Global Research

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and S&P peaked in May 2015, investors were still confident that the Fed “had their back” and that any steep or prolonged downturn in stocks would be met with additional liquidity and a firm commitment to maintain zero rates as long as necessary.  But now that the Fed has started its long-awaited rate-hike cycle, investors aren’t sure what to expect.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and popular forces continued to push the militant groups back from more territories in the Northern parts of the Lattakia province liberating the villages of Ra’as al-Qazal and Ra’as al-Kabir. Also, the militant groups have been pushed to withdrew their forces from the villages of al-Skriyeh,al-Kandisiyeh and Jabal al-Khanadiq.

Tens of al-Nusra members were killed and wounded in the army’s missile and rocket attacks on their concentration centers in Hawash al-Ash’ari region and the town of al-Nashabiyeh in Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian government forces are conducting military operations in Darayya in Western Ghouta. Separately, the Syrian warplanes bombed the militant groups’ bases and defensive positions in Jobar.

The Syrian Armed Forces and its allies have been continuing heavy clashes against ISIS in the province of Deir Ezzor.

• On Jan. 16, ISIS launched a full-scale offensive near the provincial capital’s northwestern countryside and captured the large weapons depot of Ayyash and the entire Al-Baghayliyah District. In a separate development, the terrorists captured the Thurdeh Mountains.
• On Jan.17, ISIS offensive was halted by the SAA and the loyalists recaptured Al-Baghayliyah and a half of the district including the Al-Rawad Association Neighborhood and the Al-Furat Hotel on the western bank of the Euphrates River.
• On Jan. 18, the Syrian forces continued counter attacks and liberated the Al-Fursan Gas Station, Al-Jazeera University, and the western perimeter of the Radio Broadcast Tower. Meanwhile, the terrorists were pushed to withdraw forces from the al-Ruwad heights as the SAA and the National Defense Forces (NDF) successfully advanced in the area.
• Despite the SAA’s counter attacks, ISIS is holding area near the 137th Artillery Brigade’s Headquaters, the ‘Ayyash weapons depot and inside the Al-Bughayliyah District. The heavy clashes are going there. Also, ISIS militants launched an advacy on the 137th Brigade’s HQ and the Deir Ezzor Military Airport.

On Jan.18, the SAA and the NDF hit the positions of al Nusra near the village of Kafr Sijneh in the Idlib province and killed 23 terrorists, including al Nusra field commander, Abdul Qader al-Sbeih. A senior commander of Liwa al-Ansar terrorist group, Samer Hajj Najib, was also killed in the SAA in the clashes near Jisr al-Shughour on Sunday.

Like all false flag attacks and assassinations, the 1968 murder of Martin Luther King was covered up. In the King case James Earl Ray was the framed-up patsy, just as Oswald was in the case of President John F. Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan was in the case of Robert Kennedy.

The King family, along with everyone who paid attention to the evidence, knew that they and the public were officially handed a cover-up.  After years of effort, the King family managed to bring the evidence to light in a civil case.  Confronted with the real evidence, it took the jury one hour to conclude that Martin Luther King was murdered by a conspiracy that included governmental agencies.

For more information see:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/court-decision-u-s-government-agencies-found-guilty-in-martin-luther-kings-assassination/5320024

Martin Luther King, like John F. Kennedy, was a victim of the paranoia of the Washington national security establishment.  Kennedy rejected General Lyman Lemnitzer’s Northwoods Project for regime change in Cuba, opposed the CIA’s invasion plan for Cuba, nixed Lemnitzer’s plans for conflict with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis, removed Lemnitzer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and negotiated behind the scenes with Khrushchev to tone down the Cold War.

Consequently, members of the military/security complex had it in for Kennedy and convinced themselves that Kennedy’s softness toward communism made him a security threat to the United States.  The Secret Service itself was drawn into the plot. The films of the assassination show that the protective Secret Service personnel were ordered away from the President’s car just before the fatal shots.

King was only 39 years old and had established himself as a civil rights leader.  The FBI convinced itself that King had communist connections and that the movement he led would develop into a national security threat.  In those days, emphasis on civil rights implied criticism of America that many confused with communist propaganda.  Criticizing America was what communists did, and here was a rising leader pointing out America’s shortcomings and beginning to foment opposition to the war in Vietnam.

The conflation of justified criticism with treason is always with us.  Not long ago Obama appointee Cass Sunstein advocated that the 9/11 truth movement be infiltrated and discredited before Americans could learn that they had been deceived into accepting wars and the loss of civil liberties.  Before Janet Napolitano left her post as head of Homeland Security to become chancellor of the University of California, she said that the focus of Homeland Security had shifted from terrorists to “domestic extremists,” which included war protesters, environmentalists, and government critics.

Throughout history thoughtful people have understood that truth is the enemy of government. Most governments are privatized.  They are controlled by small groups who use the government to pursue their private agendas.  The notion that government serves the public interest is one of the great deceptions.

People who get in the way of these interests are not treated kindly.  John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered.  Robert Kennedy was murdered, because he knew who the government operatives were who murdered his brother.  Robert Kennedy was well on his way to becoming the next President and implementing his murdered brother’s plan to “break the CIA into a thousand pieces.”  If Robert Kennedy had become president, elements of the national security state would have been indicted and convicted.

The Warren Commission understood that Oswald was a fall guy, but the commission also understood that at the height of the Cold War to tell the Americans the truth of the assassination would destroy the public’s confidence in the national security state.  The commission felt it had no alternative to a coverup.

Experts’ dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission led to a second inquiry, this time by the Select Committee on Assassinations of the US House of Representatives. This report, released in 1979, 16 years after JFK’s assassination, was also a coverup, but the Select Committee could not avoid acknowledging that there had been a conspiracy, more than one gunman, and that “the Warren Commission’s and FBI’s investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy was seriously flawed.” http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html

In 1997 the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board released the top secret Northwoods Project submitted to President Kennedy in 1962 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The Pentagon plan was to murder US citizens and to shoot down US airliners in order to blame Castro and create public support for an invasion that would bring regime change to Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the report, a decision that increased the doubts of the national security state that Kennedy had the strength and conviction to stand up against communism.

Washington’s response to the government’s murder of Martin Luther King was to create a national holiday in his name. Honoring the man that elements of the government had murdered was a clever way to bring the controversy to an end and dispose of troublesome questions.

Canadians should be hanging their heads in shame.

Our government is guilty of the most egregious criminal acts as defined by Nuremberg Principles, and we are bona fide members of the State Sponsors of Terrorism club.

When our government bombs the sovereign state of Syria without the consent of President al-Assad and without United Nations Security Council approval, we are committing war crimes of the highest order.

When we support and fund foreign mercenary terrorists  that are invading Syria, we are state sponsors of terrorism. There are no “moderate” terrorists.  The mercenaries are all being paid and enabled by the West and its allies, including Turkey (a NATO member),Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan.

On all counts we are guilty.  We are war criminals and state sponsors of terrorism.

The popular refrain that “Assad must go”, echoed by Canada Defense Minister, Harjit Sajjan, is in itself an endorsement of criminality.  Regime change operations are criminal according to international law.

A soft power complex that disseminates lies and confusion is seemingly sufficient to make gullible western audiences accept the criminality, even as the pretexts for previous illegal invasions invariably reveal themselves to be self-serving fabrications.

Hussein didn’t  have WMD, but  Western sanctions before the pre-meditated Iraq invasion willfully destroyed water treatment facilities and subsequently killed almost two million people, including about half a million children.

Gaddafi wasn’t “bombing his own people” or destroying Libya. The West and its proxies did the killing. The illegal bombing in Libya – in support of al Qaeda ground troops– targeted and destroyed civilian infrastructure, including the Great Man-Made River Project. The bombs and the foreign terrorist ground troops killed Libyans, including Gadaffi, but Western propagandists and “confusion mongers” always portray an inverted version of reality to justify their atrocities.

Likewise for Assad – he is defending his country from foreign terrorists, not “killing his own people” – the Western invaders are killing Assad’s people.

Assad is not starving his own people either.  Recently the discredited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) fabricated a story that alleges that Assad was starving people in Madaya.  Evidence has recently emerged, however, that Western supported rebels have been stockpiling food and selling it to civilians at exorbitant prices.  Again, Western military forces target civilians – with a view to killing and/or demoralizing them—for “strategic” purposes.  Vanessa Beeley decodes the intentional misrepresentation of the Madaya psy op. by listing investigative questions that should have been asked to find the truth, but were not.

War crimes perpetrated by the West are always dressed in mantles of respectability.  MSM spokespeople, all of whom have conflicts of interest, paint civilian murders as “collateral damage”. Some commentators use the phrase “collateral murder”, but more accurately the military doctrine of slaughtering civilians is mass murder.  The 9/11 wars are all pre-meditated,  the false pretexts are carefully manufactured by State Departments, Public Relations agencies (link), and intelligence agencies, and the mass murder is intentional. The 9/11 wars generate unforeseen developments, but the invasions and occupations were not and are not “mistakes”, as some commentators would have us believe.

Much of this evil aligns itself with Levy Strauss’ “Chaos Theory”.  NATO destroys, loots, and creates chaos so that it can impose its hegemony. Again, it’s an inversion of the ridiculous lie of “spreading democracy”.  The destruction also serves to create waves of refugees that serve to destabilize other countries — Europe is arguably being destabilized with a view to keeping the EU subservient to the U.S oligarch interests.  Interestingly, countries not being “sacrificed” include Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia – and neither country is accepting refugees/ imperial crime victims either.

All of these pre-meditated invasions point to a larger picture.  Humanity is being sacrificed for the illusory benefit of the criminal 1% transnational oligarch class. If Western populations were to awaken to the barbaric crimes being perpetrated in their names, they would rightly bow their heads in shame.

The shame would be a strong foundation for shaking off the shackles of lies and war propaganda, and for withdrawing our consent to these crimes against humanity.

Mark Taliano is a retired high school teacher. Currently he is a writer and activist residing in the Niagara region.

Toxins Found in Fracking Fluids and Wastewater, Threats to Human Heath, Scientific Study

In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way.  On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. 

In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it.  Washington is also behind the current destruction of Yemen, and Washington has enabled and financed the Israeli destruction of Palestine.  Additionally, Washington operated militarily within Pakistan without declaring war, murdering many women, children, and village elders under the guise of “combating terrorism.”  Washington’s war crimes rival those of any country in history.

I have documented these crimes in my columns and books (Clarity Press).

Anyone who still believes in the purity of Washington’s foreign policy is a lost soul.

Russia and China now have a strategic alliance that is too strong for Washington. Russia and China will prevent Washington from further encroachments on their security and national interests. Those countries important to Russia and China will be protected by the alliance.  As the world wakes up and sees the evil that the West represents, more counries will seek the protection of Russia and China.

America is also failing on the economic front.  My columns and my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, which has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Czech, and German, have shown how Washington has stood aside, indeed cheering it on, while the short-term profit interests of management, shareholders, and Wall Street eviscerated the American economy, sending manufacturing jobs, business know-how, and technology, along with professional tradeable skill jobs, to China, India, and other countries, leaving America with such a hollowed out economy that the median family income has been falling for years. Today 50% of 25 year-old Americans are living with their parents or grandparents because they cannot find employment sufficient to sustain an independent existence.  This brutal fact is covered up by the presstitute US media, a source of fantasy stories of America’s economic recovery.

The facts of our existence are so different from what is reported that I am astonished. As a former professor of economics, Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, I am astonished at the corruption that rules in the financial sector, the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve.  In my day, there would have been indictments and prison sentences of bankers and high government officials.

In America today there are no free financial markets.  All the markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The regulatory agencies, controlled by those the agencies are supposed to regulate, turn a blind eye, and even if they did not, they are helpless to enforce any law, because private interests are more powerful than the law.

Even the government’s statistical agencies have been corrupted. Inflation measures have been concocted in order to understate inflation. This lie not only saves Washington from paying Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and frees the money for more wars, but also by understating inflation, the government can create real GDP growth by counting inflation as real growth, just as the government creates 5% unemployment by not counting any discouraged workers who have looked for jobs until they can no longer afford the cost of looking and give up.  The official unemployment rate is 5%, but no one can find a job.  How can the unemployment rate be 5% when half of 25-year olds are living with relatives because they cannot afford an independent existence?  As John Williams (shadowfacts) reports, the unemployment rate that includes those Americans who have given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found is 23%.

The Federal Reserve, a tool of a small handful of banks, has succeeded in creating the illusion of an economic recovery since June, 2009, by printing trillions of dollars that found their way not into the economy but into the prices of financial assets.  Artificially booming stock and bond markets are the presstitute financial media’s “proof” of a booming economy.

The handful of learned people that America has left, and it is only a small handful, understand that there has been no recovery from the previous recession and that a new downturn is upon us.  John Williams has pointed out that US industrial production, when properly adjusted for inflation, has never recovered its 2008 level, much less its 2000 peak, and has again turned down.

The American consumer is exhausted, overwhelmed by debt and lack of income growth. The entire economic policy of America is focused on saving a handful of NY banks, not on saving the American economy.

Economists and other Wall Street shills will dismiss the decline in industrial production as America is now a service economy. Economists pretend that these are high-tech services of the New Economy, but in fact waitresses, bartenders, part time retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services have replaced manufacturing and engineering jobs at a fraction of the pay, thus collapsing effective aggregate demand in the US. On occasions when neoliberal economists recognize problems, they blame them on China.

It is unclear that the US economy can be revived. To revive the US economy would require the re-regulation of the financial system and the recall of the jobs and US GDP that offshoring gave to foreign countries. It would require, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his new book, Killing the Host, a revolution in tax policy that would prevent the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing it in debt obligations paying interest to the financial sector.

The US government, controlled as it is by corrupt economic interests, would never permit policies that impinged on executive bonuses and Wall Street profits.  Today US capitalism makes its money by selling out the American economy and the people dependent upon it.

In “freedom and democracy” America, the government and the economy serve interests totally removed from the interests of the American people. The sellout of the American people is protected by a huge canopy of propaganda provided by free market economists and financial presstitutes paid to lie for their living.

When America fails, so will Washington’s vassal states in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan.  Unless Washington destroys the world in nuclear war, the world will be remade, and the corrupt and dissolute West will be an insignificant part of the new world.

“All EU agreements with Israel must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.” – EU foreign ministers’ statement

Ministers reiterated the EU’s position that the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war – including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – are not, and will never be, part of the internationally recognized borders of Israel.

Whilst the EU has a free-trade agreement with Israel, the largest single trading bloc in the world sees the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as illegal under international law.

The policy of the current Israeli government is to covertly establish so-called ‘facts on the ground’ intended to frustrate the intention of the UN and the international community including the EU and the U.K., for an independent state for over 5 million indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

These ‘facts on the ground’ that include all illegal settlements on the West Bank must be dismantled and all settlers repatriated if the Israeli state wishes to continue its trade with Europe. Failing which, the EU-Israel Association Agreement risks being suspended and the possibility of tariffs being imposed on all Israeli goods.

“Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and other resources.” said Human Rights Watch, Business Director, Arvind Ganesan.

Israel has constructed over 230 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since its war with Palestinians in 1967. HRW stressed that businesses trading with settlers are helping these communities grow.

Settlement businesses benefit from unrestricted access to Palestinian land, water and receive government subsidies. They oversee the cultivation of thousands of hectares of Palestinian land and export agricultural products that are often labelled as made in Israel.

At the same time, Palestinians are barred from building or extracting natural resources in parts of the occupied West Bank. Between 2000 and 2012, Israel rejected 94 percent of construction permit requests filed by Palestinians.

Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to United Nations figures. The settlements are considered illegal by the UN, and the West Bank is considered an occupied territory by the International Court of Justice.

Notes:

WebMD is the most visited health site on the web. While the general belief is that it’s a trustworthy source of “independent and objective” health information, it’s become quite clear that WebMD (at www.webmd.com) is a shill, using its influence to primarily promote corporate-backed health strategies and products.

Partnerships and sponsorships¹ color WebMD’s recommendations across the board, and “passive” promotion techniques, where advertisements are designed to look more like editorials, have become commonplace.

The pharmaceutical industry’s influence over WebMD has of course been evident for some time.²

As just one glaring example, back in 2010, I wrote about how WebMD’s free online depression test³ was rigged in such a way that no matter how you responded the only answer you could receive was that you were at risk for major depression and should discuss your options with your doctor.

This fake test was sponsored by Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta, and its function was quite clear — to get you to inquire about antidepressants.

This sneaky form of direct-to-consumer advertising masquerading as a bonafide consumer aid sparked enough furor to spur Senator Charles Grassley to launch an investigation. After all, no one expects to be directed to seek help, let alone drugs, when you have no symptoms of a problem whatsoever.

Monsanto is one of the latest multinational corporate giants to use WebMD’s influence to serve its own biased agenda.

Almost every article now flaunts a Monsanto sponsored ad saying, “It’s time for a bigger discussion about food,” with links⁴ to Monsanto’s biased take on soil, water, and honey bee issues, with no other contributors to the discussion in sight.

The Rise of ‘Passive’ Marketing

According to marketing strategists, advertorial sponsorships are the best way to sell something these days, because consumers do not realize they’re being sold something.

In years past, the line between editorial and advertorial content was quite clear, and there was virtually no confusion about the fact that you were reading an ad. Today, you have to be more “eagle-eyed” to spot these differences.

A business has to pay for a sponsorship/advertorial just like it would a regular ad, and in some cases, they pay significantly more than they would for a regular ad. But the expense of a sponsorship/advertorial is considered worth it because:⁵

• The venue where your sponsored advertorial is going (in this case, WebMD and its affiliates) has no input on the content — the advertiser has full control over the text of the “informative” ad
• You, the advertiser, can control how the information is presented on the page, as opposed to having to select a regular display ad format.
• Although expensive, the sponsored advertorial can be used in multiple publications.
• Companies can reuse a sponsored advertorial as a stand-alone ad in other places.

‘Native Advertising’ Blurs the Line Between Ads and Independent Content Even Further

Another form of this type of shrouded sales presentation is called “native advertising.⁶” The key difference between a native ad and an advertorial is that a native ad fits more seamlessly into the Website on which it is featured, making it even less noticeable as a sales pitch.

In essence, you think you’re reading a regular content article, when in fact it’s all marketing. In the case of WebMD, the advertorial/native ad line is very thin. Many of WebMD’s disclaimers on its pages are barely noticeable and in a typeset that encourages readers to skip over the disclaimers entirely.

What this amounts to is a massive collusion on the part of the industries partnering with WebMD to sell THEIR health goals and products without you realizing you’ve been sold something that may or may not be in your best interest at all.

The worst thing about this is that WebMD and its affiliates promote themselves as trustworthy sources for health information. But if the information is being blurred — deliberately — to sell very specific products and ideas. How trustworthy is that?

Monsanto Uses 3rd Parties to Manipulate GMO Content

In February 2015, the California-based activist group US Right to Know filed a freedom-of-information (FOIA) request to obtain correspondence between 40 researchers at U.S. public universities and 36 different companies, trade groups, and PR firms.

The purpose of the FOIA request was to determine whether or not academics and researchers are coordinating their messaging with the industry, and/or receiving undisclosed remuneration for spreading positive messages about GMOs.

The New York Times posted a long list of emails⁷ between Monsanto and University of Florida professor Kevin Folta, a vocal advocate for GMOs. These emails clearly reveal how Monsanto’s PR firms use “independent” scientists to further the industry’s version of science.

Mother Jones⁸ has also posted an email exchange between Lisa Drake, lead for Monsanto’s U.S. State and Local Government Affairs, and Folta, relating specifically to WebMD, and how Monsanto is manipulating WebMD’s content on GMOs via third parties.

On January 15, 2015, Drake wrote to Folta saying (in part):

“Over the past six months, we have worked hard through third parties to insert fresh and current material on WebMD’s website relating to biotechnology health and safety, especially since before that, the material popping up on relation to the topic dredged up highly negative input from Organic Consumers Association and other anti-GMO critics …

 [W]e understand another way to improve the resources on the website is through bloggers to the website. It is a fairly simple process and I would appreciate your consideration of submitting a blog on the safety and health of biotech to WebMD …”

Folta has since been thoroughly discredited as an “independent” GMO expert, but it’s quite clear that there are many more just like him, quietly working on behalf of the industry while hiding the connection between them, to prevent you from realizing that what you’re reading is actually part of a covert propaganda strategy.

WebMD’s History Is Riddled with Conflicts of Interest

WebMD also receives funds from the U.S. government. In 2013, WebMD received a $4.8 million government contract to educate doctors about the Affordable Care Act and stimulate drug sales.⁹

At the time, the lack of transparency and disclosure of the contract raised questions about potential conflicts of interest. As noted by Michael Minkoff:¹⁰

“If WebMD is comfortable selling out to the drug companies, I can’t imagine they will show more compunction concerning the civil government. In order to keep their government contracts, it is very likely they will say whatever they are told to say.”

WebMD is also partnered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This virtually assures that you will not learn about any alternatives besides those approved by the FDA for your condition, and further strengthens the promotion of sponsored drugs.

By default, you will be kept in the dark about the strategies that can make a real and lasting difference, such as simple dietary changes and exercise, which in some cases have been shown to be just as effective as drugs.

WebMD also has a programming partnership with CBS News;¹¹ the two working closely together to create co-branded news segments. However, this partnership is not openly disclosed to viewers.

In 2008, CBS News ran a segment on how to protect yourself from bad medical information on the Internet.¹² Part of the recommendations included looking at sites like WebMD, as its content has been reviewed by health professionals.

But, when so much of the information presented is sponsored advertorials and “native advertising,” just how valuable is that medical advice? Viewers were essentially snookered twice, because you’re just as likely to be misled by advertising as you are by an outright crook.

Advertisers Are Not Concerned with Transparency and Full Disclosure

Others have noted that many of WebMD’s chosen doctors and experts just so happen to be affiliated with major advertisers¹³ — yet another way of steering unsuspecting patients into a particular fold.

Besides drug companies, other major advertisers include the nutrition and diet industry and the processed food industry. Here too advertorials can easily be misunderstood as “real,” science-backed content by those who are unfamiliar with diet and nutrition and can see right through the sponsored presentations.

As noted by Terry J. Allen:¹⁴

“Numerous WebMD news videos and stories tacitly endorse fast food by posing misleading questions such as ‘Fast-Food French Fries: Which Are Healthiest?’ In ‘Fast Food Survival,’ the only quoted expert, ‘Jodie Worrell, RD, Chick-fil-A dietitian,’ praises the healthiness of her company’s chicken sandwich. On WebMD’s U.K. site … a Kellogg’s-funded ‘advertorial’ asserts that a ‘panel of world health experts … concluded that a high sugar intake is not related to the development of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cancer.’

And that Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, some packing more sugar than a Twinkie, ‘do not increase the risk of tooth decay’ when eaten with milk … [T]here’s a ‘fundamental conflict between a business model that is reliant on pleasing BigPharma and other advertisers, and unbiased healthcare information that serves the public.'”

Indeed, and that’s a major problem for WebMD, which on the one hand relies on advertising dollars and sponsors to survive, while presenting itself as a source of reliable health information. Advertising has never been known for transparency and truth-telling. It’s about increasing sales, plain and simple.

It has nothing to do with public education, yet consumers turn to WebMD to become better informed about issues of concern. When marketing is presented as content, consumers are misinformed at best.

As just one of countless examples, Merck is one of WebMD’s sponsors,¹⁵ and when surfing through the many vaccine-related pages on WebMD, you will find a very clear pattern: The alleged benefits of vaccines are repeatedly hammered down as if they were irrefutable facts, while the potential drawbacks and hazards of vaccines are virtually nonexistent.

Contrary to what a concerned parent would expect, WebMD presents, on the whole, an exceptionally one-sided view of the vaccine issue, and what is NOT presented is equally potent evidence of corporate bias and influence as what is included.

Take Action! Tell WebMD to Stop Promoting Monsanto

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is now urging WebMD’s CEO to stop promoting Monsanto — the world’s largest poison pusher. If you’re as upset about this as we are, OCA has created a petition letter that you can sign and submit.

WebMD ‘Accreditation’ Promotes False Reassurance of Truthfulness

WebMD explains that the site is “accredited” by URAC Health¹⁶ — a nonprofit organization that promotes health care quality and offers accreditation for Internet health sites — which lends credibility to whatever WebMD publishes, whether it has a sponsor disclaimer on it or not.

For example, if you have knee pain and you find the page on knee pain on WebMD, you’ll see that this sponsored page talks a lot about ways to get pain relief — from Genzyme, the company sponsoring the page.

Now, if you’re in pain, why would you go traipsing all over the Internet for something else, when WebMD has it right there in front of you? After all, WebMD wouldn’t let them sponsor if it wasn’t good, would they? Especially since WebMD is accredited.

Most people simply are not going to sit and analyze this. They’re just going to buy the product. The same applies to Monsanto. If WebMD is carrying Monsanto’s message, even if it’s clear that Monsanto crafted it, then many will simply assume that GMOs must be safe. Especially if there’s no counter-balance of information presented.

Key for Successful Propaganda — The Illusion of Independent Corroboration

The drug, junk food, and biotechnology industries have deep pockets, so it’s no surprise that their adverts would be splashed all over the WebMD website.

Prescription drugs for every imaginable problem are listed on virtually every WebMD page, along with plenty of health-harming processed foods and snacks — along with Monsanto’s assurances of GMO safety. WebMD is a great example of the brilliant marketing these industries are doing.

They seek to provide you with the illusion of an independent objective third party that just so happens to confirm their solution is the best choice. But, when you draw back the curtain, you find it’s really the companies themselves that are crafting the message — not an independent entity that has looked at all the pros and cons and detail both sides of the issue.

The lack of independence among promoters and distributors of health information has become of tremendous concern. Due to a dramatic rise in scientific fraud, it’s more important than ever to be able to gain access to the full set of data before making or taking a recommendation.

Not only are industry studies 400 percent more likely to show positive outcomes, negative findings are often never published, and raw data is rarely publicly available. Across the board, companies do an excellent job of publicizing the findings they want you to know, while keeping studies that don’t support their product hidden from you and the rest of the world.

Also, I’m sure by now many of you can follow the dots and draw your own conclusions with circular maps and arrows marking the many conflicts of interest that exist between this unholy alliance of so-called independent health advisors, pharmaceutical companies, processed food companies, the biotech industry, and various regulatory agencies, including the FDA.

Folks, it’s time take control of your health, and that includes being able to discern real health advice from shadow marketing machines and propaganda that serves no one but the very industries responsible for much of the ill health in the first place.

When it comes to GMOs, labeling is an important aspect of public education. Campbell Soup recently announced¹⁷ it supports a mandatory national labeling standard for GMOs — a surprising but welcomed move, considering it’s a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and has been a major contributor to previous anti-labeling campaigns.

Three-quarters of its products reportedly contain GMOs, and the company is already disclosing which ingredients in its products are genetically engineered on its website.¹⁸

What You Need to Know About GMOs

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are live organisms whose genetic components have been artificially manipulated in a laboratory setting through creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and even viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe

A recent study by USDA scientists shows that genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa has gone wild, in a big way, in alfalfa-growing parts of the West.  This feral GE alfalfa may help explain a number of transgenic contamination episodes over the past few years that have cost American alfalfa growers and exporters millions of dollars in lost revenue.  And it also exposes the failure of USDA’s “coexistence” policy for GE and traditional crops.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) has long maintained that genetically engineered (GE) crops can co-exist with traditional and organic agriculture.  According to this “co-existence” narrative, if neighboring GE and traditional farmers just sort things out among themselves and follow “best management practices,” transgenes will be confined to GE crops and the fields where they are planted.

The latest evidence refuting USDA’s co-existence fairytale comes from arecently published study by a team of USDA scientists.  The study involved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, which, like most GE crops in the U.S. is engineered to survive direct spraying with Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide.

In 2011 and 2012, USDA scientist Stephanie Greene and her team scouted the roadsides of three important alfalfa-growing areas – in California, Idaho and Washington – for feral (wild) alfalfa stands.  Because alfalfa is a hardy perennial plant, it readily forms self-sustaining feral populations that persist for years wherever the crop is grown.

Greene and colleagues found 404 feral alfalfa populations on roadsides.  Testing revealed that over one-quarter (27%) of them contained transgenic alfalfa – that is, plants that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.  They believe that most of these feral populations likely grew from seeds spilled during alfalfa production or transport.

However, the researchers also found clear evidence that the Roundup Ready gene was being spread by bees, which are known to cross-pollinate alfalfa populations separated by up to several miles.  Their results suggested that “transgenic plants could spread transgenes to neighboring feral plants, and potentially to neighboring non-GE fields” (emphasis added).  While they did not test this latter possibility, there is no doubt that non-GE alfalfa has in fact been transgenically contaminated – not just once, but on many occasions.

In 2013, a Washington State farmer’s alfalfa was rejected by a broker after testing revealed transgenic contamination.  In 2014, China rejected numerous U.S. alfalfa shipments that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.  Alfalfa exports to China, a major market that has zero tolerance for GE alfalfa, fell dramatically.  U.S. hay prices fell, and at least three U.S. alfalfa exporters suffered many millions of dollars in losses.

Both the Washington State farmer and those who sold to the exporters intended to grow only traditional alfalfa.  It is not clear how their produce became contaminated.  Besides cross-pollination from GE feral or cultivated alfalfa, possible explanations include inadvertent mixing during harvest or storage, or (most insidiously) transgenic contamination of the conventional alfalfa seed they planted.

What makes the high (27%) GE contamination rate found in this study so remarkable is how little GE alfalfa produced it.  USDA first approved Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005, and it occupied just 1% of national alfalfa acreage in 2006.  A federal court prohibited new plantings starting in 2007, but allowed what had already been planted to remain in the ground (an alfalfa stand is typically grown for about five years).  Because this study was conducted just a few months after the re-approval of GE alfalfa in 2011, all of the feral GE alfalfa the researchers detected arose from the comparatively few fields planted in 2005 and 2006.  There is much more GE alfalfa being grown now (Monsanto says 30% of alfalfa seed sold is GE).  So there is likely much more feral GE alfalfa today than is suggested by this study.

It’s important to note that the study’s major finding – that feral GE alfalfa is present and poses a contamination risk – has been known for at least six years.  Oregon alfalfa seed grower Phillip Geertson presented USDA withdocumented evidence of feral GE alfalfa in Idaho and Oregon in 2009, but was ignored.  More broadly, USDA exhaustively discussed this and other modes of transgenic contamination in its voluminous 2010 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Roundup Ready alfalfa.  In fact, buried in that EIS is data showing still earlier episodes of transgenic contamination of alfalfa dating back to the crop’s first commercial introduction in 2005.

What’s needed now is not more studies to tell us in finer detail what we already know, but regulatory action.  Yet the USDA – which is embarrassingly subservient to the biotechnology industry – has failed to voluntarily enact a single restriction on GE crop growers.  This forces traditional farmers to bear the entire burden of preventing transgenic contamination.

The ineffectiveness of this policy is shown by contamination-induced losses of billions of dollars in corn exports to competitors like Brazil.  It is also suggested by the absurd spectacle of the U.S. (the world’s leading corn and soybean producer) importing organic corn and soy from countries like Romania and India.  Fear of transgenic contamination is one factor deterring more U.S. farmers from meeting America’s growing demand for organic foods.

Because of federal inaction, citizens have taken action to protect their traditional agriculture at the county level, and Center for Food Safety (CFS) has provided critical assistance to these efforts.  For instance, in 2014 voters in Jackson County, Oregon, overwhelmingly passed an ordinance prohibiting cultivation of GE crops in their county.  CFS helped the County and its farmers fend off a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Ordinance brought by two GE alfalfa growers with financial backing from the biotechnology industry.

Similar “GE-free zones” have been created with CFS assistance in at least seven other counties in California, Washington, Hawaii and a second county in Oregon.  CFS is also proud to support a new ordinance introduced in November of last year in Costilla County, Colorado, that would establish a GMO-Free Zone to protect locally bred heirloom maize from transgenic contamination.

Amid growing global economic gloom, including a slowdown in China and falling oil and commodity prices, major companies throughout Europe are announcing mass layoffs and job cuts.

Last Wednesday, US multinational General Electric (GE) announced plans to cut 6,500 jobs in Europe over the next two years, including 1,700 jobs in Germany, 570 in the UK, 765 in France and 1,300 in Switzerland. According to comments from the head of GE’s power division last September, this is part of a plan to squeeze out $3 billion in cost savings over five years.

GE acquired French engineering company Alstom in a €9.7 billion deal in 2014, promising to create jobs. GE France spokesman Laurent Wormser said job cuts in France will hit mainly administrative jobs in the Paris area, in human resources, public relations and the legal department.

After reaching an agreement with the trade unions, French nuclear group Areva announced plans for 6,000 job cuts worldwide, including in Germany, the United States and 2,700 in France. The “competitiveness plan” deal would net Areva €1 billion in savings by 2017.

British Airways is eliminating 5,800 jobs under a plan to cut its debts, on top of 7,600 job cuts already announced earlier. These will largely hit major British airports, including 6,600 jobs cut at Heathrow airport and 3,000 at Gatwick.

France’s largely state-owned electricity firm EDF is cutting 4,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce, through attrition over the next three years―twice the number announced previously. On a €72.8 billion turnover in 2014, EDF amassed a €3.7 net profit. This comes after last month’s announcement of more job cuts in the French state sector, with French state-owned rail operator SNCF announcement of 1,400 job cuts in France as part of a plan to shed 10,000 jobs by 2020.

Air France plans to cuts 2,900 jobs between 2016 and 2017, including 1,000 jobs this year, despite making a significant operating profit over the last year. “Air France’s recovery is continuing and the current buoyant economic situation allows us to offer a return to growth as from 2017,” Air France CEO Frederic Gagey boasted.

Tata Steel will cut 1,050 jobs in Britain, hitting plants in Port Talbot, Llanwern, Trostre, Hartlepool and Corby, after announcing hundreds of job cuts last year as steel prices plunged. Ceramics group Royal Doulton will cut up to 1,000 jobs, mostly in Britain, amid the closure of its Baddeley Green factory.

While amassing huge profits from speculation and European Union (EU) bailouts, European banks have announced over 30,000 job cuts for 2016, after Europe’s top 30 banks shed over 80,000 jobs from 2008 to 2014. According to the Financial Times, two of Europe’s biggest banks, Barclays and BNP Paribas, plan to unveil job cuts to slash 10 to 20 percent of their investment banking costs.

The assault on the European working class comes amid escalating signs that the world economy is nearing another major collapse like the one triggered by the 2008 Wall Street crash. Since the New Year, stock markets worldwide have seen massive sell-offs amid plunging prospects of economic growth in China and collapsing prices for oil and basic commodities.

As a result of a slowdown in global trade, notably in China, Germany’s export-driven economy is highly vulnerable, while Southern European economies, undermined by EU austerity bailouts, remain plagued by mass unemployment and weak consumer demand.

In a January 17 article in the South China Morning Post, New View Economics CEO David Brown warned,

“If Germany’s export powerhouse begins to falter, the rest of the euro zone will suffer as internal demand starts to trend lower. With up to 50 percent of euro zone exports traded internally within the single market, the consequences for growth and employment could be severe. Another quick recession should not be ruled out.”

Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world’s biggest private investment fund, told US financial channel CNBC that the crisis was set to worsen. “I actually believe there’s not enough blood in the streets,” he said, adding, “you’re going to start seeing more layoffs in the middle part of the first quarter, definitely the second quarter.”

The renewed economic collapse underscores the bankruptcy of capitalism. After the 2008 crisis, the European ruling class imposed harsh austerity policies, while plunging trillions of euros into bank bailouts, claiming this was necessary to prevent a complete collapse. Unenployment and social inequality skyrocketed as industries and living standards were undermined, while the super-rich saw a massive rise in their wealth.

Now, however, the economic devastation and financial criminality unleashed by the ruling class are provoking another global economic breakdown, with far-reaching consequences―not least of which is rising social opposition in the working class.

The financial press is nervously reporting social protest in China, which saw 2,774 worker protests last year, including 400 in December alone―a monthly record. Geoffrey Crothall of Hong Kong’s China Labour Bulletin told Bloomberg, “The increase in strikes and protests began last August around the time of the yuan devaluation and subsequent stock market crash and continued to build during the final quarter of the year, as the economy has showed little sign of improvement.”

Above all, the European ruling class is increasingly concerned about social protest at home. In one widely reported incident in October, after Air France announced thousands of jobs cuts, workers stormed an Air France works council meeting and assaulted two executives, ripping their shirts, amid widespread sympathy from workers across France and internationally. Air France took the unusual decision to sack and mount legal action against several of the workers.

These escalating class tensions are driving preparations in the European ruling class to try to use the military to crush strikes and social protests. In 2014, a study by the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies called for using military force to put down strikes, stating, “Within the framework of the joint foreign and security policy, the responsibilities of the police and armed forces are increasingly being merged, and the capacities to tackle social protest built up.”

Identifying “conflict between unequal socioeconomic classes in global society” as the main threat to EU “security,” it warned,

“the percentage of the population who were poor and frustrated would continue to be very high, the tensions between this world and the world of the rich would continue to increase, with corresponding consequences. … we will have to protect ourselves more strongly.”

Less than two years later, these issues have taken an acute form. Draconian security policies are being imposed across Europe on the pretext of the “war on terror,” a far-right regime is emerging in Poland and France’s Socialist Party (PS) government has imposed a three-month state of emergency after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris.

This state of emergency bans demonstrations and the PS has cracked down on ecological protests that proceeded in defiance of this ban. It is also preparing a constitutional amendment to extend the state of emergency indefinitely, allowing police to detain and search anyone they view as a potential threat to public order.

The ruling class will seek to turn this climate of law-and-order hysteria against workers’ struggles. Last week, in an unprecedented act of political intimidation, French courts condemned eight former Goodyear tire workers to prison for briefly detaining executives during a strike, setting a precedent for broader crackdowns on social opposition against layoffs and austerity.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified over the weekend that Iran has completed the measures necessary to comply with the nuclear deal reached last July with the P5+1  governments,  the New York Times Editorial Board proclaimed “the world is now safer for this.” They lauded the deal as a “testament to patient diplomacy” and President Barack Obama’s “visionary determination to pursue a negotiated solution to the nuclear threat.”

The Editorial Board takes for granted that Iran presents a threat. Iran has always maintained it has never intended to build nuclear weapons, and that it’s nuclear program was strictly meant to use nuclear technology as a source of energy production. In fact, in 1957 the United States government itself provided Iran with its first nuclear reactor while the country was ruled by U.S. ally – and murderous dictator – Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran would later sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968 and ratify it two years later. 

Several years ago Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that “(w)e believe that nuclear weapons (in the world) must be obliterated, and we do not intend to make nuclear weapons.” Previously he had said making nuclear weapons was a “sin.”

But regardless of their professed intentions, the New York Times is skeptical the Iranian government can be trusted. They claim that there still exist “daunting challenges ahead” as the other parties to the agreement need to ensure “the deal is strictly adhered to.” The New York Times’s skepticism is unsurprising. While the Times certainly will not repeat George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” language, they internalize the same ideological framework.

Is the Times’s skepticism warranted by the Iranian government’s record? That would be hard to argue, as the revolutionary regime in power since 1979 has never invaded another country. Unstated and assumed to be self-evident is the idea that Iran is dangerous and unable to be trusted because it is not aligned with Washington. Rather, it exercises its own independent foreign policy outside of American control.

If there were not a double standard in play, the Times would treat the United States government with the same skepticism as Iran. After all, the United States, which possesses at least 7,200 nuclear warheads, is the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons – twice, against a country seeking for months to negotiate a conditional surrender.

Unlike Iran, the United States is not complying with the NPT. As a state already in possession of nuclear weapons, the United States has a responsibility under its treaty obligations to pursue disarmament. The Times itself detailed the U.S. government’s own modernization of its nuclear weapons in a front-page article on January 11.

The article by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger notes that Obama promised to work towards nuclear disarmament early in his presidency, saying he would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

However, the $1 trillion plan that later emerged called for the modernization of current nuclear weapons by redesigning and improving them. The Times quotes a critical report developed by two former national security officials as saying Obama’s plan could be seen “as violating the administration’s pledge not to develop or deploy” new nuclear weapons. Neither the report nor the Times questions whether this is also a violation of the government’s obligations under the NPT.

The Times shows a graphic depiction of the enhancements, including a steerable fins, a navigation system and safety features. “The result is a bomb that can make more accurate nuclear strikes and a warhead whose destructive power can be adjusted to minimize collateral damage and radioactive fallout,” the caption reads. This may make them “more tempting to use,” according to critics.

The title of the article, “As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy,” is evidence that the debate around the Obama administration’s plan is seen as a matter of strategy and cost efficiency, rather than as a violation of international law and a threat to peace. The people left “uneasy” are all close to the national security establishment. Their concerns don’t have to do with the program’s contravention of the U.S. government’s responsibilities under the NPT. The debate is merely one of philosophical differences between policy makers.

Despite Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement (their continued compliance with the NPT is not even mentioned), the Times Editorial Board states that this doesn’t mean they “should not be subject to criticism or new sanctions for violation of other United Nations resolutions or American laws.” Indeed, they had previously called the Obama administration’s plans to impose new sanctions for Iran’s ballistic missile tests “wise.”

Aside from the dubious position that the U.S. government should unilaterally impose sanctions related to UN resolutions, they claim that Iran should be subject to the extraterritorial application of American laws. Under international law, no state is bound to respect the domestic laws of another state. The U.S. Supreme Court declared “the laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territories except so far as regards its own citizens. They can have no force to control the sovereignty or rights of any other nation within its own jurisdiction.”

The Times does not call for any legal or economic repercussions against the United States. The U.S. government’s $1 trillion program to upgrade its nuclear weapons is not in any way presented as a grave threat that affects the rest of the world. They don’t demand controls by outside powers the U.S. must strictly adhere to, as they do for Iran. Their framing of the story and absence of any editorial condemnation makes it clear the paper views the actions of the U.S. government as unquestionably beyond reproach.

The paper’s calls for the strict enforcement of the nuclear deal and application of new sanctions on the Iranian government are not grounded in any moral or legal principles. They are a reflection of the Times‘s acceptance of the U.S. government’s patronizing doctrine that threats to peace only emanate from countries outside of American control, who must be dealt with using coercion and punishment that the U.S. itself is always exempt from.

GR Editor’s Note

The ISIS is responsible for countless atrocities according to the UN report.

What the report fails to mention: Who is behind the ISIS terrorists, who is funding them, who is recruiting them?

What is the role of America’s allies: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel?

In liaison with Washington and Brussels, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are involved in the training and recruitment of terrorists. Israel provides logistical support  to the terrorists  out of the Golan Heights

The report also fails to acknowledge the civilian deaths which are the result of the US sponsored bombing campaign initiated by president Obama in August 2014. Amply confirmed the US led coalition is protecting the ISIS terrorists.  The ISIS assassinations are targeted: professionals, doctors, teachers, lawyers, public officials, journalists. Who provides them with the list? ISIS is an intelligence asset. It has special forces within its ranks.

According to the Chicago Post, which refutes its own lies:

“A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. (Chicago Post, November 6, 2015)

The above, is a statement of the mainstream media which confirms that the US is supporting a terrorist entity in violation of international law.

The UN has a responsibility to identify the State sponsors of terrorism.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 19, 2016

*     *     *

A UN report released today details the severe and extensive impact on civilians of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, with at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015. Another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced since January 2014, including more than a million children of school age.

Of the total number of casualties, at least 3,855 civilians were killed and 7,056 wounded between 1 May and 31 October last year – the period covered by the report, although the actual figures could be much higher than those documented. About half of these deaths took place in Baghdad.

The report, compiled by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is based largely on testimony obtained directly from the victims, survivors or witnesses of violations of international human rights or international humanitarian law, including interviews with internally displaced people.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering. The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide,” the report states.

“During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner. Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the Government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders. Others have been abducted and/or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations.”

The report details numerous examples of killings by ISIL in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. There are also reports of the murder of child soldiers who fled fighting on the frontlines in Anbar. Information received and verified suggests that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted by ISIL for religious education and military training.

“ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery,” the report states.

The report also documented alleged violations and abuses of international human rights and international humanitarian law by the Iraqi Security Forces and associated forces, including militia and tribal forces, popular mobilization units, and Peshmerga.

Concerning reports have been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces. “Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with ISIL,” the report states. “Moreover, as civilians move around the country, fleeing violence, they have continued to face Government restrictions on their ability to access safe areas. Once they reach such areas, some have experienced arbitrary arrest in raids by security forces and others have been forcibly expelled. The conduct of pro-Government forces’ operations raises concern that they are carried out without taking all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects.”

The discovery of a number of mass graves is documented in the report, including in areas regained by the Government from ISIL control, as well as mass graves from the time of Saddam Hussein. One of the mass graves uncovered reportedly contains 377 corpses, including women and children apparently killed during the 1991 Shi’a uprisings against Saddam Hussein in the east of Basra.

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Ján Kubiš, said “despite their steady losses to pro government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering. I strongly reiterate my call to all parties to the conflict to ensure the protection of civilians from the effects of violence.”

“I also call on the international community to enhance its support to the Government of Iraq’s humanitarian, stabilization and reconstruction efforts in areas liberated from ISIL, so that all Iraqis displaced by violence can return to their homes in safety and in dignity and that affected communities can be reestablished in their places of origin,” he said.

“I urge the government to use all means to ensure law and order, necessary for the voluntary return of IDPs to their place of origin – a task of primary importance given the recent wave of violence and killings, often of sectarian nature, notably in Diyala and Baghdad,” SRSG Kubiš said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warned that the civilian death toll may be considerably higher, and called for urgent action to rein in the impunity enjoyed by the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq. The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” the High Commissioner said.

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands.”

The High Commissioner also appealed to the Government to undertake legislative amendments to grant Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes and to become party to the Rome Statute.

The full report is available on

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMIReport1May31October2015.pdf

For more information, please contact:

In Geneva: Rupert Colville (+41-22-917-9767/ [email protected]) or Ravina Shamdasani (+41-22-917-9769 / [email protected]) or Cécile Pouilly (+41-22-917-9310 / [email protected])

In Baghdad: Samir Ghattas (+964-790-193-1281 / [email protected]), UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) 

United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)
Public Information Office (PIO) – Baghdad
Phone: +39-083-105-2640
Website: http://www.uniraq.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UnitedNationsIraq
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UNiraq
Flicker: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uniraq

Following Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” a UK petition began circulating to prevent him from entering Britain.

It gathered over 570,000 signatures, passing the required threshold for mandatory parliamentary debate.

The irony wasn’t lost on observers – the hypocrisy of denouncing Trump’s opposition to Muslim immigration in America while voting up or down on banning his entry to Britain – along with attacking his free expression right, no matter how offensive.

A Trump Organization statement said “Westminster would create a dangerous precedent and send a terrible message to the world that the United Kingdom opposes free speech and has no interest in attracting inward investment.”

“This would also alienate the many millions of United States citizens who wholeheartedly support Mr, Trump and have made him the forerunner by far in the 2016 presidential election.”

“Many people now agree with Mr. Trump that there is a serious problem that must be resolved. This can only be achieved if we are willing discuss these tough issues openly and honestly.”

MPs won’t ban Trump or any other prominent American from entering Britain. An official government statement said the following:

“For good reasons the Government does not routinely comment on individual immigration and exclusion decisions.”

“The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good.”

“The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.”

“Exclusion powers are very serious and are not used lightly. The Home Secretary will use these powers when justified and based on all available evidence.”

“The Prime Minister has made clear that he completely disagrees with Donald Trump’s remarks. The Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump’s remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.”

“The Government recognises the strength of feeling against the remarks and will continue to speak out against comments which have the potential to divide our communities, regardless of who makes them. We reject any attempts to create division and marginalisation amongst those we endeavour to protect.”

Prime Minister David Cameron blasted what he called Trump’s “hate speech.” Home Secretary Theresa May denounced his offensive remarks.

The uncomfortable reality in Britain went unmentioned. Most individuals banned from entering the country are Muslims, including Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council member Yunis Al-Astal – solely for political reasons in deference to Israel.

He’s wrongfully accused of “engaging in unacceptable behavior by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts.”

Islamophobia is rife in Britain, throughout Europe and America. War on Islam rages. Muslims are public enemy No. 1, portrayed as dangerous gun-toting terrorists,  blamed for false flag terror attacks.

Britain continues partnering with Washington’s endless wars on Muslim countries, responsible for millions of deaths, mass destruction and unspeakable human misery.

Cameron’s regime shuns desperate Muslim refugees and asylum seekers, victims of US-led imperial wars, indifferent to their suffering.

Instead of debating whether Trump should be banned from Britain, a nonbinding resolution if passed, UK parliamentarians should denounce US-led imperial wars, refusing any longer to partner in them.

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 Israeli Foreign Ministry has been working relentlessly to thwart a European Union decision that would firmly distinguish between Israel and territories occupied in the 1967, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday citing senior Israeli and European officials.

According to the officials, if the resolution is adopted it could result in new, tighter sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements.

The paper said the decision, which will be issued at the conclusion of the EU foreign minister’s monthly meeting, was expected to be relatively moderate, but senior Israeli officials concluded that the text of the resolution will be strong against Israel.

Haaretz quoted an Israeli official as saying that “the drafts have become increasingly harsh and grave from moment to moment. The Swedes and Irish are pushing and it appears as if our friends are not able to withstand it. The Germans are trying to hold the line, but are not succeeding.”

Regarding the distinction between Israel and the West Bank settlements, the draft says that “the EU will continue to unequivocally and explicitly make the distinction between Israel and all territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”

It also stresses that “EU agreements with the State of Israel are only applicable to the State of Israel and not to the settlements.”

According to the draft resolution, “the EU will continue to closely monitor developments on the ground and their broader implications…The EU will consider further action to protect the viability of the two-state solution, which is constantly eroded by new facts on the ground.”

Further, it outlines measures to resume the stalled peace process by establishing an “international support group” and organising an “international peace conference” to revive negotiations.

On Monday January 18, the MLK Day rally and march took place in downtown Detroit where a host of speakers and organizations participated.

Despite a wind chill factor below zero, the sanctuary at Central United Methodist Church was filled with activists who work consistently for social justice and peace throughout the state of Michigan. This is the same church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on numerous occasions during the 1950s and 1960s.

King delivered his annual Lent sermon at the facility on March 14, 1968 just three weeks prior to his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4.

The special guest for the 2015 gathering was Pastor Cori Bush of Ferguson, Missouri who traveled to Detroit and Toledo, Ohio to bring news about the ongoing movement in St. Louis County which woke up the United States and the world in 2014, exemplifying the reality that the society is by no means free of racist violence and state repression. Bush is a healthcare professional and a clergywoman who experienced firsthand the utilization of police violence against the people of Ferguson in the aftermath of the law-enforcement killing of Mike Brown on August 9, 2014.

Other speakers were invited including Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, who as a result of the inclement weather was not able to drive over 200 miles from Berrien County. Nonetheless, she sent a statement that was read by Marcina Cole, a leading organizer in the Detroit area campaign to win freedom and legal vindication of Rev. Edward Pinkney, Michigan’s political prisoner.

Rev. Pinkney was railroaded in the Berrien County courts during 2014 on fraudulent felony charges of changing five dates on recall petitions aimed at the removal of Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower. During the course of the trial there were no eyewitnesses presented by the court that testified to the actualization of the alleged crimes.

The political activities of Pinkney and his associates were introduced as evidence by the Berrien County prosecuting attorney Michael Sepic. Pinkney is the leader of the Benton Harbor Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), whose political work was utilized by the prosecution to convict him of these spurious charges.

At present Pinkney is serving a sentence of 30-120 months in Marquette prison in the far northern area of the state, some 10-12 hours from his home in the southwest region of the Michigan. He is appealing the conviction in the state courts. Recently, Pennsylvania political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal issued a commentary entitled “Free Rev. Pinkney” in solidarity with the Michigan activist.

Cole, who attends the Detroit MLK rally and march every year said of the event that “there was a great turn out representing people from all walks of life, including  youth and older people. We should be honored that we can fight the fight.”

She went on to recognize “some of the people who have lost their homes and are not with us today.  Jerome Jackson is one.” Jackson, an African American living with disabilities, passed away in 2014 after long fight to save his home in Inkster, a suburb of Detroit.

Cole also expressed concern for S. Baxter Jones, an anti-foreclosure activist whose Jackson County home was taken by Fannie Mae. Jones who was a co-recipient of the “People’s Spirit of Detroit” award, was arrested in July 2014 for blocking Homrich wrecking trucks that were heading to shut off the water services of Detroit residents.

Event Brings Together Regional Groups

The Detroit MLK event is the largest gathering annually of progressive forces from throughout southeastern Michigan and is endorsed by a host of organizations and coalitions dealing with education, water rights, housing, police misconduct and other issues.

Speakers and artists participating during the course of the rally and march also included: People’s lawyers Vanessa Fluker and Alice Jennings addressing issues involving housing and water rights; Elena Herrada, an elected member of the Detroit Board of Education in exile, still subjected to the emergency management of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder; Cong. John Conyers, who drafted and pushed through the federal holiday bill recognizing Dr. King which went into effect in 1986; two of the offspring of Detroit-based Civil Rights martyr Viola Liuzzo, Tony and Mary; Joe Mchahwar of Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) spoke on the plight of the people of Syria and the role of the U.S. and Israel in the continuing oppression of the peoples of the Middle East; Melissa Mays of Flint whose pioneering work exposed the crimes committed by Governor Snyder in poisoning the children and adults of this industrial city, which now has become the focus of worldwide news reports; Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American writer and Adjunct Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School explained the central role of Palestinian oppression in the political developments in the Middle East; among others.

Music was supplied by Bobbi Thompson of Central United Methodist Church, the Director of the Deep River Choir. Additional singing was provided by the Flowtown Revue, a group of activists concerned about the massive water shutoffs in Detroit.

After a more than two hour rally, a march was held through downtown Detroit walking pass several key locations: the 36^th District Court to demonstrate against foreclosures and evictions; the Wayne County Jail to protest the mass incarceration of African Americans and other oppressed peoples; the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) in opposition to water shutoffs proclaiming that water is a human right; and through the financial district saying bailout the people and not the banks.

Marchers returned to the Church for a community meal supplied by the Detroit Wobbly Kitchen where hundreds were served. A cultural program was then held coordinated by award-winning Poet Aurora Harris, a Broadside Press author and lecturer at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

Numerous artists, musicians and poets presented their works including: Wardell Montgomery, Joe Kidd and Sheila Burke Music, Wanda Olugbala, Jim Perkinson, Shushanna Shakur, Susan Sunshine, and many more.

Tracy Mathews, a longtime Detroit community activist, who has been a logistical volunteer at the Detroit MLK Day for the last six years, said the January 18 event was the best so far. “My interaction with Pastor Cori Bush provided insight into the struggle in Ferguson and was inspirational.”

This annual commemoration which seeks to evoke the social justice and anti-war legacy of MLK, was founded in 2004 amid the early months of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI). By 2005, a Detroit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Planning Committee was organized bringing in veteran Civil Rights activists along with youth and workers.

The event for 2016 was co-sponsored and endorsed by the ACLU of Michigan; Avalon Bakery; Detroit Eviction Defense; the Green Party of Michigan; the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs; Workers World Party; FIST; the League of Revolutionaries for a New America; the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights; Linda Szysko; Judith Quick Thompson; UAW Local 140 Civil Rights Committee; UAW Local 160; Veterans for Peace, Chapter 74, MI; Autoworker Caravan; Detroit Light Brigade; Dr. Gloria Aneb House; Jewish Voice for Peace; Metro-Detroit Coalition of Labor Union Women; the Pan-African News Wire; Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice; The Truth Telling Project; Water You Fighting For; We the People of Detroit; National Boricua Human Rights Network; Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; the Jamaica Project; Huntington Woods Peace, Citizenship & Education Project; Advocates for Informed Nonviolent Social Change; among others.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) attempted to launch counter-offensive in the Al-Bab Plateau in the province of Aleppo last weekend. However, the militants weren’t able to break the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) defensive positions.

Heavy clashes also were observed in the area of Ayn Al-Bayda where Liwaa Suqour Al-Sahra and the SAA repeal another offensive attempt of the militants. After the fall of Salma, the pro-government forces are continuing to gain momentum in the Latakia province. Recently, the Syrian forces took control of the villages of Kadin, Duwayrikah, Mrouniyat, Kurt Fawqani and the areas of Kurt Tahtani, Kuzbar Mount, Sundian Mount, Alkndisih and Beit Afeefah. Thus, the SAA and its allies are advancing in the direction of the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour located at the M4 highway.

The SAA and the NDF advanced on the concentration centers of the militant groups in the Sheikh Meskeen region of the Dara’a province. Also, the pro-government forces attacked the militants positions in al-Balad. Southwest of Gharz Prison in the Southern part of Dara’a city was also the scene of fierce clashes. Pro-Syrian sources report that the militants suffered heavy casualties.

On Jan.16 the Russian army launched humanitarian operations in Syria. The first humanitarian aid consignment has been delivered by Russian aircrafts to the city of Deir ez-Zor.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, some international non-governmental organizations have been already delivering humanitarian aid to Syria. However, this aid is mostly being delivered to the areas controlled by militants where most of this aid gets into the hands of extremists and is used for terrorist formations’ supplies.

On Jan.17, Jordanian Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Mohammad Momani stated that supporters of ISIS are among Syrian refugees in the camps near the Syrian-Jordanian border. About 12,000 Syrian refugees are in these camps. There is nothing new in the fact that terrorist groups including ISIS use refugee camps especially in Turkey as rear bases for operations in Syria. However, this statement could mark a shift in the Jordanian strategy in this situation. It’s hard to believe that militants were able to successfully use refugee camps at the border without unofficial support of the Jourdanian special services.

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence remembers, last week, Russia set up a joint war room with Jordan to coordinate anti-ISIS military operations in Syria.

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“Peddling fiction” …this is what Mr. Obama said of anyone who believes and says the U.S. has a weak economy.

How ironic he should say this when he did, the State of the Union address?

I mean the timing could not have been any better! In a week where oil prices hit a 14 year low, freight rates at over 30 year lows, equity, credit and FOREX markets all over the world crashing and derivatives blowing up. How do we know derivatives are blowing up? Simply because the Dallas Fed has given their banks permission not to mark energy debt to market. In essence, the Fed has instructed their banks TO PEDDLE FICTION!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale

One must ask the question(s), how can the Fed really do this as accounting firms must sign off on any audits or official financial reports?  Do the accounting firms also get “special waivers” to lie or as our fearless leader says “peddle fiction”? Also, how can the Fed really do this with a straight face? Did they really believe the markets would not sniff this out?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-17/us-bank-counterparty-risk-soars-after-energy-mtm-debacle

Just as I was about to send this post out, the Dallas Fed responded to Zerohedge and said they did not “issue such guidance to banks”, the follow up story is here

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-18/fed-responds-zero-hedge-here-are-some-follow-questions

I personally hope this is true as “reality” will be pulled forward, …one can hope! (This is a very important revelation, I plan to write againtomorrow regarding the Dallas Fed’s denial tweet).

Now, we await to hear individual names of “who” is in trouble. We have already seen Glencore and other commodity trading group bonds collapse. The credit markets have already discovered Citi and Wells Fargo have just “non” reserved for almost no losses in their energy portfolio. Is this credible? Somewhere $500 billion and $1 trillion has been lent into the energy industry over the last 30 months …with probably a minimum expected oil price of $70, is ANYONE profitable at $29? The rubber will surely meet the road in this market!

While on the subject of fictional accounting, foreign central banks have off loaded some $1 trillion worth of “reserves”, specifically U.S. Treasury securities. There is only one problem with this, there has been no accounting anywhere publicly on the other side of these trades. Who bought these Treasuries to provide the cash? Where are they accounted for? Most probably the ONLY place where this size transaction could be done in the darkness of night would be the ESF (Exchange Stabilization Fund chartered in the 1930’s). For $1 trillion worth of securities to go unaccounted is not small potatoes, the only other such “misplacement” was back in Sept. 2001 when it turned out the military could not account for $2.3 trillion but that was overshadowed the following day with the “other” news.

As for peddling fiction, if the BLS used the “old fashioned” unemployment numbers (U-6) they used to report, the U.S. would have 9.9% unemployment. If they decided to go entirely non fiction the number according to John Williams is 23%! In a nation of 330 million, we have 94 million “no longer in the work force” and 46 million unable to feed themselves …30% and 15% respectively. Are these 94 million, independently wealthy and do not need work? If we were living in a day of still photographs and radios, the food lines could mostly be hidden. Since we live in a world where everything you do is recorded, these “food lines” are erased by EBT transfer payments …problem solved (at least publicly)!

A little off subject but how about the timing of the Iran deal? They are now allowed to sell oil at what Wall Street has already called “bottom”? Are we now looking for another, future bottom? Also, they now get their hands on somewhere near $150 billion in previously tied up funds. What will happen to the institutions who will need to credit these funds and forward to Eastern institutions? Another question, one many have simply laughed off as not doable …what if Iran took a “small” amount, say $10 billion and bought gold with it? What if they had a “crazy” (and angry) man at the helm and decided to take those funds and bid for every gold ounce for sale on the planet? Might this be a financial nuclear bomb …? I am not saying they will do anything other than tend to their own business with these funds, what I AM saying is, we just handed them a very big and very loaded financial gun!

Folks, it is what it is and the global margin call is being issued with no hope of it being met. The real economy is now contracting with a financial economy more leveraged and in debt than ever before under any measurement. “Less income and less cash flow to service more debt than in all of history” … this is not fiction, it is stark reality. Now, we must watch to see what the responses will be as the markets overwhelm all plunge protection teams, central banks and sovereign treasuries. In plain street language, the markets are now far larger and far more disorderly than the smoke, mirrors, lies and abilities of the financial puppeteers to handle.

We will shortly be hearing individual “names” as we did back in 2008. Names like Fannie and Freddy, Lehman and Merrill, Citi and AIG. Once you begin to hear “names”, we will be very close to the plug being pulled on markets. When you hear individual names it will be like blood in the shark infested waters of the speculators. These names will be attacked to the death. Counterparty risk will be back, first and foremost in decision making, NO ONE will be trusted. Credit markets will begin (they already are) to seize up and the only “policy option” will be to unplug the computers! I wish it were all fiction! 

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. (Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.)

Britain’s aiding and abetting of the brutal, head chopping, summarily executing, flogging regime of Saudi Arabia continues unabated.

In spite of a “Letter before action sent as threat of legal action over arms export licences to Saudi Arabia increases …” (1) by London law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of Campaign Against the Arms Trade: “ … challenging the government’s decision to export arms despite increasing evidence that Saudi forces are violating international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen … “, it transpires that UK military advisors are also “working alongside Saudi bomb targeters.”

According to the Daily Telegraph:

“British military advisers are in control rooms assisting the Saudi-led coalition staging bombing raids across Yemen that have killed thousands of civilians, the Saudi Foreign Minister and the Ministry of Defence have confirmed.” (2)

Briefing the Telegraph and other journalists the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said that the UK and other countries in the control centre: “ … are aware of the target lists.”

The “target list” would seem to have included five attacks on schools, disrupting the remaining shreds of normality for 6,500 children. “In some cases the schools were struck more than once, suggesting the strikes were deliberately targeted”, states a report by Amnesty International. (3)

“In October 2015 the Science and Faith School in Beni Hushayash, Sana’a was attacked on four separate occasions within the space of a few weeks. The third strike killed three civilians and wounded more than 10 people.” The only school in the village, it provided education for 1,200 students.

In the village of Hadhran, the Kheir School: “also suffered multiple air strikes causing extensive damage, rendering it unusable.” In the same village two civilian homes and a mosque were bombed, two children were killed, their mother injured, with one man killed and another injured whilst praying in the mosque.

The director of another school in Hodeidah city, the al-Shaymeh Education Complex for Girls, which catered for some 3,200 students described her horror after the school came under attack twice within a matter of days in August 2015 killing two people. No students were present at the school during the attack, but a man and woman were killed. (All emphases added.)

“I felt that humanity has ended. I mean, a place of learning, to be hit in this way, without warning… where is humanity … “ she asked.

The al-Asma school in Mansouriya, was destroyed in a bombing in August. However, these horrors barely scrape the surface of the criminal and humanitarian outrage.

Yemen’s Ministry of Education showed Amnesty data revealing more than 1,000 schools inoperable, 254 completely destroyed, 608 partially damaged and 421 being used as shelter by those displaced by the Saudi led, UK assisted onslaught.

The UK is subject to the Arms Trade Treaty which entered in to force on the 24^th December 2014 and which Britain has both signed and ratified (2^nd April 2014) which prohibits arms transfers: “ … if they have knowledge that the arms would be used to commit attacks against civilians, civilian objects or other violations of international humanitarian law.”

Britain “have knowledge that … arms would be used … against civilians or civilian objects” – it is seemingly also helping to plan them, with the US also providing arms and “intelligence.”

The targets for which the UK surely share responsibility also include three medical facilities supported by Medecins Sans Frontieres, the latest on 10^th January, a hospital in Saada in the north of the country resulting in six deaths by the 17^th January, in which eight were also injured, two critically.

“This is the third severe incident affecting an MSF health facility in Yemen in the last three months. On 27 October Haydan hospital was destroyed by an airstrike … and on 3 December a health centre in Taiz was also hit”, with nine people wounded.

The exact co-ordinates of the facilities had been given to the Saudi led, British advised coalition, as they had when the US bombed the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on 3^rd October 2015.

It seems giving details of humanitarian facilities to trained killers is interpreted as an invitation to become target practice.

Other potential war crimes have included destruction of the Al-Sham water bottling factory, killing thirteen workers about to head home from the night shift and: “markets, apartment buildings and refugee camps … eleven people in a mosque.” (4)

Also destroyed last September was formerly one of the country’s largest employers, the ceramics factory, where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stated they had found definitive proof a UK made Marconi Cruise Missile used in the destruction.

Amnesty also stated that they had: “found evidence of apparent war crimes in connection with thirteen airstrikes around the north-eastern Saada region, which killed about one hundred civilians including fifty nine women and twenty two children.” (Guardian 25^th November 2015.)

Some population centres are so comprehensively decimated that survivors wonder if they are finally safe, since there is nothing left to bomb.  Doctor Natalie Roberts, working with MSF, told the New York Times (see 4) of women giving birth in caves, feeling them the safest places.

The human cost, as ever, defies imagination: “Omar Mohammed al-Ghaily, 28, sat in the center of town, near the ruins of his clothing store … The strikes killed Seif Ahmed Seif, who owned an umbrella store. Mr. Ghaily kept Mr. Seif’s identity card, maybe to return it one day to his daughter, who lives far away in Taiz. He kept coming to the rubble, he said, because he had ‘no place to go.’ “

Elsewhere, when locals tried to dig the barber from the rubble of his shop: “We found only his legs.” Bombs being dropped range from 250 pounds to 2,000 pounds. Yet last September the US was: “finalizing a deal to provide more weapons to Saudi Arabia including missiles for its F-15 fighter jets. Yemen’s population is just 24.41 million (2013 figure.)

Between March and September 2015, Britain issued thirty seven arms export licences for arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, pointed out a correspondent to the Guardian, noting: “The UK boasts that it has ‘one of the most rigorous and transparent export control regimes in the world.’ If this really is the case, the government needs to immediately suspend all arms transfers to the conflict and launch an investigation into how these weapons have been used.” (5)

Whilst the Ministry of Defence continues its mantra of having one of: “the most robust arms export control regimes in the world”, unease is growing amongst government legal advisers, with one from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office telling the Independent (27^th November 2015): “There are many Elizabeth Wilmshursts around here at the moment. Not all are being listened to”, referring to the senior government legal advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who resigned in March 2003 because she was convinced of the illegality of the proposed attack on Iraq. She had worked with the Department since 1974.

It can only be hoped that some of the “many Elizabeth Wilmshursts” will publicly call time on David Cameron’s government’s collusion in atrocities in Yemen and that Leigh Day and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade legal initiative bears fruit. Justice for so much in the region has been long delayed.

 Notes

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/britain-and-saudi-arabia-collusion-in-barbarism/5500661
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/12102089/UK-military-working-alongside-Saudi-bomb-targeters-in-Yemen-war.html
3. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/bombing-of-schools-by-saudi-arabia-led-coalition-in-yemen/
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/world/middleeast/airstrikes-hit-civilians-yemen-war.html?_r=0
5. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/yemen-and-the-scandal-of-uk-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia

Nearly 18 months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, one of the troubling mysteries is why the U.S. government – after rushing to blame Russia and ethnic Russian rebels – then went silent, effectively obstructing the investigation into 298 deaths, writes Robert Parry.

As the whodunit mystery surrounding the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 nears the 1½-year mark, the Obama administration could open U.S. intelligence files and help bring justice for the 298 people killed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Instead, a separate mystery has emerged: why has the U.S. government clammed up since five days after the tragedy?

Immediately after the crash, senior Obama administration officials showed no hesitancy in pointing fingers at the ethnic Russian rebels who were then resisting a military offensive by the U.S.-backed Kiev regime. On July, 20, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on TV talk shows claiming there was a strong circumstantial case implicating the rebels and their Russian backers in the shoot-down.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

After mentioning some information gleaned from “social media,” Kerry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “But even more importantly, we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

Two days later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a “Government Assessment,” also citing “social media” seeming to implicate the rebels. Then, this white paper listed military equipment allegedly supplied by Russia to the rebels. But the list did not include a Buk missile battery or other high-powered anti-aircraft missiles capable of striking MH-17, which had been flying at around 33,000 feet.

The DNI also had U.S. intelligence analysts brief a few select mainstream reporters, but the analysts conveyed much less conviction than their superiors may have wished, indicating that there was still great uncertainty about who was responsible.

The Los Angeles Times article said:

“U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [the designation for a Russian-made anti-aircraft Buk missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.”

That uncertainty meshed somewhat with what I had been told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts shortly after the shoot-down about what they had seen in high-resolution satellite photos, which they said showed what looked like Ukrainian military personnel manning the battery which was believed to have fired the missile.

There is also an important distinction to make between the traditional “Intelligence Assessment,” which is the U.S. intelligence community’s gold standard for evaluating an issue, complete with any disagreements among the 16 intelligence agencies, and a “Government Assessment,” like the one produced in the MH-17 case.

As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote: “The key difference between the traditional ‘Intelligence Assessment’ and this relatively new creation, a ‘Government Assessment,’ is that the latter genre is put together by senior White House bureaucrats or other political appointees, not senior intelligence analysts. Another significant difference is that an ‘Intelligence Assessment’ often includes alternative views, either in the text or in footnotes, detailing disagreements among intelligence analysts, thus revealing where the case may be weak or in dispute.”

In other words, a “Government Assessment” is an invitation for political hacks to manufacture what was called a “dodgy dossier” when the British government used similar tactics to sell the phony case for war with Iraq in 2002-03.

Demonizing Putin

Yet, despite the flimsiness of the “blame-Russia-for-MH-17” case in July 2014, the Obama administration’s rush to judgment proved critical in whipping up the European press to demonize President Vladimir Putin, who became the Continent’s bete noire accused of killing 298 innocent people. That set the stage for the European Union to accede to U.S. demands for economic sanctions on Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a state visit to Austria on June 24, 2014. (Official Russian government photo)

The MH-17 case was deployed like a classic piece of “strategic communication”or “Stratcom,” mixing propaganda with psychological operations to put an adversary at a disadvantage. Apparently satisfied with that result, the Obama administration stopped talking publicly, leaving the impression of Russian guilt to corrode Moscow’s image in the public mind.

But the intelligence source who spoke to me several times after he received additional briefings about advances in the investigation said that as the U.S. analysts gained more insights into the MH-17 shoot-down from technical and other sources, they came to believe the attack was carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military with ties to a hard-line Ukrainian oligarch. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts” and “The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case.”]

But that conclusion – if made public – would have dealt another blow to America’s already shaky credibility, which has never recovered from the false Iraq-WMD claims in 2002-03. A reversal also would embarrass Kerry, other senior U.S. officials and major Western news outlets, which had bought into the Russia-did-it narrative. Plus, the European Union might reconsider its decision to sanction Russia, a key part of U.S. policy in support of the Kiev regime.

Still, as the MH-17 mystery dragged on into 2015, I inquired about the possibility of an update from the DNI’s office. But a spokeswoman told me that no update would be provided because the U.S. government did not want to say anything to prejudice the ongoing investigation. In response, I noted that Kerry and the DNI had already done that by immediately pointing the inquiry in the direction of blaming Russia and the rebels.

But there was another purpose in staying mum. By refusing to say anything to contradict the initial rush to judgment, the Obama administration could let Western mainstream journalists and “citizen investigators” on the Internet keep Russia pinned down with more speculation about its guilt in the MH-17 shoot-down.

So, silence became the better part of candor. After all, pretty much everyone in the West had judged Russia and Putin guilty. So, why shake that up?

The Ukrainian Buks

Yet, what has become clear after the initial splurge of U.S. blame-casting is that U.S. intelligence lacked key evidence to support Kerry’s hasty judgments. Despite intensive overhead surveillance of eastern Ukraine in summer 2014, U.S. and other Western intelligence services could find no evidence that Russia had ever given a Buk system to the rebels or introduced one into the area.

Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft missile battery.

Satellite intelligence – reviewed both before and after the shoot-down – only detected Ukrainian Buk missile systems in the conflict zone. One could infer this finding from the fact that the DNI on July 22, 2014, did not allege that Buks were among the weapons systems that Russia had provided. If Russian-supplied Buks had been spotted – and the batteries of four 16-foot-long missiles hauled around by trucks are hard to miss – their presence surely would have been noted.

But one doesn’t need to infer this lack of evidence. It was spelled out in a little-noticed report by the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) that was made public last October when the Dutch Safety Board issued its findings on the causes of the doomed MH-17 flight. (Since the flight had originated in Amsterdam and carried many Dutch passengers, Netherlands took a lead role in the investigation.)

Dutch intelligence, which as part of NATO would have access to sensitive overhead surveillance and other relevant data, reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine – capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet – belonged to the Ukrainian government.

MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.”

But the intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capacity:

“Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”

MIVD noted that on June 29, 2014, “the Separatists captured a Ukrainian armed forces military base in Donetsk [where] there were Buk missile systems,” a fact that was reported in the press before the crash and attracted MIVD’s attention.

“During the course of July, several reliable sources indicated that the systems that were at the military base were not operational,” MIVD said. “Therefore, they could not be used by the Separatists.”

In other words, it is fair to say – based on the affirmative comments from MIVD and the omissions from the U.S. DNI’s “Government Assessment” – that the Western powers had no evidence that the ethnic Russian rebels or their Russian allies had operational Buk missiles in eastern Ukraine, but Ukraine did.

It also would have made sense that Ukraine would be moving additional anti-aircraft systems close to the border because of a feared Russian invasion as the Ukrainian military pressed its “anti-terrorism operation” against ethnic Russians fighters. They were resisting the U.S.-backed coup of Feb. 22, 2014, which had ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.

According to the Dutch Safety Board report, issued last October, a Ukrainian warplane had been shot down by a suspected air-to-air missile (presumably from a Russian fighter) on July 16, 2014, meaning that Ukrainian defenses were probably on high alert. The Russian military also claimed that Ukraine had activated a radar system that is used to guide Buk missiles.

Gunning for Putin?

I was told by the intelligence source that U.S. analysts looked seriously at the possibility that the intended target was President Putin’s official plane returning from a state visit to South America. His aircraft and MH-17 had similar red-white-and-blue markings, but Putin took a more northerly route and arrived safely in Moscow.

A side-by-side comparison of the Russian presidential jetliner and the Malaysia Airlines plane.

Other possible scenarios were that a poorly trained and undisciplined Ukrainian squad mistook MH-17 for a Russian plane that had penetrated Ukrainian airspace or that the attack was willful provocation designed to be blamed on the Russians.

Whoever the culprits and whatever their motive, one point that should not have remained in doubt was where the missile launch occurred. Remember that just three days after the crash, Secretary Kerry had said U.S. intelligence detected the launch and “We know where it came from.”

But last October, the Dutch Safety Board still hadn’t pinned down anything like a precise location. The report could only place the launch site within a 320-square-kilometer area in eastern Ukraine, covering territory then controlled by both Ukrainian and rebel forces. (The safety board did not seek to identify which side fired the fateful missile).

By contrast, Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk systems, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location and placed it in a much smaller area near the village of Zaroshchenskoye, about 20 kilometers west of the Dutch Safety Board’s zone and in an area under Ukrainian government control.

So, with the firing location a key point in dispute, why would the U.S. government withhold from a NATO ally (and investigators into a major airline disaster) the launch point for the missile? Presumably, if the Obama administration had solid evidence showing that the launch came from rebel territory, which was Kerry’s insinuation, U.S. officials would have been only too happy to provide the data.

A reasonable conclusion from the failure to share this information with the Dutch investigators is that the data does not support the preferred U.S. government narrative. If there’s a different explanation for the silence, the Obama administration has failed to provide it.

Amid the curious U.S. silence, the most significant public finding by Western intelligence is that the only powerful and operational anti-aircraft-missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, belonged to the Ukrainian military.

Nevertheless, the mainstream “conventional wisdom” remains that either the ethnic Russian rebels or the Russians themselves shot down MH-17 and have sought to cover up their guilt.

Some of this certainty comes from the simpleminded game of repeating that Buk missiles are “Russian-made,” which is true but irrelevant to the issue of who fired the missiles, since the Ukrainian military possesses Russian-made Buks.

But much of this “group think” can be credited to the speed with which the Obama administration got its narrative out immediately citing dubious “social media” and exploiting the West’s disdain toward Russian President Putin. He was a ready-made villain for the story.

Lying First

A similar case occurred in 1983 when Korean Airlines Flight 007 penetrated deeply into Soviet territory and was pursued by a Soviet fighter that – after issuing warnings that were ignored – shot the plane down believing it was an enemy military aircraft. Though the Soviets quickly realized they had made a terrible mistake, the Reagan administration wanted to use the incident to paint the “evil empire” in the evilest of tones.

So, Reagan’s propagandists edited the ground-control intercepts to make it appear that the Soviets had committed willful murder, a theme that was presented to the United Nations and was gullibly lapped up by the mainstream U.S. news media.

The fuller story only came out in 1995 with a book entitled Warriors of Disinformation by Alvin A. Snyder, who had been director of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division. He described how the tapes were edited “to heap as much abuse on the Soviet Union as possible.”

In a boastful but frank description of the successful disinformation campaign, Snyder noted that “the American media swallowed the U.S. government line without reservation. Said the venerable Ted Koppel on the ABC News ‘Nightline’ program: ‘This has been one of those occasions when there is very little difference between what is churned out by the U.S. government propaganda organs and by the commercial broadcasting networks.’”

Snyder concluded, “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.”

In the case of MH-17, however, the falsehoods and deceptions are not simply some spy-vs.-spy propaganda game of gotcha, but rather obstruction of justice in a mass murder investigation. Whatever evidence the Obama administration has, it should have long since been made available to the investigators, but – so far – the official Dutch reports have indicated no such assistance.

While the U.S. government maintains its official silence, the Russian manufacturer has tried to provide details about the functioning of various generations of Buks and challenged the conclusion from the Dutch Safety Board of precisely which model likely brought down MH-17. The Dutch Safety Board cited a 9M38M1 missile using a 9N314M warhead that dispersed “butterfly or bow-tie” fragments that ripped through MH-17’s fuselage.

But Almaz-Antey reported that only older warheads and missiles of the 9M38 type have that signature. “The 9M38M1 missile has no H-shaped striking elements,” Almaz-Antey executive Yan Novikov said. According to the manufacturer, the Russian army had phased 9M38 missiles out years ago, but they remained part of Ukraine’s arsenal.

On Jan. 14, the Russian aviation agency issued its own report critical of the Dutch Safety Board’s understanding of the Buk models, saying that “the strike elements” in the 9N314M warhead did not match the composition of what was recovered from MH-17. Yet, the Dutch-led criminal investigation, which is being partly run by the Ukrainian government, has shown little interest in the Russian information.

‘Citizen Journalists’

The inquiry has been much more welcoming of leads from Bellingcat, a group of “citizen journalists” led by British blogger Eliot Higgins.

Despite having made significant mistakes in an earlier investigation of the Syria-sarin case in 2013 – including misstating the range of suspect missiles – Higgins has been treated as something of a savant on the MH-17 case, basing his analysis on photographs that popped up the Internet purportedly showing a Buk missile system heading eastward from Donetsk shortly before MH-17 was shot down.

Although one of the first lessons anyone learns about the Internet is to be cautious about what you find there, Higgins and Bellingcat relied on the images to conclude that this battery was dispatched from Russia under the command of Russian forces. The bloggers went so far as to send a list of Russian soldiers’ names as suspects to the MH-17 criminal investigators.

There are, of course, problems with this sort of theorizing. First, it assumes that the photos on the Internet are genuine and not cleverly photo-shopped fakes. The Internet can be a devil’s playground for both amateur and professional disinformationists.

But even assuming that the photos are real, there is the question of why – if this cumbersome weapons system was lumbering around eastern Ukraine apparently for weeks – did Western intelligence services not detect it from overhead surveillance either before or after the shoot-down? From Bellingcat’s Internet photos, it appears there was no effort to conceal the Buk system, which curiously was headed eastward toward Russia, not westward from Russia.

Correspondent Michael Unsher of Australia’s “60 Minutes” claims to have found the billboard visible in a video of a BUK missile launcher after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes”)

 Higgins also directed an Australian TV film crew to the supposed site in Luhansk where the Buk battery, minus one missile, supposedly made its getaway back into Russia. However, the location that the Australian crew filmed clearly was the wrong place. None of the landmarks matched up, but this journalistic fraud did nothing to diminish Bellingcat’s sterling reputation with mainstream Western news outlets which routinely repeat the group’s allegations. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Reckless Stand-upper on MH-17.”]

It turns out that it is an excellent business model for “citizen” bloggers to find “evidence” on the Internet to reinforce whatever the U.S. government’s propagandists are claiming. Since the U.S. government’s credibility is shaky at best, young hip Internet readers are more inclined to trust what they hear from bloggers – and when the bloggers echo what Washington claims, the mainstream media and well-funded think tanks will join in the applause.

Latest Speculation

Earlier this month, Bellingcat’s speculation identifying Russian soldiers as MH-17 suspects based on their assignment to a Buk battery was splashed across the international press, including Dutch television, London’s Telegraph and the British Guardian. The U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty headlined its story, “Russian Soldiers Said Involved in Downing of MH17 Airliner,” complete with photos of Russian soldiers with their eyes blacked out, courtesy of Bellingcat.

“The Britain-based Bellingcat group said it had identified up to 100 Russian soldiers who may have knowledge of the movements of the Buk missile launcher that destroyed the Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 on board,” RFE/RL reported, citing a quote that Higgins gave to the Telegraph: “We have the names and photos of the soldiers in the June convoy who traveled with the MH17 Buk, their commanders, their commanders’ commanders, etc.”

Higgins told Dutch TV channel NOS that Belligcat believed that at least 20 soldiers in an air-defense unit based in Kursk “probably” either fired the missile or know who fired it.

The Dutch-led prosecution team, which collaborates with the Ukrainian government and nations that suffered large numbers of deaths from the crash including Australia and Malaysia, welcomed the Bellingcat information and promised to “seriously study it.”

Not that the prosecution team has asked or appears interested, but one could also give the sleuths a list of Americans who almost certainly have knowledge about who fired the missile and from exactly where: CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama.

Any one of those officials could end the strange silence that has enveloped the U.S. government’s knowledge about the MH-17 shoot-down since five days after the tragedy and – by doing so – perhaps they could finally bring some clarity and justice to this mystery.

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 key Australian founding myth was that no civilised people occupied this island-continent before British colonisation. From that piece of fiction the rights of more than 400 indigenous peoples, their ownership of land and their very existence could be ignored. They could be treated as if they did not exist.

Based on that central myth (eventually put into a legal doctrine called ‘terra nullius’) grew an ugly garden of racist practice: the ethnic-cleansing of Australia’s fertile river valleys; the colonisation and enslavement of the Pacific Islands peoples; the ‘White Australia Policy’; racialised immigration; engagement in a string of overseas imperial wars; and unique forms of physical and cultural genocide, which included concentration camps and stealing indigenous children from their families.

That colonial mentality has wider implications, and taints Australian approaches to conflict in Syria and the Middle East, based as they often are on an underlying assumption that Syrian and other Middle Eastern people do not exist, except perhaps as victims or refugees. Many who knew very little about Syria moved rapidly to condemn and attack the Styria Government, or cheer on unknown ‘revolutionaries’, as urged by Washington. No need was seen to speak with, recognise or respect the representatives and institutions of the Syrian people. Talking with Syrians or visiting Syria was effectively banned.

‘Racism’ is a term probably over-used, to include simple individual prejudice and ignorance. That trivialises the word. Yet all deep racial legacies stem from this colonial mentality, which denies the existence of other peoples while seeking to dominate, dispossess and displace them. This denial requires ideologies of systematic exclusion and dehumanisation.

The recent Australian Government approach combines these racial assumptions with a long standing, subordinate collaboration with the big power. And it is a sad historical fact that collaborators often try too hard to impress. They can sound more extreme than their masters, anxious to demonstrate their loyalty yet also keen to prove to the world they have something other than sycophancy to contribute.

So it is with Canberra’s Middle East policy. In the same week (in November 2015) that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop put on a brave face at Australia’s exclusion from the Vienna talks on Syria, her government presented the absurd claim that Australia was ‘the second largest international contributor’ to the military campaign ‘against ISIS’ in Iraq and Syria. Notice that Australia has coordinated precisely nothing with Syria. Bishop is referring to her commitments to Washington.

Australia’s dependent foreign relations are conditioned by its racialist history. To back Washington’s ‘regime change’ line – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria – Canberra has pretended that these other peoples do not exist, or at least that they have no voice, no organisation and no representatives.

Even reading the Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Russian media on the Middle East is disdained, if not prohibited, because those nations are either not recognised or are somehow disqualified. This is deep racism, and the peculiar dilemma of a sub-imperial power with an unresolved colonial history. The narratives of others must be authorised and mediated by the great power.

Minister Bishop has not been the greatest authority on the Middle East region. In late 2012 – while appropriately criticising her Labor predecessor, Senator Bob Carr, over his outrageous call for the assassination of the Syrian President – she exposed her ignorance by claiming that al Qaeda and Lebanon’s Hezbollah were both fighting the Syrian Government (Bishop 2012). In fact, Hezbollah has always been a close ally of secular Syria.

Nevertheless, a role was seen for Australia in pretending to reshape Syria. Ignorance has never been a barrier to colonial-style intervention. The new conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, while certainly more articulate than his predecessor Tony Abbott, set out on that difficult tightrope all sycophants have to walk. His initial message, as reported by Mark Kenny in the Sydney Morning Herald, was that ‘Mr Turnbull’s position is in lock-step with the Obama White House’ (Kenny 2015).

On the other hand, and on the same day, according to Philip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review, Australia ‘has had a different starting point to the US’ (Coorey 2015). The difference, supposedly, is ‘pragmatism and compromise’. The context was a western retreat from the imperious demand that ‘Assad must go’, though it is not clear what Australia contributed to this. In any case, Canberra was said to have been playing a ‘constructive role’.

This ‘distinct’ role seems to mean that – while both PM Turnbull and the very uncharismatic Labor leader Bill Shorten repeat Washington’s abusive mantras about Syria and President Assad – some form of ‘transitional’ power sharing may be possible. As though Canberra would have any say in the matter. Anyway, it was expected to say something.

This ‘poodle pie’ is a difficult dish to cook, but history tells us that extreme loyalty has been the main ingredient. Back in 1966 conservative PM Harold Holt coined the phrase ‘All the way with LBJ’, emphasising Canberra’s commitment to US President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s disastrous war in Vietnam, which would fail only after destroying the lives of three million Vietnamese people.

Forty years later the conservative Howard Government was Washington’s willing fool for a last minute manoeuvre to frustrate Cuba’s annual motion at the UN, to condemn the US economic blockade of the Caribbean island. These motions, consistent with international law, had always passed with overwhelming support. However, urged on by the US, Australia proposed a gratuitous amendment, critical of Cuba.

Cuba’s then Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque reacted by calling the Australian approach one of ‘pocket imperialism’ (imperialismo de bolsillo). He lashed Canberra for its support for the US torture camp at Guantanamo, declaring that Canberra, which had submitted its Aboriginal population to ‘a real apartheid-like regime, had no moral authority to criticise Cuba’ (Prensa Latina 2006). The proposed amendment failed and Australia voted with Cuba. It was a pointless intervention, only carried out to impress Washington. It was humiliating too because, just a few years later, Canberra felt obliged to develop a foreign aid partnership with Cuba, which by then had become the major medical trainer in the pacific islands.

This Australian sycophancy has been bipartisan. In 2010 Labor PM Julia Gillard rejected calls for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. ‘Australia will not abandon Afghanistan’, she said, in a speech where her voice was described as ‘shaking with emotion’. She expected Australia’s role in the occupation to continue ‘through this decade at least’. The following year President Obama began his ‘drawdown’ of US troops from a conflict he knew the US could not win. Gillard’s emotional display in favour of endless occupation was contrived and absurd.

In the current war, seeking overthrow of the Government of Syria by use of proxy Islamist militias, Canberra has been keen to play the role expected of it; but what is the correct line? The idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is virtually dead, having been replaced by a new ‘war on terror’. The problem here is that all the major supporters of the sectarian terror groups are the closest allies of Washington: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel (see Anderson 2015).

One thing that makes Australia’s colonial-style approach to Syria distinct has been the participation of many on the ‘left’ and in academia. Somehow the mission of ‘saving’ an unknown foreign people excites liberals enough to join forces with the more overt imperialists. This has echoes of the ‘civilising missions’ of 19^th century colonialism. A similar racial contempt can be seen across a range of ignorant but highly opinionated Australians, who happen to share most of the US State Department’s ‘talking points’ on the target nation.

For example Corey Oakley, writing in Red Flag (9 June 2015), the paper of the small Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative, claimed there were “clear signs of coordination between ISIS and the [Syrian] regime”. This was repetition of a Washington-generated myth, created to maintain an artificial distinction between the ‘moderate’ and extremist terrorist groups attacking Syria. A few days earlier the US Government had insisted that “ISIS advances on Aleppo [were] aided by Assad” (Guardian 2 June 2015). In fact, the US and its allies sponsor every single terrorist group in Syria and most of the victims of ISIS and the others are Syrian soldiers and pro-government civilians (Anderson 2015).

Oakley goes on to criticise the US for not providing arms to “rebel groups” then praises Turkey and the Saudis for “finally” deciding to do so, facilitating the jihadist invasion and ethnic cleansing in north Syria. This Jaysh al Fateh (‘Army of Conquest’) coalition was led by the al Qaeda groups Ahrar al Sham andJabhat al Nusra. In this way a small western ‘left’ group lent support to the most vicious and backward reactionaries, proxies for the big power.

Alex Chklovski in Red Flag (13 October 2015) backs another of Washington’s fictions, that the Syrian Government is founded on “narrow sectarian divisions”, echoing the ‘Alawite regime’ claims advanced by the Gulf Monarchies, Israel and Washington, because President Assad is from an Alawite family.

In fact, Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood back in 2011 called for a holy war on Syria precisely because it was a “secular regime”. The insurrectionists would have to ensure that “the revolution will be pure Islamic” (Al-Shaqfa 2011). That view has been shared by all major anti-government armed groups in Syria, as US intelligence privately observed in 2012: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq = the Islamic State in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”. The eventual plan to create a “Salafist principality” in Eastern Syria was “exactly” what Washington and its allies wanted, US intelligence admitted (DIA 2012).

Similarly, ‘Solidarity’ member Mark Goudkamp (21 May 2015) celebrates the “renewed victories for the insurgency” which came from this ‘Army of Conquest’. As thousands of sectarian fanatics from dozens of countries poured into Syria from Turkey, funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and armed with US weapons, Goudkamp repeated Washington’s false claims that the Syrian Government was worse than ISIS and had been “responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths”. There is no source for this claim, but it does mimic the Washington line. This ‘left’ rhetoric, denying the existence of a Syrian nation and celebrating extreme reactionaries as ‘revolutionaries’, helps the US smokescreen for its dirty war. Those who might otherwise have opposed this dirty war either made fools of themselves or were lulled into silence.

Pretentious interventions also come from academia. Tom Switzer of Sydney University’s U.S. Studies Centre (established with government money to counter ‘anti-Americanism’ in Australia, in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq) joins US colleagues with a proposal that both Syria and Iraq be balkanised, divided into tiny sectarian statelets. ‘Iraq and Syria as we have known them are gone. Iraq is not one people, but rather three peoples … Syria is also three peoples’, he claims (Switzer 2016). That idea has support from Tel Aviv, as it would tend to ‘normalise’ the apartheid state of Israel in a region thoroughly partitioned on sectarian lines. The idea has long been a ‘Plan B’ for Washington in both Syria and Iraq, in case they cannot tame unruly governments in Baghdad and Damascus.

The partition idea was detailed six months earlier by the US Brookings Institute (O’Hanlon 2015), which brazenly called for Washington to break its ‘Syria problem’ into ‘a number of localised components … envisioning ultimately a more confederal Syria made up of autonomous zones rather than being ruled by a strong central government’ (O’Hanlon 2015: 3). The Brookings report urges an initial two autonomous zones or ‘safe zones’ next to the borders of Jordan and Turkey, to allow ‘secure transportation lines for humanitarian as well as military supplies’.

All this, of course, would be in complete violation of international law, and only conceivable if the Syrian nation-state were destroyed and on its knees. Despite Washington’s best efforts, that is not the case. These academic ideas only have currency because ‘divide and rule’ has always suited the interests of big powers, intent on regional domination.

What is common to these pseudo-leftist and academic narratives, apart from their repetition of Washington’s talking points, is a deep contempt for Syrian people. None of the above authors pay attention to national organisations or representatives. The Syrian and Iraqi nation-states effectively do not exist. These colonial-style assertions rely almost entirely on western sources, consistent with the themes of colonial racism: refusing to listen to others’ voices, refusing to respect their organisations, in short refusing to recognise that other peoples exist.

Despite these colonial fantasies of ‘revolution’ and partition, the recent Vienna talks reaffirmed the important principle that only the Syrian people can decide their political leadership, and that Syria cannot be dismembered. Reassertion of these principles comes as Damascus finds itself in a much stronger military position, after Russian air power came to support a strong ground force led by the Syrian Arab Army and including local and neighbouring militia, the latter from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. The broader US plan is failing and, sooner rather than later, will be looking for some sort of face-saving exit.

Enter the Australian initiative of late 2015, which suggested that Syria, the one country in the region with a genuinely pluralist constitution, should abandon that in favour of the Lebanese ‘confessional’ model. This new constitution, according to PM Turnbull, was needed because Syria’s Sunni Muslims have been ‘disenfranchised’. He claims that the base of ISIS ‘is a Sunni population that has felt disenfranchised or depressed in Syria … [and has also felt] left out of the Shi’ite government [sic] in Iraq’. The implication is that a Lebanese-like system, where everyone must identify with a particular religious community, would somehow destroy the basis for sectarian terrorism. The sectarian history of Lebanon gives the lie to that.

This convoluted proposal is mixed with the proviso that it is the Syrians who must decide and that ‘dictating terms from foreign capitals is unlikely to be successful’. Quite so. But Australian proposals for a new constitution, prepared with zero Syrian input, are inconsistent with recognition of the right of the Syrian people to self-determination. Mr Turnbull seems to not recognise that Syrians have been just as opposed to the idea of a religious or sectarian state as would be most Australians.

US intelligence observed this fact back in 1982, after the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood insurrection at Hama. In a report of May that year, the US DIA noted ‘total casualties for the Hama incident probably number about 2,000. This includes an estimated 300 to 400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite ‘Secret Apparatus’ (DIA 1982: 7). The Brotherhood, in their typical way, would later inflate this to ‘40 thousand civilians’. Although the US had backed the insurrection, through their agents the Saudis, Saddam Hussein, the King of Jordan and others, US intelligence dryly concluded: ‘the Syrians are pragmatists who do not want a Muslim Brotherhood government’ (DIA 1982: vii). That last observation was quite right.

It is just as foolish to say that Sunnis Muslims are ‘disenfranchised’ in Syria as it is to say that Protestant Christians are disenfranchised in Australia, because we have had two successive Catholic Prime Ministers (Turnbull is a convert). All Syrians are full citizens, regardless of their religion and, as it happens, most ministers in the Syrian Cabinet are from Sunni Muslim families. It is equally foolish to call the Baghdad Government a ‘Shi’ite Government’, simply because most of the population and most MPs are from Shi’ia families.

Demanding that Arab and Muslim peoples be forced back into a sectarian box is old school racist ideology, used many times in the colonies, repeated by the sectarians and adopted by the big powers who see their own advantage in pushing sectarian division. The Australian PM references this idea to what he calls ‘Sunni Arab states’. That is Washington’s euphemism for the despotic Gulf monarchies, the least legitimate of all governments and the principal financiers of sectarian terrorism.

A few weeks after this ‘Turnbull initiative’ a UN Security Council resolution made it irrelevant. The UNSC called for an end to the Syrian conflict, demanding that the Syrian people decide their government, that terrorist groups be excluded from any truce and that a ‘unity’ government be formed. These principles require a Syrian vote on any possible constitutional change. However Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalled his country’s support for Syria keeping its “united multi-confessional” national constitution. Syria has voted several times on this constitution and has maintained the most progressive, pluralist constitution in the region. Lavrov, who has constantly consulted with Syria, appreciates that fact; Turnbull does not.

Subsequently the Australian government set a limit to its military commitments (training Iraqis and air campaign assistance) to the US coalition but said it would consider ‘providing humanitarian support for Syria and Iraq … in consultation with our coalition partners’ (Doran 2016). In typical colonial manner, it had not consulted Syria on ‘humanitarian support’.

The good news is that Australia’s racist interventions and weak attempts to join in the subjugation of Syria will have little influence. Iraq has decided to join with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia to defeat the western backed proxy armies: ISIS, Nusra, the Islamic Front, Ahrar al Sham and the rest.

That will mark the beginning of the end for Washington’s bloody spree of ‘regime change’ across the region, aiming at a US-led ‘New Middle East’. How much more Canberra decides to poison its relations with Syria and its neighbours, to maintain most favoured status with Washington, remains to be seen.

It is a particularly Australian dilemma to have a culture pervaded by big power collaboration and colonial racism: looking for pretexts to intervene, refusing to listen to the other people’s voices, refusing to respect their organisations, even refusing to recognise that they exist. That racism goes well beyond government and overtly imperial sub-culture, into servile academia and imperious left-liberal ideologies.

We have been deceived by the dirty war on Syria, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own history. Our main hope seems to be restoring some decent understandings through our better traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.

Tim Anderson’s book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’ will be published online by Global Research (Canada) in January 2016.

References

AAP (2015) ‘Syria crisis: Turnbull, Shorten condemn Assad’, SBS, 19 November, online: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/11/19/turnbull-shorten-get-stuck-assad

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

Anderson, Tim (2015) The Insidious Relationship between Washington and ISIS: The Evidence, Global Research, 3 September, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-relationship-between-washington-and-isis-the-evidence/5435405

Bishop, Julie (2012) ‘Syria on the brink’, Federal Member for Curtin, 6 December, online: http://www.juliebishop.com.au/syria-on-the-brink/

Chklovski, Alex (2015) ‘The left can oppose Russian intervention in in Syria without capitulating to our own rulers’, Red Flag, 13 October, online: https://redflag.org.au/article/left-can-oppose-russian-intervention-syria-without-capitulating-our-own-rulers

Coorey, Phillip (2015) ‘Vladimir Putin could accept Syria without Assad, Australia believes’, Australian Financial Review, 18 November, online: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/game-plan-to-destroy-islamic-state-20151118-gl1tbb

Coorey, Phillip (2015) ‘Malcolm Turnbull pushes US to accept deal on Assad’, Australian Financial Review, 19 November, online:http://www.afr.com/news/politics/malcolm-turnbull-pushes-us-to-accept-deal-on-assad-20151119-gl2tug

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

DIA (2012) Intelligence Report ‘R 050839Z Aug 2012’ in Judicial Watch, Pgs. 287-293 (291) JW v DOD and State 14-812, 18 May, online: http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/

Doran, Matthew (2016) ‘Islamic State: Australia declines United States request to increase military commitment in Middle East’, ABC, 13 January, online: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-13/australia-declines-us-request-to-boost-fight-in-middle-east/7087174

Goudkamp, Mark (2015) ‘Syria between Assad’s and IS’s counter-revolution’, Solidarity.net.au, 21 May, online:http://www.solidarity.net.au/imperialism/syria-between-both-assads-and-iss-counter-revolution/

Grattan, Michelle (2010) ‘Gillard talks tough on war in Afghanistan’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October, online:http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-talks-tough-on-war-in-afghanistan-20101019-16sjh.html

Kenny, Mark (2015) ‘Malcolm Turnbull slaps down the military option in Syria, calls for compromise’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November, online: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-calls-for-practical-deal-in-syria-despite-terrorists-20151118-gl1yme.html

Oakley, Corey (2015) ‘Rebels on the march in Syria’, 9 June, online: https://redflag.org.au/article/rebels-march-syria

O’Hanlon, Michael (2015) ‘Deconstructing Syria: towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country’, Center for 21st century Security and Intelligence, Brookings, 23 June, online: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/06/23-syria-strategy-ohanlon

Prensa Latina (2006) ‘Contundente victoria de Cuba en la ONU. 183 naciones manifestaron su repudio al bloqueo de Estados Unidos, cifra récord en estas votaciones’, Estados Unidos vs Cuba, 8 November, online: http://estadosunidosvscuba.blogspot.com.au/2006/11/cuba-en-naciones-unidas.html

Switzer (2016) ‘Redrawing the map is the best way to fight Islamic State’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 January, online:http://www.smh.com.au/comment/redrawing-the-map-is-the-best-way-to-fight-islamic-state-20160104-glyqq6.html

In the article entitled, “Racial Identity Returns to American Politics,” “The New York Times” attempts to explain why the US working class is being drawn to racial and ethnic issues over economic ones (Wed, Jan. 6, 2016). 

However, the NYT casts doubt on any meaningful analysis by the second sentence, stating that this question

“has long bedeviled analysts on the left, troubled that people who would largely benefit from a more robust government seem so often to vote for right-leaning politicians …”

By the third paragraph, readers are told that the Republican primary is “evolving from one surprise to the next.” Yes, racial politics is always a surprise unless we explore how racism and economic exploitation are linked in American history.

The NYT gives us the familiar tropes, of course: voters “nostalgic for the country they lived in 50 years ago,” and working people fearing that social services go predominantly to Blacks. But we must move beyond this familiar ground so comforting to Wall Street if we expect to understand how racism is perpetuated by our political system.

One book that does this very well is “Sundown Towns: The Hidden Dimension of American Racism” by James W. Loewen. Describing the reasons that towns from Maine to California expelled their black populations beginning around 1890, Loewen cites the waves of immigration that brought so many ethnic groups to this country. The Democrats, the “White Man’s Party,” capitalized on immigrants’ desire to be labeled “white” by running candidates who attacked African Americans as lazy, untrustworthy, and sexually menacing. This period was also the time of the Gilded Age, and the concomitant rise of an extremely wealthy elite. Did both political parties attack African Americans to divert attention from the obscene gap between the wealthy and the working people of our country?

Most whites living in towns and suburbs across America do not know what a sundown town is. They take their ethnic homogeneity completely for granted, attributing it to economic differences and not to racist terror. But in the years following 1890, Blacks were run out of these same towns, their houses and all their belongings usually burned. Signs were then put on the highways, reminding travelers that no African American was allowed in town after the whistle blew at 6 pm. The last sundown law in the country was overturned in Stamford CT in the 1950’s. According to a recent Brookings Institute report, the Stamford stands out in another area as well. It has the worst ratio of any large metropolitan area in the country when it comes to the gap between highest and lowest wages paid.

Ronald Reagan’s use racism for political power is better understood than what went on during the Gilded Age. Millions of Americans were urged to think of “welfare queens” as Black women supposedly taking advantage of the system. Not so readily acknowledged, however, is how Reagan’s appeal to racist hatred masked the beginning of what is being called the “Second Gilded Age.” Wages began their decades long decline for all workers while Reagan was blaming Black people on welfare. Clinton continued this attack on African Americans by gutting welfare, and enlarging the “War on Crime,” that would end up incarcerating a whole generation of Black men. As real wages continued to fall, both political parties and the media scapegoated the nation’s poorest and most oppressed minority, people of color. White, middle class America was shown a steady stream of local TV news, with Black men on the run and our nation’s white police force in steady pursuit.

Michelle Alexander’s penetrating analysis of this system-wide racism, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” is a must read even for progressive thinkers. The systemic racism she details is much worse than anyone dared to think, with millions of Black lives sacrificed to political expediency as well as to corporate profit.

While our newspaper of record scratches its head about how racial identity got mixed up with politics, let us look closer at the relationship between the New Jim Crow and the Second Gilded Age. Sanders represents progressive efforts to  force the wealthy elite to share their often ill gotten wealth with the workers of this country.

Trump preaches racism, identifying various minorities that have destroyed the American Dream. Which candidate does our media, including the NYT cover more? And are we once again seeing the evils of racism perpetrated to protect the tiny minority of billionaires at the very top?

Fred Nagel, a veteran and political activist, has written for Z Magazine, Mondoweiss, and War Crimes Times (a publication of Veterans For Peace). He also hosts a show on Vassar College Radio, WVKR (classwars.org).

This article was first published by WhoWhatWhy

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, WhoWhatWhy presents — through a fascinating collection of pictures — a brief history of American racism, a look at the kind of hatred, atrocities, and soul-searing humiliation that spurred King into action. The life of Martin Luther King, Jr. was short.  He was born in 1929 into a racist, hate-filled society with entrenched bigotry enforced by uncivilized laws.But, like Mohandas Gandhi, who took back his country from the British, Martin Luther King forced change on the United States through his inspired use of nonviolent resistance.King had guts. Think of the courage it took for him, and for those who were with him, to work the front lines.

Martin Luther King, Jr.  Photo credit: LBJ Library / Wikimedia

 

As he explained in 1957 in the journal Christian Century:This is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence…Nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness…This method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces…

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Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.Six years later, on August 28, 1963, he gave one of the greatest, most electrifying speeches ever delivered in America.

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This is how his rousing oration ended:I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

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‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

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I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice

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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.I have a dream today.I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

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What he wanted seems so simple, so natural, and so heartbreakingly normal.One year later, on December 10, 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. At the age of 35, he was the youngest man ever to have received it. Can you think of anyone who deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more than he did?On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.Below we present a brief history, told in eloquent images, of what gave rise to Martin Luther King’s crusade and kindled his dream of a better life for everyone.

Freedmen Voting in New Orleans, 1867  Picture not credited..From Harper’s Weekly 1872. Photo credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections.White Citizens League Barring Black Voters  From Harper’s Weekly, October 31, 1874..The Two Platforms. The Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln..“Of Course He Wants to Vote the Democratic Ticket,” Harper’s Weekly, 1876.Jim Crow Literacy Law“Eddikashun qualifukashun. The Black man orter be eddikated afore he kin vote with US Wites, signed Mr. Solid South.” Harper’s Weekly, January 18, 1879.Illustration by Merton Witten, 1937.Linocut by Elizabeth Catlett, 1946.Vote Against Supporters of Lynching Industry, 1922.Anti-Lynching Flyer circulated around 1922..No Dogs, Negros, Mexicans. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born the same year..Public Swimming Pool, White Only, 1931.Martin Luther King, Jr., at age 7 in 1936, the year Jesse Owens won Olympic gold..Jesse Owens, Olympic Gold Medalist, 1936.Separate and unequal, even the water fountains..“We Cater to White Trade Only,” 1938, Lancaster, Ohio  (NOTE:  Lancaster, Ohio, is in the North.).Rest Rooms, White Only.“Rex Billiard Hall for Colored,” Memphis, Tennessee, 1939.Rex Theatre for Colored People.Colored Only Entrance to a Movie Theater, Belzoni, Mississippi, 1939.Memphis, Tennessee, 1939.Colored Waiting Room, Durham, North Carolina, 1940.Section for “Colored Passengers” From America’s Black Holocaust Museum.We Wash for White People Only.Help Wanted. White Only..“We Want White Tenants Only in Our White Community.”  Detroit, 1940.Message from the Ku Klux Klan.Segregation in 1950.The resistance to integration continues..The power of ugliness..A police dog attacks a demonstrator in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963..“I am a man.”.Kill her! Kill her!On September 4, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford, age 15, and eight other African American students—known as the Little Rock Nine—tried to enter a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Elizabeth was supposed to join the others so they could go to school together, but she didn’t get the message. So she went on alone. This is what happened.Elizabeth approaches the guards. .“When I arrived the school, I went up to a guard. But the National Guard didn’t allow me to enter the school. I didn’t know what to do. I walked until I was right in front of the path to the front door.”..“The crowd was quiet. They were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I tried to enter, they raised their bayonets. They glared at me and I was very frightened. I turned around but the crowd came to me. They moved closer and closer. They started to revile, and blame me. They were shouting, ‘Kill her! Kill her!’”.“I tried to see a friendly face, someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she frowned to me. I turned back to the guards but their faces told me I wouldn’t get any help from them. It was hell…”..“Then I looked down the block and saw a bench at the bus stop. I don’t know why the bench seemed a safe place to me, but I started walking toward it. I tried to close my mind to what they were shouting and kept saying to myself ‘If I get there, I can be safe’…”.The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, 1956“. . . to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from difficulties, embarrassments, and to make his trips more enjoyable.”Esso, one of the few gas companies that would sell franchises to black entrepreneurs during that period, was a sponsor of the Negro Green Book and gave away copies at some of its stations. Esso’s Special Representative Wendell Alston wrote in an introduction to the 1949 edition, “The Negro travelers’ inconveniences are many and they are increasing because today so many more are traveling individually and in groups. The GREEN BOOK with its list of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services can most certainly help solve your travel problems.”.Woolworth Sit-In, 1960.New Orleans, 1963  Photo by John Kouns.“Go Home Niggers”  Response to School Integration, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963.Photo by John Kouns..March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. Here, King gave his “I have a Dream” speech.  Photo by Paul Schutzer..Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights, 1965  Photo by James Karales.White Protesters View the Selma March, 1965. Photo by John Kouns.KKK Sign on Highway to Selma, Alabama, 1965. Photo by John Kouns. Is the Klan still welcome in 2015?.Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow” (2010)Related front page panorama photo credit: Martin Luther King, Jr. quote Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Emijrp / Wikimedia

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was signed into law as a federal holiday in 1983. I do not wish to trivialize this accomplishment: it took great persistence by civil society groups and it had to conquer serious opposition. Yet what it has established is an indigestible paradox in the nation’s list of saints and heroes.

Recall that the jury in the 1999 civil trial examining the assassination reached a startling conclusion on December 8, 1999: US government agencies had conspired successfully to kill Dr. King.

Mainstream media carried little about this trial and verdict in 1999 and they persist in ignoring it to this day.

See Global Research article: 

Court Decision: U.S. “Government Agencies” Found Guilty in Martin Luther King’s Assassination by Carl Herman, January 18, 2016

When challenged they tend to say that the claims were muddy and confused and vulnerable to easy refutation. Actually, the plaintiffs’ case was strong, and the jury, after sitting and listening to presentation of evidence and argument from November 15 to December 8, was quickly able to reach consensus on the verdict. The great variety of evidence presented by attorney William Pepper pointed to the impossibility of the lone assassin hypothesis (James Earl Ray) and to the conspiring of several bodies, including the local police (Memphis Police Department), the mafia (local representative Frank Liberto), and federal police, intelligence and military units. In other words, the combination of forces that carried out the murder was not very different from that which had killed President Kennedy. Such was the planning, the commitment, and the determination of the assassins that there was little chance Dr. King could have survived the day. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Reading the transcript of this trial takes some time (it’s about 2700 pages long), but having done so I am impressed by attorney Pepper’s persistence and skill in getting to the heart of this matter. Yet if the findings are to have political force, and if the mainstream media persist in pretending the trial never took place, it falls to active citizens to do their part to make the trial and the findings known. They should tell people about this trial, encourage people to read it, quote from it, and emphasize its importance. They should not let it be trivialized (as the current Wikipedia article on Martin King tries to do) by pretending the claims of government conspiracy were weak and have been refuted—they have not.

King was killed not just because he was a civil rights activist, but because he was planning the Poor People’s Campaign, which would have involved nonviolent disruption of business as usual in Washington on behalf of all of the nation’s poor, whatever their colour. This made the 1% uncomfortable. King was also killed because he had passionately criticized his country’s pursuance of the Vietnam War—his major denunciation of that war at Riverside Church in New York City had taken place one year to the day before he was killed. The eloquent and uncompromising talk had made everyone from President Johnson to the U.S. military and intelligence communities uncomfortable.

Far from being confused and muddy, I think the central arguments presented in 1999 have been quite well established. Moreover, there was little sophistication in the attempts to buy off and threaten James Earl Ray, to discourage and even kill eyewitnesses, and to pretend against all evidence that government investigations had been thorough and had found nothing to seriously question the case against Ray.

The truth is that the lone gunman theory bit the dust in 1999, and anyone who attempts to resurrect it had better be able to challenge chapter and verse of this civil trial.

For those who have not read the trial transcript, I shall end with an exemplifying segment—worth quoting to friends who might be unfamiliar with it.

This material is taken directly, with only minor omissions, from the court transcript of testimony given in mid-afternoon, November 30th, 1999.

A former Memphis Yellow Cab driver, Louis Ward, is on the stand answering questions put to him by attorney William Pepper. Ward describes what a fellow cab driver, Paul Butler, saw and reported as an eyewitness to the assassination and its aftermath. Why Butler himself was not on the stand will eventually become clear.

Some of these details were reported by Butler via car radio right after the assassination, while Ward heard other details face-to-face from Butler a bit later in the day.

 “…as I raised up and looked, that rifle 
popped — it didn’t sound like a rifle, it sounded like two boards clapped together. And he said, I seen his jaw and part of his neck blowed away. It was like he had a stick of dynamite in his mouth. He said, as I wheeled and looked, I seen a cluster of smoke coming up out of the bushes, and then I seen the guy come running up. He didn’t have no rifle. But he said, I know that he is the one that had to shoot him. And then he
headed towards the — headed north towards 
the squad car.
And, of course, we thought the
police had picked him up. Because it was a
 black and white squad car… 

Q. So he’s telling you that after the
 shot he saw a man come out of the bushes –


A. Yes, sir.


Q. — run up north on Mulberry Street –


A. Yes, sir.


Q. — and get into a squad car — a
traffic –


A. Traffic squad car, black and white,
mm-hum.


Q. Which was parked where?


A. He said about a half a block north of
the motel.


Q. And then what happened to that car?


A. Well, he said they headed north. We thought he picked — well, he come back on the radio and said the police has picked him up and they headed north with him. You could hear the tires were squealing. So we thought the police had already picked up the guy that done the shooting.


Q. I see. So both you and Mr. Butler
had thought that the police had apprehended the shooter.


A. Yes.


Q. What happened next? Did any police
come out to the airport?


A. Yes. While I’m standing there
talking, a squad car drove up with a
lieutenant and a patrolman…And the lieutenant wrote the report down that he [Butler] had and told him that they would be back in contact with him. So they got in the squad car and left after they got the report.


Q. So they took a report from Mr. Butler
and they — they left. Where were you standing when that report was being taken? 

A. Oh, probably — when they came up, I
was standing up next to him. When they came up, I backed away, probably 3 or 4 feet out of their way, where they would have plenty of clearance. But I was close enough that he gave them the same report that he gave me. 

Q. You overheard this report being given?


A. Yes, sir.


Q. All right. Then what happened next?


A. Well, they called — the dispatcher
called him to come in to the headquarters. We have a headquarters. Said he was wanted down there. Well, later on that night, not
too much later, I was in town and drove by
the cab company and there was several squad
cars down there. And I figured that they
were, you know, taking some more reports.
And then I found out later that he was
supposed to be at court at 9 o’clock the next
morning.


Q. He was supposed to give a
statement –


A. Yes, sir.


Q. — the next morning? And how many
squad cars were around Yellow’s offices that
night?


A. There were several. I would say
seven or eight. Might have been more, might
have been five or six. But I just noticed
there were several squad cars sitting there.
I didn’t count them.


Q. Seven or eight Memphis Police Department cars around Yellow’s headquarters that night?


A. Yes, sir.


[Two weeks then pass before Ward goes back to Yellow’s headquarters, when the following takes place.]

Q. When was the next time you actually
went into the offices and –

A. Oh, it was — well, I went into the
office when I first came back to work. I
went in then. That’s when I — I asked him
about Mr. Butler.


Q. Who did you ask about Mr. Butler?


A. There was four or five cab drivers
standing around talking. And I just asked
them. And that’s when they told me — I
don’t even remember which one told me. But he said he had been throwed out of a high- speed automobile between Memphis and West Memphis. And they found him about 10 o’clock the next day.
[April 5, 1968]

Q. They said he was thrown out of a
high-speed automobile. When was he thrown out of that automobile?


A. The next — the next morning. They
said they found his body about 10 o’clock or 10:30 the next morning. He was supposed to
have been in court at 9 o’clock that morning

and he wasn’t there. They found his car
there at the cab company. And — but he
wasn’t — he wasn’t — never made it to
court. But then about 10:30 they said they
found his body between Memphis and West
Memphis.

And so it is that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, finding its way into the nation’s calendar of saints and heroes, has the potential to shake this calendar of myths and fibs into pieces.

“Sanctions” Against Russia-Iran: Economic Aggression Revisited

By Christopher Black, January 15 2016

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.

Caught With Our Pants Down in the Persian Gulf. US Navy Personnel Arrested by Iran

By Justin Raimondo, January 16 2016

Your bullshit-ometer should be making an awful racket in response to the shifting explanations given for the twenty-four-hour Iranian hostage scare involving two US Navy boats intercepted in the Gulf.

Israeli and AIPAC Big Lies About Iran’s Intended Use of “Unfrozen Financial Assets”

By Stephen Lendman, January 17 2016

AIPAC devotes a section on its web site to malicious Big Lies about Iran intending use of its unfrozen assets to spread its nonexistent “malign global influence,” once international sanctions are lifted this weekend as expected.

US Imposes Sanctions on Iran for Ballistic Missile Program

By Press TV, January 18 2016

The US Department of the Treasury says it has imposed new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program. The Treasury Department made the announcement in a statement issued on Sunday…

“The Day After” ….The Implementation of the Iran Nuclear Deal. The US Has Never Sought Peace

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, January 18 2016

Not the movie about a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact and a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the Day After the Implementation Deal of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Although I said and wrote repeatedly in the past that the US stance toward Iran will not change, by now it should be obvious to all that this is the case. America “thanked” Iran by imposing further sanctions on Iran for its defense capabilities – the ballistic missiles.

If we all share a common dream of some balance in this world, which would hopefully lead to more security for all, here is what must happen.

With the nuclear-related UNSC sanctions against Iran lifted, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SC)) must IMMEDIATELY include Iran in the SCO as a full member. The alternate is not pretty.

While some Iranian ‘reformists’ have written that ‘America needs Iran’, the truth of the matter is a more just and balanced world needs Iran, foremost Russia and China. The United States has not abandoned its aspirations of becoming a global hegemon. The US has never sought peace. Peace and expansion/domination are incompatible.

In 1941, Isaiah Bowman, a key figure in the Council on Foreign Relations wrote: “The measure of our victory will be the measure of our domination after victory.”

True to this, after the Cold War, Prominent Americans such as Wolfowitz and Rustow opined that it was important to contain Russia (the Heartland – Defense Planning Guideline 1992, 1993). It was felt that the domination of the Heartland (Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia) would lead to the domination of the World. Events in the past several years confirm the implementation stages of the plan.

As recently as April, 2015, during a speech at the Army War College Strategy Conference, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work elaborated on how the Pentagon plans to counter the three types of wars supposedly being waged by Iran, Russia, and China. These goals have been facilitated with the Nuclear Deal. Let us consider.

The deal buys America time. Iran’s strength has been its ability to retaliate to any attack by closing down the Strait of Hormuz. Given that 17 million barrels of oil a day, or 35% of the world’s seaborne oil exports go through the Strait of Hormuz, incidents in the Strait would be fatal for the world economy. Enter Nigeria (West Africa) and Yemen.

In 1998, Clinton’s national security agenda made it clear that unhampered access to Nigerian oil and other vital resources was a key US policy. In early 2000s, Chatham House was one of the publications that determined African oil would be a good alternate to Persian Gulf oil IN CASE OF OIL DISRUPTION.This followed a strategy paper for US to move toward African oil. Push for African oil was on Dick Cheney’s desk on May 31, 2000. In 2002, the Israeli based IASPS suggested America push toward African oil. In the same year Boko Haram was ‘founded’.

In 2007, AFRICOM helped consolidate this push into the region. The 2011, a publication titled: “Globalizing West African Oil: US ‘energy security’ and the global economy” outlined ‘US positioning itself to use military force to ensure African oil continued to flow to the United States’. This was but one strategy to supply oil in addition to or as an alternate to the passage of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

Enter Yemen. To understand the geopolitics of the Saudi war against Yemen, it is imperative to read “The Geopolitics Behind the War in Yemen: The Start of a New Front against Iran” written by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya. Nazemroaya correctly states: “[T] he US wants to make sure that it could control the Bab Al-Mandeb, the Gulf of Aden, and the Socotra Islands. The Bab Al-Mandeb it is an important strategic chokepoint for international maritime trade and energy shipments that connects the Persian Gulf via the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea. It is just as important as the Suez Canal for the maritime shipping lanes and trade between Africa, Asia, and Europe.”

In 2012, several alternate routes to Strait of Hormuz were identified which at the time of the report were considered to be limited in capacity and more expensive. However, collectively, the West African oil and control of Bab Al-Mandeb would diminish the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz in case of war.

A very important consideration is the stark fact that the fallout from bombing an operating uranium enrichment facility with several hundred kilograms of enriched uranium would create an environmental catastrophe which would dwarf all nuclear accidents to date killing millions of people. The Iran Nuclear Deal greatly reduces the scope of the ensuing disaster should such steps be taken.

All this is of course speculation.

There is no doubt that the primary goal of the United States is to install a Washington friendly compliant regime in Iran. But what if it fails? Has Washington spent billions of dollars to undermine and destroy the Iranian revolution, decades in demonizing the people only to change its mind? Isn’t this the same scenario we hoped would be the outcome of the end of the Cold War only to learn that Washington continued a covert war against Russia?

What’s happening in China? Is it becoming the locus of the next financial crisis? Some well positioned capitalists are beginning to suggest so, including no less than that guru of global hedge fund and financial speculators, George Soros. The Bank of Central Banks, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Geneva, is saying the same; so too are a growing list of research departments of major global banks ,like UBS and Societe General in Europe.

China today is facing a convergence of several major forces that threaten not only to drive its economy and financial system into further and faster contraction and instability, but threaten as well to destabilize the rest of the global economy, especially emerging markets.

Instability #1: Imploding Stock Markets

In early January 2016, China’s main stock markets, the Shanghai and Schenzen, fell steeply to levels that required the government to suspend trading, i.e. to shut them down. Since December 22, 2015, in just two weeks, China stock markets have contracted by more than 20 percent, in what is a third ‘leg down’ since China’s markets began first imploding last June 12, 2015.

Initially having risen by 120 percent to bubble levels in 2014-2015, China’s markets contracted -32 percent by early July. Intervention by its central bank and government thereafter briefly stabilized prices. China then devalued its currency, the Yuan, in late August and the markets fell a second time, by -42 percent. After a short recovery last fall, a third and most recent collapse of 20 percent in early January 2016 has resulted in stock values falling about -50 percent from their previous May-June 2015 highs.

After three intervention efforts requiring US$500 billion by China’s central bank and government over the past six months to stabilize the stock implosion, it has become clear that China authorities cannot prevent the markets from imploding still further. Analysts predict China’s stock index will fall to 2000 from its current 2900, and its June 2015 highs of more than 5000. That’s about a -65 percent fall, which is roughly equivalent to the collapse of U.S. stocks in 2008-09.

That kind of stock market collapse suggests China may be beginning to experience a financial crisis roughly equivalent to the U.S. financial crash of 2008-09. Stock market crashes of such dimensions are signs of either actual, or impending, near-depression conditions.

Instability #2: Currency Decline & Capital Flight

With a stock market collapse underway, wealthy Chinese investors, speculators, and China’s more than 6,000 estimated shadow banks (there were no shadow banks in 2008), are all desperately selling stock. Stock sales in Yuan are then being converted to dollars and other global currencies. The money is then sent out of China to invest abroad. Estimates of capital flight from China last year in 2015 are estimated at around US$1 trillion.

To try to stem the outflow, China authorities have been intervening in global currency markets to try to keep currency values from falling precipitously. More than US$100 billion was used to prop up the currency in December 2015 alone. But like the US$500 billion spent the past six months to intervene to stop the stock price collapse, China central bank and government attempts to prop up China’s currency have proved equally ineffective at stemming the decline in its currency, which has already devalued since last summer by 6 percent to the dollar, as pressure continues to build for still more devaluation.

Unable to prevent both its stock market implosion and further devaluations, the impression globally is growing that China is progressively losing control of growing economic instability.
The stock selling and collapse is feeding the currency devaluation and vice-versa. Investors and speculators are selling stock converting Yuan to dollars and driving down the currency’s value; in turn the declining currency is encouraging investors to sell stocks in a currency that is falling in value. In other words, a mutual downward spiral is underway.

Instability #3: Slowing Real Economy

Behind the stock-currency spiral is China’s real economy that is slowing faster than China official statistics indicate. China’s real economy, measured in GDP, is slowing far more rapidly than the government’s estimated 6.9 percent. Independent sources looking at rail and freight traffic, electricity usage, manufacturing output, and other such indicators, suggest China’s growth rate may in fact average around 5 percent. Some estimates are suggesting as low as 3 percent annual growth today. Its manufacturing sector has contracted every month throughout 2015. Export growth is negative. Industrial production and real investment growth rates are half of what they were in 2014. Prices for industrial goods are deflating and for consumer goods and services rapidly disinflating.

China’s slowing real economy means corporate profit declines and even defaults, which encourages investors to dump and sell stocks; stock and currency translates by various channels into further corporate profits decline. The problem is particularly acute among state owned and old ‘industrial’ enterprises, which have become massively indebted since 2009 and increasingly unable to secure financing even to continue production operations.

Thus these three elements—slowing real economy, stock implosion, and currency devaluation—are now feeding back upon and exacerbating each other. The downward spiral is intensifying.

Overlaid on all the three elements are the slowing global economy and slowing demand for China exports, the global currency wars intensified by recent Europe and Japan QE programs which will expand still further in 2016, and spreading recessions in emerging markets, barely growing or stagnating economies in Europe and Japan, and the concurrent collapse of global oil prices, now at US$29 a barrel and in some places, like Canada, as low as US$15.

In other words, growing fragility in the global economy outside China makes the global economy today more sensitive to growing instability within China itself, and vice-versa. China and the global economy are feeding off each other negatively as well: China destabilizing the rest of the global economy and that destabilization negatively impacting China as well.

Instability #4: Corporate Debt and Non-Performing Loans

This China-global interaction is taking place, moreover, on a tinderbox of debt in China, as well as globally. Total global debt, mostly business debt, has increased by no less than US$50 trillion since 2009. China’s total debt represents no less than half of that US$50 trillion, having risen from US$7.4 trillion in 2007 to more than US$30 trillion today. Moreover, even more ominous, about US$2.5 trillion of its US$19 trillion corporate debt represents non-performing business loans in China today.

As stock markets and currency declines, as old industrial companies slide deeper into trouble and can’t raise money capital, and as revenue from exports slows for China, it means China corporations (and local governments) will face increasing difficulty making payments on the massive debt that has accumulated since 2007. Defaults are inevitable, which in turn will make both China’s real and financial economy even more unstable.

In short, a bust in coming in China and it will spill over to the rest of the global economy with serious consequences—first for emerging markets and thereafter inevitably as well for advanced economies like the US, Europe and Japan.

China government and state banks will have to bail out the over-indebted private sector. The government has massive reserves of US$3 trillion with which to do so. But it has already spent approximately US$1 trillion dollars thus far to support stocks and its currency. How much more will it commit to bail out its falling stock market, to halt the decline of its currency and capital flight, and eventually to bail out defaulting corporations and local governments as well? And what happens to China, and the global economy, should it even balk at doing so?

The next major global financial crisis will most likely not occur in the U.S. or other advanced economies of Europe and Japan. It will originate in emerging market economies, precipitated by instability events in China. China may be able to weather the crisis, given its huge reserves. But other emerging markets, many already in recession, will find it far more difficult to do so. As China and emerging market economies enter a deeper crisis in 2016-17, the U.S, Europe and Japan, already essentially stagnating, will not prove immune as well.

Jack Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’, available from his blog, jackrasmus.com, and website,http://www.kyklosproductions.com, as well as from Amazon.

Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s branded Roundup line of herbicides, as well as hundreds of other products, but many scientific studies have raised questions about the health impacts of glyphosate and consumer and medical groups have expressed worries about glyphosate residues in food.

In October, Carey Gillam reported for Reuters that California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), has been accepting public comments about its intention to list glyphosate as a cause of cancer.

Roughly 8,000 comments were filed regarding the state action, according to officials, including those from Monsanto. Several farming, public health and environmental groups sent a letter to OEHHA supporting the listing, and said that rising use of glyphosate presents a danger to people and animals.

The OEHHA gave notice in September that it intended to list glyphosate under proposition 65, a state initiative enacted in 1986 to inform residents about cancer-causing chemicals. State officials said the action is required after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research committee in March classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

As we reported in March, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reported Monsanto’s call for the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency to retract a report published in the journal Lancet Oncology by researchers for WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

The WHO’s research unit, however, said it had reviewed many scientific studies, including two out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the United States before making its classification.

Since the WHO classification, the New York-based mass-tort firm of Weitz & Luxenberg, and other firms representing U.S. farm workers, have filed lawsuits against Monsanto, accusing the company of knowing of the dangers of glyphosate for decades. Monsanto has said the claims are without merit

Monsanto has now urged California not to list herbicide glyphosate as carcinogenic.

It added, in its formal comment, that California’s actions could be considered illegal because they are not considering valid scientific evidence.

China’s President Xi Jinping is heading to the Middle East, aiming at defusing the tensions in the volatile region of greatest importance for geopolitics and energy-security. China has also domestic security challenges which are closely linked to the Middle East and then there is business.

President Xi Jinping will be visiting a number of countries including Egypt as well as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members on one hand, and Iran and Shi’ite politicians and clerics in Iraq reached a boiling point after Saudi Arabia executed 47, including the controversial Shi’ite cleric Nimr Al-Nimr.

The Persian Gulf / Arab Gulf is one of the world’s most important shipping lanes through which much of the world’s hydrocarbons are shipped. A conflict in the region would lead to a global energy crisis that naturally also would have an impact on China’s energy security. China is Iran’s top oil client while it has close ties to the GCC member States and imports oil from GCC member States too.

[pictured right: President Sisi and President Xi Jinping during Al-Sisi’s 2015 visit to China – Courtesy YOUM7]

The crisis in the Gulf and the expansion of the Suez Canal in 2015 has led to increased focus on Egypt. Egypt, however, is itself feeling threatened due to the ongoing conflict in Yemen, an insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and the easy with which militants from Libya can infiltrate the country. Egypt considers any potential threat to shipping via the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait south of the Suez Canal as an existential threat that also would impact global energy security.

Strait of Hormuz

It is within this context that a senior Chinese official, on Monday, commented on President Xi Jinping’s visit to the region, saying China is seeking a balanced stance as it always does. China’s State news agency Xinhua notes that Xi Jinping’s visit aims at reestablishing regional stability. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming stated:

“Regarding some of the region’s problems, China has always taken a balanced and just position. … If the Middle East is not stable, I’m afraid the world can’t be very peaceful. If a country or a region is not stable, it cannot realize development. … China firmly supports regional countries individually exploring a development path that suits their national conditions.”

It is noteworthy that China also considers Iran as a key part of its New Silk Road project that aims at developing transportation and other infrastructure and at developing trade throughout Asia, the Middle East as well as Europe.

Referring to the lifting of sanctions against Iran, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming also noted that Iran could expect a rapid development in the post-sanction era and an economic comeback. A prospect that is interesting for Chinese investment capital, provided that the region is relatively stable.

The Minister also signaled Chinese interests in investing in Iran, saying that Tehran would need foreign investment, technological support and infrastructure updates to put it on the course toward this development. Earlier this month the Chinese government published “China’s Arab Policy Paper for 2016″.  In the paper, the government states that:

“China firmly supports Arab national liberation movement, firmly supports Arab countries’ struggle to uphold sovereignty and territorial integrity, pursue and safeguard national interests, and combat external interference and aggression, and firmly supports Arab countries’ cause of developing the national economy and building up the countries.” …

Bab Al-Mandeb Strait

“The world is experiencing profound and complex changes. The trend toward a multipolar world and economic globalization is deepening, and cultural diversity and the information society continue to move forward. Changes in the international configuration and international order are accelerating. All countries in the world are seizing the opportunity to readjust their development strategies, promote reform and innovation, speed up economic transformation and open up new development horizons. At the same time, the world economy is still in a period of deep transformation, with geopolitical factors becoming more prominent, regional turbulences rising one after another, non-traditional security and global challenges increasing and the gap between the North and the South widening. It remains an arduous journey to advance mankind’s noble cause of peace and development.” ….

“China and Arab states are both developing countries with their combined territory, population and economic aggregate accounting for 1/6, 1/4 and 1/8 of the world’s total respectively. Different in natural endowment and development level, China and Arab countries are all in an important development stage and have a shared mission of rejuvenating the nation. We need to collaborate with each other more closely, and learn from each other along the road of development, strengthen cooperation in seeking common development and promoting regional peace, and echo each other in building a new type of international relations, so as to safeguard state sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and to promote stability, economic development and well-being of our peoples. … China supports the Middle East peace process and the establishment of an independent state of Palestine with full sovereignty, based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. China supports the Arab League and its member states’ efforts to this end. We adhere to political solution to regional hot spot issues, and support the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free and WMD-free zone in the Middle East.”  (read the full text here)

While the Middle East is locked in a crisis, China has its own problems with insurgents and terrorism; and some of these problems are closely related to the Middle East. While there are legitimate grievances among some of China’s ethic groups, Beijing also faces militant ethnic or religious insurrection.

One of these challenges arises from Turkish and US sponsored Uyghur / Turkmen in China’s Xinyang province. Other threats emerge from the presence of Islamist militants including the growing presence of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) in northern Pakistan. Also this security threat is closely tied to the Middle East; That is, particularly Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the USA and “some” of its NATO partners, as well as elements within Pakistan’s intelligence and military establishment.

A recent bombing in the Turkish city of Istanbul has left at least 10 dead and 15 injured. The government in Ankara was quick to blame the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh), claiming the bomber was “Syrian” and had crossed over from Syria into Turkey before carrying out the terrorist attack.

The Guardian would report in its article, “Deadly Istanbul blast ’caused by Isis suicide bomber’,” that:

“We have determined that the perpetrator of the attack is a foreigner who is a member of Daesh,” prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, using an Arabic acronym for Isis. “Turkey won’t backtrack in its struggle against Daesh by even one step … This terror organisation, the assailants and all of their connections will be found and they will receive the punishments they deserve.”

However, an overabundance of evidence during the past several years indicates that ISIS is in fact both an intentional creation and continuous perpetuation of foreign state-sponsors of terrorism, including Turkey itself.

A high profile attack by gunmen at a four star hotel in Ouagadougou on Friday, Jan. 15 has highlighted the operations of various so-called “Islamist extremist” organizations in West Africa and the role of Burkina Faso and other states in the region as partners of French and United States counter-terrorism operations.

The attacks took place at the Splendid Hotel, a facility popular with foreign nationals, diplomats and military operatives from European and North American states. Also the Cappuccino Café located close by was sprayed with bullets leaving numerous casualties.

After a standoff for several hours involving over 100 hostages, eyewitnesses said that Burkinabe police and soldiers led by French and U.S. Special Forces stormed the hotel retaking the area.

Paris and Washington maintain military operatives inside this landlocked nation where they coordinate a task force ostensibly designed to track down members of Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and similar organizations. (BBC, Jan. 18)

Hostages who were released after the security operations in Burkina Faso said the gunmen targeted Westerners by killing those who looked to be of European ancestry many of whom laid wounded after being hit by bullets. One U.S. citizen and six Canadians, along with French, Dutch and Swiss nationals were among the 29 people from various countries who died as a result of the attacks.

Burkina Faso’s government declared three days of national mourning beginning on January 17 while announcing that the police and military forces stepped up security measures throughout the country in conjunction with neighboring states such as Mali which experienced similar incidents in recent months and years.

A new head-of-state was elected on November 29 in the aftermath of an attempted coup by the Regiment of Presidential Security (RSP) headed by Gen. Gilbert Diendere. The poll grew out of widespread opposition among the population and elements within the military in October 2014 when long-time former military leader turned politician, Blaise Compaore, sought to extend his term of office and was forced out of Burkina Faso taking refuge in neighboring Ivory Coast.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a statement in regard to the attacks that “These truly barbaric criminal acts carried out against innocent people, claimed by the criminal organization al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seek to destabilize our country and its republican institutions, and to undermine efforts to build a democratic, quiet and prosperous nation.”

One group, the AQIM, has claimed responsibility although these are preliminary reports. During the course of the operations at the hotel and café, the online agency SITE, which monitors posts related to such actions internationally, reported that AQIM had taken responsibility.

Political Power Struggles Contributes to Instability  

The impoverished state of Burkina Faso underwent a national uprising in October 2014 that ousted longtime western-backed dictator Blaise Compaore. After the mass demonstrations that created the conditions for Compaore’s removal, another coup occurred illustrating the divisions within the military.

During 2015 in the months leading into the transition process and national elections, Gen. Diendere of the presidential regiment attempted to take power ostensibly in an effort to halt the voting and change the character of the constitutional model. Decisions related to the elections and the composition of the current government was the result of negotiations between various political interests, the military and envoys from the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

In an article written by Pascaline Compaore, a Junior Fellow at the Conflict Prevention and Risks Analysis Division at the Institute of Security Studies in Dakar, Senegal, it noted “Compaoré’s (the former military leader and president) regime depended heavily on the elite security service known as the Regiment of Presidential Security (Régiment de sécurité présidentielle, RSP). Despite the former president’s ousting, the RSP continued to interfere in the political transition process. Some of its members, under the leadership of General Gilbert Diendéré, were responsible for the 17 September 2015 coup attempt, which resulted in the disintegration of the corps. (Jan. 16)

This same report went on saying:

“The coup d’état pointed to a lack of concrete progress in neutralizing the RSP. During the first post-putsch cabinet meeting, it had been decided that the RSP should be disarmed and reintegrated into other army postings. That some of these soldiers could continue to threaten the country’s security and stability remains a cause for concern. The dismantling of the RSP created an important security gap, which must be addressed with urgency given the volatility in the region and the backdrop of instability in the country.”

The Role of AFRICOM and Operation Barkhane

This is not the first of such attacks as there have been two other incidents in the north and west of the country. Mali underwent a similar disturbance in November at a hotel there which houses foreign diplomats and western military personnel.

Prior to the attacks at the hotel and café, the Burkinabe Ministry of Defense released an advisory reporting that approximately 20 armed men killed a policeman and a civilian in an attack on the village of Tin Abao in the northern region of the country. It was not immediately clear who was behind this separate incident.

The French embassy in December warned its citizens not to travel to a national park in eastern Burkina Faso amid reports that Malian-based Islamist groups had pledged to abduct foreign nationals. One such organization which claimed responsibility for another attack in Mali late last year, Al-Mourabitoun, said in May 2015, it was holding a Romanian man abducted from a mine in northern Burkina Faso in April.

In other reports, 50 unidentified gunmen carried out an offensive operation against a Burkina Faso security brigade near the western border with Mali in October 2015. This attack resulted in three deaths as the then transitional government blamed the incident on disgruntled elements within the RSP who were involved in the attempted coup in September.

Burkina Faso and Mali have become centers in the U.S. and French “war on terrorism”. In addition Niger and Chad have also seen greater deployments of Pentagon and French military troops.

Operation Barkhane, a force based in Chad which is said to have been established to combat Islamist fighters throughout the Sahel region, is stationed in Burkina Faso at the Splendid Hotel. This French-led unit was created in 2014 as the successor to other military contingents in Mali known as Operation Serval and Operation Epervier in Chad.

Barkhane is said to consist of a 3,000-person French force permanently headquartered in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. The operation has representation from five countries, which are the former French colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

These states are described as the “G5 Sahel.” The military operations units are named after a crescent-shaped dune in the Sahara desert.

Burkina Faso until recent years was largely a producer of cotton and other agricultural commodities for export to western states. In the current period the country has emerged as a major center for gold mining becoming the fourth largest producer of the mineral on the African continent.

Neighboring Niger contains large deposits of uranium mined and controlled by the French-based Areva nuclear energy corporation. The U.S. has constructed drone stations and other offensive weaponry in Niger in cooperation with Paris.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire

Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran from January 19-23. Xi has delivered a series of important remarks on the relationship between China and the Middle East and Arab countries, which is of great significance in promoting the Middle East peace process and pushing forward China’s relations with these countries.

1. All nations in Middle East are equally entitled to life and development.

The Middle East is beset by war and undergoing social unrest by now. Peace, stability and development are the common aspirations of countries in the Middle East. Resolving disputes through political means is a strategic option that is in the interests of all sides concerned. All nations in Middle East, including Israel, are equally entitled to life and development. Only when the legitimate rights of all countries are ensured, and all countries respect each other’s concerns, can there be permanent peace and stability in the region.

Said Xi when meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Beijing on May 9, 2013.

2. China supports a nuclear-free Gulf.

The Gulf region and Middle East situation has a global impact and all members in the region share responsibility for safeguarding Gulf security and stability. China has always backed the just cause of the Palestinian people and will continue to facilitate peace talks. China supports a nuclear-free Gulf and will continue to promote a long-term, comprehensive and proper solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Said Xi when meeting with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is also the deputy premier and minister of defense, in Beijing on March 13, 2014.

3. China and Arab states should carry forward the Silk Road spirit.

For thousands of years, the Silk Road carried the spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, learning from each other, mutual benefits and win-win results, which is passed on generation after generation. The people of China and the Arab world support each other in the battle of defending national dignity and sovereignty, help each other in realizing national rejuvenation, learn from each other in deepening cultural exchanges and promoting the prosperity of national cultures.

Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to facilitate mutual learning among civilizations. Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to adhere to win-win cooperation. Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to advocate dialogue and peace.

Said Xi when addressing the opening of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014.

4. China and Arab states should make joint efforts in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road together.

China and Arab states learned about and made friends with each other through the Silk Road, which makes them natural partners in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road together.

In building the “One Belt and One Road” together, China and the Arab states need to adhere to the principle of building jointly through consultation to meet the interests of all. China and the Arab states need to be both ambitious and down-to-earth. China and the Arab states need to rely on and promote their traditional friendship.

Said Xi at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014.

5. China opposes any discrimination and prejudice about specific ethnic group or religion.

No human civilization is superior to others. Equal exchanges make human civilization rich and colorful, just like the matching of different colors leads to greater beauty and the combination of different music instruments creates harmony and peace.

China will unswervingly support Arab countries in maintaining their national culture and tradition, and oppose any discrimination and prejudice toward specific ethnic group or religion. We should make joint efforts in calling for civilization and tolerance, and preventing extremist forces and thought from creating a fault line among different civilization.

Said Xi when addressing the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014.

6. China insists on “four adherences”.

China values relations with the Arab states and has always viewed China-Arab relations from a long-term strategic perspective. For our Arab friends, we insist on “four adherences.” The first one is adhering to the support of Middle East peace process and safeguarding legitimate rights and interests of the Arab peoples. The second one is adhering to the direction of facilitating a political solution and promoting peace and stability in the region. The third one is adhering to the idea of supporting Arab nations to explore the development pattern independently and to helping them. The fourth one is adhering to the value pursuit of promoting dialogue among civilizations and advocating a civilized new order. We are willing to walking hand in hand with the Arab countries on the path to the respective national revitalization.

Said Xi when meeting with heads of Arab delegations to the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014.

7. The Middle East peace process needs the wisdom and efforts of all sides.

Palestine-Israel, Syria and Iraq issues have intertwined and affected one another. “Violence against violence” cannot solve the Palestine-Israel issue. Promoting the Middle East peace process needs the wisdom and efforts of all sides. China will continue to support the conciliation efforts by the UN and Secretary-General to promote all parties in Syria to find a “middle way.”

Said Xi when meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on August 16, 2014.

8. China has, as always, viewed China-Arab relations from a long-term strategic perspective.

At present, China-Arab relations are lying in the middle and core and standing at a fresh start, featuring peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, learning from each other, mutual benefits and win-win results. I pay high attention to the development of China-Arab relations. China has, as always, viewed China-Arab relations from a long-term strategic perspective, and stands ready to work with Arab states to raise the China-Arab strategic cooperative relations featuring all-round cooperation and common development to a higher level.

Said Xi when sending a letter of congratulations to the year of China-Arab friendship and the 3rd Arabic Arts Festival on September 10, 2014.

9. The international community should support the people in the Middle East to seek the right path in accordance with their own national conditions.

There are many problems and complex contradictions in the Middle East. A political solution is the only realistic way to solve disputes in the region. No matter how difficult it is, we should keep maximum patience to provide maximum room for a political solution. It is the countries and peoples in the region that have the biggest say on what development path they should follow. The international community should support their efforts in seeking the right path in accordance with their own national conditions.

Said Xi when meeting with Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, Emir of Qatar in Beijing on November 3,2014.

10. China and the Arab states are friends with mutual trust and partners walking hand in hand.

China and the Arab states are friends with mutual trust and partners walking hand in hand on the path to realize mutual development.

China, adhering to the Silk Road Spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, learning from each other, mutual benefits and win-win results, will work with all the countries in the world including the Arab countries to facilitate mutual development and improve the well-being of people in all the countries in the world.

Said Xi in a letter of congratulations to the China-Arab States Expo on September 10, 2015.

Note: This article by Electronic Frontier Foundation was originally posted in 2014.

The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target.

The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents. The agency also attempted to break up his marriage by sending selectively edited “personal moments he shared with friends and women” to his wife.

Portions of the letter had been previously redacted. One of these portions contains a claim that the letter was written by another African-American: “King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all us Negroes.” It goes on to say “We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done.” This line is key, because part of the FBI’s strategy was to try to fracture movements and pit leaders against one another.

The entire letter could have been taken from a page of GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG)—though perhaps as an email or series of tweets. The British spying agency GCHQ is one of the NSA’s closest partners. The mission of JTRIG, a unit within GCHQ, is to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt enemies by discrediting them.” And there’s little reason to believe the NSA and FBI aren’t using such tactics.

The implications of these types of strategies in the digital age are chilling. Imagine Facebook chats, porn viewing history, emails, and more made public to discredit a leader who threatens the status quo, or used to blackmail a reluctant target into becoming an FBI informant. These are not far-fetched ideas. They are the reality of what happens when the surveillance state is allowed to grow out of control, and the full King letter, as well as current intelligence community practices illustrate that reality richly.

The newly unredacted portions shed light on the government’s sordid scheme to harass and discredit Dr. King. One paragraph states:

No person can overcome the facts, no even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. . . . Listen to yourself, you filthy, abnormal animal. You are on the record.

And of course, the letter ends with an ominous threat:

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

There’s a lesson to learn here: history must play a central role in the debate around spying today. As Professor Gage states:

Should intelligence agencies be able to sweep our email, read our texts, track our phone calls, locate us by GPS? Much of the conversation swirls around the possibility that agencies like the N.S.A. or the F.B.I. will use such information not to serve national security but to carry out personal and political vendettas. King’s experience reminds us that these are far from idle fears, conjured in the fevered minds of civil libertarians. They are based in the hard facts of history.

Copyright Electronic Frontier Foundation 2014

The US Department of the Treasury says it has imposed new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program.

The Treasury Department made the announcement in a statement issued on Sunday, only a day after sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear energy program were lifted.

The statement said five Iranian citizens and a network of companies based in the United Arab Emirates and China were added to a US blacklist.

The network “obfuscated the end user of sensitive goods for missile proliferation by using front companies in third countries to deceive foreign suppliers,” the statement said, adding that the five people had “worked to procure ballistic missile components for Iran.”

“Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions,” said Adam J. Szubin, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

On October 11, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired its first guided ballistic missile dubbed Emad.

Washington slammed the test, claiming the projectile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It vowed to respond with more sanctions.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said the Emad missile was a conventional weapon.

The Iranian media have aired footage of an underground missile facility of the IRGC packed with Emad missiles.

On Saturday, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order lifting US economic sanctions on Iran.

Obama’s move came after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified that Iran has implemented its commitments made in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and announced to remove international economic sanctions against the country.

Iran and the P5+1 – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany – finalized the text of the JCPOA in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2015.

Under the agreement, limits are put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for, among other things, the removal of all nuclear-related economic and financial bans against the Islamic Republic.

The petition by the “Academicians for Peace” in Turkey has resulted in an assault against the academic community of the country, which resembles the practices of the military junta of the September 12 1980, coup d’état. The petition itself and the reactions for/against it have gained a different momentum following the increasing pressure by the AKP (the governing political power) via various channels such as university administrations, legal bodies and partisan media organizations.

Each indictment such of “disloyalty,” “mandate support”[1] and “treason” directed at the academicians by the Turkish President Erdoğan, the Prime Minister Davutoğlu, several ministers and other officials, have brought new accusations and threats against the academicians that were put on the target. The names of the academicians were published by pro-government newspapers. This not only escalated the oppressive atmosphere in the country, but also increased the violence directed against the signatories. These state charges have acquired a life-threatening dimension. They crystallized with the chilling statement of an organized crime leader: “We will kill them and have a shower with their blood!” Various lynching campaigns have formed via social media.

Press Release of the petition of Academicians for Peace, Istanbul, 12 January.

Turkish university rectors, whose job it is to safeguard universal, scientific and critical knowledge and the academic staff, have sided with the political authorities. They have declared that: “This petition cannot be associated with academic freedom!” Following the investigations initiated by YÖK (the Turkish Higher Education Council) and some university rectors, several academicians have been dismissed from their universities.

Disciplinary and Criminal Proceedings

Disciplinary proceedings are being coupled with criminal proceedings and a warrant has been issued for the arrest and custody of some signatories. The head of the Turkish Bar Association, whose fundamental duty, is to protect freedom of thought and expression has also made an unfortunate statement against the academicians. In short, the reaction against the petition reflects the consolidation of the Turkish hard right, creating the space for them to take a hatchet to their political, and democratic, enemies.

The political and coercive oppression being leveled against the academicians has, in turn, increased the support and solidarity both in Turkey and abroad. Artists, authors, poets, intellectuals, students, civil servants and workers have begun to take side with the academicians. In addition to the “peace demand,” a new political demand has started to gain momentum. The draconian measures taken by the Turkish state is turning the case both into a defense of freedom of expression and thought and of the academy itself. Certainly, the ultimatums of Prime Minister Davutoğlu and President Erdoğan – “Choose your side!” and “We do not rule Turkey by consulting you!” respectively – have played a great role in these developments.

As a part of its grand strategy (the so-called new “greater Turkey” project), the Turkish political powers present the petitioners as the “black sheep” of the intellectual community. In recent years, the Erdoğan AKP governments have been quite successful in remaking the political agenda and discourse of the country by stigmatizing the opposition as “enablers” of domestic terrorism and as “domestic enemies” of the Turkish state. Such practices have helped the AKP to implement its policies by manipulating and disorienting active democratic consent and obscuring its own economic and political failures without paying a political price.

In fact, these same practices were deployed during the “Ergenekon trials,” the operations against the “Parallel/FETÖ” organization, as well as against the Gezi Square protests in 2013. The “1128s” has become an expression of treachery continually used in the pro-government media, and is the embodiment of this practice. In order to justify its security crackdown, the various branches of the Turkish state invoke the 1128 academicians in every possible occasion. The AKP partisan newspapers call for university students to start a boycott against their professors. In this oppressive and dangerous environment, only a single investigation has been conducted on the crime boss uttering violent threats; whereas a warrant for the arrest of numerous academicians has been issued. Some have already been taken into custody and their offices and houses have been searched and ransacked by police.

Turkey: A Fascist Turn?

There is no denying that the political conjuncture in Turkey is coming to represent some of the symptoms of classical fascism: the complex ensemble of the Turkish state and its diverse apparatuses are coming under the control of a single mass party; the political parties are turning into ‘mere parliamentary coteries’ cloaking the concrete ways the state is operating. Prime Minister Davutoğlu has not even criticized the crime boss, which begins to pose the indirect legitimization of a paramilitary structure. Occupational ethics and obligations have been pushed into the background to suit current political interests.

Police searching the houses of academicians in Bolu, 15 January.

In order to save its face in the diplomatic arena and to address its international image crisis, which has emerged from its foreign policy and the revelations about cooperation between the Turkish state and ISIS, the Turkish government is polarizing Turkish society through both its discourse and the authoritarian remaking of the state. By creating a “domestic enemy,” the AKP government hopes to justify its security policies; to obscure mounting social contradiction; to direct the anger of the Turkish masses to opposition of dissident citizens and organizations. As one measure, the AKP government has initiated a clean sweep of opposition in academic institutions through new organizational mandates, parallel to the ones it pushed through the political system (eventually culminating in the recent shift to a presidential system in Turkey). The French political theorist Jacques Rancière has commented: “Bad shepherds mislead only sheep and no one is forced to be a sheep.” But the AKP government desires everyone to be on its side without assessing and questioning the government’s program or operations.

Clearly, the initial task is to support the academicians, their legitimate rights to call for peace and for the autonomy of academic institutions from political oppression of the state. The assault against the academic community is an integral part of the AKP’s strategy to remake the Turkish state into its own version of authoritarianism and Islamic ideology. The opposition in Turkey must now also defend the trenches of freedoms in civil society or risk losing them all together. It is the duty of the progressive and democratic forces in Turkey to side with each of the academicians under attack by the legal and civil threats of the Turkish state. And now, it is also time to renew and further develop both national and international mechanisms of support and solidarity.

Kansu Yıldırım is an independent researcher based in Ankara and an editorial board member of Kampfplatz (Turkish journal of philosophy and social science).

Resources:

• Open Letter from Scholars in Canada in Solidarity with Academics in Turkey
• Urgent Call for Solidarity from Academicians for Peace

If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort. — Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN

In an EU press conference on September 3rd, 2015 Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban candidly referred to the current refugee crisis in Europe as “Germany’s problem”. Orban was referring to the fact that refugees amassing at the border of Hungary were heading, for the most part, to Germany. The Hungarian Prime Minister stressed that most of the refugees did not intend to stay in Hungary. Orban has come under criticism for his decision to erect a security fence on the Hungarian/Serbian border in order to stem the flow of migrants entering Hungarian territory illegally.

While most of the European media have portrayed Orban as a xenophobic, far right dictator, the decision to erect a fence was carried out in compliance with EU regulations, which require that all immigrants entering the Shengen zone be registered by the police at the border. Yet, paradoxically, Brussels is criticizing the Hungarian Prime Minister for attempting to comply with EU laws!

France’s daily Le Monde refers to the Hungarian Prime Minister as the man who is attempting to ‘criminalise‘ illegal immigrants. It is indeed a strange country that would criminalize those who break its laws!

So why is Orban coming under fire? Since coming to power in 2010 Victor Orban has implemented domestic, social and political policies that run counter to those dictated by the EU commission. In 2013 Hungary closed down the office of the International Monetary Fund, bringing the country’s finance under state control.

The International Monetary Fund is a key institution of US/Zionist global governance and there are few countries who have escaped its clutches of permanent debt. Therefore, the decision of the Hungarian government to show the IMF the door was nothing short than an act of bold insubordination to US imperialism.

Hungary has also come under criticism for media laws which ban foreign interference from US propaganda outlets such as Voice of America, which the Hungarian government deems to be contrary to the public interest. Consequently, the European Union, which is perfectly happy to ban Iranian television stations, has criticized Hungary for violations of ‘freedom of speech’.

Orban told an audience in Chatham House in 2013 that he believed there was a “leftist and green conspiracy” in Europe against “traditional values”. Orban is no doubt referring to the constant tirades made by war mongering ‘leftist’ zionists such as EU MP Daniel Cohen Bendit against Hungary. Bendit has ironically called Orban the “Chavez of Europe”. This example of ideological name-calling epitomises the meaninglessness of the left/right political paradigm in the post-Soviet era.

Orban’s ‘nationalism’ is not an imperial project. It is, rather, a national philosophy which goes against, and weakens, imperialism. It is nationalism in the sense of national liberation from neo-colonial oppression in the form of international financial institutions and the EU.

Orban’s defense of ‘traditional values’ has brought him ideologically closer to the foreign policy agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited the country in 2014. During Putin’s visit to Hungary, Orban praised the Russian leader’s role in attempting to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian war. In 2014 Orban told Hungarian media that the Ukrainian war was caused by the desire of the United States to gain control of Eastern Europe. He also pointed out that the United States wanted to draw Hungary into the crisis.

The Hungarian Prime Minister has made no secret of his desire to pursue an independent domestic and foreign policy. Hungary also has close ties to China and Iran. Therefore, to attempt, as some analysts have done, to portray Victor Orban as part of the reactionary, imperialist, xenophobic right is to oversimplify the complex interplay of ideological and geopolitical forces in the current global political arena and, in particular, the deep forces determining the generation and management of the refugee/migrant crisis. Therefore, to compare Orban’s opposition to immigration to that of British Prime Minister David Cameron is to oversimplify the matter.

British Prime Minister David Cameron plays up his opposition to immigration. But this has nothing to do with the real agenda of the British government. Cameron’s anti-immigration policies are simply the appeal to xenophobia which the Tories require to maintain their electoral votes. Cameron’s regime serves international finance capitalism in its most brutal form and finance capitalism needs constant immigration. Orban’s objections are based more on his conflict with finance capitalism and his criticisms of the liberal ideology driving globalisation.

Victor Orban has proposed that the refugees/migrants be sent back to Turkey until the end of the war in Syria. This is a sensible proposal. The ‘Refugees are Welcome’ slogan and the subsequent marches in favour of immigration served US/Israeli geostrategic objectives. Currently, few people seem to realise that and, as in the Arab Spring of 2011, the bandwagon of US imperialism has no shortage of passengers.

In this sense, Victor Orban of Hungary is, in a very limited way, worthy of the epithet ‘Hugo Chavez of Europe’. While many of Victor Orban’s political policies are far from left-wing, (for example, the banning of communist symbols) his embrace of a traditionalist, dirigiste form of capitalism with strong pro-family social policies and a multi-vectored foreign policy brings his country closer to countries such as Venezuela, Belarus, Eritrea and other nation-states attempting to maintain their sovereignty in the face of imperialism.

A deeply biased and hostile article on Le Monde nevertheless accurately describes Orban’s politics as ‘economically left wing while culturally right wing’. However, qualification is needed here. His policies are ‘left-wing’ from the point of view of global corporate finance but Orban’s economic policiesfavour the national, patriotic bourgeoisie and are therefore right-wing from the perspective of the working class.

Hungary’s multi-vectored foreign policy has had benefits for the country and especially for other Southern Hemisphere partner countries such as Venezuela. For example, a photo-voltaic energy technology product developed in Hungary and financed by China, was exported to Venezuela in 2013. It is believed that the new Hungarian technology could not only enable Venezuela to become self-sufficient in electricity, it could turn the country into a major exporter of electricity. Venezuela’s cooperation with Hungary is vital to the country’s industrialisation.

What all the countries mentioned above have in common is an attempt to construct a national voluntarism in order to stem the tide of ‘globalisation’ and all its concomitant social and economic ills. This involves a national, patriotic bourgeoisie in alliance with the working class against the ‘internationalist’ compradore bourgeoisie and the ‘New World Order’. It is, in many respects, a reversal of the class dynamics of the Second World War when the Soviet Union led an organised international working class in alliance with the remnants of the democratic bourgeoisie against international fascism.

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban came to power in a country that had been ravaged by the IMF and a deeply corrupt ‘socialist’ party that had emerged from decades of welfare state capitalism under Janos Kadar. Kadar, a liberal, replaced the communist Rakossi during the counter-revolution in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, when capitalism with ‘socialist ‘ characteristics replaced Cominform socialism. The process was euphemistically referred to as ‘de-Stalinisation’ but was, in fact, an attempt to restore capitalist modes of production.

Hungary’s ideological crisis culminated in the attempted coup of 1956, when the CIA, operating out of Vienna, attempted to overthrow the embattled regime with the help of former Nazi collaborators. The 1956 ‘Hungarian Revolution’ was, in many respects, an intelligence prototype for many US orchestrated regime change operations to follow decades later.

Although, Orban is said to have ‘fought against communism’ as a student, he was, like many others of his generation, a fighter against a particular type of capitalism which he perceived as a “leftist conspiracy” against the people. Marxist Leninists have always considered the triumph of Khrushchevite revisionism in the USSR in 1956 and the subsequent ‘de-stalinisation’ of the USSR and of the Popular Democracies of Eastern Europe to have constituted a counter-revolution against the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Khrushchev’s reforms involved abandoning state-centralised planning, the re-introduction of profit as the regulator of production, combined with a cynical and anti-Marxist foreign policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’ between capitalism and socialism. In order to justify these policies Khrushchev wrote a long mendacious speech slandering Stalin. Every claim against Stalin in Khrushchev’s speech has since been proven to have been a lie. Soviet revisionism killed not only socialism in the USSR but, with the notable exception of Albania, the hope of socialism throughout the world. This destruction of Marxism Leninism by the Soviet and later Chinese revisionists led to a revival of Trotskyism in Western imperial countries. And it is this ‘New Left’ that constitutes the vanguard of contemporary Western imperialism.

In this sense, Orban is correct in his analysis of a “leftist” conspiracy against civilization, for what we see today is the triumph of Trotskyist ideology in the form of Zionism and neo-conservativism, where proletarian internationalism has been subsumed by the ‘human rights’ international on the one hand and ‘islamist jihad’ on the other, a new ‘revolutionary’ alliance waging war against the working class.

One only has to observe the clenched fist of the US colour revolutions and the constant appeal to youthful rebellion to understand how capitalism is now deepening its grip on humanity through the appropriation of leftist, revolutionary symbology. Indeed, contemporary US capitalism is, to employ a phrase of Trotsky’s, ‘permanent revolution’. Or, in the words of US Grand Strategist General Thomas Barnett, “US-style globalisation is pure socio-economic revolution.”

But it is a revolution which wages war on the working class. One of the results of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt was the abrogation of labour laws requiring companies to pay workers during periods of factory closure due to lack of product demand. Many of the strikes that resulted in the overthrow of Mubarak’s regime were led by US funded ‘independent’ labour organisations.

Given Orban’s intransigence on the refugee issue, he is likely to face a US/Israeli backed ‘popular protest movement’ in an attempt to effect regime change. Colour revolutions often involve the transportation of thousands of foreigners to the place of protest by US intelligence agencies operating through NGOS. This happened in Belarus in 2010. Many of the youths attempting to get into Hungary could be used as a battering ram to destablize the Hungarian nation-state.

Since the fomentation of the ‘Arab Spring’ by the CIA and its numerous NGOS in 2011, NATO’s total destruction of Libya and its proxy war against Syria, millions of people have been turned into refugees. That is why they are fleeing to Europe. But it is not the principal reason for the ‘current crisis’, or rather the current phase of an ongoing and deepening crisis.

NATO’s invasion and destruction of Libya in 2011 has led to millions of desperate people attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea. This ongoing crisis has received varying levels of coverage from the mass media. For example, the sinking of a boat in the Mediterranean in July 2015 only received a four line report in the French Le Figaro newspaper, in spite of the fact that a hundred people were drowned!

However, since the publication of a drowned boy washed up on the shores of Turkey in 2015,the refugee crisis has entered a new phase, with the photo of the boy in question being used as an excuse to drum up public support for NATO air-strikes against Syria in order to “stop the massacres”

While no one seems to know just how many Syrians are among the migrants fleeing to Europe, there has been a media fixation on these particular migrants, in spite of the fact that they only represent a minority of the current migrants amassing at the Hungarian border.

The debate about what should be done to manage the refugee/migrant crisis turns on whether or not they should be welcomed into European countries. However, this pro or anti migrant debate masks a new and highly destructive phase in US/NATO geopolitical strategy. Many of the migrants at the Hungarian border are coming from refugee camps in Turkey. Austrian intelligence has reportedly revealed that US government agencies are funding the transfer of these refugees to Europe in an attempt to destabilize the continent. This new geostrategic initiative involves using desperate refugees as weapons for the purposes of US/Zionist divide and rule of the European continent.

France’s Radio Internationale has revealed that over 95 percent of migrants in the current flow into Europe are young males between 20 and 35 years old. Many are said to be fleeing conscription in the Syrian army, which has lost thousands of brave men and women since the start of the Zionist war on their country. The preponderance of young, fit males among the so-called ‘refugees’ has also been confirmed to this author personally by researchers of Russian state television RT. When asked about the refugee issue on France’s BMTV, Russian Ambassador to France Alexandre Orlov said “All I can see are young men fleeing the war instead of defending their country”. So, why are there so few vulnerable women and children among the refugees escaping the war in Syria?

The journey across the Mediterranean to Europe can normally cost up to 11,000 dollars, more money than most European workers manage to save from years of hard labour, yet we are told that millions of war-ravaged Iraqis and Syrians are suddenly able to pay this colossal sum to make the journey to Europe. How is this possible?

The glorification of the young men fleeing conscription in Syria, coupled with the demonisation of the heroic men and women in Syria fighting for their country’s freedom, is deeply indicative of the moral turpitude of our own ruling class for whom disloyalty and cowardice are the principal characteristics.

In September a Hungarian camera woman was filmed tripping a refugee carrying a child at the Hungarian border. The video soon went viral. The camera woman is now taking legal action against the man she tripped as he has changed his story to the police. Petra Laszlo has claimed that she panicked as refugees began to charge towards her. There was much indignation in the politically correct corporate media. But Syrian patriots did some research on the Laszlo’s ‘victim’. The man’s name is apparently Osama Abdel-Muhsen Alghadab and he is a member of Japhat Al-Nosra, the Al-Qaida affiliated terrorist group that has massacred thousands of innocents in Syria.

This is not to suggest by any means that all of the refugees attempting to enter Hungary are terrorists. But in the context of a global war involving complex international networks of terrorists operating under the aegis of American, Israeli and European intelligence agencies, this incident is another argument in favour of Orban’s policy of implementing normal immigration regulatory procedures.

In February 2011 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi warned Europe about the danger of an invasion by migrants and, in particular, Al- Qaeda terrorists if he were to be overthrown. Syria’s President Assad has also warned Europe of the danger of thousands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists coming to Europe, disguised as refugees. It is quite possible that a similar scenario is now coming to pass.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle. He is a regular contributor to Global Research, Russia Today International, Press TV, Sputnik Radio France, Sputnik English , Al Etijah TV , Sahar TV,and has also appeared on Al Jazeera and Al Mayadeen. He writes in English, Gaelic, and French. Read other articles by Gearóid.

With Iran celebrating international sanctions lifted on its entirely peaceful nuclear program, the US Treasury imposed new ones unilaterally and illegally – again solely for political reasons.

A Treasury press release said Iran’s ballistic missile program was targeted, unrelated to its nuclear activities.

Eleven domestic and foreign entities as well as individuals are targeted. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam Szubin lied, claiming “Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions.”

We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program.

It bears repeating. Longstanding US sanctions imposed on Iran were and continue to be solely for political reasons, no others. Any without Security Council authorization are illegal.

Accusations against the Islamic Republic are fabricated. Its ballistic missile and other military activities are entirely legal – solely for national security and self-defense, never for waging war, polar opposite America’s sordid history of raping and destroying one country after another.

Newly imposed sanctions on Iran less than 24 hours after lifting international ones shows implacable US anti-Iranian hostility. What further shoe will drop next – what other outrage against the region’s leading force for peace and stability?

Washington should sanction itself. No country operates more ruthlessly, disdainful of rule of law principles, indifferent to human suffering.

Nowhere else is responsible change more urgently needed, the only way to save humanity from the scourge of endless wars, possible WW III with nuclear weapons, risking mass annihilation.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

CIA operatives, US special forces and their rogue state counterparts train ISIS recruits in the fine art of committing gruesome atrocities, including beheadings, use of chemical and other toxic agents, as well as mass slaughtering civilians.

US-led Western imperial ruthlessness bears full responsibility for the latest horrific incident.

Dier Ezzor is Syria’s seventh largest city, its largest eastern one, located 280 miles northeast of Damascus. Pre-war, its population exceeded 200,000. Syrian oil fields are located in the area. The province connects ISIS’ declared capital Raqqa with Iraqi territory it controls.

Reports indicate their fighters slaughtered around 280 people, including women, children and whole families loyal to Assad’s government.

Mass murder followed Russia initiating efforts to provide area residents with desperately needed humanitarian aid, conducting airdrop operations.

The incident is one of the largest atrocities since Obama launched proxy war in March 2011 – using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists as imperial foot soldiers.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported 300 lives lost in Dier Ezzor’s al-Bghailiye village, mostly “women, children and the elderly.”

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi condemned what he called a barbaric and cowardly massacre. America and other nations supporting this scourge bear full responsibility.

“The Premier said that terrorist organizations are committing massacres to make up for the recurring losses and defeats they suffer at the hands of the Syrian Arab Army, and that these terror organizations know that their days in Syria are numbered,” according to SANA.

Dozens of Syrian soldiers were killed along with civilians. Some were beheaded. Hundreds of survivors were taken hostage.

Dier Ezzor’s Governor Mohammad Qaddur Ainyyia said Syrian army troops freed al-Bghailiye after the massacre. ISIS fighters suffered significant casualties.

Western media are largely silent on what happened, instead featuring fake photos of starving Madaya residents, blaming Assad irresponsibly. So far no NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or US TV reports.

Reuters reported ISIS “kill(ing) at least 250 people…including pro-government fighters and their families.”

ISIS fighters have been holding area residents hostage under siege for over a year, enduring dire conditions, why Moscow initiated humanitarian airdrops, hoping supplies will reach people in need, risking them falling into ISIS hands.

Russia called on all sides to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrians in areas besieged by ISIS and other terrorist groups.

A Foreign Ministry statement said “we continue to make active efforts, including during our contacts with the official Syrian authorities, in the interests of improving the living conditions for civilians.”

We urge (other nations) to constructively cooperate with UN humanitarian structures which will allow to secure humanitarian access to aforementioned and other settlements that found themselves in a difficult situation.

January 25 peace talks will do nothing to halt fighting and horrific atrocities committed by terrorist groups – not as long as Washington and rogue partners support them.

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 Defense Ministry said that these results did not always correspond to the stated objectives

The Russian Defense Ministry may begin publishing data on the results of airstrikes of the international coalition in the Middle East, in order to disprove the accusations alleging that the Russian military aim at civilian targets, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.

General Konashenkov recalled that at the end of last year the ministry said that it had the sufficient amount of information on the results of the work of the countries of the anti-Islamic State coalition in Syria. The Defense Ministry said that these results did not always correspond to the stated objectives.

“Frankly speaking, we expected our colleagues not only to pay attention to this, but also to draw certain conclusions. Therefore, to disprove further rumours and accusations against us and if our colleagues keep silent on the results of their bombings in Syria, we will ourselves have to inform the public of these facts,” said the Russian official.

Igor Konashenkov © Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS

According to Konashenkov, in the area of Aleppo where a school was allegedly destroyed by an airstrike more than 10 aircraft of the coalition, as well as attack drones were fulfilling various combat tasks on that day. In addition, since December 20 last year to this day the coalition planes have been making sorties and hitting targets in the area of Aleppo practically every day.

“Thus, the question is: which facilities were targeted in that area by the coalition aircraft? Our colleagues continue to stubbornly keep silent,” the Russian defense official said.

Last week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights published a report, which accused Russian warplanes of delivering an air strike at a school in the Al-Adzhar populated locality.

The number of casualties, according to the Observatory, varied from 8 to 20 people.

“As usual, the report lacked the victims’ names and addresses and did not give the name of the school or its location,” Konashenkov went on to say.

“The professional analysis of photos distributed in social networks revealed, judging from the nature of destruction, that the school had been hit by an ‘air -to-surface’ missile, which are used in Syria and Iraq exclusively by the warplanes and assault UAV of the anti-ISIS coalition,” General Konashenkov said.

Russian Defense Ministry learns who is behind Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

Konashenkov also said the ministry has found out who is behind the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which distributes information blackmailing the Russian Aerospace Force grouping in Syria. According to the official, the man moved to the United Kingdom after serving three terms in Syria.

“The first throwing-in of false information about claimed victims in the Russian air strikes appeared in social networks and some western media well before our mission in the Syrian Arab Republic began,” he said. “Most information was distributed on behalf of so-called ‘Syrian human rights activists’.”

In “distribution” of the statements made by those “human rights activists” participate, as a rule, some foreign media, which use most often the organisation called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” with headquarters in the United Kingdom, he said.

The defense ministry’s representative said over recent five years the organization’s head and sole employee was the man called Ossama Suleiman, who moved to the UK in 2000 after having served three prison terms in Syria and who took the nickname of Rami Abdurrahman.

“In his many interviews with the western media this mister every time stresses all the information he publishes comes to him personally on the phone from trusted sources,” the defence ministry’s spokesman said in conclusion. “Thus, that network of the so-called reporting human activists is active right under the nose of Islamic State and other extremists. At the same time, for some reason, they would not see the atrocities of those terrorists.”

West considers 49 civilian deaths insignificant in Syria operation planning

The spokesman also pointed out that the Western coalition considers the death of 49 civilians as insignificant in Syria operation planning while the Russian military excludes such risks in its plans.

“Our aviation does not even plan air strikes on such targets in the event of a threat of civilian deaths. However, the Western coalition can just allow itself to consider the death of 49 civilians as insignificant,” Konashenkov said.

According to the Russian general, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr said that the US military had told her that the American command made decisions on delivering such air strikes on condition that the number of civilian deaths would not exceed 50 people.

Iran has currently met its obligations to the IAEA under the 2015 US-­led agreement with the UN and now IT is the time for Israel to submit its nuclear program to UNSC inspection or face international sanctions. The imperative is for:

1. The Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona to be fully opened to inspection by the IAEA and its estimated undeclared stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads be put under UN supervision for eventual destruction other than those required for legitimate defence purposes, estimated not to exceed five warheads (5) in total.

2. Israel’s capacity for uranium enrichment to be severely limited for a minimum of 15 years and that all its centrifuges in excess of 5000 to be dismantled under IAEA supervision

3. That all supplies of heavy water be shipped to the US or other approved recipient, apart from the minimum required for legitimate medical isotopes

4. That inspections teams from the IAEA continuously monitor all Israeli nuclear sites and to verify all fissile materials thereupon.

5. That the state of Israel to become a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with immediate effect.

The timescale for all such specified actions to be approved by the United Nations Assembly in General Session.

Note

1. http://fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

Recientemente algunos intelectuales que se autodefinen de izquierda o centro-izquierda, anunciaron que estábamos a las puertas del fin del ciclo de los gobiernos progresistas, caracterizado por el agotamiento de sus programas neodesarrollistas –que incluyen el extractivismo‑, y su “ineficiente” capacidad de gestión.  Es de esperar entonces, según ellos, una avanzada de la derecha en la región, situación que configuraría un nuevo mapa político en Latinoamérica.  Con este discurso “visionario”, apuntalado por el conocimiento de los planes geopolíticos del imperio para la región, tales intelectuales contribuyeron a instalar y “naturalizar” en la opinión pública el advenimiento del fin de los gobiernos populares y su reemplazo “inevitable” por gobiernos de derecha, presentándolos incluso como una “saludable alternancia”.  Vale entonces compartir reflexiones acerca de este diagnóstico y su sentencia.

El recuento crítico de los acontecimientos políticos de los últimos años revela que las propuestas políticas que caracterizaron el quehacer de los gobiernos populares en tiempos de proyección posneoliberal, están cumplidas.  Y ello anuncia la apertura de un nuevo tiempo, con nuevas problemáticas, tareas, sujetos y desafíos.  Pero además de tareas y agendas, los primeros años de los gobiernos populares significaron también para los pueblos transitar por un conjunto de aprendizajes.

• Quedó al descubierto –en los hechos‑ que gobierno y poder no son sinónimos, que no es posible, enfrentarlos al mismo tiempo ni del mismo modo.  Las revoluciones democráticas no son sinónimos de la otrora “vía pacífica”, suponen la profundización del conflicto político como vehículo de la lucha de clases, anudada fuertemente con una profunda batalla político-cultural de ideas.

• Se evidenció que no basta con poner “buenos gobernantes” a ocupar puestos institucionales que responden al sistema que se busca cambiar.

• El crecimiento económico es importante, pero insuficiente.  La educación política, la batalla ideológica es central.  Y está anudada a la participación política, al empoderamiento.  Nadie puede empoderar a otro/s y mucho menos desde arriba.  El empoderamiento germina con la participación consciente y protagónica de los sujetos en los procesos sociotransformadores.

• Se agotó la concepción de la política desde arriba y a “dedo”, propia del siglo XX; la “bobería”, el romanticismo anodino acerca de la democracia, la subestimación de la política, y las viejas modalidades de la representación política que suplantan el protagonismo popular y fragmentan lo político de lo social.

• Fin del maximalismo teórico y el minimalismo práctico propio de sectores (ultra)izquierdistas.

• Fin del vanguardismo, del pensamiento liberal de izquierda y de las prácticas que, en virtud de ello, aíslan a la militancia izquierdista de los procesos concretos de los pueblos, sus actores y sus dinámicas, posicionándolas fuera de los escenarios concretos de las contiendas políticas.

Desafíos centrales del nuevo tiempo politico

Marcados por los procesos políticos que sacudieron el continente en los últimos veinte años, pueblos, organizaciones sociales y políticas, y gobiernos populares, revolucionarios y progresistas necesitan hacer un alto en el camino, dar cuenta de los logros, las limitaciones y las nuevas tareas del presente.  Esto es: replantearse tanto las preguntas iniciales como las respuestas que guiaron los pasos del quehacer político, económico, social y cultural por más de una década, preparándose para enfrentar nuevos desafíos.  Entre ellos destacaré aquí los siguientes:

Conservar lo logrado implica profundizar el proceso de cambios

La consolidación de actores de oposición política de signo neoliberal colocó a algunos gobiernos a la defensiva.  Conservar los logros se convirtió entonces en una prioridad del accionar político en la actual coyuntura.  Pero lo que no estuvo ‑ni está‑ claro es que para conservar lo conquistado y sostener los procesos de cambios es necesario profundizarlos, radicalizarlos.  Y esto no se logra con acuerdos de cúpulas ni buscando alianzas con sectores del poder opuestos a los cambios; el ejemplo de Brasil es muy elocuente al respecto.

La clave radica en anclar los procesos a la participación protagónica de los pueblos.  Se ha construido un nuevo tiempo social, político, cultural.  Y este trae consigo nuevas tareas cuya realización está anudada al protagonismo popular.  Esto implica también fortalecer los procesos de concientización y organización colectiva que vigoricen la determinación de los pueblos para sostener los logros alcanzados y traccionar el proceso hacia mayores transformaciones.  Y esto no puede ser espontáneo; librados los acontecimientos a la “espontaneidad” no hay que sorprenderse ante el advenimiento de sucesiones políticas de derecha.

La actual coyuntura política continental coloca a los gobiernos populares, las fuerzas progresistas o revolucionarias de la región en la disyuntiva de profundizar las transformaciones o sucumbir ante ellas, si optan por conservarlas solo “desde arriba”.

La participación protagónica del/los pueblo/s es neurálgica para que los gobiernos populares sean también un camino de construcción de poder popular

La profundización de la democracia en este nuevo tiempo reclama asumir el decisivo imperativo político del protagonismo del pueblo para profundizar las transformaciones, entendiendo que ellas anudan, simultáneamente, los derroteros políticos de los gobiernos populares con los diversos procesos de construcción y afianzamiento de poder popular desde abajo que los pueblos desarrollan en cada país.  En esto radica, centralmente, la profundización de los procesos sociotransformadores iniciados.  Pensarla como un simple aggiornamento de la agenda pública deja a los gobiernos populares a merced de la voracidad política de los opositores.

Las realidades objetivas y subjetivas han cambiado; las subjetividades políticas de los sujetos participantes de los procesos de cambio se han radicalizado, hay un pueblo que reclama nuevos y mayores protagonismos.  Ese protagonismo necesita hoy reorganizarse y rearticularse, conformando nuevas confluencias de los quehaceres de la militancia social y política, dentro y fuera de lo institucional, actualizando el horizonte estratégico de los cambios.

En este sentido, apostar a la construcción del protagonismo colectivo de los pueblos para su constitución en la fuerza político-social de liberación es el factor neurálgico que marcará el rumbo y las dinámicas políticas del presente y el futuro inmediato en los procesos populares en curso en cada país y en la región.  Ello es vehículo también para la construcción de la unidad de los pueblos.

Reconocer a la participación popular orgánica como un factor clave para el afianzamiento y la profundización de los procesos de cambio en curso, no está reñido con el reconocimiento al papel de los liderazgos individuales.  Pero esto no significa aceptar que la continuidad de los líderes a la cabeza de los gobiernos populares, es el factor que da estabilidad y solidez a los procesos.  Al contrario, cuando hay líderes que sustituyen el protagonismo político de los pueblos, en realidad, lejos de garantizar continuidades, anuncian el cortoplacismo del camino emprendido.

Pueblos sin autonomía y auto-convencimiento poco pueden hacer para sostener y/o profundizar procesos que en realidad no sienten como propios.  Por ese camino, el extrañamiento de los mismos anidará silenciosamente entre las filas populares y abrirá cauces a previsibles derrotas.  Esto no es: “sí o no”; hay muchos matices.  En no pocas coyunturas se ha visto que los pueblos y sus organizaciones concentran mayor madurez y responsabilidad que sus dirigentes y si bien no logran a veces evitar el desenlace negativo, con su presencia protagónica en las calles lo aminoran bastante.  Los líderes son importantes y en algunas coyunturas decisivos, pero nunca para sustituir la participación protagónica de los pueblos, sino para desencadenarla y potenciarla.

Hugo Chávez, ejemplo de líder carismático y gran creador y conductor del proceso revolucionario boliviariano de Venezuela, no centró el proceso revolucionario en su persona.  Tenía claro que el pueblo autoconstituido en sujeto revolucionario es el protagonista creador, constructor y sostén del poder popular de nuevo tipo que germina desde abajo en los consejos comunales y comunas.  En ellos la revolución bolivariana abre cauces hacia la creación de una nueva civilización, al orientarse ‑vía empoderamiento colectivo‑ hacia la construcción del Estado comunal.  Tan claro lo tenía que su lema fue (y es) “comuna o nada”.

Construir un nuevo modo de producción y reproducción (sociedad-naturaleza)

Una de las mayores limitaciones de lo que podría definirse sin grandes rigores, como “modelo económico neodesarrollista” es que se ajusta a los marcos del modo de producción capitalista, sosteniendo el circuito de la muerte.  Esto marca como una tarea importante de este nuevo tiempo: crear y articular procesos productivos alternativos existentes y promover la búsqueda de nuevas bases económicas que hagan posible la coherencia social entre el ciclo de producción y la reproducción.

Se trata de avanzar hacia la conformación de un sistema productivo que sea socialmente responsable del ciclo reproductivo que genera.  Esto es: aportar a la creación de un nuevo modo de producción‑reproducción sociales con lógica circular, que abra cauces a una nueva economía, que además de enfrentar con éxito la lucha contra el hambre, la pobreza, el analfabetismo y las enfermedades curables, sea el sustrato de un nuevo modo de vida y una nueva civilización, la del buen vivir y convivir.

Salir del cerco ideológico, político, cultural y mediático del poder hegemónico

• Desplegar la batalla político cultural en todos los terrenos y dimensiones, en particular las redes sociales.

• Atender al desarrollo de la subjetividad y espiritualidad de los pueblos poteciando sus identidades, culturas, cosmovisiones…

• Desarrollar sostenidamente procesos interactivos de formación política.

• Abrir cauces a un nuevo pensamiento crítico latinoamericano, descolonizado, intercultural y multicosmovisivo, plurívoco, anclado a las prácticas de los pueblos.

• Promover procesos articulados de descolonización, interculturalidad y despatriarcalización en la construcción del poder popular desde abajo.

• Desarrollar un nuevo tipo de intelectual orgánico, que descubra, promueva y potencie el pensamiento de los pueblos en toda su diversidad, amplitud y riqueza.

Trabajar por el fortalecimiento y desarrollo de las articulaciones regionales y continentales de los movimientos y organizaciones sociales populares, particularmente ampliar y profundizar el espacio ALBA de los movimientos.  Y también impulsar la creación de espacios de encuentro, intercambio y coordinación de organizaciones sociales y políticas continentales, regionales y en el ámbito de cada país.

Apostar a la creación y construcción de una nueva izquierda política, social y cultural

Es vital comprender las nuevas dimensiones de lo político, de la acción y organización políticas; dar cuenta de las nuevas realidades y sus nuevos sujetos/as: los/as desplazados/as de diversos orígenes, los/as precarizados/as permanentes, los movimientos indígenas, las mujeres, los/las jóvenes, los niños y las niñas, los y las adultos/as mayores, los LGTB… abrir espacio a las diversas identidades, cosmovisiones, saberes, sabidurías y corrientes de pensamiento: los saberes ecológicos, la biopolítica, la bioética, el feminismo político y la despatriarcalización como crítica raizal del poder del capital…

Construir la ofensiva estratégica popular revolucionaria

Una de las resultantes más recurrentes de la división del campo popular, y particularmente entre la izquierda latinoamericana, es que las protestas y luchas sociales terminan siendo funcionales a los intereses de los poderosos.  Marcado el campo popular por disputas internas de “poder”, por divisiones multicolores de todo signo entre las fuerzas políticas y su correlato en los movimientos sociales populares, los conflictos sociales terminan subordinados a los intereses intestinos del poder, fortaleciéndolo como recambio, en vez de lograr –colectivamente- subordinar a los poderosos a los intereses del pueblo y proponer una agenda política para concretar los objetivos populares (ofensiva).  El caso de Argentina es muy elocuente al respecto, visible tanto en los acontecimientos recientes como en la trayectoria histórica de las izquierdas.

A esta gran debilidad política y cultural hay que sumar la instalación de un pensamiento binario (lo uno o lo otro, blanco o negro…), el desarrollo de la guerra mediática para conquistar y anestesiar las mentes del “gran público”, sin que las organizaciones políticas y sociales –ocupadas en sus peleas internas‑, asuman las tareas de la batalla de ideas como una de las disputas centrales de las luchas políticas de nuestro tiempo.

La falta de convergencia y unidad de los diversos actores sociales y políticos, aunada con la escasa formación política, las sectorialización y el corporativismo… coloca a las organizaciones sociales y políticas de los pueblos en situación de subordinación a los intereses de los poderosos.  En función de ello, estos pueden manipularlos para alcanzar sus propósitos, debilitando y resquebrajando la base social de los gobiernos populares para reagruparse como bloque de poder opositor con capacidad de recuperar su hegemonía.  Esta recuperación es en realidad una nueva toma de posiciones de los poderosos quienes ‑haciéndose cargo de las nuevas realidades políticas recientemente vividas con los gobiernos populares‑, una vez en los gobiernos, buscarán destruir las bases democráticas de las sociedades para impedir cualquier intento futuro de reeditar gobiernos progresistas, populares o revolucionarios en el continente.  Y para ello no están solos, cuentan con el apoyo imperial del Norte, de las instituciones del poder global del capital y de sus cañoneras mediáticas locales y globales.

El arribo de gobiernos de derecha en la región no es una simple “vuelta al pasado”, tampoco responde a una “enriquecedora alternancia” de gobiernos y gobernantes.  Se trata de una vuelta de hoja, un giro raizal en la orientación de los procesos emprendidos, que se produce para articular los procesos locales con las necesidades hegemónicas y lógicas del poder global del capital: saqueo, dominación y muerte… Es importante no subestimarlo.  Y preparar las nuevas resistencias anclándolas en la coordinación y unidad a partir de la participación articulada social y política de los sectores populares en su diversidad.  A ello debe encaminarse el fortalecimiento de la formación política y de los procesos orgánicos de convergencia colectiva de organizaciones sociales y políticas hacia objetivos comunes, enmarcados en la creación y construcción colectivas de un nuevo horizonte civilizatorio.

Isabel Rauber 

– Isabel Rauber es Doctora en Filosofía; educadora popular; militante social; estudiosa de los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos empeñados en procesos participativos de construcción de poder popular desde abajo.

– See more at: http://www.alainet.org/es/articulo/174409#sthash.ugKO9Nfc.dpuf

«Le più piccole bombe Usa alimentano la paura nucleare»: così titolava ieri in prima pagina  The New York Times, riferendosi alle B61-12, le nuove bombe nucleari che gli Stati uniti stanno per installare anche in Italia al posto delle B-61 schierate ad Aviano e Ghedi-Torre. Le caratteristiche di questa nuova arma nucleare sono state descritte negli ultimi due anni in vari articoli sul manifesto: non è una semplice versione ammodernata della B61, ma una nuova arma nucleare polivalente, che sostituisce le bombe B61-3, -4, -7, -10 nell’attuale arsenale nucleare Usa. La B61-12, con una potenza media di 50 kiloton (circa il quadruplo della bomba di Hiroshima), svolge quindi la funzione di più bombe, comprese quelle penetranti progettate per «decapitare» il paese nemico, distruggendo i bunker dei centri di comando e altre strutture sotterranee in un first strike nucleare. A differenza delle B61 sganciate in verticale sull’obiettivo, le B61-12 vengono lanciate a grande distanza (circa 100 km) e si dirigono verso l’obiettivo guidate da un sistema satellitare. Si cancella così, in gran parte, la differenza tra armi nucleari strategiche a lungo raggio e armi tattiche a corto raggio.

L’articolo del New York Times aggiunge a tali caratteristiche un dettaglio di grande importanza: la B61-12 ha «una testata con quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili». Al momento del lancio, viene selezionata la potenza dell’esplosione nucleare a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire: ad esempio, quella massima per distruggere una intera città, rendendo radioattiva una vasta area; quella minima per distruggere una singola zona, provocando minore radioattività.

Le implicazioni di questa «modernizzazione» sono gravissime. Oltre che sulle bombe, gli Usa hanno in programma di installare testate nucleari a potenza variabile anche su missili da crociera. Ancora più pericoloso è che gli stessi missili sono armabili sia con testate convenzionali (non-nucleari), sia con testate nucleari. Chi è attaccato con tali missili non può dunque sapere se si tratta di un attacco nucleare o no e, per evitare il peggio, prima che i missili arrivino sugli obiettivi può lanciare per ritorsione un attacco nucleare.

Ma c’è un pericolo ancora maggiore, evidenziato perfino dal generale James Cartwright, già capo del Comando strategico degli Stati uniti, responsabile delle armi nucleari: «La modernizzazione potrebbe cambiare il modo in cui i comandanti militari valutano i rischi derivanti dall’uso di armi nucleari». In altre parole, avvertono Cartwright e altri critici, «armi nucleari di minore potenza e più precise aumentano la tentazione di usarle, perfino di usarle per primi invece che per rappresaglia». Lo conferma la Federazione degli scienziati americani (Fas): «L’alta precisione e la possibilità di usare testate meno distruttive possono portare i comandanti militari a premere perché, in un attacco, si usi  la bomba nucleare, sapendo che la ricaduta radioattiva e il danno collaterale sarebbero limitati».

Queste sono le nuove bombe nucleari Usa che, già testate nel poligono di Tonopah in Nevada, stanno per arrivare in Italia. Lo conferma da Washington, con prove documentate, la Federazione degli scienziati americani. Una foto satellitare mostra che, a tale scopo, è stato effettuato l’upgrade della base della U.S. Air Force ad Aviano e di quella di Ghedi-Torre. Analoghi lavori sono stati effettuati nella base aerea tedesca di Buchel, in altre due basi in Belgio e Olanda, e in quella turca di Incirlic dove stanno per essere installate le B61-12.

Non si sa quante B61-12 sarannno schierate in Europa e Turchia. Secondo le ultime stime della Fas, gli Usa mantengono oggi 70 bombe nucleari B61 in Italia (50 ad Aviano e 20 a Ghedi), 50 in Turchia, 20 rispettivamente in Germania, Belgio e Olanda, per un totale di 180. Nessuno sa però con esattezza quante effettivamente siano. Si sa però una cosa: quelle che verranno tra poco installate in Italia dagli Usa sono armi che abbassano la soglia nucleare, ossia rendono più probabile il lancio di un attacco nucleare dal nostro paese e lo espongono quindi a una rappresaglia nucleare. All’uso di tali armi nucleari vengono addestrati anche i piloti italiani, nonostante che l’Italia abbia ratificato il Trattato di non-proliferazione che la «impegna a non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente».

Manlio Dinucci

Há vinte e cinco anos, nas primeiras horas do dia 17 de janeiro de 1991, começava no Golfo Pérsico a operação “Tempestade do deserto”, a guerra contra o Iraque que abriu a fase histórica que estamos vivendo. Esta guerra foi desencadeada no momento em que, após a queda do Muro de Berlim, serão dissolvidos o Pacto de Varsóvia e a própria União Soviética. Isto criou, na região europeia e centro-asiática, uma situação geopolítica inteiramente nova. E, em escala mundial, desaparecia a superpotência capaz de fazer face aos Estados Unidos.

“O presidente Bush aproveitou esta mudança histórica”, conta Colin Powell. Washington traça imediatamente “uma nova estratégia de segurança nacional e uma estratégia militar para sustentá-la”. O ataque iraquiano contra o Kuweit, ordenado por Saddam Hussein em agosto de 1990, “fez com que os Estados Unidos pudessem pôr em prática a nova estratégia exatamente no momento em que começavam a torna-la pública”.

Saddam Hussein, que se torna o “inimigo número um”, é o mesmo que os Estados Unidos apoiaram nos anos 1980 na guerra contra o Irã de Komeiny, então o “inimigo número um” para os interesses estadunidenses no Oriente Médio. Mas quando em 1988 termina a guerra contra o Irã, os Estados Unidos  temem que o Iraque, graças também à ajuda soviética, conquistasse um papel dominante na região. Então, recorreram à tradicional política de “dividir para reinar”. Sob a direção de Washington, muda também a atitude do Kuait: este exige o pagamento imediato da dívida contraída pelo Iraque e, explorando a jazida de Rumaila que se estende pelos dois territórios, eleva sua produção petrolífera para além da cota estabelecida pela Opep. Assim, acarreta prejuízo ao Iraque, que saiu da guerra com uma dívida externa de mais de 70 bilhões de dólares, dos quais 40 com o Kuwait e a Arábia Saudita.  Saddam Hussein pensa sair do impasse “reanexando” o território kuwaitiano que, com base nas fronteiras traçadas em 1922 pelo procônsul britânico Sir Percy Cox, impede o acesso do Iraque ao Golfo.

Washington dá a entender a Bagdá que vai ficar fora da disputa. Em 25 de julho de 1990, enquanto os satélites do Pentágono mostram que a invasão é iminente, a embaixadora estadunidense em Bagdá, April Glaspie, assegura a Saddam Hussein que os Estados Unidos desejam ter as melhores relações com o Iraque e não pensam em interferir nos conflitos interárabes. Saddam Hussein cai na armadilha: uma semana depois, no dia 1º de agosto de 1990, as forças iraquianas invadem o Kuwait.

Washington, tendo formado uma coalizão internacional, envia então para o Golfo uma força de 750 mil homens, dos quais 70% são estadunidenses, sob as ordens do general Schwarzkopf. Durante 43 dias, a aviação estadunidense e aliada efetua, com 2.800 aviões, mais de 110 mil incursões, lançando 250 mil bombas, inclusive de fragmentação que espalham 10 milhões de munições. Participam nos bombardeios, com os EUA, forças aéreas e navais britânicas, francesas, italianas, gregas, espanholas, portuguesas, belgas, holandesas, dinamarquesas, norueguesas e canadenses. Em 23 de fevereiro de 1991, as tropas da coalizão, compreendendo mais de meio milhão de soldados, lançam a ofensiva terrestre. Esta termina em 28 de fevereiro com um “cessar-fogo temporário” proclamado pelo presidente Bush. A guerra é sucedida pelo bloqueio, que provoca na população iraquiana mais vítimas do que a guerra: mais de um milhão, das quais cerca da metade são crianças.

Imediatamente após a guerra do Golfo, Washington lança aos adversários e aos aliados uma mensagem inequívoca: “Os Estados Unidos são o único Estado com uma força, uma envergadura e uma influência em todas as dimensões – política, econômica e militar – realmente mundiais. Não existe nenhum substituto à liderança norte-americana”. (Estratégia de segurança nacional dos Estados Unidos, agosto de 1991).

A guerra do Golfo é a primeira guerra em que a República Italiana participa sob comando estadunidense, violando assim o artigo 11 da Constituição. A Otan, sem participar oficialmente como tal na guerra, põe à disposição suas forças e estruturas para operações militares. Alguns meses mais tarde, em novembro de 1991, o Conselho Atlântico promulga, na esteira da nova estratégia dos EUA, o “novo conceito estratégico da Aliança”. No mesmo ano é promulgado na Itália o “novo modelo de defesa” que, derrubando a Constituição, indica como missão das forças armadas “a tutela dos interesses nacionais em toda parte que seja necessário”.

Assim nasceu com a guerra do Golfo a estratégia que conduziu a guerras sucessivas sob o comando estadunidense, apresentadas como “operações humanitárias de manutenção da paz”: Iugoslávia  1999, Afeganistão 2001, Iraque 2003, Líbia 2011, Síria desde 2013, acompanhadas no mesmo quadro estratégico, pelas guerras de Israel contra o Líbano e  Gaza, da Turquia contra os Curdos do PKK (Partido dos Trabalhadores do Curdistão), da Arábia Saudita contra o Iêmen, a formação do chamado estado Islâmico e outros grupos terroristas funcionais à estratégia da dupla EUA/Otan, a utilização de forças  neonazistas para o golpe de Estado na Ucrânia servindo à nova guerra fria contra a Rússia.

Proféticas, mas no sentido trágico, as palavras do presidente Bush em agosto de 1991: “A crise do Golfo passará à história como a incubadora da nova ordem mundial”.

Manlio Dinucci

Fonte: Il Manifesto –
http://ilmanifesto.info/la-tempesta-nel-deserto-apriva-la-fase-che-viviamo/

Tradução de José Reinaldo Carvalho para o Blog da Resistência

Manlio Dinucci é jornalista e geógrafo italiano.

Venticinque anni fa, nelle prime ore del 17 gennaio 1991, inizia nel Golfo Persico l’operazione «Tempesta del deserto», la guerra contro l’Iraq che apre la fase storica che stiamo vivendo. Questa guerra viene lanciata nel momento in cui, dopo il crollo del Muro di Berlino, stanno per dissolversi il Patto di Varsavia e la stessa Unione Sovietica. Ciò crea, nella regione europea e centro-asiatica, una situazione geopolitica interamente nuova. E, su scala mondiale, scompare la superpotenza in grado di fronteggiare quella statunitense.

«Il presidente Bush coglie questo cambiamento storico»,  racconta Colin Powell. Washington traccia subito «una nuova strategia della sicurezza nazionale e una strategia militare per sostenerla». L’attacco iracheno al Kuwait, ordinato da Saddam Hussein nell’agosto 1990, «fa sì che gli Stati uniti possano mettere in pratica la nuova strategia esattamente nel momento in cui cominciano a pubblicizzarla».

Il Saddam Hussein, che diventa «nemico numero uno», è lo stesso che gli Stati uniti hanno sostenuto negli anni Ottanta nella guerra contro l’Iran di Khomeini, allora «nemico numero uno» per gli interessi Usa in Medioriente. Ma quando nel 1988 termina la guerra con l’Iran, gli Usa temono che l’Iraq, grazie anche all’assistenza sovietica, acquisti un ruolo dominante nella regione. Ricorrono quindi alla tradizionale politica del «divide et impera». Sotto regia di Washington, cambia anche l’atteggiamento del Kuwait: esso esige l’immediato rimborso del debito contratto dall’Iraq e, sfruttando il giacimento di Rumaila che si estende sotto ambedue i territori, porta la propria produzione petrolifera oltre la quota stabilita dall’Opec. Danneggia così l’Iraq, uscito dalla guerra con un debito estero di oltre 70 miliardi di dollari, 40 dei quali dovuti a Kuwait e Arabia Saudita. A questo punto Saddam Hussein pensa di uscire dall’impasse «riannettendosi» il territorio kuwaitiano che, in base ai confini tracciati nel 1922 dal proconsole britannico Sir Percy Cox,  sbarra l’accesso dell’Iraq al Golfo.

Washington lascia credere a Baghdad di voler restare fuori dal contenzioso. Il 25 luglio 1990, mentre i satelliti del Pentagono mostrano che l’invasione è ormai imminente, l’ambasciatrice Usa a Baghdad, April Glaspie,  assicura Saddam Hussein che gli Stati uniti desiderano avere le migliori relazioni con l’Iraq e non intendono interferire nei conflitti inter-arabi. Saddam Hussein cade nella trappola: una settimana dopo, il 1° agosto 1990, le forze irachene invadono il Kuwait.

A questo punto Washington, formata una coalizione internazionale, invia nel Golfo una forza di 750 mila uomini, di cui il 70 per cento statunitensi, agli ordini del generale Schwarzkopf. Per 43 giorni, l’aviazione Usa e alleata effettua, con 2800 aerei, oltre 110 mila sortite, sganciando 250 mila bombe, tra cui quelle a grappolo che rilasciano oltre 10 milioni di submunizioni. Partecipano ai bombardamenti, insieme a quelle statunitensi, forze aeree e navali britanniche, francesi, italiane, greche, spagnole, portoghesi, belghe, olandesi, danesi, norvegesi e canadesi. Il 23 febbraio le truppe della coalizione, comprendenti oltre mezzo milione di soldati, lanciano l’offensiva terrestre. Essa termina il 28 febbraio con un «cessate-il-fuoco temporaneo» proclamato dal presidente Bush. Alla guerra segue l’embargo, che provoca nella popolazione irachena più vittime della guerra: oltre un milione, tra cui circa la metà bambini.

Subito dopo la guerra del Golfo, Washington lancia ad avversari e alleati un inequivocabile messaggio: «Gli Stati uniti rimangono il solo Stato con una forza, una portata e un’influenza in ogni dimensione – politica, economica e militare – realmente globali. Non esiste alcun sostituto alla leadership americana» (Strategia della sicurezza nazionale degli Stati Uniti, agosto 1991).

La guerra del Golfo è la prima guerra a cui partecipa sotto comando Usa la Repubblica italiana, violando l’articolo 11 della Costituzione. La Nato, pur non partecipando ufficialmente in quanto tale alla guerra, mette a disposizione sue forze e strutture per le operazioni militari. Pochi mesi dopo, nel novembre 1991, il Consiglio Atlantico vara, sulla scia della nuova strategia Usa, il «nuovo concetto strategico dell’Alleanza». Nello stesso anno in Italia viene varato il «nuovo modello di difesa» che, stravolgendo la Costituzione, indica quale missione delle forze armate «la tutela degli interessi nazionali ovunque sia necessario».

Nasce così con la guerra del Golfo la strategia che guida le successive guerre sotto comando Usa, presentate come «operazioni umanitarie di peacekeeping»: Jugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libia 2011, Siria dal 2013, accompagnate nello stesso quadro strategico dalle guerre di Israele contro il Libano e Gaza, della Turchia contro i curdi del Pkk, dell’Arabia Saudita contro lo Yemen, dalla formazione dell’Isis e altri gruppi terroristi funzionali alla strategia Usa/Nato, dall’uso di forze neonaziste per il colpo di stato in Ucraina funzionale alla nuova guerra fredda contro la Russia. Profetiche, ma in senso tragico, le parole del presidente Bush nell’agosto 1991: «La crisi del Golfo passerà alla storia come il crogiolo del nuovo ordine mondiale».

Manlio Dinucci

Roger Godsiff MP for Birmingham Hall Green, has tabled a Parliamentary Question asking whether government will reconsider support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade deal, following the announcement that a tar sands company is suing the American Government under existing trade law after it decided against a massive new tar sands pipeline. He said “I hope that the Prime Minister will reconsider his support for TTIP in the light of this lawsuit” adding that – for instance – TTIP could leave UK taxpayers liable to being sued for billions by fracking companies.

The charge by John Hilary, head of War on Want, and many others is that ‘TTIP elevates transnational capital to a legal status equivalent to that of the nation state’

Two powerful international legal mechanisms are already seen as damaging public health and one, ICSID, appears predominantly to oppress small and relatively poor countries:

• Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is an instrument of public international law, that grants an investor the right to use dispute settlement proceedings against a foreign government

• and the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID.
  

Disputes between government and corporations are dealt with in secret in front of a tribunal. Over 500 known cases have now been filed against over 95 countries:

• Philip Morris sued the Australian government over its plain packaging rules.
• The Swedish corporation Battenfall sued the German government over its decision to phase out nuclear power
• a French firm is suing the government of Egypt over its increase in minimum wage.
• The government of Uruguay amended its legislation on health warnings on cigarette packets and ban on the sale of “light” brands,after Philip Morris filed for ICSID arbitration, claiming the restrictions hurt its business.

ICSID appears to act predominantly on behalf of corporations against small, poorer countries – but has deactivated the following link to this information.

Fifty of the 128 pending cases reveal that multinationals – mainly in the sectors of in the tobacco, finance, insurance, debt instruments, petroleum exploration, exploitation, quarrying, mining, electricity generation, hydrocarbon, oil, gas, nuclear power, food, gold, copper, tourism development and water – are taking cases against the Republic of Chile, Republic of Burundi, Arab Republic of Egypt, Republic of the Philippines, Republic of Peru, Republic of Tunisia, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Grenada, Georgia, Romania, Republic of Slovenia, Plurinational Republic of Bolivia, Republic of Togo, Republic of Ecuador, Ukraine, Republic of Panama, Republic of South Africa, Central African Republic, Republic of Paraguay and a huge twentyfour cases against the Argentine Republic.

Roger Godsiff ends:

“This appalling lawsuit shows exactly why the UK must stay out of trade deals which prioritise the rights of greedy multinationals to make a profit over the rights of citizens to breathe clean air and make their own decisions about how their country is run. The UK Government must be accountable to the citizens they were elected to serve, not to unfair trade law which puts profits before people”.

Bipartisan congressional hardliners continue opposing last year’s nuclear deal. House Speaker Paul Ryan said “(a) bipartisan majority in the House voted to reject this deal in the first place, and we will continue to do everything possible to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

He along with numerous other Republican and Democrat congressional members strongly oppose lifting international sanctions.

Republican presidential aspirants railed against changing longstanding policy. Senator Marco Rubio said he’ll “cancel this ridiculous (nuclear) deal with Iran” straightaway in office if elected. “As president, I’ll reimpose sanctions…on day one.”

Jeb Bush accused Tehran of “remain(ing) a major (regional) destabilizing force…working against American interests.”

“Nothing in the (nuclear deal) justif(ies) lifting US and international sanctions…I cannot stand behind a flawed agreement.” He called for imposing new sanctions.

Donald Trump criticized unfreezing Iranian assets, saying withholding them was meant to prevent nuclear weapons development.

Earlier, Ben Carson called the nuclear deal a “recipe for disaster.” Hillary Clinton should scare everyone – arguably the most dangerous of all US presidential aspirants, a reckless war goddess.

Earlier, she said “(i)f I’m president, we will attack Iran.” She outrageously considers the Islamic Republic an “existential threat to Israel,” calling it the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, wanting steps taken to contain its nonexistent “aggressiveness.”

She lied, claiming Tehran “still violat(es) UN Security Council resolutions with its ballistic missile program, which should be met with new sanctions designations and firm resolve.”

If elected president, her policy will be “distrust and verify.” As Secretary of State, she approved large weapons deals for Middle East rogue states, notorious for horrific human rights abuses.

At the time, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Algeria, the UAE and Oman donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Washington remains implacably hostile to Iran. Bipartisan bashing continues unabated.

New efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic may subvert what’s been accomplished – especially with a Republican hardliner or Clinton as president.

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.

Islamic State jihadists have reportedly slaughtered up to 280 people in the Deir ez-Zor province, killing “whole families” for alleged cooperation with the Syrian troops. The killings are said to have taken place a day after Russian humanitarian aid was airdropped in the region.

Local residents told Sputnik news agency the massacre happened in al-Bagilya settlement, an area which received Russian airlifted aid earlier.

“The horrific massacre carried out today by ISIL militants in al-Bagilya in Deir ez-Zor. 280 victims, including women, children and old people. Reason – cooperation with the Syrian army,” a Sputnik source said.

Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) militants reportedly carried out executions of “whole families.”

Previously, reports indicated that IS fighters were moving their way up to the northern part of the Deir ez-Zor province.

The massacre appears to be one of the worst daily mass killings that took place over the five years of the Syrian conflict.

Syrian state media reports that all the people killed were civilians. But local monitoring groups say dozens of government troops were killed as well.

Syrian state news agency SANA initially reported that IS fighters murdered dozens of civilians, without providing any further details. Meanwhile, the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV said that 280 people were killed, including children and women. The TV channel added that the dead bodies were dumped in the Euphrates River, while 400 survivors were taken hostage.

Reuters also reported at least 250 people dead in Bagilya settlement, citing a source close to the government. Some of the victims were beheaded, according to the source.

Hours after the attack was reported, the governor of Deir ez-Zor province, Mohammad Qaddur Ajnyyja, told Sputnik that Syrian army has successfully freed the settlement from Islamic State control.

“ISIL militants entered in the village of al-Bagilya… last night and perpetrated a massacre of whole families. For this reason the army headed to this region to save the population. There were clashes with ISIL militants, they suffered significant casualties, the rest succeeded to flee to the neighboring areas controlled by ISIL,” Ajnyyja said.

RT has requested information on the atrocity from several organizations on the ground, including the Red Cross, and is following the developments.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) top Midwest official knew about the Flint, Michigan drinking water crisis of 2015 months before telling the public, according to a Tuesday report by the The Detroit News.

EPA official Susan Hedman did not publicize the EPA’s concern over Flint’s water quality or the water’s dangerous health concerns. The federal agency instead quietly fought with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for at least six months about what should be done.

Anthony Fordham picks up water at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan to deliver to a school after elevated levels of lead were found in the city’s water in Flint, Michigan December 16 2015 REUTTERS/Rebecca Cook

EPA water expert, Miguel Del Toral, identified potential contamination problems with Flint’s drinking water last February and confirmed the suspicions in April. He authored an internal memo about the problem in June, according to documents obtained by Virginia Tech.

Meanwhile, Hedman became aware of the contamination issue in April. She sought legal advice, but didn’t receive the guidance until November 2014. The American Civil Liberties Union accused Hedman in October of attempting to keep Miguel Del Toral’s memo in-house, downplaying its significance.

The corrosive nature of Flint’s drinking water is causing lead from pipes and pathogens to get into the town’s water supply, according to a study by Virginia Tech. Flint is currently dealing with an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a dangerous  infection that usually spreads through a tainted water source.

Nearly two years ago, the state of Michigan decided to save money by switching Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to a local river. The state of Michigan, however, applied the wrong standards for governing drinking water, resulting in a system that did not properly control corrosion. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder activated the National Guard Tuesday to help distribute bottled water and filters to the 100,000 residents of Flint.

A class-action lawsuit against Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality alleges that the state wasn’t treating Flint’s water with an anti-corrosive agent, a violation of federal law.

“At that point, you do not just have smoke, you have a three-alarm fire and should respond immediately,” Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech researcher whose analysis helped uncover the lead contamination, told The Detroit News. “There was no sense of urgency at any of the relevant agencies, with the obvious exception of Miguel Del Toral, and he was silenced and discredited.”

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This important address to the EU parliament was first published in November 2009

Dear Friends,

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997. Below is Nurit’s speech made on International Women’s Day in Strasbourg earlier this month[November 2009]. Please listen to the words of a bereaved mother, whose daughter fell victim to a vicious, indiscriminating terrorist attack. I wish her words will enter the hearts of all peace seekers in our troubled and divided world.

For better days,
Professor Avraham Oz , Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature University of Haifa 

*      *      *

Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in my country are  Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my speech to Miriam R’aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza strip, whose five small children were killed by Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries at the family`s strawberry field. No one will ever stand trial for this murder.

When I asked the people who invited me here why didn’t they invite a Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion too localized.

I don’t know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse, torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars.

It is true, unfortunately, that the local violence inflicted on Palestinian women by the government of Israel and the Israeli army, has expanded around the globe, In fact, state violence and army violence, individual and collective violence, are the lot of Muslim women today, not only in Palestine but wherever the enlightened western world is setting its big imperialistic foot. It is violence which is hardly ever addressed and which is halfheartedly condoned by most people in Europe and in the USA.

This is because the so-called free world is afraid of the Muslim womb.

Great France of “la liberte égalite et la fraternite” is scared of little girls with head scarves. Great Jewish Israel is afraid of the Muslim womb which its ministers call a demographic threat.

Almighty America and Great Britain are infecting their respective citizens with blind fear of the Muslims, who are depicted as vile, primitive and blood-thirsty, apart from their being non-democratic, chauvinistic and mass producers of future terrorists. This in spite of the fact that the people who are destroying the world today are not Muslim. One of them is a devout Christian, one is Anglican and one is a non-devout Jew.

I have never experienced the suffering Palestinian women undergo every day, every hour, I don’t know the kind of violence that turns a woman’s life into constant hell. This daily physical and mental torture of women who are deprived of their basic human rights and needs of privacy and dignity, women whose homes are broken into at any moment of day and night, who are ordered at a gun-point to strip naked in front of strangers and their own children, whose houses are demolished , who are deprived of their livelihood and of any normal family life. This is not part of my personal ordeal.

But I am a victim of violence against women insofar as violence against children is actually violence against mothers. Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan women are my sisters because we are all at the grip of the same unscrupulous criminals who call themselves leaders of the free enlightened world and in the name of this freedom and enlightenment rob us of our children.

Furthermore, Israeli, American, Italian and British mothers have been for the most part violently blinded and brainwashed to such a degree that they cannot realize their only sisters, their only allies in the world are the Muslim Palestinian, Iraqi or Afghani mothers, whose children are killed by our children or who blow themselves to pieces with our sons and daughters. They are all mind-infected by the same viruses engendered by politicians. And the viruses , though they may have various illustrious names–such as Democracy, Patriotism, God, Homeland–are all the same. They are all part of false and fake ideologies that are meant to enrich the rich and to empower the powerful.

We are all the victims of mental, psychological and cultural violence that turn us to one homogenic group of bereaved or potentially bereaved mothers. Western mothers who are taught to believe their uterus is a national asset just like they are taught to believe that the Muslim uterus is an international threat. They are educated not to cry out: `I gave him birth, I breast fed him, he is mine, and I will not let him be the one whose life is cheaper than oil, whose future is less worth than a piece of land.`

All of us are terrorized by mind-infecting education to believe all we can do is either pray for our sons to come back home or be proud of their dead bodies.

And all of us were brought up to bear all this silently, to contain our fear and frustration, to take Prozac for anxiety, but never hail Mama Courage in public. Never be real Jewish or Italian or Irish mothers.

I am a victim of state violence. My natural and civil rights as a mother have been violated and are violated because I have to fear the day my son would reach his 18th birthday and be taken away from me to be the game tool of criminals such as Sharon, Bush, Blair and their clan of blood-thirsty, oil-thirsty, land thirsty generals.

Living in the world I live in, in the state I live in, in the regime I live in, I don’t dare to offer Muslim women any ideas how to change their lives. I don’t want them to take off their scarves, or educate their children differently, and I will not urge them to constitute Democracies in the image of Western democracies that despise them and their kind. I just want to ask them humbly to be my sisters, to express my admiration for their perseverance and for their courage to carry on, to have children and to maintain a dignified family life in spite of the impossible conditions my world in putting them in. I want to tell them we are all bonded by the same pain, we all the victims of the same sort of violence even though they suffer much more, for they are the ones who are mistreated by my government and its army, sponsored by my taxes.

Islam in itself, like Judaism in itself and Christianity in itself, is not a threat to me or to anyone. American imperialism is, European indifference and co-operation is and Israeli racism and its cruel regime of occupation is. It is racism, educational propaganda and inculcated xenophobia that convince Israeli soldiers to order Palestinian women at gun-point, to strip in front of their children for security reasons, it is the deepest disrespect for the other that allow American soldiers to rape Iraqi women, that give license to Israeli jailers to keep young women in inhuman conditions, without necessary hygienic aids, without electricity in the winter, without clean water or clean mattresses and to separate them from their breast-fed babies and toddlers. To bar their way to hospitals, to block their way to education, to confiscate their lands, to uproot their trees and prevent them from cultivating their fields.

I cannot completely understand Palestinian women or their suffering. I don’t know how I would have survived such humiliation, such disrespect from the whole world. All I know is that the voice of mothers has been suffocated for too long in this war-stricken planet. Mothers` cry is not heard because mothers are not invited to international forums such as this one. This I know and it is very little. But it is enough for me to remember these women are my sisters, and that they deserve that I should cry for them, and fight for them. And when they lose their children in strawberry fields or on filthy roads by the checkpoints, when their children are shot on their way to school by Israeli children who were educated to believe that love and compassion are race and religion dependent, the only thing I can do is stand by them and their betrayed babies, and ask what Anna Akhmatova–another mother who lived in a regime of violence against women and children–asked:

Why does that streak o blood, rip the petal of your cheek?

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Judge Napolitano (click for full article below) explains the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton. There are two aspects of the investigation. The original source of her trouble is the charge that she failed to safeguard national security secrets.

As Judge Napolitano explains, this crime does not require intent and can result from negligence or simply from a lack of awareness that a secret is being revealed, as in the case that Judge Napolitano provides of the US Navy sailor who was prosecuted for espionage because a “selfie” he sent to his girlfriend revealed a sonar screen in the background. An even more egregious case is that of the US Marine who was prosecuted for using email to alert superiors to the presence of an al-Quada operative inside a US military compound. The email is considered unsecure and thus the Marine was prosecuted for revealing a secret known only to himself.

In view of these unjustified prosecutions of US military personnel, the FBI has no alternative to recommending that Hillary be indicted.

Whether Hillary will be indicted ostensibly depends on the Justice (sic) Department and the White House. In fact, it is unlikely that either Wall Street or the military/security complex wants Hillary indicted as both have invested too many millions of dollars in her presidential candidacy, and both interest groups are more powerful than the Justice (sic) Department and the White House.

I do not think that Hillary was a good US senator and Secretary of State, and I do not think she is qualified to be President of the US. Nevertheless, I do wonder how important are the secrets about which she is accused of negligance. Even the one possibly serious disclosure that Judge Napolitano provides of Hillary forwarding a photo from a satellite of a North Korean nuclear facility doesn’t strike me as important. The North Koreans, along with the entirety of the world, know that the US has satellites and communication intercepts operating against them 24/7.

Many things with secret classifications are not secrets. In my career I had many security clearances. As staff associate, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, House Committee on Appropriations, I had top secret clearances because secret weapon systems were at stake. It was a joke among the staff that many of the “secrets” were available in the public defense literature.

As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury I received the CIA’s daily briefing of the President. It was boring reading. I came to the conclusion that the CIA was not going to report anything of consequence that possibly could turn out to be wrong.

Later, as a member of a secret Presidential committee to investigate the CIA’s view of the Soviet Union’s ability to withstand an arms race, I had very high clearances as the committee had subpoena power over the CIA. If the Kremlin had had access to the top secret documents, all the Kremlin would have learned is that the CIA had a much higher opinion of the capability of the Soviet economy than did the Kremlin.

Distinguished law professors have concluded that the US government classifies documents primarily in order to hide its own mistakes and crimes. We see this over and over. The US government can escape accountability for the most incredible mistakes and the worse crimes against the US Constitution and humanity simply by saying “national security.”

In my opinion, it is the second FBI investigation of Hillary that should be pursued. This is a much more serious possible offense. There is suspicion that Bill and Hillary privatized their public offices and turned them into a money faucet for themselves.

This is a serious problem everywhere in the West. A few years out of office and Bill and Hillary can drop $3 million on their daughter’s wedding. A year or so out of office and Tony Blair was worth $50 million. As an Assistant Secretary of Defense once told me, “European governments report to us. We pay them, and we own them.”

In Anglo-American legal history, one foundation of liberty is the requirement that crime requires intent. I do not believe that Hillary intentionally revealed secrets. If she was negligent, that should be made public and should be sufficient to disqualify her from occupying the White House. What is clear to me is that the legal principle that crime requires intent is far more important than “getting Hillary.” This foundational principle of liberty should be protected even if it means letting Hillary go.

And certainly Obama should pardon the sailor and marine.

Two Smoking Guns, Espionage and corruption: The FBI’s Criminal Inestigation on Hillary Clinton by Andrew P. Napolitano

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

The federal criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure to secure state secrets was ratcheted up earlier this week, and at the same time, the existence of a parallel criminal investigation of another aspect of her behavior was made known. This is the second publicly revealed expansion of the FBI’s investigations in two months.

I have argued for two months that Clinton’s legal woes are either grave or worse than grave. That argument has been based on the hard, now public evidence of her failure to safeguard national security secrets and the known manner in which the Department of Justice addresses these failures.

The failure to safeguard state secrets is an area of the law in which the federal government has been aggressive to the point of being merciless. State secrets are the product of members of the intelligence community’s risking their lives to obtain information.

Before she was entrusted with any state secrets – indeed, on her first full day as secretary of state – Clinton received instruction from FBI agents on how to safeguard them; and she signed an oath swearing to comply with the laws commanding the safekeeping of these secrets. She was warned that the failure to safeguard secrets – known as espionage – would most likely result in aggressive prosecution.

In the cases of others, those threats have been carried out. The Obama Department of Justice prosecuted a young sailor for espionage for sending a selfie to his girlfriend, because in the background of the photo was a view of a sonar screen on a submarine. It prosecuted a heroic Marine for espionage for warning his superiors of the presence of an al-Qaida operative in police garb inside an American encampment in Afghanistan, because he used a Gmail account to send the warning.

It also prosecuted Gen. David Petraeus for espionage for keeping secret and top-secret documents in an unlocked drawer in his desk inside his guarded home. It alleged that he shared those secrets with a friend who also had a security clearance, but it dropped those charges.

The obligation of those to whom state secrets have been entrusted to safeguard them is a rare area in which federal criminal prosecutions can be based on the defendant’s negligence. Stated differently, to prosecute Clinton for espionage, the government need not prove that she intended to expose the secrets.

The evidence of Clinton’s negligence is overwhelming. The FBI now has more than 1,300 protected emails that she received on her insecure server and sent to others – some to their insecure servers. These emails contained confidential, secret or top-secret information, the negligent exposure of which is a criminal act.

One of the top-secret emails she received and forwarded contained a photo taken from an American satellite of the North Korean nuclear facility that detonated a device just last week. Because Clinton failed to safeguard that email, she exposed to hackers and thus to the North Koreans the time, place and manner of American surveillance of them. This type of data is in the highest category of protected secrets.

Last weekend, the State Department released two smoking guns – each an email from Clinton to a State Department subordinate. One instructed a subordinate who was having difficulty getting a document to Clinton that she had not seen by using a secure State Department fax machine to use an insecure fax machine. The other instructed another subordinate to remove the “confidential” or “secret” designation from a document Clinton had not seen before sending it to her. These two emails show a pattern of behavior utterly heedless of the profound responsibilities of the secretary of state, repugnant to her sworn agreement to safeguard state secrets, and criminal at their essence.

Also this past weekend, my Fox News colleagues Katherine Herridge and Pamela Browne learned from government sources that the FBI is investigating whether Clinton made any decisions as secretary of state to benefit her family foundation or her husband’s speaking engagements. If so, this would be profound public corruption.

This investigation was probably provoked by several teams of independent researchers – some of whom are financial experts and have published their work – who have been investigating the Clinton Foundation for a few years. They have amassed a treasure-trove of documents demonstrating fraud and irregularities in fundraising and expenditures, and they have shown a pattern of favorable State Department treatment of foreign entities coinciding with donations by those entities to the Clinton Foundation and their engaging former President Bill Clinton to give speeches.

There are now more than 100 FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton. Her denial that she is at the core of their work is political claptrap with no connection to reality. It is inconceivable that the FBI would send such vast resources in the present dangerous era on a wild-goose chase.

It is the consensus of many of us who monitor government behavior that the FBI will recommend indictment. That recommendation will go to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who, given Clinton’s former status in the government and current status in the Democratic Party, will no doubt consult the White House.

If a federal grand jury were to indict Clinton for espionage or corruption, that would be fatal to her political career.

If the FBI recommends indictment and the attorney general declines to do so, expect Saturday Night Massacre-like leaks of draft indictments, whistleblower revelations and litigation, and FBI resignations, led by the fiercely independent and intellectually honest FBI Director James Comey himself.

That would be fatal to Clinton’s political career, as well.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

We watched in dismay how the beautiful country that many generations of Iraqis had worked so hard to build and develop was being destroyed. We watched with horror how the American and British ‘boys’ cheered whenever their bombs hit some ‘target’, killing Iraqis. No doubt that George Bush was enjoying it too, ‘bringing Iraq back to pre-industrial era’.

USAF F-117 : vampire in the Iraqi sky

Many Americans thought it was right to attack Iraq, they had no qualms that the country’s civil infrastructure was being purposely destroyed and that many thousands of Iraqis were dying. They believed the coalition troops were attacking Iraq to ‘liberate’ Kuwait* and to prevent an Iraqi attack on the zionist entity.

Some westerners who had never met an Iraqi and who could not even locate Iraq on the map, were filled with hatred towards the Iraqi people, because they had been told ‘how Iraqi soldiers were taking premature babies out of incubators in Kuwait’ !!! (1) and some other terrible stories fabricated by the western media,. Others were so gullible that they really believed there was such a thing as the ‘Iraqi Super canon’!!!

The western media were the accomplices of the warmongers, continuously diffusing their lies and propaganda. According to Fair,the US media allowed less than 1% of their space to those who were opposed the war. Day after day they repeated George Bush’s mantra: ‘about establishing a New World Order’ and many people in the west believed that the destruction of Iraq was worthwhile to establish this so-called ‘New World Order’.

Seventeen years have passed, but the pain and outrage I felt that night have not diminished, neither has my resentment towards all those who participated in this criminal aggression on Iraq.

George Bush, Dan Quayle, James Baker, Dick Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and many others who share responsibility in attacking and destroying Iraq still remain to be judged for crimes against peace, for war crimes, for crimes against humanity and for other criminal acts committed in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, in violation of the international law, in violation of the Conventions of Geneva and The Hague, in violation of the Charter of Nürenberg and in violation of the laws regulating armed conflicts. By waging this illegal war on Iraq George Bush also violated the Constitution of the United States.

Bush’s imperialist ‘New World Order’ was based on the capitulation and submission of the people in the Middle East, principally on the surrender of oil-rich Iraq.

On this sad seventeenth anniversary of the launching of the criminal aggression on Iraq my thoughts are with all Iraqi patriots who are fighting to free their country from the foreign occupiers.

On this day, one of the beautiful Irish patriotic song comes into my mind (I have substituted the name Ireland with Iraq)

Come the day and come the hour

Come the power and the glory

We have come to answer

Our Country’s call

From all the provinces of Iraq

Iraq, Iraq,

Together standing tall

Shoulder to shoulder

We’ll answer Iraq’s call

Hearts of steel

And heads unbowing

Vowing never to be broken

We will fight, until

We can fight no more

From all the provinces of Iraq

(1) It was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in the US who made these false accusations in front of the cameras, pretending to be a Kuwaiti nurse who had witnessed these barbaric acts!!!

*Kuwait: an invention of the British Foreign Office ‘around an oil well ‘ to deny Iraq access to the sea and so limit its influence in the Gulf and maintain it under British dependence.

“Nothing Is Moving,” Baltic Dry Index Crashes as Insiders Warn International “Commerce Has Come To a Halt”

By Tyler Durden, January 16 2016

Black Friday may be signaling big trouble ahead. What can’t go on forever won’t and never will. Eventually day of reckoning time arrives. Whether now is the moment of truth remains to be seen.

Paul Craig Roberts calls the US economy “a house of cards.” Phony government data created “the illusion of recovery.”

Monied interests never had it better for years, profiting hugely from Wall Street-orchestrated casino capitalism and manipulated markets, creating an unprecedented, unsustainable wealth effect, an open-ended near zero-interest rate climate money grab – doing nothing to create jobs and economic growth.

Wealth transference from ordinary people to super-rich elites and corporate interests was never greater in world history – reflecting government-sanctioned unprecedented greed and grand theft.

The vast majority endures protracted Main Street Depression conditions – getting worse, not better. Poverty, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, hunger, overall deprivation and human suffering are growth industries – in America and developed economies.

America spends unlimited trillions of dollars for militarism and endless imperial wars. Vital popular needs increasingly go begging. The world’s richest country was thirdworldized, transformed into Guatemala, control maintained by police state harshness.

The misnamed Federal Reserve isn’t federal and has no reserves. It’s wholly owned, controlled and operated by major Wall Street banks, solely for their own self-interest, public welfare be damned.

Money printing madness substituted for stimulative growth policies. Unprecedented, unsustainable, unrepayable debt levels were created.

The greatest ever ill-conceived experiment in monetary policy may produce global economic collapse. Systemic crisis can happen any time.

US equities posted sharp losses Friday, posting the worst 10-day start in US market history, greater than during the depths of the Great Depression – signaling economic weakness at best, looming crisis at worst.

The late Bob Chapman predicted an eventual economic train wreck, only its timing and duration unknown. “Untenable political and financial decisions put US and European economies on a collision course with disaster,” he said.

“Bailouts and market manipulation delay(ed) the inevitable.” A tipping point approaches. Unprecedented debt accumulated is “unrepayable,” he explained.

“How can anyone have confidence in a broken system? Unsustainable is the operative world.” Political courage to change things responsibly is nonexistent. Corrupt Republicans and Democrats are in bed with Wall Street crooks and other corporate favorites.

An astonishing $15 trillion in global wealth was lost since the Dow closed at 18,312 last May. Whether it’s just the beginning of looming crisis remains to be seen.

Plunging oil and other commodity prices along with China’s equity market collapse signal financial and economic trouble.

The Baltic Dry Index reflecting global trade is lower than during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.

On Friday, Zero Hedge headlined “Welcome To The Recession – Industrial Production Crashes Most in 8 Years…the fastest pace of collapse since May 2008 and a level that has never not produced a recession.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) advised clients to “sell everything,” saying 2016 will be “cataclysmic…Investors should be afraid.”

The average US equity is down over 20%, reflecting bear market conditions. TV talking head touts downplay things, claiming buying opportunities to get nonexistent bargains, urging mom and pop investors to buy what they want to sell – one of the oldest, dirtiest games in the book.

Investment strategist John Canally explained “(m)arkets rely on confidence and certainty. Right now there is neither.”

Economist Tim Quinlan calls “(t)he probability of going back into recession…higher than at any point” since 2009.

IMF head Christine Lagarde highlighted world economies “entering a dangerous phase.” No credible plans exist to get unsustainable debt levels under control.

Hedge fund manager Uri Landesman said “(c)ounting on the Fed to get us out of this (mess) is a mistake.”

The year’s brutal, chaotic start may signal much worse ahead. The fullness of time will tell.

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.

Nov 13: Paris is attacked Dec 2: Britain bombs Syria Jan 14: Guns cleared for 600 PCs

A survivor of the Paris shootings was left high and dry yesterday after Westminster suits told her she’d have to wait for compensation — because they still haven’t officially declared the murderous rampage a “terror attack.”

Christine Tudhope, from Fife, and her friend Mariesha Payne were enjoying the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan, Paris, on November 13 last year when Isis-affiliated gunmen stormed the hall and killed 89 people.

When they realised shots were being fired, the pair ran and hid in the cellar for three hours. They heard the sounds of shooting, screaming and the crash of dead bodies hitting the floor. At one point gunmen walked close by the room — the hideaways could hear them on walkie-talkies telling French police that they had hostages.

Ms Tudhope, a PR officer at Heriot-Watt University, made a claim for compensation with the Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation Scheme, which was set up by the Tory-led coalition in 2012.

But she received a letter last week stating: “The scheme only applies to an incident which the Foreign Secretary has determined a ‘designated act [of terrorism]’. The incident in which you sustained injury has not been designated.”

The government lists terrorist acts that can be claimed for on its website.

These include the hostage crisis in Algeria (2013), the kidnap of Setraco employees in Nigeria (2013), the attack at Westgate shopping centre in Kenya (2013), the attack at the Bardo National Museum in Tunisia (2015) and the attack at Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia (2015).

But more than two months after becoming the most infamous European attack for a decade, Paris is yet to make the list.

Labour MP Paul Flynn told the Star that he was “bowled over by the depths of government imbecility” in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office dragging its feet even though it only took hours last month for MPs to vote for Syria air strikes.

The motion was passed in the Commons with a huge majority of 174 six weeks ago.

Mr Flynn, a vocal opponent of war who represents Newport West, added: “This was an act of terrorism and there is no room for debate. What else could it be?

This is typical of the moronic state of government. They declare war in a couple of hours and take a decade to deal with the implications after tying themselves up in gobbledegook regulations.

This case sounds like another piece of bureaucratic unnecessary complication which is clogging up the system and the swift administration of compensation.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman told the Star: “The Foreign Secretary’s approval of the designation process was a formality required under the legal process. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority will now take this forward.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said the letter sent to Ms Tudhope was “clumsily worded.”

Out of all the political prostitutes in the Western world, one man stands out as the perfect illustration of a politician who works solely to serve his puppet masters.  Even though the majority of politicians are controlled by economic and corporate elites, the current US President, Barack Obama, is the epitome of a man who is bought and paid for by special interests. 

Obama was elected President in November 2008, and inaugurated in January 2009. From the very beginning of his Presidency, it was clear who the “lord and saviour” was beholden to. According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama’s top campaign donors in 2008 included: Goldman Sachs; JPMorgan Chase; Citigroup; Morgan Stanley; Microsoft; Google; and IBM. Considering Obama’s donors, it’s no wonder that (unlike Iceland) the US has not prosecuted the plethora of bankers and financial institutions that have engaged infraud for years, and subsequently played a pivotal role in causing the financial crisis of 2007/08.

“I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go”

In a bizarre speech in 2008, Obama said: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve travelled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states; I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to visit.” Did he simply make a mistake? Was he joking? Or was this just another slip from a person who is really just hypnotically going through the motions anytime he speaks, with no real interest in what he is saying. This bizarre statement is not an isolated one from the US President, as just a few months ago, Obama tried to argue that Russia bombing ISIL is only “strengthening ISIL.”

The Narcissist

 In Greek mythology, Narcissus, the son of a river god, fell in love with his own reflection. Judging from his actions in office, Obama also appears to care more about himself than anything else. In a recent 33-minute speech, Obama referred to himself a whopping 76 times; a true mark of a narcissistic, arrogant and egocentric person. Perhaps he was trying to challenge Julius Caesar’s record, as the former Roman general penned the majority of the ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War,’ in which the word “Caesar” is used 775 times, according to the historian Robin Lane Fox.

Tears of Deceit

 Emotive propaganda 101; cry and weep during a highly controversial and political speech on gun control, pulling at the heartstrings of the American public to push a political agenda. In this piece, I’m not trying to underplay the death of innocent people, but merely point out the way in which Obama is emotively trying to manipulate the opinions of the American public in order to push through legislation. Whatever your personal views are on gun control in the US, Obama’s tactics should be denounced as deceitful and staged.

Remember, the man who stood up and gave an Oscar winning performance recently, is the same man who is the head of the country that is carrying out more drone strikes around the world than ever before; has been funding and arming terrorists to overthrow the secular Syrian government; bombed a hospital in Afghanistan which killed at least three children; destroyed and destabilized the nation of Libya (which previously had the highest standard of living in Africa); supports Saudi Arabia in its war crime in Yemen; tortures and interrogates people across the world; and countless other crimes that kill and maim innocent people, yet no tears are shed by the US President.

Was San Bernardino a Black Op?

 There are also some anomalies in many of the mainstream narratives regarding mass shootings in the US. The tragic shooting in San Bernardino for instance, which the mainstream media claimed was carried out by husband and wife, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appears to conflict with some eyewitness accounts of the attack. Two reported eyewitnesses claim that the shooters were three tall white men wearing military gear.

Was San Bernardino a black op carried out by military personnel or mercenaries to further legitimize the push for gun control? It is difficult to conclusively say what actually happened, but the official narrative is a shaky one.  It should also be noted that some investigative journalists have argued that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of mass shootings under Obama, one of the most pro-gun control President’s in recent decades.

Obama is one of the most disconnected and detached politicians in the world today, and has to go down as one of the biggest puppets in modern history.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it really so?

The last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business, the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy, and Iran have agreed to settle their outstanding oil dues in rupees. What’s more, the two countries may conduct all future trade in their national currencies.

This follows an agreement between Iran and India in mid-2011 in which both sides decided to settle 45 per cent of India’s oil import bill in rupees and the remaining 55 per cent in euros. In March 2012 the two countries inked the Rupee Payment Mechanism that allowed India to buy crude oil in its national currency. Iran then used the funds to buy products from Indian manufacturers.

Ironically, it is the US itself which is responsible for the dollar’s elimination from India-Iran trade. The Rupee Payment Mechanism was set up to skirt American economic sanctions on Tehran. Iranian oil forms a significant portion of India’s energy requirements. Similarly, the Iranians rely upon India for steel, medicines, food and chemicals.

Replacing the dollar

India and the US may have come closer in recent years, but that hasn’t blinded New Delhi to the toxic nature of America’s currency as well as manipulation by Britain.

The US is literally writing its own cheque with its unrestrained printing of the dollar, the bedrock of America’s post-war hegemony. It is the reserve currency status of the dollar that allows the US to fund its endless wars and topple governments with impunity.

Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England is involved in interest rate fixing of an order of magnitude that makes corruption in developing countries look puny by comparison.

Such financial manipulations and currency debasements are negatively and cyclically impacting the global economy. In fact, it suits the West to have periodic booms and busts because it keeps the emergent economies in turmoil. It keeps poor countries poor and the emergent ones stuck in what’s known as the “middle income trap”.

In hi luminary piece, Geopolitics of Technology, prof. Anis Bajrektarevic very accurately diagnoses:

“the hydrocarbons and its scarcity phychologization, its monetization (and related weaponization) is serving rather a coercive and restrictive status quo than a developmental incentive. That essentially calls not for an engagement but compliance. It finally reads that the fossil fuels’ consumption (along with the policy of currency-choice and prizing it) does not only trigger one CC – Climate Change, but it also perpetuates another global CC – planetary Competition and Confrontation (over finite resources) – to which the MENA calamities are only a tip of an iceberg. Therefore, this highly addictive petrol – USD construct logically permits only a (technological) modernization which is defensive, restrictive and reactive. No wonder that democracy is falling short.”

India’s central bank has invested a significant proportion of its approximately $500 billion reserves in dollar denominated assets. Any sharp depreciation in the value of the dollar entails significant losses to this massive holding. In this backdrop, the idea of de-dollarisation has resonated with the country’s leadership in recent times.

In 2010, the Reserve Bank of India proposed floating the rupee as an alternative global currency. In a study titled ‘Internationalisation of Currency: The Case of the Indian Rupee and the Chinese Renminbi’, the bank said the dollar was likely to lose its predominance as the global reserve currency in the foreseeable future.

“The Indian rupee is rarely being used for invoicing of international trade,” the study pointed out. It argued that India needs to proactively take steps to increase the role of the rupee in the region. Also, the strength of the growing Indian economy has raised the issue of greater internationalisation of the Indian rupee.

Group remedy

Indian negotiators have actively pushed dollar-free trade at the annual meetings of the BRICS group. This group of five major economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is actively engaged in speeding up the process of increasing mutual trade in national currencies.

The $100 billion BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) and a reserve currency pool worth over another $100 billion are both aimed at weakening the western chokehold on global financial flows.

According to India’s K.V. Kamath, the first president of NDB, exchange rate differences increased the cost of hard-currency loans to emerging and developing countries by 15-20 per cent. In his view, using local currencies would eliminate that risk and ease the burden.

The BRICS have already launched a Contingency Reserve Arrangement to enable the five member states to swap currencies. Another key advantage of using national currencies in trade and investment is that businesses do not have to hedge against two different currencies. Transition to trade in national currencies will also protect countries from the volatility of a particular currency.

China’s action plan

Meanwhile, the Chinese have surprised everyone with the speed with which the renminbi has acquired global acceptance. In a paper titled ‘The Renminbi Bloc is Here’, Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler of the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics provide a dramatic picture of how the renminbi is growing in strength while the US dollar weakens.

Firstly, they say the renminbi is already the dominant reference currency in India and South Africa. Secondly, since mid-2010 the renminbi has made dramatic strides as a reference currency compared with the dollar and euro.

The renminbi has now become the dominant reference currency in East Asia, eclipsing the dollar and the euro….The currencies of South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand now more closely track the RMB than the dollar. The dollar’s dominance as reference currency in East Asia is now limited to Hong Kong (by virtue of the peg), Vietnam and Mongolia.

And they provide this chilling assessment:

“The dollar and the euro still play a greater role beyond their natural spheres of influence than does the renminbi but that is changing in favour of the renminbi.”

Why chilling? The India-Iran rupee trade, Russia-Iran rouble trade and the worldwide acceptance of the renminbi will slowly erode the prestige of the US dollar, which will have dire consequences for American prosperity.

As a country that greatly benefits from – and exploits – the dollar’s reserve currency status, the end of dollar dominance will mean a sharp decline in American incomes and the ability to project power overseas.

Rakesh Krishan Simha is New Zealand-based journalist and foreign affairs analyst, focussing on issues  which the media distorts, misses or ignores. Rakesh started his career in 1995 with New Delhi-based Business World magazine, and later worked in a string of positions at other leading media houses such as India Today, Hindustan Times, Business Standard and the Financial Express, where he was the news editor.

In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.

The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.

For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21^st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction.

Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor.

In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005.

That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1^st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”:

The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . . Banks with $10 billion or less in assets would be exempt from the cut.

The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . .

Banks vigorously fought the dividend cut, which was estimated to generate about $17 billion over 10 years for the highway trust fund.

According to Zachary Warmbrodt, writing in Politico in November, the Fed registered “strong concerns about using the resources of the Federal Reserve to finance fiscal spending.” But former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is now at the Brookings Institute, acknowledged in a blog post that the Fed could operate with little or no capital. His objection was that it is “not good optics or good precedent” to raid an independent central bank. It doesn’t look good.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee, retorted, “For the Federal Reserve to be saying this impinges upon their integrity, etc., etc. — you know, it’s absurd. This is a body that creates money out of nothing.”

DeFazio also said, “[I]f the Fed can bail out the banks and give them preferred interest rates, they can do something for the greater economy and for average Americans. So it was their time to help out a little bit.”

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

It may be their time indeed. For over a century, populists and money reformers have petitioned Congress to solve its funding problems by exercising the sovereign power of government to issue money directly, through either the Federal Reserve or the Treasury.

In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln issued debt-free US Notes or “greenbacks” to finance much of the Civil War, as well as the transcontinental railroad and the land-grant college system. In the 1890s, populists attempted unsuccessfully to revive this form of infrastructure funding. In the Great Depression, Congress authorized the issuance of several billion dollars of US Notes in the Thomas Amendment to the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act. In 1999, Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood introduced the State and Local Government Economic Empowerment Act (H. R. 1452), which would have authorized the US Treasury to issue interest-free loans of US Notes to state and local governments for infrastructure investment.

Law professor Timothy Canova plans to reintroduce this funding model if elected to represent Florida’s 23^rd Congressional district, where he is now running against the controversial Debbie Wasserman Schultz, current chair of the Democratic National Convention. Prof. Canova wrote in a December 2012 article:

. . . Wall Street bankers and mainstream economists will argue that greenbacks and other such proposals would be inflationary, depreciate the dollar, tank the bond market, and bring an end to Western civilization. Yet, we’ve seen four years of the Federal Reserve—now on its third quantitative-easing program—experimenting with its own type of greenback program, creating new money out of thin air in the form of credits in Federal Reserve Notes to purchase trillions of dollars of bonds from big banks and hedge funds. While the value of the dollar has not collapsed and the bond market remains strong, neither have those newly created trillions trickled down to Main Street and the struggling middle classes. The most significant effect of the Fed’s programs has been to prop up banks, bond prices, and the stock market, with hardly any benefit to Main Street.

In a January 2015 op-ed in the UK Guardian titled “European Central Bank’s QE Is a Missed Opportunity,” Tony Pugh concurred, stating of the US and European QE programs:

Quantitative easing, as practised by the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve, merely flooded the financial sector with money to the benefit of bondholders. This did not create a so-called wealth affect, with a trickle-down to the real producing economy.

. . . If the EU were bold enough, it could fund infrastructure or renewables projects directly through the electronic creation of money, without having to borrow. Our government has that authority, but lacks the political will. The [Confederation of British Industry] has calculated that every £1 of such expenditure would increase GDP by £2.80 through the money multiplier. The Bank of England’s QE programme of £375bn was a wasted opportunity.

According to IMF director Christine Lagarde, writing in The Economist in November 2015:

IMF research shows that, in advanced economies, an increase in investment spending worth one percentage point of GDP raises the overall level of output by about 0.4% in the same year and by 1.5% four years after the spending increase.

In a December 2015 paper titled “Recovery in the Eurozone: Using Money Creation to Stimulate the Real Economy”, Frank van Lerven expanded on this research, writing:

For the Eurozone, statistical analysis of income and consumption patterns suggests that €100 billion of newly created money distributed to citizens would lead to an increase in GDP of around €232 billion. Using IMF fiscal multipliers, our empirical analysis further suggests that using the money to fund a €100 billion increase in public investment would reduce unemployment by approximately one million, and could be between 2.5 to 12 times more effective at stimulating GDP than current QE.

The Hyperinflation Myth

The invariable objection to exercising the government’s sovereign money-creating power is that it would lead to hyperinflation, but these figures belie that assumption. If adding €100 billion for infrastructure increases GDP by €232 billion, prices should actually go down rather than up, since the supply of goods and services (GDP) would have increased more than twice as fast as demand (money). Conventional theory says that prices go up when too much money is chasing too few goods, and in this case the reverse would be true.

In a November 2015 editorial, the Washington Post admonished Congress for blurring the line between fiscal and monetary policy, warning, “Many a banana republic . . . has come to grief using its central bank to facilitate government deficit spending.” But according to Prof. Michael Hudson, who has studied hyperinflations extensively, that is not why banana republics have gotten into trouble for “printing money.” He observes:

The reality is that nearly all hyperinflations stem from a collapse of foreign exchange as a result of having to pay debt service. That was what caused Germany’s hyperinflation in the 1920s, not domestic German spending. It is what caused the Argentinean and other Latin American hyperinflations in the 1980s, and Chile’s hyperinflation earlier.

Promising Possibilities

Any encroachment on the Fed’s turf is viewed by Wall Street and the mainstream media with alarm. But to people struggling with mounting bills and crumbling infrastructure, the development has promising potential. The portal to the central bank’s stream of riches has been forced open, if just a crack. The trickle could one day become a flow, a mighty river of liquidity powering the engines of productivity of a vibrant economy.

For that to happen, however, we need an enlightened citizenry and congressional leaders willing to take up the charge; and that is what makes Prof. Tim Canova’s run for Congress an exciting development.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

AIPAC devotes a section on its web site to malicious Big Lies about Iran intending use of its unfrozen assets to spread its nonexistent “malign global influence,” once international sanctions are lifted this weekend as expected.

An unnamed Israeli source claims Tehran will invest heavily in military, not civilian projects, citing no credible evidence.

Another unnamed Israeli source was quoted, saying “(t)he world powers are mistaken if they see Iran as a solution to regional stability, and not the source of the problem.”

Fact: Iran prioritizes regional peace and stability, free from nuclear weapons.

Fact: Israel and Saudi Arabia complicit with Washington are the region’s leading proliferators of endless wars, violence and chaos.

Netanyahu and other Israeli hardliners duplicitously call Iran an existential threat – not according to departing Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, saying:

“Everyone knows that Israel is a very strong nation. This is no longer a time when (it) is forced to deal with existential threats.” It faces none.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to “finalize” last year’s nuclear deal. IAEA confirmation of Tehran observing agreed on terms is expected Saturday.

Netanyahu continues spreading Big Lies, claims about Iran’s road to the bomb along with fostering terrorism and instability.

Zarif and John Kerry met on Saturday, Tehran’s foreign minister, saying “(w)e’re trying. We’re working on” lifting international sanctions today or this weekend.

Nuclear talks “proved we can solve important problems through diplomacy, not threats and pressure, and thus today is definitely an important day. (N)aysayers are always wrong.”

Separately on Saturday, Iran freed jailed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and former US marine Amir Hekmati, accused of spying – ahead of imminent lifting of international sanctions.

They were freed “within the framework of exchanging prisoners,” according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.

In exchange, Washington will release seven Iranian-Americans lawlessly held, “languishing (in) US jails,” according to Tehran’s IRNA news service.

The exchange includes Washington agreeing to stop seeking extradition of 14 Iranians for alleged involvement in purchasing US weapons.

Dubai-based Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi’s case remains unresolved. Iran hasn’t publicly commented on his imprisonment.

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.

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