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By Eric Zuesse

To say that the U.S. public don’t care if ‘news’media lie, is shocking, but I shall here present evidence that it actually is true — not in some mere theory, but in empirical fact.

A typical example of Americans not caring about the truthfulness, nor even about the honesty, of their sources of alleged ‘news’, is that, during the period of October 3rd through the 5th, there were two news-reports both of which were true, but which, when taken together, display the total disconnect between newsmedia-honesty, on the one hand, and the confidence that the American people have in the nation’s ‘news’media, on the other.

One of these two news-reports was published on October 5th by the anonymous blogger who has come to be, amongst readers who closely follow and investigate the war in Syria, the most-trusted source of reporting on it, and the article was headlined, “Russia Issues Third Warning Against U.S. Cooperation With Terrorists”, and it provided links to each of the three recent instances in which the U.S. Government was cooperating with ISIS to defeat Syria and its defender Russia, in Syria. It summarily described the ways in which the U.S. had been exposed (but not by U.S. ‘news’media) as having been providing vital intelligence and other crucial assistance to ISIS, in ISIS’s efforts to overthrow and replace the existing Syrian Government (headed by Bashar al-Assad). That report should be read by anyone who proceeds further here, because it covers events that were certainly of top international importance and that might even precipitate war between the U.S. and Russia, but which were reported little if at all in U.S. ’news’media.

Of course, it would be very bad for U.S. ’news’media to allow the U.S. to become involved in a nuclear war against Russia and to have hidden, from the American public, the U.S. Government’s provocations which had produced such a war. The U.S. here was helping ISIS kill Russian and Syrian soldiers in Syria, who are trying to eradicate ISIS and all other jihadist groups there (including Al Qaeda etc.). Obviously, ISIS is not popular amongst the American public; and, for the United States to be constantly condemning ISIS in public, while secretly assisting ISIS to kill Russian troops and Syrian Government troops inside Syria (whose Government had invited Russia into the war to assist it to survive the onslaughts from ISIS and from the other U.S.-backed fundamentalist-Sunni jihadist groups who are backed also by Saudi Arabia and by some other fundamentalist-Islamic Sunni governments, as well as by the U.S. Government), would be disapproved of by the American people, if they were to have been informed of it. Some Americans would even be disturbed to recognize that the U.S. and its allies in Syria are all invaders there, very unlike those Russian troops are, because Russians are allies of the existing government — quite the opposite of invaders (such as the U.S. and its allies there). Some Americans dislike not only ISIS, but invaders and invasions, on basic principle. But American ‘news’media are very supportive of all of the U.S. Government’s invasions — Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. So, that was a very important article about very important matters that are being hidden from the U.S. public by the U.S. ‘news’ media.

The other news-report was from Reuters, and it headlined, on October 3rd, “The press, branded the ‘enemy’ by Trump, increasingly trusted by the public: Reuters/Ipsos poll”.

The report about the three warnings from Russia, proves (as do many other evidences) the deceit, the selective covering-up of crucial facts, by the U.S. press. It’s not a “press” in the democratic sense, but instead a pro-invasion propaganda-operation — it is a propaganda-operation (as that October 5th article proved, and I have documented also many times, such as here, here, and here). However, Reuters reports that “The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September from 39 percent last November.”

How much sheer lying has been exposed (but not by the press) about America’s press, during that time? I, and many others who are not in the press, or who are no longer in the press, have reported plenty of it (such as I’ve linked-to here, and others are, in turn, additionally linked-to in each one of those articles about our scandalous American press-institution). Here, then, are a few of my own recent reports about important context for accurately interpreting this Reuters article, which is intentionally not mentioned (but is instead hidden) by Reuters:

One, just a few weeks ago, headlined “U.S. Near Bottom In Public Trust Of Newsmedia” and reported that:

“According to the most extensive study ever done of the public’s usages of, and trust in, the newsmedia in their country — a study that (in late January early February) scientifically sampled thousands of people in each one of 36 different industrialized countries — the United States scored #28, which was in the bottom 22% of all 36 nations, regarding the public’s trust of the newsmedia.”

That study was done by the Reuters Institute, under the title “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017”. That title was credited in my rews-report, as being its source; and, so, my article about the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” should show up in a Google seach for “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017”, but it does not (which raises a question about the search-engine). However one other news-report about the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” does show up in a google search of that title: the Irish Times headlined “Report shows trust in news higher in Ireland than International average”, and it opened:

“Irish people under the age of 35 are more likely to pay for online news, according to the latest Oxford Reuters Digital News Report published today. The report notes that, despite growing up with free online entertainment, younger people have developed the habit of paying for some media. In Ireland, the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups are most likely to pay for online news, at 12 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. Irish people have a strong interest in news and have higher levels of trust in the news media than the international average, according to the report.”

Furthermore, a duckduckgo.com search for that Reuters title, “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” shows an article headlined “Media Coverage for the Digital News Report 2017”, and that’s a news-report from, and published by, the Reuters Institute itself; and you can see there what the titles are of the news-reports about it, which Reuters itself had found and reported in their own story, and none of those titles would be of any interest to the general public, all of those titles were published only in the trade press for the journalism industry and for the public relations (or propaganda) industry (it’s now actually one industry-group). The news-report that I had done, didn’t show up anywhere, but it was the only general-interest news-report that had been based upon that massive Reuters Institute study, the only report focusing on what is of general interest in it.
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All the rest of the ‘news’media had ignored it altogether; and, though I submitted that news-report, the only one ever about the general-interest findings contained in the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017,” to all U.S. general-interest ‘news’media, the only media which published it, were: washingtonsblog, informationclearinghouse, off-guardian, greanvillepost, and rinf, plus mirror-sites of any of those (all of which sites are even smaller than those). So, unless a person happens to follow those sites, the individual won’t know anything of the important findings in that massive Reuters study.

And, my news-report on it pointed out that the Reuters study showed far below-average public confidence in the ‘news’media by Americans as opposed to the global average. But when, just a few months later, Reuters did a story which showed that Americans’ trust in the ‘news’media had increased, that merited a Reuters news-story to the general press, even though their global study, which had been published just months earlier, and which showed widespread distrust by Americans of the ‘news’media as compared to the publics in other countries, Reuters informed only PR agencies and ‘journalism’ corporations and professors about that study, and without any indication ever to anyone that the distrust of the press by the publics in a few countries, such as France and America, was very high (and that it was astronomically high in Greece and in Korea — only 23% trust in each). The ‘news’media hide their rottennesses, instead of investigating and reporting them.

Obviously, the press does a big cover-up job on its own rottennesses, which are institutional, and not merely “a few bad apples.”

Other news-reports that I have done on this subject include, for example,  a report about how the press hid from the public the fact that when George W. Bush said on 7 September 2002 that the IAEA had found that Saddam Hussein was only six months from having a nuclear bomb, the press hid from the public the IAEA’s prompt and repeated statements that they had never issued any such finding or report at all. The invasion was based on such lies and cover-ups. After commonly repeated instances such as that, going on for so many years, and always hiding that the U.S. Government is lying in order to invade some country or other, why doesn’t the U.S. public yet recognize that the U.S. press is what one finds in a dictatorship such as the U.S. has been proven to be, and not an authentic journalistic institution at all. If the Greeks and Koreans have a 23% level of trust in their ‘news’media, is the only reason for Americans’ having a 38% level of trust (as shown on page 21) the U.S. media’s greater effectiveness at fooling its public?

This news-report will (as I routinely do) be submitted to all U.S. national ‘news’media for publication. How many do you think will publish it? And, how many of those will be major ‘news’media? Just google the headline here, “U.S. Public Don’t Care if ‘News’media Lie”, in order to find out which the honest few actually are. But don’t trust Google, either. The entire media-institution is rotten. And, it’s not because of errors. It’s because of the lies and the cover-ups, which are systematic, and which pump things to support the ideology that’s called “neoliberalism” in economics, and “neoconservatism” in foreign policies. It used to be called simply: “imperialism.” It’s the modern ideology of dictatorship. It’s the ideology of the American press, and that’s an overwhelmingly documented fact — no mere hypothesis, at all.

The U.S. ‘news’media drown the public in neoliberal-neoconservative propaganda. And that’s the reason why online-searching for this headline won’t find this article at the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, Slate, etc. — not at any of the ‘news’ media that pumped in 2002 and 2003 for invading Iraq. Nothing has changed about the U.S. press during at least the past 15 years. And the American public just don’t much care that they’re being constantly lied-to by the major ‘news’media and are voting on that deceived basis.

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.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-public-dont-care-if-news-media-lie/5612498

By Gaither Stewart

When in 1978 the 31-year old Afghan Communist politician-activist, Mohammad Najibullah, arrived in Tehran, “exiled” to neighboring Iran as Afghanistan’s Ambassador, I had just left Iran where I had worked throughout the year of 1977. Najibullah’s political party, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had come to power in Kabul in April, 1978 in what is known as the Saur Revolution, the name of the month in the Afghan calendar when the Communist Revolution took place. Far from united, the PDPA was divided into two factions: the more revolutionary faction (Khalq-People’s) that first took power in Kabul in that crucial year of 1978 (crucial in both Afghanistan and Iran), preferred to have the charismatic Najibullah of the Parcham faction (Banner)of the PDPA far from the halls of power.

Moreover, the entire country was divided, much of it opposed to the Communist revolution. The chief resistance forces were the also divided,the U.S.-supported Mujahideen. One might conclude that the Afghan War was a proxy war, between the USSR and the USA, the USA to control these two contiguous countries near the top of the world, Iran and Afghanistan, both bordering the Islamic part of the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union to defend itself from incursions into its Islamic republics in Central Asia.

As subsequent history would show, Najibullah’s approach to resolving the civil war in Afghanistan was quite different from that of the PDPA faction heading the government which favored more rapid steps toward the realization of the socialist revolution. However, for the observer today, Najibullah’s more political National Reconciliation policy (which failed) between the government and the Mujahideen opposition and the clergy is a key to understanding not only contemporary Afghanistan but also Afghan-Soviet relations in general and the withdrawal of Soviet troops ordered by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989: the significance of the 10-year Soviet military presence in Afghanistan should not be underestimated.

Since 1979 the 110,000 Soviet troops had guaranteed the relative stability of the Afghan Communist PDPA government. Though the U.S.-backed Mujahideen guerrillas already controlled many parts of the country, they were unable to defeat government forces and dislodge the PDPA government in Kabul as long as Soviet troops were present. The Soviet leadership had to know that that stability would quickly break down when its last soldiers departed.

Things had begun changing with the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in Moscow in 1986. Though Soviet-controlled Afghanistan was a dangerous place to be, one of Gorbachev’s gravest mistakes was to pull his troops out of Afghanistan in 1989, leaving Najibullah and his government to face the growing firepower of the Mujahideen … and the threat of U.S. intervention. The then President Najibullah understood this quite well and did all in his power to convince Soviet authorities to leave their troops in place.

IRAN

The Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran—also in crucial 1978-79—resulted in the overthrow of the U.S.-supported Pahlavi dynasty at that time under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Iranian Revolution was a violent and widely popular overthrow of a ferocious U.S.-inspired regime installed after the CIA-organized overthrow of the democratically elected government led by Premier Mohammad Mossadegh on August 19, 1953. The initial success of the leftist forces in Iran’s Islamic revolution must have been an inspiration to Najibullah.

The oil boom in Iran of the 1970s had accelerated the gap between the rich and poor in both city and provinces. I had never seen such display of wealth as in the palatial mansions at the top of the city of Tehran where some the world’s richest people lived and whose excrements literally trickled down the stinking open sewage ditches running along the streets downhill to the poorest neighborhoods in the lower city …symbolic of the enormous disparity between rich and poor.

To be sure, as has been said time and again, inequality truly kills. Example: life expectancy in 1970 in pre-revolutionary Iran was 58%; today, 70%. In neighboring Syria, it was 70% in 1970. Moreover,adding to the widespread hate for the Shahinshah’s regime was the presence of tens of thousands of unpopular skilled foreign workers and foreign entrepreneurs like the one I was associated with in search of lucrative contracts in fields ranging from infrastructure construction to heavy industry, mining and even the production of tiles at which Persians were masters. Most Iranians were angered by the fact that the Shah’s family was the foremost beneficiary of the income generated by oil so that the line between state earnings and family earnings blurred. No one should believe that the last Pahlavi Shah was a benefactor of the Iranian people; he was a tyrant and, in effect, a U.S. puppet, a key part of U.S. efforts to control the entire region.

I was in Tehran during most of 1977 as an interpreter for a newly formed Italian company before being named its Iranian representative. Though I understand zilch about the business world I came to love Iran and its people and considered the proposed job an excellent short-term opportunity to learn the country. In that capacity I witnessed some of the demonstrations against the Shah that commenced in October 1977 since the hotel I lived in was in the lower town near Tehran University and foreign embassies, the area where major demonstrations took place. Marxist groups, primarily the Communist Tudeh Party and Fedaeen guerrillas, had been weakened considerably by the Shah’s repression. Despite this the leftist guerrillas played an important role in the final February 1979 overthrow of the Shah, delivering the coup de grace to the U.S. installed regime. Many of the most powerful guerrilla groups—the Mujahideen—were leftist but also Islamist even though they opposed the reactionary influence of the clergy.

Together with armed guerrilla of the People’s Fedaeen, remaining elements of the Tudeh Party, plus various Islamist groups and the powerful organization of the Bazaarists, the revolutionary movement developed from the general unrest in the country, widespread poverty and the terror of the notorious secret police, SAVAK. As protests grew in intensity in late 1977, I watched as people surrounded trucks carrying young army troops some of whom threw down their guns and jumped down to join the crowds. In other places instead a more hardened military opened fire and reports circulated of thousands of victims. At that point the company I was to work for collapsed and like many foreign entrepreneurs abandoned Iran.

I too returned to Rome from where I tried to follow events in Iran. The revolution itself emerged from the widespread civil resistance. Between August and December 1978 strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Shah left Iran on January 16, 1979. Invited back to Iran by the transitional government, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was greeted on his return to Tehran by millions of Iranians. Shortly after, the royal reign ended definitively when rebels overwhelmed troops loyal to the exiled Shah, bringing Khomeini to power. Iran voted in a national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979.

At that time I knew little about the events underway in neighboring Afghanistan. I first became acquainted with the name Najibullah, when he headed the Communist Party in Kabul in the 1980s. With the support of the Soviet Union, he became President of Afghanistan in 1987… by the way the only period in my memory when any semblance of order existed in chaotic Afghanistan. Dr. Najibullah must have learned much from the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

KABUL

Though divided by internal conflict among the tribal peoples and by foreign intervention for centuries, Afghanistan had made some progress toward modernization by the 1950s and 60s, toward a more liberal and westernized lifestyle, but obligated to cater to the conservative factions. Exotic and Oriental Kabul at that time was an “in” place for the international elite who frequented Afghanistan to visit the soaring mountains of the Hindi Kush, the huge central area of Afghanistan, in a way truly the top of the world. After the assassination of his father, Mohammad Zahir Shah succeeded to the throne and reigned (not ruled) as monarch from 1933 to 1973. In 1964, he had promulgated a liberal constitution that produced few lasting reforms, but instead permitted the growth of unofficial extremist parties of both left and right. Because of the turbulence at home, the king went into exile in Italy in 1973 and lived in the Rome suburbs near my residence. I tried to get an interview with him but never got past his secretary-watch dog; he had allegedly survived an assassination attempt in 1991 so was extremely stingy with interviews.

Though officially neutral during the Cold War, Afghanistan was courted by both the USA and the Soviet Union: machinery and weapons from the USSR and financial aid from the USA.Progress was halted in the 1970s by a series of bloody coups and civil wars. One will be surprised that despite modernization, the average life expectancy for Afghans born in 1960 was 31.

Dr. Najib as Najibullah was called because he had a degree in medicine from Kabul University became the President of Afghanistan in 1987 at the age of 40. Born in 1947 in Gardiz, the son of a prominent Pashtun family, he joined the Parcham faction of the PDPA in 1965 at the age of 18, became an activist and was twice jailed for his militancy. His faction of the Communist PDPA was in disagreement with the Khalq over the proper path to Communism in Afghanistan, the Khalq favoring more rapid steps toward the realization of Socialism than the Parcham.

Since his return from exile in 1980, the longest and most important part of which was in Moscow, Dr. Najib headed the dreaded Khad, the secret police, during which time he personally acquired a reputation for brutality: torture and execution of the opposition was the norm, as its was in Iran, as in most of the world today. He had the close support—if not control—of the KGB. His Khad was modeled on the Soviet Committee of State Security (KGB), was militarized, grew in size to the point it allegedly had 300,000 troops, and was considered effective in the pacification of wide parts of the country.

MOSCOW

In an attempt to give the Afghan story a personal touch, I have added this curious historical coincidence. I moved to The Netherlands in 1978 where I broke into Dutch journalism with articles about Iran. As a result of published articles in the press and my stay in Tehran I somehow became an advisor to a prominent TV producer who at the time was working on a series of specials on Iran. Since I had studied Turkish at Munich University and had become interested in the Soviet Central Asian republics, the former Russian Turkestan, especially Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan which border northern Afghanistan, I proposed a series of colorful reportages on landmarks in the Central Asian republics such as Samarkand and Bokhara. So in late spring of 1978, armed with a stack of Dutch TV credentials I set out for Moscow.The plan was to interest Soviet television in a cooperative effort.

I finally met with a person at the Ostankino TV center and presented the idea of a cooperative production of Soviet and Dutch television about Soviet Central Asia. In retrospect I came to understand that Moscow TV people must have thought I was insane: an American representing Dutch television proposes a joint TV production about the vast area bordering with Afghanistan and the Soviet-backed Communist government in Kabul in a struggle with a U.S.-backed opposition. Ludicrous. Moreover, and unbeknownst to me, Najibullah was also present in Moscow lobbying for a Soviet intervention in his country to bolster the Communist government in Kabul while I was proposing a TV production about areas between Moscow and Afghanistan. Soviet TV people were not interested and I instead cut a ridiculous figure, while Dr. Najib’s contacts were extremely interested in his proposals and in him personally. His major sponsor was the powerful KGB, a relationship which lasted until the bitter end of his life.The documentary series I proposed was about the lands over which Soviet tanks and armored cars would pass not many months ahead  on their way to Afghanistan, accompanied also by the young Afghan political figure, Mohammad Najibullah.

KABUL

Once back in Kabul, Dr. Najib became the director of Khad, the secret police, which operated under Soviet control. Not only an intelligence organization, it was a military force. It had tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters. A state within the state, Khad was charged with both counter-intelligence activities and intelligence gathering to eliminate active and potential opponents and counterrevolutionaries. Dr. Najib might have taken his cue from Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB. On how to combat counter-revolutionaries, Dzerzhinsky said in 1918:

“Don’t think that I seek forms of revolutionary justice; we are not now in need of justice. It is war now—face to face, a fight to the finish. Life or death.”

That was also the belief of Che Guevara decades later. And that must have been the guideline for Mohammad Najibullah, who reigned with an iron fist over Khad from 1980 until he became head of the party and President of Afghanistan in 1987.

Once in power, Dr. Najib undertook his National Reconciliation policies. He eliminated the word Communist and references to Marxism from a new Constitution in 1990, labeled Afghanistan an Islamic Republic (as in Iran), introduced a multiparty system, freedom of speech and an independent judiciary. Yet the Mujahideen—which controlled wide parts of the country—refused to join in. With U.S. and western support the fanatical Taliban (religious students) emerged and conquered the country. When in 1992 they took Kabul, Dr. Najib found refuge in the United Nations compound where he lived until 1996. On September 27 the Taliban took Najibullah from his refuge, castrated him, dragged him behind a car over Kabul streets, finished him with a gunshot and hung his body from a traffic post.

In conclusion, some results of the Thirty Years War in Afghanistan are clear: the USA dream of control of these lands at the top of the world, in Afghanistan and Iran, was shattered. I tend to think of Iran and Afghanistan together. Twenty-five years of oppression and exploitation were too much for Iranians who rose up, made a revolution, and ousted America. Russia too lost something in Iran while Ayatollah Khomeini ruled; now that has been overcome and Russia and Iran are today allies … against aggressive Yankee imperialism. Iran was thus lost to the USA but Afghanistan seemed and perhaps in the minds of some

Neocons continues to be a promising alternative. No oil but lots of poppies and valuable land and location. Soviet Russia had dreamed of a Soviet-friendly progressive Afghanistan to protect and secure its vast Islamic regions extending from the Caucuses to the Far East. It failed to quell the ruly, untamable Afghans as Americans cannot still today. Though U.S.-supported Mujahideen could not defeat in battle the Soviet-supported government in Kabul in the 1980s, it at least convinced the Russians to abandon a lost mission and to leave, a lesson that the USA has continued to learn and unlearn for 16 years. On the flimsiest of excuses it too invaded indomitable Afghanistan in 2001 after 11 September … andis still there flailing at windmills, unable to completely abandon another lost war.

Dr. Najib is gone. The dream of a Communist Afghanistan is gone. The Soviet Union itself is gone. But a defeated America still hangs on in a tiny portion of the complex country of Afghanistan.

Gaither Stewart is a veteran journalist, his dispatches on politics, literature, and culture, have been published (and translated) on many leading online and print venues.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/afghanistan-us-sponsored-al-qaeda-freedom-fighters-were-used-to-railroad-the-formation-of-a-secular-socialist-government/5612543

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

“The Sociology of Justice”, which is the timely theme of The Philippine Sociological Society’s 2017 National conference at UP Cebu must be understood in relation to an unfolding New World Order which destroys sovereign countries through acts of war and “regime change”.

In turn, large sectors of the World population are impoverished through the concurrent imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms. This New World Order feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women.

October 7, 2017 marks the 16th anniversary of the October 7, 2001 illegal US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan. Michel Chossudovsky, University of the Philippines, Cebu, October 7, 2017

We are at the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history.

In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in the largest display of military might since the Second World War, the US has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

War is presented as a peace-making undertaking. The justification for these US-led wars is the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) with a view to instilling (Trump style) Western “democracy” Worldwide.

Global warfare sustains the neoliberal agenda. War and globalization are intricately related.

What we are dealing with is an imperial project broadly serving global economic and financial interests including Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil, the Biotech conglomerates, Big Pharma, The Global Narcotics Economy  and the Media  and Information Giants.

Also, September 11, 2001 followed by the invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, also marks the official launch of the so-called “global war on terrorism” which has served as a justification for US-NATO led wars and interventions in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and South East Asia.

The Global War on Terrorism is Fake

Amply documented, Al Qaeda and its various affiliates including ISIS-Daesh are creations of US intelligence.

Pre-emptive Nuclear Doctrine

Meanwhile, a major shift in US nuclear doctrine has occurred with the adoption of the doctrine of preemptive warfare, namely war as an instrument of  “self defense”. The ideology of preemptive warfare also applies to the use of nuclear weapons on a pre-emptive basis. In 2002, the US administration put forth the concept of preemptive nuclear war, namely the use of nuclear weapons against enemies of America as a means of self defense.

The Trump administration is openly threatening the World with nuclear war. How to confront the diabolical and absurd proposition put forth by the US administration that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran or North Korea will  “make the World a safer place”?

Where is the Antiwar Movement?

Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the antiwar movement is dead.  Piece-meal activism often funded by Wall Street prevails, focussing narrowly on environmental concerns, climate change, racism, civil rights. Invariably war and the extensive war crimes committed by US-NATO as part of an alleged counterterrorism agenda are not the object of organized public dissent. The motto is a non sequitur: “we are against war, but we support the war on terrorism.”

War propaganda prevails, thereby providing a human face to US-NATO atrocities and human rights violations. In turn, the governments of the countries which are the object of US aggression, are casually accused of killing their own people.

Media disinformation turns realties upside down. North Korea is not a threat to global security. Belgium with 20 B61 tactical nukes deployed under national command has a larger arsenal than the DPRK (allegedly 4 nuclear bombs).

These B61 nuclear bombs in five undeclared European nuclear weapons states (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey) are targeted at both Russia and the Middle East.

The mainstream media has failed to warn public opinion that a US led nuclear attack against North Korea or Iran could evolve towards World War III, which in the words of Albert Einstein would be “terminal”, leading to the destruction of humanity.

“Today there is an imminent risk of war with the use of that kind of weapon and I don’t harbor the least doubt that an attack by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran would inevitably evolve towards a global nuclear conflict.

In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity. Let us have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything that is used to make war, must disappear!”  (Fidel Castro Ruz, Conversations with Michel Chossudovsky, October 12-15, 2010)

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. (Albert Einstein)

The anti-war movement is dead, nuclear war is not front page news.

The justification of America’s long war is to “make the world safer”.

War is presented as a humanitarian endeavor. Global Security requires going after al Qaeda as part of an alleged counter-terrorism campaign.

The world is led to believe that  the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are threatening the World. The truth is that Al Qaeda and its  numerous affiliates  as well as the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh) are without exception creations of US intelligence. They are intelligence assets.

When a US sponsored nuclear war becomes an “instrument of peace”, condoned and accepted by the World’s institutions and the highest authority including the United Nations, there is no turning back: human society has indelibly been precipitated headlong onto the path of self-destruction.

From Colonialism to Post-Colonialism

Post-colonial history is a continuation of colonial history which established America’s contemporary imperial agenda, largely as a result of the displacement and defeat by the US of the former colonial powers (e.g. Spain, France, Japan, Netherlands). This US hegemonic project largely consists in transforming sovereign countries into open territories, controlled by dominant economic and financial interests. Military, intelligence as well economic instruments are used to carry out this hegemonic project.

Militarization marked by more than 700 US military bases and facilities worldwide under the unified combatant command structure indelibly supports a global economic agenda.

Moreover, this military deployment is supported by US macro-economic policy which imposes austerity on all categories of civil expenditure with a view to releasing the funds required to finance America’s military arsenal and war economy.

Military intervention and regime change initiatives including CIA sponsored military coups and “color revolutions” are broadly supportive of the neoliberal policy agenda which has been imposed on indebted developing countries Worldwide.

The Globalization of Poverty

The “globalization of poverty” in the post-colonial era is the direct result of the imposition of deadly macroeconomic reforms under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction. The Bretton Woods institutions are instruments of Wall Street and the corporate establishment.

The time path of these reforms –which has led to a process of global economic restructuring– is of crucial significance. The early 1980s marks the onslaught of the so-called structural adjustment program (SAP) under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank. “Policy conditionalities” largely directed against indebted Third World countries are used as a means of intervention, whereby the Washington based International Financial Institutions (IFI) impose a set menu of deadly economic policy reforms including austerity, privatization, the phasing out of social programs, trade reforms, compression of real wages, etc.

It is worth noting that a parallel process of neoliberal economic reform –which largely consisted in privatizing as well gradually dismantling the welfare state– was instigated in the 1980s in the US and Britain under what was described as the Reagan-Thatcher era.

Post-Cold War Era Reforms

A second phase of economic restructuring commences at the end of the Cold War with drastic economic reform packages imposed on Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, the Balkans as well as on the constituent republics of the former Soviet Union (e.g. Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan).

Concurrently in Western Europe the Maastricht Treaty –which came into force in 1993– was imposed on the member states of the European Union. What was referred to as the The Maastricht criteria (or  convergence criteria) which eventually led to the formation of the eurozone largely consisted in imposed the neoliberal policy agenda on the EU member states. These Maastricht criteria also served to derogate the sovereignty of individual member states.

Maastricht is a structural adjustment program (SAP) in disguise. Essentially Maastricht and the subsequent instatement of the eurozone contributed to paralyzing national monetary policy, foreclosing the use of internal public debt operations as an instrument of national economic development. The requirements of budgetary austerity imposed under the “Maastricht criteria” limited EU member states ability to finance their social programs leading to the gradual demise of the post World War II welfare state. The public debt is taken over by the European Central Bank (ECB) as well as private creditors.  The longer term impacts are mounting external debts as well as debt conditionalities and the repayment of debt from the proceeds of an extensive privatization program.

It should be mentioned that this phase of restructuring also coincides with the inauguration of the World Trade Organization (1995) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which has been conducive to a dramatic  transformation of the North American economic landscape, leading to the demise of regional and local level economies throughout North America.

In turn, the 1990s coincides with an extension and expansion of NATO, including massive “defense” expenditures which are not the object of neoliberal austerity measures. In fact quite the opposite. Neoliberalism feeds the Military Industrial Complex.

What is at stake is the “Thirdworldization” of the so-called developed countries leading to mass unemployment in several EU countries including Spain, Portugal and Greece, whose economies are now subjected to same IMF style reforms as those applied in Third World countries. What this signifies is that the Globalization of Poverty has extended its grip, leading to the impoverishment not only of the former Soviet block countries and the Balkans but also of the so-called high income countries of Western Europe.

More generally, the 1990s coinciding with NATO’s “humanitarian” war against Yugoslavia is the launchpad of NATO’s military buildup as well as  the globalization of NATO beyond it’s North Atlantic boundaries in the post Cold War era.

The Asian crisis of 1997-98 also marks an important threshold in the evolution of the neoliberal economic framework, pointing to the ability through speculative manipulations of foreign exchange and commodity market to literally destabilize the national economy of targeted countries. In this regard, institutional speculators have now the ability of artificially pushing up the price of food staples, or pushing up or down the price of crude oil.

The Global Cheap Labor Economy

The neoliberal agenda characterized by the imposition of strong “economic medicine” (austerity measures, freeze on wages, privatisation, repeal of social programs) has in the course of the last 30 years supported the extensive delocation of manufacturing to cheap labor (low wage) havens in developing countries. It has also served to impoverish both the developing and developed countries.

“Poverty is good for business.” It promotes the supply of cheap labor commodities worldwide in industry as well as in sections of the services economy.

This global process of economic restructuring (which has reached new heights) relies on compressing wages and the cost of labor worldwide while at the same time reducing the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of people. This compression of consumer demand ultimately triggers recession and rising unemployment.

The low wage economy is supported by exceedingly high levels of unemployment, which in developing countries are also the result of the destruction of the regional and local production not to mention the destabilization of the rural economy. This “reserve army on unemployed” (Marx) contributes to keeping wages down to their bare minimum.

China is the most important haven of cheap labor industrial assembly with 275 million migrant workers (according to official Chinese sources). Ironically, the West’s former colonies, as well as countries which are the victims of US military aggression and war crimes (e.g. Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia) have been transformed into cheap labor havens. The conditions prevailing in the aftermath of the Vietnam war were in large part instrumental in the imposition of the neoliberal agenda starting in the early 1990s.

Cheap labor is also exported from impoverished countries (India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, etc)  and used in the construction industry as well as in the services economy.

High levels of unemployment serve to maintain wages at an exceedingly low levels

Aggregate Demand

This global economic restructuring has been conducive to a dramatic increase in poverty and unemployment. While poverty is an input on the supply side favoring low levels of wages, the global cheap labor economy inevitably leads to a collapse in purchasing power, which in turn serves to increase the levels of unemployment.

Cheap labor and the compression of purchasing is the mainstay of neoliberalism. The transition from demand oriented Keynesian policies in the 1970s to the neoliberal macro-ecoomic agenda in the 1980s. The neoliberal economic policy agenda applied Worldwide sustains the global cheap labor economy. With the demise of demand oriented policies, neoliberalism emerges as the dominant economic paradigm.

Structural Adjustment in the Developed Economies

This generalized collapse in living standards which is the product of a macroeconomic agenda, is no longer limited to the so-called developing countries. Mass unemployment prevails in the United States, several EU countries including Spain, Portugal, Greece are experiencing exceedingly high levels of unemployment. Concurrently, the revenues of the middle class are being compressed, social programs are privatised, social safety nets including unemployment insurance benefits and social welfare programs are being curtailed.

Underconsumption

The generalized collapse of purchasing power is conducive to a recession in the consumer goods industry. Commodity production is not geared towards the basic necessities of life (food, housing, social services, etc) for the majority of the World’s population. There is a dichotomy between “those who work” in the cheap labor economy and “those who consume”.

The fundamental injustice of this global economic system is that “those who work” cannot afford to purchase what they produce. In other words, neoliberalism does not promote mass consumption. Quite the opposite: the development of extreme social inequalities both within and between countries ultimately leads to recession in the production of necessary goods and services (including food, social housing, public health, education).

The lack of purchasing power of “those who produce” (not to mention those who are unemployed) leads to a collapse in aggregate demand. In turn, there is surge in the demand for “high end luxury consumption” (broadly defined)  by the upper income strata of society.

Weapons and Luxury Goods. The Two Dynamic Sectors of the Global Economy

Essentially, while global poverty contributes to underconsumption by the large majority of the World’s population, the driving force of economic growth are the upper income markets (deluxe brand names, travel and leisure, luxury cars, electronics, private schools and clinics, etc).

The global cheap labor economy triggers poverty and underconsumption of necessary goods and services.

The two dynamic sectors of the global economy are

1. Production for the upper income strata of society.

2. The production and consumption of weapons, namely the military industrial complex.

Neoliberal policy  is conducive to the development of a global cheap labor economy which triggers decline in the production of necessary consumer goods (Marx’s Department IIa).

In turn, the lack of demand for necessary goods and services triggers a vacuum in the development of social infrastructure and investments (schools, hospitals, public transportation, public health, etc) in support of the standard of living of the large majority of world population.

The global cheap labor economy alongside the restructuring of the global financial apparatus creates an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth which is accompanied by the dynamic development of the luxury goods economy (broadly defined) (Marx’s Department IIb) .

Department III in the contemporary global economy is the production of weapons, which are sold Worldwide largely to governments. This sector of production in the US is dominated by a handful of large corporations including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace, Boeing, et al.

While neoliberal policies require the imposition of drastic austerity measures, the latter apply solely to the civilian sectors of government spending. State funding of advanced weapons systems is not the object of budgetary constraints.

In fact, the austerity measures imposed on health, education, public infrastructure, etc, are intended to facilitate the financing of the war economy, including the military industrial complex, the regional command structure consisting of 700 US military facilities Worldwide, the intelligence and security apparatus, not to mention the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons which is the object of a one trillion dollar allocation by the US Treasury to the US Defense Department. This money is ultimately trickles down to the so-called defense contractors, which constitute a powerful political lobby.

The reproduction of this global economic system is dependent upon the growth and development of two major sectors (departments): the Military Industrial Complex and the Production of High Income and Luxury Consumption.

High income luxury consumption for the upper social strata is combined with the dynamic development of the weapons industry and the war economy. This duality is what generates exclusion and despair.

It can only be broken and dispelled through the criminalization of war, the closure of the weapons industry and the repeal of the gamut of neoliberal policy instruments which generate poverty and social inequality.

How to Reverse The Tide of War and Globalization

The people’s movement had been hijacked. The antiwar movement is defunct. The civil society organisations which have all the appearances of being “progressive” are creatures of the system. Funded by corporate charities linked to Wall Street, they form part of a politically correct “Opposition” which acts as “a spokesperson for civil society”.

But who do they represent? Many of the “partner NGOs” and lobby groups which frequently mingle with bureaucrats and politicians, have few contacts with grass-roots social movements and people’s organisations. In the meantime, they serve to deflect the articulation of “real” social movements against the New World Order.” While the neoliberal paradigm is the focus of their attention, the broader issues of war and regime change are rarely addressed.

The programs of many NGOs and people’s movements rely heavily on funding from both public as well as private foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, McCarthy foundations, among others.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.

Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits as well as the World Social Forum.

The Development of a Broad Grassroots Network

What is required is ultimately to break the “controlled opposition” through the development of a broad based grassroots network which seeks to disable patterns of authority and decision making pertaining both to war and the neoliberal policy agenda. It is understood that US military deployments  (including nuclear weapons) are ultimately used in support of powerful economic interests.

This network would be established at all levels in society, towns and villages, work places, parishes both nationally and internationally  Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate the antiwar organizational structure. Of crucial importance, this movement should extend into the Armed Forces as a means to breaking the legitimacy of war among service men and women.

The first task would be to disable war propaganda through an effective campaign against media disinformation. The corporate media would be directly challenged, leading to boycotts of major news outlets, which are responsible for channelling disinformation into the news chain.  This endeavor would require a parallel process at the grass roots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of  the war and the global economic crisis, as well as effectively “spreading the word” through advanced networking, through alternative media outlets on the internet, etc.

The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the structures of political authority, is no easy task. It would require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history. It would require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society and acting with a single voice. It would also require eventually unseating the war criminals, and indicting them for war crimes.

Text of Michel Chossudovsky’s keynote address to the Philippine Sociological Society (PSS) National Conference, University of the Philippines, Cebu, October 7, 2017.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/from-global-poverty-to-exclusion-and-despair-reversing-the-tide-of-war-and-globalization/5611619

By Colin Todhunter

The increasingly globalised industrial food system that transnational agribusiness promotes is not feeding the world and is responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises. Localised, traditional methods of food production have given way to globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and actions which have resulted in the destruction of habitat and livelihoods and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture that weds farmers and regions to a wholly exploitative system of neoliberal globalisation.

Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina or palm oil production in Indonesia, transnational agribusiness and global capitalism cannot be greenwashed.

In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate PR, many take as given that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, land, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful, corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.

These natural assets (‘the commons’) belong to everyone and any stewardship should be carried out in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf, not by private transnational corporations driven by self-interest and the maximization of profit by any means possible.

The Guardian columnist George Monbiot notes the vast wealth the economic elite has accumulated at our expense through its seizure of the commons. A commons is managed not for the accumulation of capital or profit but for the steady production of prosperity or wellbeing of a particular group, who might live in or beside it or who created and sustain it.

Unlike state spending, according to Monbiot, a commons obliges people to work together, to sustain their resources and decide how the income should be used. It gives community life a clear focus and depends on democracy in its truest form. However, the commons have been attacked by both state power and capitalism for centuries. In effect, resources that no one invented or created, or that a large number of people created together, are stolen by those who see an opportunity for profit.

We need only look at how Cargill captured the edible oils processing sector in India and in the process put many thousands of village-based workers out of work. Or how Monsanto conspired to design a system of intellectual property rights that allowed it to patent seeds as if it had manufactured and invented them. Or how India’s indigenous peoples have been forcibly ejected from their ancient forest lands due to state’s collusion with mining companies.

As Monbiot says, the outcome is a rentier economy: those who capture essential resources seek to commodify them – whether trees for timber, land for real estate or agricultural seeds, for example – and force everyone else to pay for access.

While spouting platitudes about ‘choice’, ‘democracy’ and ‘feeding the world’, the corporate agribusiness/agritech industry is destroying the commons and democracy and displacing existing localised systems of production.

“[Economies are being] opened up through the concurrent displacement of pre-existing productive systems. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished” (Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of Poverty, p16).

As described here, for thousands of years farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems. The farmer possesses acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and story-telling. The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge were stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered

Large corporations with their proprietary seeds and synthetic chemical inputs have eradicated traditional systems of seed exchange. They have effectively hijacked seeds, pirated germ plasm that farmers developed over millennia and have ‘rented’ the seeds back to farmers. Genetic diversity among food crops has been drastically reduced, and we have bad food and diets, degraded soils, water pollution and scarcity and spiralling rates of poor health.

The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: the Green Revolution deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding.

We have witnessed a change in farming practices towards mechanised industrial-scale chemical-intensive monocropping, often for export or for far away cities rather than local communities, and ultimately the undermining or eradication of self-contained rural economies, traditions and cultures. We now see food surplus in the West and food deficit areas in the Global South and a globalised geopoliticised system of food and agriculture.

In India, Green Revolution technology and ideology has merely served to undermine indigenous farming sectors centred on highly productive small farms that catered for the diverse dietary needs and climatic conditions of the country. It has actually produced and fuelled drought and degraded soils and has contributed towards illnesses and malnutrition, farmer distress and many other problems.

What really irks the corporate vultures which fuel the current industrial model of agriculture is that critics are offering genuine alternatives. They advocate a shift towards more organic-based systems of agriculture, which includes providing support to small farms and an agroecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically.

Agroecology: taking back power

Much has been written about agroecology, its successes and the challenges it faces (see this, this and this). A prominent strand of the agroecological movement regards this model of agriculture as a force for radical change. It offers a political-economical critique of modern agriculture and the vested interests that determine it.

In this respect, Food First Executive Director Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that agroecology offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics and outright plunder of a neoliberalism that in turn drives a failing system of GM/chemical-intensive industrial agriculture.

The scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

The Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology by Nyeleni in 2015 argued for building grass-root local food systems that create new rural-urban links, based on truly agroecological food production. It went on to say that agroecology should not become a tool of the industrial food production model but as the essential alternative to that model. The Declaration stated that agroecology is political and requires local producers and communities to challenge and transform structures of power in society, not least by putting the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the commons in the hands of those who feed the world.

The more the power structures that shape modern agriculture are understood and the consequent devastating effects are made public, the more urgent the need becomes to establish societies run for the benefit of the mass of the population, and that means a system of food and agriculture that is democratically owned and controlled. This involves prioritising localised rural and urban food economies and small farms (both rural and urban) that should be shielded from the effects of rigged trade and international markets. It would mean that what ends up in our food and how it is grown is determined by the public good and not powerful private interests, which are driven by commercial gain and their compulsion to subjugate farmers, consumers and entire regions, while playing the victim each time campaigners challenge their actions.

There are enough examples from across the world that serve as models for transformation, from farming in socialist Cuba to grass-root movements centred on agroecology in Africa and India.

Agroecology must be regarded as a key form of resistance by food producers and both urban and rural communities to an increasingly globalised economic system that puts profit before the environment. Whether in Europe, Africa, India or the US, agroecology can protect and reassert the commons and is a force for grass-root change that should not be co-opted, diluted or subverted by the cartel of powerful biotech/agribusiness companies. This model of agriculture is already providing real solutions for sustainable, productive agriculture that prioritise the needs of farmers, consumers and the environment.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-battle-against-the-global-food-conglomerates-the-seeds-of-agroecology-and-common-ownership/5612557

By Amelia Smith

“This village is a Muslim-free zone,” reads a sign hanging at the entrance to a village in an area of Myanmar outside Rakhine state. The orders are directed at the country’s Rohingya population, an ethnic group of around 1.3 million that live mainly in Rakhine and who have been described as the “world’s most persecuted minority”.

It’s not difficult to see why. Since 1992 the Burmese government has imposed heavy restrictions on the Rohingyas. If they want to travel from one town to the other they have to pass immigration checkpoints and to do so the administration must grant them permission.

Because requests are regularly turned down the Rohingyas have become isolated within their own country:

“They’ve kept us in an open air prison for more than 25 years. Since 1978 they are propagating and they are brain washing the public that these people are invading the country, that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh,” says Nay San Lwin, an activist and blogger who has adopted the prefix “Ro” on social media to identify himself as Rohingya.
“This is our own native land,” he continues. “We gave them an open channel to debate with us but nobody dares to debate with us because they know they are lying.”

“We entered the Rakhine land before the seventh century, then the Rakhine Buddhists invaded us in the eleventh century. Those living in the southern part were driven out from the southern side to the northern side. [Then they said] these people are invading our country from the northern side. It’s similar to Israel and Palestine’s history, as we know Palestinians became like the immigrants.”

As Muslims the Rohingya already live in a majority Buddhist country but the military, says San Lwin, want Myanmar to be “pure Buddhist”. To achieve this they stoke tension between the Buddhists and Muslims and try and force the Rohingya to flee:

“Rakhine has two or three insurgency groups fighting for the land. The Burmese government always creates communal problems and keeps them busy so they are always fighting with the Muslims and they have no time to fight with the Burmese government.”

In addition to this Rohingyas are barred from entering certain professions; they are discriminated against in the education system, in health services and when they are practicing their religion.

When Myanmar won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 the Rohingya were recognised as an official ethnic group and enjoyed full citizenship rights. But in 1974 the government launched operation Jasmine and took away their citizenship and national registration cards.

After it had effectively rendered them stateless some 270,000 Rohingyas fled the country. Under the 1982 citizenship law the government asked everybody to apply for a new citizenship card, many of which were refused on the basis that Myanmar did not recognise them as one of its 135 ethnic groups.

In 2001 San Lwin left Myanmar legally to work in Saudi Arabia because back then his parents were officials of the state and had citizenship. But eventually the embassy stopped renewing his passport, he became stateless, and he migrated to Europe.

A particularly vicious wave of violence against the Rohingya began in August this year when the military launched an “anti-terror” operation, beating, raping, shooting and torturing Rohingyas and burning down their villages.

If you count the Rohingyas who have previously fled the country, there are now roughly 800,000 who are seeking refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. Videos posted on social media capture hundreds of Rohingyas walking through mud and water barefoot, their possessions gathered in bundles on their back.

Much of the anger has been directed at Myanamar’s de facto leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has failed to condemn the army’s abuses and has instead labelled the Rohingya terrorists, argued that the military are victims of a misinformation campaign and even accused women of reporting fake rapes.

Suu Kyi seems to be indifferent to her long fall from grace. Over 400,000 people have signed an online petition to strip her of her peace prize, led by those who campaigned for her release in the late eighties when she was held under house arrest for her efforts to bring democracy to a country living under a military dictatorship and was consequently revered as a symbol of peace.

“She was my hero too in the past,” San Lwin tells me. “We supported her, all Rohingya supported her; our expectation was that the Rohingya’s situation would change if she got into power. But sadly the opposite is happening. We did many campaigns when she was under house arrest – demonstrations in UK and France, online petitions, we celebrated her birthday.”

When Suu Kyi founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) party in 1988 many Rohingyas joined her party in northern Rakhine state, San Lwin tells me. In the 1990 election four candidates from northern Rakhine stood but they didn’t win mainly because the Rohingyas had their own political party.

“All the Rohingya members got their identity cards from the party and on those cards the Rohingya name was clearly mentioned. Now all those party members are denied their existence,” he says.

Between 1948 and 2015 Rohingyas enjoyed their full voting rights and were elected into parliament. Whilst Suu Kyi was under house arrest one of the founders of the NLD branch in Buthidaung Township, U Kyaw Maung, was arrested repeatedly by military intelligence and tortured to death for refusing to resign from the party.

San Lwin doesn’t think there are any Rohingya left who still support Suu Kyi:

“She never took the side of the Rohingya people or the other ethnic minorities. She doesn’t want to lose her position because she struggled for many, many years to get this position, that’s the reason she’s not condemning [the violence]. On the other hand she’s taken the side of the military, which means she’s against us. Also she’s denying our existence.”

On the whole, news coverage in the West of the latest atrocities have been pretty accurate, reckons San Lwin. However India – where Islamophobia is rising and hate crimes against Muslims are increasing – is pumping out a lot of fake news whilst China is simply a propaganda machine for the [Myanmar] government, says San Lwin.

Officially, the Myanmar government is not allowing any reporters – or unofficially any aid – into Rakhine state but earlier this week the Chinese media visited the area.

“One of the reasons they are burning all the houses and clearing the land is they have an agreement with China,” says San Lwin.

The $10 billion Kyauk Pyu Special Economic Zone Project agreed between China and Myanmar will see oil and gas pipes built in Rakhine state and has been criticised by activists who question whose land will be appropriated for construction to begin, and where the people living there will go.

San Lwin believes that the main reason behind all this violence is not necessarily this project. Neither is it the physical appearance of the Rohingya, nor their ethnic group or the language they speak. The problem, says San Lwin, is their religion.

Ethnic groups such as the Dainet or the Marmagyi share the Rohingyas physical appearance, language, tradition and culture yet are not Muslims, so they are recognised as official ethnic groups and have been granted full citizenship rights. Other Muslims in the country, says San Lwin, are also suffering:

“[The military] have a plan to wipe out all the Muslims in the country. This is the long-term plan. In 20 years, after they have cleared all the Rohingya population, there will be other ethnic cleansing of the other Muslim minorities in the country.”

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-military-plan-to-wipe-out-all-muslims-in-myanmar/5611256

By Colin Todhunter

Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. There is a deliberate strategy to make agriculture financially non-viable for India’s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose a World Bank sanctioned model of food production. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.

The aim here is not to repeat what has been previously written on this. Suffice to say that the long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Walmart-type supermarkets that, going on current evidence (see 4th paragraph from the end here), will offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already illegally dominates the cotton industry in India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agricultural policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the ‘contemporary East India Company‘ and regulatory bodies are now compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest.

Monsanto is hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. Its claims are hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is easily torn away to expose the self-interest that lies beneath.

With an obligation to maximise profits for shareholders, Monsanto seems less concerned with the impacts of its products on public health (whether in Argentina or the US) or the conditions of Indian farmers due to its failed GM cotton and more concerned with roll-outs of its highly profitable disease-associated weed-killer (Roundup) and its GM seeds.

To ensure it remains ‘business as usual’, part of the relentless message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive/GMO treadmill model of farming (which by now, any informed person should know is nothing but a lie). Monsanto has done every foul thing possible (including bribery and fakery) to ensure its business model dominates and that critics are smeared or crushed. As a result, we have an increasingly dominant model of unsustainable industrialised food and agriculture dominated by green revolution ideology and technologies (and wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests), which involves massive social, environmental and health costs.

Rejecting Monsanto’s neocolonialism

In 2015, trade and agricultural policy analyst Devinder Sharma asked the following questions during a debate on Indian TV about rural population displacement and farming:

“Why do you want to move the population just because Western economists told us we should follow them? Why? Why can’t India have its own thinking? Why do we have to go with Harvard or Oxford economists who tell us this?”

His series of questions strike at the heart of the prevailing development paradigm in India. It is a model of development being dictated by the World Bank and powerful transnational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and Cargill.

Monsanto’s mindset is based on the conquering and control of nature.

Let us turn briefly to Raj Patel:

“Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… .”

Contrast this with the ethos and principles of agroecological approaches to farming, which works with nature, as set out here.

Monsanto’s business model thrives within a system of capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable its model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.

Devinder Sharma is thus right to ask why can’t India have its own thinking.

And India does have its own thinking. Environmental scientist Viva Kermani:

“It can quite easily be said that Hinduism is the world’s largest nature-based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. It views the earth as our Mother, and hence, advocates that it should not be exploited. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources.”

Kermani notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement and Greenpeace, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered. She adds that this understanding of and reverence towards the environment is common to all Indic religious and spiritual systems: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

According to Kermani, the Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. So much importance was given to trees, that there was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance. Christians were made to turn all their love and adoration for nature towards their one and only god, who was a jealous god. The elements of nature then became devoid of all divinity and were left to be conquered by man.

Whereas the Christian belief is that nature is destructive and therefore has to be conquered, according to Kermani, the Dharmic view propagates conservation of the nature and advices man to live in harmony with nature without indulging in exploitation. Hindus strongly believe that the world is one family and thus the divine is also seen in animals and are protected. The deification of animals, therefore, has led to the protection of many species of animal. The recognition that every animal played a role in creating an ecological balance, allowed people to live in harmony with animals.

Kermani concludes by saying:

“Today’s environmental crisis demands a response. The world is grappling to find solutions to multiple crises of the environment. Technology is considered the panacea. For Hindus, the environment is not protected because of the selfish urgency to save biodiversity and hence save human future, but because it is the Dharmic way of life and hence a righteous duty that all humans are obliged to perform.”

And before critics say this is all well and good, but how can India possibly feed itself without chemicals, without Monsanto or Bayer, without agritech inputs? Such people should know that India is self-sufficient in many staples and was traditionally more productive prior to the imposition of green revolution ideology and technology. Moreover, such ideology and technology has undermined an indigenous farming sector that once catered for the diverse dietary needs and climatic conditions of India and it has actually produced and fuelled drought, degraded soils, illnesses and malnutrition, farmer distress and many other issues.

Playing god

Similar processes that destroyed the essential link between humans and nature played out in the West long ago. Many of the ancient pagan rituals and celebrations (that early Christianity incorporated and co-opted) helped humans come to terms with some of the most basic issues of existence (death, fertility, good, evil, love, hate, etc.) and served to sanctify their practical relationship with the natural environment and its role in sustaining human life. The planting and harvesting of crops and various other seasonal activities associated with food production thus became central to various beliefs and customs.

For example, Freyfaxi marks the beginning of the harvest in Norse paganism, while Lammas or Lughnasadh is the celebration of the first harvest/grain harvest in Paganism and Wicca and by the ancient Celts.

Humans celebrated nature and the life it gave birth to. Ancient beliefs and rituals were imbued with hope and renewal, and people had a necessary and immediate relationship the sun, seeds, animals wind, soil and rain and the changing seasons that nourished and brought life.

Discussing Britain, Robert W Nicholls explains:

“The cults of Woden and Thor were superimposed on far older and better-rooted beliefs related to the sun and the earth, the crops and the animals, and the rotation of the seasons between the light and warmth of summer and the cold and dark of winter. These ancient beliefs were so well established that whatever the name of the great god who for the moment was favored by the state rulers, whether Mithras or Woden – or Christ – the old practices, so essential for the fertility of the crops and for good luck in life, were maintained in farming communities until Christian decrees and the feudal system led to their final attrition.”

Nicholls reaffirms the importance of agriculture in these beliefs by adding:

“Little is known about the religious beliefs that sustained the rural population of pre-Christian Britain… The range of pagan deities – earth, water, fire, the sun, stone, and wood – supported as they were by agrarian production, suggests a religion that had a sound practical base. Two illusive figures appear as a backdrop to rural beliefs and demonstrate a male-female, winter-summer bipolarity: an ancient Earth Mother, who preceded the rise of later goddesses and grain deities, and a horned god of the hunt, who was the pivotal focus of a totem cult of stag masqueraders.”

In the 1950s, Union Carbide produced a series of images that depicted the company as a ‘hand of god’ coming out of the sky to ‘solve’ some of the issues facing humanity. One of the most famous images is of the hand pouring agrochemicals on Indian soils. As Christianity co-opted traditional pagan beliefs to achieve hegemony, corporations steeped in the Western mindset that Kermani speaks of have also sought to depict themselves in a god-like, all-knowing fashion.

But in more modern times, instead of using spiritual/religious ideology to secure compliance, they have relied on neoliberal economic faith and dogma and have co-opted science and scientists whose appeals to authority (not logic) have turned them into the high priests of modern society.

Whether it is fueled by Bill Gates, the World Bank’s neoliberal-based rhetoric about ‘enabling the business of agriculture’  or The World Economic Forum’s ‘Grow’ strategy, the implication is that the India’s and the world’s farmers must be ‘helped’ out of their awful ‘backwardness’ by the West and its powerful corporations – all facilitated of course by a globalised, corrupt system of capitalism.

The same farmers who Viva Kermani says have “legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts. Instead, they were reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

And what is the result of the war on nature, farmers, traditional agriculture and the environment?

We see the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And we see Monsanto making huge annual profits, and its CEO Hugh Grant and VP Robb Fraley being amply rewarded. Grant brought in just under $12m in 2015. Fraley raked in just under $3.4m. In January 2015, Monsanto reported a profit of $243m (down from $368m the previous year). Greed and ego trump all else. Farmer suicides are little more than collateral damage. And environmental degradation is a price worth paying.

In India today, we have a BJP-led government that espouses politically expedient Hindu nationalist sentiments. And yet it is selling out the nation to foreign interests whose beliefs and actions are opposed to much of what traditional Hinduism stands for in terms of its ecological heritage. Where is the logic?

The logic is fairly easy to decipher: what is happening has little to do with Hinduism or nationalism, however defined, and everything to do with a Wall Street backed Indian political elite suffering a severe bout of Stockholm syndrome, in awe of its captors.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/monsantos-violence-in-india-the-sacred-and-the-profane/5581536

By Sara Flounders

Featured image: British colonial forces in Myanmar, known at the time as Burma.

Demonstrations, protests and online petitions have appeared worldwide to defend the struggle of the Rohingya people who have been driven from Myanmar into exile. What is of concern is that political forces with no history of or interest in defending the rights of these oppressed people, including the U.S. and Saudi regimes, have joined this effort.

While he was threatening People’s Korea, Iran and Venezuela in his United Nations speech, U.S. President Donald Trump also demanded that the U.N. Security Council take “strong and swift action” to end violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya population.

U.S. government officials, including U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence, have called for immediate action and delivery of humanitarian aid to the Rohingya.

Since Washington and Riyadh are inflicting a murderous war on millions of people in Yemen, not to mention in other parts of the world, working-class movements and anti-imperialist forces around the globe are asking what is behind their sudden concern for a small ethnic group in Southeast Asia. Could it have something to do with geopolitical maneuvering in Myanmar between China and the U.S.?

As a huge developing economy with central planning, significant state ownership and cash reserves, China is in a position to offer extensive infrastructure development. China’s One Belt One Road project and other economic plans are attracting great interest.

U.S. policy is increasingly geared toward disrupting these development plans with vastly expanded militarization and regional wars. This is the strategy behind the Pentagon’s “Pivot to Asia.” A Western network of nongovernmental organizations and Saudi-backed extremists are part of the disruption.

Myanmar and the Rohingya

Myanmar, earlier called Burma, is a formerly colonized, underdeveloped and extremely diverse nation of 51 million people. It has 135 distinct ethnic groups among its eight nationalities.

Myanmar is a resource-rich, strategically important country bordering China, Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Laos. It’s important to Wall Street banks and U.S. policy makers as a major exporter of natural gas, and there are plans to make it a conduit for oil.

Within Myanmar, the Rohingya people are an oppressed ethnic group of approximately 1 million people. A majority of Rohingya are Muslim, though they make up less than half of Myanmar’s Muslim population, which is scattered throughout the mostly Buddhist country.

The Rohingya are considered stateless. They live in the state of Rakhine, on the Bay of Bengal, and share a long border with Bangladesh.

In articles on Myanmar and the Rohingya, Reuters News (Dec. 16, 2016), Chicago Tribune (Aug. 31), Wall Street Journal (Sept. 13) and the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (Sept. 7), all reported Saudi support for the Rohingya struggle.

The group carrying out armed resistance in Myanmar, known as Harakah al-Yaqin (HaY, Faith Movement in Arabic) and now called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, is headquartered in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Ataullah abu Ammar Junjuni, a Pakistani national who lived in Saudi Arabia, is the leader of ARSA. This group led a coordinated attack on 30 Myanmar military posts on Aug. 25.

The Myanmar military responded with a wave of repressive attacks on the Rohingya that drove tens of thousands of people over the border.

U.S./Saudi crimes in Yemen

Meanwhile, the Saudi kingdom is carrying out a genocidal war on Yemen, enforcing a blockade of food and aid against the poorest country in Southwest Asia. This war is only possible using U.S.-made jet aircraft and bombs. The Saudi military cannot fly its own jet aircraft or carry out bombing runs without direct U.S. assistance and in-air refueling. In addition, the Pentagon is now carrying out at least one covert strike every two days in Yemen.

Yemen is caught in “the world’s largest hunger crisis,” which is “man-made” and is starving “an entire generation.” (Washington Post, May 19)  According to U.N. figures, more than 7 million Yemenis are close to famine.

The World Health Organization has warned of “the worst cholera outbreak in the world” in Yemen. (CNN, Oct. 4) The U.N. counted 777,229 cholera cases as of Oct. 2, many of them in children.

Saudi bombing of sanitation and sewage infrastructure in this impoverished country is a major cause of the deadly epidemic. Yet this desperate crisis was not on the U.N.’s agenda, and is barely mentioned in the media as world leaders met in New York in September. The media focus was on Trump’s talk of aiding the Rohingya.

The U.S. State Department has pledged to provide “emergency shelter, food security, nutritional assistance, health assistance, psychosocial support, water, sanitation and hygiene, livelihoods, social inclusion, non-food items, disaster and crisis risk reduction, restoring family links, and protection to over 400,000 displaced persons in Burma and in Bangladesh.”

Remember that the U.S. military is engaged in bombing, drone attacks, targeted assassinations and starvation sanctions against at least eight Muslim countries on any given day: Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia provides no rights for any of the peoples living within its borders. Minority religious communities and millions of immigrant workers, even after living there for generations, are not counted as citizens. Its vast oil wealth is owned by one family: the House of Saud.

Saudi Arabia has played its reactionary role by funding extremist groups, often with the quiet support of the U.S., in Afghanistan, Syria and across the Middle East. Increasingly in South Asia, Saudi-influenced political and religious extremism is having an impact.

Saudi Arabia spends over $1 billion to fund 560 Wahhabi mosques and Islamic centers in Bangladesh, which borders  Myanmar. This means a new center of reaction in almost every village and town in Bangladesh. Similar funding has been long underway in India and Pakistan.

U.S. pivot to Asia

U.S. and Saudi support for the Muslim Rohingya is based on the U.S. declared “pivot to Asia.” For U.S. strategists, it is a way to block Chinese influence in a strategic region.

Eighty percent of China’s needed oil and much of its trade passes through the Malacca Straits — a narrow choke-point between Indonesia and Singapore — and into the increasingly tense South China Sea. U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups stationed there could easily blockade this movement of needed resources.

To counter U.S. aggressive moves, China’s development programs are aimed at diversifying and finding ways around a direct confrontation with U.S. military power.

China is building a deep-sea port, industrial park, and gas and oil pipelines at Kyauk Pyu in Myanmar on the Bay of Bengal. This would provide China with an alternative route for energy imports from the Middle East that avoids the Malacca Straits. The multibillion-dollar construction project is also enormously beneficial to Myanmar’s economy, aiding development of its gas fields. U.S. and Saudi intervention in the escalating Rahingya struggle threatens this development project.

There is no region in the developing world, whether in Asia, Africa or Latin America, where U.S. imperialism, in its present stage of decay, plans to assist desperately needed economic development. The U.S. economy is geared to super-profits through war, weapons sales and onerous debt. U.S. imperialism can only continue its domination by disrupting the development of any potential competitors or economic bloc of competitors.

Divide-and-rule tactics

By consciously supporting and inflaming both sides of a national struggle, the cynical Western imperialist powers are employing a longtime divide-and-rule tactic meant to dominate a whole region by becoming the outside arbiter.

U.S. imperialists have done this in many international crises. In Iraq, the U.S. built bases in the Kurdish region while claiming to support the unity of the Iraqi state. Playing on this division has strengthened the ruinous involvement of the Pentagon in the region.

In the Philippines a sudden insurgency of a minority Muslim population on the island of Mindanao has become the latest excuse for the U.S. to offer joint training and stationing of its troops there.

Myanmar refugee camps in Bangladesh may become recruitment areas for the Islamic State group (ISIS) and staging grounds for future interventions, said Forbes, a magazine about corporate finance, last July 11.

Pentagon plans for expanded intervention, coordinated with Saudi organization and funding, can be seen in this warning by the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

“There is legitimate concern that the violence will attract outside forces. Now that thousands of battle-hardened, ISIS-affiliated foreign fighters are seeking new missions beyond a shrinking Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, new opportunities to defend Muslims will inevitably appeal to them.” (Sept. 7)

All the countries of the region, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and China, have every interest in a peaceful reconciliation for the Rohingya people. The region needs coordinated development, not the enormous disruption of war.

This article was originally published by Workers World.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-u-s-and-saudi-arabia-back-rohingya-in-myanmar/5613015

By Edward Curtin

“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.” –
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1951

“It is not only information that they need-in the age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it….What they need , and what they feel they need , is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves.” – C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959

The main stream media’s (MSM) ongoing narrative of the massacre in Las Vegas is clearly deceptive. This is nothing new. That is their modus operandi. Overwhelm people with a glut of information about a terrible tragedy and all becomes clear to people sick-at-heart over the deaths and injuries to innocent people. But it’s a false clarity engendered to confuse. Tell the story big and loud, and tell it repetitively from different angles, and it becomes hard to think straight, especially with the addition of all the sad stories of the innocent victims’ deaths and injuries. Who can forget the false official narrative that was spun amid the grief for all the innocent victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Few could think straight at the time.

The MSM tells us in detail about Stephen Paddock’s gambling life, his houses and real estate dealings, how much he paid for them, his gun collection numbering 47, including all those in his hotel room (23), the alleged exact number of rounds he had in his car (1,600), how he shot from his hotel room windows, etc. We are told what his brother and girlfriend say about him: they are shocked; he was just a regular guy; they can’t explain it. We are told how he got the room gratis, how long he stayed there, and that he was planning to escape (they say this with a straight face). Told how many people died (59) and how many were injured (527), we remember these numbers vaguely, especially the latter. A regular person just feels overwhelmed by all the information, the numbers; saddened and depressed for all the victims, and more afraid.

What the media do not say is that there is video and witness evidence that there were at least two more shooters, maybe more, one from a lower floor and another at the Bellagio Hotel that was locked down. This means that there was a conspiracy involved. They don’t mention this so that someone like me can do so and be branded a “conspiracy theorist,” the term created by the CIA to besmirch anyone questioning the official narrative of the JFK assassination.  You will notice that I am not – purposefully – linking to this evidence that I assert exists, nor am I raising more of the many questions surrounding this case. I am hoping that readers will research these matters themselves, and if they discover that there is evidence proving that there was more than one shooter, then, just as with the magic bullet absurdity in the JFK case, they will conclude, ipso facto, that the MSM are involved in a cover-up of a conspiracy, which is itself a conspiracy – a  factual conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. And if that is so, they will ask why, and who is being protected. Cui bono? Why would the MSM push this narrative of the lonely crazed gunman?

People need to realize that they must be immediately skeptical of such official narratives and do their own research, and they will learn that there are excellent alternative websites that are doing real journalism and are seeking truth for truth’s sake.

While this brief article is not a “lucid summation,” as Mills suggested we need, I offer it as a concise provocation to anyone reading this to develop their own sociological imaginations to achieve such lucidity at a time when propaganda is king and the pawns are being swept off the devil’s chessboard.

One might end up asking: Who’s the devil? And answering their own question?

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-las-vegas-massacre-the-media-narrative-is-deceptive/5612247

By Robert J. Burrowes

In Las Vegas on 1 October 2017, it appears that one man (although it might have been more) killed 59 people and shot and injured another 241 (with almost 300 more injured while fleeing). The incident got a lot of publicity, partly because the man managed to kill more people than most mass killers. However, because the killer was a white American and had a Christian name, he was not immediately labeled a terrorist, even though his death toll considerably exceeded that achieved in many ‘terrorist attacks’, including those that occur in war zones (such as US drone murders of innocent people attending weddings)

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there is now an average of one mass shooting (arbitrarily defined by the FBI as a shooting in which at least four victims are shot) each day in the USA. By any measure, this is a national crisis.

However, while there has been a flood of commentary on the incident, including suggestions about what might be done in response based on a variety of analyses of the cause, none that I have read explain the underlying cause of all these mass killings. And if we do not understand this, then any other suggestions, whatever their apparent merits, can have little impact.

The suggestions made so far in response to this massacre include the following:

1. Making it much more difficult, perhaps even illegal, to own a gun. See ‘Guns’.

2. Drastically reducing the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs (which are almost invariably being consumed by the killer). See ‘Drugs and Guns Don’t Mix: Medication Madness, Military Madness and the Las Vegas Mass Shooting’.

3. Recognising and addressing the sociological factors implicated in causing the violence. See ‘violence is driven by socioeconomic factors, not access to firearms’ argued in ‘Another Mass Shooting, Another Grab for Guns: 6 Gun Facts’ and ‘a deep sickness in American society’ argued in ‘The social pathology of the Las Vegas Massacre’.

4. Identifying whether or not the killer had ideological/religious links to a terrorist group (in this case ISIS, as claimed by some). See, for example, ‘ISIS Releases Infographic Claiming Las Vegas Gunman Converted 6 Months Ago’.

5. Identifying and remedying the ways in which constitutional provisions and laws facilitate such massacres. See ‘Las Vegas Massacre Proves 2nd Amendment Must be Abolished’.

6. Recognizing the way in which these incidents are encouraged by national elites and are sometimes, in fact, false flag attacks used as a means to justify the consolidation of elite social control (through such measures as increased state surveillance and new restrictions on human rights).

7. Limiting the ways in which violence, especially military violence, is used as entertainment and education, and thus culturally glorified in ways that encourage imitation. See ‘People Don’t Kill People, Americans Kill People’.

However, as indicated above, while these and other suggestions, including certain educational initiatives, sound attractive as options for possibly preventing/mitigating some incidents in future, they do not address the cause of violence in this or any other context and so widespread violence both in the United States and around the world will continue.

So why does someone become a mass killer?

Human socialization is essentially a process of inflicting phenomenal violence on children until they think and behave as the key adults – particularly their parents, teachers and religious figures – around them want, irrespective of the functionality of this thought and behavior in evolutionary terms. This is because virtually all adults prioritize obedience over all other possible behaviors and they delusionarily believe that they ‘know better’ than the child.

The idea that each child is the only one of their kind in all of living creation in Earth’s history and, therefore, has a unique destiny to fulfill, never even enters their mind. So, instead of nurturing that unique destiny so that the child fully becomes the unique Self that evolution created, adults terrorize each child into becoming just another more-or-less identical cog in the giant machine called ‘human society’.

Before I go any further, you might wonder if the expression ‘phenomenal violence?’ isn’t too strong. So let me explain.

From the moment of birth, human adults inflict violence on the child. This violence occurs in three categories: visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’. Visible violence is readily identified: it is the (usually) physical violence that occurs when someone is hit (with a hand or weapon), kicked, shaken, held down or punished in any other way. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

But what is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that is inflicted on us mercilessly, and has a profoundly damaging impact, from the day we are born?

In essence, ‘invisible’ violence is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themselves thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, parents, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioural responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioural outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behaviour that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviours, including many that are violent towards themselves, others and/or the Earth.

Moreover, this emotional (or psychological) damage will lead to a unique combination of violent behaviours in each case and, depending on the precise combination of violence to which they are subjected, some of them will become what I call ‘archetype perpetrators of violence’; that is, people so emotionally damaged that they end up completely devoid of a Self and with a psychological profile similar to Hitler’s.

These archetype perpetrators of violence are all terrified, self-hating and powerless but, in fact, they have 23 identifiable psychological characteristics constituting their ‘personality’.For a full explanation of this particular psychological profile, see ‘Why Violence?’and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.Of course, few perpetrators of violence fit the archetype, but all perpetrators are full of (suppressed) terror, self-hatred and powerlessness and this is fundamental to understanding their violence as explained in ‘Why Violence?’

Rather than elaborate further in this article why these perpetrators behave as they do (which you can read on the documents just mentioned), let me explain why the suggestions made by others above in relation to gun and drug control, socioeconomic factors, ideological/religious connections, constitutional and legal shortcomings, resisting efforts to consolidate elite social control, and revised education and entertainment programs can have little impact if undertaken in isolation from the primary suggestion I will make below.

Once someone is so emotionally damaged that they are effectively devoid of the Self that should have defined their unique personality, then they will be the endless victim of whatever violence is directed at them. This simply means that they will have negligible capacity to deal powerfully with any difficult life circumstances and personal problems (and, for example, to resist doctors prescribing pharmaceutical drugs), they will be gullibly influenced by violent ideologies, education and entertainment, and they will have virtually no capacity to work creatively to resolve the conflicts (both personal and structural) in their life but will do what was modeled to them as a child in any effort to do so: use violence.

And by now you have probably realized that I am not just talking about the mass killers that I started discussing at the beginning of this article. I am also talking about the real mass killers: those politicians, military leaders and weapons corporation executives, and all those other corporate executives, who inflict mass violence on life itself, as well as those others, such as academics and those working in corporate media outlets, that support and justify this violence. This includes, to specify just one obvious example, all of those US Senators and Congresspeople who resist implementing gun control laws. See ‘Thoughts and Prayers and N.R.A. Funding’.

In essence then, if the child suffers enough of this visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence, they will grow up devoid of the Selfhood – including the love, compassion, empathy, morality and integrity – that is their birthright and the foundation of their capacity to behave powerfully in all contexts without the use of violence.

Instead, they will become a perpetrator of violence, to a greater or lesser extent, and may even seek employment in those positions that encourage them to support and/or inflict violence legally, such as a police or prison officer, a lawyer or judge – see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’– a soldier who fights in war or a Congressperson who supports it, or even an employee in a corporation that profits from violence and exploitation. See ‘Profit Maximization is Easy: Invest in Violence’.

In addition, most individuals will inflict violence on the climate and environment, all will inflict violence on children, and some will inflict violence in those few ways that are actually defined as ‘illegal’, such as mass killings.

But if we don’t see the mass killers as the logical, if occasional, outcome of (unconsciously) violent parenting, then we will never even begin to address the problem at its source. And we are condemned to suffer violence, in all of its manifestations, until we inevitably drive ourselves to extinction through nuclear war or climate/environmental collapse.

If you are looking for a lead on this from political leaders, you are wasting your time. Similarly, there are precious few professionals, particularly in the medical and psychiatric industries – see ‘Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry’ – who have any idea how to respond meaningfully (assuming they even have an interest in doing so). So why not be your own judge and consider making ‘My Promise to Children’?

In addition, if further reducing the violence in our world appeals to you, then you are also welcome to consider participating in the creation of communities that do not have violence built into them – see ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’– signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or consider using the strategic framework on one or the other of these two websites for your campaign to end violence in one context or another: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

In summary then: For the typical human adult, it is better to endlessly inflict violence on a child to coerce them to obey. Of course, once the child has been terrorized into this unthinking obedience, they won’t just obey the parents and teachers (secular and religious) who terrorized them: they will also obey anyone else who orders them to do something. This will include governments, military officers and terrorist leaders who order them to kill (or pay taxes to kill) people they do not know in foreign countries, employers who order them to submit to the exploitation of themselves and others, not to mention a vast array of other influences (particularly corporations) who will have little trouble manipulating them into behaving unethically and without question (even regarding consumer purchases).

Or, to put it another way: For the typical human adult, it is better to endlessly inflict violence on a child to coerce them to obey and to then watch the end-products of this violence – obedient, submissive children who are powerless to question their parents and teachers, resist the entreaties of drug pushers, and critique the propaganda of governments, corporations and the military as well as the media, education and entertainment industries – spiral endlessly out of control: wars, massive exploitation, ecological destruction, slavery, mass killings…. And to then wonder ‘Why?’

For these terrorized humans, cowardly powerlessness is the state they have been trained to accept, while taking whatever material distractions are thrown their way as compensation. So they pass on this state to their children by terrorizing them into submission too. Powerfully accepting responsibility to fulfill their own unique destiny, and serve society by doing so, is beyond them.

The great tragedy of human life is that virtually no-one values the awesome power of the individual Self with an integrated mind (that is, a mind in which memory, thoughts, feelings, sensing, conscience and other functions work together in an integrated way) because this individual will be decisive in choosing life-enhancing behavioural options (including those at variance with social laws and norms) and will fearlessly resist all efforts to control or coerce them with violence.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-psychology-of-mass-killers-what-causes-it-how-can-you-prevent-it/5612861

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Some promises are made and kept; others disavowed. But the ‘promise’ made by Arthur James Balfour in what became known as the ‘Balfour Declaration’ to the leaders of the Zionist Jewish community in Britain one hundred years ago, was only honored in part: it established a state for the Jews and attempted to destroy the Palestinian nation.

In fact, Balfour, the foreign Secretary of Britain at the time his declaration of 84 words was pronounced on November 2, 1917, was, like many of his peers, anti-Semitic. He cared little about the fate of Jewish communities. His commitment to establishing a Jewish state in a land that was already populated by a thriving and historically-rooted nation was only meant to enlist the support of wealthy Zionist leaders in Britain’s massive military buildup during World War I.

Whether Balfour knew it or not, the extent to which his short statement to the leader of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild, would uproot a whole nation from their ancestral homes and continue to devastate several generations of Palestinians decades later, is moot. In fact, judging by the strong support his descendants continue to exhibit towards Israel, one would guess that he, too, would have been ‘proud’ of Israel, oblivious to the tragic fate of the Palestinians.

This is what he penned down a century ago:

“His Majesty’s government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”

Speaking recently at New York University, Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi described the British commitment, then, as an event that “marked the beginning of a century-long colonial war in Palestine, supported by an array of outside powers which continues to this day.”

But oftentimes, generalized, academic language and refined political analysis, even if accurate, masks the true extent of tragedies as expressed in the lives of ordinary people.

As Balfour finished writing down his infamous words, he must have been consumed with how effective his political tactic would be in enlisting Zionists to join Britain’s military adventures, in exchange for a piece of land that was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

Yet, he clearly had no genuine regard for the millions of Palestinian Arabs – Muslims and Christians alike – who were to suffer the cruelty of war, ethnic cleansing, racism and humiliation over the course of a century.

The Balfour Declaration was equivalent to a decree calling for the annihilation of the Palestinian people. Not one Palestinian, anywhere, remained completely immune from the harm invited by Balfour and his government.

Tamam Nassar, now 75 years old, was one of millions of Palestinians whose life Balfour scarred forever. She was uprooted from her village of Joulis in southern Palestine, in 1948. She was only five.

Tamam, now lives with her children and grandchildren in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Gaza. Ailing under the weight of harsh years, and weary by a never-ending episode of war, siege and poverty, she holds on to a few hazy memories of a past that can never be redeemed.

Little does she know that a man by the name of Arthur James Balfour had sealed the fate of the Nassar family for many generations, condemning them to a life of perpetual desolation.

I spoke to Tamam, also known as Umm Marwan (mother of Marwan), as part of an attempt to document the Palestinian past through the personal memories of ordinary people.

By the time she was born, the British had already colonized Palestine for decades, starting only months after Balfour signed his declaration.

The few memories peeking through the naïveté of her innocence were largely about racing after British military convoys, pleading for candy.

Back then, Tamam did not encounter Jews or, perhaps, she did. But since many Palestinian Jews looked just like Palestinian Arabs, she could not tell the difference or even care to make the distinction. People were just people. Jews were their neighbors in Joulis, and that was all that mattered.

Although the Palestinian Jews lived behind walls, fences and trenches, for a while they walked freely among the fellahin (peasants), shopped in their markets and sought their help, for only the fellahin knew how to speak the language of the land and decode the signs of the seasons.

Tamam’s house was made of hardened mud, and had a small front yard, where the little girl and her brothers were often confined when the military convoys roamed their village. Soon, this would happen more and more frequently and the candy that once sweetened the lives of the children, was no longer offered.

Then, there was the war that changed everything. That was in 1948. The battle around Joulis crept up all too quickly and showed little mercy. Some of the fellahin, who ventured out beyond the borders of the village, were never seen again.

The battle of Joulis was short-lived. Poor peasants with kitchen knives and a few old rifles were no match for advanced armies. British soldiers pulled out from the outskirts of Joulis to allow Zionist militias to stage their attack, and the villagers were chased out after a brief but bloody battle.

Tamam, her brothers and parents were chased out of Joulis, as well, never to see their beloved village again. They moved about in refugee camps around Gaza, before settling permanently in Nuseirat. Their tent was eventually replaced by a mud house.

In Gaza, Tamam experienced many wars, bombing campaigns, sieges and every warfare tactic Israel could possibly muster. Her resolve is only weakened by the frailty of her aging body, and the entrenched sadness over the untimely deaths of her brother, Salim, and her young son, Kamal.

Salim was killed by the Israeli army as he attempted to escape Gaza following the war and brief Israeli invasion of the Strip in 1956, and Kamal died as a result of health complications resulting from torture in Israeli prisons.

If Balfour was keen to ensure “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” why is it, then, that the British government remains committed to Israel after all of these years?

Isn’t a century since that declaration was made, 70 years of Palestinian exile, 50 years of Israeli military occupation all sufficient proof that Israel has no respect for international law and Palestinian human, civil and religious rights?

As she grew older, Tamam began returning to Joulis in her mind, more often seeking a fleetingly happy memory, and a moment of solace. Life under siege in Gaza is too hard, especially for old people like her, struggling with multiple ailments and broken hearts.

The attitude of the current British government, which is gearing up for a massive celebration to commemorate the centennial of the Balfour Declaration suggests that nothing has changed and that no lessons were ever learned in the 100 years since Balfour made his ominous promise to establish a Jewish state at the expense of Palestinians.

But this also rings true for the Palestinian people. Their commitment to fight for freedom, also remains unchanged and, neither Balfour nor all of Britain’s foreign secretaries since then, have managed to break the will of the Palestinian nation.

That, too, is worth pondering upon.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/10/the-balfour-declaration-destroyed-palestine-not-the-palestinian-people/