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By Eric Zuesse

Saudi Arabia, owned by the Saud family, are telling the U.S. Government, they’ll wreck the U.S. economy, if a bill in the U.S. Congress that would remove the unique and exclusive immunity the royal owners of that country enjoy in the United States, against their being prosecuted for their having financed the 9/11 attacks, passes in Congress, and becomes U.S. law.

As has been well documented even in sworn U.S. court testimony, and as even the pro-Saudi former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged privately, “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” She didn’t name any of those “donors” names, but the former bagman for Osama bin Laden, who had personally collected all of the million-dollar+ donations (all in cash) to Al Qaeda, did, and he named all of the senior Saud princes and their major business-associates; and, he said, “without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” So, both before 9/11, and (according to Hillary Clinton) since, those were the people who were paying virtually all of the salaries of the 19 hijackers — even of the four who weren’t Saudi citizens. Here’s that part of the bagman’s testimony about how crucial those donations were:

Q: To clarify, you’re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?
A: They do, absolutely.

So: being a jihadist isn’t merely a calling; it’s also a job, as is the case for the average mercenary (for whom it doesn’t also have to be a calling). The payoff for that job, during the jihadist’s life, is the pay. The bagman explained that the Saud family’s royals pay well for this service to their fundamentalist-Sunni faith. Another lifetime-payoff to the jihadists is that, in their fundamentalist-Sunni culture, the killing of ‘infidels’ is a holy duty, and they die as martyrs. Thus, the jihadist’s payoff in the (mythological) afterlife is plenty of virgins to deflower etc. But, the payers (the people who organize it, and who make it all possible) are the Saud family princes, and their business associates — and, in the case of the other jihadist organizations, is also those other Arabic royal families (the owners of Qater, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman). However, 9/11 was virtually entirely a Saudi affair, according to Al Qaeda’s bagman (who ought to know).

The report of the threat by the Saud family comes in veiled form in an April 15th news-story in The New York Times, headlined, “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.” It says that the Saud family’s Foreign Minister is “telling [U.S.] lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in [U.S.] treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.” The NYT says that this threat is nothing to take seriously, “But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” While the carrying-out of this threat would be extremely damaging to the Saud family, the NYT ignores the size of the threat to the Sauds if their 9/11 immunity were removed — which could be far bigger. Consequently, this matter is actually quite a bit more than just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

Russian Television is more direct here: “Saudi Arabia appears to be blackmailing the US, saying it would sell off American assets worth a 12-digit figure sum in dollars if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi Government to be held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” (The Saudi Government is owned by the Saud family; so, even that statement is actually a veiled way of referring to the possibility that members of the royal Saud family — the individuals name by the bagman — could be held responsible for 9/11.)

Even immediately in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there had been some mentions in the U.S. press of the U.S. Government making special allowances for Saud Prince Bandar al-Saud, a close friend of the Bush family (and he was also one of the Saudi Princes mentioned specifically by the bagman), to fly out of the country to avoid being sought by prosecutors. Furthermore, Newsweek’s investigative journalist, Michael Isikoff, headlined on 12 January 2001, “The Saudi Money Trail”, and he reported statements from royal Sauds, that they didn’t really mean for their donations to be going to such a thing as this. (Perhaps those individuals didn’t, but Bandar almost certainly did, because he was the Saud Ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11.) However, now that the U.S. Government is relying heavily upon Saudi money to pay for the U.S. weapons and to help to organize the operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria and to replace him with a fundamentalist-Sunni leader, there is renewed political pressure in the United States (from the victim-families, if no one else), for the arch-criminals behind the 9/11 attacks to be brought to American justice. After fifteen years, this process might finally start. That would be a drastic change.

Clearly, the threat from the Sauds is real, and the royal response to this bill in the U.S. Congress reflects a very great fear the owners of Saudi Arabia have, regarding the possible removal of their U.S. immunity, after 15 years.

Prosecution of those people will become gradually impossible as they die off. But a lot more time will be needed in order for all of the major funders of that attack to die natural deaths and thus become immune for a natural reason — the immunity of the grave. The U.S. Government has protected them for 15 years; but, perhaps, not forever.

To say that this threat from the Sauds is just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States” seems like saying that a neighbor’s threat to bomb your house would constitute just “another sign of escalating tensions” between you and your neighbor. The passing-into-law of this bill in Congress would actually constitute a change from the U.S. Government being a friend and partner of the Sauds, to becoming their enemy.

Obviously, there is little likelihood of that happening; and, on April 20th and 21st, U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Salman al-Saud. Without a doubt, this topic will be on the agenda, if it won’t constitute the agenda (which is allegedly to improve U.S. relations “with Arab leaders of Persian Gulf nations” — not specifically with Saudi King Salman and with his son Prince Salman).

If President Obama represents the American public, then the Sauds will have real reason to fear: the U.S. President will not seek to block passage of that bill in Congress. However, if the U.S. President represents instead the Saud family, then a deal will be reached. Whether or not the U.S. Congress will go along with it, might be another matter, but it would be highly likely, considering that the present situation has already been going on for fifteen years, and that the high-priority U.S. Government foreign-policy objective, of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, is also at stake here, and is also strongly shared not only by the Sauds but by the members of the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, the impunity of the Saud family is taken simply as a given in Washington. And, the U.S. Government’s siding with the Sauds in their war against Shia Muslims (not only against one Shiite: Assad) goes back at least as far as 1979. (Indeed, the CIA drew up the plan in 1957 to overthrow Syria’s Ba’athist Government, but it stood unused until President Obama came into office.)

Furthermore, the U.S. Government is far more aggressive to overthrow Russia-friendly national leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych, than it is to stop the spread of fundamentalist Sunni groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.; and, a strong voice for U.S. foreign policy, the Polish Government, even said, on April 15th, that as AFP headlined that day, “Russia ‘more dangerous than Islamic State’, warns Poland foreign minister”; and Russia itself is, along with Shiite Iran, the top competitor against the fundamentalist Sunni Arab royal families in global oil-and-gas export markets. So, clearly, the U.S. Government is tightly bound to the Saud family. Terrorism in Europe and America is only a secondary foreign-policy concern to America’s leaders; and the Saud family are crucial allies with the U.S. Government in regards to what are, jointly, the top concerns of both Governments.

Consequently, there is widespread expectation that some sort of deal will be reached between U.S. President Barack Obama and the Saudi leaders, King and Prince Salman, and that the Republican-led Congress will rubber-stamp it, rather than pass the proposed bill to strip the Saud family’s immunity.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
18 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

 

By Franklin Lamb

“It was a place to connect to your history, to your identity and to tell others, who were not from Aleppo or Syria: “This is where we are from. This is who we are.” This is where you come to encounter your roots. It was a place that existed forever, a place we thought would exist long after we were gone. But we were wrong.” (Amal Hanano, Lessons from the Minaret, 2013)

For the past two months, since the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee amended legislative proposal H.R. 1493, known as the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act , the key bill has picked up stream on Capitol Hill with bi-partisan support. This week (4/13/2016), the full senate passed the measure by unanimous consent. This important legislation, which is expected to become law in the coming weeks, given its strong support also on the House side of Congress, calls for emergency import restrictions on at-risk Syrian cultural property within 90 days of President Obama’s signature. Rather than establishing a rather controversial cultural heritage czar called for in an earlier version, H.R. 1493 now calls for an inter-agency executive committee to protect international cultural property.

This observer has been advised by two Congressional sources that concerns for the restoration of our shared global cultural heritage in Syria, widespread relief that Palmyra has been liberated from ISIS iconoclasm, and American public support for the repair and restoration of Palmyra’s treasures, are major reasons for moving the tough new and most welcomed ban on Syrian cultural property forward.

These concerns are global and being widely debated this spring, especially by archeological organizations. Among a growing number of diverse organizations that continue to monitor damage to Syrian cultural heritage and who are joining the debate and often voicing disparate and occasionally emotionally antithetical views with respect to our shared global cultural heritage in Syria are the following:

Aga Khan Trust for Culture the Co-coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA), ASOR, Avaaz, , Heritage and development, International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), International Council on Archives (ICA), International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), International Council of Museums (ICOM), , Libraries without Borders/Bibliothèques sans Frontières, Peace Palace Library. Research Guide Cultural Heritage, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Blue Shield International, Canadian Conservation Institute, Conservation Center for Art & historic artefacts, Conservation OnLine (CoOL), History of Historic Royal Palaces, Hornemann Insitut, IFLA’s work on preserving cultural heritage, Image Permanence Institute, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (ICC), International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Le laboratoire de conservation, restauration et recherches de Draguignan, Portal Euromed Heritage Digital Resources, ,Preserving History. How to Digitally Archive and Share Historical Photographs, Documents, and Audio Recordings, The Shirin NGO (www.shirin-international.org), The Getty Conservation Institute, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

There are many contributing to this rapidly expanding dialogue and sometimes boisterous and even accusatory debate.

Avaaz, is circulating a Petition against UNESCO and Russian plans to reconstruct Palmyra. It states in part: “We, the undersigned, urge the international community and its cultural organizations and academic institutions to help protecting the Syrian heritage and sparing it the political, ethnic, sectarian, or business agendas of the fighting groups in the Syrian conflict and their global backers. …We regret that UNESCO Director General “reiterated her full support for the restoration of Palmyra” without first considering the ramifications of such a hasty statement.

The intention of UNESCO and other organizations to engage in a restoration and reconstruction process of the ancient site of Palmyra right now is both inopportune and unrealistic. Millions of Syrians are still suffering the enormous consequences of this bloody war. Among them are the people of Palmyra who have experienced and continue to experience loss of life, detention, displacement, and the devastating destruction of their homes and heritage.” But we firmly oppose any hasty reconstruction initiated by UNESCO and carried out by parties directly involved in the Syrian tragedy.”

Restoring Palmyra: Yes! Hastily: No!!!

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has made public its views “Against Rushing to Conclusions about Palmyra Damage.” ICOM warns against rushing to draw conclusions about the damage inflicted by ISIS terrorists on the world heritage site of Palmyra, ICOM’s director of Programs and Partnerships advised this week.

“Assessment is what we need so far, because no official international mission has been there in a couple of years, we have not assessed the situation of heritage,” France Desmarais said advising that “There are three words that we need to remember when we talk about this – professionalism, independence and integrity, and we want to make sure that whatever assessment is conducted it should be of course done with national and international experts of diverse institutions and expertise and it needs to be done thoroughly. Any quick assessment that would be done for communication purposes would not be welcome.”

Other experts and academics are also skeptical, believing that the task will take many years and resources, that some sites are beyond repair, and that others might never be restored to their former glory. They argue as Syrian archeologist and refugee Mr. Azm has that “It’s still early days,” “This is all going to take a long time.”

The Shirin NGO (www.shirin-international.org) will soon release a blunt motion challenging a project of reconstruction of Palmyra, a result of recent talks between UNESCO Director General and the President of Russia. According to the Shirin-International Board of Directors, their motion, “written by professional archaeologists and Directors of excavations in Syria until 2010/11 will be sent to a large number of institutions and organizations, including to UNESCO and its satellite agencies, universities, press agencies, chancelleries.”

Avaaz, noted above, is circulating another Petition against UNESCO and Russian plans to reconstruct Palmyra. It states in part: “We, the undersigned, urge the international community and its cultural organizations and academic institutions to help protecting the Syrian heritage and sparing it the political, ethnic, sectarian, or business agendas of the fighting groups in the Syrian conflict and their global backers. We regret that UNESCO Director General “reiterated her full support for the restoration of Palmyra” without first considering the ramifications of such a hasty statement. The intention of UNESCO and other organizations to engage in a restoration and reconstruction process of the ancient site of Palmyra right now is both inopportune and unrealistic. Millions of Syrians are still suffering the enormous consequences of this bloody war. Among them are the people of Palmyra who have experienced and continue to experience loss of life, detention, displacement, and the devastating destruction of their homes and heritage. And we firmly oppose any hasty reconstruction initiated by UNESCO and carried out by parties directly involved in the Syrian tragedy.”

Some inside and outside of Syria question whether limited government resources should be used restoring ruins while half of Syria’s population remains displaced, including thousands from Palmyra, and others are killed in daily fighting and airstrikes that are hallmarks of its five-year-old conflict. They suggest that there is an international responsibility to preserve and protect our shared cultural heritage.

Karen Leigh, deputy Middle East bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal explained to this observer recently that some are advocating that while Palmyra was built with stone and mortar, it must be rebuilt with computers and drones and with the new technology. She wrote: “Some are urging UNESCO to use drones to get a bird’s-eye view of areas needing repair, not just at Syria’s six UN World Heritage Sites but at countless other sites around Syria.

Three-dimensional reconstructions will aid precise repairs. Radar scanning will be used to view and assess any damage to underground structures such as the city’s Roman-era catacombs.

Francesco Bandarin, assistant director-general for culture at UNESCO. Opined, “A machine in one or two hours gives you a perfect reconstruction of an object, whereas before it would take weeks and weeks. But don’t expect Palmyra will be rebuilt in a day. This will be years and years of painful work,” he added noting that the continuing reconstruction at Cambodia’s Angkor, similar to some of Palmyra’s sites in scope, has taken decades after war and nature took their toll.

Stefan Simon, director of the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University, expresses the hope “that colleagues can travel to Syria with sophisticated equipment and scanners can go to Palmyra.”

Nasser Rabbat, director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues that strict views on conservation could impair Palmyra’s reconstruction efforts: Technological improvements aren’t a substitute for knowledge held by the generations of Syrian historians who lovingly restored the city’s columns and stones. It is not that we have lost things that have stood as they were for 2,000 years. What we have lost is the effort, the intellectual and labor effort, of generations of restorers who worked on this city.”

Shall we 3D print a new Palmyra?

The Institute for Digital Archaeology hopes 3-D models of Palmyra’s sites will result in their detailed reconstructions which helps produce a replica of Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph and other structures. Others criticize this approach and worry about creating ‘kitch antiquates.’

Many archeologists argue that 3D printing fails to capture the authenticity of the original structures, amounting to little more than the Disneyfication or McDonaldization of heritage. They also point out that the fighting is still ongoing: some estimates suggest that half a million Syrians are dead, millions are displaced, and perhaps 50%-70% of the nearby town has been destroyed. Given the pressing humanitarian needs, stabilization alone should be the priority for now.

The international community is also playing a role. Groups like UNOSAT, the UN’s satellite imagery analysts have used satellite imagery to monitor the damage. On the ground, Syrian-founded NGOs like APSA have linked with universities to assess the site. Groups such as NewPalmyra and Palmyra 3D Model are using the latest technology to create open-access 3D computer models from photographs.

Still others claim that rebuilding archeological sites fail to redress the loss caused by the extensive looting of the site, focusing only on the dramatically destroyed monuments. Raising questions, for example whether returning Palmyra to its pre-conflict state denies a major chapter of its history and suggesting that what is required is wide-ranging discussion on the priorities for the immediate future and the nature of any future reconstruction.

Some aver that at each repaired archeological site that there must be a memorial as a testimony to those beheaded in the arena, or tied to columns that were detonated etc because their stories are also part of Syria’s, history. Others insist that while Palmyra may hold great interest to the world, the final decision should belong to those who have lived in and around it, took care of it for centuries managed it, fought for it, and protected it for generations: the Syrian people.

Syria’s Director of Antiquities, Dr. Maamoun Abdul-Karim has recently urged that Palmyra must not just “rise again”, It must not be turned into a fake replica of its former glory. Instead, what remains of this ancient city after its destruction by Isis – and that is mercifully more than many people feared –perhaps 80%, should be tactfully, sensitively and honestly preserved. DGAM Director Abdelkarim promised that 100 years of experience in conservation, including on the grand avenues and public buildings of Palmyra, would be put to immediate use but also called for international support. “We have to send a message against terrorism that we are united in protecting our heritage,” he said. “We will never accept that the children of Syrian and the world visit the site of Baalshamin and Bel and the victory arch while they are lying in ruins on the ground. We will rebuild them.”

The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums at the Syrian Ministry of Culture is currently assessing the damage inflicted on the ancient city along with its museum in order to be able to set plans and visions for emergency and urgent intervention through adopting a clear and scientific method (the castle of Palmyra, the gate of the Temple of Bel, the structure of the museum, the damaged statues). In addition, the DGAM is preparing the architectural and constructional plans for our future restoration works within definite deadlines; this is because a large part of the architectural elements of the damaged monuments can be reused in restoration so as to retain the city’s originality and identity.

Wrote Dr. Abdul-Karim to this observer on 4/13/2016, “Some speculations and statements, made by some who do not belong to our institution, speak of our intention to rebuild the city utilizing 3D technologies as well as constructing modern buildings. These, unquestionably, are in complete contrast to our vision at the DGAM, which has been well-reputed for its scientific professionalism for almost 100 years since it was established. It has helped rescue the majority of artifacts under such exceptional circumstances in the past five years of war. It also carried out emergency restoration works in a number of Syrian ancient cities between 2014 and 2015, including the Ancient City of Homs, Maaloula, the Ancient City of Damascus, Krak des Chevaliers (after its liberation) and a number of other castles on the Syrian coast. Hence, we would like to emphasize that our plans and visions will be devised and designed in cooperation with our national and international partners taking into account international standards and conventions applicable worldwide.”

It has been reported that even after becoming refugees and leaving their beloved country, Syrians have worked to keep a detailed memory of the archeological sites alive. Syrian artists have created artworks depicting destruction in Palmyra and elsewhere. In a Jordanian camp, refugees made miniature models of the city and other cultural sites, even measuring out the number and position of Palmyra’s columns from available photos.

The intensifying international debate over how best to restore and protect our shared global cultural heritage in Syria is positive, relevant, essential and constructive.

And it is quite likely that this discourse will bring new safeguards for saving our past for our future.

Franklin Lamb’s recent book, Syria’s Endangered Heritage, an International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect is available on Amazon and other ebook outlets as well as at www.syrian-heritage.com . Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

16 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Andre Vltchek

They met in Hiroshima, Japan, in the first city on Earth that had been subjected to nuclear genocide. They were representing some of the mightiest nations on Earth: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States – the so-called Group of Seven (G7). And at the end of their encounter, they called for “a world without nuclear weapons”.

I am talking about the foreign ministers of seven countries with the largest economies on Earth.

Read carefully the names of these countries, one by one! For decades and centuries, the world has been trembling imagining their armed forces and corporations. Lashes administered by their colonial rulers have scarred entire continents, tens of millions were enslaved, and hundreds of millions killed, billions robbed.

Even now, if we all listen carefully, we can clearly hear the victims screaming, in agony: the native people of Canada and United States, the colonized people of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. For centuries, the entire world has been in shackles, on its knees, humiliated, plundered and destroyed.

G7! How many billions of victims from all corners of the world, made those countries so ‘grand’?

To ensure that the pillage could continue uninterrupted, the West together with those “honorary whites” (a term that the South African apartheid regime invented exclusively for the Japanese people) created several aggressive and belligerent pacts, including NATO, calling them, of course, “defensive” alliances. It came as no surprise: remember that in the lexicon of the Empire of Lies, war is called peace, while aggression is always defined as defense. But this I have already described in detail, in my 820-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.

Now foreign policy tsars of the “G7” were standing shoulder to shoulder again, in Hiroshima, of all places, and only a few days after the 71st anniversary of the nuclear blast. Making predictable declarations and self-glorifying speeches.

The weather was good, partly sunny, with excellent visibility. But was the world really able to see through the thick fog of Machiavellian cynicism and lies, dispersed all over the Planet by those grinning rulers of the world?

F15 – overflying Kadena air base

On April 11, 2016, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) issued a written declaration on nuclear disarmament:

“We reaffirm our commitment to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons in a way that promotes international stability”.

Seriously? No one around those ministers fell; nobody was seen to be rolling on the floor, shaking from uncontrollable laughter. Obviously, a joke repeated thousands of times loses its luster.

But that was not all. The text of the declaration continued:

“This task is made more complex by the deteriorating security environment in a number of regions, such as Syria and Ukraine, and, in particular by North Korea’s repeated provocations.”

What exactly were we reading? What was between the lines? Were we being told that the United States needs all of its 6,970 nuclear weapons to antagonize Syria and North Korea, while sustaining the fascist regime in Ukraine?

Just to put things into perspective: two Communist countries with nuclear capability have really negligible stockpiles of nuclear weapons, compared to the West and G7. China has 260 and North Korea (DPRK) approximately 15. In comparison, France has 300 and the U.K., 215.

In 2016, the population of China stands at 1.382 million, while that of France is less than 65 million. China has more than 21 times more people to defend, but despite that, France has more nuclear weapons.

The comparison gets even more ridiculous between North Korea and the U.K.

The figures quoted above are the latest “official” statistics, taken from the World Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Report, updated as recently as on March 2, 2016.

It would also be appropriate to recall that North Korea has never invaded any foreign country. Also China (PRC), apart from two brief border clashes, has never been involved in any large-scale military conflict. Not once has it colonized or destroyed a foreign land. Both France and the U.K. have been plundering on all of the planet’s continents, for centuries. Later, in the 20th Century, the United States ‘took over’ the reigns of imperialism from the old and ‘traditional’ European colonialist empires.

One statement is actually correct: there is that deteriorating security environment in a number of regions, but only due to the covert as well as direct aggressions of NATO and the G7 countries.

But it would be even more honest to declare: “We are sorry, we really cannot disarm, because if we would, it would become much more difficult to loot and to control the world.”

Goma, DR Congo – people that are making G7 rich

Before dispersing, the G7 party did what its members enjoy doing the most: lashing at China.

As Reuters reported:

“Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies said they strongly opposed provocation in the East and South China Seas, where China is locked in territorial disputes with nations including the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan… Earlier on Monday, the G7 foreign ministers said after meeting in the Japanese city of Hiroshima that they opposed “any intimidating coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions”.”

The US is habitually implementing that ‘good old’ British ‘divide and rule’ strategy. In Asia, it uses its ‘client’ states, particularly the Philippines, Japan and South Korea to isolate and provoke both China and DPRK. This policy is so dangerous that many here believe that it could eventually trigger the Third World War.

This time, China has fired back, almost immediately. At a news briefing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang declared:

“If the G7 wants to continue playing a major role in the world, it should take an attitude of seeking truth from the facts to handle the issues the international community is most concerned with at the moment.”

The Western military build-up in the Asia Pacific region, the military maneuvers conducted jointly by the US and South Korea, as well as the continuous militarization of Japan, are definitely some of the topics that are making most of the Asian continent both ‘concerned’ and frightened.

Nuclear Dome, Hiroshima, Japan

Predictably, the DPRK remained the main punch bag of the G7. The ministers never explained exactly why the world should be petrified of North Korea. Such fear should apparently be taken for granted, especially after the long decades of intensive and vicious Western and South Korean propaganda.

But back to the statement of the ministers:

“We condemn in the strongest terms the nuclear test on January 6 and the launch using ballistic missile technology on February 7, March 10 and March 18 conducted by North Korea. It is profoundly deplorable that North Korea has conducted four nuclear tests in the 21st century.”

Of course, building defenses against the combined NATO and G7 aggressions is one of the most deplorable crimes, it calls for capital punishment!

Shamelessly, after spreading verbal toxins, all seven ministers went to the grounds of the monument and museum dedicated to the victims of “Hiroshima A-bomb”.

The Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida led the pack. Under the bizarre leadership of his government, Japan has been doing its absolute best to betray Asia, and to antagonize its neighbors. In the most servile and shameful way, it has fully accepted the Western dictates, increased the volume of its own hysterical propaganda campaign against China and DPRK, and has begun to bolster its military.

Why? Just to please its masters, those ‘noble and superior Westerners’!

By now, Japan is not even what its Prime Minister Shinzō Abe wants the world to believe that it is: a conservative nation governed by a nationalist government.

Japan has no spine, just as it has no foreign policy. It fully takes orders from the United States. And as I was told repeatedly by one of the employees of the NHK: “No major media outlet in Japan would dare to broadcast anything important, related to international affairs, that hasn’t appeared previously on at least one of the major US networks.”

Looking at Japan’s past, “conservative nationalists” used to be, for instance, some of the greatest writers like Yukio Mishima, a man who ended his life in 1970 by committing a ritual suicide, protesting Japan’s unabashed submission to the West. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe is definitely a ‘conservative’, but is he really a Japanese nationalist? He is defending the interests of Washington much more than those of his own country. Perhaps, “honorary white and one of G7 leaders” would be the most fitting term to define him.

Now, according to the official NATO website: “Japan is the longest-standing of NATO’s “partners across the globe”.

It is also one of the nations that are shamelessly plundering the world through its brutal corporations.

***

And so they stood there – seven ministers from some of the most aggressive countries on Earth.

They stood on the turf that was, more than 70 years ago, burned to ashes, in just a few seconds after the nuclear explosion.

They said again and again how much they would like to disarm, how much they would like to see the world free of nuclear weapons.

What they didn’t say was that they never would disarm, voluntarily.

And they never clarified how they actually made it to that exclusive G7 club: because of the unbridled plunder during their colonial history, and because of the modern-day global corporate pillage, as well as their mining and oil “investments”. And of course because of the “world order”, imposed by force and all sorts of weapons, nuclear and conventional, on the rest of the Planet.

Instead of Group of Seven, this pack should be simply called ‘GS’ – the Group of Shame.

The ministers stood for some time in front of the flame burning at the monument to Hiroshima A-bomb victims. They posed for the cameras. Then they went away, sat down at some table, and wrote the official declaration on nuclear disarmament, ‘explaining’ why they cannot abandon their tools of coercion. And that declaration turned out to be nothing more than yet another monumental pile of lies!

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.Discussion with Noam Chomsky:On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel.

15 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Patrick Martin

A report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50 largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten.

Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

But the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries overseas, many of them desperately poor.

The $111 billion a year in US taxes evaded would be sufficient to eliminate 90 percent of child poverty in America, effectively wiping out that social scourge. It is more than the annual cost of the food stamp program, or unemployment benefits, or the total budget of the Department of Education.

Oxfam timed the release of its report for the April 15 income tax deadline in the United States (actually Monday, April 18 this year), when tens of millions of working people must file their income tax returns or face federal penalties. Working people could face additional tax penalties of up to 2 percent of household income, to a maximum of $975, under the Obamacare “individual mandate,” if they have not purchased private health insurance.

There is a stark contrast between the IRS hounding of working people for relatively small amounts of money—but difficult or impossible to pay for those on low incomes—and the green light given to corporate tax cheats who evade taxation on trillions in income.

“As Americans rush to finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”

The Oxfam report, titled “Broken at the Top,” expresses concern that “tax dodging by multinational corporations…contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth.”

It continues: “This inequality is fueled by an economic and political system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest, causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and developing countries alike.”

Oxfam collected figures available from the 10-K reports and other financial documents issued by the 50 largest US companies, covering the period since the Wall Street crash, 2008 through 2014, and presented them in an interactive table. The figures included total profits, federal taxes paid, total US taxes paid (including state and local), lobbying expenses, tax breaks, money held in offshore accounts, and benefits received from the federal government, including loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Among the most important findings:

* The top 50 companies made nearly $4 trillion in profits globally, but paid only $412 billion in federal income tax, for an effective tax rate of barely 10 percent, compared to the statutory rate of 35 percent.

* The 50 companies spent $2.6 billion to influence the federal government, while reaping nearly $11.2 trillion in federal support, for an effective return of 400,000 percent on their lobbying expenses.

* The overseas cash stashed by the 50 companies, nearly $1.4 trillion, is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Russia, Mexico, Spain or South Korea.

* US multinationals reported 43 percent of their foreign earnings from five tax havens, countries that accounted for only 4 percent of their foreign workforce and 7 percent of foreign investment. All told, US companies shifted between $500 billion and $700 billion in profits from countries where economic activity actually took place to countries where tax rates were low.

* In the year 2012 alone, US firms reported $80 billion in profits in Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in the four largest economies (after the US itself): China, Japan, Germany and France. This figure was nearly 20 times the total GDP of the tiny island country.

The Oxfam report also pointed to an estimated $100 billion in taxes evaded in foreign countries, many of them rich in natural resources extracted by such global giants as Exxon, Chevron and Dow Chemical. According to the report, “Taxes paid, or unpaid, by multinational companies in poor countries can be the difference between life and death, poverty or opportunity. $100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million citizens. $100 billion is equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.”

The report cited former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assessment that “Africa loses more money each year to tax dodging than it receives in international development assistance.”

Oxfam offered no solution to the growth of inequality and the systematic looting by big corporations that its report documents, except to urge governments around the world to close tax loopholes. The group also pleads with the corporate bosses themselves not to be quite so greedy. Neither capitalist governments nor the CEOs will pay the slightest attention. But the working class should take note of these figures, which provide ample evidence of the bankrupt and reactionary nature of capitalism, and the urgent necessity of building a mass movement, on a global scale, to put an end to the profit system.

15 April, 2016
WSWS.org

 

By Dr Gideon Polya

American President Barack Obama recently hosted and addressed the 4th Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) that is aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism. However an endlessly mendacious Obama ignored the failure over long-term storage of nuclear waste, the unconscionable US Alliance dispersal of depleted uranium in US war zones around the world, and the massive reality of state nuclear terrorism in which Humanity is existentially threatened by the nuclear terrorism of 9 nuclear weapons states, specifically (with upper estimates of nuclear weapons in brackets) the US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (less than 10).

The essence of Obama’s speech [1] is contained in the following 4 quotes that have been subjected to analysis revealing the profound dishonesty of the world’s current number 1 nuclear terrorist, Barack Obama:

(1) “ Good morning, everybody. It is my privilege to welcome you to Washington and to formally convene our fourth Nuclear Security Summit. I convened our first summit — six years ago, in this same room — because the danger of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon is one of the greatest threats to global security…

(2) We’ve made nuclear security a priority at the highest levels. And I want to thank all my fellow leaders — from more than 50 nations and key international organizations — for your commitment to this work and being here today. Some of you were here for our very first summit; many of you have since taken office and joined this work. But it’s a reminder that the task of protecting our citizens transcends political ideologies, parties and administrations. To date, our nations have made some 260 specific commitments to improve nuclear security — and so far, three-quarters of these steps have been implemented. More than a dozen nations have removed all their highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Countries have removed or disposed of several tons of this deadly material. Nations have improved their nuclear security, including stronger regulations and more physical security of nuclear facilities, and more nations are cooperating to prevent nuclear smuggling. Leading up to this summit, nations have fulfilled additional commitments. Argentina, Switzerland, Uzbekistan all successfully eliminated all their highly enriched uranium from their countries. China recently opened its new center for promoting nuclear security and training, and I’m pleased that the United States and China are cooperating on nuclear security. And Japan is working to complete the removal of more than half a ton of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which is the largest project in history to remove nuclear material from a country. I’m also pleased to announce that in recent days, after many years of work, 102 nations have now ratified a key treaty — the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. As a result, we expect that the treaty will enter into force in the coming weeks — giving us more tools that we need to work together in the event of theft of nuclear material or an attack on a nuclear facility…

(3) For the first time in a decade, we’re providing a public inventory of our stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which could be used for nuclear weapons, and that inventory is one that we have reduced considerably. When it comes to our nuclear-powered ships and submarines, we’re exploring ways to further reduce our holdings of highly enriched uranium…

(4) And that’s why our work here remains so critical. The single most effective defense against nuclear terrorism is fully securing this material so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands in the first place. This is difficult. At hundreds of military and civilian facilities around the world, there’s still roughly 2,000 tons of nuclear material, and not all of this is properly secured. And just the smallest amount of plutonium — about the size of an apple — could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It would be a humanitarian, political, economic, and environmental catastrophe with global ramifications for decades. It would change our world. So we cannot be complacent. We have to build on our progress. We have to commit to better security at nuclear facilities; to removing or disposing of more dangerous material; to bringing more nations into treaties and partnerships that prevent proliferation and smuggling; and to making sure that we have the architecture in place to sustain our momentum in the years ahead. With so many members of the global coalition against ISIL here today, this will also be an opportunity to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power to keep a terrorist group like ISIL from ever getting its hands not just on a nuclear weapon, but any weapon of mass destruction”.

Analysis.

(1) “The danger of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon”.

Obama dishonestly focuses on non-state terrorists who, thank goodness, do not currently have (a) nuclear weapons or (b) nuclear material for a dirty conventional bomb that would devastate economically by widely distributing deadly radioactivity [2]. However Obama ignores the vastly more dangerous state terrorists who do have nuclear weapons, are responsible for massive nuclear waste pollution, and variously have sanctioned and enabled corporate terrorists (e.g. those responsible for the Fukushima disaster) [3, 4].

A nuclear exchange between nuclear terrorist states would wipe out most of Humanity (current population about 7.3 billion) , successively through the initial instantaneous destruction of cities, subsequent deaths from burns and radiation sickness from radioactive fallout, and finally through a “Nuclear Winter” decimating agriculture, photosynthesis and photosynthate-based life in general. While imposing deadly Sanctions on Iran (that has zero nuclear weapons and repeatedly states that it does not want nuclear weapons and wants a nuclear weapons-free Middle East), the US (7,315 nuclear weapons) is boosting its nuclear and conventional forces in Asia and Australia and continues to pour billions of dollars of military aid into the war criminal, genocidally racist, ethnic cleansing and nuclear terrorist rogue state of Apartheid Israel that reportedly has up to 400 nuclear weapons. The upper estimates of stored nuclear weapons are as follows: US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (less than 10). Apartheid Israel, India , Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan have not ratified the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) [4]. Nuclear exchanges have almost occurred accidentally several times in the last half century [5] and in several instances have only been averted by the sane actions of particular courageous and humane individuals e.g. Commander Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (1962) and Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (1983) [6, 7].

The US leads the world in actual nuclear terrorism through its killing of 200,000 civilians through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It is claimed that the US may have used a neutron bomb to secure the Baghdad airport in the war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 [9, 10]. The US continues to develop nuclear weapons, a plethora of pro-Zionist and Zionist psychopaths advocate “nuke Iran”, and now loose cannon US presidential candidate, Donald Trump, espouses more nuclear proliferation.

(2) “We’ve made nuclear security a priority at the highest levels”.

This assertion by mendacious Obama is contrary to the following realities:

(a) Only 50 nations attended the Nuclear Security Summit and Russia was notable for its absence.

(b) Pro-Zionism and pro-Apartheid Obama failed to mention nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, racist Zionist-run, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel that has up to 400 nuclear weapons to help maintain a minority racist Zionist government (the Indigenous Palestinian subjects of Apartheid Israel now represent over 50% of the population ruled by Apartheid Israel but 73% are excluded from voting and are highly-abusively confined to the Gaza Concentration Camp or West Bank ghetto Bantustans without human rights, without charge or trial, and merely for the asserted “crime” of being Indigenous Palestinians living in a tiny portion of 90% ethnically cleansed Palestine) [8, 11-15]. Possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons by genocidally racist, serial invader Apartheid Israel is a huge threat to Humanity.

(c) Notwithstanding controversy over effects of low level radiation, a fundamental tenet of radiation safety remains that radiation damage is directly proportional to radiation dose and there is no threshold [2]. This conservative position informs physical radiation safety arrangements for radiation workers that are designed to minimize exposure to radiation and ingestion of radioactive material [2]. Despite this, and despite evidence for the chemical toxicity and teratogenicity (birth–defect-causing) properties of depleted uranium (uranium with a lower level of fissile U-235), countries of the US Alliance, notably the US, UK, Apartheid Israel and Saudi Arabia have variously used depleted uranium-containing weapons in Libya, Palestine (notably in the Gaza Concentration Camp), Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan [16]. This indiscriminate and widespread pollution with depleted uranium has been applied by the US Alliance against a swathe of Muslim countries but would be totally forbidden within the US itself and constitutes s a war crime.

(d) According to ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons): “Nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law. The Humanitarian Pledge is a commitment by nations to fill this unacceptable “legal gap”. It offers a platform from which they can – and must – launch negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons”. 127 countries have so far signed this Pledge [8, 17]. France and the Anglosphere members of the US Alliance are notable for not signing the Pledge. Thus, for example, while Australia has no actual nuclear weapons of its own, it has hosted nuclear tests and testing of nuclear weapons delivery systems, hosts nuclear armed war ships, plays a key role in US nuclear terrorism through its Pine Gap joint US-Australian communications facility, and under the present pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Coalition Government slavishly supports US and Israeli war policies and is doing its best to oppose a Nuclear Weapons Ban. Thus the Sydney Morning Herald reported (2014): “ In October 2013, according to the documents released under freedom-of-information law, Australia refused a request by New Zealand to endorse a 125-nation joint statement at the United Nations highlighting the humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.” Australia objected to a sentence declaring that it is in the interest of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, ”under any circumstances”. A group of 16 nations, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa and New Zealand, have been working to highlight the humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons. That diplomatic campaign is intended to lay the ground for negotiation of a convention that would prohibit nuclear weapons – putting them in the same category as chemical and biological weapons, which are already prohibited under international law… declassified documents have revealed that the government’s primary concern is that a nuclear weapons ban would ”cut across” Australia’s reliance on US nuclear deterrence” [18].

(e) The US and other nuclear industry countries have not yet found a suitable location for safe long-term storage of nuclear waste. However there is currently a major push for Australia to store the world’s nuclear waste in remote Central Australia, a proposal that is made more alarming by the presence of up to 2,500 child-killing US Marines in US lackey Australia’s Northern Territory and proposals for an even greater presence in northern Australia of US military, potentially nuclear –armed US navy and potentially nuclear-armed US strategic bombers. The US has a dirty record of interference in Australia, notably the CIA-backed coup against the reformist Whitlam Government in 1975 over the Pine Gap communications base that is crucial for US nuclear terrorism, the US veto of Labor leader Mark Latham in 2004 over his election campaign promise to bring Australian soldiers back from Iraq, and the US-approved, mining-company-backed and pro-Zionist-led Coup against the Rudd Labor Government in 2010 [19]. If, as envisaged by some, Australia became the world’s nuclear waste storehouse, one can realistically envision US military takeover of Australia (for “freedom” and “world peace” of course) if a progressive Australian Government backed out of the arrangement.

(3) “We’re exploring ways to further reduce our holdings of highly enriched uranium”.

In the past the US was able to reduce “holdings of highly enriched uranium” by sending such material to Apartheid Israel as in the 1965 Apollo Affair, illegal and utterly irresponsible transfers that led to the ruling colonizer Zionist minority of Palestine acquiring up to 400 nuclear weapons [8, 20, 21].

(4) “The single most effective defense against nuclear terrorism is fully securing this material so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands in the first place… we’re doing everything in our power to keep a terrorist group like ISIL from ever getting its hands not just on a nuclear weapon, but any weapon of mass destruction”.

Mendacious Obama finds refuge in “terror hysteria” by touting the extremely remote if terrifying prospect that barbarous ISIL rebels – with no industry and hiding in caves and in bombing-devastated towns from conventional, guided missile and drone bombing – might nevertheless be able to acquire nuclear weapons. Obama ignores the actuality of genocidally racist, serial invader, nuclear terrorist states, namely the US, UK, France and Apartheid Israel, having already acquired huge numbers of nuclear weapons, with the worst such state, the US, having repeatedly used nuclear weapons to mass murder 250,000 civilians. Further, these nuclear terrorist US Alliance countries are notorious serial invaders of other countries – thus the US has invaded 70 countries, the UK 193, France 80, Apartheid Israel 12 and formerly UK lackey and now US lackey Australia 85 [22-26].

Conclusions

Mendacious Obama is the world’s worst nuclear terrorist and is also presently as president of the US the world’s worst operating serial invader, worst human rights abuser, worst genocidal killer and most deadly drug pusher. The nuclear-armed US Alliance led by Obama is presently undertaking military operations in a swathe of 20 impoverished countries from Mauritania to the Philippines that have suffered 27 million avoidable deaths from deprivation and about 5 million deaths from violence since the US Government’s false flag operation on 9-11 [27]. Obama has continued the Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide, Somali Genocide and Muslim Genocide, and through unwavering support for a genocidal Apartheid Israel continues to make Americans complicit in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide [28]. Thanks to George Bush and Barack Obama, 1.2 million people have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007, the breakdown (as of 2015) including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, and 5,000 Australians [29].

Our world is acutely threatened by nuclear weapons (that threaten the very existence of Humanity), poverty (that kills 17 million people each year) and man climate change (that threatens to wipe out all but 0.5 billion people this century). The US led by Obama is a world leader in nuclear terrorism, One Percenter-dominated inequity (with the One Percenters owning half of the world’s wealth) and deadly, ecocidal capitalism that acutely threatens Humanity and the Biosphere. A comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Ban is needed to avoid an accidental full-scale nuclear catastrophe and a consequent Nuclear Winter that will wipe out most of Humanity and the Biosphere [8].

Nuclear terrorist Obama has 8 months to go as president but may be replaced either by the odiously bigoted demagogue Donald Trump or by mass murderess Hillary Clinton whose obscene utterance “We came, we saw, he died” provides an epitaph for Libya, formerly a pro-woman, secular state and the richest country in impoverished Africa but wantonly and unforgivably devastated and consigned to endless sectarian civil war by the France, UK and US (FUKUS) Alliance. For all the likelihood of a first ever female president and American rhetoric about defending Western civilization from fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, US policy resolutely backs the misogynist, sectarian, state terrorist, war criminal and climate criminal Saudi dictatorship, has eliminated secular, pro-woman regimes in the Muslim world, specifically in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and most recently has devastated Syria in attempted removal of the secular Assad regime [30]. American propaganda ignores the Elephant in the Room reality that state terrorism by serial invader, US Alliance nuclear terrorist states is far, far worse than evil and repugnant non-state terrorism [3, 31].

Every person must stand up for Humanity and the Biosphere in the One Percenter War on Terra led by America under mendacious, war criminal and climate criminal Obama. What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) against all politicians, parties, corporations and countries disproportionately complicit in nuclear terrorism.

References.

[1]. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rutte at Opening Session of the Nuclear Security Summit”, White House, 1 April 2016: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/01/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rutte-opening-session-nuclear .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Rational risk management, science and denial”: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogspot.com.au/2008/02/risk-management-science-denial.html .

[3]. “Stop state terrorism” : https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .

[4]. “List of states with nuclear weapons”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons .

[5]. Fred Mendelsohn, “Working to abolish nuclear weapons” , ABC Radio National Ockham’s Razor, 10 August 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/working-to-abolish-nuclear-weapons/5650138 .

[6]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[7].”Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[8]. “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Genocide In Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration Of A Modern State” By Abdul-Haq Al-Ani & Tariq Al-Ani”, Countercurrents, 15 March, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150315.htm .

[10]. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State” (Clarity Press, 2015).

 

[11]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[12]. “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration .

[13]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[14]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[15]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[16]. “Depleted Uranium”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

 

[17]. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN): http://www.icanw.org/pledge/ .

 

[18]. Philip Dorling, “Australian diplomats frustrated nuclear weapons ban”, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 2014: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australian-diplomats-frustrated-nuclear-weapons-ban-20140309-34fgg.html .

 

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/3488-pro-zionist-led-coup.html .

 

[20]. “The Apollo Affair”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apollo_Affair .

 

[21]. “Nuclear weapons and Israel”, Wikipedia: https://www.google.com.au/#q=us+enriched+uranium+israel .

[22]. Gideon Polya, “President Hollande And French Invasion Of Privacy Versus French Invasion Of 80 Countries Since 800 AD”, Countercurrents, 15 January, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150114.htm .

[23]. Gideon Polya, “US has invaded 70 nations Since 1776 – make 4 July Independence From America Day”, Countercurrents, 5 July 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya050713.htm .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “British Have Invaded 193 Countries: Make 26 January ( Australia Day, Invasion Day) British Invasion Day”, Countercurrents, 23 January, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230115.htm .

[25]. Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm .

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ .

[27]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[28]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[29]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide” : https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

 

[30]. Gideon Polya, “Fundamentalist America Has Trashed Secular Governance, Modernity, Democracy, Women’s Rights And Children’s Rights In The Muslim World”, Countercurrents, 21 May, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210515.htm .

[31]. “State crime and non-state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/ .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
11 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ellen Brown

The bombshell publication of the “Panama Papers,” leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled “Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak,” UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes:

Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland.

Iceland, of course, was the only country to refuse to bail out its banks, instead throwing its offending bankers in jail.

Pepe Escobar calls the released Panama Papers a “limited hangout.” The leak dovetails with the attempt of Transparency International to create a Global Public Beneficial Ownership Registry, which can collect ownership information from governments around the world; and with UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s global anti-corruption summit next month. According to The Economist, “The Panama papers give him just the platform he needs to persuade other governments, and his own, to turn their tough talk of recent years into action.”

The Daily Bell suspects a coordinated global effort linked to the push to go cashless. It’s all about knowing where the money is and who owns it, in order to tax it, regulate it, “sanction” it, or confiscate it:

Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent . . . . A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in power.

This is a reason why the “cashless society” idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records.

Michael Snyder of InvestmentWatchBlog.com also links the Panama Papers with the push to go cashless:

. . . [W]ith this Panama Paper leak and all its pre-conditioning against tax havens, people aren’t realizing yet that very soon, once Negative Interest Rates and Bail-Ins are being openly discussed and prepared for implementation, the whole tax haven or tax dodger discussion in the media will quickly switch from talking about corrupt billionaires and shell companies half way around the world, and instead will be talking about something much closer to home . . . .

In my strong opinion this whole thing is all part of the coming capital control war, which ties directly in with the coming transition to a biometric digital currency, the implementation of Negative Interest Rates, the rollout of large scale systemic bail-ins, and the demonization and eventual criminalization of physical assets that are outside of direct taxation control (which again would be done using the pre-conditioned guise of “tax havens”, with physical precious metals and physical cash being the main targets).

War on Corruption or War on Savers?

What we may be witnessing here is the 1% going after the 10% of people who, according to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, do not need to borrow but are “net savers.” Today the remaining 90% are “all borrowed up.” Either they are unwilling to borrow more or the banks are unwilling to lend to them, since they are poor credit risks. Who, then, is left to feed the debt machine that feeds the 1%, and more specifically the 0.001%? The power brokers at the top seem to want it all, and today that means going after those just below them on the financial food chain. The challenge is in squeezing money from people who don’t need to borrow. How to legally confiscate their savings?

Enter bail-ins, negative interest, all-digital currencies, and the elimination of “tax havens.”

Bail-ins allow the largest banks to gamble with impunity with their depositors’ money. If the banks make bad bets and become insolvent, they can legally confiscate the deposits to balance their books, through an “orderly resolution” scheme of the sort mandated in the Dodd-Frank Act.

Negative interest is a fee or private tax on holding funds in the bank.

Eliminating cash prevents the bank runs that these assaults on people’s savings would otherwise trigger. Money that exists only as digital entries cannot be withdrawn and stored under a mattress.

Exposing tax havens shows the predators where the money is and who has title to it, facilitating its confiscation and preventing the funding of massive rebellions against confiscation.

Orchestrated at Davos

That could help explain those coordinated developments we’ve been seeing across the central-bank-controlled world, proliferating particularly after the January summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the global elite gather to discuss the hot economic issues of the day.

According to one Morgan Stanley attendee, a notable topic this year was the need for “a rapid introduction of a cashless society so that even more negative deposit interest rates could be introduced in Europe to offset likely secular stagnation.” With the use of physical cash curtailed, J.P. Morgan estimates the European Central Bank could ultimately bring interest rates as low as negative 4.5%.

“Secular stagnation,” the official justification for negative interest, means a chronic shortfall in demand: not enough money chasing goods and services. Today virtually all money is created by banks when they make loans; and when old loans are paid off, new ones must be taken out to maintain the money supply. Central banks have traditionally dropped interest rates to stimulate this continual borrowing, but interest rates have now effectively been pushed to zero. The argument is that they can be pushed below zero – but only if cash withdrawals, and hence bank runs, are not an option.

That is the argument; but as Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, observes:

The notion is that the economy’s poor economic performance is not due to the failure of economic policy but to people hoarding their money. The Federal Reserve and its coterie of economists and presstitutes maintain the fiction of too much savings despite the publication of the Federal Reserve’s own report that 52% of Americans cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions or borrowing the money.

In an article titled “Exposing the Hidden Agenda of Davos 2016”, Zerohedge reports on a flurry of activity during and after Davos related to the push to go cashless. But stimulating demand may just be the cover story for something darker behind this orchestrated effort.

Rescuing the Economy or the Banks?

Of greater concern at Davos than “secular stagnation” was the imminent insolvency of some major banks. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in January from Davos, quoted William White, former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, who warned:

The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up.

. . . European banks have already admitted to $1 trillion of non-performing loans: they are heavily exposed to emerging markets and are almost certainly rolling over further bad debts that have never been disclosed.

The European banking system may have to be recapitalized on a scale yet unimagined, and new “bail-in” rules mean that any deposit holder above the guarantee of €100,000 will have to help pay for it. [Emphasis added.]

It seems the War on Cash is being waged, not to stimulate the economy, but to save the lucrative private banking scheme at all costs. Quelling the riots likely to result from the mass confiscation of deposits could also underly the heightened push for a global “security state” and for those “anti-corruption” measures designed to determine where the money is and who owns it.

Postscript: Bail-ins under the new 2016 European Recovery and Resolution Directive began officially today, April 10, in Austria. Ominously, it was in Austria that a major bank bankruptcy triggered the Great Depression in 1931.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.

12 April 2016

By Tim Kelly and Nobuhiro Kubo

Japan is fortifying its far-flung island chain in the East China Sea under an evolving strategy that aims to turn the tables on China’s navy and keep it from ever dominating the Western Pacific Ocean, Japanese military and government sources said.

The United States, believing its Asian allies – and Japan in particular – must help contain growing Chinese military power, has pushed Japan to abandon its decades-old bare-bones home island defense in favor of exerting its military power in Asia.

Tokyo is responding by stringing a line of anti-ship, anti-aircraft missile batteries along 200 islands in the East China Sea stretching 1,400 km (870 miles) from the country’s mainland toward Taiwan.

Interviews with a dozen military planners and government policymakers reveal that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s broader goal to beef up the military has evolved to include a strategy to dominate the sea and air surrounding the remote islands.

While the installations are not secret, it is the first time such officials have spelled out that the deployment will help keep China at bay in the Western Pacific and amounts to a Japanese version of the “anti-access/area denial” doctrine, known as “A2/AD” in military jargon, that China is using to try to push the United States and its allies out of the region.

Chinese ships sailing from their eastern seaboard must pass through this seamless barrier of Japanese missile batteries to reach the Western Pacific, access to which is vital to Beijing both as a supply line to the rest of the world’s oceans and for the projection of its naval power.

China’s President Xi Jinping has set great store in developing an ocean-going “blue water” navy capable of defending the country’s growing global interests.

To be sure, there is nothing to stop Chinese warships from sailing through under international law, but they will have to do so in within the crosshairs of Japanese missiles, the officials told Reuters.

FIRST ISLAND CHAIN

As Beijing asserts more control across the nearby South China Sea with almost completed island bases, the string of islands stretching through Japan’s East China Sea territory and south through the Philippines may come to define a boundary between U.S. and Chinese spheres of influence. Military planners dub this the line the “first island chain”.

“In the next five or six years the first island chain will be crucial in the military balance between China and the U.S.- Japan,” said Satoshi Morimoto, a Takushoku University professor who was defense minister in 2012 and advises the current defense chief, Gen Nakatani.

A U.S. warship in late October challenged territorial limits that China is asserting around its new man-made island bases in the Spratly archipelago.

But Beijing may already have established “facts on the ground” in securing military control of the South China Sea, some officials and experts say.

“We may delay the inevitable, but that train left the station some time ago,” a senior U.S. military source familiar with Asia told Reuters, on condition he was not identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

China’s “ultimate objective is hegemony over the South China Sea, hegemony over the East China Sea”, said Kevin Maher, who headed the U.S. State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs for two years until 2011. “To try and appease the Chinese would just encourage the Chinese to be more provocative,” said Maher, now a consultant at NMV Consulting in Washington.

TURNING THE TABLES

Japan’s counter to China in the East China Sea began in 2010, two years before Abe took power.

The predecessor Democratic Party of Japan government pivoted away from protecting the northern island of Hokkaido against a Soviet invasion that never came to defending the southwest island chain.

“The growing influence of China and the relative decline of the U.S. was a factor,” said Akihisa Nagashima, a DPJ lawmaker who as vice minister of defense helped craft that change. “We wanted to do what we could and help ensure the sustainability of the U.S. forward deployment.”

China is investing in precision missiles as it seeks to deter the technologically superior U.S. Navy from plying waters or flying near Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

Beijing in September gave friends and potential foes a peek at that growing firepower in its biggest ever military parade, which commemorated Japan’s World War Two defeat. Making its debut was the Dongfeng-21D, a still untested anti-ship ballistic missile that could potentially destroy a $5 billion U.S. aircraft carrier..

It joins an arsenal the U.S. Congress estimates at 1,200 short-range missiles and intermediate missiles that can strike anywhere along the first island chain. China is also developing submarine- and land-launched radar-evading cruise missiles.

“Rather than A2/AD, we use the phrase ‘maritime supremacy and air superiority’,” said Yosuke Isozaki, Abe’s first security adviser until September and a key author of a national defense strategy published in 2013 that included this phrase for the first time.

“Our thinking was that we wanted to be able to ensure maritime supremacy and air superiority that fit with the U.S. military,” he added.

Toshi Yoshihara, a U.S. Naval War College professor, said Tokyo could play an important role in limiting China’s room for maneuver through the East China Sea to the Western Pacific, enhancing U.S. freedom of movement and buying time for the alliance to respond in the event of war with China.

“You could say Japan is turning the tables on China,” Yoshihara said.

Memories of Japanese aggression in World War Two still haunt Tokyo’s relations with its near neighbors, and tensions have sharpened since the return to power of Abe, who critics view as a revisionist who wants to downplay Japan’s wartime past.

“Any Japanese military trend will elicit close attention and misgivings from Asian neighboring countries,” China’s National Defense Ministry told Reuters by email in reply to questions about Japan’s island strategy.

“We urge the Japanese side to take history as a mirror, and take more actions in the interests of growing mutual trust.”

Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, cast Japan’s build-up in the East China Sea as complementary to a broader U.S. strategy.

“The U.S. planning process for any theater takes into consideration the capabilities and forces of friends and potential adversaries,” Aucoin told Reuters. “The U.S plans with the ultimate objective of maintaining peace and stability not only for Japan, but also for the region.”

MISSILES BATTERIES, RADAR STATIONS

Over the next five years, Japan will increase its Self-Defense Forces on islands in the East China Sea by about a fifth to almost 10,000 personnel.

Those troops, manning missile batteries and radar stations, will be backed up by marine units on the mainland, stealthy submarines, F-35 warplanes, amphibious fighting vehicles, aircraft carriers as big as World War Two flat-tops and ultimately the U.S. Seventh Fleet headquartered at Yokosuka, south of Tokyo.

Already cooperating closely, the Japanese and U.S. navies will draw closer than ever after Abe’s new security legislation legitimized collective self-defense, allowing Japan to come to the aid of allies under attack.

One crucial change, said Maher: the U.S. and Japanese military can now plan and practice for war together and deliver a “force multiplier”.

Bigger defense outlays are adding potency. Japan’s military is seeking spending in the next fiscal year’s budget that would top 5 trillion yen ($40 billion) for the first time, including money for longer-range anti-ship missiles, sub-hunting aircraft, early-warning planes, Global Hawk drones, Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and a new heavy-lift, long-range transport jet.

In some areas, however, Japan’s military is making do. Anti-ship missiles designed 30 years ago to destroy Soviet landing craft heading for Hokkaido are being deployed to draw the defensive curtain along the southwest island chain.

Able to lob a 225-kg (500-lb) warhead 180 km, they have enough range to cover the gaps between the islands along the chain, said Noboru Yamaguchi, a Sasakawa Peace Foundation adviser and former general who procured them three decades ago.

Japan’s military planners must also figure out how to transform an army used to sticking close to its bases into a more mobile, expeditionary force.

Decades of under-investment in logistics means Japan has too few naval transport ships and military aircraft to carry large numbers of troops and equipment.

A more delicate task for Japan’s government, however, may be persuading people living along the islands to accept a bigger military footprint. After decades hosting the biggest concentration of U.S. troops in Asia, people on Okinawa are voicing greater opposition to the bases.

For now, communities on the long chain of islands, home to 1.5 million people, that have been asked to host Japanese troops are happy to do so, said Ryota Takeda, a lawmaker who as vice defense minister until Sept. 2014 traveled there frequently to win residents’ approval for new deployments.

“Unlike officials sitting in the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo they are more attuned to the threat they face every day.”

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates, William Mallard and Alex Richardson)

18 December 2015

By Robert Parry

Exclusive: Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry.

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.

We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.

Or as the Guardian writes: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”

Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.”

A British media-watch publication, the Off-Guardian, which criticizes much of the work done at The Guardian, headlined its article on the Putin piece as “the Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody.”

But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.

Some of those Western interests now are worried about the growth of the BRICS economic system – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a competitor to the West’s G-7 and the International Monetary Fund. After all, control of the global financial system has been central to American power in the post-World War II world – and rivals to the West’s monopoly are not welcome.

What the built-in bias against these and other “unfriendly” governments means, in practical terms, is that one standard applies to a Russia or a Brazil, while a more forgiving measure is applied to the corruption of a U.S. or European leader.

Take, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s millions of dollars in payments in speaking fees from wealthy special interests that knew she was a good bet to become the next U.S. president. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clinton Stalls on Goldman-Sachs Speeches.”]

Or, similarly, the millions upon millions of dollars invested in super-PACS for Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential hopefuls. That might look like corruption from an objective standard but is treated as just a distasteful aspect of the U.S. political process.

But imagine for a minute if Putin had been paid millions of dollars for brief speeches before powerful corporations, banks and interest groups doing business with the Kremlin. That would be held up as de facto proof of his illicit greed and corruption.

Losing Perspective

Also, when it’s a demonized foreign leader, any “corruption” will do, however minor. For example, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s denounced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for his choice of eyewear: “The dictator in designer glasses,” declared Reagan, even as Nancy Reagan was accepting free designer gowns and free renovations of the White House funded by oil and gas interests.

Or, the “corruption” for a demonized leader can be a modest luxury, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sauna” in his personal residence, a topic that got front-page treatment in The New York Times and other Western publications seeking to justify the violent coup that drove Yanukovych from office in February 2014.

Incidentally, both Ortega and Yanukovych had been popularly elected but were still targeted by the U.S. government and its operatives with violent destabilization campaigns. In the 1980s, the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra war killed some 30,000 people, while the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine sparked a civil war that has left some 10,000 people dead. Of course, in both cases, Official Washington blamed Moscow for all the trouble.

In both cases, too, the politicians and operatives who gained power as a result of the conflicts were arguably more corrupt than the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Yanukovych’s government. The Nicaraguan Contras, whose violence helped pave the way for the 1990 election of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro, were deeply implicated in cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]

Today, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian government is wallowing in corruption so deep that it has provoked a new political crisis.[See Consortiumnews’com’s “Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine.”]

Ironically, one of the politicians actually named in the Panama Papers for having established a shadowy offshore account is the U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, although he got decidedly second-billing to the unnamed Putin. (Poroshenko denied there was anything improper in his offshore financial arrangements.)

Double Standards

Mainstream Western journalism no longer even tries to apply common standards to questions about corruption. If you’re a favored government, there might be lamentations about the need for more “reform” – which often means slashing pensions for the elderly and cutting social programs for the poor – but if you’re a demonized leader, then the only permissible answer is criminal indictment and/or “regime change.”
One stark example of these double standards is the see-no-evil attitude toward the corruption of Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is touted endlessly in the Western media as the paragon of Ukrainian good governance and reform. The documented reality, however, is that Jaresko enriched herself through her control of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund that was supposed to help the people of Ukraine build their economy.

According to the terms of the $150 million investment fund created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jaresko’s compensation was supposed to be capped at $150,000 a year, a pay package that many Americans would envy. But it was not enough for Jaresko, who first simply exceeded the limit by hundreds of thousands of dollars and then moved her compensation off-books as she amassed total annual pay of $2 million or more.

The documentation of this scheming is clear. I have published multiple stories citing the evidence of both her excessive compensation and her legal strategies for covering up evidence of alleged wrongdoing. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich” and “Carpetbagging Crony Capitalism in Ukraine.”]

Despite the evidence, not a single mainstream Western news outlet has followed up on this information even as Jaresko is hailed as a “reform” candidate for Ukrainian prime minister.

This disinterest is similar to the blinders that The New York Times and other major Western newspapers put on when they were assessing whether Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in a coup in February 2014 or just wandered off and forgot to return.

In a major “investigative” piece, the Times concluded there was no coup in Ukraine while ignoring the evidence of a coup, such as the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they would put into power. “Yats is the guy,” said Nuland – and surprise, surprise, Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up as prime minister.

The Times also ignored the observation of George Friedman, president of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, who noted that the Ukraine coup was “the most blatant coup in history.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

The Propaganda Weapon

The other advantage of “corruption” as a propaganda weapon to discredit certain leaders is that we all assume that there is plenty of corruption in governments as well as in the private sector all around the world. Alleging corruption is like shooting large fish crowded into a small barrel. Granted, some barrels might be more crowded than others but the real decision is whose barrel you choose.

That’s part of the reason why the U.S. government has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “journalism” organizations, train political activists and support “non-governmental organizations” that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. For instance, before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.

But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the State Department and USAID. Last year, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the globe, including “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.”

USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,” In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what looked to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the first Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”

But the larger danger from this perversion of journalism is that it sets the stage for “regime changes” that destabilize whole countries, thwart real democracy (i.e., the will of the people), and engender civil warfare. Today’s neoconservative dream of mounting a “regime change” in Moscow is particularly dangerous to the future of both Russia and the world.

Regardless of what you think about President Putin, he is a rational political leader whose legendary sangfroid makes him someone who is not prone to emotional decisions. His leadership style also appeals to the Russian people who overwhelmingly favor him, according to public opinion polls.

While the American neocons may fantasize that they can generate enough economic pain and political dissension inside Russia to achieve Putin’s removal, their expectation that he will be followed by a pliable leader like the late President Boris Yeltsin, who will let U.S. operatives back in to resume plundering Russia’s riches, is almost certainly a fantasy.

The far more likely possibility is that – if a “regime change” could somehow be arranged – Putin would be replaced by a hard-line nationalist who might think seriously about unleashing Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the West again tries to defile Mother Russia. For me, it’s not Putin who’s the worry; it’s the guy after Putin.

So, while legitimate questions about Putin’s “corruption” – or that of any other political leader – should be pursued, the standards of evidence should not be lowered just because he or anyone else is a demonized figure in the West. There should be single not double standards.

Western media outrage about “corruption” should be expressed as loudly against political and business leaders in the U.S. or other G-7 countries as it is toward those in the BRICS.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

4 April 2016