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By Jeffrey Sachs

NEW YORK – The Brexit vote was a triple protest: against surging immigration, City of London bankers, and European Union institutions, in that order. It will have major consequences. Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency will receive a huge boost, as will other anti-immigrant populist politicians. Moreover, leaving the EU will wound the British economy, and could well push Scotland to leave the United Kingdom – to say nothing of Brexit’s ramifications for the future of European integration.

Brexit is thus a watershed event that signals the need for a new kind of globalization, one that could be far superior to the status quo that was rejected at the British polls.

At its core, Brexit reflects a pervasive phenomenon in the high-income world: rising support for populist parties campaigning for a clampdown on immigration. Roughly half the population in Europe and the United States, generally working-class voters, believes that immigration is out of control, posing a threat to public order and cultural norms.

In the middle of the Brexit campaign in May, it was reported that the UK had net immigration of 333,000 persons in 2015, more than triple the government’s previously announced target of 100,000. That news came on top of the Syrian refugee crisis, terrorist attacks by Syrian migrants and disaffected children of earlier immigrants, and highly publicized reports of assaults on women and girls by migrants in Germany and elsewhere.

In the US, Trump backers similarly rail against the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented residents, mainly Hispanic, who overwhelmingly live peaceful and productive lives, but without proper visas or work permits. For many Trump supporters, the crucial fact about the recent attack in Orlando is that the perpetrator was the son of Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan and acted in the name of anti-American sentiment (though committing mass murder with automatic weapons is, alas, all too American).

Warnings that Brexit would lower income levels were either dismissed outright, wrongly, as mere fearmongering, or weighed against the Leavers’ greater interest in border control. A major factor, however, was implicit class warfare. Working-class “Leave” voters reasoned that most or all of the income losses would in any event be borne by the rich, and especially the despised bankers of the City of London.

Americans disdain Wall Street and its greedy and often criminal behavior at least as much as the British working class disdains the City of London. This, too, suggests a campaign advantage for Trump over his opponent in November, Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is heavily financed by Wall Street. Clinton should take note and distance herself from Wall Street.

In the UK, these two powerful political currents – rejection of immigration and class warfare – were joined by the widespread sentiment that EU institutions are dysfunctional. They surely are. One need only cite the last six years of mismanagement of the Greek crisis by self-serving, shortsighted European politicians. The continuing eurozone turmoil was, understandably, enough to put off millions of UK voters.

The short-run consequences of Brexit are already clear: the pound has plummeted to a 31-year low. In the near term, the City of London will face major uncertainties, job losses, and a collapse of bonuses. Property values in London will cool. The possible longer-run knock-on effects in Europe – including likely Scottish independence; possible Catalonian independence; a breakdown of free movement of people in the EU; a surge in anti-immigrant politics (including the possible election of Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen) – are enormous. Other countries might hold referendums of their own, and some may choose to leave.

In Europe, the call to punish Britain pour encourager les autres – to warn those contemplating the same – is already rising. This is European politics at its stupidest (also very much on display vis-à-vis Greece). The remaining EU should, instead, reflect on its obvious failings and fix them. Punishing Britain – by, say, denying it access to Europe’s single market – would only lead to the continued unraveling of the EU.

So what should be done? I would suggest several measures, both to reduce the risks of catastrophic feedback loops in the short term and to maximize the benefits of reform in the long term.

First, stop the refugee surge by ending the Syrian war immediately. This can be accomplished by ending the CIA-Saudi alliance to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, thereby enabling Assad (with Russian and Iranian backing) to defeat the Islamic State and stabilize Syria (with a similar approach in neighboring Iraq). America’s addiction to regime change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) is the deep cause of Europe’s refugee crisis. End the addiction, and the recent refugees could return home.

Second, stop NATO’s expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. The new Cold War with Russia is another US-contrived blunder with plenty of European naiveté attached. Closing the door on NATO expansion would make it possible to ease tensions and normalize relations with Russia, stabilize Ukraine, and restore focus on the European economy and the European project.

Third, don’t punish Britain. Instead, police national and EU borders to stop illegal migrants. This is not xenophobia, racism, or fanaticism. It is common sense that countries with the world’s most generous social-welfare provisions (Western Europe) must say no to millions (indeed hundreds of millions) of would-be migrants. The same is true for the US.

Fourth, restore a sense of fairness and opportunity for the disaffected working class and those whose livelihoods have been undermined by financial crises and the outsourcing of jobs. This means following the social-democratic ethos of pursuing ample social spending for health, education, training, apprenticeships, and family support, financed by taxing the rich and closing tax havens, which are gutting public revenues and exacerbating economic injustice. It also means finally giving Greece debt relief, thereby ending the long-running eurozone crisis.

Fifth, focus resources, including additional aid, on economic development, rather than war, in low-income countries. Uncontrolled migration from today’s poor and conflict-ridden regions will become overwhelming, regardless of migration policies, if climate change, extreme poverty, and lack of skills and education undermine the development potential of Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

All of this underscores the need to shift from a strategy of war to one of sustainable development, especially by the US and Europe. Walls and fences won’t stop millions of migrants fleeing violence, extreme poverty, hunger, disease, droughts, floods, and other ills. Only global cooperation can do that.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

25 June 2016

 

APRN Statement on Protests vs US Military Troops in Japan

The Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN) vehemently opposes the continued presence of US military troops in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan and condemns the Abe Administration’s continued negligence to the voices of the Okinawan people that led to the recent murder and rape of a 20-year-old Okinawan woman by a former US Marine.

Last May 19, Kenneth Franklin Shinzato was arrested by Okinawan authorities over the death of Rina Shumabukuro whose body was found beside a road in central Okinawa after being reported missing last April 28. The former US Marine confessed to raping Shimabukuro before strangling and stabbing her to death after which he transported her body in a suitcase. This is not the first time this happened in Okinawa – in 1995, three US Marines gang-raped a 12-year old Okinawan schoolgirl which marked the groundswell of peoples opposition against military bases in Japan [1]. Massive demonstrations in 1995 prompted the US to publicly ‘pledge’ in reducing its military footprint in Okinawa which ironically until now still serves as a linchpin to US’ security relations with Japan and a strategic location for the US to pursue its pivot to East Asia.

The recent killing and rape of a local Okinawan woman sparked yet again simultaneous mass protests across the country that gathered tens of thousands of people in Japan calling for the ouster of US military bases in the country.

The heavy US military presence in Okinawa operates under the US-Japan Security Treaty first signed in 1952 which allows the US to take unfettered military actions in Japan in the interest of ‘maintaining peace’ in East Asia. The security treaty was further amended in 1960 to include a separate pact called the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) agreement which unduly protects US military personnel, servicemen, base employees and certain civilian workers who commit crimes in the country by giving the US jurisdiction over such cases [2]. It must be noted that in this case of violence against Rina, the former US Marine was arrested by the Okinawan authorities, and is expected to face criminal court under the local authority. However, that may not have been possible had he fled into the US bases, or if the violence had occurred while on duty.

The continued US military presence this treaty perpetuates puts the Japanese peoples at risk as it allows free reign for US soldiers and service people to commit crimes with impunity, and provides the US with unrestricted access to Japan’s resources to secure its geopolitical interests in the region. For seven decades now since the end of World War II, the people continue to bear the weight of vast US military bases in Okinawa along with the numerous human rights violations associated with them.

In addition, Okinawa’s land mass is less than 1 percent of Japan’s but it is home to 74% of exclusive-use US military facilities in the country [3]. Okinawa currently hosts 26,000 US military personnel, 32 US military installations, 20 air spaces and 28 water areas that serve as training zones exclusive for US military use [4].

This over burden is, in part, due to the ignorance by the Japanese Government to let this go on. As an island on the peripheries of the Japanese Archipelago, the Okinawan people have historically been subject to discrimination by Tokyo. Nearly 80 percent of people in Okinawa have always demanded that the burden be at least matched by other prefecture’s share of US bases. However, the voices only fell into deaf ears of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, especially under the current Abe Administration, who himself is aggressively leading the militarization of the Far East.

APRN stands in solidarity with the Okinawan people demanding justice for the death of Rina and the immediate pullout of US military troops from their land. We likewise urge our members, partners and the international community at large to continue opposing the presence of US military bases across the Asia Pacific region.

OPPOSE MILITARY BASES IN JAPAN!

US TROOPS OUT NOW!

RESIST MILITARISM IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION!

June 24, 2016

 

By Geoffrey Robertson

It’s not over yet. A law that passed last year to set up the EU referendum said nothing about the result being binding or having any legal force. “Sovereignty” – a much misunderstood word in the campaign – resides in Britain with the “Queen in parliament”, that is with MPs alone who can make or break laws and peers who can block them. Before Brexit can be triggered, parliament must repeal the 1972 European Communities Act by which it voted to take us into the European Union – and MPs have every right, and indeed a duty if they think it best for Britain, to vote to stay.

It is being said that the government can trigger Brexit under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, merely by sending a note to Brussels. This is wrong. Article 50 says: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” The UK’s most fundamental constitutional requirement is that there must first be the approval of its parliament.

Britain, absurdly, is the only significant country (other than Saudi Arabia) without a written constitution. We have what are termed “constitutional conventions”, along with a lot of history and traditions. Nothing in these precedents allots any place to the results of referendums or requires our sovereign parliament to take a blind bit of notice of them.

It was parliament that voted to enter the European Economic Community in 1972, and only three years later was a referendum held to settle the split in Harold Wilson’s Labour party over the value of membership. Had a narrow majority of the public voted out in 1975, Wilson would still have had to persuade parliament to vote accordingly – and it is far from certain that he would have succeeded.

Our democracy does not allow, much less require, decision-making by referendum. That role belongs to the representatives of the people and not to the people themselves. Democracy has never meant the tyranny of the simple majority, much less the tyranny of the mob (otherwise, we might still have capital punishment). Democracy entails an elected government, subject to certain checks and balances such as the common law and the courts, and an executive ultimately responsible to parliament, whose members are entitled to vote according to conscience and common sense.

Many countries, including Commonwealth nations – vouchsafed their constitutions by the UK – have provisions for change by referendums. But these provisions are carefully circumscribed and do not usually allow change by simple majority.

In Australia, for example, a referendum proposal must pass in each of the six states (this would defeat Brexit, which failed in Scotland and Northern Ireland). In other countries, it must pass by a very clear majority – usually two-thirds. In some US states that permit voting on public legislative proposals, there are similar safeguards. In the UK (except, under a 2011 act in the case of an EU expansion of power), referendum results are merely advisory – in this case, advising MPs that the country is split almost down the middle on the wisdom of EU membership.

So how should MPs vote come November, when prime minister Boris Johnson introduces the 2016 European Communities Act (Repeal) Bill? Those from London and Scotland should happily vote against it, following their constituents’ wishes. So should Labour MPs – it’s their party policy after all.

By November, there may be other very good reasons for MPs to refuse to leave Europe. Brexit may turn out to be just too difficult. Staying in the EU may be the only way to stop Scotland from splitting, or to rescue the pound. A poll on Sunday tells us that a million leave voters are already regretting their choice: a significant public change of mind would amply justify a parliamentary refusal to Brexit. It may be, in November, that President Donald Trump becomes the leader of the free world – in which case a strong EU would become more necessary than ever. Or it may simply be that a majority of MPs, mindful of their constitutional duty to do what is best for Britain, conscientiously decide that it is best to remain.

There is no point in holding another referendum (as several million online petitioners are urging). Referendums are alien to our traditions, they are inappropriate for complex decision-making, and without careful incorporation in a written constitution, the public expectation aroused by the result can damage our democracy. The only way forward now depends on the courage, intelligence and conscience of your local MP. So have your say in the traditional way: lobby him or her to vote against the government when it tries to Brexit, because parliament is sovereign.

Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers and has argued many landmark human rights cases in British and Commonwealth Courts and the European Court of Human Rights.

27 June 2016

By Saleh el Namey

A group of Gaza fishermen were working an early morning shift when the Israeli navy opened fire.

Rajab Abu Riyala and his brother Khaled were shot during that 31 May incident. A bullet had to be removed from Rajab’s knee as a result.

They were among five fishermen arrested on two vessels by Israel. All were brought to Ashdod, a port in present-day Israel, and were detained for most of the day. Both of the vessels were confiscated. “Every Gaza fisherman who is arrested undergoes a long and cruel process of interrogation and strip searches,” said Bashir Abu Riyala, one of the five.

Bashir, a cousin of Rajab and Khaled, questioned why Israel behaves as if fishermen are a security threat. “The way they harass us cannot be tolerated,” he said. “Each time they arrest fishermen, they fail to get the information they are looking for. We do not know anything. All we want is to fish freely and safely.”

Bashir thinks it is unlikely that the vessel will be returned to them.

Due to the confiscation, he and his cousins are now out of work.

The fishermen were within three nautical miles of the Gaza coast, a zone in which Israel theoretically allows fishing to take place.

Israel has repeatedly attacked fishermen working within those limits.

The limits have also been subject to a number of changes.

Boost to economy?

In April, it was reported that fishing would be permitted within nine nautical miles off certain parts of the Gaza coast. Citing Israeli officials, The New York Times suggested that Israel was allowing fishermen to work in a wider area as part of efforts to boost Gaza’s economy.

Any benefits to Gaza’s population would have been short-lived.

Israeli authorities subsequently stated they were reimposing a limit of six nautical miles for the entire Gaza Strip.

That limit is considerably less than the 20-mile zone established for Gaza’s fishermen under the Oslo accords, which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed in the 1990s.

Last year, Maher Baker and his son Khader were fishing near Gaza’s coastline when Israeli forces shot at them repeatedly.

Khader was wounded in the arm and the two men were taken to Ashdod. After being shackled and forced to take off their clothes, the father and son were subjected to an aggressive interrogation.

“Even though we were fishing within three miles of the coast, the Israelis accused us of fishing in a dangerous and prohibited area,” Maher told The Electronic Intifada. “Simply, they do not want us to fish. They want the sea for themselves.”

The Bakers’ vessel has still not been returned to them. Since the incident occurred, they have been trying to scrape together enough money to buy a new one.

“I have just spent my whole day running from the union [for Palestinian fishermen] to charities, to the UN, looking for some kind of financial support,” said Khader.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights recorded 139 incidents in which Gaza’s fishermen were shot at by Israeli naval forces during 2015. Twenty-four fishermen were wounded.

There were also six incidents in which boats were shelled and chased.

More than 70 fishermen were arrested last year and 22 vessels were confiscated.

These incidents are part of the economic warfare Israel wages against Gaza’s fishermen.

Deprived of coast

The nine-year blockade of Gaza means that motors, spare parts and fiberglass — all essential for maintaining and repairing vessels — are scarce. Fuel is often unaffordable.

Muflih Abu Riyala, a member of the Palestinian Fishermen’s Syndicate, said that Gaza has suffered from equipment shortages for so long that fishermen “have gotten used to it.”

“Israeli procedures are suffocating the fishing industry,” he said. “Catches have fallen dramatically. Why are we deprived of fishing off our own coast?”

Before Israel imposed its siege, Gaza fishermen could catch as much as 4,500 tons per year, some of which was exported to the occupied West Bank. Catches since the imposition of the siege have fallen below 1,500 tons per year, according to Abu Riyala.

Forcing fishermen to operate within such strict limits has depleted many fish stocks in the waters next to the coast.

Amer al-Qaran, a fisherman from the Deir al-Balah area of central Gaza, works with his three sons for at least 15 hours a day.

The best time of day to fish is the early morning, he said. Yet because of Israeli restrictions, the most he can expect to catch in a six-hour morning shift is around 7 kilograms of fish. “That is sometimes not enough to cover the amount of fuel my boat uses during a shift,” he said.

“Sometimes I spend long hours at sea without catching any fish,” he said. “I am afraid that I will come under Israeli fire if I advance another mile.”

Isra Saleh el-Namey is a journalist from Gaza.

This article was first published by Electronic Intifada

26 June 2016

By Kevin Zeese

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers
The globalized economy is not working for most people of the world. International trade agreements and new government structures like the European Union serve corporate power and put the people and planet aside to ensure profits continue to come first. They undermine democracy and national sovereignty, leaving people feeling more powerless.

By pushing austerity and commodification of public services, people are now more economically insecure with less wealth and lower incomes. The response of many is anger. Some protest austerity, others blame people of a different skin color, heritage or ethnicity. The surprise vote in the UK to leave the European Union is the latest, and perhaps the biggest, example of the blowback economic and political elites are getting for their actions.

The Brexit Backlash

As economist Michael Hudson tells Chris Hedges, the negative impact of neo-liberal economics is augmented by US and NATO military actions. The war on Iraq, destruction of Libya, ongoing military conflict in Syria; along with the US regime change in Ukraine and lining Russian borders with NATO forces while the US demands Europe spend more on militarism; have led to a massive exodus of migrants from the Middle East which has exacerbated economic insecurity and nationalist fears.

The impact of the Brexit is just beginning. Hundreds of billions have been lost and bankers and investors are going to find themselves upside down. US and European banks, as well as UK banks, just lost 9 percent of their value because of the drop in the value of British currency. These financial elites will be demanding another bailout and the US and other governments controlled by the finance sector will comply. This will lead to greater anger at the bottom and the conflict between the elites and the people will grow, leading to new explosions.

The European political establishment has been hit with a shockwave. They did not see this coming. British prime minister David Cameron immediately announced his resignation, but that is just the beginning. Stock markets dropped around the world, the British pound fell to 1985 levels and another recession for Britain is on the horizon, which will create more shockwaves throughout Europe and the world. Populist views in multiple European nations are rising and there could be other countries seeking to leave the EU. The Brexit could be the beginning of the end for the EU.

The Brexit vote showed how out of touch the elites are with the lives of the people in England. They are unaware how austerity, unfair incomes and lack of wealth makes life unbearable for many. The same is true throughout the globalized economy, which is rigged for the 1% around the world. As the elites seek to protect themselves, at the cost of everyone else, it is time for the Left to escalate its actions against austerity, poverty and extreme inequality.

The popular movement for economic, racial and environmental justice must seize the moment to demonstrate that the real issues are economic and classist; that the economy rigged by and for the transnational corporations and the investor class is robbing people, treating them as wage slaves with no power and ignoring their hopes while highlighting their lack of political power. This is an opportunity for the movement, but the narrative must be reshaped to be about living standards, pensions, wages and wealth of the people.

As Left Unity argues the Brexit makes it more important for people in Britain to link with those in the Nuit Debout movement in France, with those struggling in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland as well as with the various fronts of struggle in the US. We are all in this together, just as the transnational corporations have united to build their power in governments across the world.

The European Union Anti-Democratic, Favoring Austerity and Public Services Privatized

Brexit may be just the first country to seek to leave the EU. Movements in multiple countries are getting stronger because many are seeing the EU does not represent them. Even those who favored the UK staying in the EU, like Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, agreed the EU needed major transformation.

Perhaps the greatest example of the EU missteps has been in Greece. After the 2008 economic collapse Greece did not recover. Greece sought a bailout from the EU and had to deal with the Troika, the European Commission (the executive body of the EU), International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. The troika required harsh terms to assist Greece in the sovereign debt crisis beginning in 2010 with a bailout and additional bailouts in 2012 and 2015.

Throughout this time there were protests against the Greek government and the EU austerity requirements. Its climax was in 2015 when Syriza put forward a national referendum on the required austerity measures. Two thirds of Greeks voted in the referendum and a landslide 61% to 39% of the pubic opposed the terms set by the Troika.

The Troika reacted aggressively, ignoring the views of the Greek people and continuing their demands showing deep conflicts in the Eurozone and highlighting the undemocratic nature of the EU. Syriza could have taken more aggressive action – nationalizing banks, creating their own currency, issued their own Euros – instead, amid nationwide protests the Syriza government approved the deal, causing divisions in its own party. Alexis Tsipras, forced to give in to the European bankers, knew the austerity policies forced on Greece were a “dead end.” He said he tried to represent the people against the powerful, but the powerful won.

The Troika forced a fire sale of Greek public works and infrastructure to their creditors – Greece was for sale, everything must go. This meant the sale of 14 regional airports, which the Germans took, major ports, gas transmission lines, motorways, the main telecommunication system, postal service, water utilities, casino licenses – you get the idea, everything. And, they were forced to sell in the midst of a depression for very low prices. How could this process help Greece be financially stable in the future? In fact, it assures Greece will not be a stable economy. Not only did the Troika take away Greek assets, it took away its dignity after showing that democracy in the birthplace of democracy had no meaning.

Not only did the people of Greece get the message of the abusive power of the EU but people all over the world witnessed it. There were 22 countries with a debt crisis at the time, with predictions that the number could grow to 71 nations. Germans in 14 cities protested against the abuse of Greece. There were members of the EU Parliament that showed their solidarity with the Greek people, but they did not have the power of the Troika. The view of the world was “we are all Greece.”

Bankers should go to jailThe world saw that the bankers rule in the EU, the people can get down on their knees and beg, but the bankers will make them grovel and give them nothing. The facts showed irresponsible German bankers were a greater threat to Europe than Greece, that Germany had built the façade of a strong economy on bad loans and that so much of the Greek economic problem was a tragedy and a lie. Nine months after this abusive agreement, a leak from the IMF showed that they may be negotiating the debt in bad faith and trying to precipitate another debt crisis to avoid fulfilling their side of the bargain. With the shock waves of the Brexit, economic collapse may be returning to Europe and a country like Greece, economically ravaged by the Troika, may be at great risk.

Some of the lessons from this Greek tragedy may lead to even more radical responses in the future. A Grexit has been talked about and called for, but at the time the people were not ready. Will they be in the near future? People are now recognizing that a left political party in one nation cannot challenge the ruling class of bankers and investors, a broader revolt in the future will be necessary. And, we may find that the power structure of the ruling class will destroy itself from the inside, not from the outside.

The Hypocrisy of the IMF on Austerity, Wealth Divide and Worker Rights

The International Monetary Fund was a key player in the Greek crisis and has been a key player in the globalized economy that serves transnational corporations and not the people. The IMF has pushed austerity on many nations around the world – shrinking their economies when they needed to be growing, pushing wealth to the top when the wealth divide needs to be made smaller; and weakening the power of workers.

IMF World Bank protest

The IMF knows these policies do not work and are counterproductive but they continue to insist on them. The IMF is a tool of the bankers and investment class. It does their work, even though they know it will be counterproductive for the economies of various nations as well as for the global economy. As the backlash against the EU and other global economic institutions designed by and for big business builds, the IMF’s policies will deserve a good deal of blame.

The IMF’s own reports indicate that neoliberalism has been oversold and that austerity is much worse for the economy than they realized. The IMF is now telling the United States that it needs to spend more money to build-up its economy.

In 2015 the IMF said in a report that income inequality is harming economies around the world, calling it the “defining challenge of our time.” The report came out one month before the Greek landslide vote against the austerity and other measures that would expand inequality being forced on Greece. The report found that inequality may show GDP growth but growth does not trickle down and creates a weaker economy.

A March 2015 IMF report, four months before the Greeks voted to oppose the Troika bailout, found that as worker rights and unions diminish, the CEO’s and investors get wealthier but workers get poorer. The wealth divide expands and the economy gets weaker. Yet, the IMF – one-third of the Troika – insisted Greece put in place policies that weakened workers and pushed money to the top.

The Backlash to Austerity Is Broader Than Brexit

The UK was in an uproar over the unfair economy produced by the austerity policies of David Cameron. Protests began immediately after Cameron was elected with only a plurality of the vote. Shortly after the “no” vote by the Greeks there were mass protests calling for an end to austerity by the EU. There was an occupation outside of Parliament when the 2015 budget was released. A broad coalition of 60,000 people protested outside of the Conservative Party meeting over promised austerity programs.5708f74a2e00006400950d3f

When it came out in the Panama Papers that Cameron’s family was hiding money offshore to avoid taxes, protests exploded with 150,000 in the streets of London and led to calls for his resignation last October. In September of 2015, Jeremy Corbyn defeated the Blairites and won the leadership of the Labor Party. The Blairites continue to try to remove him, but Corbyn is fighting back.

In Spain, Podemos (We Can) grew out of anti-austerity protest movements. They built their power in the streets, followed by a metamorphosis into a political party that became a major threat to Spain’s political establishment. In May of 2015 they and allied parties won major municipal elections, taking power at the city level. By December 2015, the two party system in Spain came to an end when Podemos, just two years old, came in third place in national elections with 21%, just 7% behind the leader. In December they refused a coalition with the other parties, preventing a majority government. Podemos is going into the upcoming national election in a strong position. It has allied with United Left and is willing to form a government with the Socialists included. It is calling for an increase in social spending of 6% of GDP over four years, paid for by progressive income taxes, an increased corporate tax, fighting tax fraud and financial transactions tax.

Another example: as another globalization project is attempted in Europe, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), there have been mass protests throughout the continent. In April 2015 in an international day of action against TTIP hundreds of thousands of people protested across Europe, saying no to the sovereignty-killing agreement that would undermine the environment, food and jobs in Europe. Hundreds of thousands protested against TTIP in Germany in October 2015. In February of 2016, activists from seven countries blocked US-EU talks on TTIP in Brussels. When Obama came to Germany in April, 90,000 people protested his trade agenda calling for “free love, not free trade.”

As with Obama’s other big trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the TTIP gives big business power over legislation and prevents laws in the public interest. Leaks showed TTIP was empowering transnational corporations while threatening the environment and health. And, it has come out that the EU trade minister promised to reduce barriers for ExxonMobil and other oil companies, such rules would undermine the Copenhagen agreement. All of this has added up to the near death of the TTIP and recognition by Obama that he cannot finish negotiating it before he leaves office. The difficulty of passing the TTIP is leading the EU to try to undermine democracy further by claiming that a Canadian agreement, CETA, does not require ratification by each country, but only by the EU, according to leaks.GREECE-DEBT-FINANCE-LABOUR-STRIKE-EUROPE

All of this is fueling a broader democracy movement in Europe. Five anti-austerity, pro-democracy leaders in Europe called for a summit at the end of last year to plan a response to EU’s attack on the people. Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, announced a new European effort seeking democracy by 2025 in Berlin this past February. Varoufakis hopes to enable progressives throughout Europe to take back power from what he described as a “shadowy world of bureaucrats, bankers, and unelected officialdom.” The group seeks to end the EU’s “opaque decision-making process” and urgently seeks to democratize Europe.

Brexit Part of a New Era of Protest

In this broader context, Brexit should be seen as part of a longer rebellion, going back to the Indignado movement in the spring of 2011 (the European occupy) and building with anti-austerity revolts in multiple countries. The vicious attack on Greece ripped off the fig leaf of the EU and showed how it had become a big business, anti-democratic vehicle. Now we are in the midst of a new phase of a global protest against the United States, IMF, EU and web of international trade laws that are denying nation’s their sovereignty and undermining democracy around the world.

Brexit shows we have our work to do to educate people that this is not about racism and anger at ethnic groups, but is really the battle between the people and the elites. It is a conflict over whether we the people will have the power to decide our futures, whether we can create a fair economy that serves more than the 1% and whether we can act in ways that are consistent with the needs of the environmental crisis we face. There are multiple crises that are linked the crises in democracy, in capitalism and of environmental collapse. We are in an age of dissent and there is much more to come.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are co-directors of Popular Resistance. This article is based on their weekly newsletter

26 June 2016

By John Pilger

The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.

This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the “remain” campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain. The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.

A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain’s ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.

Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – irst Iraq, now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centrepiece of modern “globalisation”, with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labour; its perfidious politicians and politicised civil servants.

All this has now come home to Europe, enriching the likes of Tony Blair and impoverishing and disempowering millions. On 23 June, the British said no more.

The most effective propagandists of the “European ideal” have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even “cool”. What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as “neoliberalism”.

The aim of this extremism is to install a permanent, capitalist theocracy that ensures a two-thirds society, with the majority divided and indebted, managed by a corporate class, and a permanent working poor. In Britain today, 63 per cent of poor children grow up in families where one member is working. For them, the trap has closed. More than 600,000 residents of Britain’s second city, Greater Manchester, are, reports a study, “experiencing the effects of extreme poverty” and 1.6 million are slipping into penury.

Little of this social catastrophe is acknowledged in the bourgeois controlled media, notably the Oxbridge dominated BBC. During the referendum campaign, almost no insightful analysis was allowed to intrude upon the clichéd hysteria about “leaving Europe”, as if Britain was about to be towed in hostile currents somewhere north of Iceland.

On the morning after the vote, a BBC radio reporter welcomed politicians to his studio as old chums. “Well,” he said to “Lord” Peter Mandelson, the disgraced architect of Blairism, “why do these people want it so badly?” The “these people” are the majority of Britons.

The wealthy war criminal Tony Blair remains a hero of the Mandelson “European” class, though few will say so these days. The Guardian once described Blair as “mystical” and has been true to his “project” of rapacious war. The day after the vote, the columnist Martin Kettle offered a Brechtian solution to the misuse of democracy by the masses. “Now surely we can agree referendums are bad for Britain”, said the headline over his full-page piece. The “we” was unexplained but understood – just as “these people” is understood. “The referendum has conferred less legitimacy on politics, not more,” wrote Kettle. ” … the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.”

The kind of ruthlessness Kettle longs for is found in Greece, a country now airbrushed. There, they had a referendum and the result was ignored. Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought “better terms” with a venal status quo in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was asked by the BBC if he would pay tribute to the departed Cameron, his comrade in the “remain” campaign. Corbyn fulsomely praised Cameron’s “dignity” and noted his backing for gay marriage and his apology to the Irish families of the dead of Bloody Sunday. He said nothing about Cameron’s divisiveness, his brutal austerity policies, his lies about “protecting” the Health Service. Neither did he remind people of the war mongering of the Cameron government: the dispatch of British special forces to Libya and British bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and, above all, the beckoning of world war three.

In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin’s speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The Soviet victory – at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces – won the Second World War.

Putin likened the current frenzied build up of Nato troops and war material on Russia’s western borders to the Third Reich’s Operation Barbarossa. Nato’s exercises in Poland were the biggest since the Nazi invasion; Operation Anaconda had simulated an attack on Russia, presumably with nuclear weapons. On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering “peace and security” if they voted to leave the EU. The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.

25 June 2016

By Feroze Mithiborwala

Far too many facts pertaining to the Orlando massacre
by Omar Mateen raise serious questions about the
ghastly killing of American citizens as a False Flag
opertion of the FBI. The fact that the gory incident
came within days days of the death of Mohammed Ali,
whose passing away had re-awakened American and
global interest in the Islam he lived also raises
questions of whether the spectacular terror act
was aimed at burying, along with him the idea
of a principled and non-violent Islam.
14 Questions FBI Must Answer.

 

If the FBI, America’s extremely powerful military-security-surveillance
complex and the corporate media are to be believed, the Orlando massacre
was the gruesome handiwork of Omar Mateen – a “gay-hating Muslim fanatic”,
a “homegrown, radicalised lone-wolf” – who single-handedly slaughtered
50 people and injured as many in a killing spree at the Pulse bar on a night
dedicated to the Gay Latino community. The massacre, we are told, lasted
three hours before the Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT)
finally brought down the mass murderer.

However, eyewitness statements, several news reports and video
clips of the gory incident raise serious questions that suggest
yet another False Flag operation. Here below are facts which
have surfaced in the aftermath of the massacre which the
FBI must address:

Mateen himself was a gay. This discredits the narrative
of the massacre as a homophobic hate-crime. Why is the
FBI desperately trying to suppress this fact?
Mateen’s links to radical Islamists – Moner Abu Salha,
the first American suicide bomber in Syria – are being
downplayed by the FBI as “minimal.” Why?
Mateen had links with Islamist preachers
Abu Taha Marcus Dwayne Robertson and the
blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, both of
whom have been terror operatives with proven links
to the CIA? How could the FBI be unaware of this fact?
What about Mateen’s links to FBI handlers for a period
of 10 months during 2013? The statement of Florida’s St.
Lucie county’s Sheriff Ken Mascara alleges that the FBI
had dispatched an informant to “lure Omar into some kind
of act and Omar did not bite”. Is this not a clear indictment
of the FBI and it’s fatal policy of entrapment to commit acts of terror.
The all-powerful G4S security agency has named a psychiatrist
who had conducted a psychological evaluation to certify
Mateen’s fitness for a job with the agency. But the psychiatrist
claims she never saw Mateen and that she was not even living
in Florida at the time the test is claimed to have been conducted.
Why is the G4S lying?
Why are the FBI’s version and the timeline of the terror attack
on Pulse bar put out by the corporate media so incoherent and
misleading? An off-duty cop along with other officers had
confronted the heavily armed Mateen who started shooting
outside the Pulse Bar before going inside? Why was he not
followed into the bar by the armed cops? Why is there no
mention of the Pulse bar’s own security? How is it that
no CCTV cameras were operational?
The 3-hour delayed response of the SWAT Team
needs to be explained by the authorities. Why
did the police and the SWAT team fail to follow
the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP),
which states that they have to intervene and
enter the premises if the shooting is underway?
Mateen purchased the guns from a gun store
owned by Ed Henson, a former NYPD Officer.
Another gun store owner Robert Apell affirms
that he had alerted FBI to a ‘suspicious’ customer
on a shopping spree weeks before the Orlando
shooting. Why did the FBI not act on the information?
Eye-witnesses are on record saying that there
were anywhere between 2-5 shooters, that Mateen
was not the lone shooter. Who were the other shooters
and where are they? Why is this key evidence
being suppressed?
Why doesn’t the shooting math add up?
FBI states that only 202 rounds were fired.
Why are experts challenging the supposed facts?
James Wesley Howell, who himself was to attack
a Gay Pride Rally in Santa Monica on that very day
in a parallel operation told the local police that
both Mateen and he were trained by the CIA
in Virginia. Is it true that Mateen was part of a
hit-squad team for Orlando and who was
supposed to get away alive?
Is it true that Wackenhut – the world’s largest
private security corporation, with whom Mateen
was employed for a period – is a front for the CIA
and has an extremely dubious track record
The FBI has a known record of creating terror,
entrapment and manufacturing terrorists
and masterminding false flag terror operations.
Was the Orlando massacre part of this ugly past of the FBI?
Each of these questions are examined in detail below.

Mateen himself was a Gay
That Omar was himself gay was stated by his former wife
Sitora Yusufiy who was married to Mateen in 2009
for three months. She made this disclosure
on Brazilian television station SBT Brazil,
as reported by the New York Post. Her fiancé,
Marco Dias, speaking in Portuguese on her behalf,
said Yusufiy believed that Mateen had “gay tendencies”
and that his father had called him gay in front of her.
Dias also claimed “the FBI asked her not to tell this
to the American media.”

In a news report under the headline,
‘Ex-wife’s bomb shell claim: club shooter was gay’,
the New York Post revealed:

The bombshell came as a male former classmate of
Omar Mateen said he had been asked out romantically
by the mass killer, who reportedly was a virtual regular
at the Pulse nightclub, having visited it more than
a dozen times over the years.

The former classmate said he would hang out with Mateen,
hitting gay bars after attending class at
Indian River Community College police academy in 2006
— and one time Mateen asked him out “romantically,”
according to the Palm Beach Post.

“We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not
out at the time, so I declined his offer,” the former
classmate told the paper.

The classmate’s claims came after reports
emerged that Mateen frequented the club
for years before Sunday’s massacre.

“It’s the same guy,” Chris Callen, a drag queen
who performs under the name Kristina McLaughlin,
told the Canadian press. “He’s been going to this bar
for at least three years.”

Callen’s husband, Ty Smith, recalled seeing a drunk
Mateen being escorted from the club. “Sometimes he . . .
would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,”
he told the Orlando Sentinel.

At least four Pulse clubgoers remembered seeing Mateen
at least a dozen times in the past. But authorities said
they had no further information when asked about the sightings on Monday.

Callen and Smith shot down claims that Mateen had snapped
after seeing two men kissing each other in public.
“That’s bullcrap, right there. No offense. That’s straight-up crap.
He’s been around us,” Smith said. “Some of those people
did a little more than (kiss) outside the bar …
He was partying with the people who supposedly drove him to do this?”

Kevin West, another regular at Pulse, told the Los Angeles Times
that Mateen used gay dating apps on a regular basis and even
messaged him on a gay dating app, Jack’d. He even saw Mateen
an hour before the shooting, which is again a remarkable fact,
not being reported by the MSM.

Mateen’s ties with a terrorist
Omar’s links to radical Islamists have been downplayed
by both the FBI as “minimal”, as well as by his employer
G4S-Wackenhut, the world’s largest private security firm,
linked closely to the CIA.

In the aftermath of the attack, authorities are trying to
ascertain how it’s possible that Mateen cleared
four background checks, two with the company and two with the FBI,
without raising sufficient alarm.

Former superior court judge from New Jersey,
Napolitano stated that Mateen qualified for the
highest level of weaponry that one can qualify
for in Florida, calling this an “extraordinary breakdown”
within the G4S security system, in the background checks
required for someone in his position.

The FBI in 2014 investigated a potential connection
between Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha –
the first American suicide-bomber in Syria who blew
himself up killing government soldiers in 2014 –,
according to an NBC report.

Omar and Salha were also reported to have met up
at parties according to a former classmate who wishes
to remain anonymous. This further proves that the
interaction between the two was a red flag which
should have been heeded, which again the FBI
seems to have missed out.Or then did they?
Were the FBI just allowing another one of their
terror entrapment programmes to play out
to its logical conclusion?

Mateen’s links to Salha were well-known,
yet the FBI brushed this connection off as being “minimal.”

The common link between the radicalisation of both
Salha and Mateen is Anwar al-Awlaki. Both are
said to have heard the cleric’s fiery sermons,
which finally led them to commit the acts of terror.

In his article, ‘I Reported Omar Mateen To The FBI;
Trump Is Wrong That Muslims Don’t Do Our Part’,
Muhammad A Malik, also reaffirms the point that
both Moner and Mateen were radicalised by the Awlaki tapes.

Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical spiritual leader linked
to several 9/11 attackers, the Fort Hood shooting,
and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an
airliner – was a guest at the Pentagon in the
months after 9/11, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News.

Awlaki was invited as “…part of an informal
outreach program” in which officials sought contact “…
with leading members of the Muslim community,”
the official said. At that time, Awlaki was widely
viewed as a “moderate” imam at a mosque in
Northern Virginia.

In this important video, Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer
a retired US army reserve lieutenant colonel
who gained fame for his claims about mishandled
intelligence before the September 11 attacks
and for the censoring of his book,
Operation Dark Heart, goes on to
reveal that Anwar al-Awlaki was an FBI asset.

Mateen’s radical Islamist preachers

Mateen was a follower of cleric Abu-Taha (Marcus Dwayne Robertson), a former US Marine who acted as a bodyguard for the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman. Robertson was the imam of the Orlando-based ‘Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary’, where Mateen had enrolled online.

In addition to working with the CIA, Robertson was an FBI informant for 15 years. He is linked to the blind cleric Sheikh Abdel Omar Rahman, al-Qaeda and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
One of the main operatives the CIA had utilized in its war against the Soviets was Sheikh Abdel Omar Rahman. The CIA utilized Rahman because of his influence over the Mujahadeen then brought him into the US on a CIA-sponsored visa.

To the CIA, which pumped more than $2 billion into the fourteen-year Afghani resistance effort, Sheikh Omar was what intelligence officials call “a valuable asset”.

According to the UC website, www.constitution.org:

The use of former enemy soldiers, criminals, and terrorists for their dirty work is also a time-honored tradition among intelligence agencies, who stand to gain the “plausible deniability” so coveted in the world of covert operations.

One of the main operatives the CIA had utilized in its war against the Soviets was Omar Rahman. The CIA utilized Rahman because of his influence over the Mujahadeen, then brought him into the US on a CIA-sponsored visa. While the Sheikh was eventually convicted for conspiracy to bomb targets in the US, prosecutors encountered resistance in pursuing him and other World Trade Center bombing suspects because of their ties to the Mujahadeen, and their ties to US intelligence.

During a conversation between a 20-year veteran FBI agent and one of his top undercover operatives, the operative asked:
“Why aren’t we going after the Sheikh Adbel Rahman?” demanded the undercover man.”It’s hands off,” answered the agent.”Why?” asked the operative.”It was no accident that the Sheikh got a visa and that he’s still in the country,” replied the agent, visibly upset. “He’s here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA.” The agent pointed out that the Sheikh had been granted a tourist visa, and later a green card, despite the fact that he was on a State Department terrorist watch-list that should have barred him from the country. He’s an untouchable, concluded the agent.Following the Orlando massacre Abu-Taha Robertson and several associates have been rounded up for questioning, according to law enforcement sources. Robertson’s school may not have been the only source of Mateen’s spiritual guidance. Mateen was at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce with Imam ShafiqRahman two days before the nightclub attack, according to The Washington Post. That mosque was frequented by American-born Al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda of Syria) suicide-bomber Salha who blew himself up in Syria in 2014 and the two knew each other, according to officials. Mateen’s association with Salha led the FBI to interview him in 2014. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Mike McCaul told Fox News law enforcement determined at the time their contact “was minimal.”

In his brilliant and path-breaking book, Visas for Al Qaeda – CIA Handouts that Rocked the World – An Insider’s View, J Michael Springmann documents the role of the CIA in the creation of the Arab-Afghan Legion, that later transmogrified from the Mujahedeen into the Al Qaeda and from there to the ISIS of our present times.

Mateen and his FBI handlers:
In their path-breaking article, ‘Before Omar Mateen Committed Mass Murder, The FBI Tried To ‘Lure’ Him Into A Terror Plot” – New revelations raise questions about the FBI’s role in shaping Mateen’s lethal mindset’, Max Blumenthal and Sarah Lazare have come out with astounding revelations that prove beyond doubt that the FBI was trying to lure Mateen into committing an act of terror under the influence of his handlers as stated on record by Sheriff Ken Mascara.

Here are some excerpts:

Before Omar Mateen gunned down 49 patrons at the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the FBI attempted to induce his participation in a terror plot. Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that after Mateen threatened a courthouse deputy in 2013 by claiming he could order Al Qaeda operatives to kill his family, the FBI dispatched an informant to “lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite.“

While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in shifting his mindset toward an act of violence. All that is known at present is that an FBI informant attempted to push Mateen into agreeing to stage a terror attack in hopes that he would fall into the law enforcement dragnet.

Trevor Aaronson, a journalist and author of, Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror, revealed that nearly half of terror cases between 9/11 (2001) and 2010 involved informants – many of whom were themselves criminals raking in as much as $100,000 from the FBI. “Is it possible that the FBI is creating the very enemy we fear?” Aaronson wondered.

The revelations of FBI manipulation cast Mateen’s case in a uniquely troubling light. Though he refused to “bite” when an FBI asset attempted to push him into a manufactured plot, he wound up carrying out a real act of spectacular brutality, and allegedly swore loyalty to ISIS in the midst of it.

Now the question is whether the FBI was right to pursue Mateen before he could kill, or whether it played an influencing role in shaping his attitude towards politically-motivated violence.

While the full extent of Mateen’s contact with the FBI is unknown, it is clear that it extended into the realm of planning a bogus terror attack. The question now is whether manipulation by a FBI informant had any impact on Mateen’s deadly decision.
“The FBI should scrutinize the operating procedure where they use undercovers and informants and pitch people to become informants,” said Rowley a former FBI agent. “They must recognize that, in this case [with Mateen], it had horrible consequences if it did, in fact, backfire.”

Tony Cartalucci in his incisive article, ‘CONFIRMED: FBI Introduced Florida Shooter to ‘Informants’, further brings out the connections between Omar Mateen and his FBI handlers:

It is now confirmed that in addition to two investigations and two interviews, Florida terror suspect Omar Mateen was also approached by “informants” working for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over a period of 10 months.
This further connects the missing links in Mateen’s radicalization and the seemingly invisible hands that likely guided him to carry out his act of terror.
Cartalucci’s report adds that while speaking to The New York Daily News, the FBI director, James Comey admitted that, “FBI spied on Orlando gay club terrorist Omar Mateen for 10 months in 2013: FBI Director James Comey:
Mateen first appeared on authorities’ radar in 2013 after the security guard’s colleagues alerted the FBI to inflammatory statements he made to colleagues claiming “family connections to Al Qaeda,” according to Comey.
Nevertheless, FBI investigators investigated Mateen, who was born in New York, for 10 months. They introduced him to confidential informants, spied on his communications and followed him.They also interviewed him twice.
Here’s more from Cartalucci:
The significance of this cannot be understated. “Informants” in this context, according to FBI affidavits regarding similar counterterrorism investigations, refers to individuals posing as members of terrorist organizations who approach suspects; coerce them into planning and preparing for terrorist attacks, before finally aiding the FBI in the suspect’s arrest before the attack is finally carried out.
The article also refers to the other cases of entrapment wherein James Medina, a homeless man with mental problems, and 23-year-old Cuban-American Harlem Suarez both believed that they were working for the ISIS in a make believe world created by the FBI.
In the case of Rezwan Ferdaus, whose mental wellness had deteriorated so much that he was wearing adult diapers at the time of his arrest on terrorism charges, he was led to believe that he was working for the Al Qaeda!
Rezwan Ferdaus, like Medina, was provided assistance by the FBI every step of the way, including being provided 24 lbs of C4 explosives, 6 fully automatic AK47 rifles, and 3 grenades – the FBI’s own affidavit reveals (.pdf). He was brought deep into a fictional world where he believed he was working directly with Al Qaeda for nearly a year – told that “detonation devices” he constructed and passed on to FBI informants were “used” in Iraq to “kill” American soldiers.
Mateen’s connections to the FBI are further affirmed by Steven D Kelley, a former CIA/NSA Contractor.
“This event was clearly just one more false flag event. The individual that’s being named as the shooter clearly is very closely connected to the US government all the way up to his family, and there’s a long history of involvement with government agencies on either side of different issues”.
Why is the G4S lying?

Omar Mateen’s Wackenhut ID-CardThe G4S claims that Mateen had cleared all the medical and psych-evaluation tests conducted before being hired. But in an another intriguing development, Dr. Carol Nudelman who is said to have certified Mateen claims that the tests were not conducted by her, she has never met Mateen and was not even in Florida during that period. The psych certification clears the employee concerned to bear arms and thus this report is crucial to the mounting evidence against the G4S and its history of dubious dealings.Following the denial by Dr Nudelman, G4S has retracted its statement, claiming a “clerical error” and that another psychiatrist had conducted the psych-evaluation. The name of the “other psychiatrist” has still not been made public.Why is the G4S lying?Furthermore, the G4S hired him even though Mateen’s job applications had been rejected by two police departments.
Seven months into a job as a prison guard in 2007, Mateen was fired for threatening to bring a gun to class. He settled on a career as a low level security guard for G4S Security Solutions, a global security firm that employed him for nine years. Though Mateen’s applications to two police departments were rejected, he was able to pass a G4S background check and receive several guard assignments. (The world’s third largest private employer, G4S has accumulated a staggering record of human rights abuses, including accusations of child torture.)
Despite all these rather worrying indications, the G4S/Wackenhut, the world’s leading private security corporation, never fired him.

Why the conflicting versions from FBI, corporate media?

The timeline as offered by the New York Times is very sketchy at best and is certainly misleading.

The timeline which mentions Mateen’s entry into the Pulse at 2.02 am has very little information about the 3 crucial hours leading to the final assault by the SWAT Team at 5.00 am.

The official narrative states that Mateen was apprehended by Adam Gruler, an off-duty security officer (with a dubious past of police violence against civilians), a gun-fight broke out, soon supported by “additional officers”, Mateen entered the Pulse and then started shooting killing 50 and injuring as many.

Adam Gruler, the off-duty cop who was supposedly on scene looking for a patron with a fake ID and is being promoted as a hero, was exposed by Copwatch 2011 as a violent policeman.

This weak narrative of the off-duty cop and the other officers who apprehended Mateen must be challenged for the following reasons:

It fails to describe the battle with an off-duty police officer and the other officers who on hearing the gunshots came to the aid of Gruler, even as Mateen entered the bar and began to shoot away as per the official version.

According to CNN, an off-duty police officer who was at the Pulse nightclub “engaged the shooter as he entered the club”.

Engaged? As he entered the club? A gunfight, where none were injured or killed? What precisely transpired?

Why didn’t Gruler and the other cops follow Mateen and enter Pulse even as they supposedly were shooting at Mateen?

Not a single mention about the private security guards and bouncers that all bars have at their entrance and inside to deal with unruly violent customers – where were/are they?
Where were the CCTV cameras?

One report stated that the CCTV cameras were under maintenance and thus non-functional. In fact all of the mainstream media reports have refrained from even mentioning the CCTV cameras. It is for this reason that we have no footage at all from within the Pulse, or from its external area in the car-park. How very convenient!

3-hour delayed response of SWAT Team
The arrival of the SWAT Team three hours after the terror attack has been criticized by many security experts and begs a logical explanation. The key element is that as part of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP),
“Police are trained that if there’s an active shooter in progress, you go in and confront the shooter at any risk. When an active shooter is shooting, you go in and shoot the shooter,” says Chris Grollnek an expert on active-shooter tactics and a retired police officer and a SWAT team member.

“This was a catastrophic failure on police SWAT tactics,” charged Chris Grollnek, who served on a SWAT team in McKinney, Tx., for seven years and now runs a company training civilians and law enforcement to prevent and respond to active shooter incidents.

Grollnek heaped criticism on the Orlando SWAT team commander for waiting to breach the Pulse nightclub after gunman Omar Mateen stormed in at about around 2 a.m. Sunday, slaughtering 49 people and wounding 53 others — the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s history and the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11.

Cops were on the scene in less than two minutes but it wasn’t until 5 am that 11 SWAT members entered the club and fatally shot Mateen, said police chief John Mina and Grollnek, who spoke with law enforcement officers familiar with the investigation.

Asked if he had any doubt the delay between arrival at the scene and breaching the club cost lives, Grollnek responded tersely, “None.”

Grollnek also “reserved his anger for the police commanders in Florida who didn’t allow the SWAT team members to enter until several hours after the shooter began the attack”.

Worse, when the SWAT did finally break-through from the rear end in the Rest Rooms, they reportedly killed many of the terrified desperate people seeking to escape from the opening provided.
Conclusion: The standard operating procedure for the police and the SWAT team should have been to intervene when the firing was on and the people were being massacred, but they chose to wait for three hours before launching their attack. The picture is far too murky and the official timeline fails to address the glaring anomalies.
FBI was alerted about ‘suspicious’ customer?

Mateen purchased his guns prior from a Gun Shop St. Lucie Shooting Center owned by a retired NYPD Officer Ed Henson, prior to the terror attack on the Pulse Bar. The shop has been closed till further notice.Ed Henson, a retired NYPD detective is known to be very Islamophobic. Henson is reported to supply weapons to the police department. Was Ed Henson a “Patsy-Minder”, providing services for the FBI in lieu of lucrative offers?TheNew York Daily News reported that the store’s owner, Ed Henson, an ex-NYPD officer, had posted on Facebook in December a meme that said, “F— Islam, F— Allah. F— Muhammad.F— the Koran. F— people who support terrorism,” as well as a comment in November calling for Obama to be “handcuffed, removed from Office and charged with Treason and then publicly executed!” “How can the American People and military stand by and do nothing while this piece of sh– puts everyone of us in danger.”Ed Henson does not appear to be a person who would be very happy selling guns to Muslims… But would he not if it was meant to lead to a false flag and thus further his political agenda?Apparently, Robert Abell the owner of Lotus Gunworks had a greater sense of responsibility than former NYPD detective Ed Henson. Mateen wanted to purchase body armour that raised suspicion. Abell refused after which Mateen inquired about bulk purchase of ammunition, on which again he was cross-questioned. Omar made a call, spoke in a foreign language and left, after which Abell contacted the FBI and reported the matter. But the FBI took no serious notice of the incident and never visited the store or investigated further.Clearly the FBI is far more efficient in the Hollywood TV serials!
Ed Henson’s role in the supply of weapons to terror patsies and criminals linked to the FBI should be investigated.

Eye-witnesses claimed there were 2-5 shooters
Why is this fact going unreported in the media? The following videos and eyewitness reports clearly support this overwhelming evidence.
A victim of Sunday’s early morning terror attack at the Pulse nightclub gave a bombshell interview to an ABC reporter after being released from a local hospital.

During the interview the eyewitness, who played dead for several hours during the attack as a strategy to stay alive, said that he had overheard a phone conversation that the shooter was engaged in. The eyewitness said that the shooter made mention that he was the “fourth shooter” and that there were “three others,” “snipers,” along with a ‘female suicide bomber’ that was playing dead.
Additionally the witness said that the terrorist on the phone also mentioned “to stop bombing ISIS.”
This is an absolute bombshell info that is being suppressed by the mainstream press! This information should be the focus on every mainline channel!
Janiel Gonzalez, 26 an eye witness told the palmbeachpost.com he heard another gun from a different direction, so he wonders if there were two gunmen.
“Everybody dropped to the floor. We were trying to look for an exit. But the main exit was right next to the entrance where the shooter was shooting,’’ he said.“In a moment of desperation we were all crawling on the floor trying to find a place to exit. I looked to my right and I could see people going through some curtains. We were digging through the curtains and found a door.’’

But he said the door was blocked by a man. He wasn’t sure if it was a club security person or an accomplice to the gunmen.

“Fifty people were trying to jump over each other trying to exit the place. There was a guy holding the door and not letting us exit. He’s like ‘Stay inside, stay inside.’ As he is saying that, the shooter keeps getting closer and closer and the sound of the bullets is getting closer. Everyone starts to panic. People are getting trampled. Let us out, let us out!’’’

Gonzalez’ first thought was that it was a hate crime. “This guy is trying to prevent us from leaving. Maybe they’re working together,’’ he said.

Javer Antonetti, 53, told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that he was near the back of the dance club when he heard the gunfire. “There were so many (shots), at least 40,” he said. “I saw two guys and it was constant, like ‘pow, pow, pow,’.
Zepher_907:
“I saw the report first hand on CNN about 2 or 3 hours after it broke the news so probably 5 am Florida time and it never played again and I haven’t been able to find it. It was an older Hispanic lady in her late 40s or early 50s that didn’t speak English to well. She was telling reporters that she was on the phone with a club patron that was with her son at club. He told the Hispanic lady that he saw TWO SHOOTERS standing next to each other that opened fire on the crowd before the mother’s son was wounded by three gunshot wounds. The footage only played once and I have not been able to find it online. I knew I should’ve recorded it.”
Cody Agnew: Narrating an eyewitness’ account from woman who was shot with 12 bullets as 2 other men were in the club firing at people.

Cody’s Facebook post sparked a heated debate and can be found on https://www.rt.com/viral/346686-orlando-massacre-social-media-outrage/n

An audio clip of the Orlando terror attack reveals two or more guns firing simultaneously.Additionally witnesses said that “they” are shooting

Yet another eyewitness to the attack, who was inside the nightclub when it happened, was giving his testimony on the attack, after being trapped inside the club, live on-air, to a mainstream news source when he was abruptly cut off after providing a crucial detail. The eyewitness said that during the attack “there was a guy there that was trying to […] hold the door closed so that we couldn’t exit,” as pointed out by an investigative reporter on YouTube.
In yet another clip we see ‘crisis actors’ carrying an “injured person” then let him stand as they get past the cameras and then talk to each other after a job well done. Astounding!

Conclusion: Evidently there are multiple eye-witness reports stating that there were two or more shooters. Clearly this was not the job of a single shooter. The fact that both the FBI and the corporate media are suppressing these obvious facts further points to the Orlando incident being a false flag terror attack, where Mateen was the fall-guy, while there were other far more professional shooters, who were allowed to slip away in the general mayhem and confusion once the job was done.

Mateen’s phone calls claiming allegiance to ISIS

As per the official narrative Mateen was shooting away with his AR-15 Assault Rifle, even as he found time to change magazines plus make telephone calls to 911 and certain news outlets ostensibly to reveal his identity and his links to the ISIS. Says, Robert David Steele (former FBI/CIA Contractor), “The tape pledging allegiance to ISIS is patsy perfect.”

Conclusion: Thus this time it was not about a terrorist(s) leaving behind an ID-card or a passport but about phone calls made, to ensure that an identity is created, which can be then played upon by the investigating agencies and the corporate media. This sounds like a slight tweak on the part of the FBI False Flag section, as they have been laughed at and scorned in the recent past where passports were supposedly found on the person of dead suicide-bombers blown to smithereens.
How the shooting math add up
“There is a 0% chance that only 202 rounds were fired in Pulse,” says Mike Cernovich – a popular non-fiction writer and a licensed attorney whose legal writing has been cited in federal court opinions and academic journals – as he deconstructs the shooting episode and posits certain key facts and questions. He affirms that the shooting and the murderous mayhem that followed cannot be explained on the basis of one shooter and asserts that there were more.

He also challenges the police statement that 202 rounds were fired.
“Let’s play with that 202 number. Therefore 202 rounds – 12 (shot before entering Pulse) – 30 (shot into ceiling). That leaves 160 rounds in total. Remember that 160 rounds includes shots fired by police. There were 102 dead and wounded. That’s a bullet-to-casualty ratio of 1.6 to 1. In other words, there were 1 dead or wounded for every 1.6 rounds fired. Has this ever happened in the history of mankind? Is there anyone in the Special Operations community who has witnessed a ratio of 1.6 to 1? Again, that math includes rounds shot by police. How many rounds did the shooter fire himself?”

“Again, do the math. The media is saying that 202 rounds were fired in total. This includes all shots fired. We know the shooter fired rounds before going into Pulse and also fired rounds into the ceiling. There has never been a mass shooting where only 1.5 rounds took out one person.”

“As I explained in Part 1 of this series, here is what I need to see:

Firearms used by shooter
Each magazine used
Casualty count (102)
Ballistic report from each victim (how many rounds are in each victim)
Pictures of entire structure with bullet holes counted
We haven’t received this information, and given the outright lies being told, likely never will.”

Cernovich also states that according to his sources the second shooter could be at the Orlando Hospital which was under lockdown and off-limits.

15 Jun
Mike Cernovich @Cernovich
A source tells me that the hospital treating #OrlandoShootingvictims is under 24/7 surveillance. Second shooter may also be a patient.

Denny Hodge @_the_mad_1
@Cernovich There has to be something to that. When AC was on last night, the actual ER audio mentioned the shooter being there/lockdown.
3:22 AM – 15 Jun 2016

A parallel second terror operation planned for the same day?

The writer Danny Quest essentially states that there were two terror operations underway on that very day. One was to hit the Pulse bar in Orlando, Florida and the other a Gay Pride parade in Santa Monica, California.
The second terror operation was being led by James Wesley Howell. When he learnt that Mateen and his accomplice Brandy had been killed, Howell panicked and contacted the Santa Monica police department. Howell realised that he had been setup by the CIA and he too was going to be killed.

Howell stated that he had been recruited by the CIA through the online fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary course where he got to know Mateen. Both were then trained in Virginia by the CIA to shoot and make bombs and carry out simultaneous operations in Orlando and Santa Monica.

Two differing and contradictory versions have emerged from within the Santa Monica police department (SMDT). The first version as per the LA Times, quoting Santa Monica police chief Jacqueline Seabrooks was that Howell had been caught and arrested with explosives and that his interrogation revealed he was to harm the Gay Pride parade.

But after the FBI tookover the case, the SMDT version soon changed to say that they were unaware of the suspects intentions.

The following are excerpts of a the article by Danny Quest on June 15, which provide details of two-CIA trained hit-squads and the subsequent cover-up underway.

The real truth of the story was released to a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who works for “Get Off the BS” by two Santa Monica police officers that have been issued gag orders under threat of Federal prosecution for talking further talking about the incident.

According to two department sources, Howell called the Santa Monica police on Sunday morning claiming that he needed protection from the CIA. Howell further elaborated to the dispatcher stating that he “had been set up by the CIA – they are going to kill me.”

According to Howell, he was in LA to meet with another person in a collaborated attack on the gay communities in both Florida and Los Angeles.

Howell additionally stated that, “everything has gone south. Dan was gone when I got here. They killed the leader of the Florida attack this morning. They are going to kill me. I need protection.”

According to sources within the police department’s investigation Howell indicated to officers who first made contact with him that Howell claimed he was one of five people involved in a planned Sunday attack on both the east and west coasts.

Howell stated that he was supposed to “hook up” late Saturday night with his contact in LA who was supposed to have more weapons and chemicals to mix with the Tannerite he was in possession of.

When I got here, Dan was gone. I went to his apartment and he had cleared out… I tried calling him but he never answered me,” said Howell.

When questioned about the other four people involved in the plot, Howell was only familiar with the first names of three of the alleged suspects, naming his contact in LA – Dan and two of the three contacts in Florida,Omarand Brandy.

Speaking of the suspect killed in the Pulse Bar massacre in Florida, Howell stated, “Omar was not supposed to be killed. They lied to us – Omar and Brandy were supposed to get away.”

When Howell was questioned about how he and his conspirators knew each other, he said that, “We were all familiar with each other through an online fundamental Islamic knowledge seminary course[1]– we were recruited through the course and trained together at a camp in Virginia – we were taught how to shoot and make bombs – everyone knew their part – something went wrong….”

Before the officers could further question Howell, agents working for the Los Angeles office of the FBI quickly swept in and took over the case. Santa Monica detectives were never allowed to talk with Howell.

In summary, it appears that Howell was on his way to “hook up” with another conspirator (Dan) to set off explosives and shoot people at the gay pride parade in Hollywood California on Sunday.

Finding his contact missing when he got to LA and having heard thatOmar Matteen had been killedby an FBI SWAT team in Orlando, Howell determined he had been double crossed by the CIA and feared for his own life

Howell was taken in to custody by the FBI before Santa Monica police officers could further question him about the motives behind killing gay people on both coasts of the US on Sunday.However, in absence of further information and or anyone who will officially go on record, there is no doubt that the American public is not being told the truth about the Orlando, Florida shooting and the arrest of Howell on Sunday.

It is a shame that the Fed’s got to the Santa Monica police chief on Sunday before she was silenced, however we are very thankful that at least two officers have risked their jobs and freedom to reveal what she would of most likely Tweeted had the Fed’s not got to her.

Would you like to make odds that it was just a “coincidence”, as the mainstream media reports, that Howell armed to the teeth with assault rifles and explosives, was on his way to a gay pride parade the same day as the massacre in Florida?

Wackenhut’s dubious track record
Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was said to have rebuffed Wackenhut’s effort in the 1980’s to purchase a weapons propellant manufacturer in Quebec with the remark “We just got rid of the CIA, we don’t want them back.”

“It is known throughout the industry,” said retired FBI special agent William Hinshaw, “that if you want a dirty job done, call Wackenhut.”

Phillip Agee, the left-wing former CIA agent who wrote an expose’ of the agency in 1975, said, “I don’t have the slightest doubt that the CIA and Wackenhut overlap.”
The Wackenhut board of directors includes powerful men from the American military and intelligence establishment, as well as political leaders who walk the corridors of power in the White House, reveals William Corbett.
William Corbett, a terrorism expert who spent 18 years as a CIA analyst and is now an ABC News consultant based in Europe, confirmed the relationship between Wackenhut and the agency.
“For years Wackenhut has been involved with the CIA and other intelligence organizations, including the DEA,” he told SPY. “Wackenhut would allow the CIA to occupy positions within the company in order to carry out clandestine operations.”Wackenhut maintains an especially close relationship with the US federal government in other ways as well. While early boards of directors included such prominent personalities of the political right as captain Eddie Rickenbacker; general Mark Clark and Ralph E. Davis, a John Birch Society leader, current and recent members of the board have included much of the country’s recent national-security directorate: former FBI director Clarence Kelley, former CIA deputy director Frank Carlucci, former defense intelligence agency director general Joseph Carroll, former US Secret Service director James J. Rowley, former marine commandant PX Kelley, acting chairman of President Bush’s foreign-intelligence advisory board and former CIA deputy director admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Before his appointment as Reagan’s CIA director, the late William Casey was Wackenhut’s outside legal counsel.

Conclusion: Can there be any doubt that Wackenhut operates as a front of the CIA?

The company has 30,000 armed employees on its payroll. Source Watch wanted to know more about this special relationship; but the government was not forthcoming. Repeated requests to the Department of Energy for an explanation of how one company got the security contracts for nearly all of America’s most strategic installations have gone unanswered.

Here is a detailed report on various human rights violations, corruption and management failures documented by the Jewish Voice for Peace.

G4S is a British multinational corporation that has grown to be the largest security company in the world. The company operates in120 counties, and employs more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. It provides a broad array of security services to government, corporate, and industrial clients. G4S has been plagued by scandals and negative media coverage linked to violations of human rights, ripping off taxpayers, and gross mismanagement. As a result, the company has come under sharp criticism from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Examples of high profile G4S problems include:

G4S Involvement Israeli Prisons and Check Points
Critical Failures in Employee Screening, very relevant in the case of Omar Mateen
Gross Mismanagement of Florida Youth Detention Centers
G4S Contracts in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Who Profits, a research project of the Coalition of Women for Peace, has done extensive research on G4S and its role in supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. (WeDivest.org website)
Palestinian legislators and human rights activists held in G4S equipped prisons. Many Palestinians have been jailed in G4S equipped prisons for engaging in non-violent protests.
Damning reports of the private prisons and juvenile homes in the US being managed by G4S, with detailed reports of sexual abuse to torture.
G4S security subsidiary overbilling Miami taxpayers
G4S overcharging UK government
Another worry is that Wackenhut-G4S procured Securicor and as part of the deal Argenbright Security, which was managing the Dulles Airport during the 9/11 Terror attacks.

Conclusion: Wackenhut today is the third largest employer in the world after Walmart (USA) and Foxconn (Taiwan) employing more than 650,000 people across the globe. It provides services ranging from security guards at housing complexes, embassies, airports and nuclear plants. Wackenhut is clearly aligned with the global-military-industrial-security-surveillance-complex. In the age of the privatization of security and surveillance, Wackenhut has gained enormous profits and power, is all pervasive and has grown into a gargantuan lethal Frankenstein.

FBI’s dubious record in masterminding false flag terror operations
The evidence is so overwhelming that it is barely an issue of debate, as the facts have been well documented, recorded and present in the public domain.
In an excellent article, Glenn Greenwald – who along with Edward Snowden has single-handedly exposed the global surveillance programme run by the American NSA, CIA and the FBI – says that the dearth of genuine terrorists in America is so acute that the FBI actually has to go out of its way to find and create terrorists.
The strategy of the FBI is as follows. It sends in its vast network of informants, criminals and/or agents into the communities looking for individuals that they can prey on and radicalize. Once they zero on the prey, they begin the process of ideological radicalization, supply of money, training in arms and weapons and finally set them up to carry out a terror attack. This entire programme could carry on for over a year if required. Then at the very last moment the patsy is apprehended with dud weapons supplied by the FBI, which essentially takes the credit for preventing a terror attack and defending the homeland from terrorists.

The FBI setting up a patsy, providing him with a suicide-bombing vest
Judge Napolitano is a former New Jersey superior court judge, a senior judicial analyst, a syndicated columnist and a distinguished professor at the Brooklyn Law School. He has written nine books on constitutional, legal, and political subjects. He has also been waging a struggle to expose the FBI and the policy of entrapment of innocent citizens.In this popular video, “The FBI Creates, Then ‘Foils’ Terror Plots – False Flags Exposed”, Judge Napolitano goes on to expose the FBI and its false flag terror operations.

In his brilliant article in the New York Times published in April 2012, David Shipler makes a strong case to expose the strategy whereby the FBI are manufacturing terror plots and entrapping ordinary citizens:

“The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the FBI, whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.”
Thomas Fuentes, the former FBI assistant director goes on to explain the economics that perpetuates the cycle of national security budgets and the strategy of false flag terror operations.
The answer is simple. In thewordsof former FBI assistant director, Thomas Fuentes: “If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that ‘We won the war on terror and everything’s great,’ cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half.”
In their path-breaking study, John Mueller and Mark Stewart analyse the politics of terrorism and the sheer futility of the current strategy to combat terror, merely “chasing ghosts”, a problem that they say is highly overblown and exaggerated. This leads to increasing drain on national resources and more worryingly a crackdown on civil liberties and the increasing reach of an opaque security state. The odds that an American will be killed by a domestic terrorist any given year is about one in 4 million.
In “Chasing Ghosts: The Politics of Terrorism”, Mershon affiliates John Mueller and Mark Stewart show that the effort has not, statistically speaking, been efficient or successful. Only one alarm in 10,000 has proven to be a legitimate threat – the rest are what Mueller and Stewart call “Chasing Ghosts.” The ghosts are enormous drains on resources and contribute to a countrywide paranoia and has resulted in widespread support for (and minimal critical questioning of) massive expenditures and infringement on civil liberties, including regular invasions of privacy and legally questionable imprisonments.Mueller and Stewart contend that the “ghost chase” occupying American law and enforcement agencies and fuelling federal spending persists because the public has been led to believe that the terrorism threat is significant. As they show, it is not as significant threat – certainly not large enough to justify the vast security state apparatus that has emerged to combat it.

The chance that an American will be killed by a terrorist domestically any given year is about one in 4 million. Yet despite the statistically low risk and the extraordinary amount of resources put towards combating threats, Americans still worry and the government still spends billions.

Until the true threat of terror is understood, Mueller and Stewart argue that the country cannot begin to confront whether our pursuit of ghosts is worth the cost.

(John Mueller is a senior research scientist and Wood Hayes Chair Emeritus at the Ohio University. He is the author of 18 books, including “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006). Mark Stewart is director of the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia. He has more than 25 years of experience in probabilistic and vulnerability assessment of infrastructure and security systems.)

In conclusion
Just a few days prior to the Orlando False Flag, for the first time in years, American Muslims held their heads high, even as their nation and all of the world, discussed the greatness of Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer and truly the greatest of all times. Muhammad Ali’s life was discussed, his views on politics, which very few successful sportsmen truly have the courage or the vision to speak-out, thus very significant for the times that we live in. His stand against the Vietnam War, his support for Palestine, his outspokenness and contribution to the movement for racial equality were all widely appreciated with adulation. His views on liberal Islam were also widely discussed and he stood for the co-existence of people of various religions, cultures and ethnicities, he believed in the celebration of our diversities.

Muhammad Ali was once again the hero of a new generation of Muslims and secular liberals across the world. All this made it possible for American Muslims to stand up with a degree of pride and self-respect, in being both good Muslims and Americans – with Muhammad Ali being the role model!

All of a sudden it was chic and cool to be an American Muslim!

But the Orlando False Flag terror attack has ensured that the gains of the last few days have once again been sadly reversed, with the possibilities of dire consequences which cannot be understated.

Thus it is being widely discussed that one of the key reasons for the Orlando False Flag was to counter the gains that the American Muslim community made due to the positive discussions that emerged around the passing away of the Great Muhammad Ali. There are many vested interests both within America and the global level who wish to see the state of affairs carry along the path of divisions, intolerance, hatreds, of more violence, wars and suffering.

In the aftermath of the Orlando terror attack, leading American Muslims had issued a statement on June 13. Excerpt:

On behalf of the American Muslim community, we, the undersigned, want to extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the barbaric assault that occurred early yesterday morning at Pulse, an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We unequivocally say that such an act of hate-fueled violence has no place in any faith, including Islam. As people of faith, we believe that all human beings have the right to safety and security and that each and every human life is inviolable.
Three days ago, Americans honored the memory of one of the greatest and most beloved men in American history: Muhammad Ali, who was a devout Muslim. The Islam Muhammad Ali followed is one of love, tolerance, and respect for all. American Muslims everywhere felt that he ended, once and for all, the vacuous claim that one cannot be both Muslim and American.

We, as American Muslims, follow the openhearted and inclusive Islam of Muhammad Ali and completely reject the hatred, provincialism, and intolerance of those who trample upon the rights of others, besmirching and defiling the name of Islam. The criminal who took the lives of dozens of patrons of the Orlando nightclub and injured many others was an aggressor, plain and simple.

The Orlando terror attack once again lays bare the imperial neo-conservative strategy of “controlled chaos”, leading to a perpetual state of fear, confusion, visceral hatreds and divisions, whereby the masses are more pliant to control under the “unchallengeable” slogan of “national security”. The increasing tentacles of the surveillance system, the crackdown on civil liberties, the promotion of more interventionist wars abroad, the muzzling of dissent and the increasing control of the corporate media and its hegemonic narrative, create an atmosphere whereby democratic and constitutional principles and institutions are being ceaselessly weakened.

The politics of false flag terrorism, whereby the national security agencies, in close coordination with private security corporations, justify their ever-expanding budgets by planning and orchestrating terror attacks has now been well documented and proven beyond doubt. There have been many whistleblowers from within the security system that have courageously stepped forward to expose the rot and the corruption that lies within the corridors of power. They have exposed the evil designs of the ruling elite who play with the ordinary lives of billions of people across the world.

In the course of the last two decades, the slogan ‘War against Terror’ has only led to a cycle of even more wars and more terror, with suffering caused to millions of dead and even millions more who are seeking refuge to escape their war-torn nations. The world has not witnessed a tragedy on this scale since the dark days of WWII, unfolding before our very eyes.

Even as the world hurtles towards a precipice, more people across the world than ever before are aware of the nefarious plots of the globalist cabal and the challenges that confront us. But how do we resist and expose this gargantuan monster is the question.

The answer lies in reaching out to each other as human beings, across religions and cultures, across nations, sharing information and insights, speaking out with courage, asking questions, seeking answers – where there are none. Yet, stating the truth with a belief in our individual conscience, in the ‘still small voice’ that Mahatma Gandhi referred to in times of great distress, a belief in our collective humanity and the common destiny that awaits us all.

Feroze Mithiborwala is a peace activist in Mumbai. He led the Asia to Gaza peace flotilla.

24 June 2016

By Chiqui Guyjoco

The Chaldean Patriarchate invited Iraqi Christians in the war-torn country to celebrate the Holy Ramadan with their fellow Muslim citizens as a symbolic gesture of solidarity.

Heeding the call of Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, Iraqi Christians joined Iraqi Muslims Friday, June 17 in celebrating the holy month of Ramadan by fasting and prayer.

“In this way we just wanted to propose a Christian gesture: as Christians, we are confident that fasting and prayer, also shared with others, can work miracles, while weapons and military interventions only kill,” Sako told Agenzia Fides.

Muslims around the world celebrate Ramadan by dawn to dusk with fasting and intense prayer. They commemorate the time believed when Allah revealed the Quran to Prophet Muhammad.

The Christians also accompanied their symbolic gesture with acts of charity as they pray for peace and stability in a country that’s ravaged by Islamic State terrorists and produced a large number of internally displaced people.

“Today we will offer, through Caritas Iraq, a contribution of $50 thousand in favor of the refugees of Fallujah,” said Sako.

The patriarch added that they planned to “symbolically offer” Iftar to some Iraqi Muslims as they break the day’s fasting. He noted that although many Muslims expressed gratitude, some Christians abroad criticized their gesture.

Dr. Bob Roberts, a senior pastor of Northwood Church who helped pen the landmark document Marrakesh Declaration that aimed to better Christian-Muslim relations worldwide, denounced the unloving attitude adopted by fellow Christian Americans toward Muslims as detrimental to Christian-Muslim relations.

Roberts believe that hateful comments Christians make against the Muslims only add to Christian persecution in predominantly Muslim countries.

“We are creating a nightmare for Christians around the world,” Roberts told The Christian Post. “Christians actually increase Christian persecution around the world in America by being hateful to Muslims. And those are your brothers in Christ. The world is connected.”

23 June 2016

By Martin Kreikenbaum

The number of people around the globe displaced by war, armed conflict and persecution at the end of 2015 was higher than ever before. A report titled Global Trends, published on World Refugee Day by the UNHCR, counted 65.3 million displaced persons, the first time it has surpassed 60 million since the collection of figures began in 1951.

Compared to the previous year, the number of people forced to flee rose by 5.8 million. Compared to 2011, when the UN refugee agency reported a new record of 42.5 million, the number has risen by more than 50 percent.

Although the document fails to name those responsible for this global humanitarian crisis, it demonstrates very clearly the extent of the suffering and persecution caused by the continuous wars waged by the US and its Western European allies over the past two-and-a-half decades in the name of human rights and combatting terrorism.

According to the UNHCR, 12.4 million people were forced to flee their homes last year, of which 8.6 million sought refuge within their own countries and are now dependent on aid to survive as internally displaced people. Every minute, 24 people were driven from their homes, or 34,000 per day.

The number forced to flee from persecution, armed conflict, rampant violence or human rights violations surpassed the population of Britain or France. A fictional “nation of refugees” would come in 21st place in a list of the states with the largest populations. Today, one out of every 113 people is either an asylum seeker, internally displaced or a refugee.

In each of the categories into which the UN divides refugees, new tragic records were reached. Internally displaced people now number 40.8 million; there are 3.2 million waiting on the outcome of asylum applications and 21.3 million were forced to flee their country of origin as refugees. More than half of all refugees are children and young people. The number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum as refugees has trebled to 98,000.

A list of the main countries of origin for refugees sheds a stark light on the crimes of the imperialist powers, which have laid waste to wide areas of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Africa, thereby provoking the global refugee crisis.

By financing and providing military support to Islamist forces, the US encouraged the outbreak of a civil war in Syria in 2011 which created the conditions for the establishment of ISIS. Together with the US-led air strikes on ISIS militias, which in turn treat the local population with brutality, the war for regime change has forced more than 11.6 million people to flee in the past five years. Out of a total population of 20 million, every second Syrian is a refugee.

From Afghanistan, where the US led a military invasion in 2001 as part of a “war on terror” that destroyed large areas of the country, 2.7 million people fled across the country’s borders and 1.2 million have become internally displaced. The war in Iraq has to date forced 4.9 million from their homes, the majority of which are cared for internally by the UNHCR.

The UN report focused in particular on the rapidly worsening situation in Yemen. Within a year, almost 10 percent of the population has been forced to flee. Around 2.5 million are internally displaced, while 169,900 have fled abroad. The reason for this is the war waged by Saudi Arabia, the United States’ closest ally in the region. After Houthi rebels overthrew the Saudi and US-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi in January 2015, Saudi Arabia intervened with air strikes and ground troops, resulting in the deaths of at least 6,000 civilians.

This intervention was not only given the full backing of the US government, it was carried out with participation and support of the Pentagon. US President Barack Obama had previously vastly expanded the drone war in Yemen, subjecting the impoverished population to criminal air strikes.

Another major source of global refugees is Central Africa, where, along with the US, it is above all the European powers who have acted militarily in the name of “humanitarian interventions” to secure important supplies of raw materials and markets.

The UNHRC counted 4 million refugees and internally displaced people from Sudan, 2.5 million from South Sudan, 2.4 million from Somalia, 2.9 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1 million from the Central African Republic, 2.4 million from Nigeria, 475,000 from Eritrea, 450,000 from Libya and 280,000 from Mali.

The coup in Ukraine orchestrated by the US and Germany, which brought fascistic forces to power, forced almost 2 million people to leave their homes. Above all as a result of the separatist war in the east of the country, which was a direct product of the coup, 1.6 million people have been forced to flee internally.

But while the imperialist powers have caused the global refugee crisis, they are doing virtually nothing to accommodate and care for the refugees. According to the UNHCR report, 86 percent of the 21.3 million refugees have sought protection in low and middle income countries directly bordering conflict regions. In the least developed countries, 4.2 million refugees were accepted.

Top of the list for accommodating refugees is Turkey, where 2.5 million are struggling to survive. However, Turkey, as the border guard for Fortress Europe, has already closed its border to Syrian refugees. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 60 Syrian refugees have been shot on the Turkish border since the beginning of the year.

There are 1.1 million refugees are living in Lebanon, which has a population of 4 million, 1.6 million in Pakistan, 1 million in Iran, 750,000 in Ethiopia and 700,000 in Jordan.

“More people are being displaced by war and persecution and that’s worrying in itself, but the factors that endanger refugees are multiplying too,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grand. “At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year; on land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders.”

Grandi was concerned above all with calls to abandon the Geneva Refugee Convention, which are mainly being raised within the EU. For this, he blamed racist agitation by governments and the media.

This contrasted, Grandi said, with the widespread willingness to help among the population, which is resisting the persistent xenophobia.

“In contrast to the toxic narrative repeatedly played out in the media, we have often witnessed an outpouring of generosity; by host communities, by individuals, and by families opening their homes,” Grandi said. “These ordinary people see refugees not as beggars, competitors for jobs, or terrorists, but as people like you or me whose lives have been disrupted by war. Their simple acts of solidarity are going on around the world, every day.”

Grandi ultimately appealed to the “international community of states” to increase financial support as well as the willingness to accept refugees. But it is precisely the aggressive foreign policy of the imperialist powers, and their strict closed border policy which is producing misery for refugees.

This article was first published in www.wsws.org

22 June 2016

By Pepe Escobar

So what started as a gamble by David Cameron on an outlet for domestic British discontent, to be used as a lever to bargain with Brussels for a few more favors, has metastasized into an astonishing political earthquake about the dis-integration of the European Union.

The irrepressibly mediocre Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, posing as a “historian”, had warned that Brexit, “could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but Western political civilization in its entirety”.

That’s foolish. Brexit proved that it’s immigration, stupid. And once again, it’s the economy, stupid (although the British neoliberal establishment never paid attention). But serious bets can be made the EU system in Brussels won’t learn anything from the shock therapy – and won’t reform itself. There will be rationalizations that after all the UK was always classically whiny, obtrusive and demanding special privileges when dealing with the EU. As for “Western political civilization”, what will end – and this is a big thing — is the special transatlantic relationship between the US and the EU with Britain as an American Trojan Horse.

So of course this all goes monumentally beyond a mere match between a hopelessly miscalculating Cameron, now fallen on his sword, and the recklessly ambitious court jester Boris Johnson – a Donald Trump with better vocabulary and speech patterns.

Scotland, predictably, voted Remain, and may probably hold a new referendum — and leave the UK — rather than be dragged out by white working class English votes. Sinn Fein already wants a vote on united Ireland. Denmark, the Netherlands and even Poland and Hungary will want special status inside the EU, or else. Across Europe, the extreme right stampede is on. Marine Le Pen wants a French referendum. Geert Wilders wants a Dutch referendum. As for the vast majority of British under-25s who voted Remain, they may be contemplating one-way tickets not to the continent, but beyond.

Show me the people

Anglo-French historian Robert Tombs has remarked that when Europeans talk about history they refer to the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Great Britain is somewhat overlooked. In reciprocity, quite a few Britons still consider Europe an entity that should be kept at a safe distance.

To compound the problem, this is not a “Europe of peoples”. Brussels absolutely detests European public opinion, and the system exhibits an iron resistance to reform. This current EU project that ultimately aims at a federation, modeled on the US, does not cut it in most of Britain. Arguably this is one of the key reasons behind Brexit – which for its part has already disunited the kingdom and may eventually downgrade it into a tiny trading post on the edge of Europe.

Lacking a “European people”, the Brussels system could not but be articulated as a Kafkaesque, unelected bureaucracy. Moreover, the representatives of this people-deprived Europe in Brussels actually defend what they consider to be their national interest, and not the “European” interest.

Brexit though does not mean Britain will be free from the dictates of the European Commission (EC). The EC does propose policy, but nothing can be followed through without decisions from the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which group representatives of all elected governments of member states.

Arguably Remain, in the best possible case, would have led to some soul-searching in Brussels, and a wake-up call, translating into a more flexible monetary policy; a push to contain immigration inside African borders; and more opening towards Russia. The UK would remain in Europe giving more weight to countries outside the eurozone while Germany would concentrate on the 19-member eurozone nations.

So Remain would have led to the UK increasing its politico-economic weight in Brussels while Germany would be more open to moderate growth (instead of austerity). Although Britain arguably would wince at the notion of a future eurozone Treasure Minister, a European FBI and a European Minister of the Interior, in fact the whole notion of a complete economic and monetary union.

That’s all water under the bridge now. Additionally, don’t forget the mighty single market drama.

The UK not only will lose duty-free access to the EU’s single market of 500 million people; it will have to renegotiate every single trade deal with the rest of the world since all of them have been EU-negotiated. French economy minister and presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron has already warned that, “if the UK wants a commercial access treaty to the European market, the British must contribute to the European budget like the Norwegians and the Swiss do. If London doesn’t want that, then it must be a total exit.” Britain will be locked out of the single market – to which over 50% of its exports go — unless it pays almost all that it currently pays. Moreover, London must still accept freedom of movement, as in European immigration.

The City gets a black eye

Brexit defeated an overwhelming array of what Zygmunt Bauman defined as the global elites of liquid modernity; the City of London, Wall Street, the IMF, the Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), major hedge/investment funds, the whole interconnected global banking system.

The City of London, predictably, voted Remain by over 75%. An overwhelming $2.7 trillion is traded every day in the “square mile”, which employs almost 400,000 people. And it’s not only the square mile, as the City now also includes Canary Wharf (HQ of quite a few big banks) and Mayfair (privileged hang out of hedge funds).

The City of London – the undisputed financial capital of Europe — also manages a whopping $1.65 trillion of client assets, wealth literally from all over the planet. In Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson argues, “financial services companies have flocked to London because it lets them do what they cannot do at home”.

Unbridled deregulation coupled with unrivalled influence on the global economic system amount to a toxic mix. So Brexit may also be interpreted as a vote against corruption permeating England’s most lucrative industry.

Things will change. Drastically. There will be no more “passporting”, by which banks can sell products for all 28 EU members, accessing a $19 trillion integrated economy. All it takes is a HQ in London and a few satellite mini-offices. Passporting will be up for fierce negotiation, as well as what happens to London’s euro-denominated trading floors.

I followed Brexit out of Hong Kong – which 19 years ago had its own Brexit, actually saying bye bye to the British Empire to join China. Beijing is worried that Brexit will translate into capital outflows, “depreciation pressure” on the yuan, and disturbance of the Bank of China’s management of monetary policy.

Brexit could even seriously affect China-EU relations, as Beijing in thesis might lose influence in Brussels without British support. It’s crucial to remember that Britain backed an investment pact between China and the EU and a joint feasibility study on a China-EU free trade agreement.

He Weiwen, co-director of the China-US-EU Study Centre under the China Association of International Trade, part of the Ministry of Commerce, is blunt; “The European Union is likely to adopt a more protectionist approach when dealing with China. For Chinese companies which have set up headquarters or branches in the UK, they may not be able to enjoy tariff-free access to the wider European market after Britain leave the EU.”

That applies, for instance, to leading Chinese high-tech companies like Huawei and Tencent. Between 2000 and 2015, Britain was the top European destination for Chinese direct investment, and was the second-largest trading partner with China inside the EU.

Still, it may all revert into a win-win for China. Germany, France and Luxembourg – all of them competing with London for the juicy offshore yuan business – will increase their role. Chen Long, economist with Bank of Dongguan, is confident “the European continent, especially Central and Eastern European countries, will be more actively involved in China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ programs.”

So will Britain become the new Norway? It’s possible. Norway did very well after rejecting EU membership in a 1995 referendum. It will be a long and winding road before Article 50 is invoked and a two-year UK-EU negotiation in uncharted territory starts. Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling summed it all up; “Nobody has a clue what ‘Out’ looks like.”

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). His latest book is Empire of Chaos. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.