law of the gangster, the pirate, the bandit, and their lairs are Washington, London and Brussels.

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”.

US condemns Russia’s role in Syria, amid conflict Washington and its allies started in the first place. The US State Department has condemned what it claims is an increase in “civilian casualties” due to Russian military operations in Syria. CNN’s report, “U.S. blasts Russian “indiscriminate attacks” in Syria,” claims:

“The U.S. sharpened its criticism of Russian airstrikes in Syria on Tuesday, charging that “indiscriminate attacks” had reportedly caused hundreds of civilian casualties and the displacement of over 100,000 residents.”

“We’ve seen a marked and troubling increase in reports of these civilian casualties since Russia commenced its air campaign,” a spokesman for the U.S. State Department said.

Careful readers will notice however, that it is not actually civilian casualties that are on the rise, but rather merely “reports of” them that are increasing. By examining the nature of both the reports, and those who are making them, it is revealed that this latest media campaign pursued by the West is entirely disingenuous, and puts into jeopardy real oversight and genuine human right advocacy.
The CNN article also claims:

Various human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accused the Russian military of killing civilians in its airstrikes.

And it would be Amnesty International’s report that CNN links to in reference to the US State Department’s comments.

The Amnesty International report titled, “Syria: ‘Civilian Objects Were Not Damaged’: Russia’s Statements on its Attacks in Syria Unmasked,” even in title alone appears politically motivated in nature. However, it is under the report’s section, “Methodology,” that reveals the true deception at play.

Amnesty International’s report admits that (emphasis added):

Amnesty International researched remotely more than 25 Russian attacks in Syria between September and December 2015. It interviewed by phone or over the internet 16 witnesses to attacks and their aftermath and spoke to more than a dozen Syrian human rights defenders and representatives of medical organizations supporting work in the areas of the attacks. It obtained and reviewed audiovisual imagery relating to all of these attacks or their aftermath, and commissioned advice from weapons experts on munitions visible in them. It reviewed statements published by the Russian Ministry of Defence and relevant articles in Russian and other media. It also reviewed reports of Syrian and international human rights organizations, humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, military and weapons analysts and open-source research networks.

In other words, the entire report is based on hearsay from the very people fighting against the Syrian government, and/or in league with the very armed, terrorist organizations Russia, the Syrian military, and allegedly even the United States and its allies are supposedly fighting in Syria and across the region.

The report also admits that it is in contact with the discredited Rami Abdulrahman, a UK-based anti-Syrian “activist” who regularly coordinates with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Amnesty International disingenuously refers to this one-man operation as the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.”

The New York Times in an article titled, “A Very Busy Man Behind the Syrian Civil War’s Casualty Count,” would claim:

…despite its central role in the savage civil war, the grandly named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is virtually a one-man band. Its founder, Rami Abdul Rahman, 42, who fled Syria 13 years ago, operates out of a semidetached red-brick house on an ordinary residential street in this drab industrial city [Coventry, England].

The New York Times would also reveal:

Money from two dress shops covers his minimal needs for reporting on the conflict, along with small subsidies from the European Union and one European country that he declines to identify.

Considering various conflicts of interests, including open bias against the Syrian government and funding coming from governments bent on overthrowing that government, how Amnesty International finds Abdulrahman’s information credible is a mystery. How Amnesty International finds his information convenient, on the other hand, is no mystery at all.

Physicians for Human Rights is also referenced by Amnesty International. It has been behind previous and equally dubious accusations leveled against Russia in Syria, and is a US State Department-funded, US-based front – making the US State Department’s recent statements not only baseless, but disingenuously self-referencing.

The equally discredited Eliot Higgins, a sofa-bound unemployed British man who now openly works as a “contractor” for Western defense companies and is clearly engaged in biased propaganda, not objective analysis, was also referenced in Amnesty International’s report. Under methodology, Amnesty International claims it “reviewed” what it called “open-source research networks.” This is a euphemism for people like Higgins who sit at home and watch YouTube videos, and draw conclusions most suitable to sustain the West’s narrative.

Other “sources” Amnesty International cites in the footnotes of its report include “eyewitnesses” who “wished to remain anonymous.”

Contempt of Human Rights Advocacy 

We can imagine a court hearing in which a police department is trying to give its side of the story, and all of its witnesses are either police or “anonymous witnesses” who sound a lot like the police. The hearing would be thrown out as a farce, and those involved in making it a farce, would likely be charged with contempt of court.

Likewise, Amnesty International and the political interests using its deceitful work, are in contempt of human rights advocacy. They are undermining justice, accountability, and the dignity of such work by exploiting it for political gain.

What’s worse still, is even as the US State Department gets up to the podium to condemn Russia’s military operations based on the words of networks the US State Department itself helped create to intentionally tell only one side of the human rights situation on any given battlefield, the US itself is guilty of all it has accused Russia of, and more. And not only in Syria, but in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and far beyond.

It should also be remembered that it was the United States and its various allies, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who conspired to ignite the conflict in Syria in the first place as a means of effecting regime change, just as a US-led coalition accomplished in Libya earlier in 2011. In fact, the US would be caught funneling terrorists and weapons from the devastated battlefields of Libya to Syria, for a repeat performance.

Dissecting the lies of the West and exactly how they are crafted and by whom precisely, helps expose and undermine this utter contempt for human rights advocacy.

Human rights advocacy is in fact a very necessary and important task. There are legitimate monitors and researchers who do in fact attempt to advance human rights advocacy. But because the abuse of such advocacy is so appealing to those who stand the most to gain from managing public perception, and because those who stand to gain the most still possess vast amounts of unwarranted power and influence, particularly across mass media, real advocacy seems to have been lost in an ocean of lies.

And as the West’s ability to change the facts on the ground in Syria continue to diminish in the face of successful joint Russian-Syrian military operations, we can predict this abuse of human rights advocacy will only continue to increase.

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

Israel says it won’t pay Iran oil pipeline venture debt, regardless of court’s ruling in dispute dating back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

An Israeli oil company, the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company, has been ordered to pay $1.1 billion in compensation to Iran by a Swiss court, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.

In response, Israel clarified that it will not pay the debt to the Iranians. “Without referring to the matter at hand, we’ll note that according to the Trading with the Enemy Act it is forbidden to transfer money to the enemy, including the Iranian national oil company,” the Finance Ministry statement said.

The compensation ruling follows a long-running legal battle between the two countries over the revenues from an oil pipeline joint venture that dates back to before the Islamic Revolution.

IRNA cited an “informed source” at Iran’s Presidential Center for Legal Affairs for its information about the court’s ruling.

The joint venture between the two countries, which began under the Shah of Iran in 1968, was a project for selling Iranian oil to Europe via Israel. The oil was shipped from Iran to Eilat and then transported to the Mediterranean seaport of Ashkelon via the newly constructed Trans-Israel Pipeline.

The jointly-owned pipeline was effectively nationalized by Israel after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after which Iran turned from being Israel’s ally to its enemy, and Iran’s assets were expropriated.

Iran launched three international arbitration suits in Swiss and French courts to receive its share of the revenues from Israel’s continued operation of the pipeline, estimated to be in the billions of dollars, and Iranian assets that were nationalized.

IRNA said the ruling relates to the Israel’s sale of Iranian oil that it received on credit and never paid for.

According to IRNA, the latest ruling pertains to a case related to the National Iranian Oil Company’s delivery of 14.75 million cubic meters of crude oil worth $450 million to Israel’s Trans-Asiatic Oil Ltd. or TAO.

In 1989, the Swiss court initially ordered TAO to pay $500 million to Fimarco Anstalt, a company registered before the revolution in Lichtenstein by NIOC.

Payment was deferred pending deliberations over interest claims. This month’s ruling was the culmination of that case, with TAO ordered to pay $1.1 billion in addition to $7 million in legal fees, IRNA quoted the source as saying.

The source said Iran has also launched a case against TAO in Panama’s courts for implementation of the ruling and original claims against the Israeli firm.

Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court has reportedly allowed Iranian clients to file an arbitration claim for $7 billion against Israel.

The original claim relates to Iran’s shares in the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co. as well as two oil ports and storage facilities, and a fleet of tankers which were expropriated by Israel.

The venture is shrouded in a veil of secrecy in Israel and any information about the pipeline or its financing is subject to censorship.

As many as 800 Egyptian soldiers arrived in Yemen late on Tuesday, Egyptian security sources said, swelling the ranks of a Gulf Arab military contingent launching a wide war on the country, Reuters news agency reported.

It was the second reported deployment of ground troops there by Egypt. The first was in 1962 when Cairo dispatched 70 thousand, while only half of them returned home in 1967, as the rest were killed by the Yemeni resistance fighters.

Egyptian security sources stated that four Egyptian units of between 150 to 200 troops along with tanks and transport vehicles arrived in Yemen late on Tuesday.

“We have sent these forces as part of Egypt’s prominent role in this alliance … the alliance fights for the sake of our brotherly Arab states, and the death of any Egyptian soldier would be an honor and considered martyrdom for the sake of innocent people,” a senior Egyptian military source said.

Worthy to note that Yemen is a member-state of the Arab League that combines all Arab states under one umbrella.

Yemeni officials put the number of foreign troops from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar at least around 2,000, while Qatari-owned Al Jazeera TV said at least 10,000 foreign soldiers had arrived, including 1,000 from the UAE.

Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, a spokesman for the coalition, told Reuters its forces were focusing on overcoming the Yemeni resistance in central and southern provinces, pounding their positions from the air across the country before beginning any thrust towards Sanaa.

Residents reported heavy air raids on military bases throughout Sanaa on Wednesday, the latest in a series of daily assaults which fishermen said killed 20 Indian nationals off a Red Sea port on Tuesday. At least 15 other civilians were killed throughout the country on Tuesday, medics said.

The alliance has increased air strikes on Sanaa and other parts of Yemen since Friday, when a Houthi missile attack killed 300 coalition troops at a military camp in central Marib province.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for more than five months (168 days) now to restore power to fugitive president Abed-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 5,788 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

There is much debate regarding fake images and video footage used by major news networks including the BBC and CNN.

This article was written in September 2011 in the wake of NATO’s extensive bombings of Libya.  

And this is where fake reports and fake images come in. The international community, we are told,  is waging a “humanitarian war”. And the people of Libya are rejoicing.

The official story is that they have been liberated following an extensive and illegal bombing campaign under NATO auspices.

Fake images are now being used by the MSM in Syria to provide a human face to the US-NATO led coalition, which is supporting the “moderate terrorists”.  

Flash back to September 2011

Michel Chossudovsky, January 14, 2016

*      *     *

Green Square Tripoli. Libyans are seen celebrating the victory of Rebel forces over Ghadaffi in this BBC News Report (see below)

Examine the footage:

It’s not Green Square and it’s not the King Idris Flag (red, black green) of the Rebels.  

Its the Indian flag (orange, white and green) and the people at the rally are Indians.

Perhaps you did not even notice it.

And if you did notice, “it was probably a mistake”.

Sloppy journalism at the BBC or outright Lies and Fabrications? Recognize the flags?

Indian Flag  (see right)

Libya’s Rebel Flag (King Idris)

This is not the first time images have been manipulated or switched.

In fact it seems to be a routine practice of the mainstream media.

Terrorists “celebrating” in Green Square

There is no celebration. It is a NATO sponsored massacre which has resulted in several thousand deaths.

But the truth cannot be shown on network television. The impacts of NATO bombings have been obfuscated.

The rebels are heralded as “liberators”.

NATO bombing is intended to save civilian lives under The Alliance’s R2P mandate.  But the realities are otherwise: the civilian population is being terrorized by the NATO sponsored Rebels.

The images must be switched to conform to the “NATO consensus”.

Death and destruction is replaced by fabricated images of celebration and liberation.

War Propaganda and War Crimes

Media disinformation in relation to war is categorized as war propaganda, which constitutes a criminal offense under international law

This form of reporting constitutes a war crime, because the intent is to obfuscate NATO atrocities. Without media disinformation, nobody would support the war.

NATO bombings of Tripoli in the last two weeks have resulted in several thousand deaths. The Rebels are not Liberators as portrayed by the media; amply documented they are Al Qaeda terrorists working hand in glove with NATO:

 “War propaganda has entered a new phase, involving the coordinated action of satellite TV stations. CNN, France24, the BBC and Al Jazeera have become instruments of disinformation used to demonize governments and justify armed aggressions. These practices are illegal under international law and the impunity of the perpetrators must be stopped.” Thierry Meyssan, Global Research, August 22, 2011)

See Global Research reports on NATO war crimes and media disinformation:

VIDEO: Tripoli BEFORE and AFTER NATO/Rebel “Liberation”
View the footage on GRTV
– 2011-09-01

VIDEO: Make No Mistake. NATO is Committing War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in Libya
– by Julian Teil, Mathieu Ozanon, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-08-28

Expose the Lies. This Global Research video was produced and directed in Tripoli by a team of committed journalists, researchers and cameramen.

Tibet 2008: CNN Caught Red Handed in Manipulating Images and Switching Video Footage

In 2008, in  a different context, CNN was also caught red handed in manipulating images pertaining to the Tibet Riots.

The report presented by CNN’s Beijing Correspondent John Vause focussed on the Tibet protests in Gansu province and in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

What was shown, however, was a videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India.

Viewers were led to believe that the protests were in China and that the Indian police shown in the videotape were Chinese cops.

At the outset of the report, a few still pictures were presented followed by a videotape showing police repressing and arresting demonstrators in what appeared to be a peaceful protest:

On the day of the Lhasa Riots (March 14, 2008), the videotape presented by CNN in its News Report on the 14th of March (1.00pm EST) was manipulated.

VIDEO: Tibet monks protest against Chinese rulers (CNN, March 14, 2008)

The video footage, which accompanied CNN’s John Vause’s report, had nothing to do with China. The police were not Chinese, but Indian cops in khaki uniforms from the North-eastern State of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Viewers were led to believe that demonstrations inside China were peaceful and that people were being arrested by Chinese cops.

Chinese Cops in Khaki Uniforms

1′.27-1′.44″ video footage of “Chinese cops” and demonstrators including Buddhist monks. Chinese cops are shown next to Tibetan monks

Are these Chinese Cops from Gansu Province or Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, as suggested by CNN’s John Vause’s Report?

REPORT ON CHINA, MARCH 14

Alleged Chinese cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in China , CNN, March 14, 2008  1′.36”

Alleged Chinese cops in khaki uniforms repressing Tibet demonstrators in China, CNN, March 14, 2008  1’40”

Their khaki uniforms with berets seem to bear the imprint of the British colonial period.

Khaki colored uniforms were first introduced in the British cavalry in India in 1846.

Khaki means “dust” in Hindi and Persian.

Moreover, the cops with khaki uniforms and mustache do not look Chinese.

Look carefully.

They are Indian cops.

The videotape shown on March 14 by CNN is not from China (Gansu Province or Lhasa, Tibet’s Capital). The video was taken in the State of Himachal Pradesh, India. The videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India was used in the CNN report on the Tibet protest movement within China.

In a March 13 Report by CNN, demonstrators are being arrested by Indian police in khaki uniforms during a protest march at Dehra, about 50 km from Dharamsala in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

VIDEO; Tibet Protest movement in India, CNN, March 13, 2008

“Indian police arrested around 100 Tibetans on Thursday, dragging them into waiting police vans, as they tried to march to the Chinese border to press claims for independence and protest the Beijing Olympics.” (REUTERS/Abhishek Madhukar (INDIA))

Below are images from the CNN’s report on March 13, on the protest movement in Himachal Pradesh, India:

Compare these images to those in the March 14 CNN report. Same cops, same uniforms, same Indian style moustache

CNN MARCH 13 REPORT ON INDIA

Indian cops repressing Tibetan demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008  0′.53″

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008  1′.02″

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008, 1′.18″

Indian cops repressing Tibetan demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008  2.04″

The CNN’s March 14 report on the Tibet Protest movement in China shows Chinese cops in khaki uniforms, yellow lapels and berets.

While the videotape is not identical to that of March 13 in India , CNN’s coverage of the events in China on March 14 used a videotape taken from the coverage of the Tibet Protest movement in India on March 13, with Indian cops in khaki uniforms.

The protest movement in India on March 13 was “peaceful”. It was organised by the Dalai Lama’s “government in exile”. It took place within 50 km of the headquarters of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.

The Western media was invited in to film the event, and take pictures of Buddhist monks involved in a peaceful, nonviolent march. These are the pictures which circled the World.

So what has occurred is that CNN  has copied and pasted its own videotape of the Tibet Protest movement in India and has fabricated a Gansu Province/ Lhasa, China “peaceful” protest movement with Chinese cops in khaki British colonial style uniforms.

The Chinese never adopted the British style khaki uniform and beret.

These uniforms do not correspond to those used by the police in China. (See photograph below)

No khaki uniforms in China. These are the uniforms of China’s “Armed Police”.

For the complete 2008 report see Michel Chossudovsky

Western Media Fabrications regarding the Tibet Riots
Fake Videotape used by CNN
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2008-04-16

CNN’s report focussed on the Tibet protests in Gansu province and in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. What was shown, however, was a videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India.

The region already is cauldron of endless violence and chaos. Is Washington planning a scenario of military escalation.

Iranian naval commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi accused Washington of reckless moves, risking war with the Islamic Republic.

His remarks followed seizure of two small US vessels illegally operating in Iranian waters, briefly detaining their crew members.

Before their release, “the US navy and a US aircraft-carrier showed unprofessional behavior for about 40 minutes and made some moves in the air and the sea in the region,” said Fadavi – provocations risking direct confrontation.

America’s regional presence, including in Persian Gulf waters, is hugely destabilizing. No clashes occurred this time. Longstanding US hostility toward Iran suggests next time may be different.

Washington’s aim to replace Iranian sovereign independence with Western-controlled puppet governance risks direct confrontation.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top military aide Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi explained the formation of a Tehran, Moscow, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad anti-Washington, Israeli, Saudi coalition.

“The policies of the Al Saud are influenced by the Zionist regime and this regime is seeking to push the region towards insecurity, unrest, turmoil and chaos,” he stressed.

“A coalition comprising the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel (continue) massacring the people of Syria, Iraq and Yemen…”

“The Zionist regime is looking to stir tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and this issue needs the vigilance of the country’s political officials because insecurity is in the interest of the Zionists and the Americans.”

On Wednesday, Putin and Obama spoke by phone. A Kremlin statement said both “leaders called for de-escalation of the tensions that arose in connection with the crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

Putin seeks regional calm and stability, polar opposite Obama’s imperial agenda, supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups, stoking endless conflicts, allied with Riyadh, Israel, Turkey wanting Iranian sovereign independence eliminated.

Their brinkmanship moves risk greater Middle East violence and chaos than already – a reckless agenda threatening world peace.

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.

It used to be, and indeed children are still taught in schools, that the advances that have been made in the last five hundred years (antibiotics, electricity, computers etc) resulted from the application of Science and its overthrow of dogmatic belief.

All ideas are put to the question in the auto da fe of experiment: Galileo’s observations versus the Inquistion’s biblical earth-centric world view and so forth. But over the same period, the power of belief (in Jesus, Marxism, Allah, perhaps ‘Economics’) has continued to flourish alongside the supposedly observation- based, empirical philosophy that we call Science.

Belief is strictly about what we cannot know but I am not going down the Dawkins black hole on this one since there are certainly some very odd things that science cannot explain. But I want to apply the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s approach to something that Science can explain and has: the health effects of ionising radiation.

Kierkegaard said of belief that it becomes stronger the more impossible and threatened it is. And this seems to be rapidly coming true in the case of nuclear energy. The torture imposed on logic, reason and observational data by the advocates of nuclear power has now reached the level of clinical psychosis.

A psychosis is a thought disorder in which reality testing is grossly impaired. There is so much evidence that nuclear power kills, causes cancer, mutates populations, reduces fertility and kills babies that only a mad person would continue with the belief that it is a good thing and should be pursued no matter what the cost in money and death.

And as they move to even greater levels of psychotic delusion they present two new survival strategies which make it brilliantly clear that the proponents of nuclear are off their heads.

First the recent move to petition the US nuclear regulators to accept the idea that small amounts of radiation are actually good for you (Yes!); we should all be forced to be irradiated like food, maybe at birth in the equivalent of a mass vaccination. In you go, Jimmy: BZZZZZ, there you are, that didn’t hurt did it?

And the second, as I wrote about recently, is to cancel the US nation-wide study of cancer near nuclear plants.

Are these two moves related? You bet! If the National Academy of Sciences Cancer Study found that people are dying because of the ‘low doses’ received from the emissions, then obviously low doses of radiation can’t be good for you. We are back to the Dark Ages.

Hormesis, or ‘radiation is good for you’

I am regularly asked to comment on Hormesis, the idea that small amounts of radiation are good for you.

Several animal experiments seem to have shown that if you deliver a low dose of radiation and then later follow it up with a big dose, those groups that are primed with the low dose have a resistance to developing cancer from the big dose compared with controls which have not.

The explanation is that cells adjust their DNA repair levels, the concentrations of cellular anti-oxidants and radiation repair systems is altered in proportion to the perceived radiation stress. I accept that this is the case, and indeed it seems intuitively likely that such a system would have developed.

We protect against ultraviolet damage to skin cells by sun-tanning, and we have haemoglobin modulators that can be induced by low oxygen levels at altitude. For radiation the process is termed hormesis and is entirely dependent on the induction of cell repair.

But there is clearly a limit to this process: above a certain dose it is overwhelmed: the cell just can’t mobilise enough defences and the castle is taken; by which I mean the DNA is mutated and off we go.

The alternative position, the probabilistic one, which is where we are now with radiation protection models, NCRP, ICRP all those people, is that radiation creates its effects by causing tracks of charged particles, mostly electrons.

Every ionization causes damage to the cell, and therefore even at the smallest dose, one ionisation, there is damage to the cell and hence a finite probability that this will lead to cancer. These are the armies facing each other in the petition to assume a threshold, based on the hormesis model versus the Linear No Threshold model.

Actually, as far as human cancer and genetic damage is concerned, both are wrong. I met the hormesis brigade, Myron Pollycove and Ludwig Feinendegen at the CERRIE conference in Oxford in 2004. They were quite sympathetic with what I was arguing (maybe they hadn’t thought it through), but they both seemed like nice guys. Scientists anyway. Not psychotic. Because their arguments were based on observation.

Sadly, it’s not true

So what is wrong with hormesis. Is radiation good for you? The answer, of course, is no it isn’t. There are two alternative, not mutually exclusive reasons. The first is due to Elena Burlakova, Head of Radiation Biology at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her groups have carried out dozens of experiments on the effects of radiation on different systems.

The dose response they find is biphasic.  The effects (including a plot she made for childhood leukemia near nuclear sites) go up then down then up again.

She ascribes this to a combination of the basic dose response which is like a hogs back, going up then flattening, and the induction of repair systems ( the hormesis effect) resulting in a falling of the response, which is then overwhelmed at some point, at which the response rises. So the largest effect is at very low doses indeed.

The second is my idea and it is very simple [1]. In the body there are many differentiated types of cell, but what they all (except a few which do not replicate and which you are stuck with all your life, heart muscle, brain) have in common is that at any single time there are two classes: those that are functioning, and those that, because of age (and DNA damage) or fresh DNA damage, make the decision to replicate and provide a daughter cell to take over the job that the parent can no longer do properly.

Replication begins with a 12 hour period in which the cell checks the DNA strands against one another, repairs any repairable mistakes (mis-matches) and then divides. This period is known from experiments to be extraordinarily sensitive to radiation damage to the DNA, ten to hundreds of times more sensitive.

So as the dose to the cell and specifically the DNA is increased, mutation increases for these sensitive minority sub-class of cells which are in repair-replication phase. Thus the cancer rates (or whatever genetic end point is used) rises sharply at these very low doses.

But then the dose reaches the point where these cells are so damaged they cannot survive. At this point, the cancer effect falls (a dead cell doesn’t represent a cancer hazard, it cannot create a genetically damaged clone).

This reduction appears to the hormesis crew as a good thing, but note it doesn’t operate from the lowest dose, only from some intermediate low dose, and this position is different for different cells.

As the dose increases, after all the sensitive replicating cells are wiped out, the insensitive cells begin to be affected (region B) and the cancer excess risk rises again until these also are overwhelmed and you die (region C). The effect is clearly seen in the results of the huge Cardis et al. 15-country nuclear workers study data which is presented at different doses.

Injecting dogs with plutonium – to prove what?

Some years ago I was up against one of these hormesis geezers, a certain Dr Otto Raabe, in a court case in America. He was the expert for the defence. Raabe was in charge of the Beagle dog studies in New Mexico.

They injected these poor creatures with Plutonium, Radium or Strontium-90 and watched them develop bone cancer and leukemia. The doses were enormous, the number of dogs was small (cost). The whole place was contaminated with Plutonium, the particles hanging in the air like fairy dust. The burial site for the dogs is so radioactive it is fenced off as a US superfund site for decontamination.

Raabe’s thing was that he had mathematically converted beagle dogs into humans: you should just see his amazing three dimensional graphs (these guys love all that stuff). Well you can probably find them somewhere on the internet.

The best thing was that in one of his papers he discussed how difficult it was to do these beagle studies. He wrote that 12 (yes 12) of his control dogs (no injections of Plutonium) had unfortunately died of lung cancer and had to be removed from the analysis. What!!?

I checked out the rates of lung cancer in dogs (you can find everything on the web) and that was the end of Raabe. Low dose, you see. Fairy dust.

Anyway, as far as nuclear sites are concerned, none of this is really relevant, except as an excuse to increase the limits of exposure. This is because the cancers near the nuclear sites are caused by internal exposures, to Plutonium, Uranium, Tritium, Strontium-90, Caesium-137, Iodine-131, Carbon-14, particles and huge amounts of radioactive noble gases Krypton-85 and Argon-41. There are more nasty isotopes but that will do.

And internal exposures can deliver doses to the cell and to the DNA which are far above the small doses that the hormesis people are citing. They are talking about low external doses around external natural background, up to 10 mSv.

The alpha particle track in a cell delivers about 400mSv. The alpha decay of a Uranium atom bound to DNA delivers several thousand mSv to the DNA, and also amplifies natural background though secondary photoelectron effects. Different game altogether.

So whats the conclusion? It is this: there is no threshold from zero dose. There is an apparent reduction in the response over some variable intermediate low dose region (the right hand side of the A region peak in Fig 1) which varies depending on the cell type.

Since we don’t know what this is, and anyway it varies, we cannot allow for the effect in legislation. And of course, we don’t know what other downsides there are to induced repair: one clear likelihood is that you die earlier.

You only get a limited number of replications before you run out of the ability to replace cells. If you use them up with induced repair systems that’s the end of the road. Otherwise why haven’t we all got these repair systems zinging and spinning at maximum rpm all the time? We all die. And that is why.

The Sweden nuclear waste repository at Forsmark

Hormesis is about misinterpreting some results to obtain what you want. If the hormesis issue seems jaw-dropping, here is a better one where there are no results to interpret, only mathematical modelling.

On 3rd November I was in Stockholm at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The meeting was to present to the public and concerned individuals the safety case for the proposed high level nuclear waste repository at Forsmark on the shore of the Baltic Sea just north of Uppsala.

In this perfect example of rational calculation gone mad, the Swedes are proposing to bury the waste in copper canisters which they have mathematically persuaded themselves will keep the stuff from the environment for 100,000 years (Yes!).

The State, in the form of the Environment Council, requires proof that the death toll as a result of this Kierkegaard insanity will be less than 1 in 1,000,000 per year for that period. These deaths are calculated using environmental dose modelling based on the famous ICRP risk model.

I had already written two reports for the Swedish Environment Council [2] and Ditta and I had even presented a complaint to the Swedish Justice Minister in 2012 on this issue [3] [4]. The meeting was in Swedish, and they would not allow me to make a presentation from the stage.

These soothing powerpoints were naturally made by ten or so of the scientific luminaries associated with the ICRP and the presentations verged on criminal misdirection.

Luckily the moderator, a woman, gave me space to jump up at each question time and make clear what was really going on. At the end, she gave me about 15 minutes to present the truth (see video embed, below) [5]. This was also reported in the Osthammar Nyheternewspaper which gave several pages to these arguments. [6]

There was a predictable response from the men in suits the following week and I get to reply. Carry out a cancer study, I say: let’s look at cancer near the present Forsmark reactors, which are among the dirtiest in the world. Lets look at the real world rather than modelling it. Of course they will not: just as the NAS in the USA will not.

My main argument was about the Fukushima thyroid cancers [7]. The average thyroid doses from radio-Iodine at Fukushima were reported to be less than 10mSv. At this dose the current risk model predicts less than 0.05 extra cancers in the 300,000 screened 0-18 year olds.

But in a paper published last October it was reported that there were discovered about 110 extra cancers in Fukushima and none in a control screened group in Nagasaki. This shows an error in the model of about 2,500 times. Our studies and the child leukemia studies suggest the error is bigger.

Kierkegaard was from Denmark. Sweden had Ibsen, whose play, An Enemy of the People, focuses on the attacks by the establishment (out to make money) on the messenger who points out that their nasty tricks are killing everyone. Plus ca change …

References

1. (Busby IntechOpen 2013). Busby Christopher (2013). ‘Aspects of DNA Damage from Internal Radionuclides, New Research Directions in DNA Repair‘, Prof. Clark Chen (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-1114-6, InTech, DOI: 10.5772/53942.

2. Busby report to the Environmental Council: Pandoras Canister.

3. Busby & Ditta deliver Complaint to Justice Chancelor of Sweden

4. ‘Chris Busby – Scary Rider‘, Nuclear Power? Yes Please.

5. Chris Busby; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – YouTube

6. ‘Cancer study can be relevant in Östhammar‘. Östhammars Nyheter, 6th November 2015.

7. Tsuda Toshihide, Tokinobu Akiko, Yamamoto Eiji, Suzuki Etsuji, ‘Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan: 2011 to 2014‘. Epidemiology: doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000385. Download

The Syrian government forces liberated the strategic town of Salma in the Latakia province on Jan.12. The Syrian forces seized the Fort of Kafr Dulbeh in Tal al-Khazan and Tal al-Harmiyah in the Northern part of Salma.

Al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants have reportedly suffered heavy losses in the clashes in these areas. In turn, the SAA reportedly lost 6 soldiers killed and 8 wounded. The success of operation was grounded on the high level of coordination of the Russian Air Force with the Syrian Arab Army infantry and artillery units.

Al-Rabiyah located in the Turkmen Mountains will likely become a next target of the pro-government forces. It’s last high ground stronghold controlled by terrorists in the province. If Al-Rabiyah is liberated, the SAA will have a strategic initiative to push terrorists from the entire Latakia province.

On Jan.12, ISIS launched offensive operations in the Homs province striking the pro-government forces at Al-Dawa and Al-Bayarat located near Palmyra. ISIS reportedly captured a large cache of weapons and armory including a T-55 Tank in Al-Dawa and seized the village. In Al-Bayarat, terrorist units have faced a strong resistance and were pushed to retreat. The situation in the area of Palmyra remains tense.

The SAA is continuing to advance north along the Aleppo-Raqqa highway. The SAA liberated the village of ‘Ayn Al-Jahesh located south of the ISIS stronghold of Al-Bab. Now, the Syrian forces are advancing on Al-Bab. Meanwhile, the U.S. backed “Syrian Democratic Forces” are conducting operation to capture the ISIS-controlled town of Menbeij in east Aleppo. Thus, ISIS has almost completely lost the initiative in the province.

On Jan.11, 20 people were killed and 50 others wounded after a bomber detonated his explosives-filled vest inside a cafe in Muqdadiya, 80 km northeast of Baghdad. ISIS gunmen killed at least 18, four of them police forces, in Baghdad. A separate bombing in the Nahrawan district southeast Baghdad killed 7 and injured 15 people.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Security Forces liberated the Qaryat Sakran region in the province of Anbar. Iraqi sources argue that scores of militants have been killed there. Also, clashes were observed in the al-Shaei region.

It seems we are seeing the reappearance of the kitten campaigns in Madaya over the last 10 days.

When is a terrorist not a terrorist ~ The Kitten Campaign.

The heart wringing laments describing feline throat cutting and accompanying photos  have been circulating in both mainstream media and social media with comparable intensity.

People have responded, quite naturally, with horror but lets examine the possible origin of this concept and why it might just be another in the long line of publicity ploys used to maintain public support for an illegal proxy military intervention in Syria.

The creator of #Madaya_is_starving, one of the first and most potent of the twitter hashtags to flood twitter feeds was none other than Raed Bourhan, who describes himself as a fixer & “researcher” for the London Times, allegedly based in Zabadani.

On the 5th January he offered his services to journalists wanting to cover the Madaya story.

He later disseminated the now iconic image of the cat with a knife being held to its throat about to be sacrificed to feed the starving of Madaya.  This, despite the universally accepted reports of UN deliveries of food in October 2015  that should have sufficed for a minimum of two months & the entry of the UN on the 28th of December to evacuate 126 injured “moderate rebel militants”.

The London Times appeared to be sufficiently persuaded of Raed Bourhan’s credibility to produce the following headline:

Snowbound and starving Syrians forced to eat cats ~ Times Article

The question that not one main stream media journalist has asked, is why the UN would have left starving children behind on December 28th or not made more of a fuss when confronted with starvation and mass kitten culling. 

In fact, at least one main stream media outlet showed its nervousness over yet another suspect image relating to Madaya after a collective, valiant effort by genuine analysts, researchers and independent journalists successfully exposed the majority as fake, within hours of the propaganda storm breaking.

The Daily Mail accompanied the photo with:

“This picture posted by an activist on Twitter purportedly shows a cat about to be slaughtered for food by a starving Syrian in Madaya. However, MailOnline has not yet been able to verify the image which may simply have been used for illustration purposes”

What also became clear, relatively quickly, was the actual dearth of Western journalists on the ground in Madaya.  This was highlighted by Murad Gazdiev, RT reporter on the ground in Madaya.

“About two dozen journalists here. Can’t see any Western press. Strange, given how worried they were about #madaya” ~ Link to tweet here. 

One cannot help but ask, how on earth the media managed to produce quite so much information about the situation in Madaya without having anyone on the ground in the area and seemingly without being able to verify their extraordinary claims that logic alone should have rendered spurious.

One of the VICE editors, when questioned on why they had run with fake photos, explained:

“Yes, sorry about that but residents in Madaya had sent the photos saying they had seen them on Al Jazeera and had assumed them to be of Madaya”

 

Am I the only one to find it a little peculiar that Madaya residents were recycling photos that they had seen on Al Jazeera and could not verify if they were of Madaya or not..or would it not have been simpler to have taken actual photos of the starving people in Madaya? This has puzzled me immensely.  Perhaps I am being a little too logical?

Or perhaps this entire situation has been nothing more than a clumsy attempt to destabilise the area and give Ahrar al Sham and associates time to further attack Israel’s arch enemy in Syria, the Hezbollah brigades situated in the mountains around Zabadani?

Should VICE have published photos from an unverified source?

Madaya is raising many questions that have been raised since the inception of the illegal war on Syria but still remain unanswered. Many excellent articles [I will include them at the end of this short piece]  have been written highlighting aspects of the propaganda fog, smoke and mirrors and astounding outright lies that have driven this narrative at warp speed into the annals of Western deception tactics used to justify illegal and destructive direct or proxy intervention onto Sovereign nation soil.

Should we be surprised, for instance, that an “activist” researching for The London Times was one of the first to create the hash tag #Madaya_is_starving  and to run with the extreme images and information?

Throwback to the Marie Colvin affair 2012, which I will be writing more about shortly in an article highlighting the Avaaz role in creating an agitprop shop of “citizen journalists” in 2011, funded by public donation totalling over $ 1 million to provide mobile phones, cameras and networking equipment to ensure a flow of propaganda that would sweep the world into yet another “regime change” operation, this time in Syria.

This is taken from an article by Tony Cartalucci written shortly after the death of Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times, in Homs February 2012.

“Reading any report out of the corporate-media, we find Syria’s campaign against admittedly armed rebels paradoxically referred to as a “massacre,” and an almost palpable fervor to justify circumventing the latest UNSC resolution veto. As news comes out of the death of two foreign journalists in Homs, Remi Ochlik and Marie Colvin who sneaked into Syria and were operating there illegally to begin with, Western leaders are unanimously calling this the “breaking point.” France’s Nicolas Sarkozy even stated, “that’s enough now, this regime must go and there is no reason that Syrians don’t have the right to live their lives and choose their destiny freely.”

Or another example of the Sunday Times [London Times] duplicity can be found here:

The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels

“The Lies of London’s  Sunday Times regarding Obama’s counter-terrorism campaign against the ISIS is refuted by an earlier Sunday Times report. The Sunday Times report quoted below confirms that Obama has been arming the terrorists for the last three years, since 2012.”

When we look back at the propaganda casualties during its war on Syria, we see a graveyard littered with the corpses of BBC, Al Jazeera, Telegraph, Times, CNN fake narratives [among many others]. The death of Marie Colvin was another such casus belli, thwarted once more by Syria’s steadfast and dignified public reaction, the nobility of the Syrian Arab Army on the battlefield and the concerted efforts of anti NeoColonialist researchers and analysts.

It is exhausting for us, on the sidelines of the war on Syria to contend with the relentless stream of hostile journalism but we cannot even begin to imagine the toll it is taking on the Syrian people battling it on the ground while also grappling with the terror hordes introduced into their homeland by our “change” hungry governments. Change at any cost, no matter the bloodshed, the rape, the massacres, the imprisonment, the true starvation, the daily horror that Syrian people must live through.

Siege: any prolonged or persistent effort to overcome resistance

The ignominy of our Governments role in this siege of Syria and their guilt of multiple crimes against Humanity & against the Syrian people must be mercilessly exposed & the monster unmasked.  The lies and hypocrisy that are its oxygen must be snuffed out.

We owe, at least that, to the beleaguered people of Syria.

More than 50,000 people from around the world came together in Paris in December 2015 to address the single biggest threat to the survival of the natural world – the climate crisis. There is virtual unanimity among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the warming of the planet, and if critical steps are not taken, a habitable world will cease to exist.

But there are entities that stand to lose if alternative sources of energy overtake coal, oil and natural gas. They are huge corporations, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Texaco.

Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, Exxon – now called ExxonMobil – spent millions of dollars in a sophisticated campaign to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The oil giant knew better.

Exxon’s Scientists Confirm Climate Change

In 1977, James Black, an Exxon senior scientist, told a meeting of powerful oil company executives, “There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from burning of fossil fuels.” The following year, Black wrote: “Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

During much of the 1980s, Exxon conducted cutting-edge research on climate change. In 1982, its environmental affairs office prepared a corporate primer labeled “not to be distributed externally.” It said that preventing global warming “would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.” If that didn’t happen, the primer read, “There are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” It added: “Once the effects are measurable, they may not be reversible.”

In 1989, Duane Levine, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy development, told the board of directors that scientists largely agreed that the burning of fossil fuels would release gases that could raise temperatures between 2.7 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the 21st century. Glaciers would melt and sea levels would rise, Levine declared, “with generally negative consequences.”

When James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, testified before Congress in 1988 that global warming had begun, Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colorado) said, “Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend.”

As calls for reductions in carbon dioxide from fossil fuels increased in the United States and around the world, Exxon realized the severity of the threat to its bottom line. Brian Flannery, Exxon’s climate expert, wrote in an internal newsletter that such regulations would “alter profoundly the strategic direction of the energy industry.”

Exxon Begins to Sow Doubt About Climate Change

Exxon made a strategic decision to publicly sow seeds of doubt about climate change while internally confirming it. A far-reaching investigation by Columbia University’s Energy and Environmental Fellowship Project and the Los Angeles Times, and another by InsideClimate News, revealed Exxon’s fateful shift.

An internal draft memo dated August 1988, called “The Greenhouse Effect,” set forth the “Exxon position.” It advised that the corporation should “emphasize the uncertainty.”

In 1992, Exxon joined the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a group of fossil fuel companies and industry front groups organized by the American Petroleum Institute to spread uncertainty about the scientific basis for climate change. The GCC took ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post, emphasizing doubt about climate change.

Exxon was not alone in its deception. Mobil, Texaco, Shell, Standard Oil of California, Gulf Oil and other behemoths joined together in the GCC to protect their enormous profits.

Exxon conducted a PR campaign, lobbying to prevent US and international measures to limit greenhouse gases. For years, Mobil, then ExxonMobil after the two oil giants merged in 1999, bought a weekly “advertorial” on the editorial pages of the Times.

Exxon repeatedly cited the rationale underlying the 1997 US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol: restricting carbon dioxide emissions “could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs, or any combination thereof.”

In 1998, Exxon’s senior environmental lobbyist frighteningly declared, “Victory will be achieved when … average citizens ‘understand’ uncertainties in climate science” and when “recognition of uncertainty becomes part of ‘conventional wisdom.'”

More recently, in 2012, ExxonMobil’s CEO minimized fears about climate change. Rex Tillerson told the Council on Foreign Relations, “We have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt.” He added, “It’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.”

How reassuring. Merely an “engineering problem.”

Revoking a Corporate Charter

One of the side events at the Paris climate conference was devoted to holding ExxonMobil accountable for its dangerous deception about climate change. Columbia law professor and former environmental lawyer Michael Gerrard presented a scenario whereby the corporation could be sued for being a criminal enterprise under the RICO statute (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), violating consumer protection laws, constituting a public nuisance and participating in a civil conspiracy.

At that meeting, I suggested petitioning the attorney general of New Jersey, where ExxonMobil is incorporated, to revoke its corporate charter.

Corporations have no inherent right to exist. Since corporations are created by states, the states possess the power to dissolve them. Every state and the District of Columbia have a procedure by which citizens, through their attorney general, can go to court to revoke the charter of a corporation that violates the law. Thus, lawbreaking corporations can be dissolved, put out of business and their assets sold pursuant to a judge’s order that will protect jobs, the environment and the public interest.

In 1976, California’s conservative Republican attorney general used corporate charter revocation to force a private water company out of business for delivering contaminated water to its customers. The company settled the litigation and its assets were sold before its charter was revoked.

The New York State attorney general used the tool in 1998 in conjunction with other litigation to put two New York corporations, Council for Tobacco Research and Tobacco Institute Inc., out of business and order their assets donated to state education and health institutions. Dennis Vacco argued that the Council was using its tax-exempt status by acting as a propaganda arm of the tobacco industry. The stated mission of the groups was “to provide truthful information about the effects of smoking on public health,” Vacco said. “Instead,” he added, “these entities fed the public a pack of lies in an underhanded effort to promote smoking and to addict America’s kids.”

The tobacco industry eventually agreed to dissolve the two front groups as part of a multistate settlement of a lawsuit over the public health costs of smoking. But first, Vacco convinced the states’ courts to appoint a receiver for the two tobacco groups and dissolve the Council for Tobacco Research because it had violated its nonprofit corporate charter and tax-exempt status.

Also in 1998, Alabama Circuit Judge William Wynn, acting as a private citizen, filed a lawsuit to revoke the charters of Alabama’s five major tobacco companies. They included Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, R.J. Reynolds, The Liggett Group and Lorillard Corporation. Judge Wynn cited legal violations including contributing to the delinquency of a minor, unlawful distribution of material harmful to a minor, endangering the welfare of a child, third degree assault, reckless endangerment and deceptive business practice. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the judge’s action shed a critical light on the malfeasance of the tobacco industry.

Indeed, in the 1950s and 1960s, the tobacco companies had intentionally spread disinformation about the dangers of tobacco. While they financed internal research demonstrating that tobacco was addictive and harmful, they sponsored a public campaign minimizing the dangers. The parallels with ExxonMobil are striking. The tobacco companies were convicted in 2006 of “a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public.”

In September 1998, a coalition of 150 environmental and human rights organizations petitioned California Attorney General Dan Lundgren to revoke the corporate charter of Union Oil Co. of California (Unocal) due to violations of state and international law in the construction of a natural gas pipeline in partnership with Myanmar’s (formerly Burma) military dictatorship. The petition was filed by Loyola Law School professor Robert Benson and other attorneys for the International Law Project for Human, Economic and Environmental Defense (HEED), a project of the National Lawyers Guild.

The petition alleged 10 counts of illegal actions by Unocal. They included enslavement and forced labor; forced relocation of Burmese villages and villagers; killing, homicide, rape and torture; environmental devastation; cultural genocide of indigenous and tribal people; aiding and abetting oppression of women and homosexuals; unfair and unethical treatment; usurpation of political authority; and deception of the courts, shareholders and the public.

Ironically, in the count of environmental devastation, the petition called Unocal “an incorrigible recidivist polluter” and “an engine of destructive greenhouse gases” whose actions are contributing to life-threatening climate change amounting to “ecocide.”

The petition was denied and later refiled before a new state attorney general who, in turn, also turned it down. But the mass mobilization against Unocal likely led the corporation to pull out of a gas pipeline deal with Afghanistan, whose Taliban government was a notorious human rights violator.

In 1996, the law firm of Hadsell & Stormer, also comprised of attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild, brought suit on behalf of 14 Burmese villagers in the landmark case of Doe v. Unocal. Filed under the Alien Tort Statute and several California laws, the lawsuit alleged forced labor, crimes against humanity, violence against women and torture.

Four months after the lawsuit was settled in 2005, Chevron bought Unocal’s interest in the Burmese pipeline. As stated above, Chevron is one of the large oil companies contributing to climate change. Such is the circle of corporate malfeasance.

ExxonMobil’s Corporate Charter Should Be Revoked

In November 2015, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation to determine whether ExxonMobil lied to the public about the perils of climate change or to its investors about how those risks may harm the oil business. Schneiderman served the corporation with a subpoena, demanding records of its climate research, including financial information and emails.

New Jersey residents should urge their attorney general to initiate proceedings to revoke the corporate charter of ExxonMobil, which is incorporated in New Jersey. US Supreme Court Justice Byron White said in 1978 about corporations: “The state need not permit its own creation to consume it.” ExxonMobil’s dangerous and deceptive behavior has endangered not only the state of New Jersey. The climate crisis it has helped create threatens to consume the entire world.

The British government has turned down millions of pounds of EU funding to help those affected by flooding and lack of food.

Hundreds of thousands across the UK are so poor that they are having to rely on charitable food banks to stave off hunger.

The EU parliament agreed to provide aid for those suffering extreme poverty in the EU. The EU offered up to £22 million to help subsidise Britain’s food banks, but the money was blocked by the UK government.

Food-bank use in Britain is at record levels, with the Trussell Trust charity running over 400 food banks across the country. More than one million food parcels, each providing enough food for three days, were given out between 2014 and 2015, more than 400,000 of which went to children.

Thirteen million people live below the poverty line in the UK. According to the Trussell Trust, 1 in 5 mums in Britain regularly skip meals to feed their children.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, urged the Prime Minister to reverse the decision to reject EU funds for food banks, but to no avail.

British government officials explained that the government rejected the EU funding for food banks because it considers that member states are best placed to take charge of such funding.

The Department of Work and Pensions commented that the government was not saying no to the money but, rather, “no to Europe about how it should be spent.”

David Cameron’s official spokesman said the issue is whether the UK should be in charge of the funds that are spent in the UK.

“This Government believes that it should be, and that it should not be the European Commission and other European institutions that tell us how to spend funds spent in the UK.”

Mr Cameron’s government has welcomed food banks, describing them as an “excellent example” of active citizenship.

By the same principle, the British government has also not applied for EU funding to help the many thousands in Britain who have lost their homes and businesses because of wide-spread flooding following record-levels of rain fall.

EU member states are entitled to apply for money from the EU Solidarity Fund when a natural disaster causes substantial damage, calculated as a percentage of Gross National Income.  In the UK’s case, this would be a natural disaster causing damage in excess of  3 billion euros.  An application to the emergency fund must be made within 12 weeks of the commencement of the disaster.

The governments of Bulgaria, Italy and Romania accessed a total of €66.5 million (£48m) from the fund following recent severe flooding in those countries.

According to accountants, KPMG, the cost of the UK floods has so far topped £5 billion, which is roughly €6.8 billion, so Britain is entitled to apply for the EU emergency help.

But so far, the UK government has refused to accept any EU support for Britain’s flood victims, just as it has rejected available EU support for those in Britain too poor to buy enough food.

Labour MEPs have written to the Prime Minister urging his government to apply immediately for EU funding to help the communities hit by flooding.

In the letter, the MEPs pointed out to Mr Cameron that when, in 2014, the South West of England was hit with similar flooding, “the UK government failed to draw down on vital European Union funding, leaving people in that area without extra financial support to rebuild their lives.”

Continued the letter:

“We would like to ask you to make sure this situation is not repeated, and that this time the UK government makes use of the resources at its disposal and applies for full EU support.”

Last month Labour MP, Jamie Read, asked the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, if his department would apply for EU funding to support communities affected by flooding. But Mr Hammond replied that more time would be required to provide an answer.

Catherine Bearder, Liberal Democrat MEP for south-east England, said that EU officials told her that the UK government could apply for £125m in grants for flood victims, 10% of which could be available within six weeks.

She told The Guardian, “It is baffling that the government has still not applied for EU solidarity funding. Millions of pounds could be made available within weeks to help pay for cleanup costs and the rebuilding of vital infrastructure. The Conservatives must not deprive flood-hit communities of desperately needed funds.”

EU commissioner Corina Creţu said she was surprised that Britain had not yet applied for any EU help for the floods in Britain.

Back in the summer of 2007 the then Labour government had no qualms in applying to the European Union Solidarity Fund for support and subsequently received £134 million to help deal with the flood crisis that year which also caused billions of pounds of damage.

As reported then by the BBC:

“The EU Solidarity Fund is particularly aimed at helping countries cope with the uninsurable costs of natural disasters, such as cleaning up and restoring infrastructure.”

At the time, the Conservative opposition welcomed the Labour government’s decision to appeal for European funds, but said Britain should have applied earlier.

But now that they are in government, it appears that the Conservatives prefer not to apply for EU help at all, even though such support is clearly needed by people suffering right now.

Is it because the current government, whose MPs and many of its Cabinet appear to be predominantly Euro-sceptic, is too proud to ask for EU help?

If so, such pride is needlessly hurting many ordinary, every-day people in Britain who tonight are homeless because of severe flooding, and/or don’t have enough money to properly feed themselves or their families.

In his Christmas message last month, the Prime Minister said, “giving, sharing and taking care of others” was something Britain could be proud of. And he urged the public to “think about those in need” over the festive period.

Isn’t it time for the Prime Minister to practice what he preaches?

We’re not a tax haven, we have never been involved in any kind of tax malpractice – Michael Noonan, Irish Minister for Finance 5^th October 2015

If your top political figures need to constantly state that your countryis not a tax haven, then the chances are it probably is a tax haven. And as the UN’s Philip Aston says, ‘When lists of tax havens are drawn up, Ireland is always prominently among them’. Following their investigation into the tax affairs of Apple, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain similarly found that by any ‘common sense definition of a tax haven’ Ireland easily met the criteria. I mean when Forbesregularly ranks you in their list of ‘Top ten tax havens’, there’s not really much of a debate to be had.

Here in Ireland there’s no debate to be had, well certainly not one of any genuine substance, largely because our mainstream media considers it a relatively taboo subject. With both our public and privately owned media organisations reflecting the kind of political establishment and corporate opinion that’s heavily invested in the tax haven strategy, its little wonder that much of the Irish public is unaccustomed to the notion that we’re a tax haven, despite the broad international consensus.

Just take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s announcement last month that it was relocating its HQ here, in another corporate inversion designed solely to slash its tax bill. This drew international condemnation with the Financial Times calling us a financial ‘black hole’, the Guardianargued that we should be ‘subject to economic sanction’, whilst US presidential hopefuls Trump, Clinton and Sanders all issued criticism of their own.

As usual our media skirted around the issue, stating obvious facts like our tax regime was ‘back in the international spotlight’, but failing to offer any serious analysis of why this was. Then  of course there was the customary denial by a top political figure, this time our Minister for Agriculture Simon Conveney, who declared ‘Nobody is using Ireland as a tax haven’.

Someone should tell poor Simon to take a stroll down to the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC). There he’ll find a small building located at 5 Harbour Master Place which houses around 250 companies controlling almost €2 billion worth of assets, but he won’t find any employees – because there are none.  Not even a fella to clean the brass plates on the door.

But as Bob Dylan said ‘the times they are a changing’. The OECD has recently launched its new Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project (BEPS) designed to clamp down on this kind of corporate tax dodging, talk of standardised European corporation tax rates in the air, and pretender to the US Presidency Bernie Sanders has already made clear that if elected he’ll clamp down on the kind of corporate tax dodging ‘that cheats not only America out of tax revenue but also Ireland’.

Obviously none of this is guaranteed to put an end to corporate tax dodging or the countries that facilitate it, but it’s a clear indication of which way the wind is blowing, meaning Ireland urgently needs to change course. The first step is facing up to the fact that we are a tax haven, so let’s review the historical and contemporary evidence.

A taxing history

The dominant economic narrative here in Ireland is that we were the economically ‘sick man’ of Europe up until the 1990s, after which time we slashed corporation tax, multinationals flocked and the Celtic Tiger was born. It’s the old low corporation tax = high growth rates line; yes that old chestnut!

In reality our tax haven strategy was born back in the 1950s after a range of tax exemptions on corporate income and profits, as well as offshore tax exemptions were introduced. But it was the late 1970s before things really got going, as our Industrial Development Authority (IDA) began marketing Ireland abroad as a ‘no tax’ regime, and the idea of establishing a dedicated Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) was hatched.

Former head of the IDA and one of the IFSC’s chief architects Padraic White, co-authored the book The Making of the Celtic Tiger. In the book he describes how he recruited Bob Slater, a Wall Street expert on offshore banking, who ‘examined the success of Bermuda in creating jobs in financial services, and he was satisfied that Ireland could emulate its achievement.’ Yes Ireland planned to create its very own Bermuda triangle, but the only thing that would be going missing was the tax obligations of multinationals.

Although our Central Bank initially rejected the plan because it ‘smacked of a banana republic’, it was revived in the 1980s following the election of a new government under the notoriously corrupt Charles Haughey, a man who would siphon off the equivalent of 45 million euro in today’s money whilst being central to one of the largest tax evasion scams in the history of the state.

Today the IFSC administers almost 50% of global alternative investment funds (hedge funds, venture capital, derivative contracts, mortgage back securities, etc) and with its low taxes and light regulation has disparagingly been referred to as the ‘Wild West of European Finance’.

The Celtic Tiger didn’t take off because large multinationals flocked here after we slashed corporation tax in the 1990s. As the graph from the Tax Justice Network shows Ireland had long been trying to market itself as a tax haven; it just wasn’t working, not until we joined the European Single Market in 1993.

Nevertheless the misleading notion that low corporation tax means high growth, buoyed by the kind of historical revisionism that our media and politicians regularly engage in, has deified Ireland’s low tax regime into some kind of sacred cow. Challenging this orthodoxy has been very difficult as those who try are characterised as treasonous bastards attempting to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

The has served to narrow the parameters for debate on the issue of corporation tax, meaning that even the political forces of the left from the weak social democrats to the radical left do not advocate raising our 12.5% rate.

(Tax Justice Network http://www.taxjustice.net/2015/03/12/did-irelands-12-5-percent-corporate-tax-rate-create-the-celtic-tiger/)

If it walks like a duck…

The two defining characteristics of a tax haven are; (1) a jurisdiction there is little/no tax liabilities for foreign individuals/businesses and (2) where key financial information is suppressed. Ireland, as we shall see, easily ticks both of these boxes.

1) Tax!? No thanks, we’re a multinational

Our 12.5% corporation tax rate is often referred to as the ‘cornerstone’of our economy, but even the dogs on the street know that the amount that’s usually paid is as little as 2%, and sometimes it’s nothing at all. Between 2007 and 2012 the likes of Google, Microsoft, and pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories, all managed to pay less than 1% tax on their profits. 

They do this through a process called transfer pricing, also known as profit shifting. With 60-70% of global trade now done intra firm big multinationals are more likely to trade with different subsidiaries of themselves than with rivals. This brings opportunities to artificially shift profits from high to low tax jurisdictions.

And here in Ireland we wrote the book on the transfer pricing. Well ok maybe we didn’t write the book, but the Irish Tax Institute does run specialist courses in the thing, advertising it as ‘The only global event that brings you the ‘’how to’’ of transfer pricing’.  And to be fair the accountants in the ITA are speaking from experience, many of them having worked for the 4 big accountancy firms based here (PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC), KPMG, Deloitte and EY) who assist multinationals in evading tax. For example a recent report by the British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found the PwC was promoting tax evasion on an ‘industrial scale’.

One particular incident from their report focused on PwC’s orchestration of a loan by Shire Pharmaceuticals between its subsidiaries in Ireland and Luxembourg, which assisted them in dodging a huge bill that should have been due to the Luxembourg authorities.

Now take a look at the box below to see who Ireland’s biggest ‘trading partners’ are. Yes in first place it’s our old friend Bermuda, and this is in no small part thanks to Google shifting its profits between Google Ireland Ltd and Google Ireland Holdings, which is a Dublin-registered company that’s actually located in Bermuda. This direct investment data does not signify any genuine economic activity taking place, rather what it demonstrates is how Ireland allows the Googles and Shires of this world to shift their profits between their different subsidiaries in order to dodge tax.

2) The Secrets we keep

A climate of financial opacity is the other major characteristic of a tax haven. So its little wonder that a recent report by 19 European non-governmental organisations found that Ireland’s lack of “financial and company transparency” is one of the chief reasons we’re such an attractive location for corporate subsidiaries. You see the problem with this kind of corporate secrecy is that it tends to attract those with something to hide. Here’s a trio of examples which illustrate how Ireland helps to facilitate such secrecy.

Firstly there’s the case of Apple who are currently (and welcomingly) being investigated by the European Commission to see if they arranged a number of illegal ‘sweetheart’ tax deals here. Ireland’s strict law surrounding taxpayer confidentiality has meant that these deals, although widely suspected, have been beyond the scrutiny of both the public and our national parliament, despite being of huge significance to the public purse.

If found guilty Apple could be forced to repay the state for up to ten years’ worth of tax, a figure that JP Morgan estimates could be as high as €19 billion. And as anyone who has been paying attention to Irish affairs over the last few years could surely attest – we could really do with the money. Unfortunately our government is preparing to take a case to the European Court of Justice to oppose such a ruling.

Next up is our shadow banking sector which enjoys a similar opacity. For instance Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) like mortgage backed securities (MBS), which we all know played a major role in the global financial crisis, aren’t even regulated by our Central Bank who claims their job is to regulate firms rather than specific instruments. Prior to 2008 they didn’t even bother to keep a record of how many of these institutions were operating here.

In the wake of the crash pressure was put on the Irish state to place greater oversight on the industry. We responded by hiring just two people to supervise an entire sector worth €2,250 billion. Even if those two individuals were Superman and the Flash they still wouldn’t have a hope of keeping up. But I guess that just shows how serious our government was on shining a light on the shadow banking industry.

Lastly is the area of offshore trusts, a means of avoiding tax so common that even the dogs on the street could tell you what they’re used for. The users of trusts enjoy relative anonymity which makes it difficult to ascertain who owns them, what assets they control and thus how to tax them.  That’s why the establishment of a public register of all the beneficial owners of companies and trusts is presently being pursued at the European level. Unsurprisingly our government, along with the likes of Luxembourg, are lobbying hard behind the scenes to have the idea shot down.

The Sad Conclusion

Ireland’s tax haven strategy isn’t just screwing our own citizens; we’re screwing the citizens of other countries too. Our legal framework undercuts the tax laws of other nations by encouraging economic activity to relocate here purely in order to dodge tax. Christian Aidestimates that the loss to developing countries from the kind of transfer pricing operations that Ireland facilitates is somewhere in the region of $160bn annually, with developed countries like America losing around $60bn per year.

For that reason the international community is now taking steps to clamp down on tax havens and the transfer pricing they facilitate. The net is beginning to close but unfortunately the Irish public, misled by the misinformation spouted by our media and politicians, are blissfully unaware of this.  We need to wake up, because as Richard Murphy the economic adviser to Jeremy Corbyn says, “No one believes companies locate in Ireland because of great employees, infrastructure etc. They just think of tax-dodging as the first, last and only reason.”

“Of course, all humanitarian actors face challenges in maintaining wartime neutrality. But the agencies of the United Nations, including UNRWA, carry an additional burden. They are attached to a global organization that is, in fact, highly political.”∼ David Bosco, American University

It appears that the marginalization of the plight of Kafarya and Foua continues unabated.

The two predominantly Shia villages in Idlib province are still being largely ignored by the media and Government pundits who are using Madaya to sharpen their propaganda knives and continue stabbing the Syrian Government & the Syrian people in the back.

A report has just come in from Al Manar [Arabic] and resident surgeon Dr Ali Almoustafa stating that UN officials have failed to visit Kafarya & Foua to assess the critical health deterioration of residents which include the starving & wounded from the pre cease fire daily terror bombardment by the besieging gangs of Ahrar al Sham and Al Nusra mercenaries.

The reason the UN has given for this dereliction of duty is fears about passing the Ahrar Al Sham checkpoints which have been set up along the roads that allow access to the crippled villages of Kafarya and Foua.

This statement is rendered ridiculous when one considers the fact that the UN has had no such issues entering Madaya, their entry having been facilitated by the Syrian Government in Damascus and the Syrian Arab Army surrounding Madaya.

Al Manar have reported that the UN met with a committee representing the armed thugs and another from the local residents. So, in Madaya the thugs are sugar coated?

As Dr Al Jaafari, Syrian permanent Representative to the UN, said yesterday in his address to media and UN officials:

“The information concerning the humanitarian situation in Madaya is based on false information, and totally ignores the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in other areas besieged by armed terrorist groups. The reality of the so-called besieged, hard to reach areas is that some of those areas are controled by terrorist groups who are using civilians as human shields, and other areas are be-sieged from the terrorist groups who are preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Meaning that the terrorist armed groups are two categories. One category is exerting, besieging on the civilians from within inside. And the other category is exerting, besieging from outside.

In Kafraya and al-Foua, the terorrists are besieging the two towns from outside, surrounding the two towns, in Idlib..

But in Madaya and al-Zabadani, the terrorists are inside. So they are using the civilians as human shields while they are inside.”

As evidence mounts, pointing to Western media and Governmental manipulation of the facts and exploitation of the misery of the Syrian people, we see an almost ghoulish relishing of their role as purveyors of deceit and harbingers of further suffering for Syria.

The gloves are off, the Western media and political hostility towards the Syrian people and elected Government has been laid bare and exposed for the world to see.  The Emperor is butt naked, the robes of pseudo diplomacy in tatters and the crowds are starting to point and stare at the Truth which Madaya has brought to the light.

Invoking ‘The Holocaust’

However, for these neocolonialist pariahs, the show must go on.  Samantha Power, the ring mistress of White House propaganda only just resisted comparing Madaya to the Holocaust, teetering on the edge of indecency by stopping at WWII but the connection was unmistakable.

“Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children, even babies, in Madaya,” she told the General Assembly.

These are just the pictures we see. There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War Two.” ~ report here

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft picked up the Syrian government demonization baton and ran with it:

“Starving civilians is an inhuman tactic used by the (President Bashar) al-Assad regime and their allies.”

In the Houses of Parliament in the UK, the Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening announced:

“No one who has seen the pictures coming out of Madaya over recent days can say this this atrocious situation is anything other than utterly appalling. The situation is deliberate and man-made. The Assad regime has besieged the town since July, causing horrific suffering and starvation. I should remind the House that the UK has been at the forefront of global efforts to help ensure, from day one, that people suffering inside Syria have been helped over the past four years.”

And as a final example of dogged hypocrisy, French Ambassador Francois Delattre said there could be:

“no credible political process without progress on the humanitarian front.”

The levels of sanctimonious posturing from these representatives of “Democracy” is staggering when one considers the sheer scale of destruction that their Governments are responsible for globally.

The Yemen Lie

Yemen is being systematically destroyed by  the Western ally and primary trade partner in the region. Saudi Arabia is a despotic regime despatching its regional & national opposition with customary lawlessness and brutality, fully endorsed by the same Governments that are levelling unverified accusations at the Syrian government.

The siege of Yemen supported by the UN, NATO and the US is decimating the already poverty stricken country, not to mention the raining down of US and UK manufactured bombs and illegal explosives that are maiming and massacring the Yemeni civilian population on a daily basis.

Last week a home for the blind was bombed in Sanaa and images of bewildered and shocked residents emerged from Yemen. Children unable to find their way back to their familiar surroundings because the walls had been reduced to rubble.

Lethal and flesh tearing cluster bombs were used to target densely populated civilian areas of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

DESTRUCTION: Saudi Arabia’s brutal destruction of Yemen has torn apart thousands of communities and families.

Ambassador Power’s statement on Madaya is particularly disturbing  when put in context.  She is rubbing her hands in covert glee at the impending massacres in Burundi, supporting the supply of weapons and military aid that ensures the wholesale slaughter of the Yemeni people and stepping over the bones of murdered Palestinians, Iraqis, Libyans, Nigerians, Somali among others in her climb to the top of the political tree.

Another siege that is not discussed with the same intensity as Madaya is of course, that of Gaza but cynically speaking the abject misery of the Palestinian people living among the rubble of 3 Israeli wars on the besieged strip of land, does not serve the NATO US Israeli GCC “regime change” agenda in Syria and is therefore to be marginalised in deference to another trade and military industrial complex partner, Israel.  One more  regional Western ally of note for their brutal and oppressive illegal occupation.

It appears that brutality and oppression are to be sanctioned when of benefit to the West.

As Dr Al Jaafari stated yesterday:

“Those who are besieged are all the Syrians. We are talking about Syria being be-sieged by enemies, by criminals, by murderers, by hostile governments targeting the whole Syrian people.

…It’s about 23 million Syrians besieged, by economic sanctions, by terrorists crossing from Turkey, from Jordan, from Lebanon, from Iraq. This is the reality. The whole Syrian people are besieged.”

When we watch Dr Al Jaafari navigate the hostility from Western, Qatari & Saudi media, we are struck by his patience & dignity despite the knowledge that these media outlets have been  caught red handed,  disseminating fraudulent photos not even from Madaya,  and failing to either ask the salient questions or to report important factual elements that would have completely altered public perception and portrayed the Syrian Government in the Humanitarian light that is deserved.

It is bewildering that whenever there is a step forward towards a political solution in Syria, certain incidents are fabricated to de-fame the Syrian government and to negatively impact the political process….

The examples of such incidents are many and happened before certain United Nations Security Council meetings, as well as before Geneva 2 meeting, and Moscow 1 and Moscow 2 consultative meetings.

Now, and when the Syrians are going to meet in Geneva, end of this month, certain regional and international parties supporting terrorism in Syria are not satisfied that the Syrian government is engaging positively in the political process. And thus are trying to demonize it…. torpedoing the meeting in Geneva.” ~ Dr Al Jaafari.

In fact, how Syria responds time and time again to the pack of hyenas that are baying for its blood, NATO US Israel, KSA, the western media ghouls, will go down in history as heroism, nothing less.

Notes

Thank you to Eva Bartlett for the Transcript of Dr Al Jaafari’s address.

“THOSE WHO ARE BESIEGED ARE ALL THE 23 MILLION SYRIANS”: SYRIA’S AMBASSADOR TO THE UN, DR. BASHAR AL-JA’AFARI ON MADAYA, KAFARYA, FOUA, ZABADANI, SYRIA.

Please also do read Eva Bartlett’s articles on Kafary and Foua

Untold suffering in Kafarya and Foua

Kafarya and Foua 

Rise up! Rise up, Americans!

Too long have you delayed!

While imperial-minded presidents

Their cruel wars have made.

The hard-earned coin for which you toil

They waste on wars on foreign soil,

The liberties you enjoyed of late

They club to death in their police state.

Rise up! Rise up, Americans!

Take peace into the street!

Only the Pentagon gains from war

For the rest of us it’s defeat.

MLK denounced the war in Viet Nam

As he would today’s war in Afghanistan

As King stood up to racism

Let us stand up to militarism.

Rise up! Rise up, Americans!

Take peace into the street!

It is in our hands we hold our fate

Non-violent America, demonstrate!

In 2015, police in the United States continued to kill at a rate far higher than every other country in the world for which statistics are currently available. That year, U.S. cops killed at least 1,200 people, more than three per day on average, according to the research of the website www.killedbypolice.net.

The exact number is not known. There is no federal agency that keeps track. The FBI compiles annual statistics for “justified homicides” by police—but participation in the program by the approximately 18,000 police agencies in the country is completely voluntary, and only about 800 actually provide reports. Most departments, including the notoriously racist and murderous New York Police Department, do not participate at all.

The FBI reported 444 killings by police in 2014, the latest report available. The FBI’s amazingly broad definition of “justifiable homicide” by police is: “The killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.” The FBI classified every one of the 444 killings as “justified.”

“The Counted,” a project of the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper, documented the deaths of 1,136 people killed by U.S. police in 2015. Its extensively researched database confirmed the racist and class dimensions of police violence.

African Americans were killed at a rate of 7.15 per million (301 deaths); Latinos – 3.48 per million (193 deaths); Native Americans – 3.4 per million (13 deaths); whites – 2.92 per million (578 deaths); and Asian/Pacific Islanders – 1.34 per million (24 deaths). No corporate criminals are in the list.

No ‘war on police’ in 2015

And while the FBI makes no effort to create a comprehensive database of annual police killings, the agency has very exact numbers of police officers “killed in the line of duty.” This data comes from the “Officer Down Memorial Project,” which receives funding from the federal Department of Justice.

The “Officer Down” project includes in its 2015 report six Air Force Special Agents killed in Afghanistan, and even lists all police dogs that die or are killed “in the line of duty.”

Contrary to the demagogic campaign rhetoric from a number of current candidates for U.S. president, there is no evidence whatsoever of a “war on police.” In fact, the number of police killed in 2015 declined significantly from the previous year. Police officers who died inside the United States or its territories (colonies) dropped from 133 in 2014 to 123 in 2015, the majority in both years due to illness or accidents.

Police officers killed by hostile actions—gunfire or assault—declined from 64 to 49. Given that there are more than 1.5 million police in the country, those numbers reveal that the claim of a “war on cops” is truly bogus.

U.S. cops kill at 100 times or more the rate of other countries

U.S. political leaders frequently promote the chauvinistic idea of “American exceptionalism,” the notion that the United States is the “one indispensable country,” superior to all others. It is dangerous propaganda employed to justify wars and interventions around the world.

But in the area of state violence, the United States is indeed “exceptional,” particularly as compared to other developed capitalist states.

In Britain, also a capitalist country with a long history of racism, police reportedly fired guns three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. Police do not generally carry guns on patrol. From 2010 through 2014, there were five fatal police shootings in Britain, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent of Britain’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period!

In 2015, German police, who do carry guns, reportedly killed two people. Germany, another racist, imperialist country with large numbers of oppressed minorities, has a population about one quarter that of the United States.

While police killings in Canada, another multi-national state, have sharply increased in the past two years, U.S. cops were five times as likely to kill as their Canadian counterparts. Japan had no reported police killings in recent years.

Contrary to the myths propagated by politicians, mass media and schoolbooks, extreme racist, anti-worker and anti-poor violence has been a central feature of U.S. history since the country’s founding. U.S. capitalism was constructed on a foundation of genocidal extermination of Native people and the unpaid labor and murder of millions of enslaved Africans. The U.S. ruling class created whole agencies of armed thugs to shoot down and repress striking workers.

State violence has been an essential element of a system based on ruthless exploitation inside and outside the U.S. borders. It will only be eliminated when the system itself is.

This incisive article written more than five years ago examines what has now become a fait accompli: Integration into NATO, Threatening Russia,  the Militarization of the Baltic States

With the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into Eastern Europe from 1999-2009, the U.S.-led military alliance has grown by 75 percent, from 16 to 28 members.

By 2009 all former non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member states had been incorporated into NATO, the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) being absorbed with its merger into the Federal Republic in 1990. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO in 1999 and Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia in 2004. Albania, which suspended participation in the Warsaw Pact six years after its founding, in 1961, was brought into the Alliance last year.

The 2004 expansion included seven nations in all, the three mentioned above, the first former Yugoslav republic, Slovenia, and the first former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Immediately upon their accession, the United States began to employ the new members’ territory for military bases, troop deployments, air patrols and the initial stages of a continent-wide anti-ballistic missile system beyond already existing NATO plans for the bloc’s Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence Programme.

The year after Romania was brought into NATO’s ranks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed an agreement with its government to acquire the use of four military bases in the country, including the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in southeast Romania near the Black Sea which had been used two years before for the invasion of Iraq. Romanian President Traian Basescu paid his first official visit to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld five months before the treaty was signed.

At the time the Pentagon’s acquisition of the bases was characterized as part of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s “strategic shift intended to place US forces closer to potential areas of conflict in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.” [1] Washington had led NATO’s nearly three-month air war against nearby Yugoslavia five years before, invaded Afghanistan two years after that and launched the attack on Iraq another two years later. Three wars in less than four years and all to the east of NATO’s former area of responsibility.

The pact with Romania was the first of its kind in a former Warsaw Pact nation. It was followed the next year by a comparable arrangement with neighboring Bulgaria in which the U.S. secured the indefinite use of four military facilities, including two air bases.

This February the governments of Romania and Bulgaria announced their willingness to host components of the American interceptor missile system designed to cover all of Europe under what the White House and the Pentagon call a new phased adaptive approach.

But the first U.S. and NATO military presence in what had been Warsaw Pact member states occurred the year before the U.S.-Romanian Defense Cooperation Agreement and moreover was in former Soviet space. After Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in March of 2004 the North Atlantic bloc immediately began what it deems a Baltic air policing mission in the airspace of the three nations as a Quick Reaction Alert operation.

In the interim warplanes from several NATO member states – the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Turkey, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania to date – have flown what at first were three-month and are now four-month around-the-clock rotations over the three Baltic states, all of which have borders with Russia. Estonia and Latvia adjoin the Russian mainland to their east and Lithuania Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to its west. (Northeast Poland also borders Kaliningrad.)

On September 1 the U.S. took over NATO’s Baltic air patrol with the 493rd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron deployed from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England to the Siauliai International Airport in Lithuania where the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission is based. Four U.S. F-15C Eagle jet fighters, capable of being armed with four types of air-to-air weapons including Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles, and 120 personnel are assigned to the mission.

It is the third time American warplanes have been deployed for the Baltic air operation and the second time F-15 Eagles have been employed for the purpose.

U.S. ambassador to Lithuania Anne Derse, who came to the position from being American envoy to Azerbaijan, said as the U.S. Air Force took over from its Polish counterpart: “The (493rd has) already established a legacy of professionalism in the Baltics, and we look forward to building upon it. As all warriors know, the surest way to maintain peace is to exercise constant vigilance and rigorously prepare to meet all potential threats. The Baltic air policing mission is just one of many facets of NATO’s vigilance and preparation.” Derse didn’t indicate which potential threats the warriors were preparing to confront, but a look at a map of the Baltic Sea does.

Major General Mark Zamzow, vice commander of the 3rd Air Force based at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, added, “Our relationship with the Baltic nations has grown remarkably since the inception of the Air policing mission.”

He was also cited claiming “a 2008 endeavor designed to provide complex air policing training has since evolved with a broader scope emphasizing a wide spectrum of air operations over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.” [2]

Two weeks after the U.S. warplanes and airmen arrived in Lithuania, the president of neighboring Estonia officiated over the opening of the newly expanded and modernized Amari Air Base in his nation, which the local press reported can accommodate 16 NATO jet fighters, 20 military transport planes and 2,000 troops. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said “The construction of the Amari Air Base, which was jointly financed by the Estonian state and NATO, is a perfect expression of the solidarity between allies” [3] and that “the completion of the air base would make it much easier to bring allied troops and their equipment to Estonia in the event of a crisis situation.”

He also “underscored the fact that from 2012, when the complex as a whole is due for completion, NATO will have one of the most modern air force bases in the region at its disposal.” [4]

Estonian Air Force chief Brigadier General Valeri Saar confirmed that Baltic air policing warplanes could use the base in the future and that NATO pilots will begin to employ it for training purposes beginning in October.

Not only have NATO and the U.S. moved military personnel and aircraft into nations bordering northwestern Russia, but they have done so in flagrant violation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) negotiated in 1989 between the 16 members of NATO and six of the Warsaw Pact at the time, which mandated comprehensive limits on several categories of conventional military equipment in Europe.

The treaty was signed in 1990 and ratified the next year after the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, which created gray areas that the Pentagon could exploit – as it has through NATO’s eastward expansion in the interim – to station military hardware and personnel in Russia’s fellow Black Sea states Bulgaria and Romania and in its Baltic Sea neighbors Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.

The CFE pact was signed by 22 nations and ratified by 30: The 16 members of NATO, six non-Soviet former members of the Warsaw Pact and eight ex-Soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are not signatories to the treaty. Neither is former Yugoslav republic Slovenia, inducted into NATO along with the three Baltic states in 2004.

In 1999 an Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE-II) was signed during the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe summit in Istanbul by the same 30 countries that had endorsed the original.

To date only four former Soviet republics – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine – have ratified it. NATO nations have sabotaged the treaty’s implementation by linking it, without legitimate legal or other grounds, with the withdrawal of what until recently were small Russian peacekeeping contingents in Transdniester, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. What NATO refers to as the Istanbul Commitments. 1,500 Russia troops in Transdniester have no impact on European security, but by preventing the CFE-II treaty from entering into force the U.S. and NATO retain the right to violate the treaty’s (and its predecessor’s) limits on troops and armaments – including combat aircraft and attack helicopters – in non-signatory nations like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia suspended its commitments under the CFE-II treaty three years ago because of concerns over the U.S. and NATO deploying troops and equipment to Eastern Europe and the threat of missile shield deployments to follow.

This past May the first deployment of U.S. anti-ballistic missiles in Europe was achieved when a Patriot Advanced Capacity-3 missile battery and over 100 troops were moved into the Polish city of Morag near the Baltic Sea.

When on September 17 of last year U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the decision to shift from previous interceptor missile plans for Eastern Europe to the “smarter, stronger, and swifter” phased adaptive approach, discussions began on stationing Standard Missile-3 interceptors, both the traditional ship-based and new land-based versions, in the Baltic as well as the Black and Mediterranean Seas.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania not having signed the original CFE treaty or its successor and no NATO state having ratified the adapted agreement permit Washington to deploy longer-range interceptor missiles as well as warplanes to and off the coasts of the three Baltic states.

The U.S. and NATO have claimed that moving military forces and equipment into Eastern Europe, several thousand U.S. troops to Bulgaria and Romania at any given times along with jet fighters to the Baltic Sea region and missiles to Poland, is not in violation of the CFE treaty as they are not permanent deployments. But they are. NATO’s Baltic air policing mission, for example, has been conducted for almost six and a half years and, as seen above, is expanding in scope into the indefinite future.

Moreover, NATO’s four new members on the Baltic Sea – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – have been transformed into training grounds for the Pentagon’s and NATO’s wars abroad, especially that in Afghanistan, and to prepare for potential confrontation and conflict with fellow Baltic littoral state Russia.

U.S. troops, warships and warplanes are present in the region on a regular basis, conducting military exercises several times a year.

The trade-off between the U.S. and other founding members of NATO on the one hand and the bloc’s new members in Eastern Europe on the other is for the latter to provide bases for use by Washington and Brussels and to supply troops for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as others to come in exchange for NATO and its main member the U.S. – the world’s sole military superpower – placing them under the Alliance’s Article 5, the bulk of which states:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

As examples of the obligations imposed on new member states, Poland ran the Multinational Division Central-South in Iraq from 2003-2008 with NATO assistance and deployed 2,500 troops for the command. It currently has 2,600 troops in Afghanistan, where it has lost 21 soldiers, and another 400 held in reserve for the mission. The Iraq and Afghanistan deployments are the largest overseas military commitments undertaken in Poland’s history.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all had troops in Iraq – Latvia’s and Lithuania’s under Polish-NATO command – and all three countries currently have forces serving under NATO in Afghanistan.

NATO maintains a Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland, responsible to its Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia, and in 2008 NATO inaugurated the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia, also connected with the U.S.-based Allied Command Transformation. The second was established a year after cyber attacks in Estonia which domestic – and U.S. – officials blamed on Russia, although Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo was compelled to admit he had no evidence that Russian government agencies played any role in the attacks. Notwithstanding which, the Western press at the time was rife with speculation over NATO invoking its Article 5, first used as a justification for NATO entering the war in Afghanistan, for the occasion.

This June the Times of London wrote that:

“NATO is considering the use of military force against enemies who launch cyber attacks on its member states.”

A report issued by the Group of Experts – led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – that NATO appointed to promote the new Strategic Concept that will be adopted at the bloc’s summit in Lisbon in November stated:

“a cyber attack on the critical infrastructure of a Nato country could equate to an armed attack, justifying retaliation.” [5]

Estonia is a likely test case for the policy.

The U.S. and NATO are ensuring they have the military forces in place to make good on their threat by conducting almost constant war games in the Baltic Sea.

On September 13 over 4,000 troops and 60 ships along with planes and helicopters from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden participated in this year’s Northern Coasts exercises in the Baltic Sea, the largest maneuvers ever staged in Finnish territorial waters.

On September 20 U.S. Special Operations Command Europe launched the Jackal Stone 10 multinational military exercise with 1,300 special forces from the U.S., Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Romania and Ukraine. The exercises began at a Polish air base and continued at two bases in Lithuania. The U.S. dispatched USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet (whose area of responsibility is the Mediterranean Sea) to participate in the drills.

According to a U.S. Naval Special Warfare official: “During the 10-day special operation exercise, Mount Whitney’s presence was a huge asset. The ship provided excellent surveillance of targets at sea and helped the SOF [special operations forces] planners maintain an excellent perspective of the big picture by strategically placing itself off the coast, ready to perform any task the SOF required.” [6]

The United States European Command website said of the war games: “The experiences and lessons learned from the current war in Afghanistan underscore the critical importance of deliberate planning for coalition special operations forces (SOF) missions.

“Training opportunities such as the Jackal Stone 10 exercise, co-hosted this year by Poland and Lithuania and coordinated by the U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, provide a unique venue for the U.S. to develop commonalities with its international SOF partners whether by land, air or sea….The Jackal Stone 10 exercise allows SOCEUR [Special Operations Command Europe] an opportunity to enhance the capabilities of its partner nations so they can become an integral part of the NATO footprint, specifically in developing the staff planning and operational ability of special operations forces.” [7]

A Polish newspaper revealed intentions beyond the war in Afghanistan in reporting that:

“Exercise Jackal Stone 2010 was designed to enhance international military cooperation and increase military preparedness in CEE [Central and Eastern Europe].”

It also quoted the previously mentioned Naval Special Warfare official asserting that:

“[the exercise] was a unique opportunity for SOF units from these countries to promote better communication and improve our readiness to build a greater fighting force worldwide.” [8]

The U.S. 352nd Special Operations Group conducted “midnight training maneuvers” in the skies above Poland: “The mission began with two Combat Shadows flying in formation. As the training progressed, the crews conducted evasive maneuvers while flying at low levels in reaction to simulated area threats.” [9]

U.S. and Polish forces also held a mass casualty exercise to prepare for “potential ‘real world’ emergencies” at the 21st Tactical Airbase in Swidwin where the opening ceremony for Jackal Stone 10 was held.

In the words of Polish Warrant Officer Anna Matulska:

“I’ve been deployed to Iraq before and it’s the same way. We have to work quickly, we have to triage and as in the case of our burn patients, we have to make sure they are kept warm.” [10]

Jackal Stone 10 had among other purposes that of preparing Poland to become a “framework nation,” which will “enable it to assume command of multinational special forces within NATO by 2014.” [11]

The launching of the war games at the Swidwin air base included an address by Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich, who said:

“Special operations in the world today are becoming increasingly important in the conduct of combat operations. And exercises like this check the ability of allied and international cooperation, which is essential for the success of the Allies.” [12]

On the closing day of Jackal Stone 10 Klich left for Washington, D.C. to meet with Pentagon Chief Robert Gates and “hold talks…on Afghanistan and the future of NATO” as well as U.S. missile shield plans. He also participated in the swearing-in ceremony of Polish General Mieczyslaw Bieniek as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia. “This is the highest post that a Polish officer has ever taken in NATO,” Klich said. He was reported as “adding that his presence at the ceremony is necessary to show how important NATO is for Poland and how important it is for the country to have its representative in high NATO structures.” [13]

On the same day the Polish defense minister arrived in Washington, Polish Radio announced that former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski wrote to 738 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and “dozens of ambassadors worldwide, urging them to help block an expansion of Russia’s influence abroad.”

In what was described as “an unprecedented move for a leader of an opposition party,” the twin brother of recently deceased President Lech Kaczynski demanded that:

“Washington and Brussels should…give greater assistance to countries that want to free themselves from the Russian sphere of influence.” [14]

The ambassadors Kaczynski sent his letter to were those of the other 26 European Union member states, plus the U.S., Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Norway, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

The last six nations are targeted by the Eastern Partnership initiative of the EU, first promoted by Poland in 2008, which is designed to recruit the former Soviet republics away from the Commonwealth of Independent States and thus complete the isolation, the effective quarantine, of Russia in Europe. [15]

The U.S. and NATO are expanding the use of the Alliance’s Baltic Sea member states to train for wars outside the region and for moving American and NATO military forces into it.

On September 27 the PRT-12 Challenge training exercise started at a military base in Lithuania. PRT is short for Provincial Reconstruction Team, a joint military-civilian counterinsurgency pacification project. 27 PRTs operate in Afghanistan under the command of several NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troop contributing countries.

Lithuania’s Kæstutis Battalion, the majority of whose troops “have been deployed to multinational missions in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan previously,” is being prepared for a new rotation to Afghanistan. “Representatives of Denmark, Georgia, Japan, the USA, Poland, Finland and Ukraine serve together with Lithuanian military and civilian personnel in the Ghor PRT camp in Chaghcharan.” Japan is not officially acknowledged as an ISAF contributor.

The training involves 200 troops, including Ukrainian forces. “A camp was installed for the purpose of the exercise in the Kazlu Ruda Military Area; it parallels the camp of the Lithuanian-led PRT in Ghor….Soldiers will demonstrate their ability to respond to fictitious situations, such as demonstrations of the local population, insurgent attacks with IEDs on provincial roads, firing at the camp, etc. The exercise is organised by the leadership of the Lithuanian Land Force.” [16]

On September 28 it was reported that 50 advance troops from other NATO nations had arrived in Latvia for the Sabre Strike 2011 military exercise to be conducted at the Adazi Training Area from October 18 to 31. “The aim of Sabre Strike 2011 is to tune [up] interoperability procedures and improve the integration of the land and air operational ability of three Baltic States and the U.S with prospects of participation in the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) operation in Afghanistan and other multinational operations in the future.” [17]

One of the purposes of the exercises is the implementation of Latvia’s role as part of the NATO Host Nation Support system – whose “requirements include the deployment of NATO HQs, multinational HQs and forces for exercises or for operations during peace, crisis, or conflict” [18] – which “is one of the main tasks to ensure Latvia’s successful integration in NATO.” [19]

NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the Alliance.

They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.

Notes

1) BBC News, December 6, 2005
2) Headquarters Allied Command Ramstein, September 1, 2010
3) Estonian Public Broadcasting, September 15, 2010
4) Office of the President, September 15, 2010
5) The Times, June 6, 2010
6) Warsaw Business Journal, September 28, 2010
7) United States European Command, September 28, 2010
8) Warsaw Business Journal, September 28, 2010
9) United States European Command, September 24, 2010
10) United States Air Forces in Europe, September 29, 2010
11) Warsaw Business Journal, September 28, 2010
12) U.S. Consolidates New Military Outposts In Eastern Europe
Stop NATO, September 23, 2010
13) Polish Radio, September 28, 2010
14) Polish Radio, September 29, 2010
15) Eastern Partnership: The West’s Final Assault On the Former Soviet Union
Stop NATO, February 13, 2009
16) Baltic Course, September 28, 2010
17) Defence Professionals, September 28, 2010
18) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
19) Defence Professionals, September 28, 2010

Image: Tom Vilsack, the former Biotechnology Governor of the Year in Iowa and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Photo via ilbioeconomista.com.

As President Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 prior to his election, he dazzled clean food activists by promising to label foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in accordance with the overwhelming majority of Americans (over 90% in most polls) who have been calling for it for years.

It wasn’t just what he said, it was how he said it: with a firm, hopeful and determined tone that conveyed the strong sense of frustration felt by millions of supporters, and made them want to believe.

Now, as Obama’s final term winds down, those same clean food advocates have not only been alienated by the administration, they’ve also been left to wrestle with the many pro-Monsanto and pro-Biotech forces that have taken over Washington, D.C.

Among them is Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and ‘Biotech Governor of the Year’ who was appointed as Secretary of Agriculture, one of a long list of disappointing moves made by Obama not too long after he was elected.

In over 60 countries across the world, GMOs are subject to mandatory labeling, and a huge portion of Europe actually just banned their cultivation in 2015. But American activists have had to fight tooth-and-nail against political and corporate interests at every turn just for the right to a simple label.

And now, with the country’s first GMO labeling law finally set to take effect in Summer 2016 in Vermont, Vilsack and friends are threatening to undo years of hard work through secret meetings and backdoor maneuvering.

Vilsack Vows to “Fix” Democratically Passed GMO Labeling Bill

The humble state of Vermont is rarely ever in the spotlight (unless we’re talking about maple syrup I suppose), but all eyes in the clean food movement are focused on the The Green Mountain State as July 1, 2016 looms. That’s when the state’s democratically passed, mandatory GMO labeling bill is set to take effect.

But now Vilsack, one of the many pro-GMO forces on the inside, is threatening to overturn it by holding an invitation-only meeting with the goal of “fixing” Vermont’s law before it goes into effect.

“I’m going to challenge them to get this thing fixed. I would like to avoid making food more expensive,” Vilsack said to the Des Moines Register from his office overlooking the National Mall. Vilsack added that there is “urgency to reach a compromise” between both pro-GMO corporate interests and organic/non-GMO food advocates. But organizations like the Organic Consumers Association still haven’t been told when this “secret meeting” will be held, and haven’t received their invitation yet, either.

With the pro-Monsanto Vilsack calling the shots and sending out the invitations, it’s safe to say that the rights of Vermont citizens, who worked hard to enact the labeling bill, might not be fairly represented.

Monsanto, Lobby Group Spending Millions To Stop the Inevitable

Time and time again, a familiar script has played itself out in regards to GMO labeling in America: citizens voice their approval of mandatory labeling, polls back them up, and then Monsanto and its small army of lobbying and PR front groups start pulling out the checkbooks.

Aside from their shocking lawsuit against the state of Vermont for “freedom of speech violations” (over a simple label that would say which ingredients are genetically engineered), the groups have spent an exorbitant amount of cash trying to prevent us from exercising our democratic rights.

Image: Neil Young and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin speak about the state’s first ever GMO labeling bill at a press conference. Photo via Terri Hollenback/Seven Days (Vermont)

Monsanto has spent over $24.2 million (at least) to prevent mandatory GMO labeling at the state level, and the GMA has spent over $13.2 million, including being involved in the biggest money laundering scandal in Washington state history. All while arguing that the labeling bills will be “too costly” for consumers despite independent evidence to the contrary.

The OCA had this to saw about the coming Vermont law, which still must fight off a lawsuit from Monsanto and the largest food lobby in the world, the Grocery Manufacturers Association:

Should the GMO labeling movement, which has fought so long and so hard to require food manufacturers to disclose this basic information about their products, settle for anything less than a mandatory labeling law like Vermont’s?

We don’t think so. Vermont’s GMO labeling law must be allowed to take effect July 1, 2016, as scheduled. Then we can talk about next steps, at the federal level.

With time ticking on the law taking effect, which could change everything and embolden initiatives in other states, Monsanto and their allies in Washington are getting desperate. Recent attempts to pass a bill designed to stop states from passing similar labeling laws has essentially failed, and a last-ditch attempt to include a state labeling ban in a $1.1 trillion, 2,000-plus page omnibus bill also failed.

Now Vilsack is planning to subvert the will of Vermont citizens by stopping their democratically passed labeling bill in its tracks.

“I intend to, after the first of the year, convene a meeting of folks who have been reaching out to me,” said Vilsack. “These are not necessarily Senators or members of Congress, but they are folks who are interested in the labeling issue.”

Just who exactly are these “folks who are interested in the labeling issue,” anyway?

As of right now, nobody knows (except Vilsack, perhaps).

But we do know that the people of Vermont have spoken, and like most Americans they want mandatory labeling, the same right afforded to citizens of the vast majority of modern nations across the world. It should be the minimum, really, in a country where GMOs were foisted upon the American people without their consent or knowledge in the first place. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

You can send a message to Secretary Vilsack through the OCA website by clicking on this link.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism…A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.”

-George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language,” 1946

The final State of the Union address given by President Barack Obama on Tuesday night was a litany of lies, banalities and military threats. The speech underscored the inability of the American political establishment to honestly address a single social question facing the broad masses of the population.

The address was generally praised by the media as a statement of confidence in America’s future. In fact, it combined bluster about the strength of the US economy absurdly at odds with economic and social reality with self-praise for “taking out” the enemies of American imperialism and assurances of more military havoc to come.

To the extent that Obama touched in passing on the growth of social inequality, the ever greater domination of the corporate-financial elite, falling wages and rising poverty, these pervasive features of social life in America were ascribed to cosmic forces of “change” entirely disconnected from government policies in general and those pursued by his administration in particular over the past seven years.

There is an objective significance to the reduction of the State of the Union address, an American political tradition that goes back to George Washington, to an empty and cynical media spectacle. This process did not begin with Obama. It has been underway for decades, in parallel with the ever further turn of the ruling elite and both big business parties to the right and the widening chasm between the entire political system and the broad mass of working people.

While there was never a golden age of American bourgeois politics, the annual State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress once had a certain democratic content. There was a time when the president in the form of this speech sought to make a sober assessment of the actual state of the nation’s economic, political and social life and the condition of its relations with other nations. It was both a means of internal communication within ruling circles and a report to the broader population.

In Abraham Lincoln’s December 1862 message to Congress, the Great Emancipator spoke in favor of abolition. “Fellow-citizens,” he declared, “we cannot escape history… In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free and honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”

In a later period, Franklin D. Roosevelt pledged a “Second Bill of Rights” that would include provisions ensuring “freedom from want.” (The proposal was a dead letter almost as soon as it was made.) In 1963, John F. Kennedy cautioned that “the mere absence of war is not peace.”

Even some of the more reactionary presidents of an earlier period could seriously acknowledge the existence of social problems. In 1922, Warren G. Harding began his State of the Union address by declaring, “So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them, in the face of the known limitations of a short session of Congress, would seem to lack sincerity of purpose.”

The immense growth of social inequality in parallel with the dismantling of much of US industry, the decline in the global economic position of American capitalism and the increasing domination of a parasitic and quasi-criminal financial elite have made any objective accounting of the real “state of the union” a political impossibility. All those in attendance Tuesday night were well aware that the important policy decisions on both the domestic and international front are made neither by the president nor Congress, but rather by the military brass, the intelligence establishment and Wall Street. The same conviction is growing within broad layers of the population who are increasingly alienated from and disgusted by the entire political and economic set-up.

Having come to power by posing as an opponent of the war in Iraq and the militarism of the Bush years, Obama could hardly make an honest assessment of his foreign policy, which has added to the war in Afghanistan new wars in Libya, Syria and Iraq, an expansion of drone assassinations and a policy of military provocation against Russia and China that has brought the world closer to world war than at any time since 1945.

A major part of his address Tuesday was given over to boasting of America’s destructive military power and his readiness to use it. Responding to his critics among the Republican right, he proclaimed:

“The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation attacks us directly, or our allies, because they know that’s the path to ruin.”

Having posed as a critic of Bush’s anti-democratic buildup of the police powers of the state in order to get elected, Obama was in no position to discuss his expansion and institutionalization of police state measures such as pervasive government spying; the jailing and persecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden; the shielding of the authors and organizers of torture programs; the militarization of the police and defense of killer cops.

Among the most blatant lies in Obama’s speech was the assertion, “For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works better for everybody.” Had Obama added “who counts” to the end of this sentence he would have been closer to the truth.

Trillions of dollars for the banks and speculators whose recklessness, lawlessness and greed triggered the Wall Street crash and ensuing depression, not a single “bankster” prosecuted in seven years—that on one side. On the other, sweeping wage reductions for autoworkers imposed by Obama’s “Auto Task Force,” and austerity, school closures, pension cuts and attacks on health benefits for millions of working people under “Obamacare.”

The result: 95 percent of all income gains during the Obama presidency going to the richest 1 percent of households!

In what has become a hallmark of American political rhetoric, Obama concluded his speech with sheer bathos: “I see [the voice of America] in the worker on the assembly line who clocked extra shifts to keep his company open, and the boss who pays him higher ways instead of laying him off… The protester determined to prove that justice matters—and the young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brace, quiet work of keeping us safe.”

A political system that must resort to such stupid and transparent posturing is a political system in terminal crisis. The mounting indignation and militancy of the masses will seek new avenues of struggle outside of and in opposition to the entire rotten edifice of official politics.

How do we know what we know about China?  Tens of billions of dollars are invested in China’s markets and manufacturing sector based on government-generated statistics whose accuracy is—and should be — widely questioned.

Under China’s authoritarian power structure, the media, including the Internet, is tightly controlled. The most professional-appearing media outlets with the largest audiences are all state-sanctioned. As for Western media companies, their ability to operate within China is wholly reliant upon approval of the authorities.

Without a free press, China became a black box that, until the recent economic slowdown and stock market slide, consistently produced double-digit returns for multi-national corporations and eye-popping bargains for global consumers. But news about the corruption and sometimes deadly malfeasance that underlay this boom rarely reached the general public.

An August 2005 New York Times article summed it up with the headline,“Media Executives Court China, but Still Run Into Obstacles.” The story described the vigorous lobbying efforts by Disney, Viacom and News Corporation to clear hurdles with China’s Propaganda Department and Ministry of Culture to access the vast Chinese market.

Rupert Murdoch — Flattery Got Him Everywhere

Consider the narrative arc of NewsCorp mogul Rupert Murdoch. In the early 1990s, the global media baron, already well established in Australia, Britain and the US, set his sights on Asia. In two stages, in 1993 and 1995, Murdoch spent a billion dollars acquiring Star TV, which used a satellite (AsiaStat 1) that had been launched in 1990 atop China’s Long March III rocket.

Murdoch’s strategic acquisition gave his conglomerate control over what Joseph Straubhaar, a professor of global media at the University of Texas at Austin, describes as “the most prominent regional satellite and cable operation in the world.” Star TV’s reach extends from the Arab world to East and Southeast Asia.

NewsCorp’s plans for Star TV were nothing if not ambitious, and the politically conservative Murdoch was not shy about giving them an ideological, free-market twist. He proclaimed in 1993 that “advances in technology have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes,” while “satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels.”

In October of 1993, Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng moved to outlaw the private ownership of satellite dishes, putting Murdoch’s plan for Asian media market domination in peril. The next year Star TV dropped from its lineup the BBC’s World Service, the world’s largest international broadcaster, whose unfettered news coverage did not meet with the Chinese government’s approval. And Murdoch went on a charm offensive aimed at getting back in the good graces of China’s leadership.

As reported in the New York Times, the Murdoch-owned publishing house, Harper Collins, released a glowing biography of Deng Xiaoping, at the time China’s most powerful elder statesman. NewsCorp and its subsidiaries helped Chinese official state broadcasters with their website and helped get the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s news outlet, on line. Another Murdoch-linked company helped the Chinese develop an encryption capability to facilitate the development of payTV.

By1998, Xinhua, the state’s news service, was reporting that China’s President Jiang appreciated Murdoch’s efforts at reporting on “China objectively and cooperating with the Chinese press over the last two years.”

Bloomberg Censors Itself

The difficulties of reporting from China under the regime’s tight media controls was highlighted by another case, this time involving  Bloomberg News.

After earning a reputation for hard-hitting coverage of high-level corruption in China, Bloomberg backed itself into a public relations nightmare. As chronicled in a 2014 Columbia Journalism Review article by Howard French, a former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief, Bloomberg pulled the plug on an investigative project near completion that would have exposed an “extensive web of corruption ties between one of China’s wealthiest businessmen and elite politicians.”

Defending the decision not to publish the piece, Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg News editor-in-chief, likened the situation “to the need of self-censorship by foreign bureaus in Nazi Germany to preserve their ability to continue reporting there.”

This year Freedom House, a nonprofit civil-liberties advocacy group, reported that China “was sentencing journalists to long prison terms,” “ignoring due process” and shutting down popular Internet-based messaging systems “used to disseminate news.”

And the Committee to Protect Journalists recently declared that, for the second year in a row, China led the world in the number of jailed journalists, holding a quarter of the nearly 200 incarcerated reporters worldwide.

Air Pollution Kills 4000 Per Day

Under cover of censorship and self-censorship, the consequences of China’s role as the world’s factory —  air too toxic to breathe and water too foul to drink — were regularly eclipsed in Western corporate media by stories about how investors could best profit from the China boom.

For decades, local grassroots protests over political corruption, labor rights and environmental justice gathered momentum but were kept largely out of the public eye, for fear of falling into disfavor with China’s gatekeepers.

According to Peter Kwong — a distinguished professor of urban affairs at Hunter College and one of the nation’s leading experts on Chinese politics — the number of local protests throughout China rose from 8,700 a year in the early 1990s to 180,000 by 2010.

Kwong was one of the producers of the Oscar-nominated HBO documentary China’s Unnatural Disaster; The Tears of Sichuan Province, The film recounts the protest movement sparked by the collapse of schools in a May 2008 earthquake that killed more than 5,000 children. The parents say the schools failed structurally because they were cheaply constructed by builders who cut corners to make illicit profits. The film shows how office buildings and shops adjacent to collapsed schools withstood the earthquake, prompting parents to dub the schools “tofu construction.”

The same year that the parents of Sichuan risked it all to seek redress for their dead children, air monitors placed on the US Embassy in Beijing gave the world the first independent confirmation, available in real-time on social media, of just how bad China’s air had become.

“It all really got started with the air monitors on the US Embassy. That was a real game-changer,” says Barbara Finamore, senior attorney and Asia director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, officials resorted to drastic but temporary measures to clear up the skies, shutting down heavy industries and restricting driving in the smog-shrouded capital.

In the years since, pressure has been mounting on China’s top leadership to recognize that the mainland’s degraded natural-resource base has come to a tipping point.

The most recent comprehensive air-quality survey, conducted by Berkeley Earth, a scientific research non-profit, blamed China’s toxic air pollution for 4,000 deaths a day, roughly 17 percent of the nation’s mortality rate.

To put that in a global context, a report from the Max Planck Institute recently estimated worldwide deaths  from air pollution at 3.3 million — with roughly half of those occurring in China.

“Now breathing air in China can be like smoking 40 cigarettes a day,” says Kwong. “For years the export industry was subsidized by not having to deal with the environmental costs, and the export trade had access to relatively low-cost land.”

“Environmental quality is the major source of the middle class’s dissatisfaction, and failing to improve it will only accelerate the ongoing brain-drain and capital flight,” says Taisu Zhang, a professor of contemporary Chinese law at Duke University.

The NRDC’s Finamore finds a glimmer of  hope in China’s the burgeoning environmental movement: “Activity is happening at the local level when the rivers run black and the farmers and fishermen protest. You can tell what colors are popular in Western fashion based on the color of the dye in China’s rivers.”

Finamore believes China’s leadership is finally committed to shifting the economy away from heavy industrial production and toward consumer goods. This would mean reducing China’s carbon footprint by cutting back on the use of coal, while encouraging the growth of its middle class.

But phasing out inefficient coal-burning factories will not be easy. “Local governments often drag their feet, either because they rely on the company for tax revenue or have some other kind of relationship with the owner,” Finamore told WhoWhatWhy.

Rooting Out Corruption — How Deep Does It Go?

Sometimes, it takes a major disaster to trigger real change.

Duke University’s,Taisu Zhang  contends that the July 2011 collision of two high-speed trains that killed 35 and left 190 injured was just such an event.

“The train disaster was a turning point,” Zhang told WhoWhatWhy. “After that, the state changed the way they handled these kinds of catastrophic events.They came to realize that by trying to keep things under wraps it only made things worse.”

Two recent man-made disasters illustrate the extent of the problem in a country as vast as China, where buying immunity from government regulation is a long-hallowed business practice. Last month, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a sprawling high-tech boomtown, scores were killed when an avalanche of dirt and debris from a construction landfill enveloped 33 factory buildings and displaced more than a thousand people.

For months before the breach, two private inspection firms, under contract to monitor the rapidly growing mound of rubble, warned municipal officials of a looming disaster. Their warnings were ignored, as additional construction waste was piled onto the site. After the so-called “industrial accident” the official responsible for managing the district committed suicide.

This past summer the city of Tianjin was rocked by a series of blasts and a subsequent chemical fire that killed 114 people, injured almost 700, and damaged 17,000 homes. The source of the explosion was a warehouse where sodium cyanide and other lethal chemicals had been stored — despite zoning laws that prohibited their presence in such close proximity to residential neighborhoods.

The state-sanctioned Xinhua news agency reported that the operator of the warehouse was arrested, along with his silent partner, the son of a former police chief, who had wielded his influence to get permits and licenses for the facility.

In an official statement, President Xi Jinping used the massive disaster to call for “safe growth” and to promote a national business ethic that put the “people’s interests first.”

Professor Zhang noted that much will depend on how Beijing deals with the on-going exposure of just how deep corruption runs in the Chinese economy: “The anti-corruption campaign has helped reinforce the legitimacy of the central government but it also opened up a can of worms they can’t close up easily because, if they try to control the press around it, they run the risk of it appearing to be a sham.”

Just last year, a hard-hitting documentary about the pollution generated by China’s oil and coal industry, called “Under the Dome,”  rocked China’s Internet. Featuring China Central Television newscaster Chai Jing, it registered 150 million viewers — until Chinese censors took it down.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series. For Part 1, please go here.

U.S. Media Condemns Iran’s “Aggression” In Intercepting U.S. Naval Ships — In Iranian Waters

Even when the White House was saying they did not yet regard the Iranian conduct as an act of aggression, American journalists were insisting that it was.

News broke last night, hours before President Obama’s State of the Union address, that two U.S. Navy ships “in the Persian Gulf” were “seized” by Iran, and the 10 sailors on board were “arrested.”

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Ghandi

British politics is starting to look interesting, despite the efforts of the mainstream media and theWestminsterestablishment – those Members of Parliament who have more interest in position, power and money than the opinions of the people they are supposed to represent.

First they ignore you…

Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, sitting on Labour’s back benches for over 30 years, has been ignored byWestminster for a long time. Known and loved by a lot of ordinary people for his dedicated campaigning against apartheid, for peace, against nuclear weapons and for social justice, he was labelled as ‘hard’ or ‘far’ left by his fellow Parliamentarians. Tolerated but not taken seriously, the Labour Party never seemed to ask itself just why he kept being re-elected by his constituents, each time with a bigger majority than before.

Then they laugh at you…

When he became a candidate in the Labour party leadership contest, media and MPs all laughed. They simply couldn’t take it seriously. The Conservatives couldn’t believe their luck. They had beaten Labour into the ground in last May’s general election, and here was Labour practically cutting its throat by having such a maverick stand for leader.

That lasted for about two weeks, and then it began to sink in that, as inferior to themselves as they thought he was, he was actually rather more popular with the public than they were. For most of the established Labour MPs, there wasn’t anything to laugh about after he was voted in as their leader.

Then they fight you…

From day one, Corbyn and his team suffered the most appalling onslaught of bad press, some of it downright slanderous, aided and abetted by yesterday’s men Tony Blair and his friend the equally ‘filthy rich’ Peter Mandelson. There were constant exclusives based on rumours, leaks and complaints from certain members of his own Shadow Cabinet (who he had appointed in an effort to be inclusive) bent on getting him ousted.

This man couldn’t possibly be a Prime Minister; he didn’t look like one, he didn’t dress like and he certainly didn’t talk like one. For a start, he couldn’t shout, insult and make stupid, over-rehearsed jokes like David Cameron. And no way could Labour win the next election. The picture the public was constantly presented with was of a Labour party at war with itself, destroying itself from the roots up.

And then you win.

It was depressing, watching the horribly childish shenanigans. And it was also depressing that Corbyn did not appear to make any effort to curb those people who were intent on destroying him. But he has always been someone for dialogue rather than confrontation. Perhaps he was just waiting, patiently, as they removed themselves – as some already have by resigning from his cabinet team.

Even newspapers like the Guardian, once known for its liberal views, were happy to report on all the nonsense stories, seemingly as eager to put the boot in as everyone else. Until now. They have published Ewen MacAskill’s report on how Corbyn is reshaping Labour.

Over 100 of Labour constituency parties were interviewed on the changes they had seen since the general election. It makes for some interesting reading, encouraging for Corbyn’s supporters and positively frightening for both Blairite MPs and the Conservatives.

The main change has been a surge in membership. Peter Mandelson would have Labour MPs and peers believe otherwise, claiming that “30,000 long-term members have left the party, real members, tens of thousands…” He has forgotten the number of people who left the party because of Tony Blair andIraq; Blair reduced party membership from 407,000 to under 200,000. Corbyn on the other hand has increased membership to 388,407, and that number is still rising.

As the breakdown of the Guardian’s survey shows, almost every constituency party reported increased numbers, sometimes quadrupling or quintupling the number of their members.

Some of the big rises are in constituencies that are not traditionally Labour. Cities show a surge in new young members. The membership increase was at one point excused by the ‘old guard’ as being all youngsters who idolised Corbyn (the Corbynistas) and who didn’t understand ‘real’ politics. However, as one constituency put it, “our members range from 16 to 90”.

Many old members are returning to the fold, and having an immediate impact. Most new and returned members are left-wing, and many will want their voices to be heard. Some constituency officers complained that new members didn’t ‘come to meetings’ but as the secretary for Southampton and Romsey explained, old members want old-style meetings, when many others, including the young, were far happier to discuss politics over a glass of wine.

And of course, being ‘active’ for many new members will mean being out on the streets, campaigning.

It is clear that the gains in local membership are most apparent in constituencies with Conservative MPs. And from the comments given to the Guardian they are the ones that want to really oppose the Conservatives. Those constituencies with Labour MPs are far less adventurous.

It is also apparent that, although Labour has gained some new members inScotlandwhere the party to beat is the Scottish Independence Party, they are unlikely to make much impact on the Scottish Parliament elections being held later this year.

Scotland, once a Labour stronghold, has never really forgiven Labour for its part in the Better Together campaign, and while Corbyn is popular north of the border, as he demonstrated at a recent trades union event in Glasgow, he cannot by himself regain the trust they once had in Labour.

But that aside, the quiet but steady growth this survey shows will be very unwelcome news to Corbyn’s detractors, and very welcome indeed to those who want Britain to engage in a new and kinder politics.

The country’s surface-level political drama should not distract from deeper fissures.

The great sweeps of capital accumulation flowing above, through and from South Africa are leaving local businesses weaker than at any other time in memory. This may be just the medicine a mostly divided and yet often over-confident left opposition requires in 2016. Corporations are now at their most unpredictable and unpatriotic, with rapid expatriation of dwindling profits, the near death of several mega-mining firms that once ruled the roost, and a schizophrenic ruling class giddily backslapping some days, but inconsolably depressed most others.

The financial roller-coaster ride that nearly all the emerging markets barely survived in 2015 could become more exciting yet in 2016, here, especially if rising forces on the political left manage to derail the faultiest, most dangerous cars. For a change, these also appear to be the ones most ready to tip over in any case, carrying the chief executive officers most oriented to brutal labor exploitation, to mining and smelting, and to reaping profits from investments elsewhere in Africa. Those cars are also bearing the load of boorish, overweight politicians like President Jacob Zuma, whose punch-drunk behavior in the last month suggests he might well flip the whole train.

Zuma’s desperation musical-chairs cabinet reshuffling from Dec. 9-13 began when he fired a finance minister who was brutal to (black) poor and working people – insofar as his 2015-16 budget reduced their welfare grants and restructured retirement funds against their wishes – and generous to the (white) rich. Those who profited from apartheid and its neoliberal aftermath can now take offshore US$700,000 annually (up 2.5 times from last year), which, explains a Moneyweb reporter, “effectively ended [exchange] controls for all but the most wealthy South Africans.”

According to insiders, Zuma was opposed to Nene’s stay because he threatened to deny state funding to presidential friends in the airline and nuclear reactor industries (the latter, especially, from Moscow). After an uproar and as an obvious fig leaf, on December 11 Zuma publicly earmarked Nene to head up the future Johannesburg branch of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB).

Former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel scorned this as an 85 percent job responsibility cut for Nene, revealing local elite contempt for the institution which so many commentators hoped would offer a genuine alternative to orthodox finance. (One of the two BRICS Bank directors chosen from South Africa, the erratic former central bank governor Tito Mboweni, had earlier derided the NDB as “very costly” and yet just after his appointment, he told Bloomberg that nuclear financing “falls squarely within the mandate of the NDB.”)

Thanks to his unabashedly neoliberal record, Nene was so beloved by orthodox financiers that three of them – Barclays Africa CEO Maria Ramos, Investec CEO Stephen Koseff and Goldman Sachs’s Colin Coleman – were, The Times reported, “in constant consultation with the ANC [and] forced the ANC to demand that Zuma reverse his decision” to replace Nene with an apparent yes-man, David van Rooyen. And behind Barclays, Investec (the fifth largest local bank) and Goldman Sachs lurked three even more threatening institutions: Moody’s, Standard&Poor’s and Fitch, all holding the power to downgrade South Africa’s credit rating to junk bond status in coming weeks.

Immediately after Nene’s firing, an estimated US$28 billion in local financial assets evaporated in two days, as investors fled. Major banks took the main hit, with one losing 10 percent of its stock market value. After banker armtwisting and to save face, on Dec. 13 Zuma shifted van Rooyen sideways to the local government ministry and rehired as finance minister Pravin Gordhan, a man just as loved by the markets as Nene and Manuel, during his 2009-14 period of neoliberal fiscal management and financial deregulation.

When the musical chairs finally halted, Gordhan quickly opposed Zuma’s closest airline ally on a prohibitively expensive deal with Airbus, but apparently agreed to a vast bill for several future nuclear reactors. However, the conditions he’ll face in 2016 and subsequent years are going to be exceptionally tough in part because of the desperation that businesses are now facing, and in part because his prior permission to let profits flow abroad put South Africa’s foreign debt close to US$150 billion, double the amount he initially inherited from Manuel in 2009.

Worse, according to a new Global Financial Integrity report, from 2004-13 alone, the supposedly fiscally-responsible Manuel, Gordhan and Nene allowed an average of nearly US$21 billion in annual illicit financial outflows by multinational corporations. Many of the worst were apartheid’s beneficiaries – Anglo America, De Beers, Old Mutual, SAB Miller, Investec, Didata, BHP Billiton, Liberty – which from the mid-1990s to early 2000s gained ANC permission to relist in London, New York and Melbourne.

As a result, a sovereign debt crisis appears on the medium-term horizon. Nearly five years ago, discussing the North African (‘Arab Spring’) uprisings and predicting a ‘Tunisia Day’ for South Africa within a decade, Moeletsi Mbeki offered a scorching critique of the ANC’s sell-out to big business. The country’s richest white men, according to Mbeki, “took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo.”

The strategy’s contradictions have been unmasked on many occasions, including the August 2012 Marikana Massacre, in which the notorious Lonmin mining house tried to end a platinum workers’ wildcat strike when South Africa’s now Deputy President (and then 9 percent Lonmin owner) Cyril Ramaphosa emailed in a request for “pointed” police action against the “dastardly criminals,” resulting in 34 shooting victims the next day. But now the companies responsible for doing the killing are themselves under fire, losing money at a ferocious pace.

It is hard to know how much, given South African elites’ world-leading level of tax fraud, misinvoicing and transfer pricing. But the share of company tax within total state revenue dropped from 27 percent in 2008-09 to 19 percent last year, as only 25 percent of 653,000 companies in South Africa reported taxable income. In contrast, South Africa was scored as having the third highest profit rate in the world by the International Monetary Fund in 2011, before the 60 percent crash of commodity prices.

Most mining houses have likewise shrunk in half or more, with Lonmin in the pits at less than 5 percent of its 2012 share value today; indeed, a few weeks ago, a US$407-million rights issue was undersubscribed by 30 percent. The South African state is jumping in with ‘lemon socialism’ financial underwriting, via a civil servants’ pension fund. And today worth just 10 percent of its share valuation peak, Anglo American Corporation recently announced a two-thirds staff downsizing.

Finally, investments by South African capital up-continent are showing some of the same trends, especially mining houses, retail and cellphone firms. The latter witnessed the most spectacular one-year loss in African history when the continent’s largest communications firm, MTN, was fined US$3.9 billion in November for having failed to disconnect more than five million of its phone lines for which people did not provide state-sanctioned identification. The firm was also recently unveiled for illegitimately channelling billions of dollars in profits to its Mauritius offshore accounts, during Ramaphosa’s term as chairperson.

How South Africa’s civil society and parliamentary left aims to avoid more destructive roller-coaster capitalism awaits another column.

Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society and is also Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Image: Navy SEALs conduct a capabilities exercise at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story on Virginia Beach, Virginia, July 21, 2012. Beginning in mid-January, Navy SEALs will be conducting war games across Washington State’s coastal areas, including through public and private property. (Photo:Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class William S. Parker / US Navy)

These exclusive Navy documents outline plans for combat training exercises along vast areas of Washington State coastline. Each shows the areas the Navy is prepared to utilize.

Beginning in mid-January, Navy SEALs will be practicing unannounced and clandestine combat beach landings across Washington State’s Puget Sound and many other coastal areas of that state.

The simulated combat exercises, which will include the use of mini-submarines and other landing craft, will deposit Navy SEALs carrying “simulated weapons” on 68 beach and state park areas in Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Washington’s west coast, unbeknownst to most of the relevant government agencies tasked with overseeing these areas.

Internal Navy emails, two slide shows (which can be viewed in full here and here) and other documents obtained exclusively by Truthout reveal the vast extent of the operations. They also reveal the fact that the Navy labeled the relevant files as “For Official Use Only” and emails as “Attorney-Client privilege,” a move that exempts such documents from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Image: The Navy has planned exercises that could take place, according to their own maps, along the entirety of Washington State’s coastlines. (Image: Document obtained by Dahr Jamail)

In the new scenario, which the military calls “realistic military training,” Navy SEALs carrying “simulated” weapons may also travel across public and private property within city limits, and may swim through public and private marinas occupied by people living on boats. They could conduct war game patrols on roads through residential communities. In addition to tribal, state, federal and county lands, there are many properties on the Navy’s list of training sites marked as private.

Naval plans include the use of special reconnaissance teams conducting patrols, which are authorized to go on simulated “direct action” missions. The definition of “direct action” is “short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments and which employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets.”

Public concern for what is clearly an ongoing domestic military expansionism is growing. Despite some strange conspiracy theories around Operation Jade Helm in 2015, the operation also provoked a very real concern: The spread of the military into residential and public areas. This, coupled with several recently documented instances of abusive, unlawful behavior by Navy SEALs overseas, has many people alarmed by what is to come.

War Games in Peace Parks

Across Washington, the Navy’s upcoming war game exercises, which are slated to begin January 14, will be carried out across 68 beach areas around the state, many of which lie within the boundaries of state parks.

Many of these beaches are popular with the public and contain campgrounds and marinas. According to maps in the two slide shows Truthout obtained, Navy SEAL activities will occur well inland from the beaches. Each site for the exercises will be “utilized” two to eight times per year, and “events” can last between two and 72 hours.

Naval maps of the areas where the exercises will occur show large areas where “surveillance and reconnaissance” will occur, along with “direct action” areas and “insertion and extraction” zones.

According to the documents, a “safety” buffer of 500 to 1,000 meters will also be maintained by a Navy support team in boats, vehicles and on foot, which will prevent bystanders from entering the areas.

This amounts to periodic closings of public land, including state parks and fishing areas, with no public comment periods or government oversight. Given that some of the exercises will entail Navy SEALs swimming through marinas where people live on their boats, along with exercises and patrols through residential neighborhoods and private land, maintaining a “safety” barrier of 500 to 1,000 meters simply does not seem possible.

One of many areas slated for direct actions in the Navy’s plans is Fort Worden State Park, on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The Navy has designated a large area atop a hill there – a place that contains popular public trails and picnic areas – for its war exercises.

The hilltop location includes a seating area for quiet contemplation, called Memory’s Vault, which is referred to as a “peace park.” The public in the area will likely interpret the Navy’s use of this portion of the park as another of the many gestures of contempt they have seen from the military.

According to Karen Sullivan, former assistant regional director at the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Division of External Affairs and a retired endangered species biologist, the Navy’s actions are also illegal. Sullivan has worked in the division for over 15 years, and is an expert in the bureaucratic procedures the Navy is supposed to be following.

She is now part of the West Coast Action Alliance, one of two large multistate and international citizen groups that have tasked themselves with watchdogging the Navy, due to what they believe are ongoing violations of the law, blatant acts of disrespect toward human and environmental health, and ongoing bellicose behavior by the military branch.

According to Sullivan, the Navy’s actions are a violation of several laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Administrative Procedures Act, National Historic Preservation Act and possibly others, as well as a violation of the public trust doctrine.

“They have exempted themselves from disclosing to the public, and even to state and federal agencies, the full scope and nature of their actions, in order to segment them into smaller pieces that individually may look harmless but cumulatively have big impacts,”

Sullivan told Truthout.

In one example, the Navy, without any consultation with the State of Washington, recently concluded that the war games would have no effect on historic and cultural properties – including those belonging to Indigenous tribes – and therefore there was no need to consult with the State or with tribes on the new sites for 2016.

Sullivan expressed deep concerns about the exercises the Navy has planned for Washington coastlines and the communities near them.

“Having Navy SEAL kill teams in battle gear conducting war games around private homes and public beaches, parks, campgrounds and marinas is going to have a big effect on the people living and recreating there,” she said. “Besides potentially creating public fear and confusion, the Navy will close off the areas they’re war gaming in. Doesn’t that require a public process?”

Connie Gallant is the board president of the Olympic Forest Coalition, a group that promotes the protection, conservation and restoration of natural forest ecosystems and their processes on the Olympic Peninsula. Like Sullivan, she agrees that while the military needs to train, the methods the Navy is employing across Washington are unacceptable.

“Navy SEALs must be well-trained for any situation,” she told Truthout.

“However, given the fact that there are already many beaches throughout the country where they are currently training, in addition to having a new 60-acre Pacific Ocean complex in San Diego County that adds 1.5 million square feet of coastal development, I question the need to add our pristine beaches to their inventory. Landing on the beaches is only the first step; combat training typically includes the use of ordnance weapons.”

Gallant sees the use of Fort Worden State Park in particular as an egregious example of what the Navy’s exercises can do to a once-pristine area.

“Because Fort Worden was a military base long ago and is now a historical park, this may give the Navy a good excuse to reclaim it as yet another post/training area – thereby preventing us from enjoying our leisurely walks, exercises, environmental training of marine life, bird watching, photographing, and communing with nature. Paradise ruined,”

she said.

Truthout has reported extensively on the wide-scale negative impacts the Navy’s war gaming has had, and will have, on wildlife around the region.

Nevertheless, the Navy is poised to move forward with its exercises, and according to Sullivan, it is doing so using nefarious, illegal methods.

“The Navy will retrofit an environmental assessment [EA] for the places where they’ve already done their war games all around Puget Sound, but eight new sites for 2016 will likely be exempted from the EA via a self-declared ‘categorical exclusion,'”

she said. “This is illegal because the new sites are a part of the big picture and cannot legally be separated from them.”

Image: Naval documents show specific areas, like this state park area, where beach landings of SEAL teams could take place, including areas where war gaming could take place. (Image: Document obtained by Dahr Jamail)

Categorical Exclusion

The Navy is using an exemption process called a categorical exclusion (CATEX) as a means of sidestepping federal regulations that could prohibit its use of these areas for exercises.

By definition, a categorical exclusion is

“a category of actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment, and, for which, therefore, neither an environmental assessment nor an environmental impact statement is required.”

According to an email obtained by Truthout, the Navy intends to issue its own CATEX on some of the SEAL activities as a means to segment and hide the full scope of its actions. Other communications have revealed that the Navy will retrofit an EA for the big action but will continue to CATEX pieces of it to keep it going.

The email also said,

“… the Navy, without any consultation or concurrence with Washington’s State Historic Preservation Officer [SHPO], has concluded in the CATEX that there is no effect on historic properties and therefore no need to consult with the SHPO.”

The Navy’s method essentially ensures that it will get its way, as there is not going to be time for a full and legitimate EA and public process period between now and mid-January (in just a few days), when it begins its exercises for at least the second year in a row.

A glance at the Code of Federal Regulation citation for this shows that the Navy’s actions are anything but uncontroversial, or consistent with federal, state or local laws. They certainly do not fall into the categories of public transportation, emergency utility repairs or improvements to existing rest areas and weigh stations, for which categorical exclusions were originally intended.

Hence, in the case of these upcoming exercises across Washington State coastlines, the Navy is issuing its own categorical exclusions for a massive amount of covert training in civilian-populated areas. By doing so, it is circumventing state, local and possibly federal governments by concluding “no significant impacts” in its own assessments – and it continues to proceed in secret.

“Realistic Military Training”

The Navy defines realistic military training (RMT) as training that is “conducted outside of federally owned property.”

Hence, according to that definition and according to the US military’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the RMT process is theoretically designed to ensure coordination between US Department of Defense representatives and local and regional officials in the areas where their exercises are to be conducted.

Steps like risk assessments, medical plans, surveys of training areas and coordinating their activities with local, state and federal law enforcement officials are supposed to be mandatory.

However, in the Navy’s upcoming coastal exercise, not one of the measures listed by SOCOM has been offered to the public or to local or state officials in Washington, and no publicly availabledocumentation exists that such measures have ever been considered.

According to SOCOM, the purpose of RMT is “[t]o hone advanced skills, [and] the military and interagency require large areas of undeveloped land with low population densities with access to small towns.”

Yet, many of the areas outlined in the Navy’s documents for their upcoming exercises take place in populated areas, on developed land.

Well over 100,000 people live on the Olympic Peninsula alone, and Olympic National Park hosts 3 million visitors per year.

“This is particularly galling with Navy SEALs about to conduct insertions, extractions, launch and recovery, special reconnaissance and other activities with ‘simulated weapons’ in populated areas without the knowledge of the public,” Sullivan said.

“Training like that cannot be considered anything but RMT. The fact that the public is completely unaware of it because the Navy has not notified them, despite legal obligations via NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and policy obligations as described in the SOCOM presentation, is further evidence of its intent to deceive the public and circumvent the law.”

There are numerous other RMT-type events that have occurred around the United States in recent years, including “urban” training events in various communities around the country.

A December 2015 US Army report titled “Intelligence Support to Urban Operations” addresses challenges facing military action in an urban environment.

“With the continuing growth in the world’s urban areas and increasing population concentrations in urban areas, the probability that Army forces will conduct operations in urban environments is ever more likely,” the manual states.

Clearly, the Navy’s training in Washington is also focused along these lines as well.

“The enemy situation is often extremely fluid – locals friendly to us today may be tomorrow’s belligerents,” the manual continues. “Adversaries seek to blend in with the local population to avoid being captured or killed. Enemy forces who are familiar with the city layout have an inherently superior awareness of the current situation.”

Military training for combat in urban environments, like the Navy’s upcoming exercises in Washington, has been ongoing at bases around the country, with the goal of preparing soldiers for close-contact engagements within urban environments. As recently as March 2015 in South Carolina, Operation Vigilant Guard saw large deployments of troops in civilian areas for training.

Sullivan sees these actions, and in particular the upcoming naval exercises across Washington State, in an insidious light.

“The real story here is the fact that kill teams in training will be conducting covert operations in and around residential communities and on public lands without our knowledge,” she said.

Sullivan believes the general public needs to be concerned about the Navy’s actions, along with the ongoing domestic military expansion as a whole, because they both present “an unprecedented and unlawful taking of public and private space for military activity.” She points out that there is no plausible justification for the Navy’s incursion into urban areas.

“The Navy has millions of acres of Defense Department land to train in,” Sullivan said. “Now they’re using and closing portions of our national forests. Why do they need to invade our neighborhoods, too?”

She also sees another threat from the Navy’s exercises in state parks and private lands: the normalization of military activity “in our lives and in places where it has historically never been.”

Like Gallant, Sullivan is not opposed to the military conducting trainings, in itself. She objects to the training happening in places where people live, work and recreate, and without the informed consent of the public.

“We object to the shell game that has passed for public process,” Sullivan said.

“We object to the Navy’s apparent contempt for the laws of the land, and to the fact that the military is steadily moving off the millions of acres of land the public has given it for training, in order to practice warfare among us, the very citizens it is supposed to protect.”

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

His third book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in Washington State.

First published by WhoWhatWhy

I first met William Weyland Turner at a political conference, in a hotel bar in Los Angeles. He was 71, and Parkinson’s disease made his every move a staggering, slow-motion effort; walking, taking a sip of a drink, even laughing. Yet his brain remained sharp.

We bonded immediately over our distaste for our hotel. The rooms, all bad angles and David Lynch lighting, had allegedly been designed with feng shui in mind. Rooms of absurd discomfort resulted, with tiny nonsensical chairs and televisions that were propped up six inches off the ground and facing the window, as if for the benefit of local birds. The elevators were bathed in ominous red light;  when moving between floors, they produced ominous whispering rather than Muzak.

Most importantly, neither of us could turn on the overhead lights in our rooms, so we were forced to rely on the closet light for illumination. “I’m a smart guy,” Turner said. “You’re a smart guy. And we still can’t figure this out.” I ordered another $15 cocktail, unhappy about the tab but happy with the company.

William Turner – or, forever after, Bill – was in the final chapter of one hell of a life. He started off as the embodiment of one of those pragmatic, respectable, square-jawed men celebrated on mid-twentieth century American television, but wound up among hippies and conspiracy theorists. And the damndest thing about it was that the progression actually made perfect logical sense.

Born in 1927, he enrolled in the Navy at age 17, and was assigned to the Pacific shortly before the bombs were dropped in Japan. Returning home, he played semi-pro hockey, at one point flirting with the New York Rangers of the NHL.

But the FBI paid better – back then anyway. He stayed with the Bureau from 1951 to 1961, becoming increasingly dubious about its tactics and the curious obsessions of its leader, J. Edgar Hoover. When he finally left the FBI for good – he had tried to leave in 1957 but was assured that changes were in store – he didn’t go out, as he put it, with “the customary hearts and flowers routine.”[1] Instead, he decided to file suit for violations of his free speech rights, and although it was unsuccessful he did manage to get some negative assessments into the public record from other agents.

Turner had become increasingly uncomfortable with the director’s focus on rooting out a largely illusionary Communist threat, the beginnings of COINTELPRO (a program that targeted mostly black organizations, such as the Black Panthers, as well as Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King), wiretapping and illegal “black-bag” jobs. In Turner’s opinion, the FBI seemed to be little more than the church of J. Edgar Hoover, which was dangerous for national security. As Turner himself jocularly relates in his autobiography:

…Hoover projected an image of perfection…An example of this is the story about the New York agents who cornered a fugitive at a subway entrance. A shootout ensued, and one agent was taken to the hospital with a leg wound. The next morning Hoover appeared with his civic group as scheduled. “Gentlemen,” he began, “I am with you this morning even though my heart is heavy, for last night in New York one of my agents was killed in a gun battle.” When the Director’s words reached New York, agents drew straws to see who would go to the hospital and finish off the wounded agent.[2]

Turner realized he was at a crossroads. He had served in the Navy and spent ten years investigating and prosecuting crime as one of Hoover’s finest. So what would he do? He would become a journalist, and not just any journalist – he would wind up as the editor of Ramparts magazine.

Along with Paul Krassner’s iconoclastic The Realist, Ramparts was one of the most radical magazines of its time: an ostensibly Catholic publication that was in practice a leftist attack on the status quo. Typical articles probed government surveillance or CIA infiltration of liberal groups. Authors included members of the Black Panther party .

In the 50s, every red-blooded American kid ran around with a Junior G-man badge; in the next decade, the FBI would be seen as yet another arm of an oppressive state. And somehow Bill Turner had moved from one to the other. It was like television star Donna Reed suddenly appearing in a West African dashiki.

The fact is, Turner had stayed true to his principles. He was a patriot, but he wasn’t a fool – and when he saw the FBI as part of the problem, he didn’t hesitate to join the other side.

As editor of Ramparts under publisher Warren Hinckle, he produced some of the most radical writing of the period, as well as giving voice to what was labeled the New American Left. This was a reaction to the Vietnam War, the emerging surveillance state, the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and the major assassinations of the Sixties – John and Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.

In many ways, Turner was ahead of his time. One example is an article he wrote in the January 1967 Ramparts about the right-wing militia called the Minutemen. In words that could scarcely be more relevant today, he berates the FBI for spending all its time chasing the ghosts of Communism when a real American threat grows within our own society – disenfranchised white men violently opposed to racial change.

The article gained credence coming from someone who had recently been involved in the very organization he now criticized. Although offended, Hoover’s outfit realized that confronting Turner was pointless. An internal FBI memo notes that “Due to Turner’s attitude toward the Bureau, it would be useless to contact him to set him straight…No further action is necessary as this article merely represents another of Turner’s attempts to smear the Bureau.”[3]

That same issue of Ramparts played an important role in history for quite another reason: it contained William Pepper’s scathing anti-war article, “The Children of Vietnam.”

After reading Pepper’s piece, Dr. King  asked the author to speak to his Atlanta congregation. This relationship spurred the civil-rights leader to turn his attention to the Vietnam war, which he condemned in his famous April 4, 1967,speech. (King would be assassinated exactly one year after that speech.)

Meanwhile, Turner’s Minutemen article attracted the attention of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who asked Turner to help him investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[4]

A key figure in this investigation, dramatized in Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, JFK, was a New Orleans businessman and CIA contract agent named Clay Shaw, whom Garrison accused of conspiring to kill Kennedy.

Turner agreed to help Garrison, and almost a year later wrote a cover story in Ramparts: “In my opinion, there is no question they have uncovered a conspiracy.”

One aspect of the case that Ramparts magazine focused on in the early going was a cluster of mysterious deaths of people involved in some way with the assassination.

An FBI memorandum, dated 10/27/1966, notes that in previous articles the magazine “…focused on at least 10 persons known to have been murdered, to have committed suicide, or died in suspicious circumstances since the Kennedy assassination…” Then there is a space and one remark: “The Director asked, What do we know of [REDACTED].”

A most intriguing redaction.

Turner himself wrote about some of these suspicious deaths, including that of Gary Underhill. Underhill had been in military intelligence in World War II, before working for the CIA and serving as an advisor to LIFE Magazine publisher Henry Luce, who controlled the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination .[5]

Several days after the JFK assassination, Underhill told a friend that he knew a drug-running faction of the CIA had killed Kennedy, adding, ominously, “they knew that he knew.” Underhill would later be found shot dead, with a pistol under his left arm. His death was ruled a suicide, despite the fact that Underhill was right-handed.

Turner wrote:

J . Garrett Underhill had been an intelligence agent during World War II and was a recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms. A researcher and writer on military affairs, he was on a first-name basis with many of the top brass in the Pentagon. He was also on intimate terms with a number of high ranking CIA officials – he was one of the Agency’s “un-people” who performed special assignments. At one time he had been a friend of Samuel Cummings of Interarmco, the arms broker that numbers among its customers the CIA and, ironically, Klein’s Sporting Goods of Chicago, from whence the mail order Carcano allegedly was purchased by Oswald.[6]

Having spent so much time aiding Garrison on the latter’s doomed investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination — Shaw was eventually acquitted of involvement — Turner would find himself investigating the murder of another Kennedy, John’s brother Robert, shot to death in June 1968. The resulting book (written with Jonn Christian), The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspiracy and Coverup, continues to be one of the key volumes written on the case, along with Shane O’Sullivan’s Who Killed Bobby?

The general public is mostly unaware of the evidence for a conspiracy in the death of RFK, even though the physical evidence is easier to understand than in the JFK case. Although witnesses saw Sirhan Sirhan shoot at RFK while facing his front, the Senator’s wounds are in his back and the rear of his head, from a gun fired at point-blank range.

An astonishing story in its own right, complete with a Girl in a Polka Dot Dress, a “Walking Bible,” and mind control, the RFK assassination narrative is too complex to relate here. However, Turner and Christian must have done something right, because Random House destroyed 20,000 copies of the book rather than publish it, allegedly in response to the threat of a lawsuit by a known criminal with an FBI rap sheet.[7]

Turner would go on to write more books, including an autobiography. Although slowed in later years by his Parkinson’s, his ailments did not affect his mind. He continued to write and research, and remained as passionate as ever about exposing the truth behind government obfuscations.

Bill Turner died on December 26, 2015.

I worked with him numerous times over the years, helping him deliver his speeches at the yearly Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) conferences, and he was always flexible, polite, and pleasant. (This may not seem like much, but when you work with dozens of remote speakers from all over the world, an affable and cooperative manner truly matters).

In a research “community” too often characterized by cut-throat competitiveness, Bill made himself a lot of friends for his gentle spirit and his kindness. His memory, as well as his work, will live on.

Notes:

[1] Ibid, 15.

[2] Turner, William. Rearview Mirror (Penmarin Books: Granite Bay, CA: 2001), 3.

[3] Memorandum, 1/19/1967, to W. S. Sullivan from C. D. Brennan, Subject: “Minutemen”

[4] Turner, 116.

[5] DiEugenio, James. Destiny Betrayed (Skyhorse Publishing: New York, NY: 2012), 98.

[6] Turner, William, “The Inquest,” Ramparts, June 1967.

[7] Turner, Rearview Mirror, 259.

The Syrian Air Force has targeted a convoy of 20 tankers smuggling oil from territories held by ISIS on the al-Mayadin Highway near the city of Dayr al-Zawr.

A top commander of al-Qaeda-linked Ahrar al-Sham terrorist group, Abu Talib, was killed in a trap explosion in the Idlib province.

The loyalist forces are advancing in the southeastern part of the Hama province. Last night, clashes resumed along the northern bank of the Orontes River. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies clashed with Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham at the village of Jarjisah located north of the terrorist-controlled town of Al-Rastan. The SAA reportedly killed about 25 militants and imposed control of Jarisah as result of these clashes. Next expected aim of the Syrian forces is the town of Al-Rastan.

Separately, a number of civilians sustained injuries after militants groups launched mortar attacks on the northern part of the Syrian province of Hama.

On Monday, the pro-government forces launched military operations to capture the town of Al-Rashiddeen in South Aleppo clashing with militants of Al-Nusra, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, Liwaa Suqour Al-Sham, and Harakat Nouriddeen Al-Zinki. The SAA reportedly captured the militants’ supply route to Al-Rashiddeen. The urban fighting is continuing.

The tensions have been raised between a Christian militia, called the Gozarto Protection Forces (GPF), and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the city of Al-Qamishli. 1 GPF member was reportedly killed and 3 locals wounded in the clashes observed inside the Al-Wasta District of Al-Qamishli last night. Other reports argue that the GPF fighters killed 3 YPG fighters which is a branch of the SDF, defending their positions in the district. The development shows that despite the US support the predominantly Kurdish SDF forces are unable to advance to the territories with major non-Kurdish populations.

If you have a possibility, if you like our content and approaches, please, support South Front’s project. South Front’s work is not possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/

ISIS and other terrorist groups are killing Syrians they hold captive by appalling atrocities,  exposure to freezing temperatures, denial of vital medical treatment, and starvation.

Syrian armed forces so far haven’t freed trapped Fuaa and Kafrya residents in Idlib province mountainous areas. They may freeze to death from exposure or perish from denial of essential to life services.

Syrians in Aleppo province Nubl and Al-Zahra areas are threatened the same way. Unknown numbers are dying out of sight and mind, their situation ignored by the media- suffering at the hands of US-supported ISIS and other terrorist groups, holding them captive under siege and endless war.

Anyone attempting to leave risks being lethally shot by snipers. Many hundreds of desperate men, women and children were killed or wounded, medical care mostly unavailable.

Earlier Syrian attempts to deliver humanitarian aid were blocked or stolen. Nubl and Al-Zahra have been under siege for years.

Fake Western, Saudi and Qatari media images alleging Madaya starvation substitute for explaining the plight of Syrians besieged by ISIS and other terrorist groups.

On Monday, humanitarian aid reached Madaya residents – 44 trucks delivering food, medicines, blankets and other supplies, despite ISIS terrorists controlling most of the area.

They routinely steal humanitarian aid, using it for themselves along with selling it at unaffordable prices – around $250 for a kilogram of rice.

Residents complained of confiscated government aid – current supplies at risk.

On Monday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported 65 trucks of humanitarian aid reaching Madaya, Kafrya and Fuaa – a cooperative Syrian government, Syrian Red Crescent, ICRC and UN initiative.

Whether supplies reach desperate people in need remains to be seen, given terrorists’ attempts to steal them.

Separately, Russia reports its aerial campaign struck 1,100 terrorist targets since January 1 alone – permitting Syrian armed forces to continue retaking territory lost earlier, inflicting heavy casualties and loss of equipment on ISIS and other takfiris.

Two key terrorist field commanders were killed in combat – Bashar Mohamed Al-Qatur and Mohamed Ismael.

Operations are impeded by Ankara directly aiding terrorist fighters – letting them freely cross back and forth between Turkey and Syria.

Erdogan provides them with weapons, munitions, equipment and supplies. He sells their smuggled oil, waging proxy war on Syria complicit with Washington.

 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 rarely told story of the 1948 war that founded Israel concerns Nazareth’s survival. It is the only Palestinian city in what is today Israel that was not ethnically cleansed during the year-long fighting. Other cities, such as Jaffa, Lydd, Ramleh, Haifa and Acre, now have small Palestinian populations that mostly live in ghetto-like conditions in what have become Jewish cities. Still others, like Tiberias and Safad, have no Palestinians left in them at all.

Nazareth was not only an anomaly; it was a mistake. It was supposed to be cleared of its Palestinian population, just like those other Palestinian cities now in Israel. Much to Israel’s regret, it has become an unofficial capital for Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the Israeli population.

The reason for Nazareth’s survival are the actions of one individual. Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew who was the commander of the Israeli army’s Seventh Armoured Brigade, disobeyed orders to expel Nazareth’s residents.

Dunkelman’s role has been largely obscured in the historical record – and for good reason. Israel would prefer that observers make an unjustified assumption: that “Christian” Nazareth survived, unlike other Palestinian cities, because its leaders were less militant or because they preferred to surrender. Dunkelman’s story proves that was not the case.

It is therefore a welcome development that a major Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, has revisited Dunkelman’s role in Nazareth, even if its reporter, Mitch Potter, has contributed in his own way to the mythologising of Dunkelman in an article headlined: “The Toronto man who saved Nazareth”.

Excised memories

It is worth bearing in mind, when we consider the attacks on Palestinian cities in 1948, how sensitive these matters were for Israel. Both Dunkelman and another commander, Yitzhak Rabin, who would later become a prime minister, wrote memoirs that included their experiences of the 1948 war.

Under pressure from the Israeli military authorities, both excised from their accounts the sections they had written dealing with the attacks on the Palestinian cities they were responsible for attacking. That was because those accounts were the proof, long denied by Israel and its supporters, that the Israeli leadership had intended and carried out the ethnic cleansing of most of the Palestinian population during 1948.

Some 750,000 Palestinians – out of 900,000 living inside the borders of what was to become the new Jewish state – were forced out and refused the right to return. In fact, the expulsion rate was far higher than the ostensible 80 per cent figure. Under pressure from the Vatican, Israel allowed many Christian refugees back; it did a land swap with Jordan in 1949 that brought more than 30,000 Palestinians into the new state; and many Palestinian refugees managed to sneak back to surviving communities like Nazareth and blend in with the local population in preparation for what they hoped would be their return to their villages.

Rabin led the attack on the Palestinian cities of Lydd and Ramleh, near Tel Aviv and today the mostly Jewish cities of Lod and Ramla. According to the missing section of his autobiography, later publicised in the New York Times, Rabin asked David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, what to do with the 50,000 inhabitants of Lydd and Ramleh. Rabin recounted: “Ben Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: ‘Drive them out!’” Rabin did exactly that, after a terrible massacre of hundreds of residents who were sheltering in a local mosque.

Ben Gurion, as the Israeli historian of the period Ilan Pappe has noted in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, was careful not to leave a paper trail showing that he had ordered the expulsion of Palestinians. Instead, Israel would promote the myth that the Palestinian population had been ordered by neighbouring Arab leaders to flee.

Relieved of command

We do not know if Dunkelman had a similar meeting with Ben Gurion. What we do know, and the Star’s account confirms, is that it had been made clear to Dunkelman that he was supposed to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth. Dunkelman disobeyed, and allowed the city to surrender. He was relieved of his command in Nazareth a day later.

The Star reports on a page referring to the attack on Nazareth that was removed from Dunkelman’s 1976 memoir, Dual Allegiance. We know about it only because his ghostwriter, the late Israeli journalist Peretz Kidron, tried to interest the New York Times in Dunkelman’s story, as a counterpart to Rabin’s. The Times published the Rabin story but ignored Dunkelman’s.

Interestingly, Dunkelman kept the account of his role in the Nazareth attack so quiet that, according to their quotes in the Star, neither his son nor his publisher at Macmillan knew about it.

Dunkelman writes that he was “shocked and horrified” at the order to depopulate Nazareth. He told his superior, Haim Laskov: “I would do nothing of the sort.” He demanded that his replacement give his “word of honour” that the inhabitants would be allowed to stay, and concludes: “It seems that my disobedience did have some effect … It seems to have given the high command time for second thoughts, which led them to the conclusion that it would indeed be wrong to expel. There was never any more talk of the evacuation plan, and the city’s Arab citizens have lived there ever since.”

‘Swallowing’ Nazareth

In fact, we know what those “second thoughts” were. Stripped of a pretext to justify expulsions from Nazareth in the supposed “heat of battle”, Ben Gurion came up with Plan B (or maybe it was Plan E, given that the ethnic cleansing was inspired by Plan Dalet, or D in Hebrew).

In the wake of the 1948 war, during a near two-decade period of military government imposed on Israel’s new Palestinian minority, Ben Gurion decided to establish Nazareth Ilit (Upper Nazareth) almost on top of Nazareth. It was the flagship of his “Judaisation of the Galilee” campaign. Ben Gurion was aghast not only that Nazareth had survived, but that it had doubled in size as thousands of refugees from surrounding villages fled to it seeking sanctuary.

According to Israeli state archives, Michael Michael, the military governor for Nazareth in this period, stated that the goal of Nazareth Ilit was to “swallow up” Nazareth. In short, Israel hoped retrospectively to destroy Nazareth as a Palestinian city, transforming it into another Lydd. The Jewish city of Nazareth Ilit would become with the main city, with Nazareth its own shadow ghetto. Despite Israel’s best efforts, it largely failed in this goal, not least because it struggled to attract Israeli Jews to live next to a large Palestinian population .

Why was it so important for the Israeli leadership to destroy Nazareth? Because they feared that a Palestinian city – with its intellectuals, political activists, and advanced education system under the control of international Christian institutions – might encourage the emergence of an effective resistance, one that would be able to mount opposition to a state privileging Jews. Such a political and cultural capital might articulate to the outside world exactly what Israel was up to in Judaising places with large Palestinian populations like the Galilee.

Mortar barrages

The Toronto Star’s starry-eyed account of Dunkelman includes the following observation: “He won no medals for refusing to molest civilians [in Nazareth], nor any credit from his Israeli superiors.” He is painted as a man who stuck close to the rules of war and avoided hurting civilians wherever possible in a series of “almost bloodless” attacks.

But in fact, as the Star notes in passing, Dunkelman’s chief military talent was for making innovative use of “concentrated mortar barrages”, a skill he learnt during the Second World War. In other words, he was an expert at firing large numbers of imprecise shells into populated areas, inevitably killing and wounding civilians.

Two Canadians have published posts making important criticisms of the Star’s account.

Peter Larson, chair of Canada’s National Education Committee on Israel-Palestine, points out that the operation in July 1948 led by Dunkelman was an attack on communities like Nazareth that were supposed to be firmly part of an Arab state under the terms of the United Nations Partition Plan, set out nine months earlier. As Larson writes, “Nazareth was forcibly incorporated into the new State of Israel contrary to the UN plan and despite the wishes of its residents.”

Protection for Christians

There is archival evidence to suggest that Dunkelman believed Christian Palestinians needed protecting, a view he did not extend to Muslim Palestinians.

Israeli historian Benny Morris notes a cable from Dunkelman as his troops marched through the Galilee in November 1948: “I protest against the eviction of Christians from the village of Rama and its environs. We saw Christians at Rama in the fields thirsty for water and suffering from robbery. Other brigades expelled Christians from villages that did not resist and surrendered to our forces. I suggest that you issue an order to return the Christians to their villages.”

Morris mentions that under the influence of Dunkelman, among others, the Israeli army’s guidelines on the expulsion of Christian Palestinians changed over time.

In contrast to his decision to protect Nazareth and Christians, Dunkelman and his soldiers were ruthless in driving out Palestinians from many of the more than 500 Palestinian communities razed by Israel in 1948 and afterwards.

War crimes

In Saffuriya, a large Muslim village a few kilometres from Nazareth that was attacked by the Seventh Brigade a day earlier, barrel bombs were dropped on the village as the residents were at home breaking that day’s Ramadan fast. All of Saffuriya’s inhabitants were driven out, and their homes destroyed. Today it is an exclusively Jewish farming community called Tzipori.

Without a doubt, Dunkelman directly participated in the mass expulsion of many tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from their homes – a war crime by the laws of war that had recently emerged in the wake of the Second World War. He also admitted in his memoir that he allowed his troops to loot Palestinian property, another war crime.

But, while he does not refer to them in Dual Allegiance, Dunkelman is also implicated in some of the more notorious Israeli massacres of Palestinians in 1948.

In the worst case, in the village of Safsaf, north of Safad, notes Canadian journalist Dan Freeman-Moloy, Dunkelman had command responsibility as he led Operation Hiram in late October 1948. His troops’ behaviour in Safsaf and elsewhere is made clear in documents in Israel’s military archives uncovered by Morris for his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.

Drawing on a declassified briefing from November 1948 by Israel Galili, Ben Gurion’s number two in the defence ministry, Morris writes of the actions of Dunkelman’s troops:

“At Saliha it appears that troops blew up a house, possibly the village mosque, killing 60-94 persons who had been crowded into it. In Safsaf, troops shot and then dumped into a well 50-70 villagers and POWs [prisoners of war]. In Jish, the troops apparently murdered about 10 Moroccan POWs (who had served with the Syrian Army) and a number of civilians, including, apparently, four Maronite Christians, and a woman and her baby.”

Morris concluded:

“These atrocities, mostly committed against Muslims, no doubt precipitated the flight of communities on the path of the IDF advance. … What happened at Safsaf and Jish no doubt reached the villagers of Ras al Ahmar, ‘Alma, Deishum and al Malikiya hours before the Seventh Brigade’s columns. These villages, apart from ‘Alma, seem to have been completely or largely empty when the IDF arrived.”

Dunkelman can no doubt take credit for Nazareth’s survival. But a full and proper historical accounting is still needed of the war crimes committed not only by Dunkelman but by those he answered to.

If the future of labor unions is in the hands of the Supreme Court, the outlook is bleak. Labor’s denial was shattered when Judge Alito signaled that the Court had the votes to decimate union membership nationwide. This specific attack aims at public sector unions, the last high-density stronghold of the labor movement. It also foreshadows that private sector unions will be further attacked, into dust this time.   

The Friedrichs decision now seems inevitable, but nothing is inevitable in politics. The decision will not be announced until June, and this 5 month delay allows unions time to fully express their power. A nationwide series of actions would certainly make the Supreme Court think twice. And the Supreme Court is especially politically sensitive.

A primary yet unofficial duty of the Supreme Court is to gauge and express public opinion, by codifying it into law. The biggest decisions in Supreme Court history were the expressions of mass movements, organized social demands that forced themselves onto the pages of the constitution and other landmark precedents that deeply affected millions of people.

The winning of civil rights, ending segregation, a woman’s right to choose, and laws that allow for the formation of strong labor unions were not granted by the Supreme Court, but foisted upon it through sustained collective action. The recent victory of the LGBTQ movement was won through years of militant organizing, not cheerfully bestowed by the conservative Supreme Court.

The landmark labor law that Friedrichs seeks to destroy was itself won through mass struggle. In 1977 the labor movement won a resounding victory in ‘‘Abood vs Detroit.” In discussing the Abood decision, the Supreme Court acknowledged — and continues to discuss — the “social peace” motive that was at the core of the Abood decision.

In 1977 “social peace” referred to the nationwide strike waves in the public sector that raged from the late 60’s and 70’s. The teacher unions were especially active, with a thousand strikes that involved hundreds of thousands of teachers.

The main demand of these public sector unions — strong unions — became legal rights recognized by the Supreme Court. This Abood victory was, like other social movement victories, a power forced onto the Supreme Court, not freely given.

Unions are under attack now because their prior strength appears zapped. Union membership has shrunk for decades and the power that won Abood seems vulnerable to a thrashing. Unions are backed into a corner, and they can either fight for dear life or be steamrolled while frozen in the headlights.

Unions have five months to fight back. The public’s mind is not made up. Social media can influence millions of minds in days. In fact, unions have already successfully transformed opinion about unions in recent years. The ongoing success of the “fight for 15” and high publicity actions like the Chicago Teachers Union strike have deeply resonated with the public.

According to the most recent Gallop poll, union support continues to rise, with a 5% increase in the last year. Now 66% of young people support unions. These are powerful statistics that can and must be transformed into action. Immediately.

If the Supreme Court sees millions of feet in the street, it would take notice. If the Court saw the coordinated occupation of state capitols across the country, à la Wisconsin 2011, the Court wouldn’t dare rule against unions, since the judges know better than to ignite social fires. Their sworn but unspoken duty is to put them out.

The Supreme Court is the arbitrator of social forces in the country, and for unions to get the best possible ruling they must apply the maximum of social force. Unions cannot temper their demands now, they must maximize them.

For example, the unions in California that filed a ballot measure for a $15 minimum wage are boldly riding the tsunami of the “fight for 15,” while an opposite example can be found in Washington state, where unions bargained against themselves by filing a ballot measure for $13.50 instead. Now is the time to shoot for the stars; there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Millennials are dying for living wages, stable jobs, and the dignity that comes with the job protections that unions offer. They understand their situation would improve with a strong union. They are waiting to be organized and brought into the labor movement.

The South is likewise very pro-union, and like millennials most people in the South have no union. The basic math here favors unionization strongly, but only a strong and dedicated union movement can take advantage of this.

Union members must insist that their leaders work with other unions in organizing mass rallies while pouring resources into educating and mobilizing the public behind demands like $15, rent control, and the creation of public sector jobs through taxing the rich. Unions should also link up with the Black Lives Matter movement and demand that Democratic nominees for president become champions for a pro-union Friedrichs decision.

Unions cannot wish Friedrichs away. Not organizing powerfully and broadly will empower the Supreme Court to rule against us, striking a blow that can’t be simply shaken off. It won’t be a mild concussion either, but a coma; one that unions might not wake from for another 30 years.

Shamus Cooke is a Chief Steward for SEIU 503, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected]

The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions ~ John Pilger

.

Madaya.  Here is my list of 36 questions that the mainstream media should have asked but didn’t:

1.  How many civilians are in Madaya?
2. What is the history of Madaya and the region?
3. How important is Hezbollah’s presence in the region?
4. How does this affect Israel’s agenda and links to the various terrorist factions involved?
5. Who precisely is occupying Madaya. What % are Ahrar al Sham, Al Nusra or FSA?
6. Are those gangs from Madaya originally or have they been imported into Madaya?
7. If imported into Madaya, who by and for what reason?
8. To whom are the villagers of Madaya allied?
9. If they are indeed anti Assad, why are we seeing video footage of pro Assad demonstrations and the citizens chanting “The Syrian people and the Syrian Army are one hand”?
10. If it is the SAA, Hezbollah and the Syrian Government imposing the “starvation” why then do we see video footage of civilians arguing with terrorists and saying. “we are hungry not you”?
11. Why have we not seen one image of a starving terrorist?
12. Why if the Syrian Government is not allowing aid into Madaya have we been told that the Red Cross/UN entered Madaya on the 19th October with enough food to last 2 months?
13. Why if the Syrian Government is not allowing aid into Madaya was the UN able to enter on the 28th December 2015 and evacuate 126 wounded terrorists?
14. Why, if the UN evacuated wounded terrorists, did they not evacuate the “starving” children or at least mention that conditions were deteriorating in Madaya?
15. Why do relief campaigns state clearly that there is food available but at extortionate prices?
16. If food is available at extortionate prices who is stockpiling it? Those who occupy Madaya ie the terrorists or the SAA who are outside Madaya and have no control over the food once it has been delivered by the UN allowed in by the SAA?
17. If the terrorists are stockpiling the food delivered by the UN with permission of the Syrian Government, who is responsible for any subsequent starvation?
18. The food for Madaya comes from Damascus which is a Government held area.  If the Syrian Government is intent upon starving its own people or even those who might be in opposition why would it allow food to leave Damascus to be taken to Madaya?
19. The Syrian Government is accused of bombing its own people time and time again, why, therefore, did the Syrian Government not simply bomb Madaya but instead allowed food into the village and evacuated terrorists as part of an ongoing Amnesty deal?
20. Why are we publishing photos without verifying them?
21. Why are we relying on information from “activists” and not sending reporters to Madaya to witness the reality?
22. Why, if people have died of starvation, have no names been released or records produced?
23. Why, if we know Kafarya and Foua are a part of the ongoing negotiations for amnesty and release of civilians from terrorist siege in Kafarya and Foua, do we never mention these villages that have been under genuine starvation since March 2015 and partial siege and assault since 2011.
24. Why might the village of Madaya be under siege by the SAA?
25. If it is under siege, for how long? When did this siege start and what events coincide?
26. How does this siege relate to the ongoing amnesty negotiations?
27. Is siege a normal event in warfare? What other sieges in history compare?
28. Why do we not mourn the 1700 lives lost in Kafarya and Foua with the same intensity that we mourn lives lost in Madaya that we cannot prove have been lost?
29. Why do we not listen to the Red Cross spokesperson when he says Madaya had enough food for 2 months [delivered on the 19th October] or that they have now delivered enough food for 40,000 people
30. Why do we not register the fact that the same Red Cross spokesperson stated clearly that they have no problem entering Government held areas with the exception of Deir Ezzor but they cannot enter any “moderate rebel” held areas.
31. Why, if the FSA are the recognised “moderate rebels” are they working with Al Nusra [Al Qaeda] and Ahrar al Sham [Al Qaeda affiliate] in Madaya?
32. Why are hundreds of residents of the town of Madaya Rural Damascus fleeing toward the Syrian army positions asking to be evacuated to government controlled areas?
33. Where does all the money go that is raised by the Government agencies loosely masquerading as NGOs?
34. Why do we condemn before we have asked the right questions?
35. Why do we never discuss the NATO US GCC Israeli siege of Syria?
36. Why do we lie and keep lying even when the truth is looking us straight in the eye?
37. How do we sleep at night?

It’s 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian:

“If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t know and can’t know.”

It’s time they knew. ~ John Pilger 

Fars News reported Iranian military forces seized two small US naval vessels on Tuesday, detaining 10 crew members – “trespassing (provocatively three nautical miles within) Iran’s territorial waters.”

Pentagon and State Department officials made dubious claims about one boat experiencing mechanical problems, contact lost with both vessels before entering Iranian waters.

Washington spies intensively on Iran, both vessels likely involved in surveillance, conducting operations illegally in Iranian waters, caught red-handed. GPS devices taken from crew members confirmed their illegal presence in Iranian waters.

On Wednesday, Fars News reported Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) issuing a statement, saying “it has released the US marines and their vessels in international waters” after determining no harm done by entering Iranian waters.

Crew members were treated humanely. “The Americans have undertaken not to repeat such mistakes.”

The IRGC blamed Washington for “excited and unprofessional moves,” saying it prioritizes regional calm.

John Kerry was in contact with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. He requested a formal apology, Kerry extending it, according to Fars News.

On Wednesday, Iranian Armed Forces’ Chief of Staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said “(w)e hope the incident…which will not probably be the American forces’ last mistake in the region, will be a lesson to (US congressional members) seeking to sabotage” last year’s nuclear deal.

He stressed Iranian vigilance in confronting provocative regional moves. Following the seizure of US vessels, Iranian naval commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said:

“the US Navy and (a nearby) aircraft carrier resorted to unprofessional behavior as well as aerial and seaborne provocations in the area, which were deflected through the IRGC’s timely action.”

“Any country’s territorial waters are where the presence of vessels should come with prior notification and permission.”

Last October, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter asserted America’s right to “fly, sail and operate” anywhere it wishes globally, governed solely by its own rules, risking world peace and stability.

Provocations repeat with disturbing regularity. Was Tuesday’s incident the result of a mechanical problem as Washington claims or a spying mission caught red-handed?

Iranian authorities diplomatically downplayed it, choosing calm over confrontation.

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.

The USDA Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, previously indicated he would be back to business as usual as soon as government officials returned to work from their holiday break. Now he has reportedly announced a closed-door, invitation-only meeting to continue the bidding of the biotech industry. [1]

Natural Society has pointed out Vilsack’s very obvious conflict of interest in his position before as it pertains to Big Biotech and other health/food related sectors, but this planned meeting makes it even more obvious that he has no intention of protecting the small farmer, or US agriculture in general.

Vilsack’s plan for a secret meeting is timed with Campbell’s Soup Company’s announcement that it is going to adopt GMO labeling for all of its products. While representatives from Big Food and Big Biotech, including Monsanto executives, will be invited to the meeting in Washington D.C., it seems odd that not one official representative will be invited from the four states that have recently passed obligatory GMO labeling laws: Alaska, Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont.

There should be no ‘secret’ invitation-only meetings. They should all be open to the public, and at the very least broadcast or live recorded for all to participate in the democratic process of deciding what is to become of our food.

Furthermore, any federal GMO labeling law, rule, or policy MUST be mandatory – not voluntary – and no state’s rights should be trampled upon in any new ‘regulations’ imposed, as was attempted with the DARK Act.

GMO labeling is indeed already a compromise to a full-out ban. More than 90% of the public has demanded labeling, and any closed-door meetings only insinuate the patent truth – – that Vilsack plans to sneak more legislation into our country…that he would keep you from knowing what is in your food.

Notes:

[1] GMO Free USA

AltHealthWorks

After the killing of Michael Brown in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri in the late summer of 2014, protests erupted, and the Black Lives Matter spread across North America to protest police violence, too often systematically directed at poor and racialized communities.

The massive police presence at these protests, with weapons and armoured vehicles that looked and felt like major military deployments, made it clear to all that something fundamental had taken place in policing practices and strategies. The intensification and extension of the coercive and security branches of the state was well-known since the declaration of the ‘war on terror’ in 2001, and the subsequent leaks of official documents by Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and others. The hardening of the state in its day-to-day operations at the most local levels could now be seen everywhere by all, in an increasing confrontation with the democratic rights of assembly and protest.

Lesley Wood’s recent book, Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing (2014), locates these developments in a longer term perspective in relation to the spread of neoliberalism. Analyzing police agencies, strategies and practices from the mid-1990s to the present, she identifies a range of the structural and political forces that have led to the militarization of policing, particularly in North America, but also in trends that extend to Europe. This involves detailing a new matrix in the relations between the security, national police and defence apparatuses of the state with local police forces and the defence and security industries. Professional police associations and their various conferences and conventions have become important nodes for the spread of ‘best-practice policing’, in the form of kettling, barricading, infiltration and pre-emptive arrests, usage of new anti-protest weaponry, security screening, local intelligence-gathering capacities and the like. But also as sites where the case is made for an increase in police budgets, more capital intensification of policing and thus for accumulation by the ‘coercive’ industries (which define modern urbanism as much as the so-called ‘creative’ sector).

In a period of sharpening inequality, permanent neoliberal austerity, and hard right forces gaining ground, the logic for a further militarization of policing, securitizing of cities, and curtailing and limiting protests. In her book, Wood seeks not only to map these developments in North America through time, but also to expose the contradictions in the new forms of policing in capitalist states, and begin to pose how social and anti-capitalist movements will have to respond to ‘demilitarize our relations’.

Lesley Wood teaches sociology at York University, Toronto and Greg Albo teaches political science at York University.

*

Greg Albo (GA): Your book is a powerful dissection of the ways that the policing of protests have been transformed over the last decade or so. When did you start noticing these shifts? What was it that made you want to take it up as a necessary research project for the anti-capitalist and social justice movements?

Lesley J. Wood (LJW): I’ve been going to protests since I was in high school, starting with anti-death penalty, anti-apartheid, and anti-nuclear mobilizations. Most of these protests were permitted, routine and very large affairs. As a white woman, my experience with the police was limited and relatively predictable. However, when I attended protests against the Democratic Republican Convention in Chicago in 1996, I was struck by a different style of police action – there were masses of police surrounding the march, funnelling the crowd into a fenced pen where we were supposed to protest, organizers were grabbed and arrested, and organizing spaces were raided by hundreds of police. We had to flee and hide out in a warehouse in the South Side of Chicago. I saw this style again when I moved to New York City and became involved in anti-police brutality and Reclaim the Streets protests in 1998. The police would attempt to trap us on the sidewalk, using barricades and bikes; they would grab organizers in advance, and attempt mass arrests – any trust or predictability quickly dissolved.

During this same period, the global justice movement emerged, and one could see both the style of protest transform, not just in the U.S. but in Canada. My earlier writing looked at this transformation of protest tactics, and the use of direct action, but activist friends pushed me to understand the other side of the puzzle, the simultaneous and interactive changes to protest policing.

GA: Many of us in North America would identify the increase of coercion and police presence with the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s, and in Canada with the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec City. How do you date these trends in the militarization of policing and what are some of its main features and practices?

LJW: Clearly, the pepper spraying of protesters at the Asian Pacific Economic Community (APEC) summit by the RCMP in 1997, and the tear gassing, pepper spraying and mass arrests at the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 were turning points that justified a change in protest policing strategy. John Noakes and Pat Gillham cite a Philadelphia police official that argues that the Seattle protests were parallel to Pearl Harbor in the way that the changed protest policing. However, the roots of the shift go back to the use of armoured personnel carriers and SWAT teams in Black and Latino communities during the heyday of the War on Drugs, and the new less lethal weapons like pepper spray that began to be used by police in the mid-1990s after the LAPD beat Rodney King on camera – and people rioted. This militarized equipment was combined with an emphasis on spatial control by 2000, and then after 9/11, incorporated an emphasis on threat assessment and intelligence led policing.

The new model of protest policing that emerged in the late 1990s has been called “strategic incapacitation,” “the Miami Model” or as the French translation of my book calls it, “neutralization.” It involves a logic of pre-emption and control – that evaluates protest as a potential threat. As a result it combines four elements, first an emphasis on intelligence gathering and threat assessments; second, spatial control; third, militarized units with less lethal weapons, and fourth, pre-emptive mass arrests.

GA: A lot of your prior research has been on the history of social movements and protests. These movements for social justice have always had to confront the coercive apparatuses of the state, and often police violence, from setting up and defending picket lines to protesting war. What are some of the historical comparisons we need to keep in mind in understanding the current period?

LJW: Police repression is clearly not new. Explicit repression also tends to increase when waves of protests accelerate. In the early part of the 20th century, the 1930s and in the late 1960s, many movements in North America and beyond were militant and disruptive, and in such periods police actions became extremely brutal as they attempted to maintain control. The period from the mid-1970s through the 1990s included a wide range of movements, but many of them were relatively routinized and cooperated with police permit processes and their attempts to manage and control the disruptiveness of protest.

This ‘negotiated management’ or ‘liason policing’ model was still repressive, but it worked through negotiation, permits and management. As more disruptive movements arose, activists challenged this model, and the police responded with more explicit force. In the past fifteen years we’ve seen a sequence of short lived but significant waves of protest – the global justice movement, the anti-war movement, Occupy, Idle No More, the Quebec Student Movement and anti-austerity mobilizations and Black Lives Matter. These movements are all facing police using strategic incapacitation.

GA: If maintaining social order is always one of the necessary functions that a capitalist state undertakes in defence of the ruling classes, the administrative organization of policing practices – what you call a ‘public order management system’ building on ideas from Bourdieu – is little studied or understood on the Left. What did you uncover and why did this lead you to insist on a new phase in the militarization of protest policing in Canada and North America?

LJW: On the left we tend to talk about the police as either the armed, mindless thugs doing the bidding of the capitalists or some sort of omnipotent force strategically destroying our movements. These caricatures don’t help us to understand the shift in policing and variation amongst times and places. While recognizing that the police institution plays a unique role in defending the status quo, in other ways, they are much like other institutions. Like other institutions, police agencies and leaders struggle to defend their legitimacy, resources, and autonomy. When these are challenged by movements, politicians, the media or even other policing agencies or experts, they often work to reassert these things. What happened with the clashes between police and the global justice movement was a crisis in the legitimacy of the existing police strategy, and the development of a new one – using the products and practices being promoted by the most powerful actors in the field of policing.

What I found, through looking at the policing literature, attending policing events and examining court transcripts and policy documents is that there is a shared logic of threat assessment being utilized within a field of policing that is increasingly transnational, integrated through professional policing associations like the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These networks bring together key police agencies like the NYPD, LAPD and the RCMP and security and defence corporations like TASER. Such opinion leaders can then promote ‘best practices’ and products which spread to other agencies facing criticism and seeking to shore up their profile as successful, effective police agencies.

The legitimacy of this integrated field of professional policing and security facilitated the spread of this new model, particularly in the post-9/11 period which justified a push toward integration of policing with homeland security and threat assessment.

GA: A particularly important theme that comes across from the book is how the privatization of particular aspects of policing functions has in fact gone along with strengthening the centralized command and control capacities of the coercive apparatuses of the state. Thus even the coercive branches of the state have followed, to varying degrees, the neoliberal norms of the ‘new public management’ animating state administration.

Much like neoliberal deregulation of industry, this has not required less but more regulation. As well, police budgets, as well as those for security, the military, courts, prisons, and so forth, continue to go up. How do you locate the militarization of policing strategies of protests and in general in relation to these developments?

LJW: Despite neoliberal austerity policies that attack other social spending, surveillance technologies and the privatization of security, police budgets continue to grow across Canada and in many other countries. Where police budgets face cuts – like in the UK and some areas of the U.S., often regional, federal or private security, intelligence and anti-terrorism initiatives take their place. There is massive growth in the security and defense industries and markets like less lethal weapons and surveillance technology.

These shifts are due to the way that policing leaders have embraced the idea that through information technology and an emphasis on ‘measurable results’, they can predict and pre-empt criminal activity. The drive to show the efficiency and effectiveness of this social control expands the reach of the police and justifies their increasing budgets and powers. Political leaders and the media feed into this with law and order agendas that allow a very narrow idea of ‘security’ to trump all other social goods. This works at the level of anti-terrorism initiatives and community policing.

Police forces are replacing social services in many low income neighbourhoods. Instead of social workers in schools, we see police officers. Instead of quality community housing, youth centres and access to public space, we see ‘hot spot’ policing initiatives. Clearly this logic goes far beyond protest policing, and most directly affects racialized communities. Some of these issues have been highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.

GA: In many parts of the world as well as North America, the hard right has been gaining political ground, including political office. This new hard right has varied lineages and affinities to fascism. It is hard not to see the current period of permanent austerity as associated with an authoritarian phase of neoliberalism. In the recent Socialist Register on the the Politics of the Right, you have an essay which situates policing in this new political context. What are your thoughts on how the militarization of policing today figures into these developments?

LJW: There is clearly less space for dissent in a society that is driven by a demand for ‘total security’ in the most efficient way possible. Communities and their resistance to this authoritarianism are evaluated in terms of threat. Clearly histories of white supremacy, xenophobia and colonialism shape those criteria. We can see this in the way that indigenous people fighting for their lands are coded as terrorists, Black communities are criminalized, or the way that immigrants are represented as the sources of violence.

An easy example of the way this works can be seen in the photo many people are sharing on social media. It shows the riot police surrounding the Black Lives Matter rally at the Mall of America, and the commentary beside it points out how this police strategy is radically different to the gentle way police are handling the Oregon militia protests.

GA: In conclusion, what are the strategic insights you want to convey about the struggle against the militarization of policing and the cautions we need to take up in organizing mass protests and long-term mobilization and building alliances against neoliberalism?

LJW: I hope that by understanding the police logic a little better we can pay more attention to the ways that the resources, legitimacy and autonomy of the police are not fixed or guaranteed. In various cities, the efforts of grassroots movements and legal challenges have limited the adoption of TASERs, Long Range Acoustic Devices, and challenged barricading practices. Community opposition can limit the expansion of the police into new sites and tasks, and can challenge increases in police power and police budgets.

The police are dependent on alliances with politicians, policing experts, corporations, the media and different communities for their legitimacy, resources and autonomy. These alliances vary. Even though reforms are not going to solve the problem, they may save lives. By paying attention to the gaps, tensions, contestation amongst these actors we can work to limit police power and control. In doing this, we are defending the space for the movements and communities fighting for a more just, peaceful society.

Japan plans to use Self-Defense Force units to drive away “Chinese naval ships” from waters near the disputed Diaoyu Islands, a move that experts say will break the currently controlled status-quo and may lead to escalated tensions or even open confrontation in the East China Sea.

Analysts have also said that Japan may want to play up East China Sea tensions to suppress the domestic opposition before its controversial security bill comes into effect in March.

Responding to Japan’s warning, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said Tuesday that China’s resolve in upholding territorial sovereignty is unswerving when it comes to the Diaoyu Islands but urged Japan to exercise restraint.

“An escalation of tensions in the East China Sea is the last thing we want to see. We are willing to properly manage and settle the relevant issue through dialogue and consultations,” Hong said.

The status-quo in the East China Sea has been controlled so far as both China and Japan have dispatched only coast guard vessels to patrol the area, a situation that will change once Japan dispatches military vessels, analysts said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday that “if a foreign naval vessel transits our waters for [purposes] other than ‘innocent passage,’ we will order a sea patrol and take the step of having the Self-Defense Force unit order withdrawal.”

Japan had informed China of its decision in November and Japan’s government had approved the course of action last May, Suga was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Suga’s comments come after a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun that Japanese naval ships would be sent to urge “Chinese naval ships” to leave if they come within about 22 kilometers of the islands for reasons other than “innocent passage.”

According to international law, a passage is innocent if it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state.

“By introducing its military into the disputes over the East China Sea, Japan has unilaterally escalated tensions and it may lead to war,” Wang Pin, a researcher on Japanese studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Warning measures

According to Japan’s Defense Ministry, the Self-Defense units will first send warnings to “Chinese naval vessels” and ask them to leave. If the Chinese vessels refuse to comply, the Self-Defense units will take certain measures to drive them off.

A representative from Japan’s Defense Ministry told the Global Times on Tuesday that China’s vessels can be “allowed” to pass as long as they don’t violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and pose no threats to the coastal countries’ peace and order.

“Japan’s claim has no legal basis. The Diaoyu Islands belong to China, thus our vessels do not need Japan’s approval to pass the nearby waters of the islands. Japan is using the so-called international law to cover up its own misdeeds and is trying to shift the blame to China,” Wang said.

The Diaoyu Islands are a sticking point between the two countries. In 2014, China and Japan agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues while acknowledging different positions on the Diaoyu Islands.

The status-quo in the East China Sea has been controlled so far as both China and Japan have only dispatched coast guard vessels to patrol the area. If Japan unilaterally uses its Self-Defense units, China will deploy its naval force in return, which will greatly increase the chance of open confrontation, Wang said.

“In that sense, Japan’s move to deploy Self-Defense units is an aggressive military provocation. The escalated tensions will pose a great threat to regional stability,” Wang further noted.

Raised concerns

“Japan’s claim signals a potential threat to the stability of East China Sea, which should raise China’s concerns,” said Hu Lingyuan, a professor from the Japanese Research Center at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

Japan’s controversial security bill that allows its military to operate overseas for the first time since the end of World War II will take effect in March despite widespread public opposition. The country is trying to play up the East China Sea tension to suppress domestic opposition as well as mislead the public into supporting the Japanese military’s overseas operations in the future, Hu said.

“Japan’s wild ambition has been thoroughly exposed as it calls for mutual cooperation on one hand but deteriorates regional stability on the other,” Hu said.

“Japan should think twice before taking any action. In the face of military provocation, China will definitely respond with its naval power, as Japan’s claim will pose great threats to China’s national interests and territorial integrity,” Wang said.

Japan plans to use Self-Defense Force units to drive away “Chinese naval ships” from waters near the disputed Diaoyu Islands, a move that experts say will break the currently controlled status-quo and may lead to escalated tensions or even open confrontation in the East China Sea.

Analysts have also said that Japan may want to play up East China Sea tensions to suppress the domestic opposition before its controversial security bill comes into effect in March.

Responding to Japan’s warning, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said Tuesday that China’s resolve in upholding territorial sovereignty is unswerving when it comes to the Diaoyu Islands but urged Japan to exercise restraint.

“An escalation of tensions in the East China Sea is the last thing we want to see. We are willing to properly manage and settle the relevant issue through dialogue and consultations,” Hong said.

The status-quo in the East China Sea has been controlled so far as both China and Japan have dispatched only coast guard vessels to patrol the area, a situation that will change once Japan dispatches military vessels, analysts said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday that “if a foreign naval vessel transits our waters for [purposes] other than ‘innocent passage,’ we will order a sea patrol and take the step of having the Self-Defense Force unit order withdrawal.”

Japan had informed China of its decision in November and Japan’s government had approved the course of action last May, Suga was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Suga’s comments come after a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun that Japanese naval ships would be sent to urge “Chinese naval ships” to leave if they come within about 22 kilometers of the islands for reasons other than “innocent passage.”

According to international law, a passage is innocent if it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state.

“By introducing its military into the disputes over the East China Sea, Japan has unilaterally escalated tensions and it may lead to war,” Wang Pin, a researcher on Japanese studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Warning measures

According to Japan’s Defense Ministry, the Self-Defense units will first send warnings to “Chinese naval vessels” and ask them to leave. If the Chinese vessels refuse to comply, the Self-Defense units will take certain measures to drive them off.

A representative from Japan’s Defense Ministry told the Global Times on Tuesday that China’s vessels can be “allowed” to pass as long as they don’t violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and pose no threats to the coastal countries’ peace and order.

“Japan’s claim has no legal basis. The Diaoyu Islands belong to China, thus our vessels do not need Japan’s approval to pass the nearby waters of the islands. Japan is using the so-called international law to cover up its own misdeeds and is trying to shift the blame to China,” Wang said.

The Diaoyu Islands are a sticking point between the two countries. In 2014, China and Japan agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues while acknowledging different positions on the Diaoyu Islands.

The status-quo in the East China Sea has been controlled so far as both China and Japan have only dispatched coast guard vessels to patrol the area. If Japan unilaterally uses its Self-Defense units, China will deploy its naval force in return, which will greatly increase the chance of open confrontation, Wang said.

“In that sense, Japan’s move to deploy Self-Defense units is an aggressive military provocation. The escalated tensions will pose a great threat to regional stability,” Wang further noted.

Raised concerns

“Japan’s claim signals a potential threat to the stability of East China Sea, which should raise China’s concerns,” said Hu Lingyuan, a professor from the Japanese Research Center at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

Japan’s controversial security bill that allows its military to operate overseas for the first time since the end of World War II will take effect in March despite widespread public opposition. The country is trying to play up the East China Sea tension to suppress domestic opposition as well as mislead the public into supporting the Japanese military’s overseas operations in the future, Hu said.

“Japan’s wild ambition has been thoroughly exposed as it calls for mutual cooperation on one hand but deteriorates regional stability on the other,” Hu said.

“Japan should think twice before taking any action. In the face of military provocation, China will definitely respond with its naval power, as Japan’s claim will pose great threats to China’s national interests and territorial integrity,” Wang said.

Fifty years ago the focus shifted from non-violent direct action to urban rebellion

This year’s national commemoration of the 87th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes during a period of renewal in the anti-racist movement.

King was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. The annual official commemoration of his birthday always falls on the third Monday of the month.

Since 1986, the date has been designated as a federal holiday. However, there is almost no information transmitted by the corporate media, the educational system or through numerous organizations that hold events in honor of the holiday, that speak directly about the work that the Civil Rights and anti-war leader was involved in.

It is almost never mentioned over these official channels that King was arrested over thirty times and towards the end of his life he became a staunch opponent of the United States military invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Neither is there any recognition of his desire to eradicate poverty in the U.S. and the call for a guaranteed income as well as mandatory full employment.

Three major campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), co-founded by King in 1957, during the final two years of his life (1966-1968), have tremendous bearing on the task facing African Americans, the working class and the progressive movement in general today. These efforts center around the SCLC’s intervention in the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1966 demanding open housing; the linking of the struggle for Civil Rights with the demand for a unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam; and support for striking African American sanitation workers in Memphis, who were fighting for recognition as a union against the-then racist city administration of Mayor Henry Loeb.

King’s Legacy and the Anti-Racist Struggle in 2016

Since the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, a significant amount of media focus has rightly been on the rash of police killings of African Americans in cities, suburbs and small towns across the United States. Myths about the U.S. being a “post-racial” society were gaining currency within certain political circles.

However, actual events would shatter these illusions. A vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in early 2012 and the subsequent acquittal of his assailant in 2013 reawakened the consciousness of oppressed and anti-racist youth around the country.

Even though President Barack Obama has been elected twice as the first occupant of the White House by a person of African descent, race relations and the social plight of African Americans had worsened under his tenure.  Census data and a series of reports looking at the correlations between poverty and race illustrate clearly that national and class oppression is intensifying under the current period of capitalist downturn and restructuring.

Not only is this rising consciousness taking place in the urban areas, a series of demonstrations at university and college campuses highlighted the symbols of institutional racism and the lack of sensitivity on the part of administrators to the demands of African American students as well. These demonstrations during the fall of 2015 began on some of the most elite higher educational institutions and were led by those African Americans who were deemed by the ruling class as being privileged and destined to find a secure position within bourgeois society.

Within the purported “color-blind” social context, schools and building named after slave owners and ideological racist remained without being challenged. The dreaded Confederate flag was still flying on state capitol buildings and public locations 150 years after the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, which ostensibly ended the legalized enslavement of four million Africans.

These realities were further magnified when Dylan Roof massacred nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina at one of the most historic places of worship, the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which dates back to the antebellum period in one of the most concentrated slave production states in the U.S.

Nevertheless, with all of the mass demonstrations and three significant rebellions in Ferguson and later Baltimore in 2015, no effective action has been taken by the federal government to address the worsening situation. The administration is claiming that the financial crisis of 2008 has been corrected and that the jobless rate stands at only five percent.

The fact that the labor participation rate is at its lowest level in four decades and African American poverty is rising as a direct result of the Great Recession is testament to the failure of the current Democratic White House. The campaign of presidential aspirant Hilary Clinton has not proposed any legislative or executive programs to improve the social conditions of African Americans, leaving the political landscape open for left forces to articulate and organize around a program that speaks directly to the status of the oppressed and workers in the U.S.

Reigniting the Movement in the Cities

Some fifty years ago, Dr. King and the SCLC moved into Chicago to join the Freedom Movement in that urban area. The African American masses in Chicago exploded in anger after the Democratic Mayor Richard Daley refused to seriously consider the demands for the abolition of slums and a policy of open housing.

SCLC in alliance with local organizations exposed the hypocrisy of Democratic Party controlled political machines such as that of Daley in Chicago, which provided lip service to Civil Rights but practiced segregation and therefore facilitating super-exploitation. The Chicago campaign coming in the aftermath of the Watts Rebellion of August 1965 prompted the escalation of tensions between the Chicago authorities and the African American community resulting in mass demonstrations against racism and a full-blown rebellion on the West Side in late July of that year.

Rebellions had erupted in numerous cities in 1966 including Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska. Chicago would prove to be the most violent and disruptive. Instead of granting the demands of the Chicago Freedom Movement in totality, King and the other organizations were blamed for inciting the rebellions.

There are profound lessons from the Chicago Freedom Movement and the plight of cities today as it relates to the housing question, police brutality, political and economic power.

Although the housing question in 2016 takes on a different character than in 1966, it is still a pressing concern for the oppressed and working people. Millions were driven from their homes during the Great Recession while the administrations of both President George W. Bush and Obama did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the people.

In 1966 de facto segregation was prevalent in cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles and many other municipalities. Five decades later the marginalization and oppression of African Americans through the denial of jobs, decent wages, quality education, access to water and utility services, environmental justice and affordable housing, represents the continuation of institutional racism well into the 21st century.

It will take an even more revolutionary movement than which emerged during the 1950s and 1960s to complete the struggle for absolute equality and national liberation. These efforts, like King’s in 1967-1968, must bring together progressive elements from all the oppressed nations, in alliance with the workers and the poor.

Ultimately socialism must become the rallying cry of the majority of the people within capitalist society. A genuine anti-capitalist movement that will upend private property and all exploitative relations of production, is the only solution to the current crisis in the U.S. and globally.

This article first published in January 2016 analyzes the ongoing confrontation between the US and China in relation to the South China Sea.

A long brewing crisis of both regional and global proportions has been festering in the South China Sea in recent years between claimants to a variety of islands, reefs and shoals and more importantly access to oil and natural gas resources that are worth trillions of dollars. Although this dispute, or more accurately put, many individual and interlocking disputes, have gained in importance in recent years, they have been a bone of contention for centuries.

The discovery of vast stores of oil and natural gas and the assertiveness of a resurgent China have brought a long dormant dispute back to a level of international importance.

The “dispute” may be broken down into three main areas of argument.

The first is the matter of delineating territorial waters and economic exclusivity zones (EEZ) for each individual nation that borders the South China Sea and how these areas may often overlap.

The second issue are the legal rights to exploration and exploitation of oil and natural gas, mineral and renewable resources in the overlapping EEZs as well as the international sea zone that lies outside territorial and EEZ areas.

The third matter of contention is the free passage of international commercial traffic and warships through United Nations delineated “International” waters.

At first glance it may seem easy to rely on the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982) to resolve these issues; however, a number of factors make this quite difficult.

UNCLOS exists in part to establish the legal status of territorial waters and to lay down a framework to determine who has the right to harvest the bounty of the world’s oceans both between nations with maritime borders and those that are land locked. It also sets up a legal framework for dispute resolution. This dispute resolution framework exists partly due to the fact that the adopted method for delineating EEZs often leads to overlapping EEZs between one or more nations. This is the case in the South China Sea.

To add to the legal ambiguity, there are historical factors that only magnify the ambiguity. For example, who has right to the ownership of islands that no one has ever built permanent settlements on when their location was known for centuries? Now that vast oil and natural gas fields may lie under these remote areas that cannot independently support human habitation, a number of nations are claiming historical precedent to ownership regardless of their lack of utilization and the generally laissez faire attitude toward their sovereignty for hundreds of years.

China submitted an official case to the United Nations in 2009, laying out the Chinese claim to most of the South China Sea. What has come to be known as the “Nine Dash Line Claim” (which China has asserted in one form or another for years) asserts that almost the entire South China Sea is the sovereign waters of the Peoples Republic of China. China sights both historical factors and their interpretation of UNCLOS to support this claim. A group of nations bordering the South China Sea, and who have conflicting claims refute the Chinese position. A number of nations without any legal claim to these waters for purposes of territorial waters or EEZs, also refute the Chinese claim for a number of significant reasons.

Territorial Waters and the EEZ

The UNCLOS clearly specifies how the borders of a nation’s territorial waters are to be established and delineated:

Article 2

 Legal status of the territorial sea, of the air space over the territorial sea and of its bed and subsoil

1. The sovereignty of a coastal State extends, beyond its land territory and internal waters and, in the case of an archipelagic State, its archipelagic waters, to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea.
2. This sovereignty extends to the air space over the territorial sea as well as to its bed and subsoil.
3. The sovereignty over the territorial sea is exercised subject to this Convention and to other rules of international law.

Furthermore:

Article 3

Breadth of the territorial sea

Every State has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baselines determined in accordance with this Convention.

Article 4

Outer limit of the territorial sea

 The outer limit of the territorial sea is the line every point of which is at a distance from the nearest point of the baseline equal to the breadth of the territorial sea.

Furthermore, it less clearly specifies how the extent and borders of a nation’s Economic Exclusivity Zone (EEZ) are to be established and delineated:

Article 55

Specific legal regime of the exclusive economic zone

 The exclusive economic zone is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this Part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of this Convention.

Article 56

Rights, jurisdiction and duties of the coastal State in the exclusive economic zone

1. In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has:

(a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds;

 (b) jurisdiction as provided for in the relevant provisions of this Convention with regard to:

(i) the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations and structures; 44

(ii) marine scientific research;

(iii) the protection and preservation of the marine environment;

 (c) other rights and duties provided for in this Convention.

2. In exercising its rights and performing its duties under this Convention in the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State shall have due regard to the rights and duties of other States and shall act in a manner compatible with the provisions of this Convention.
3. The rights set out in this article with respect to the seabed and subsoil shall be exercised in accordance with Part VI.

Article 57

Breadth of the exclusive economic zone

The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

(United Nationals Convention of Law of the Sea, 1982)

Obviously, these definitions were created by lawyers, as they are somewhat ambiguous and leave ample room for limitless future argument; such arguments guaranteeing lawyers a livelihood since time immemorial. They have created a patchwork of overlapping EEZs and legally agreed to or disputed territorial waters delineations.

China’s claim

The UNCLOS attempts to legally delineate territorial waters and provide for established EEZs for the benefit of coastal nations. That being said, it is quite easy to see that China has a much easier to justify claim, both historically and legally to most of the Paracel Islands. The majority of them lie in their EEZ, they have built settlements and installations on some of the islands, and they have fought and won at least two past naval engagements with Vietnam (in 1974 and 1988) to enforce sovereignty. A justifiable claim to the Spratly Islands or Scarborough Shoal by China is another matter altogether. The map below easily illustrates the established EEZs (as proposed under UNCLOS, which China is a signatory).

Conflicting claims in the South China Sea

Apparently, China has decided to push their claim to a majority of the South China Sea by actually establishing habitation and extensive facilities of both commercial and military significance on a number of islands in both the Paracel and Spratly Island chains, as well as around Scarborough Shoal (although to a lesser extent there).

China is clearly embracing the old adage that “ownership is nine tenths of the law”. When one considers this strategy alongside the significant Chinese modernization and expansion of its naval area control and denial capability in the past two decades, it is obvious that China aims to overthrow the current status quo. The old status quo does not support China’s interests, so they aim to change it. Other parties to the conflict, most notably the United States desire to maintain the status quo.

Chinese land reclamation efforts at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands August 2014 – January 2015.

Vietnam has chosen a more tactful and nuanced approach. Vietnam has decided to seek international diplomatic support for its claims, diplomatic mediation, as well as a robust yet less ambitious naval modernization strategy. While the United States pledged $18 million (USD) to help Vietnam protect its territorial waters and coastline in June of 2015, a long-standing U.S. arms embargo is still in effect. Vietnam had been reliant on Russian naval arms for 40 years; however this is changing as Vietnam looks to supplement its relatively small navy with western armaments and patrol craft.

Vietnam has chosen the strategy of building a more powerful and robust coastwise navy, planning to acquire more modern vessels of small displacement such as patrol boats, corvettes and frigates. This will bolster Vietnam’s territorial defense capabilities, while not fomenting an arms race that they have no hope of winning with their larger neighbor China.

Three US Arleigh Burke Class DDGs on maneuvers in the Pacific.

The United States and the Issue of Freedom of Navigation in the International Waters

The issue of freedom of navigation in international waters in the South China Sea is a valid concern by many “neutral” parties. This is a centuries old concept; that there should always be free and uninhibited commercial and military traffic (both on the water and now in the air as well) on internationally recognized waterways of the high seas. These international free transit corridors are a core foundation of international trade and cooperation that must always maintain their neutrality and absence of sovereignty. They, quite simply put, belong to all nations and individuals of the world for the purposes of transportation and commerce.

This age old concept is essential to maintaining what should be a universally embraced concept of equality amongst all peoples and all sovereign nations of the world and their equal and unequivocal right to commerce and peaceful pursuits on the high seas. The determination of the United States to defend this concept is honorable, just and essential; however, it is not through righteousness and altruism alone that the government of that nation has adopted such a stance. At some point in the past, when the United States still held the moral high ground and obeyed international law in all respects one could honestly come to such a conclusion; but any concept of truly altruistic intent in the geopolitical maneuvering of any nation is naïve. All nations act in their own interests, regardless of the nation, or the era of human history.

Three US Arleigh Burke Class DDGs on maneuvers in the Pacific.

The United States has an undeniable interest in keeping the South China Sea an international waterway, free of any national controls. An estimated $5 trillion (USD) in international trade passes through this waterway annually. It also has many self-serving interests in keeping the resources of this area divided amongst a host of claimants.

As we have seen all too often in recent history, such as in the Middle East, the United States’ foreign policy has focused on the dissolution and fragmentation of power and resources of any potential single benefactor other than itself. In extremely simplified terms, it is a classic divide and conquer strategy. Sowing discord and disagreement in a regional dispute, while inserting an outside international influence of a military nature of magnified proportions, will do nothing but enflame the situation and lead not only to a regional naval arms race, but force all parties to look for a military solution where a combination of diplomacy and proportional military deterrence would have naturally provided a more equitable answer over time.

The simple fact is that the United States realizes that time favors China in this dispute. China has far more resources in diplomatic, economic and military terms to throw at determining this dispute in its favor than all of the other claimants combined. The United States needs to use its military power in a way that nullifies all parties involved and not as a buttress to the claims of those parties that it favors.

Conclusions

The current territorial disputes in the South China Sea have been festering for centuries, but the relatively recent discovery of significant oil and natural gas deposits in the area have added a sense of urgency and veracity that had been historically absent. As the nations in the region scramble for the necessary resources they will need to grow and prosper in the coming decades, they will inevitably be faced with disputes over legal rights to resources and sovereignty, and will be challenged to find a means by which to resolve these disputes. There currently exist both positive and negative influences on both the efforts of de-escalation and conflict resolution.

All parties involved apparently have legitimate claims to certain areas in dispute dependent upon legal grounds and historic precedent. None possess a legitimate claim to all of the areas that they have stipulated should fall under their UNCLOS jurisdiction or sovereignty. China clearly has no legally defensible claim under UNCLOS, or supported by any historical evidence of particular merit to all of the area included in their “Nine Dash Line” claim.

China is relying upon their own ingenuity, industry and force of will to develop these areas and make them their own in very material terms. They are occupying and developing islands that have never been used for human habitation of any significance, by anyone in the course of human history, at a scale that is unprecedented. In such a case, do they not have a claim of sovereignty to these islands, and if they do, to what internationally recognized extent? Does a nation that peacefully develops a previously barren area of the world not have any claim of sovereignty over it, when many nations claim sovereignty over land that has changed hands many times as a result of war and conquest? What legitimizes the claim of the United States to Saipan or Guam, or the claim of Britain to Gibraltar other than the argument of the legitimacy of imperial conquest or the favorable outcome of war in their favor? This is the very status quo foundation of sovereignty that China is challenging.

The United States can use its military might and diplomatic influence to mediate in an impartial manner in the cause of international law and the honorable and indispensable concept of freedom of navigation on the high seas. This would be a welcomed endeavor in the eyes of most nations of the world. The United States can also play a destructive and counterproductive role as the outside agitator and schoolyard bully, as it so often has done in international affairs in recent years. We can only hope that in the U.S., statesmanship and wisdom overcomes imperial hubris, and that in China, pragmatism overcomes ambition.

This article first published in January 2016 analyzes the ongoing confrontation between the US and China in relation to the South China Sea.

A long brewing crisis of both regional and global proportions has been festering in the South China Sea in recent years between claimants to a variety of islands, reefs and shoals and more importantly access to oil and natural gas resources that are worth trillions of dollars. Although this dispute, or more accurately put, many individual and interlocking disputes, have gained in importance in recent years, they have been a bone of contention for centuries.

The discovery of vast stores of oil and natural gas and the assertiveness of a resurgent China have brought a long dormant dispute back to a level of international importance.

The “dispute” may be broken down into three main areas of argument.

The first is the matter of delineating territorial waters and economic exclusivity zones (EEZ) for each individual nation that borders the South China Sea and how these areas may often overlap.

The second issue are the legal rights to exploration and exploitation of oil and natural gas, mineral and renewable resources in the overlapping EEZs as well as the international sea zone that lies outside territorial and EEZ areas.

The third matter of contention is the free passage of international commercial traffic and warships through United Nations delineated “International” waters.

At first glance it may seem easy to rely on the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982) to resolve these issues; however, a number of factors make this quite difficult.

UNCLOS exists in part to establish the legal status of territorial waters and to lay down a framework to determine who has the right to harvest the bounty of the world’s oceans both between nations with maritime borders and those that are land locked. It also sets up a legal framework for dispute resolution. This dispute resolution framework exists partly due to the fact that the adopted method for delineating EEZs often leads to overlapping EEZs between one or more nations. This is the case in the South China Sea.

To add to the legal ambiguity, there are historical factors that only magnify the ambiguity. For example, who has right to the ownership of islands that no one has ever built permanent settlements on when their location was known for centuries? Now that vast oil and natural gas fields may lie under these remote areas that cannot independently support human habitation, a number of nations are claiming historical precedent to ownership regardless of their lack of utilization and the generally laissez faire attitude toward their sovereignty for hundreds of years.

China submitted an official case to the United Nations in 2009, laying out the Chinese claim to most of the South China Sea. What has come to be known as the “Nine Dash Line Claim” (which China has asserted in one form or another for years) asserts that almost the entire South China Sea is the sovereign waters of the Peoples Republic of China. China sights both historical factors and their interpretation of UNCLOS to support this claim. A group of nations bordering the South China Sea, and who have conflicting claims refute the Chinese position. A number of nations without any legal claim to these waters for purposes of territorial waters or EEZs, also refute the Chinese claim for a number of significant reasons.

Territorial Waters and the EEZ

The UNCLOS clearly specifies how the borders of a nation’s territorial waters are to be established and delineated:

Article 2

 Legal status of the territorial sea, of the air space over the territorial sea and of its bed and subsoil

1. The sovereignty of a coastal State extends, beyond its land territory and internal waters and, in the case of an archipelagic State, its archipelagic waters, to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea.
2. This sovereignty extends to the air space over the territorial sea as well as to its bed and subsoil.
3. The sovereignty over the territorial sea is exercised subject to this Convention and to other rules of international law.

Furthermore:

Article 3

Breadth of the territorial sea

Every State has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baselines determined in accordance with this Convention.

Article 4

Outer limit of the territorial sea

 The outer limit of the territorial sea is the line every point of which is at a distance from the nearest point of the baseline equal to the breadth of the territorial sea.

Furthermore, it less clearly specifies how the extent and borders of a nation’s Economic Exclusivity Zone (EEZ) are to be established and delineated:

Article 55

Specific legal regime of the exclusive economic zone

 The exclusive economic zone is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this Part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of this Convention.

Article 56

Rights, jurisdiction and duties of the coastal State in the exclusive economic zone

1. In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has:

(a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the production of energy from the water, currents and winds;

 (b) jurisdiction as provided for in the relevant provisions of this Convention with regard to:

(i) the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations and structures; 44

(ii) marine scientific research;

(iii) the protection and preservation of the marine environment;

 (c) other rights and duties provided for in this Convention.

2. In exercising its rights and performing its duties under this Convention in the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State shall have due regard to the rights and duties of other States and shall act in a manner compatible with the provisions of this Convention.
3. The rights set out in this article with respect to the seabed and subsoil shall be exercised in accordance with Part VI.

Article 57

Breadth of the exclusive economic zone

The exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

(United Nationals Convention of Law of the Sea, 1982)

Obviously, these definitions were created by lawyers, as they are somewhat ambiguous and leave ample room for limitless future argument; such arguments guaranteeing lawyers a livelihood since time immemorial. They have created a patchwork of overlapping EEZs and legally agreed to or disputed territorial waters delineations.

China’s claim

The UNCLOS attempts to legally delineate territorial waters and provide for established EEZs for the benefit of coastal nations. That being said, it is quite easy to see that China has a much easier to justify claim, both historically and legally to most of the Paracel Islands. The majority of them lie in their EEZ, they have built settlements and installations on some of the islands, and they have fought and won at least two past naval engagements with Vietnam (in 1974 and 1988) to enforce sovereignty. A justifiable claim to the Spratly Islands or Scarborough Shoal by China is another matter altogether. The map below easily illustrates the established EEZs (as proposed under UNCLOS, which China is a signatory).

Conflicting claims in the South China Sea

Apparently, China has decided to push their claim to a majority of the South China Sea by actually establishing habitation and extensive facilities of both commercial and military significance on a number of islands in both the Paracel and Spratly Island chains, as well as around Scarborough Shoal (although to a lesser extent there).

China is clearly embracing the old adage that “ownership is nine tenths of the law”. When one considers this strategy alongside the significant Chinese modernization and expansion of its naval area control and denial capability in the past two decades, it is obvious that China aims to overthrow the current status quo. The old status quo does not support China’s interests, so they aim to change it. Other parties to the conflict, most notably the United States desire to maintain the status quo.

Chinese land reclamation efforts at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands August 2014 – January 2015.

Vietnam has chosen a more tactful and nuanced approach. Vietnam has decided to seek international diplomatic support for its claims, diplomatic mediation, as well as a robust yet less ambitious naval modernization strategy. While the United States pledged $18 million (USD) to help Vietnam protect its territorial waters and coastline in June of 2015, a long-standing U.S. arms embargo is still in effect. Vietnam had been reliant on Russian naval arms for 40 years; however this is changing as Vietnam looks to supplement its relatively small navy with western armaments and patrol craft.

Vietnam has chosen the strategy of building a more powerful and robust coastwise navy, planning to acquire more modern vessels of small displacement such as patrol boats, corvettes and frigates. This will bolster Vietnam’s territorial defense capabilities, while not fomenting an arms race that they have no hope of winning with their larger neighbor China.

Three US Arleigh Burke Class DDGs on maneuvers in the Pacific.

The United States and the Issue of Freedom of Navigation in the International Waters

The issue of freedom of navigation in international waters in the South China Sea is a valid concern by many “neutral” parties. This is a centuries old concept; that there should always be free and uninhibited commercial and military traffic (both on the water and now in the air as well) on internationally recognized waterways of the high seas. These international free transit corridors are a core foundation of international trade and cooperation that must always maintain their neutrality and absence of sovereignty. They, quite simply put, belong to all nations and individuals of the world for the purposes of transportation and commerce.

This age old concept is essential to maintaining what should be a universally embraced concept of equality amongst all peoples and all sovereign nations of the world and their equal and unequivocal right to commerce and peaceful pursuits on the high seas. The determination of the United States to defend this concept is honorable, just and essential; however, it is not through righteousness and altruism alone that the government of that nation has adopted such a stance. At some point in the past, when the United States still held the moral high ground and obeyed international law in all respects one could honestly come to such a conclusion; but any concept of truly altruistic intent in the geopolitical maneuvering of any nation is naïve. All nations act in their own interests, regardless of the nation, or the era of human history.

Three US Arleigh Burke Class DDGs on maneuvers in the Pacific.

The United States has an undeniable interest in keeping the South China Sea an international waterway, free of any national controls. An estimated $5 trillion (USD) in international trade passes through this waterway annually. It also has many self-serving interests in keeping the resources of this area divided amongst a host of claimants.

As we have seen all too often in recent history, such as in the Middle East, the United States’ foreign policy has focused on the dissolution and fragmentation of power and resources of any potential single benefactor other than itself. In extremely simplified terms, it is a classic divide and conquer strategy. Sowing discord and disagreement in a regional dispute, while inserting an outside international influence of a military nature of magnified proportions, will do nothing but enflame the situation and lead not only to a regional naval arms race, but force all parties to look for a military solution where a combination of diplomacy and proportional military deterrence would have naturally provided a more equitable answer over time.

The simple fact is that the United States realizes that time favors China in this dispute. China has far more resources in diplomatic, economic and military terms to throw at determining this dispute in its favor than all of the other claimants combined. The United States needs to use its military power in a way that nullifies all parties involved and not as a buttress to the claims of those parties that it favors.

Conclusions

The current territorial disputes in the South China Sea have been festering for centuries, but the relatively recent discovery of significant oil and natural gas deposits in the area have added a sense of urgency and veracity that had been historically absent. As the nations in the region scramble for the necessary resources they will need to grow and prosper in the coming decades, they will inevitably be faced with disputes over legal rights to resources and sovereignty, and will be challenged to find a means by which to resolve these disputes. There currently exist both positive and negative influences on both the efforts of de-escalation and conflict resolution.

All parties involved apparently have legitimate claims to certain areas in dispute dependent upon legal grounds and historic precedent. None possess a legitimate claim to all of the areas that they have stipulated should fall under their UNCLOS jurisdiction or sovereignty. China clearly has no legally defensible claim under UNCLOS, or supported by any historical evidence of particular merit to all of the area included in their “Nine Dash Line” claim.

China is relying upon their own ingenuity, industry and force of will to develop these areas and make them their own in very material terms. They are occupying and developing islands that have never been used for human habitation of any significance, by anyone in the course of human history, at a scale that is unprecedented. In such a case, do they not have a claim of sovereignty to these islands, and if they do, to what internationally recognized extent? Does a nation that peacefully develops a previously barren area of the world not have any claim of sovereignty over it, when many nations claim sovereignty over land that has changed hands many times as a result of war and conquest? What legitimizes the claim of the United States to Saipan or Guam, or the claim of Britain to Gibraltar other than the argument of the legitimacy of imperial conquest or the favorable outcome of war in their favor? This is the very status quo foundation of sovereignty that China is challenging.

The United States can use its military might and diplomatic influence to mediate in an impartial manner in the cause of international law and the honorable and indispensable concept of freedom of navigation on the high seas. This would be a welcomed endeavor in the eyes of most nations of the world. The United States can also play a destructive and counterproductive role as the outside agitator and schoolyard bully, as it so often has done in international affairs in recent years. We can only hope that in the U.S., statesmanship and wisdom overcomes imperial hubris, and that in China, pragmatism overcomes ambition.

Western television viewers are being bombarded with daily reports about the savage Syrian Army and its barbaric siege of the ‘moderate’ rebel-controlled town of Madaya.

If you listen to the media like a responsible taxpayer should, Assad is personally starving all the women and children living in Madaya.

The problem is that according to Madaya residents, there is food, it’s just being withheld by Al-Nusra Front and other bastions of democratic values:

Excerpts:

The anti-government groups are nothing but traders of people’s blood. They only cared about securing food supplies for themselves and their families, and sell the rest to people for astronomical prices.

And:

Ahrar al-Sham and the Nusra Front have food but they do not feed anybody. We had to make do by eating grass.

Originally Appeared at German Economic News. Translated from the German by Werner Schrimpf

Russia just issued its revised national security document which names so-called color revolutions as a potential high risk to the country. The strategy document is a reaction to the Ukraine coup that was masterminded by the Western alliance, and the military threat from NATO member states following the coup.

Russia sees a threat to its security caused by activities from foreign parties, organizations, and NGOs. These groups are quite active in former Eastern bloc states and intend to conduct so-called color revolutions – that means to agitate and provoke an elected government until it can be overthrown. Despite the argumentation of U.S. news agency Reuters, the new doctrine is not directed in any way against the U.S. — at least according to the Russian news agency, TASS.  According to TASS, the new strategy document identifies “radical social groups which use nationalist and religious extremist ideologies, foreign and international NGOs, and also private citizens who work to undermine Russia’s territorial integrity.” Those movements would intend to destroy Russia’s traditional spiritual and moral values. Reuters wording [of the headline] “Russia names United States among threats in new Russian security strategy” could be seen as a — possibly unintended — interpretation from Reuters that the US could be behind such color revolutions.

Reuters and TASS are essentially reporting the same thing: a newly released appraisal signed by President Putin, confirming a more prominent role of Russia in the settlement of global problems and international conflicts. Russia’s independent national and international proceedings provoked counter actions by the U.S. and its allies who intend to conserve their global and full spectrum dominance. These various counter actions are increasing the pressure on Russia in political, economic, and military terms. The new strategy document replaces a former version from 2009 which did not yet mention NATO and the U.S. as a potential threat.

The reasons behind the revised Russian strategy document are the events and the coup d’etat which took place in the Ukraine in 2014. The U.S. and the EU had masterminded an anti-constitutional overthrow of the legally elected government which ended in a deep disruption within the Ukraine population and a subsequent military conflict. Steady NATO encroachment on Russia’s borders represents another threat to Russia.

For the time being, Western states are denying any involvement in the coup despite the fact that recorded telephone calls from U.S. special envoy, Victoria Nuland, clearly proving that she was promoting and pushing today’s premier minister Arseni “Jaz” Jazenjuk who took over the legally elected former president Janukowytsch. A current research analysis from Ottawa University, whose conclusions were based on the manifest content of videos and media reports, confirms Moscow’s point of view of the Maidan Massacre. The analysis from Ottawa University demonstrates that snipers who were simultaneously shooting at protesters and police forces had not been hired by the government but by Western opposition parties and groups in order to create turmoil and to overthrow the legal government.

The Russian document comes rather late which could be an indication that Putin had initially hoped that relations with the West might improve. This assumption was confirmed by former U.S. foreign minister Henry Kissinger some weeks ago, who stated he did not receive any indication during his talks with President Putin of a new Cold War being revived.

But on the other hand, NATO as well as Germany have modified their military doctrines in the meantime, and both parties are calling Russia a new enemy. An appropriate response from Russia is actually overdue.

Syria is not mentioned in the new strategy document. Since the 30th of September 2015, Russia has been conducting air strikes against extremist terror groups in Syria in coordination with the U.S.  Basically, Putin and Obama have agreed to a common approach in Syria.

“Look up here, I’m in Heaven!  I’ve got scars that can’t be seen…” – David Bowie, “Lazarus” (2015)

Each age values its own species of celebrity.  But each age also brings with it the phenomenon of reflected adulation. Cashing in on death, in other words, remains the business of business itself, the celebrity machine that draws out its replicas, its snivelling types, and its more rapacious breeds.  David Bowie’s passing presented a glowing opportunity, not to be missed.

The first use of the Bowie aura, and a fitting one at that, was by the man himself.  Gordon Rayner and Hannah Furness of The Telegraph decided to see him as a cunning being, one who managed to redefine his own death artistically, and by keeping his impending demise at the hands of ravaging cancer under wraps.  “David Bowie,” opened the article, “spent his entire career defining the art of popular music and on Sunday he pulled off perhaps his greatest ever coup when he turned his own death into one last spellbinding performance.”[1]

The release of his final album, Blackstar, was a performance “bordering on the supernatural”.  It constituted a requiem of sorts, with various “pointers to his demise,” prophetically fulfilled two days later.  There is much talk about morbidity and x-rays.  The video of one of the first tracks, Lazarus, features the singer in a hospital bed, concluding with him vanishing into a wardrobe.  Tony Visconti, Bowie’s long-time producer, added some fuel to the mix.  “His death was no different from his life – a work of art.”

Bowie, however, was not to be left alone to his own bit of selling. Once dead, the adulation brigade would come out grabbing at every grain of the Bowie phenomenon with rampant enthusiasm.  Such antics at times verged on the grotesque.  They revealed the comingling of celebrity worship, political tribute, “reality” television and the desperation on the part of the entertainment complex to get the quick, financial fix.  Such matters are all fair game.

Arguably the most notable political narcissist in the modern era, Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, certainly thought so. Having turned No. 10 into a celebrity processing factory during his stewardship seeded by spin, Blair could not help expressing his views in The Times on Bowie, of which he was “a huge fan.”

Just as he did in office, Blair found skewing the account hard to avoid, continuing that ever disingenuous tendency he made famous with New Labour’s “Cool Britannia” project.  “From the time I saw his Ziggy Stardust concert as a student I thought he was a brilliant artist and an exciting and interesting human being.”[2]

The Mail Online was more sceptical about Blair’s university-Ziggy Stardust experience, though it did concede that Blair probably saw a Bowie concert at some point.  “Blair was 19 when the Ziggy Stardust tour first visited Oxford for concerts in May and June 1972 – although Blair would not have been at the university yet.”[3]  He only matriculated at St. John’s College in October that year.

Bowie’s own views of “Cool Britannia” – Blair’s vain effort to gather popularity from the pop and entertainment fraternity – dripped with scorn.  In 1999, he would tell Jeremy Paxman that such a project was “so clichéd and silly and ineffective”. His response was to meet Blair in high heels and a vicar’s dog collar, neither of which the then fawning prime minister noticed.

In Britain, UK Celebrity Big Brother also found the Bowie cash cow irresistible, making hay by cornering the singer’s ex-wife, Angie, on national television with news that the star had snuffed it.  This, in turn, created a domino effect of Bowie publicity, stormily condemning Big Brother for its purportedly insensitive policies.

The entire revelation was broadcast from the habitually obscene “diary room camera”. Initially, Angie says that she had not seen Bowie “in so many years” and could not “make a big drama about it, but… feel an era has ended”. The frontal calm dissipates, leaving those Big Brother irritants known as “house guests” to comfort the distraught Angie. “The stardust has gone.”  A true spectacle!

Irrespective of the authentic emotional state of Bowie’s former partner, the entire grotesquery was part and parcel of an industrial entertainment complex, one of collusion and collaboration.  Those at Channel Five, which received a dozen complaints after the airing, would have felt it worth it.  The Bowie name was too good to avoid streaming through the popular unconsciousness of the program, and reality television was there to make a killing. After all, Angie was largely there as a link to Bowie’s name, a vicarious “celebrity” herself.  And she was not, to the consternation of some Big Brother watchers, going anywhere.

Besides, suggested Angie’s manager, Ray Santilli, the former model “had plenty of time to consider her position off-camera to process the news.”  The ambush, in other words, hardly counted as such.  Big Brother had already readied her for a simulated emotional collapse.  “She made the decision to go back into the house, she made the decision to be interviewed afterwards.”[4]

It was time for Angie to take advantage of the Bowie name for another round.  Television, even in its reality format, is ever an enemy of reality, a stimulant for dissimulation.  Bowie would have understood that.

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

Notes:

West Papua is a secret story. On the western half of the island of New Guinea, hidden from the world, in a place occupied by the Indonesian military since 1963, continues a remarkable nonviolent struggle for national liberation.

In Merdeka and the Morning Star, academic Jason MacLeod gives an insider’s view of the trajectory and dynamics of civil resistance in West Papua. Here, the indigenous population has staged protests, boycotts, strikes and other nonviolent actions against repressive rule.

This is the first in-depth account of civilian-led insurrection in West Papua, a movement that has transitioned from guerrilla warfare to persistent nonviolent resistance. MacLeod analyses several case studies, including tax resistance that pre-dates Gandhi’s Salt March by two decades, worker strikes at the world’s largest gold and copper mine, daring attempts to escape Indonesian rule by dugout canoe, and the collection of a petition in which signing meant to risk being shot dead.

Merdeka and the Morning Star is a must-read for all those interested in Indonesia, the Pacific, self-determination struggles and nonviolent ways out of occupation. [Order the book by clicking on the image of it on the right]

West Papuans Testify

We have come to testify. There is much that we want the world to know.

We want you to travel with us to the remote places of Papua—Wamena, Paniai, the Jayawijaya Highlands, the Star Mountains, Mindiptana, Timika, Arso, Mamberamo, Biak, Merauke, Asmat and many other places. We want you to hear stories of suffering from the mouths of ordinary people. Our memories are clear and sharp.

‘In this river our father was murdered’

‘On that mountain slope there used to be villages. They were destroyed by the military’

‘On that open field, our old men were forced to burn their koteka [penis sheaths] because they were considered primitive’

‘In the past that mountain was ours, now people have destroyed our mother’

We want you to travel with us to the sites of the massacres. We want to testify about the killings and the beatings with rifles.

We want to testify about the people who were disappeared, those who were imprisoned and those who were tortured.

There have been many forms of torture – the burning, the stabbing of the genitals, the rape of women.

These are some of the injustices that we want the world to know.

On some days bombs have fallen like rain. We have been up against Hercules aircraft and helicopters and boats. They had overwhelming power.

And after the massacres or murders, the injustices always continue.

Rather than acknowledge the truth, they tell lies.

The perpetrators are promoted not punished, while the victims are dragged into court.

Some of us have spent years in prison. One of us was jailed for 15 years simply for raising our Morning Star flag.

Over years we have faced one injustice after another and then another.

There has been violation after violation since 1963. Entire villages have been destroyed. And Papuan people have been turned against other Papuans.

Injustices continue to this day. Today we face human rights violations, economic injustice, and every week thousands more migrants come in white ships and planes. We are becoming a minority in our land.

Those who resist face continuing discrimination. We are excluded from employment, education and health care. And for women, it has been worse.

They suffered the rapes and assaults and then even more. They were shamed by their own families and often marriages broke apart. These are forms of double injustice and women’s suffering that no one should ever have to face.

These are just some of the injustices that we are testifying to today.

We want the world to know about this.

We also want to testify to the effects of these injustices

Some of our bodies bear the scars.

And so do our souls. We will never forget the sound of the killings.

Some of us still feel the fear. For those who fled we don’t know if we will be safe when we return.

Other survivors have been left with physical disabilities and troubles in the mind.

The rapes brought shame – so much shame that some women did not seek medical help.

And sometimes survivors may feel guilty for being alive. The killings can make us doubt that we have a right to live.

There have been effects for children too. Fear came to the children who did not go to school for months.

When the foreigners have taken our land, cut down our forests and destroyed our rivers, this destruction affects us too. The loss of our sacred places has brought sickness to our people.

And sometimes we feel like we are slaves in our own land. Some of us have to struggle everyday just to feed our families and send our children to school.

But there is more that we want you to know.

We want you to know our testimonies of remembrance.

We are survivors and also witnesses. We have always remembered those who were killed. We will remember them until we die.

There are many ways that we do this.

We have cultural ways of joining in memory and in prayer. We place stones or wreaths of flowers. And there are traditional songs that we use to connect us with those who have died and with the ancestors. These are songs we can sing to those who have passed. We do this in a quiet place, a garden, a beach.

Or we remember through making statues of our loved ones, or photos, or lighting candles. We commune with our ancestors.

But we never forget them. They are with us. Those of us who are still alive have a responsibility to keep progressing the struggle. I have dreams of those who were killed in the jungle. They come to me in my dreams and they encourage me to keep going. I dreamt of them just last week. I listen to their voices.

If they knew that we were meeting together now, if they knew that we were gathering this testimony, they would be very happy. This would mean something to them.

They have gone over there to another world. We will always remember them.

We also want you to know the stories of our resistance, action and rescue

Our people have a long, long history of resistance. We Papuans have been resisting outsiders for centuries. Back to the 1850s, the Dutch who were seeking to protect their spice trade, faced more than 40 Papuan rebellions – both violent and nonviolent. Diverse tribes came together to resist. Angganeta Menufandu, a Konor (indigenous prophet) from Biak Island, led a mass defiance of government and mission bans on wor (ritual singing and dancing) and urged her followers not to pay taxes and to withhold labor. When the Japanese invaded, towards the end of World War Two, they were initially welcomed but, after acts of cruelty, the movement for a free and independent West Papua began again. The killings and massacres began in these times. And our resistance continued.

Our struggle for freedom continued after WWII when the US drove the Japanese out of West Papua at the cost of thousands of lives. And since 1963 we have resisted Indonesian government rule.

We remember our long history of resistance. This history raises us up.

We carry it on.

Many of us have formed organisations of action. We come together for survivors of human rights abuses, for women, for people all over Papua.

We form resistance groups. We are students, young people, older people, women, men, religious leaders and traditional leaders. We take action on behalf of those who are living and those who are no longer alive.

Some of us, who witnessed massacres, were involved in acts of rescue on the days when bullets were raining down, and when the sky was on the fire. After the Biak Massacre our family gave shelter to two men who were fleeing for their lives. My father gave them his clothes. He sat my sisters on their laps. We sat down quietly and we opened all the doors and all the windows. When the soldiers came in with all their weaponry, we stood there shaking. As they held their guns at us, and asked us if we were hiding anyone, we said no. We were all shaking, my father, my sisters, myself, but we survived, and the two men survived too. For four days they stayed with us. We had almost no food but my mother found a way to feed us. We are survivors, rescuers and resistors.

Right across Papua, and for so many years, we have continued to resist, to rescue and to raise the Morning Star. When we cannot fly our flag we have painted it on our bodies, stitched it into noken string bags. When one of us was imprisoned for 15 years for raising our flag, he was offered amnesty if he apologised, but he refused. ‘Why should I say sorry? I have done nothing wrong. It is the Indonesian state who has to say sorry. And not just to me but to all the Papuan people. They have to return our sovereignty.’

And even though it is risky for us there are many times we have come out on to the streets in our thousands, even in our tens of thousands, to demand freedom.

These are just some of our stories of resistance. There are stories of resistance all over Papua.

We want you to know that building unity is not easy – but we are doing it

The Indonesian government and corporations use many methods to divide us. To turn Papuans against Papuans. If some people raise their voice, the company will come – or the government will come – and say, ‘Hey come into the office, let’s talk.’ They then give that person money, or a scholarship, or a good job. These are some of the ways our opponent uses to break our resistance.

But we keep taking steps to come together. There is a long history to this. When the Amungme have a problem we build a traditional house. In this house – this Tongoi – people come, sit down and talk. We invite every leader and chief from every village. People come together in one mind. When people then go out of the Tongoi they are going to bring a change. These are traditional ways of calling up assistance. In our culture, no one can stand up by themselves. Everyone needs everyone.

So we keep taking steps to come together. We have now formed the United Liberation Movement for West Papua. Inside this United Movement are the National Federal Republic of West Papua (NFRWP), the West Papua National Coalition of Liberation (WPNCL), National Committee for West Papua (KNPB), National Parliament for West Papua (PNWP) and other non-affiliated groups. We are strengthening our struggle and as we do so more and more people join us. People in other Pacific nations are raising their voices.

Our resistance is like a mat or noken – many strands woven together to become one.

Our resistance is like a spear, sharp and dangerous.

Our resistance is like a drum that speaks with the voices of the ancestors.

We want you to know about Papuan skills in survival

Despite all the injustices we have faced, we are survivors and we have many skills. We are wise about when to speak, when to stay quiet, and when to sing our songs. Some of these songs were written in prison for the future of West Papua. Some of our singers have been arrested and murdered. But we continue to sing freedom.

We also have our dances. We wear our traditional dress, and dance traditional Papuan dances. Our Papuan culture helps us to love and care for one another. When we live inside our culture we are free.

We have prayer, faith in Jesus Christ, and God as our witness.

And we have each other. We are among friends and we want to acknowledge all those who have stood with us.

There are other Papuan survival skills too.

Like mothers’ skills of endurance. Mothers who sell fruit and vegetables to feed their families and send their children to school display their produce on hessian mats by the side of the road. Rain, hail, sun and dust they sit. They survive.

Some of us travelled by canoe with 43 others all the way to Australia to seek another life. Years later, some of us sailed back to West Papua with the Freedom Flotilla. The West Papuans, Aboriginal elders and other Australian supporters on board the Flotilla carried a message of peace and solidarity, and reignited ancient connections.

And we have skills in humour, in jokes and in laughter. Even in the hardest times, we pray, we sing, we dance, and somehow we find a way to laugh.

We want you to know about our hopes and our dreams

We carry a big hope together … a free West Papua. We have held onto this hope for many, many years.

As we lift up these injustices to the light, then all the other cases will also be lifted up.

And we carry a hope for justice – international justice, western justice, West Papuan justice, spiritual justice.

That is why we are testifying today.

We are sharing with you testimonies of injustice.

We are speaking about the effects of these injustices.

We are sharing testimonies of remembrance.

We are sharing stories of resistance, action and rescue.

We are sharing the ways we build unity.

We are sharing our Papuan survival skills.

And we are testifying to our hopes and to our dreams.

What we are testifying here has been an open secret. We have always known this, God has always known this, but now you will know it too.

This means that now you are also witnesses.

So these stories and our hopes will now also be carried by you.

Thank you.

Jason MacLeod is an organiser, researcher and educator. He is the author of the just-published book ‘Merdeka and the Morning Star: civil resistance in West Papua’. Order his book here.

This testimony was written in collaboration with Mama Tineke and Daniel Rayer, two West Papuan activists who survived the Biak Massacre, and David Denborough from the Dulwich eCntre. It contains the voices of many of the people of West Papua Jason has collaborated with and is in part based on a similar testimony developed for the Biak Massacre Citizens Tribunal.

To justify U.S. “regime changes,” the U.S. government has routinely spread rumors and made other dubious claims which – even when later doubted or debunked – are left in place indefinitely as corrosive propaganda, eating away at the image of various “enemies” and deforming public opinion.

Even though this discredited propaganda can have a long half-life – continuing to contaminate the public’s ability to perceive reality for years – President Barack Obama and his administration have shown no inclination to undertake a kind of HAZMAT clean-up of the polluted information environment that American citizens have been forced to live in.

Image: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)

A recent case in point was the emergence – in the State Department’s New Year’s Eve release of more than 3,000 emails to and from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – of evidence that two key propaganda themes used to advance violent “regime change” in Libya in 2011 may have originated with rebel-inspired rumors passed on by Clinton’s private adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

A March 27, 2011 email from Blumenthal reminded Clinton that

“I communicated more than a week ago on this story — [Libyan leader Muammar] Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing — though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, [Defense Secretary] Robert Gates gives credence to it.”

Blumenthal’s email, which was slugged “Rumor: Q[addafi]’s rape policy,” then plunged ahead into his new rumor:

“Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation.”

A month later, this bizarre Viagra-rape angle became part of a United Nations presentation by then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice who brought up the Viagra charge in a debate about the evils of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

A U.N. diplomat at the closed session on April 28, 2011, told The Guardian that

“It was during a discussion about whether there is moral equivalence between the Gaddafi forces and the rebels. She listed human rights abuses by Gaddafi’s forces, including snipers shooting children in the street and the Viagra story.”

On Blumenthal’s other propaganda point, it’s not clear where Defense Secretary Gates got the idea to accuse Gaddafi of “staging” scenes of U.S.-inflicted carnage, but Blumenthal’s email indicates that he was disseminating that rumor which might have been picked up by Gates, rather than independently confirmed by Gates. (It’s also true that the “staging” excuse has been used before when evidence emerges of U.S. bombs killing civilians.)

Media Self-Interest

Yet, regardless of the truth or falsity of such U.S. claims and counter-claims, the chance that someone inside Official Washington is going to review the lies and exaggerations used to rationalize a major U.S. foreign policy initiative – in this case, the violent overthrow of the Gaddafi regime – to, in effect, “clear” Gaddafi’s name is remote at best.

The few cases of the media debunking U.S. propaganda, such as exposing the made-up claims about Iraqi soldiers killing babies on incubators before the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, are rare exceptions to the rule. Even rarer are cases when the U.S. government admits that it relied on false information, such as the intelligence community recanting its pre-invasion claims about Iraq hiding WMD stockpiles in 2002-03.

The much more common approach is to simply leave the decaying propaganda in place and move on to the next target of opportunity. There is little benefit for anyone to undertake the painstaking work of separating whatever slices of truth exist within the rot of lies and exaggerations that were used to justify some war.

Image: President Barack Obama at the White House with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Samantha Power (right), his U.N. ambassador. (Photo credit: Pete Souza)

The way mainstream journalism usually works in America is that a reporter who challenges U.S. government propaganda aimed at a foreign “enemy” is putting his or her career at risk. The reporter’s patriotism will be questioned amid suggestions that he or she is a “fill-in-the-blank-with-the-villain’s-name” apologist.

And since the reality – whatever it is – is usually fuzzy, there is almost never any vindication for a brave stance. So, the smart career play is to go along with the propaganda or stay silent.

A similar reality exists inside the U.S. government. Honest intelligence analysts can expect no rewards if they debunk one of these propaganda themes, especially after a number of important U.S. officials have gone out publicly and sold the falsehood to the people. Making the Secretary of State or the Defense Secretary or the President look bad is not a great career move.

France’s Designs

Plus, the propaganda themes, which stress American righteousness in standing up to foreign evil, are useful in obscuring the self-interested motives that often circle around a killing field like the one that Libya has become.

For instance, another Blumenthal memo to Clinton explained France’s political and pecuniary interests in toppling Gaddafi and thus thwarting his ambitious plans to use Libya’s oil wealth as a means of freeing parts of Africa from French domination.

In an April 2, 2011 email, Blumenthal informed Clinton that sources close to one of Gaddafi sons were reporting that “Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver” and the hoard had been moved from the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli closer to the border with Niger and Chad.

“This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).”

Blumenthal then added that

“According to knowledgeable individuals, this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.”

The email added:

“According to these individuals, Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, b. Increase French influence in North Africa, c. Improve his internal political situation in France, d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”

In an earlier email, dated March 27, 2011, Blumenthal also discussed the French interests in the conflict, citing “knowledgeable individuals” who said that Sarkozy “is pressing to have France emerge from this crisis as the principal foreign ally of any new government that takes power.”

Image: French President Nicolas Sarkozy

So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this “regime change” by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya’s wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa – or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!

Seeing No Jihadists

In selling the Libyan policy to the American people, it was also important to downplay another part of the crisis: that Gaddafi was right when he warned of the danger from Islamic radicals, including Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, operating in eastern Libya.

Gaddafi’s original military offensive was aimed at these groups, but the Obama administration’s propagandists twisted the issue into Gaddafi supposedly committing “genocide” against the people of eastern Libya, thus requiring a U.S.-led “responsibility to protect” or “R2P” mission.

However, in the emails to Clinton, Blumenthal conveyed the actual reality – that these supposedly innocent anti-Gaddafi rebels in the east indeed included jihadist elements. He wrote:

“Sarkozy is also concerned about continuing reports that radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC [the rebel’s National Transitional Council] and its military command.

“Accordingly, he [Sarkozy] asked [a] sociologist … who has long established ties to Israel, Syria, and other nations in the Middle East, to use his contacts to determine the level of influence AQIM and other terrorist groups have inside of the NLC. Sarkozy also asked for reports setting out a clear picture of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel leadership.”

Blumenthal added:

“Senior European security officials caution that AQIM is watching developments in Libya, and elements of that organization have been in touch with tribes in the southeastern part of the country. These [European] officials are concerned that in a post-Qaddafi Libya, France and other western European countries must move quickly to ensure that the new government does not allow AQIM and others to set up small, semi-autonomous local entities — or ‘Caliphates’ — in the oil and gas producing regions of southeastern Libya.”

In other words, the danger of Islamic terror groups exploiting the power vacuum that the Obama administration and its Western allies were creating inside Libya was well understood in March 2011, but the supposed “R2P” mission pressed ahead nevertheless.

The “R2P” advocates also turned a blind eye to evidence that black Africans working for Gaddafi’s government were being systematically rounded up and murdered. As Blumenthal reported to Clinton, “Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting.”

These so-called “mercenaries” were contractors from black Africa where many people viewed Gaddafi as a champion of the continent’s development, independent of the former Western imperial powers and the harsh demands of the International Monetary Fund. While some of these blacks were part of Gaddafi’s security structure, others were involved in construction projects.

Image: Slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi

Whatever their assignments, executing prisoners of war is a war crime – and the image of U.S.-backed rebels singling out black Africans for execution turns the pretense of an “R2P” mission on its head – or perhaps all those noble humanitarian arguments were just phony from the start.

As Brad Hoff of the Levant Report wrote,

“historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency.”

Reality’s Hard Sell

But it probably would have been a hard sell to the American people if the U.S. government explained the dark side of the “R2P” mission – that it involved systematic executions of blacks and rapacious Western officials grasping for oil and gold – as well as creating a vacuum for jihadists. Instead, it worked much better to promote wild rumors about Gaddafi’s perfidy.

It is in this way that U.S. citizens, the “We the People” who were supposed to be the nation’s sovereigns, are treated more like cattle herded to the slaughterhouse.

Some of us did try to warn the public about these risks. For instance, on March 25, 2011, days before Blumenthal’s emails, I described the hazard from the neocon “regime change” strategies in Libya and Syria, writing:

“In rallying U.S. support for these rebellions, the neocons risked repeating the mistake they made by pushing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They succeeded in ousting Saddam Hussein, who had long been near the top of Israel’s enemies list, but the war also removed him as a bulwark against both Islamic extremists and Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf. …

“By embracing these uprisings, the neocons invited unintended consequences, including further Islamic radicalization of the region and deepening anti-Americanism. Indeed, a rebel victory over Gaddafi risked putting extremists from an al-Qaeda affiliate in a powerful position inside Libya.

“The major U.S. news media aided the neocon cause by focusing on Gaddafi’s historic ties to terrorism, including the dubious charge that he was behind the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988. There was little attention paid to his more recent role in combating the surge in al-Qaeda activity, especially in eastern Libya, the base of the revolt against him.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons Regroup on Libyan War.”]

Though the 2011 concerns about Al Qaeda have since morphed into worries about its spinoff, the Islamic State, the larger point remains valid regarding Libya, which descended into the status of failed state after Gaddafi’s ouster and his brutal torture-murder on Oct. 20, 2011. Secretary Clinton greeted the news of Gaddafi’s demise with glee, exulting, “we came, we saw, he died” and then laughed. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hillary Clinton’s Failed Libya Doctrine.”]

More than four years later, the Obama administration still struggles to piece together some order from the chaos in Libya, where Western governments have even abandoned their Tripoli embassies. Meanwhile, the Islamic State and other jihadist groups continue to expand their control of Libyan territory.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has hung on despite continued efforts by the Obama administration and its regional Sunni allies to remove him. The four years of war – waged mostly by jihadists armed and financed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western powers – have killed a quarter million people and made millions homeless, now spreading the Mideast’s disorders into Europe where the refugee crisis is dividing the European Union.

Of course, in the U.S. mainstream media, the Syrian deaths and destruction are blamed almost entirely on Assad, much as the conflict in Libya was blamed on Gaddafi and the U.S. invasion of Iraq was blamed on Saddam Hussein. In the world created by U.S. propaganda, it is always some other guy’s fault.

In the Syrian case, the major decaying propaganda theme that continues to contaminate public understanding of the crisis has been the accusation that Assad “gassed his own people” with sarin on Aug. 21, 2013. Although independent evidence has long been pointing in the direction of a rebel provocation, perhaps aided by Turkey, the old rotting propaganda is routinely dug up by neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks to justify why “Assad must go!” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.“]

In the case of Libya, Blumenthal’s emails provide a useful window into what was actually happening behind the scenes – and what Secretary of State Clinton knew.

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 and barnesandnoble.com).

The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is an organization that presents itself as an NGO officially dedicated to “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world”.  But in reality it gets 95% of its budget from the United States Congress.  It was officially created by the Reagan administration in 1982.

The nature of the NED has led many contemporary intellectuals and researchers to describe it as an agency enabling the secret services of the US to overthrow governments that the US State Department dislikes.

This description was supported by the testimony of Oliviet Guilmain, a researcher at the CECE (Centre for the Comparative Study of Elections), during an information session at the French Senate concerning financing of the electoral process.  It is known that the NED finances opposition parties in numerous countries and provides special aid to exiles and opponents of regimes targeted by the US State Department.

In  the case of Syria, NED’s main organization is the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. It is also a partner of the International Human Rights Federation (FIDH) which received $140,000 following a meeting in December 2009 between Carl Gershman and self-styled French human rights organizations. NED’s French contact was François Zimeray, who was former Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s Ambassador for Human Rights. Those present during that meeting included the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (CCFD), the African section of AEDH (Act Together for Human Rights), Reporters Without Borders, SOS Racisme and the FIDH.

The International Federation of Human Rights is thus an official partner of the NED, as is also shown by its support for the allegations made by the ex-secretary general of the Libyan Human Rights League – also attached to the FIDH – against the government of Moammer Kadhafi.  Those allegations, also supported by the NGO “U.N Watch”, were what set off the diplomatic procedures against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

In the case of Syria, Dr. Radwan Ziadeh is the director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. His highly impressive biography makes clear his engagement is in favor of US foreign policy in the Middle East. In particular, he is a member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington. He was present alongside Aly Abuzakuuk – one of the NED representatives in Libya – for the Round Table of the Democracy Awards, which is an event that honors so-called “human rights activists” by the NED.

Moreover, there are strong similarities between the process that created the Humanitarian War in Libya and what is being elaborated in regard to Syria. For example, UN Watch, an organization that coordinates the operations of the NED and the FIDH in Geneva, has already launched several petitions against the Syrian regime and Bachar Al-Assad. These petitions against Syria make the same allegations of massacres as those put forth by the ex-secretary of the Libyan Human Rights League, Sliman Bouchuiguir, at the UN Human Rights Council against Libya.

It is therefore an urgent matter to denounce these procedures. It is all the more important since recent history shows us that these allegations were not verified in the case of Libya. Nor was there any proof based on any solid evidence about the allegations made against Tripoli, contrary to the claims of the International Criminal Court.

Julien Teil is a videographer and investigative documentary film maker from France.

Statement attributable to Julien Harneis, UNICEF Representative in Yemen

“With no end in sight to the deadly conflict in Yemen, nearly 10 million children inside the country are now facing a new year of pain and suffering.

“Continuous bombardment and street fighting are exposing children and their families to a deadly combination of violence, disease and deprivation.

“The direct impact of the conflict on children is hard to measure. The statistics confirmed by the UN (747 children killed and another 1,108 injured since March last year; 724 children pressed into some form of military activity) tell only part of the story. But they are shocking enough in themselves.

“The broader effects of the violence on innocent civilians extend much further. Children make up at least half of the 2.3 million people estimated to have been displaced from their homes, and of the more than 19 million people struggling to get water on a daily basis; 1.3 million children under five face the risk of acute malnutrition and acute respiratory tract infections. And at least 2 million children cannot go to school.

“Public services like health, water and sanitation have been decimated and cannot meet the ever-increasing needs of a desperate population. Few of the 7.4 million children requiring protection (including psycho-social support to help deal with the effects of their exposure to violence) will actually receive it.

“The longer-term consequences of all this for Yemen – which was already the Middle East’s poorest nation even before the conflict — can only be guessed at.

“Agencies like UNICEF are doing the best they can, in an extremely hazardous working environment. As a result, in 2015, more than 4 million children under 5 were vaccinated against measles and polio, and 166,000 children were admitted for treatment against malnutrition.  Over 3.5 million affected people were provided with access to water and 63,520 people belonging to extremely poor communities were assisted with humanitarian cash transfers in the cities of Sanaa and Taiz.

“But so much more is needed. The children of Yemen need urgent help and they need it now.

“That can happen if all parties involved in the conflict – as is their duty under International Humanitarian Law — were to allow unhindered access to areas affected by the fighting, where civilians are dying because hospitals are not functioning, medicines are in short supply and children are at risk of dying from preventable diseases. Aid agencies would then be able to scale up their work accordingly.

“But what is really needed — above all else — is an end to the conflict. Only in that way can the children of Yemen look forward to 2016 with hope rather than despair.”

UNICEF promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child, in everything we do.  Together with our partners, we work in 190 countries and territories to translate that commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children, to the benefit of all children, everywhere.  For more information about UNICEF and its work visit: www.unicef.org

For further information, please contact:

Mohammed Al-Asaadi, UNICEF Yemen, [email protected], +967 711760002
Bismarck Swangin, UNICEF Amman, [email protected] +962 790 157 636
Najwa Mekki, UNICEF New York, [email protected], +1 917 209 1804

The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question.

Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster.

By most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016 than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have been forced into bankruptcy.

According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values.

In 27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Obama, however, painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring, “The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” He boasted,

“We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s; an unemployment rate cut in half.”

The president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 “recovery” is the weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a decent-paying job.

He went on, tellingly, to cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it “just had its best year ever.” This perfectly expresses the utter blindness, not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The “best year ever” was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits.

Real wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obama’s stooges in the United Auto Workers union.

“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” Obama concluded. The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

The president conceded that economic inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as though the policies of his administration—bailouts for Wall Street, budget cuts and wage cuts for workers—had nothing to do with it.

In the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted, by “recklessness on Wall Street,” not a single banker or speculator has been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income since Obama entered the White House.

Obama listed a few other policy “successes,” claiming that “we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector… we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans.” He was referring, however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans Administration.

Obama sought to defend the foreign policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

While he claimed to reject an American role as the world’s policeman, he nonetheless boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”

He continued, “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas.

Obama indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he claimed, “With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons.”

He called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed,

“will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt America’s commitment—or mine—to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year…”

Then he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries, “our reach has no limit.”

Obama concluded his speech with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

In a clear reference to Donald Trump, he argued that “we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us strong.”

Obama was making an argument, not so much that racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role. “When a politician insults Muslims,” he said, “it makes it harder to achieve our goals.”

El Sistema de la Reserva Federal (Fed, por su acrónimo en inglés) de Estados Unidos finalmente lo hizo, jaló el gatillo: el miércoles 16 de diciembre de 2015, en punto de las 14 horas (hora en Washington, Distrito de Columbia), se anunció la decisión de elevar el precio del dinero en 25 puntos base. De esta manera, la tasa de interés de los fondos federales (federal funds rate), la que se cobran los bancos entre sí por préstamos de 1 día, aumentó desde un nivel mínimo entre cero y 0.25 por ciento en el que se encontraba desde finales de 2008, a otro que oscila entre 0.25 por ciento y medio punto porcentual.

Se trata de la primera vez que se lleva a cabo un alza de tipos de interés en casi 1 década, la última subida tuvo lugar en 2006, cuando comenzaban a emerger las primeras señales de la crisis hipotecaria (subprime) en Estados Unidos. Cierto es que hace ya un buen tiempo que la presidenta del Fed, Janet Yellen, venía advirtiendo a propios y extraños que, más temprano que tarde, iba a elevar la tasa de interés de los fondos federales, un referente clave que determina el costo del crédito en el ámbito internacional.

De acuerdo con la mayoría de los integrantes del Comité Federal de Mercado Abierto (FOMC, por su sigla en inglés) del Fed, el aspecto más preocupante de la economía estadounidense tenía que ver con la evolución del mercado de trabajo. Según se puede leer en sus estatutos, el Fed tiene la obligación de cumplir con tres objetivos fundamentales: la estabilidad financiera, la baja inflación y el pleno empleo.

Si se los compara con los puntajes alcanzados en 2008, hoy en día los principales índices de la bolsa de valores de Nueva York (el Dow Jones, el Nasdaq y el índice Standard & Poor’s 500) parecen haberse recuperado, con todo y que la economía estadounidense aún no consigue registrar los niveles de inversión productiva ni de empleo alcanzados hace 7 años. Pero para el Fed todo se encuentra bajo control, pues la volatilidad observada durante el último año en el mercado bursátil no es tanto un reflejo de los problemas “estructurales” de la economía de Estados Unidos, sino que obedece a pequeñas “correcciones” en los precios de los títulos financieros.

Por lo tanto, si bien existen ciertas amenazas sobre la estabilidad financiera, no son tan grandes como para poner en cuestión la recuperación económica, a juicio de varios funcionarios del Fed. En cambio, sí hay bastante angustia en torno a la inflación. Pues el nivel de precios en Estados Unidos se ha mantenido por debajo de 2 por ciento, el objetivo del Fed, desde hace más de 3 años. Es que si bien la meta del Fed es mantener baja la inflación, si el nivel de precios se mantiene en un nivel demasiado bajo por un largo tiempo, es una señal inequívoca de que algo anda realmente mal en la economía.

Los estímulos monetarios y fiscales implementados por el Fed y el Departamento del Tesoro, respectivamente, no lograron apuntalar la inflación en Estados Unidos; el peligro mayor está en que en algún momento la baja inflación termine por convertirse en deflación (caída de precios), la peor pesadilla de los capitalistas. Según los datos del Departamento del Trabajo, en octubre pasado el índice de precios al consumidor (IPC) creció apenas 0.2 por ciento con respecto al mismo periodo de 2014, mientras que si se excluyen los precios de los alimentos y la energía, el incremento fue de 1.9 por ciento. En noviembre los datos mostraron una leve mejoría, el IPC creció 0.5 por ciento en términos anuales, y los precios subyacentes al consumidor aumentaron 2 por ciento.

Janet Yellen confía en que en el mediano plazo, a medida que la recuperación siga cobrando fuerza, la inflación va a terminar por acercarse cada vez más al objetivo de 2 puntos porcentuales. Y por último, el Fed debe velar por un mercado laboral boyante. Pleno empleo en la jerga económica significa estar en una situación en la que el país en cuestión utiliza la mayor parte de sus capacidades productivas. Cuando la tasa de desempleo se ubica en alrededor de 5 por ciento, el gobierno de Estados Unidos considera que hay pleno empleo.

Y según las cifras más recientes, la nómina no agrícola consiguió incrementos importantes durante el último tramo de 2015, en especial en noviembre, cuando aumentó en 211 mil. Así, la tasa de de desempleo oficial cayó de 10 por ciento en 2009, a cerca de 5 por ciento. Sin embargo, se deja de lado que si se tomara en cuenta una definición mucho más amplia de desempleo, la metodología U-6, que considera a las personas que han abandonado la búsqueda de empleo, así como a los trabajadores dispuestos a cumplir con una jornada de tiempo completo, la tasa de desempleo se ubica en casi 10 por ciento.

“En general, la información económica y financiera recibida desde nuestra reunión de octubre ha sido consistente con nuestras expectativas de una mejora continuada del mercado laboral […] si [el Fed] retrasa el inicio de una normalización de la política demasiado, probablemente acabemos teniendo un endurecimiento político relativamente abrupto que evitará que la economía supere nuestros objetivos”, sentenció Yellen a principios de diciembre de 2015.

El Fed elevó sus expectativas de crecimiento para el próximo año hasta 2.4 por ciento, la estimación previa era de 2.3 por ciento. También disminuyó su proyección para el desempleo en 2016 a 4.7 por ciento, por debajo de la anterior de 4.8 por ciento. No obstante, ese optimismo desbordado soslaya por completo que los empleos ganados son, sobre todo, a tiempo parcial en el sector de los servicios; en contraste, tanto las empresas de la manufactura y el sector de la energía (en especial las vinculadas con los hidrocarburos) han realizado despidos masivos en los últimos meses. Por otro parte, los salarios, si bien han aumentado poco a poco, el incremento es todavía insuficiente para conseguir aumentos significativos en el nivel de consumo, y sobre todo, en la inflación.

¿Cómo nos afectará la decisión que tomó el Fed? ¿Qué pasará con la economía mundial? El dólar se revaluó apenas unas horas después de que el Fed subió la tasa de interés de los fondos federales. Luego los precios de los hidrocarburos tocaron el piso: el precio del barril de petróleo Brent se situó en 37.44 dólares, una caída de 3.44; mientras que el precio del crudo en su variedad West Texas Intermediate (WTI) cayó 4.81 por ciento, hasta 35.56 dólares por barril.

Es que los precios de las materias primas (commodities) se comportan de manera inversamente proporcional a las cotizaciones del dólar. El cobre, el oro, el petróleo, la plata, así como la mayor parte de los commodities se encuentran financiarizados, esto es, su valor monetario depende en gran medida de las fluctuaciones de precios en los mercados de derivados (denominados en dólares). De modo inevitable, las empresas exportadoras de Estados Unidos tendrán mayores dificultades para colocar sus mercancías en el mercado mundial (ante el encarecimiento del dólar).

Visto desde el otro lado, las monedas de los países emergentes tendrán una depreciación más pronunciada. Sus exportaciones deberían ganar competitividad (ante el abaratamiento de sus monedas) si no fuera porque en estos momentos el comercio internacional registra sus niveles más bajos de las últimas 3 décadas.

Por ejemplo, las exportaciones latinoamericanas entre 2013 y 2015 registraron el peor nivel de los últimos 80 años, según las estimaciones de Alicia Bárcena, la secretaria ejecutiva de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (Cepal). Es que no hay tantos países a los cuales vender, incluso la región de Asia-Pacífico se encuentra en franca desaceleración.

Por lo tanto, el efecto negativo se observará sobre todo por la vía de las finanzas, cientos de miles de dólares de capitales de cartera se fugarán de los países emergentes hacia Estados Unidos, con lo cual los mercados bursátiles (de los países emergentes) sufrirán graves pérdidas, sus monedas se depreciarán aún más y el monto de la deuda externa aumentará (denominada en dólares).

“2016 será un reto para los mercados emergentes conforme la caída de precios de las materias primas, y el débil crecimiento del comercio mundial extiende la experiencia reciente de las presiones presupuestarias y de balanza de pagos”, declaró a The Wall Street Journal el economista jefe de Deutsche Bank, David Folkerts-Landau.

Ante ese complicado escenario, lamentablemente no cabe más que esperar fuertes recortes de gasto público en las naciones emergentes. De acuerdo con las proyecciones actualizadas a diciembre de 2015, publicadas por la Cepal, nuestra región cerró 2015 con una contracción de -0.4 por ciento del producto interno bruto (PIB), y solamente crecerá 0.2 por ciento el próximo año, uno de los desempeños más mediocres desde 2009. No obstante, una vez que se realicen los ajustes de corte neoliberal exigidos por las burguesías locales (lo mismo en Colombia y México, que en los países que ostentan tener gobiernos progresistas como Brasil y Venezuela), la recesión será de mayor calado, y por lo tanto, la expansión económica en la región será mucho menor a lo estimado por la Cepal. Larga vida aún tiene esta crisis…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez es economista, egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Twitter: @noyola_ariel.

Those who have been reading my work for any length of time know I have been adamant we would someday face a “global margin call”. I believe this call was issued last week! No matter how you look at the world, whether financially, geopolitically, macro, micro or whatever …what underlies everything in our world today is “credit”.

Credit is used to build, wage war, to produce and deliver, to consume or to trade, EVERYTHING runs on credit. As a side note, in order for credit to be extended, the borrower must have some sort of “collateral”. This collateral can be physical, financial, or simply “faith”, meaning a good credit rating or at least trust by the lender.

We’ve now arrived at a point very similar to where we were in the fall of 2008 with several very grave exceptions. The world is facing a global margin call again, only this time there are no sovereign entities left with a clean balance sheet that can be levered up further.

There are also no tools left available to the various central banks to administer monetary policy. They have already printed, monetized debt and lowered rates to zero. Richard Fisher has even admitted they have no ammunition left! As a side note, rates were cut to zero to make the higher debt balances serviceable but now even zero percent rates are not enough. From a macro standpoint, real economic activity is not generating enough cash flow (profits and tax revenues) to support this current debt. Lastly, there is no more “collateral” left to borrow against. Whether it be stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities or even “faith”, we are at the end of the road in the collateral department.

We have recently found out (not that we did not already know) through admission that many statistics have been wrong, and wrong for many years. What was reported and paraded as fantastic employment news on Friday turned out to really be a stinker as the truth turned out to be a whopping 11,000 job gain

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/newsflash-from-the-december-jobs-report-the-us-economy-is-dead-in-the-water/ !

What would have been considered heresy just 10 years ago is now “normal”, the Swiss National Bank has become a huge global hedge fund along with the PBOC and Bank of Japan. Does anyone doubt the Fed is not deeply in U.S. equity markets also (by the way, US monetary aggregates have gone into SHARP decline since the Dec. 6th report)? What kind of monetary policy is this? Sovereign “money” (currency) is foundationed on stock markets? Please keep in mind that global trade is crashing with the Baltic Dry Index making all time lows this past week and reports of tankers (non oil) all over the world being docked and empty. As for oil, there is such a global glut there are now fears of lack of storage space. All of this points toward a collapsing real global (depression) economy …which must service the most financial debt in the history of history!

This past week, markets all around the globe convulsed greatly with almost nothing left unscathed. There was a different excuse each day for the drops. We first heard about the Saudi/Iran disconnect of diplomatic ties, then, everything was down because of the yuan devaluation and their market hitting the 7% circuit breakers. I even heard someone say that everyone has such great profits they wanted out …but not until the 2016 tax year which is why they waited until the first week.

I do not believe any of it and would instead say we are simply receiving a global margin call. This had to come sooner or later as the world sits upon the greatest credit build in all of history. We are simply at the end of a “credit cycle” …unfortunately the largest credit cycle EVER! Everyone “knew” this day would come yet no one paid attention to it in their daily lives as “life just went on” as if nothing was wrong! I am sure we will hear reason after reason in the future …the real reason being too much debt with not enough collateral left nor enough economic activity to support it. Simple!

Now, the margin call comes. Now comes the great unwind! “Collateral” of all sorts will be questioned. The questions will be of the “strength, liquidity, ownership and even whether the collateral even exists”. Everything will be questioned and nothing taken for granted or even at face value. The issue of “trust” and even “who” can you trust will come forward. Institutions who have traded with each other for decades will suddenly be looking at each other with different eyes. Questions like “will I get paid” or “will I receive what I paid for” will be an everyday exercise.

There will surely be “blame” but what will it be? Several years into the future it will be understood for what it really is, too much debt, leverage and financially modified products such as derivatives. In the immediate, the blame might go on anything or anyone. We could see a banking collapse in China, Europe or start somewhere insignificant like “Pottersville”.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-08/35-trillion-neutron-bomb-keeps-kyle-bass-night

It could be some sort of military action.

Maybe in the Middle East, eastern Europe, China South Sea. It could involve any number of characters from the US, China, Russia or Saudis, Israelis, Iran, Syria, Iraq? Who knows? It could begin with oil. It could begin with gold. It could begin with “truth” coming out in the form of a “truth bomb” and finger pointing. We might see a global trade war or outright currency war.

Do the Chinese, Russians and Saudis have enough Treasury securities to dump and cause an interest rate spike? Are the Saudis still U.S. allies or do they view us now as pro Iran and they switch alliances? Will, and which treaties will be honored when push comes to shove? If I had to guess, whatever happens will certainly not be “petro dollar” friendly!

All of these questions and many more will be asked. The most important of course being whether or not “you” can meet the margin call or whether you do business with a cross partner who cannot meet the call. When I write “you” I mean to say everyone, every entity, and every sovereign government. This is how we will get the long awaited reset, the markets will close and accounts will be settled and liquidated if necessary, only upon the reopenings will you understand what you really have. The great global unwind is here and now with the most dreaded of all phrases about to be announced

“MARGIN CALL GENTLEMEN”!

UN Human Rights Experts Urge US to close Guantánamo and End Impunity for Abuses

Behind Netanyahu’s Ban on the “Islamic Movement” in Israel

By Jonathan Cook, January 12 2016

Huge pressure was already on Angela Merkel’s shoulders prior to the New Year celebrations. When it came in its waves of chaos on the eve, the security services in Cologne were found wanting.  The police document from Cologne, leaked to Der Spiegel, speaks of chaos and lack of control.  “Women, accompanied or not, literally ran a ‘gauntlet’ through masses of heavily intoxicated men that words cannot describe.”[1]

A range of activities, altogether some 170 criminal acts, are documented: women being surrounded by gangs of men; unwanted hands being laid on clothing, grabbing between legs, buttocks, and breasts, and a good bit of thieving for good measure.

It also outlines a considerable inability to identify and prosecute the alleged offenders, even instances of disbelief and confusion in the face of such violence.  Screams of help were ignored.  The police involved were short of personnel, vastly outnumbered.

It was a boon for the reactionary right, but it was also a bitter reality for those keen on pursuing injustices to persons caught in sexual violence.  Eyes have been on such statements in the leaked police report as that of a man who yelled: “I’m Syrian!  You have to treat me kindly!  Frau Merkel invited me.”

The result has been a besmirching of a range of positions – feminists accused of not doing enough by preferring political correctness over attacking gender hatred; progressives accused of being apologists; and a general sense that discussions of the refugee problem have ignored the dimension of gender.

Tempting as the last option is, the numbers simply do not hold up to scrutiny, at least in terms of violent sexual avalanche.  It is reported that some 32 individuals came out of 1,000 young men were supposedly involved in a range of sexual crimes.  They comprise nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, three Germans, one Iraqi, one Serb, and one American.  A subsequent report from the Interior Ministry in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) state notes that 516 criminal complaints were registered, 237 being criminal in nature.

Merkel seems to be on a hiding to nothing.  She has had a diminishing luxury in terms of how she deals with refugees.  The huge numbers have presented an alibi for increasing hostility within Germany, and a considerable headache for her ruling coalition.  It is precisely such a number that conjures up images of a loss of control, the borderless nightmare.

Anger is being registered across party circles and certain figures. Carsten Linnemann, a member of the Christian Democrats (CDU), has claimed that, “If the influx continues as it has, then integration can’t work.”  Merkel has consistently insisted on how, “Wir können das schaffen, under wir schaffen das.”[2] (We can handle this, and we will handle this.)

To Merkel’s “we can do this” message, Linnemann showed less enthusiasm.  “If we get another 800,000 or a million people arriving this year, then we won’t be able to do this.”[3]

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) have seen their chance to pounce.  Dirk Driesang needed a provocative image to use, and decided that Egypt’s Arab Spring protestors supplied one.  “Anyone who opens the borders wide must know they are bringing Tahrir Square to Germany.”

Noisy Pegida protesters made their presence felt in Leipzig, though a police spokeswoman did confirm that they were met person to person by counter-demonstrators.  Cologne has seen retaliations, leading to injuries on 11 individuals, including Pakistanis, Syrians and Guineans.

The new policy in itself will not make an overwhelming difference in terms of expulsion.  Offenders, insisted Merkel, “must feel the full force of the law.”  The “right to asylum can be lost if someone is placed on probation or jailed.”  Asylum remains a legal principle controlled by legal regulation and qualification.

There is nothing new or provocative about this, though some parties on the left insist that her supposedly revised stand involved “shooting from the hip”.  But Merkel has so far resisted the move to introduce the notorious cap on numbers, and the Hungarian solution of closing borders.  Were Germany to do that, it would certifiably kill off the Schengen zone and the principle of mobility.

The issue of gender violence, and its appropriation by various groups for a protection agenda, was never far away from the incidents. The Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, did not make matters any easier by suggesting that women had failed in their endeavours of self-protection.  They would do better than to keep strangers “at an arm’s length”.  That said, she also claimed on Tuesday that, “There are no indications that this involved people who have sought shelter in Cologne as refugees.”[4]

The more balanced view is that a handful of criminal actions do not, by their nature, criminalise an entire fleeing populace.  Many of the refugees currently in Germany can count themselves as survivors of sexual abuse, one of the inglorious nasties of war and conflict.

An interesting contrast would be to assess hefty, alcohol-fuelled acts of domestic violence on New Year’s that happen among local nationals every year.  Leave the patriotic nonsense aside, and get into the social policy.  Now that might provide an interesting corrective for the fatherland conservative types worried about nationalist, gendered pollution from Africa and the Middle East.