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By Adam Garrie

The billionaire George Soros is more renowned for meddling in the sovereign affairs of foreign states than he is for quitting his association with them, but when it comes to Turkey, Soros has in fact decided to walk away. According to statements from Soros’s Open Society Foundation, all activities based in Turkey will unilaterally cease after Soros operatives involved in the financing of terror were apprehend by Turkish law enforcement officials.

Turkey’s President President Tayyip Erdogan recently spoke about the negative effects that Soros’s meddling have had on Turkey as it relates to the case of one Osman Kavala who is currently in prison for staging a terrorist provocation. Erdogan stated,

“The person (Kavala) who financed terrorists during the Gezi incidents, is already in prison. And who is behind him? The famous Hungarian Jew Soros. This is a man who assigns people to divide nations and shatter them. He has so much money and he spends it these way”.

This is not the first time that Erdogan has defended Turkish dignity against the incursions of those employed by George Soros. Prior to June’s elections in Turkey, western financial firms including those associated with Soros began wildly speculating against the Turkish Lira. In response to this, President Erdogan said the following during a speech made in May of this year:

“Our economy grew by 7.4 last year and we are not slaves of Soros or anyone else but Allah.

Hey finance sector, if you play these types of games with our investors, know that you will pay a heavy price. My brothers who have dollars or euros under their pillows, go and invest your money in the lira. We will foil this plan all together”.

By putting pressures on Soros agents in Turkey, Ankara has successfully done what many weaker nations have not be able to do. Namely, Turkey has successfully removed Soros’s influence from Turkey by taking a tough stance on his operatives who have been caught attempting to overthrow the peace and stability of the Republic of Turkey.

In addition to speculating against the Lira, the Soros operative Kavala is among a dangerous handful of individuals who in 2013 staged a violent provocation in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Additionally, Kavala was known to have close links with the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the political wing of the terror group PKK.

As Soros regularly ploughs millions into various political and agitation driven movements throughout the world, Turkey is now in a rare position to offer other nations guidance on how to successfully apprehend and bring to justice the Soros operatives whose mission is to overturn the peaceful governance of sovereign nations. In addition to Turkey, Russia and Hungary have also taken moves in recent years against organisations funded and/or operated by Soros.

A Soros free Turkey is in fact a vital component to resisting attempts by foreign agents to undermine the will of the Turkish people as was recently expressed in this summer’s Presidential and parliamentary elections which saw Erdogan winning a new term under the revised constitution while the AK Party/MH Party alliance came first in the country’s national parliament. As Turkey prepares for local elections, it is vital that foreign interference does not come between the Turkish citizen and the ballot box.

As part of President Erdogan’s overarching stance on reviving the domestic and geopolitical vitality of the Republic of Turkey, it is essential that all political movements operating in Turkey do so legally and peacefully. The reckless decades long track record of Soros indicates that the presence of his organisations in any nation represents a prima facie threat to the desired state of law and order that is necessary to insure the security and prosperity of all Turks.

Because of this, the Soros withdrawal from Turkey should be welcomed as it will not only ensure a fair, free and peaceful set of local elections, but it will help secure Turkish sovereignty against enemies both foreign and domestic.

Adam Garrie is Director at Eurasia future and co-host of The History Boys with George Galloway.

26 November 2018

Source: https://eurasiafuture.com/2018/11/26/erdogan-successfully-drives-soros-out-of-turkey/

By Rafael Correa

The destruction of the rule of law

Can you imagine a “democracy” in which the president handpicks a council that proceeds to dismiss the Constitutional Court, the Judicial Council which oversees the judiciary, the National Electoral Council, the Attorney General, the ombudsman, and all six major regulators (superintendents)?

Unfortunately, that is the current situation in Ecuador. Abusing participatory democracy, and deceiving the public with the complicity of a corrupt press, on February 4 of this year they called an unconstitutional referendum.

Several articles in our constitution stipulate that the Constitutional Court must rule on the legality of any referendum questions, but, given the clear unconstitutionality of several questions, the government knew that a ruling would not go its way and called the referendum by decree. For the first time in its history, Ecuador had a nationwide referendum without a ruling from the Constitutional Court.

With the approval of the tricky and confusing question 3, they seized the so-called Council of Citizen Participation [CPCCS in the Spanish acronym], whose members were selected through national competitions, and which, according to the Constitution of Ecuador, is responsible for overseeing competitions that elect about 150 control authorities. [1]The unconstitutional referendum gave a “Transitory” CPCCS (which I’ll refer to as the CPCCS-T) the “power” to evaluate and, if applicable, dismiss these control authorities. The dismissal of authorities is an exclusive constitutional power of the National Assembly. The Constitutional Court, which is not even selected by the CPCCS , cannot be dismissed by anyone else.

At present, Ecuador does not have a Constitutional Court. The President’s handpicked CPCCS-T [after dismissing the court] declared a two month absence of the court which expire this week and will surely be extended. Throughout this lapse, Ecuadorians have no one to guarantee our constitutional rights.

The illegally dismissed authorities had to be replaced by their [already selected] alternates, as the law demands, but the “Transitory” CPCCS-T directly appointed its replacements. Not even the unconstitutional referendum gave it the power to directly appoint authorities.

Ecuador is presently a “Transitory Republic”. We have a transitory CPCCS, a transitory Judicial Council, a transitory National Electoral Council, and similarly with the Prosecutor General, Ombudsman, Comptroller General, and all superintendents – all transitory and practically all open enemies of my government. All were illegally and arbitrarily appointed by the CPCCS-T and under its complete control.

The Ecuadorian state has five branches: the Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Electoral, and the Transparency and Social Oversight branch. Three of these five branches are in the hands transitory officials directly appointed the Executive’s handpicked CPCCS-T.

The temporary authorities were sworn in before the CPCCS-T, violating article 120 of the Constitution which states that they must sworn in before the National Assembly. I hope you understand what it means to be pursued by an “acting” prosecutor directly appointed and sworn in before a “transitory” Council whose president – a personal and political enemy of mine- publicly insults me every day and says that I must go to prison.

The president of the CPCCS-T [Julio Cesar Trujillo] has explicitly declared that if his Council’s decisions contradict the Constitution, then the former would prevail, because they are equivalent, according to him, to a Constituent Assembly. In reality, a constituent disenfranchisementis being carried out, without any authorization or even the knowledge of its supposed constituents: the Ecuadorian people.

The only constitutional aspect of question 3 in the referendum was the proposal that future members of the CPCCS be selected by popular vote and not through open contests based on merit. The Government knows that it will lose those elections, and is aware of all the abuses it perpetrated, so Trujillo has therefore proposed – that at the same time local elections are held in March of 2019 – that another referendum take place so that the people can give blanket approval to all the violations and also eliminate the CPCCS!

In other words, in the same elections where the definitive members of the CPCCS were supposed be elected for the first time by popular vote, it is proposed that the CPCCS be eliminated after the handpicked CPCCS-T has already changed all the control authorities – the perfect coup d’État.

The dismissal of the vice president

Our adversaries lost the [2017 Presidential] elections but took power anyway as we were betrayed. People voted for the continuation of the Citizen Revolution, but the program of the losing candidate was implemented. The referendum itself was the central proposal of the candidate who was defeated at the polls. This would not be possible without the brazen support of large media corporations.

To pull off this coup d’État, it was necessary to get rid of Vice President Jorge Glas. This was achieved by implicating him in the corruption case regarding Odebrecht, which occurred in twelve countries. Odebrecht, a Brazilian company, was probably the largest construction company in Latin America, but it created an entire department dedicated to dispensing bribes to public officials.

On October 2, 2017, the Vice President was illegally placed in pre-trial detention. After 90 days, the President of the Republic directly declared the position abandoned and appointed the replacement of the Vice President, without waiting for any ruling by the Constitutional Court, as ordered by the Constitution.

Vice President Glas was implicated exclusively on the basis of the false testimony of a corrupt Odebrecht official. Glas was convicted of a crime that was not the one for which his immunity was lifted; and they sentenced him with a repealed code in order to increase the penalty and thereby prevent him from walking free and retaking the Vice Presidency. All this is unthinkable if the rule of law exists.

Meanwhile, the self-confessed corrupt Odebrecht officials were not pursued by Ecuadorian prosecutors, clearly revealing that a pact had been made that they’d be left alone if they accused the Vice President.

In March, the president of the National Assembly was dismissed, a former ally of the government who explicitly denounced the pact that had been made with Odebrecht. As in any other country in the world, the Vice President of the Assembly was supposed to have replaced him, but, again violating the Constitution, the Government made political deals in order to appoint another person.

That is, in addition to not having a Constitutional Court, and in addition to having all its control authorities illegally appointed, Ecuador has both a Vice President and a President of the National Assembly who were unconstitutionally appointed.

To this day, not a cent of illegally obtained money has been shown to have been received by Vice President Glas, which is recognized even by media that always opposed the Citizen’s Revolution. One of this media’s most prominent voices just admitted that the Vice President is imprisoned without evidence against him, but by “the force of circumstances”. Read “the media’s lynching”.

On October 21, Vice President Jorge Glas was transferred from a minimum security prison to a common prison. This was done by the Government in reprisal for Fernando Alvarado, former Secretary of Communication (another persecuted politician) breaking his ankle bracelet and seeking asylum in a friendly country. This reminds us of Nazi tactics: if a prisoner escapes, you kill five as revenge and as a deterrent. As in periods of fascism, reprisals are taken against the family and partners of the alleged offenders.

Even thoughpretrial measures can only be ordered by judges, the Government also announced that all members of my government who are supposedly being “investigated” are prohibited from leaving the country, revealing total control of the justice system and directly violating the American Convention on Human Rights.

To top it off, the acting prosecutor also said that in the next few days he will name perpetrators and accomplices of crimes perpetrated against the State, and that he will request the corresponding pretrial measures to prevent the “flight” of those who could be involved in these “crimes”.

Persecution and the blocking of political participation

In January of 2018, in an absolutely illegal way and through direct interference of the Government, they took away from us the party that I founded, the most successful and largest in Ecuadorian history: Alianza País.

We have tried three times to register a new political movement that represents the Citizens’ Revolution, but we have been illegally prevented from doing it. Trampling our political and human rights, and democracy itself, the country’s main political force, the Citizens’ Revolution – which in the last elections obtained nearly 40 percent of the citizens’ vote – is without a legally recognized political organization and is prevented from participating in elections.

Finally, as already mentioned, judicial persecution has been unleashed against the members of my Government. The main instruments of this persecution are the “transitory” comptroller whose appointment followed no legal process whatsoever – and the handpicked “acting prosecutor” – a position that does not exist in Ecuadorian law.

My former administrative team has been targeted by about 300 audits of the Comptroller’s Office with criminal implications. The reports do not even mention the legal articles where the alleged crimes are described. Many of these former collaborators of mine are out of work and have had to sell their homes, vehicles, etc., in order to pay their lawyers.

Anyone who believes that these are mere “opinions” of mine should ask the Ecuadorian State for concrete things like the legal documents that correspond to the appointments of the comptroller, prosecutor or Judicial Council and analyze if they are constitutional. They simply do not exist.

In my personal case, I have 14 criminal proceedings against me, for things as ridiculous as a supposedly exceeding a legal limit on Ecuador’s public debt, which, in addition to being false, is not criminal, never mind that the president is not directly responsible for debt management.

They accuse me for a decree stating that, to meet the 40 percent maximum public debt / GDP ratio, a limit that we set ourselves set in 2010, said the public debt had to be measured in a consolidated manner, as per an IMF manual. The Comptroller apparently did not like this, and therefore asks that a criminal investigation be initiated against an ex-president.

Another example is an accusation regarding the concession of an oil field called Singue, which I had not even heard of. I am implicated in the case because one of the companies sent a letter to the Presidency denouncing that it had been damaged. I never read the letter. Hundreds of communications arrive daily to the Presidency. The letter was forwarded directly to the corresponding ministry, but, even if I had read it, there is nothing criminal here. Imagine the precedent! Anyone who seeks to implicate the President in an alleged crime simply sends a letter to the Presidency, and that is enough.

Finally, since they could never prove me corrupt, nor will they ever, they implicate me in supposed cases of repression: kidnapping, murder and even an extrajudicial execution of a police officer killed by crossfire while protecting me on September 30, 2010 – when there was a coup d’état and it was me that they wanted to kill.

They put forward outlandish theories, for example that I had turned the intelligence services into a political police. In one of the cases, they hired supposed experts who compared my Government with the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, where, in Argentina alone, there were 30,000 dead and missing. But it turns out that all the alleged cases of repression are before 2013, when the current President of Ecuador was Vice President. How is it possible that he did not know something so serious? It’s obvious that they lie.

The case that has advanced the most is the so-called Balda case, for which I have been called to trial in the most absurd way. I even had an arrest warrant against me since I was ordered to appear every 15 days in Quito, which was impossible because, as everyone knows, I have lived in Belgium for more than a year.

The false testimony of the confessed intellectual author of the alleged kidnapping, a policeman I do not even know, but who, according to his story, met with me three times and spoke with me on the phone three times is what involves me in the case.

They already had to admit that he lied when he said that he had met with me and that they have no proof of the alleged calls. We’ve already managed to show that during one of the alleged calls I was actually flying from Guayaquil to Quito. In present day Ecuador, where the presumption of innocence no longer exists, the state does not have to prove someone’s guilt. Instead, after any false testimony, the accused has to prove their innocence.

The press has depicted Balda, the alleged victim, as a legislator, which is false. In fact, this guy has a long criminal record, was a fugitive from justice in Colombia, was dedicated to computer hacking, and was held for 35 minutes by his associates during these illegal activities. Shortly after the alleged kidnapping, he was deported by the Colombian government, since, in addition, his status in Colombia was not legal.

In 2013, Balda filed a complaint in Ecuador about this alleged kidnapping, where among the many defendants he does not even mention me.

Then, in 2015 he filed a complaint in Colombia against members of my government and against me, a complaint dismissed by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office for lack of evidence.

Despite this, six years later, in April 2018, the case was reopened in Ecuador, the press giving it sensationalist coverage and portraying it as a “state crime” against a “legislator”.

In October of 2017 President Lenin Moreno announced that he had not lost hope of seeing me imprisoned, and Balda himself in November sent messages on social media saying that there would soon be a red alert from Interpol against me. Clearly, everything was planned.

One of Moreno’s main advisers admitted that he traveled to Spain, where a former intelligence secretary also implicated in the case resides, to tell him to surrender and accuse me. In exchange for that they would help him; otherwise, they were going to “rain criminal charges” on him.

We have documents and audiovisual evidence showing all of this.

Regional Lawfare

Lawfare is a regional strategy. It is what they are also doing against Lula da Silva and Cristina Fernández. Its main instruments are the press and co-opted judges.

Judge Moro’s case is classic. He orders prison for Lula in a case of corruption that is extremely dubious, and in this way prevents him from participating in the presidential elections in Brazil, even though he was the frontrunner in the polls, thus opening the doors for the triumph of the fascist Jair Bolsonaro.

Moro will be the Minister of Justice of the new Government. It is all crystal clear.

The double standards are also infuriating. The only thing that exists in the international agenda on Latin America is Venezuela. If our leftist parties had perpetrated a coup d’état like Brazil’s, or trampled all over the constitution as in Ecuador, or if our governments had persecuted political opponents as they are doing with Lula, Cristina, Jorge Glas or me, we would already be hauled before the International Criminal Court.

There is too much hypocrisy. In all Latin America, but particularly in Ecuador, not only democracy is being destroyed, but also the very pillars of civilization: justice, human rights, and truth.

NOTE:

[1] There were seven unrelated questions in the referendum.

_____________________________________________________

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017.

26 November 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/11/ecuadors-soft-coup-and-political-persecution/

By Prof. Graeme McQueen

22 Nov 2018 – Fifty-five years ago, on November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although there has been a great deal written about this event over the years, I want to draw attention to one exceptionally important article, originally delivered as a talk on November 20, 1998. Vincent Salandria gave this talk in Dallas at the invitation of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. (See Sources.)

Salandria had been a high school teacher at the time of the assassination (he later became a lawyer) and was one of the first people in the US to write essays expressing dissent from the government narrative of lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, maverick leftist.

In his 1998 talk Salandria went through over a dozen of the famous obstacles to the government story—the grassy knoll witnesses, the “magic bullet,” the testimony of the doctors at Parkland Hospital, and so on—but he did not let himself get sidetracked into detailed debates on any of these. By 1998 he had already seen, and participated in, 35 years of such debates. He had long ago concluded that, “the national security state at the very highest level of its power killed President John F. Kennedy for his efforts at seeking to develop a modus vivendi with the Soviets and with socialist Cuba.”

In 1998 he felt it was time to warn researchers about the danger of wasting time in “false debates,” where the essential facts had clearly been established and the wrangling served only the purposes of the assassins. Rather than repeat the debates, Salandria decided in 1998 to outline his basic approach. I will call this the Salandria Approach. I draw attention to it because I believe it helps us find our feet when we tackle not only the JFK killing but many of the killings in the 21st century’s War on Terror.

Here are Salandria’s words:

I began to sift through the myriad facts regarding the assassination which our government and the US media offered us. What I did was to examine the data in a different fashion from the approach adopted by our news media. I chose to assess how an innocent civilian-controlled US government would have reacted to those data. I also envisioned how a guilty US national security state which may have gained control of and may have become semi-autonomous to the civilian US governmental structure would have reacted to the data of the assassination.”

He adds that,

only a guilty government seeking to serve the interests of the assassins would consistently resort to accepting one improbable conclusion after another while rejecting a long series of probable conclusions.”

Let us take two cases from Salandria’s list of over one dozen in order to see what he was getting at.

The Grassy Knoll

Dozens of witnesses thought there were shots from an extended grassy rise, containing several structures, situated west of the famous Texas School Book Depository Building. Salandria, refusing to get drawn into the familiar debate, says:

Let us assume arguendo [for the sake of argument] that all of the eyewitnesses who had concluded that shots were fired from the grassy knoll were dead wrong. But an innocent government could not and would not at that time have concluded that these good citizens were wrong and would not have immediately rushed to declare a far-fetched single assassin theory as fact.”

Note that Salandria’s emphasis is not on the details of the grassy knoll discussion but on the method the government followed in its investigation. And he is right, both about the immediate claim that Oswald acted alone— presented, as he explains, by a government representative on November 22 itself—and about the identical statement presented later by the Warren Commission.

In both cases the claim flew in the face of the eyewitness evidence. For example, despite the fact that there are references to dozens of witnesses to shots from the grassy knoll in the 26 volumes of evidence appended to the Warren Report, the Commission itself displayed little interest in them. And when the Commission dismissed every single one of the grassy knoll witnesses to protect its lone gunman theory it did so without bothering to make a sustained argument.

It chose instead to play a credibility game. It pronounced:

No credible evidence suggests that the shots were fired from the railroad bridge over the Triple Underpass, the nearby railroad yards or any place other than the Texas School Book Depository Building” Warren Report, p. 61

In other words, the Commission decided to gather together into one great agglomeration the credibility of its seven well dressed and high-ranking white men associated with government and use this to crush the credibility of the “good citizens” who were present in the Plaza and witnessed, with their senses, the unfolding of events.

It was a breathtaking move. But in what way could it be said to characterize an innocent government? How could any serious investigator pretend to solve an evidential problem by playing a credibility game? Standard practice in a homicide investigation would be to find all witnesses, to interview them, and to record their statements impartially, making sure to ask each one of them where they thought the shots came from and why they reached their conclusion. How would the opinions of congressmen, spies and the like possibly be relevant to the case when these gentlemen declined to offer adequate counter-evidence or to give a serious argument to support their peculiar conclusion?

Readers who have never had the opportunity to see and hear for themselves the good citizens in question may benefit from Mark Lane’s documentary:

Well, where, in such a case, does the Salandria Approach lead us? We have no choice but to conclude that the Warren Commission’s investigation was not what we would expect from “an innocent civilian-controlled US government.”

It was more characteristic of “a guilty government seeking to serve the interests of the assassins.” There was a predetermined perpetrator and an insistence on the guilt of this perpetrator, while evidence suggestive of a conspiracy was systematically ignored, distorted or suppressed.

Suppose we were to apply the Salandria Approach to events of the 21st century–to the eyewitnesses at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, for example? We have over 150 witnesses who reported that they saw, heard or felt explosions at the time of the beginning of destruction of the Twin Towers. (See Sources for assertions in this and the following paragraph.)

Their testimony constitutes very significant support for the theory that the Trade Center was blown up and did not undergo collapse from structural failure caused by airplane collision. We are not simply talking about loud sounds here. We are talking about sounds that experienced firefighters suspected were caused by bombs. We are talking about patterns of explosions seen pulverizing the buildings. We are talking, in some cases, about witnesses who say these explosions threw them through the air. Now, avoiding the debates about the details of this testimony, let us follow Salandria and ask: What did the government’s 9/11 Commission do with these eyewitness accounts, all of which were in its possession?

The answer is that it called for no comprehensive search for eyewitnesses (neither did the FBI, as far as I can discover), nor did it have such witnesses asked the appropriate questions. It devoted to these witnesses a single line in the roughly 585 pages of its Report. And that single line is both dismissive and extremely misleading.

What about the National Institute of Standards and Technology, assigned by government the task of looking in detail at the destruction of the Trade Center and sorting out the reasons for its destruction? In the thousands of pages of its reports on the Twin Towers we find not a single mention of the explosion witnesses. Despite NIST’s pride in its interviewing techniques, and despite its access to all the relevant information, it somehow missed over 150 witnesses. It made no attempt to find them, to sort out their testimony, or to discover how their words might illumine the mystery of the so-called “collapses.”

We should recall that the efforts of the 9/11 Commission and NIST were mere follow-through. A strenuous attempt to promote the structural failure hypothesis was begun on the very day of September 11, 2001, in the absence of serious evidence in its favour and in bold contradiction to what large numbers of witnesses were saying. (Sources)

When we adopt the Salandria Approach we must, to paraphrase Salandria, conclude that, “an innocent government could not and would not at that time have concluded that these good citizens were wrong and would not have immediately rushed to declare a far-fetched [structural failure] theory as fact.”

The Magic Bullet

In his essay Salandria explains the absurdity of the single bullet (“magic bullet”) theory, according to which one bullet passed entirely through the president’s body and then caused all of Governor Connally’s wounds, emerging after its adventure in near-pristine condition. This bullet evidently had no difficulty changing direction in mid-air, nor did it balk at losing mass in Connally’s body and then regaining this mass at the end of its journey. Salandria concludes:

“our Cold War government in the context of the assassination had declared a moratorium on the science of physics.”

Remember: the issue before us is not merely he single bullet theory itself but the behavior of government representatives in investigating this hypothesis. So it is in those moments when we read the Warren Commission transcripts and watch counsel Arlen Specter leading and pressuring witnesses into accepting the single bullet theory that we realize we are seeing the handiwork of a guilty state.

Now, what might we find if we were to apply the Salandria Approach to the destruction of the World Trade Center? To restrict ourselves, for the sake of this discussion, to World Trade 7, what would the approach of an innocent government to this building destruction look like? Would we not expect a thorough search for eyewitnesses?

Would not all of the recoverable steel be preserved carefully and made accessible to civilian experts? Would there not be a serious attempt to explain evidence of corrosion and vaporization of the steel? Would there not be the most rigorous examination of the Trade Center dust, searching for evidence that would allow ascertainment of temperatures reached during the building’s destruction and searching as well for residue of explosives and incendiaries?

Would there not be frank astonishment at the fact that the descent of this 47-storey building, not hit by a plane, began rapidly, symmetrically, and at free fall acceleration? Would not physicists openly debate this astounding event, troubled by the fact that the vertical columns of this well constructed steel-framed high-rise offered no resistance whatsoever when, for mysterious reasons, the collapse began?

Surely an innocent government sincerely probing for the truth would not choose, instead of taking the path outlined above, to construct a computer simulation that, even with manipulation, could not replicate the historical event clearly preserved on video? Surely investigators would not bring the simulation to an abrupt end before it was able to represent total collapse, and surely they would not refuse to release the complete data set used in their simulation, claiming it might compromise national security? (Sources)

When we ask these questions and contemplate the answers we see at once what game NIST has been playing in its account of World Trade 7. In the 21st century there is, perhaps, no more obvious demonstration that the US government, for the sake of its War on Terror, has “declared a moratorium on the science of physics.”

There is an entire organization, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which has taken as its task for over a decade the pointing out of such violations of the laws of physics in the US government’s account of the September 11, 2001 crime. The organization is to be praised for its creativity and persistence. Yet the false debate continues, and the intelligentsia continues to insist that the Emperor is well dressed, thank you very much.

Political Implications of Grassy Knolls and Magic Bullets

There is something I have always found arresting about the grassy knoll, and my concerns extend to the suppressed witnesses of September 11. In both cases we have ordinary folks—people like ourselves—who are, supposedly, citizens of a democracy. They are also, as far as we can tell, of sound mind and body, able to perceive with their senses and assess with their minds. Yet, all of a sudden, when their bodies and minds tell them something that conflicts with a government dictum, they are considered by government of no more political competence than cattle. I find it hard to think of a greater insult to these “good citizens” and to the notion of democracy, and I find it hard to think of a more brash assertion of the principle of authority.

This is why witnesses from the grassy knoll and the World Trade Center should be at the centre of the current debate about state deception and its relation to democracy.

As for magic bullets in Dealey Plaza and the mysterious collapse of World Trade 7, they are, I suggest, of comparable political importance to the abused witnesses. We face a collection of gentlemen in suits and ties (seven gentlemen in the Warren Commission and ten in the 9/11 Commission) telling us that their stories are more potent than the laws of the universe. How poor must be our self-confidence that we can put up with this guff? How defective must be our educational systems if they produce citizens who accept this?

Here we are, then, at the 55th anniversary of the murder of a president who was moving away from Cold War thinking and entering a different path. As we reflect on the direction in which his assassins have steered the United States of America, to the detriment of all of us, US citizens and otherwise, let us reflect on Salandria’s words:

By coming to understand the true answer to the historical question of who killed President Kennedy and why, we will have developed a delicate and precisely accurate prism through which we can examine how power works in this militarized country. By understanding the nature of this monumental crime, we will become equipped to organize the struggle through which we can make this country a civilian republic in more than name only.”

SOURCES:

The Salandria essay that is the basis of my article, “The JFK Assassination: A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes,” can be found here.

Both the Warren Report and the 26 volumes of evidence can be found at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website.

The list of 156 eyewitnesses to explosions in the Twin Towers can be found here. A discussion of the method used to arrive at the list as well as the treatment of these witnesses by the 9/11 Commission and NIST can be found in my article, “Eyewitness Evidence of Explosions in the Twin Towers” in The 9/11 Toronto Report, ed. James Gourley, International Center for 9/11 Studies, 2012.

For a discussion of the destruction of World Trade 7 see the website of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth & especially Ted Walter’s publication, Beyond Misinformation.

For the dismissal of evidence of controlled demolition from the earliest moment see Ted Walter’s recent article, “Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani: The First Government Officials to Dismiss the Idea of Controlled Demolition on 9/11.”

For a discussion of Kennedy’s turn away from the Cold War see James Douglass’s brilliant JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Prof. Graeme MacQueen is co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies and co-author, with Johan Galtung, of Globalizing God-Religion, Spirituality and Peace, TRANSCEND University Press, 2008.

26 November 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/11/john-f-kennedy-55-years-on-casting-light-on-the-jfk-assassination-9-11-and-other-21st-century-crimes/

By Richard Falk

18 Nov 2018 – I along with many others am being victimized these days. They are being labeled anti-Semites, and in some instances, self-hating Jews as well. This is a Zionist and Israeli effort to shut down our voices and punish our non-violent activism, with special venom directed at the BDS Campaign because it has become so effective in recent years. This negative branding of the opposition is being called ‘the new anti-Semitism.’ The old anti-Semitism was simply hatred of Jews as expressed through negative images and attitudes, as well as discriminatory practices, persecution, and vigilante violence. The new anti-Semitism is criticism of Israel and Zionism, and it has been endorsed by governments friendly to Israel and pushed by a variety of prominent Jewish organizations, including some associated with Holocaust survivors and memories. Emmanuel Macron, President of France, put this pushback by apologists for Israel rather clearly, if in a rather malicious form: “We will never surrender to the expressions of hatred. We will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is the reinvention of anti-Semitism.” The false premise is equating Zionism with Jews, automatically making criticism and opposition to the Zionist state of Israel as anti-Semitism.

Already in 2008 the U.S. State Department moved more subtly in a direction similar to that of Macron with this formal statement: “Motives for criticizing Israel in the UN may stem from legitimate concerns over policy or from illegitimate prejudices. […] However, regardless of the intent, disproportionate criticism of Israel as barbaric and unprincipled, and corresponding discriminatory measures adopted in the UN against Israel, have the effect of causing audiences to associate negative attributes with Jews in general, thus fueling anti-Semitism.” The fallacy here is to view criticism as ‘disproportionate’ without ever considering the realities of Israel’s long record of unlawfulness with regard to the Palestinian people. To those of us who view the reality of Israeli policies and practices have little doubt that the criticisms being advanced, and the pressures being exerted, on in every sense proportionate.

A related argument often made is that Israel is being held to higher standards than other states, and this discloses an anti-Semitic sub-text. Such an argument is disingenuous. It is not a defense to suggest that the criminality of others is more severe. Besides, the U.S. subsidizes Israel to the extent of at least $3.8 billion a year, besides its unconditional backing of its behavior, creating some responsibility to impose limits according with international humanitarian law. As well, the UN contributed to the Palestinian ordeal by failing to implement the partition solution, and allowing for 70 years for millions of Palestinians to be subject to apartheid structures of domination. No other people can so justifiably blame external forces for its own sustained tragedy.

In 2014 Noam Chomsky explained the false logic of such an allegation with typical moral and intellectual clarity: “Actually, the locus classicus, the best formulation of this, was by an ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, […] He advised the American Jewish community that they had two tasks to perform. One task was to show that criticism of the policy, what he called anti-Zionism — that means actually criticisms of the policy of the state of Israel — were anti-Semitism. That’s the first task. Second task, if the criticism was made by Jews, their task was to show that it’s neurotic self-hatred, needs psychiatric treatment. Then he gave two examples of the latter category. One was I.F. Stone. The other was me. So, we have to be treated for our psychiatric disorders, and non-Jews have to be condemned for anti-Semitism, if they’re critical of the state of Israel. That’s understandable why Israeli propaganda would take this position. I don’t particularly blame Abba Eban for doing what ambassadors are sometimes supposed to do. But we ought to understand that there is no sensible charge. No sensible charge. There’s nothing to respond to. It’s not a form of anti-Semitism. It’s simply criticism of the criminal actions of a state, period.”

One feature of this new anti-Semitism is its non-response to the well-evidenced allegations of crimes against humanity made by those being labeled as anti-Semites. Do these ardent supporters of Israel really carry their sense of impunity to such an extent that silence is allowed to stand as an adequate defense? Underlying such a denial of the very idea of legal accountability and moral responsibility is this sense of Israeli exceptionalism, an outlook toward international criminal law that it shares with American exceptionalism. Those who adhere to such exceptionalism purport to be outraged even by the implication that such a government might be subject to the norms embedded in the statute of the International Criminal Court or the UN Charter. Israeli exceptionalism does have its own roots in biblical tradition, especially a secular reading of Jews as ‘the chosen people,’ but really rests on a comfort zone created by the geopolitical umbrella shielding its most law-defying moves from global scrutiny. Illustrative of many such protective actions was the recent UN General Assembly Resolution declaring Israeli steps toward the annexation of the Golan Heights to be null and void, with only Israel and the United States voting ‘no’ as against 151 UN members voting ‘yes.’

If we take just a minute to consult international law we find the issue so obvious as to be unworthy of serious discussion. A cardinal principle of contemporary international law, often affirmed by the UN in other contexts, is the impermissibility of the acquisition of territory by force of arms. There is no dispute that Golan Heights were part of Syrian sovereign territory until the 1967 War, and that Israel acquired control that it has exercised ever since as a result of forcible occupation.

The Ironies of the New New Anti-Semitism

There is an opportunistic irony present. The new anti-Semitism seems to have no trouble embracing Christian Zionist despite their hostility to Jews that is coupled with their fanatical devotion to Israel as a Jewish state. Anyone who has watched a Christian Zionist briefing knows that their reading of the Book of Revelations involves an interpretation that Jesus will return once all Jews return to Israel and the most holy temple in Jerusalem is restored. Such a process does not end there. Jews then face an ultimatum to convert to Christianity or face eternal damnation. And so there is present among these fanatical friends of Israel a genuine hostility to Jews, both by trying to insist that ending the Jewish diaspora as a matter of religious imperative for Christians, and in the dismal fate that awaits Jews who refuse to convert after The Second Coming.

An illuminating perversity is present. Unlike the new anti-Semites that have no hostility to Jews as people, the Christian Zionists give priority to their enthusiasm for the state of Israel, while being ready to disrupt the lives of diaspora Jews and eventually even Israeli and Zionist Jews. Maybe it is less perversity than opportunism. Israel has never had any reluctance to support the most oppressive and dictatorial leaders of foreign countries provided they buy arms and do not adopt an anti-Israeli diplomacy. Netanyahu’s congratulatory message to Jair Bolsonaro the newly elected leader of Brazil is but the most recent instance, and Israel received a quick reward by an announcement of a decision to join the United States in moving its embassy to Jerusalem. In effect, the new anti-Semitism is comfortable with both Christian Zionism and with foreign political leaders that exhibit fascist inclinations. In effect, a blind eye toward the core reality of true anti-Semitism is a characteristic of the new anti-Semitism so favored by militant Zionists. For abundant documentation see the important book by Jeff Halper,War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification (2015).

Against such a background, we need a descriptive term that identifies this phenomenon and rejects its insidious claims. I am here proposing the inelegant label ‘the new new anti-Semitism.’ The idea of such a label is to suggest that it is the new anti-Semites not the critics and activists critical of Israel that are the real bearers of hatred toward Jews as Jews. Two kinds of arguments are contained in this pushback against the campaign seeking to discredit or even criminalize the ‘new anti-Semites.’ First, it deflects criticism from the persistence of an alarming reality, the continuing ordeal of apartheid imposed on all the Palestinian people as a whole, which should become the salient concern for all who wish the best for humanity. Secondly, it deliberately or unwittingly diverts attention from, and confuses, objections to real anti-Semitism by accepting on behalf of the state of Israel the embrace of Christian Zionists (and evangelicals) along with that of fascist leaders who preach messages of ethnic hatred.

To conclude, we who are attacked as new anti-Semites are really trying to honor our humanidentity, and to reject tribalist loyalties or geopolitical alignments, in our commitment to the realization of Palestinian rights, above all their right of self-determination. As Jews to hold Israel accountable under standards that were used to condemn Nazi surviving political and military leaders is to honor the legacy of the Holocaust, not to defile it. In contrast, when Israel sells weapons and offers counterinsurgency training to fascist led governments around the world or remains ready to accept post-Khashoggi Saudi Arabia as a valued ally, it obscures the evil nature of the Holocaust in ways that could haunt Israel and even diaspora Jews in the future.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. He is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel .

26 November 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/11/the-new-new-anti-semitism/

By Ranjan Solomon

The creation of the State of Israel will always be judged an unjust agreement imposed on Palestinians by the United Nations in 1947. The agreement came through the UN system when decolonization had not even started and the UN was, for most part, a club of western nations and a relatively smaller number of so-called Third World nations.

Western nations had their own reasons to make the award to Israel. Mostly, it was guilt stemming from the holocaust. The conception of an independent Arab and a Jewish State with a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem was a losing proposition to resolve the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism. Arab leaders argued that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.

Immediately after adoption of the Resolution by the General Assembly, a civil war broke out and the plan was not implemented. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke with anger and contempt for the way the UN vote had been lined up. He said the Zionists had tried to bribe India with millions of dollars and that Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the Indian ambassador to the UN, had received daily warnings that her life was in danger unless “she voted right”. Several other countries also voted against the partition agreement arguing that it violated the principle of sovereignty and right to self-determination.

In 1948 the Palestinian exodus, also known as the al-Nakbah, literally “disaster”, “catastrophe”, or “cataclysm”), occurred when about half of pre-war Palestine’s Arab population – fled or were expelled from their homes, during the Arab-Israeli war. The Nakba continues to this day in multiple ways in more horrendous, and brutal ways than in 1948. In its accumulated arrogance Israel has come to live in a make-believe world that suggests it is invincible. But the illegitimacy of its very foundations, and its exploitative and devious ways of land theft, disrespect for human dignity, international law, human rights, has sparked resentment all around. Israel is a global recluse.

In this issue of Palestine Updates, Ramzy Baroud describes this predicament in a profound article: “The Tide is turning: Israel Is Losing on two War Fronts”. He avers that all the power and money in the world cannot reverse the waves of justice now flowing in favour of Palestinians. The precise time for liberation may not have arrived. But it will – sooner than later! This week alone we have news from Airbnb removing settlements from its listings, the Quakers in Britain are now the first church in the UK to suspend investing its centrally-held funds in companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine. There is the popular decision of Canadian Federation of Students to endorse BDS. Importantly; we also have news about a global South view on Israelis’ colonization. The call from a large collective of Nigerian Muslim activists calling for boycott of Israel is an equally powerful message.

Israel’s isolation is present and emergent at multiple levels and manifold political spaces.

Indeed the tide is turning!

Ranjan Solomon

22 November 2018

Source: http://palestineupdates.com/israels-imposed-legitimacy-is-under-grim-challenge/

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The November 12 botched Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip is delineating Tel Aviv’s failure to utilize its army as a tool to achieve Palestinian political concessions.

Now that the Palestinian popular resistance has gone global through the exponential rise and growing success of the Boycott Movement, the Israeli government is fighting two desperate wars.

Following the Gaza attack, Palestinians responded by showering the Israeli southern border with rockets and carried out a precise operation targeting an Israeli army bus.

As Palestinians marched in celebration of pushing the Israeli army out of their besieged region, the fragile political order in Israel, long-managed by right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was quickly unraveling.

Two days after the Israeli attack on Gaza, Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, quit in protest of Netanyahu’s ‘surrender’ to the Palestinian Resistance.

Israeli leaders are in a precarious situation. Untamed violence comes at a price of international condemnation and a Palestinian response that is bolder and more strategic each time.

However, failing to teach Gaza its proverbial ‘lesson’ is viewed as an act of surrender by opportunistic Israeli politicians.

While Israel is experiencing such limitations on the traditional battlefield, which it once completely dominated, its war against the global Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is surely a lost battle.

Israel has a poor track record in confronting civil society-based mobilization. Despite the vulnerability of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation, it took the Israeli government and military seven long years to pacify the popular Intifada, the uprising of 1987. Even then, the jury is still out on what truly ended the popular revolt.

It should be accepted that a global Intifada is much more difficult to suppress, or even contain.

Yet, when Israel began sensing the growing danger of BDS – which was officially launched by Palestinian civil society in 2005 – it responded with the same superfluous and predictable pattern: arrests, violence and a torrent of laws that criminalize dissent at home, while unleashing an international campaign of intimidation and smearing of boycott activists and organizations.

That achieved little, aside from garnering BDS more attention and international solidarity.

The war on the Movement took a serious turn last year when Netanyahu’s government dedicated a largesse of about $72 million to defeat the civil society-led campaign.

Utilizing the ever-willing US government to boost its anti-BDS tactics, Tel Aviv feels assured that its counter-BDS efforts in the US is off to a promising start. However, it is only recently that Israel has begun to formulate the wider European component of its global strategy.

In a two-day conference in Brussels earlier this month, Israeli officials and their European supporters unleashed their broader European anti-BDS campaign.

Organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA) and the Europe Israel Public Affairs group (EIPA), the November 6-7 conference was fully supported by the Israeli government, featuring right-wing Israeli Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Ze’ev Elkin.

Under the usual pretext of addressing the danger of anti-Semitism in Europe, attendees deliberately conflated racism and any criticism of Israel, of its military Occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.

The EJA Annual Conference has raised Israel’s manipulation of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ to a whole new level, as it drafted a text that will purportedly be presented to prospective members of the European Parliament (MEPs), demanding their signature before running in next May’s elections.

Those who decline to sign – or worse, repudiate the Israeli initiative – are likely to find themselves fending off accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

This was certainly not the first conference of its kind.

The anti-BDS euphoria that has swept Israel in recent years, yielded several crowded and passionate conferences in luxurious hotels, where Israeli officials openly threatened BDS activists, such as Omar Barghouti. Barghouti was warned by a top Israeli official in a 2016 conference in Jerusalem of “civil assassination” for his role in the organization of the Movement.

In March 2017, the Israeli Knesset passed the Anti-BDS Travel Ban, which requires the Interior Minister to deny entry to the country to any foreign national who “knowingly issued a public call to boycott the state of Israel.”

Since the ban went into effect, many BDS supporters have been detained, deported and barred from entering the country.

While Israel has demonstrated its ability to galvanize self-serving US and other European politicians to support its cause, there is no evidence that the BDS Movement is being quelled or is, in any way, weakening.

On the contrary, the Israeli strategy has raised the ire of many activists, civil society and civil rights groups, angered by Israel’s attempt at subverting freedom of speech in western countries.

Only recently, Leeds University in the UK has joined many other campuses around the world in divesting from Israel.

The tide is, indeed, turning.

Decades of Zionist indoctrination also failed, not only in reversing the vastly changing public opinion on the Palestinian struggle for freedom and rights, but even in preserving the once solid pro-Israel sentiment among young Jews, most notably in the US.

For BDS supporters, however, every Israeli strategy presents an opportunity to raise awareness of Palestinian rights and to mobilize civil society around the world against Israeli occupation and racism.

BDS’ success is attributed to the very reason why Israel is failing to counter its efforts: it is a disciplined model of a popular, civil resistance that is based on engagement, open debate and democratic choices, while grounded in international and humanitarian law.

Israel’s ‘war-chest’ will run dry in the end, for no amount of money could have saved the racist, Apartheid regime in South Africa when it came tumbling down decades ago.

Needless to say, $72 million will not turn the tide in favor of Apartheid Israel, nor will it change the course of history that can only belong to the people who are unrelenting on achieving their long-coveted freedom.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

21 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/21/the-tide-is-turning-israel-is-losing-on-two-war-fronts/

By Eric Zuesse

The Post-World-War-II world order was dominated by the one WW II major combatant that had only 0.32% of its population (the lowest percentage) killed by the war: the United States. The Soviet Union’s comparable number killed by the war was the highest — it was 13.7% — 42 .8.times higher than America’s. The U.S. was the main force that defeated Japan and so won WW II in Asia. The U.S.S.R., however, was the main force that defeated Germany and so won WW II in Europe. The U.S.S.R. suffered vastly more than did the U.S. to achieve its victory. In addition to suffering 42.8 times the number of war-deaths than did U.S., the U.S.S.R.’s financial expenditures invested in the conflict, as calculated by Jan Ludvik, were 4.8 times higher than were America’s financial expenditures on the war.

Thus, at the war’s end, the Soviet Union was exhausted and in a much weaker condition than it had been before the war. By contrast, the U.S., having had none of the war’s battles occurring on its territory, was (by comparison) barely even scratched by the war, and it was thus clearly and overwhelmingly the new and dominant world-power emerging from the war.

That was the actual situation in 1945.

The U.S. Government did not sit on its haunches with its enormous post-war advantage, but invested wisely in order to expand it. One of the first investments the U.S. made after the war was the Marshall Plan to rebuild the European countries that had now become the U.S. aristocracy’s vassal-states. The heavily damaged U.S.S.R. possessed no such extra cash to invest in (rebuilding) its vassals. Furthermore, the U.S.S.R.’s communist regime was additionally hobbled by Karl Marx’s labor theory of value, which produced prices that contained no useful information about demand and thus no constructive information for planners. (Planning is essential regardless whether an enterprise is private or public.) Thus, the U.S.S.R. was doomed to lose in its economic competition with The West, so that the Cold War was actually a losing proposition for them, from the very start of the post-war era. America’s post-WW-II dominance, combined with Marx’s crippling economic theory, and produced the exodus of East Europeans to The West.

America’s aristocracy thus increasingly rose on top internationally. Like any aristocracy, the American aristocracy’s main concerns were foreign trade, and so U.S. international corporations increasingly expanded even at the expense of the corporations owned by its competing, now-vassal, aristocracies, and the U.S. aristocracy’s corporations and brands thus came to dominate the entire capitalist sphere. The growth-bug, if it becomes an addiction, is itself a disease. Out of control, it is a cancer, which can destroy the organism. This is what happened in America. Conquering also the communist sphere was the U.S. aristocracy’s long-term goal, so that they would ultimately dominate every nation, the entire world. By the time of 1980, the U.S. aristocracy’s top goal (world domination) became also the U.S. Government’s top goal. The cancer had spread to the culture’s brain. Growth, backed by “Greed is good” economics, became practically the American religion, viewed as patriotic, and not merely as the nation’s economic model (which was bad enough, with its increasingly imperialistic thrust — such as 2003 Iraq, 2011 Libya, 2012- Syria, 2014 Ukraine, 2016- Yemen, and maybe now Iran).

America’s unchallengeable dominance lasted from then till now, but clearly has now reached near its end. The United States is trying to restore its post-Soviet (post-1991) global supremacy, by intensifying the U.S. regime’s secret war against Russia and its allies, which started on the night of 24 February 1990 and which could reach a crescendo soon in WW III unless something will be done by America’s allies to force the by-now wildly flailing U.S. aristocracy to accept peacefully the end of the American aristocracy’s hegemony — the termination of their, until recently, unchallengeable control over the world. By now, with the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror of America’s NATO military alliance gone since 1991 and yet no peace-dividend but only ever-increasing wealth-concentration into the tiny number of billionaires who benefit from war weaponry-sales and conquests, America needs to abandon its addiction to growth, or else it will proceed forward on its current path, to WW III. That’s its current path.

According to Josh Rogin in the Washington Post on November 14th, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence had just said, as Rogin phrased it, that “the United States has no intention of ceding influence or control over the [Pacific] region to Beijing” and that if China won’t do everything that the U.S. demands, then the U.S. is fully prepared to force China to obey. The same newspaper had earlier presented Robert D. Kaplan, on October 9th, saying, “The United States must face up to an important fact: the western Pacific is no longer a unipolar American naval lake, as it was for decades after World War II. The return of China to the status of great power ensures a more complicated multipolar situation. The United States must make at least some room for Chinese air and naval power in the Indo-Pacific region.” But the U.S. regime is now making clear that it won’t do that.

The U.S. regime appears to be determined to coerce both Russia and China to comply with all American demands. With both of those countries, as with Iran, the U.S. regime is now threatening hot war. Trump, as the “deal-maker,” is offering no concessions, but only demands, which must be complied with, or else. The United States is threatening WW III. But what nations will be America’s allies, this time around? If many European nations abandon the U.S., then what?

Key for the U.S. regime is keeping the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Rockefeller Capital Management, Global Foresight, Third Quarter 2018 presents Jimmy Chang, Chief Investment Strategist, headlining “Nothing Trumps the Dollar, Yet”. He writes: “The reserve currency status gives the U.S. a significant advantage in handling its finances. American economist Barry Eichengreen observed that it cost only a few cents for the U.S. to print a $100 bill, but other countries would need to produce $100 of actual goods or services to obtain that $100 bill. The world’s need for the greenback allows the U.S. to issue debt in its own currency at very low interest rates. French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who later became the president, coined [in 1965] the term ‘exorbitant privilege’ to describe America’s advantage” of the U.S. dollar over any other nation’s currency. That “exorbitant advantage” never went away. Chang concludes: “As for the King Dollar, its short-term outlook appears robust.” However, few other observers now share that view. Increasing numbers of countries are pricing goods in other currencies, and China’s yuan and the EU’s euro are especially significant contenders to end dollar-dominance and to end the advantages that U.S.-based international corporations enjoy from dollar-dominance.

Other than dollar-dominance, the key barrier to world peace is NATO, the military alliance of the northern aggressor-nations. Proposals have been put forth for the EU to have its own army, which initially would be allied with NATO (i.e., with the U.S. regime). On November 17th, Russian Television bannered “EU army: Will it be easy for Europe to get rid of American political diktat?” and pointed to the U.S. vassal-nations that would be especially likely to stay in NATO: UK, Poland, Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Perhaps the other EU nations and Russia could form their own military alliance, which will formally be committed to the independence of those U.S. vassal-nations, and which will welcome individual peace-treaties with each of them, so as to indicate that aggression is only the U.S. regime’s way, and thus to lay the groundwork for peace instead of war, going forward. Clearly, the people who control the U.S. are addicted to invasions and coups (“regime-change”s), instead of to respecting the sovereignty of each nation and the right of self-determination of people everywhere. America’s conquest-addiction threatens, actually, every other nation.

Perhaps a reformed and truly independent EU can provide the new reserve currency, and also in other ways the foundation for global peace between nations. NATO will be irrevocably opposed to this, but it could happen. And if and when it does, it might tame the aristocratic beast that rides the American warfare state, but this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. A step forward toward it is the courageous statement by “The Saker” at the American news-commentary site, Unz dot com, on November 15th, “Thanking Vets for Their ‘Service’ – Why?” He boldly notes that after World War II, all U.S. invasions have been criminal, and that it’s a remarkably long string of evil — and this doesn’t even include the many coups, which have likewise destroyed some nations.

Nationalism is just as evil in today’s America as it was in Hitler’s Germany. It is hostile to people in any other nation. It demands conquest. And wherever nationalism rules, patriotism dies and is replaced by nationalism.

Only by restoring patriotism and eliminating nationalism can WW III be avoided. Ending dollar-dominance is part of the path toward an internationally peaceful world that focuses more on serving the public’s needs and less on serving the aristocrats’ cravings. But ending NATO is also necessary.

Either these things will be done, or there will be WW III.

—————

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

21 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/21/the-world-order-thats-now-emerging/

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

18 Nov 2018 – Trump calls for escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Why? Is it part of the “Global War on Terrorism”, going after the bad guys, or is it something else?

Unknown to the broader public, Afghanistan has significant oil, natural gas and strategic raw material resources, not to mention opium, a multibillion dollar industry which feeds America’s illegal heroin market.

These mineral reserves include huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium, which is a strategic raw material used in the production of high tech batteries for laptops, cell phones and electric cars.

The implication of Trump’s resolve is to plunder and steal Afghanistan’s mineral riches to finance the “reconstruction” of a country destroyed by the US and its allies after 16 years of war, i.e “War reparations” paid to the aggressor nation?

An internal 2007 Pentagon memo, quoted by the New York Times suggests that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010, see also Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2010).

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment…

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said… “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines. (New York Times, op. cit.)

What this 2007 report does not mention is that this resource base has been known to both Russia (Soviet Union) and China going back to the 1970s.

While the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani has called upon President Donald Trump to promote US. investments in mining, including lithium, China is in the forefront in developing projects in mining and energy as well as pipeline projects and transport corridors.

China is a major trading and investment partner with Afghanistan (alongside Russia and Iran), which potentially encroaches upon US economic and strategic interests in Central Asia

China’s intent is to eventually integrate land transportation through the historical Wakhan Corridor which links Afghanistan to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region (see map below).

Afghanistan’s estimated $3 trillion worth of unexploited minerals, Chinese companies have acquired rights to extract vast quantities of copper and coal and snapped up the first oil exploration concessions granted to foreigners in decades. China is also eyeing extensive deposits of lithium, uses of which range from batteries to nuclear components.

The Chinese are also investing in hydropower, agriculture and construction. A direct road link to China across the remote 76-kilometer border between the two countries is in progress. (New Delhi Times, July 18, 2015)

Afghanistan has extensive oil reserves which are being explored by China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

“War Is Good for Business”

The US military bases are there to assert US control over Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. According to Foreign Affairs, “there are more U.S. military forces deployed there [Afghanistan] than to any other active combat zone”, the official mandate of which is “to go after” the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS as part of the “Global war on Terrorism”.

Why so many military bases? Why the additional forces sent in by Trump?

The unspoken objective of US military presence in Afghanistan is to keep the Chinese out, i.e hinder China from establishing trade and investments relations with Afghanistan.

More generally, the establishment of military bases in Afghanistan on China’s Western border is part of a broader process of military encirclement of the People’s Republic of China.–i.e naval deployments in the South China sea, military facilities in Guam, South Korea, Okinawa, Jeju Island, etc. (see 2011 map below)

Pivot to Asia

Under the Afghan-US security pact, established under Obama’s Asian pivot, Washington and its NATO partners have established a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, with military facilities located close to China’s Western frontier. The pact was intended to allow the US to maintain their nine permanent military bases, strategically located on the borders of China, Pakistan and Iran as well as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

US military presence, however, has not prevented the expansion of trade and investment relations between China and Afghanistan. A strategic partnership agreement was signed between Kabul and Beijing in 2012. Afghanistan has observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Moreover, neighboring Pakistan –which is now a full member of the SCO–, has established close bilateral relations with China. And now Donald Trump is threatening Pakistan, which for many years has been the target of America’s “undeclared drone war”.

In other words, a shift in geopolitical alignments has taken place which favors the integration of Afghanistan alongside Pakistan into the Eurasian trade, investment and energy axis.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and China are cooperating in oil and gas pipeline projects. The SCO of which Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are full members is providing a geopolitical platform for the integration of Afghanistan into the Eurasian energy and transport corridors.

China is eventually intent upon integrating Afghanistan into the transport network of Western China as part of the Belt and Road initiative.

Moreover, China’s state owned mining giant, Metallurgical Corporation of China Limited (MCC) “has already managed to take control of the huge copper deposit Mes Aynak, which lies in an area controlled by the Taliban. Already in 2010, Washington feared “that resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth which would upset the United States”… After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more” (Mining.com)

China and the Battle for Lithium

Chinese mining conglomerates are now competing for strategic control of the global Lithium market, which until recently was controlled by the “Big Three” conglomerates including Albemarle’s Rockwood Lithium (North Carolina), The Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile and FMC Corporation, (Philadelphia) which operates in Argentina. While the Big Three dominate the market, China now accounts for a large share of global lithium production, categorized as the fourth-largest lithium-producing country behind Australia, Chile and Argentina. Meanwhile China’s Tianqi Group has taken control of Australia’s largest lithium mine, called Greenbushes. Tianqi now owns a 51-percent stake in Talison Lithium, in partnership with North Carolina’s Albemarle.

This thrust in lithium production is related to China’s rapid development of the electric car industry:

China is now “The Center Of Lithium Universe”. China is already the largest market for electric cars. BYD, Chinese company backed by Warren Buffett, is the largest EV manufacturer in the world and Chinese companies are producing the largest amount of lithium chemicals for the batteries. There are 25 companies, which are making 51 models of electric cars in China now. This year we will see over 500,000 EVs sold in China. It took GM 7 years to sell 100,000 Chevy Volts from 2009. BYD will sell 100,000 EVs this year alone! (Mining.com, November 2016 report)

The size of the reserves of Lithium in Afghanistan have not been firmly established.

Analysts believe that these reserves which are yet to be exploited will not have a significant impact on the global lithium market.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website.

19 November 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/11/more-american-troops-to-afghanistan-to-keep-the-chinese-out-lithium-and-the-battle-for-afghanistans-mineral-riches/

By Neta C. Crawford

14 Nov 2018 –The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans.

This number differs substantially from the Pentagon’s estimates of the costs of the post-9/11 wars because it includes not only war appropriations made to the Department of Defense – spending in the war zones of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in other places the government designates as sites of “overseas contingency operations,” – but also includes spending across the federal government that is a consequence of these wars. Specifically, this is war-related spending by the Department of State, past and obligated spending for war veterans’ care, interest on the debt incurred to pay for the wars, and the prevention of and response to terrorism by the Department of Homeland Security.

If the US continues on its current path, war spending will continue to grow. The Pentagon currently projects $80 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) spending through FY2023. Even if the wars are ended by 2023, the US would still be on track to spend an additional $808 billion (see Table 2) to total at least $6.7 trillion, not including future interest costs. Moreover, the costs of war will likely be greater than this because, unless the US immediately ends its deployments, the number of veterans associated with the post-9/11 wars will also grow. Veterans benefits and disability spending, and the cost of interest on borrowing to pay for the wars, will comprise an increasingly large share of the costs of the US post-9/11 wars.

Table 1 summarizes the direct war costs – the OCO budget – and war-related costs through FY2019. These include war-related increases in overall military spending, care for veterans, Homeland Security spending, and interest payments on borrowing for the wars. Including the other areas of war-related spending, the estimate for total US war-related spending allocated through FY2019 is $4.9 trillion. But because the US is contractually and morally obligated to pay for the care of the post-9/11 veterans through their lifetimes, it is prudent to include the costs of care for existing post-9/11 veterans through the next several decades. This means that the US has spent or is obligated to spend $5.9 trillion in current dollars through FY2019. Table 1 represents this bottom-line breakdown for spent and obligated costs.

Table 1. Summary of War Related Spending, in Billions of Current Dollars, Rounded to the Nearest Billion, FY2001- FY2019

Figure 1. US Costs of War: $5.9 Billion of Current Dollars Spent and Obligated, through FY2019

Further, the US military has no plans to end the post-9/11 wars in this fiscal year or the next. Rather, as the inclusion of future years spending estimates in the Pentagon’s budget indicates, the DOD anticipates military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria necessitating funding through at least FY2023. Thus, including anticipated OCO and other war-related spending, and the fact that the post-9/11 veterans will require care for the next several decades, I estimate that through FY2023, the US will spend and take on obligations to spend more than $6.7 trillion.

Neta C. Crawford is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Boston University and Co-Director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

19 November 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/11/costs-of-post-9-11-u-s-wars-to-2019-5-9-trillion/