Just International

Israel is always the victim, especially when it’s the executioner

By Nile Bowie

A global outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinian cause has again come to the fore since Israel launched its Operation Protective Edge in Gaza earlier this month, and the only people that seem to be unmoved by scenes of indiscriminate bloodletting are Israelis themselves.

As the operation enters its fourth week, the death toll has surpassed 1,200, while over 7,000 have been injured. Cases of entire families being killed in airstrikes have become routine. Images depicting mangled and dismembered men, women, and children showcase the appalling violence that the people of Gaza are forced to endure.

Gaza’s only power plant, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs, has recently been destroyed, which further impedes the work of overcrowded and under supplied medical facilities tasked with treating the thousands of injured civilians who have fallen victim to Israel’s strikes from air, land and sea.

Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques have been targeted by Israel, whose leadership has defied international calls for an unconditional ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has signaled that the operation will continue in the long-term, appeasing hawkish ministers and media figures that have called for an expanded assault on Gaza.

Israel claims the ongoing operation is necessary to impede the military capabilities of Hamas, which it accuses of launching unprovoked rocket fire into Israel’s territory. Another precursor was the kidnapping and murder of three teenage Jewish settlers who were hitchhiking in the West Bank, whose bodies were discovered in late June.

It is crucial to understand the context that led to the launching of Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza. Despite any evidence to implicate Hamas in the killing of the three boys, Israel credited the Palestinian resistance organization with the crime and promised a tough response, launching an extensive search-and-destroy campaign against Hamas in the West Bank.

Before any rockets were fired from Gaza, Israeli forces rounded up and arrested over 500 activists and killed more than half a dozen, in addition to a 16-year-old teenager who was abducted and burned alive by Jewish settlers in a reprisal attack. Although Israel failed to produce any evidence demonstrating Hamas’s involvement in the kidnapping of the three settlers, it launched attacks in the Gaza strip that targeted and killed Hamas members.

Contrary to the Israeli narrative that it is reluctantly responding to Hamas’ unjustified rocket fire, it is clear that Israeli provocations precipitated a forceful response from Hamas, to which Israel responded with a punishingly disproportionate military operation, which can acceptably be defined as an act of collective punishment, a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.

The military campaign in Gaza has also laid bare the mendacity of Israeli slogans and talking points, which are used to legitimize and make permissible any degree of punishment deemed necessary. The narrative spun by Israel depicts Gazans as an inherently hostile and belligerent people, and centers obsessively around a focus on Israeli suffering, creating a false sense of equivalence in the military actions taken by Israel and that of Hamas.

An accusation that has become frequently alleged by Israel throughout the ongoing operation is that Hamas uses civilians as human shields and deliberately puts Palestinian civilian lives in danger by denying them the opportunity to evacuate targeted areas. Hamas and activists in Gaza vigorously deny this charge.

The claim that Hamas intentionally prevents civilians from evacuating targeted areas has not been corroborated by independent reports from journalists covering the conflict. There is no evidence that Hamas coerces civilians. Even in the event that Hamas did indeed use civilians as human shields, which would be illegal under international law, it would not justify Israel’s bombardment of populated residential areas and housing structures.

The purpose of this accusation is to absolve Israel of wrongdoing by shifting the blame to Hamas, and also to deny agency to the Palestinian resistance. In a shameful display of intellectual dishonesty, the Israeli narrative affirms a thought process that deprives the Palestinian dead of their victimhood. Even as Israeli forces bombard the dispossessed and humiliated people of Gaza in their F-16 fighter jets and drones, they paradoxically blame Palestinian deaths on Palestinians themselves.

Israeli society has been utterly propagandized by emotionally manipulative and militaristic sloganeering, and while there are certainly dissenters and people who adamantly oppose the status quo, the majority of Israelis widely support the ongoing campaign against Gaza, primarily because they have been conditioned by the state to believe they are victims of both history and the present.

Israel’s leadership has shamefully preyed upon the historical trauma and persecution of the Jewish people to legitimize its occupation; it equates legitimate criticism with anti-Semitism, and any resistance to the state’s dehumanizing colonialism as an existential threat to the Jewish people. These tendencies have given rise to a rabid brand of ultra-nationalism that has clouded the Israeli conscience.

A powerful example of Israel’s moral corruption comes from the southern city of Sderot, located less than one mile from the Gaza strip, where residents reportedly assembled on a hilltop at night to watch the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which they joyfully celebrated while eating popcorn and smoking water pipes. The the act of celebrating another people’s subjugation and killing can only be a demonstration of one’s lack of humanity.

When the Israeli leadership claims that no other country would tolerate rockets falling on its cities, it exposes a glaring contradiction: that the Israeli understanding of self-defense implies that they are the only people entitled to it. Israel, as an occupying power, has an obligation and a duty under international law to protect the civilians under its occupation.

The notion that Israel takes measures to avoid civilian causalities is a self-evident fantasy. In Gaza, Tel Aviv is effectively employing the ‘Dahiya Doctrine,’ coined during Israel’s indiscriminate aggression on Lebanon in 2006, which refers to the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of disproportionate force to undermine popular support for armed resistance. This strategy has emboldened Hezbollah and the same will be true for Hamas.

In practice, Israel denies Palestinians the right to govern themselves and simultaneously declares war on them. When the international community allows Israel to use weapons of industrial warfare against a helpless civilian population with impunity, it cannot also deny the right of the Palestinians to use force to defend themselves.

As a dispossessed people living under the brunt of an occupying power, the Palestinians have a legitimate right to respond with force, provided that civilians are not intentionally targeted. Hamas’ rockets are indeed indiscriminant and pose a danger to Israeli civilians, however they are almost entirely ineffective. The asymmetric death toll is indeed a testament to Hamas’ rocket fire being a symbolic gesture of resistance more than anything else.

The bottom line is that average Israelis want security and their fear of Hamas’ rockets shouldn’t be derided. However, the actions taken by Israel only ensure that another generation of brutalized and traumatized Palestinians will seek revenge through force because the occupation has destroyed their lives. Israel’s use of force is entirely self-defeating; it makes no one safer.

There is much to criticize in the conduct of Hamas, but it must be acknowledged that they speak for the majority of Gazans in rejecting a ceasefire with Israel unless the blockade is lifted and border crossings opened as a minimum requirement. Israel appears unwilling to yield.

Israelis who support their government’s offensive should ask themselves a simple question: Why are the Palestinians firing rockets? The people living in the West Bank and Gaza are the families of refugees that were forcibly expelled from what is referred to as Israel more than five decades ago by Jewish settlers who wanted an exclusive state of their own.

The answer is that a people can only be humiliated, dehumanized, and cornered into violence for only so long before they fight back: for their dignity and their right to exist. Israel’s main objective in this operation is to maintain the occupation and prevent the emergence of a unified Palestinian resistance.

Until the Israelis overcome the delusion that they can suppress the Palestinian right to self-determination, there will be tunnels, there will be rockets, and there will be stones. In trying to legitimize the occupation, Israel is delegitimizing itself.

Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today, and a research affiliate with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

30 July 2014

MH17 – Sacrificed Airliner: The New Cold War

By Andre Vltchek

The special train carrying refrigerated corpses from the MH17 catastrophe has left the station of Torez, just a few miles from the crash site. People, who died a terrible death onboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, will soon be reunited with their grieving families. They will receive a proper funeral, and will be laid to rest in the Netherlands, Malaysia and several other countries. They are on their way home, at last.

The people of the Donetsk People’s Republic have legitimate reasons for seeking a course independent from Kyev’s. Including the central fact the latter’s regime is populated by open fascists and came about as a result of a foreign-engineered putsch.

The Ukrainian rebels handed over the black boxes to international authorities. The investigation can begin. It hopefully will begin, unobstructed by political maneuvering.

Will the Empire allow the investigation to follow its course? The Western propaganda machine is in full gear. The twisting of facts, obscuring of evidence, and maneuvering public opinion all over the world: all this is being done with determination and routinely applied precision.

So much is at stake! Increasing cooperation between Russia, Latin America and China could mean the end of Western neo-colonial control of the world. The creation of alternatives to the World Bank can free billions of human beings from market feudalism and its slavery. Powerful news organizations broadcasting from Russia (RT), Venezuela (TeleSur) and Iran (Press TV) are consistently breaking the depressing and nihilistic monopoly of Western propaganda and control of people’s brains all over the world.

The more liberating these trends and waves are for the world, the more panic there is in Washington, London and Paris, but also on Wall Street and in the City, as well as in the newsrooms of the corporate media.

The West is terrified. Its ‘exceptionalism’, tremendous profits from controlling everything that moves on this planet, the kick of being in charge and holding the whip, all this can disappear if these waves of resistance are not reversed!

And the villains are damned Russia and Putin, who is refusing to yield. Putin is despicable, and a real nuisance in the eyes of the Empire, because he is unwilling to sacrifice, or to destroy his own country as Yeltsin had done two decades earlier. The villains are also those bloody Chinese, because they are sticking to their ideals, to socialism the Chinese way, while lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The other villains are those bastards from Latin America, with their big dreams and humanism, their revolutions and sudden refusal to sacrifice their own people for the wellbeing of the Western elites.

And all of them – these three disobedient parts of the world, three cohorts – are now getting closer and closer together, forging an as yet undefined alliance, but an alliance nevertheless, increasing cooperation, signing treaties, creating alternative organizations, and saying “No!” to the world order. And more countries are looking at all this with hope; more are joining the club of the free. Not absolutely free, but free from Western colonial terror, which is now perhaps the worst kind of terror that exists on this planet (including those horrid derivates of the regime, implanted all over the planet).

To fight these dissident nations openly, to do it on ideological or moral grounds, is impossible. They would most certainly not lose! By now it should be too obvious, it should be too clear who is on the ‘right and wrong sides of history’.

Therefore, the “smear” is the only way for the Empire to advance its destructive cause. Or at least it is the most effective way. The good old way of discrediting one’s enemy, was by dragging him through filth, by turning his achievements into failures, his heroic resistance into hideous crimes. The Brits perfected this, ruling their colonies for centuries, by deceit and perverse philosophical concepts. The German Nazis were fairly effective as well.

The way it stands, there is nothing good that Russia can do. There is nothing decent about China (it is Communist when it suits Western propaganda or ‘more capitalist than traditionally capitalist countries are’, when it fits the bill). Venezuela with its direct democracy is dictatorial. And so on.

And now the plane… The second Malaysian Boeing 777 lost in one single year… Both belonged to one of the best airlines on earth, with a great maintenance record for its equipment! Strange, very strange… But Russia is certainly to blame. Because the President of the United States said so, because the British PM said so… No proof is needed. The Western public is extremely obedient.

Now the bodies are going! From a small Torez station, they are going home, wrapped in bags.

They are victims of something that many decent people all over the world are even afraid to formulate in their minds.

The area of Eastern Ukraine that they – the corpses – are now leaving, is full of local victims, too – those civilian victims of ethnic cleansing, whose only fault is that their maternal tongue happened to be Russian, or that they do not or cannot live in a country run by the pro-Western fascist dictatorship of the ‘Chocolate King’, Poroshenko, and his gangsters.

Now civilians are dying, every day. That does not bother the Western regime. Killing the rebels, their families and neighbors, is encouraged. Burning people in Odessa, burning them alive, is not even criticized in the lackey corporate media. The entire debate and coverage of events has become grotesque and sick.

More then 100,000 people have recently crossed into Russia, seeking refuge from Ukrainian bombers and rockets, or perhaps more, most likely much more.

Russian lives do not count. Asian lives do not count. African lives do not count. Middle Eastern lives do not count. The lives of Latin Americans do not count. That is why the West so freely and without hesitation has murdered tens of millions of ‘unpeople’, for decades and centuries.

The formula is simple: Dutch tourists do count. Ukrainian villagers don’t. It was quite similar during Nazi control of Europe.

***

Right after the tragedy, the legendary thinker and Chief Editor of “The Greanville Post”, Patrice Greanville, summarized the events and predicted what is coming. He did it with deadly accuracy:

“The US TV networks —the West’s Ministry of Truth organs—and other media have been blabbering almost nonstop for the past few hours about the Malaysian airliner down in Ukraine.

In the early reports on CBS, ABC, etc., I perceive a marked tendency to suggest “Russia or her proxies did it”, in this case also involving the “Pro-Russia separatists” in East Ukraine, who supposedly “have been shooting at planes” (the implication is indiscriminately) in their struggle against Kiev’s all-out military offensive.

As you probably agree, this is either an outright blatant provocation by the West, or a direct result of Washington’s criminal policies in Ukraine.

It’s easy to determine several scenarios in varying degrees of plausibility and culpability. While it’s plausible the plane was shot down by Eastern Ukraine separatists, it’s also obvious they (and Russia) have little to gain from such an act. So at worst, it can be argued it was simply an error on their part.

Indeed, if the plane was shot down by a missile, it could have been fired accidentally by the East Ukraine rebels—perfectly understandable given the horrible pounding they’ve been taking by Kiev’s air force, etc.

The second type of suspect involves not error but direct intention and therefore full moral culpability. Here the lineup is clear, as the shot could have come from Kievan forces in the region, seeking to heighten tensions as per script, or [from] a third party working for the West…

As usual, the larger context, that the US is the principal and very real meta-cause of this tragedy, will be lost to most in America…

Welcome to the new, even higher stakes Cold War, courtesy of the usual bastards in Washington, and their accomplices around the world.

The problem for us now is how to counter the inevitable propaganda wave sure to follow. Brace yourselves for the barrage of hypocrisy and sanctimonious accusations to pour out of Washington’s mouthpieces.”

All this was happening while I was working in Cambodia, trying to counter another fully perverse narrative manufactured by the West in this tortured country, several decades ago.

I met my friend, a fellow war correspondent, Andrew Marshall, and asked him, theoretically, about the coverage of similar events. Andrew is the former head of Reuters in Iraq, who later resigned from the agency because it refused to publish his critical findings about the Thai establishment and its ‘elites’ (I will be soon publishing my full interview with him). He offered his thoughts on the issue of the downed passenger jet. The point he was making: whatever the answer to ‘The question’ is (who is responsible for the act itself?), it does not change the wider geopolitical and ethical issue:

“There is a tendency in the 21st century World of 24-hour rolling news coverage to overemphasize and dramatize individual incidents in a conflict, subjecting them to intense coverage, while at the same time failing to analyze the underlying causes and patterns of conflict. The task of analyses is to focus on the “signal”, not the “noise”, but most modern media do the opposite. It’s also clearly true that powerful global interests seek to control the narrative by staging events to drown out the signal with noise. Some opponents of this strategy seek to create their own “noise”, trying to undermine the dominant narrative. In many instances it is justified, but a focus on the noise rather than signal can be counterproductive.

For example, I believe the overwhelming evidence of what happened on 9/11 is that men associated with Al Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This was then exploited by the United States to justify a disastrous “war on terror” in the Muslim world.

The modern news media seize on incidents such as MH17, or 9/11, to exemplify a wider struggle. But in fact, in conflict, all sides tend to commit atrocities sometimes, and all sides make mistakes. In any conflict, innocents on all sides, and innocents unconnected with any side, routinely suffer. This is tragic. But sensible analysts need to avoid conflating the horror and blame of specific incidents within a conflict with the overall moral calculus of the conflict. The two are totally unconnected.”

***

Soon, things began to crystalize. As Western propaganda howling reached a crescendo, I contacted another trusted source, Sergei Kirichuk, the leader of the ‘Borodba’ movement, an influential left-wing organization in Ukraine, which is fully opposed to the Kiev junta, but at the same time maintains its independence, and cannot be defined as fully ‘pro-Russian’. He replied at length, and I have translated most of his quote for this essay:

“Without any doubt, the tragedy of the Malaysian airliner has become the most significant political event of the last few years. The tragic death of innocent people shook public opinion in Ukraine and in the entire world. Unfortunately, the circumstances of the tragedy and the information related to it, offers more questions than answers. First, and the most important question, is how did a passenger airliner happen to be in the epicenter of the military conflict? In all those days leading to the tragedy, the mass media was carrying stories about attempts by the insurgents (both successful and unsuccessful attempts) to down airplanes belonging to the Ukrainian military. Earlier it was announced that the airspace was declared closed for civilian aviation. Besides, MH17 deviated significantly from its usual flight path; routinely it was flying more to the south. Answers to these questions should be given through an international investigation.

The second important question is based on the claim by the Ukrainian security services, related to some “intercepted communication of the terrorists”, that the ‘terrorists’ were the ones who downed the plane. This communication appears to be a clear fabrication, fake, but were it to be genuine, it would provoke even more questions towards the Ukrainian security services: would it mean that they were able to monitor the communications of their adversaries, were familiar with their plans, but did nothing to prevent the tragedy?

The most terrible thing is that the tragedy of innocent people who lost their lives is being used by Ukrainian mass media as some sort of justification for the loss of lives of the civilian population in Donbas. The onslaught of the Government forces began with renewed zeal, not caring at all, anymore, about the losses among the armed forces or civilian population.

Besides that, pro-NATO elements now believe that there is solid justification for the invasion of Ukraine by Western forces…”

***

But a leading international lawyer, Christopher Black (he has investigated genocides and crimes against humanity all over the world), based in Toronto, Canada, went even further, and declared in a letter to me:

“The downing of the Malaysian airliner was either an accident by the Kiev forces or the anti-fascist forces of the Donetsk Republic, in each instance targeting the plane because they thought that it was a military and therefore a legitimate target, or it was a deliberate attack on a known civilian aircraft. If it was deliberate then it is a case of mass murder and a war crime since it took place in the midst of hostilities. I wouldn’t call it an act of terrorism as some have said as an act of terrorism is designed to create fear and panic in a population. Clearly those who downed the plane had other motives than creating fear and panic among civilians.

Many writers over the past few days have commented that neither the DPR forces nor Russia had either the equipment in place to hit neither the plane nor the motive to deliberately shoot it down. But there is strong circumstantial evidence that the forces of the Kiev regime had the means, the opportunity and the motive. They had the equipment and engaged in very suspicious actions; they had BUK anti-aircraft systems in place for unknown reasons since the DPR forces have no aircraft, the Ukraine Air Traffic Control ordered the plane’s crew to divert from the regular more southerly route to go north over the combat zone, a Ukraine jet fighter was recorded by Russian radar climbing rapidly towards it just before it went down, and, within minutes of the crash, it was the Kiev regime and its masters in Washington and London who cried loudly that it was the DPR and Russians who were to blame without a shred of evidence to support the claim. And now we know that the Ukraine SBU immediately seized the ATC radar tapes and do not appear to have handed them over to international investigators.

Kiev and Washington also had the motive: to smear Russia and the anti-fascist forces and to provoke the EU to abandon its political and economic relations with Russia. It does not take a Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes to conclude the most likely suspects are in Kiev and Washington not in Donetsk and Moscow.

President Putin has insisted on an objective international investigation since the news broke while President Obama and his minions in Kiev have done nothing but call for the head of Putin. History shows that President Putin has insisted on adherence to international law and civilized behavior consistently throughout his terms in office. His integrity is unquestioned, whereas President Obama has been consistent in his calls for war, war and more war in every region of the globe and insists that the Americans are “exceptional” and above the law and judgment.

It may be that the results of an independent investigation of this tragic and terrible event will have consequences for the United States that are beyond its imaginings and that will erase any remaining influence or credit that it may still have in the world. They have committed many crimes. This may be the one crime too many.”

***

The presentation of logical arguments and proof, by Moscow, by the rebels, and even by some dissidents inside the Western regime, has not changed the dogged and extremist position of the Empire. But why should it, really, if the entire scenario had been, most likely, manufactured (or at least manipulated) by the neo-con mafia in Washington and by their counterparts in European capitals?

At some point, The Wall Street Journal reported in its article, “Russia Presents Its Account of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Crash,” and it was refreshing that at least some quotes ‘from the other side’ were able to make it into the mainstream Western media:

“Russia’s Defense Ministry on Monday presented its first detailed account of the final moments of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, saying Russian radar had spotted a second aircraft in the vicinity shortly before the crash and that satellite imagery showed Ukraine had moved missile systems into the area before the incident.

At a news conference, air force chief Igor Makushev didn’t say who the ministry thought had fired the missile that apparently brought down the airliner on Thursday.

In an elaborate presentation displaying radar and satellite imagery, Mr. Makushev said it was likely that the second airplane was a Ukrainian fighter jet. He also showed satellite photos allegedly portraying several Buk ground-to-air missile systems in the area close to where the plane crashed. The systems, he said, could only belong to the Ukrainian military. Ukraine has accused Russia of giving the rebels a Buk system, with which they then shot down the passenger jet.

Mr. Makushev said the airplane deviated from its course by 14 kilometers, but then attempted to return to its course, before crashing shortly after.

He said Russia is prepared to hand all of the information it has to European authorities, which included satellite imagery and data from its own radars.”

***

But there was much more to it – proof after proof painstakingly put together by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. And one is only left to wonder how many ‘objective’ and ‘well-informed’ European and US citizens ever read these accounts.

It is becoming clear and obvious, that even at the height of the so called Cold-War, citizens of the Soviet Union, even countries like Romania, were much better informed and knew more about the lines of thought of their adversaries, than the arrogant and thoroughly brainwashed Westerners now know about the points made by the people in the countries designated as their enemies.

But back to the Russian response:

The Wall Street Journal was referring to what occurred on July 21, 2014, at a Special Briefing by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the crash of the Malaysian Boeing 777 in Ukrainian air space, the speech was given by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant-General A.V. Kartapolov. For those who are interested in what Russia has to say, these briefings are indispensable.

I worked for several hours, on improving the original translation, while trying to keep the original tone in which this was presented.

General Kartapolov argued that:

After the Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 accident on July 17, studying the international flight-plan for, Amsterdam – Kuala Lumpur, we can find a quantity of conflicting information. In this case, the Russian Federation Ministry of

Defense considers it necessary to submit the information which is at the General Staff’s disposal. On the scheme you can see the international flight-path. The

Boeing-777 was supposed to fly on this flight-path. Draw your attention to the fact that the aircraft was flying inside the specified air corridor to Donetsk, but then it deviated north from the route. Meanwhile the maximum distance from the left border of the air corridor was 14 kilometers.

Then we can see that the Boeing-777 turned back to the borders of the specified air corridor. Nevertheless, the Malaysian aircrew didn’t perform the maneuver successfully. At 17.20 the aircraft began registering a rate reduction, at 17.23 the aircraft’s point blinked off on the radar. Why did the aircraft cross the border of the air corridor? Was it a navigation mistake, or the aircrew following the Dnepropetrovsk ground control orders? We will find out the answers after the decoding of the “black boxes” and communications. According to our information on the day of the accident, the Ukrainian Armed Forces deployed 3 to 4 artillery batteries of Buk-M1 missile systems not far from Donetsk. The system can hit targets at a distance of up to 35 kilometers, and at an altitude, up to 22 kilometers. Why did the Ukrainian Armed Forces deploy these air defense units in the Donetsk region? As we know militants don’t have any aircraft.

On the scheme we can see that both the projected impact point and the flight-path are inside the air defense battle zone of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Buk-M1 missile system. We have satellite photos of the Ukrainian Air Defense systems deployed in the Southeast of the country.”

Then the photos of the Buk are shown, near Luhansk and Donetsk. The first three photos are dated July 14, 2014. There are photos from that day to the day of the accident: launchers, radar, all belonging to the Ukrainian military.

After the painstaking photo presentation, the General continued:

“I want to expose the airspace situation in the Donetsk area that day. In the picture you can see the information of the objective air traffic control between 17.10 to 17.30 Moscow time.

During that period, there were 3 civilian aircraft:

Flight from Copenhagen to Singapore at 17.17;

Flight from Paris to Taipei at 17.24

Flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur… Beside it, the Russian system for air traffic control detected a Ukrainian Air Force aircraft, supposedly a Su-25, moving upwards towards the Malaysian Boeing-777. The distance between two aircraft was 3-5 kilometers.

The Su-25 can gain an altitude of 10,000 meters in a short time. It is armed with an air-to-air missile R-60, which is able to lock-on and destroy a target at a distance of 12 kilometers, and destroy it definitely at a distance of 5 kilometers. What was the mission of the combat aircraft, in the flight-path of civilian aircraft, almost at the same time and same altitude with the civilian craft? We want to have this question answered.

The video of the Rostov Aerial Center of the Joint Air Traffic Management

System can provide the information. The Chief of Staff of the Air

Force, Lieutenant-General Igor Makushev, will comment on the video.”

Then the Chief of Staff of the Air Force of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant-General I.Y. Makushev presents his arguments:

“Today the aircraft Air Traffic Control has acquired some objective control materials from the Rostov Aerial Center of the Joint Air Traffic

Management System. The video presents the air control information on the airspace situation in the region of Donetsk in the period from 17.19 P.M. to 17.25P.M., Moscow time, on July 17, 2014. In the upper left corner there is a

Boeing-772 mark, as it was following the route from Copenhagen to Singapore. Under this dot, there is another aircraft – it is marked as Boeing-777, which is on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. And on its right there is a Boeing-778 mark making its way from Delhi to Birmingham. All these three aircraft have been steadily monitored by the three radar stations of the air traffic control of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The Boeing-777 is moving towards the Russian Federation state boundary, and is to cross it at the point of «TONAK». An air traffic control officer has been controlling the aircraft flight and keeps on enquiring for its flight variables to compare them with the given ones. At 17.20 P.M. at a distance of 51 kilometers from the Russian Federation state boundary and the azimuth of 3000 (degrees), the aircraft started to lose its speed inexplicably, which is to be seen quite distinctively on the table of the aircraft characteristics. At 17.21.35 (seconds) P.M. with the aircraft at a speed of 200 km/h, at the point of the Boeing crash, there is a new mark of an aircraft to be seen. The radar stations of Ust-Donetsk and Butirinskoe, during the 4 minute period, steadily monitored the aircraft. The Air Traffic Control officer, having enquired for the characteristics of newly appeared aircraft but couldn’t possibly get them, because it is in all likelihood that the aircraft had no secondary deduction system mounted on it, which is typical of military aircraft. The early detection of this aircraft appeared to be quite impossible because those radars work in a standby mode and usually perform the air situation control. Detection possibilities at the given distance are over 5000 m altitude.

The detection of the aircraft turned out to be possible as soon as the aircraft ascended.

The further aircraft flight variables changed. It was now flying in the area of the Boeing crash and was monitoring the situation. Earlier the Ukrainian officials reported that on the day of the Boeing-777 accident, there were no military aircraft flying in the region. So, as you can see, it does not appear to be true.

…We also have some questions for our US partners. According to the statement of the US representatives, they have some pictures from space supporting that the militants launched the missile. But nobody has seen these pictures.

According to our records from 17:06 till 17:21 Moscow time on the July 17 over the Southeastern territory of Ukraine, a US space satellite flew overhead. This is a special device of the experimental space system designed to detect and track various missile launches. If the US party has photos made by the satellite, please let us ask them to show them to world community for further investigation.

Is it a coincidence or not? However, the time of the Malaysian Boeing-777 accident and the time of the observation done by the satellite over the Ukrainian territory are the same. In conclusion, I would like to mention that all the concrete information is based on the objective and reliable data of the different Russian equipment, in contrast to the accusations of the US against us, made without any evidence. A good example of such facts is that some mass media showed the transportation of a Buk-M1 missile system from Ukrainian to Russian territory. We can clearly see that it is a frame-up. These pictures were taken in the city of Krasnoarmeisk, which is confirmed by a banner situated close to the road. This banner has an address of the car shop situated at No. 34, Dnepropetrovskaya Street. Since May 11th, the Krasnoarmeysk city has been under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That is why we have some questions. What kind of launching system is it? Where is it being transported? Where is it now? Why is it completely unloaded? What was the last time it launched missiles? To end my speech I would like to emphasize that the Russian Federation did not deliver any Buk-M1 missiles systems to the militants, and any other such equipment. All the data compiled by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation will be transmitted today to the experts of the European countries and Malaysia…

The Ministry of Defense will continue to inform you about the newly revealed facts connected with the air disaster of Malaysian Boeing-777.

***

Now why on earth should we not believe this presentation, backed by facts, images and concrete analyses?

Western and Ukrainian lies are piling up: wobbly explanations or no explanations at all for change of 777’s course, lowering altitude, ‘bad weather’, and revealing testimony of the Spanish traffic controller working in Ukraine…

And why should we believe people like the current President of the United States, who openly bragged about US ‘exceptionalism’, at the military academy, which has been responsible for producing countless mass murderers?

And for the sake of objectivity, why would we not listen to the Russians, before imposing sanctions on them, for something that we are, most likely, responsible for, ourselves?

And although it is most likely that the pro-Western Ukrainian military shot down the plane, even if it were to be the other side that did it, the entire conflict began with the EU and the US destabilizing Ukraine, overthrowing the legitimate government, and igniting the war.

Angry Dutch families of the victims should stop pointing fingers at Russia. Instead they should go to Brussels and Washington to express their wrath and to demand justice.

***

And what about Malaysia and Indonesia? Indonesia lost 12 people on that ill-fated flight.

Most of the Southeast Asian countries are historically “client” states of the West, with hardly any independent, non-corporate media. Indonesia has been exactly that since the 1965 ‘events’. Malaysia, pushing for an independent course under Dr. Mahathir’s rule, is presently being lured by the US, which is trying to establish military bases there, or to at least gain access to existing Malaysian ones.

Suddenly, a great amount of US funding has been unleashed, to win over Malaysian intellectuals, some of the most shamefully subservient in the region. Several have already began departing for conferences, cultural exchanges and writer’s retreats, to destinations all over the United States, all expenses paid.

In Kuala Lumpur, there was deadly silence after the downing of MH17. Not one writer or filmmaker that I know and contacted wanted to go on record. One mistaken word and the entire rosy dream of Western ‘funding’ would go up in flames.

Only the official anti-Russian narrative was available.

Two filmmakers spoke, but off the record:

“To be honest, Malaysians are completely out of touch with what’s happening or even with the political consequences of the ‘deal’ that our Prime Minister had made to bring the bodies back. No one has even questioned what the deal was. There is no discussion whatsoever, even in the educated circles as it’s taboo to even start talking about anything other than the people who died. All Malaysians care about is that it’s tragedy and that we should feel sad. But largely, Russia and Putin are the villains in the mind of Malaysians.”

In Indonesia, theories vary. Some are far, remote from the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Agus Suhartono, a former aeronautical engineer at PT. Dirgantara Indonesia, thinks that Malaysia has been punished for creating an alternative banking system for the Muslim world:

“I think it is bit strange. How could a plane at an altitude of more than 30,000 ft be a mistaken missile target? At that altitude, the plane identification should be very clear. Whoever fired knew perfectly well what he was doing. The question should be why MAS (Malaysia Airlines) again? Did they rub somebody the wrong way? Why was Malaysia the target twice in a row? I think maybe because the financial turnover of the Arab world is centered in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is the gate. The sharia gate of the Arab financial world.”

***

New sanctions are being leveled against Russia. “Cold Warriors” in Canada, Australia, UK and US are back in their saddles, like Major Kong in the unforgettable film, “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, they are ready to cover their skulls with cowboy hats, and stick A-bombs between their legs. Time to ‘go and bomb the Russkies’.

Arabs are not tough enough adversaries, and most of the Muslim world is now in ruins anyway, thanks to the ‘War on… ehm… terror’.

Russia and China are again blocking the West from fully controlling the world. ‘How dare they?’

The most frightening thing is the state of the self-righteousness and self-deception of the Western public. One wants to scream: Don’t they see? Do they refuse to see? Is it more comfortable not to see? How long are they going to pretend that they are blind? Or maybe they are blind…

After the MH17 tragedy and after the way it has been handled by the Western mass media, there is no doubt that we are back to the Cold War again. It is not just a war against Russia. The war is reflected in the arms race that is being accelerated by the US in Asia, from the revolting, racist anti-Chinese propaganda, and from the attempts to overthrow our socialist governments in Latin America.

We should never forget that Western imperialism murdered tens of millions of innocent people all over the world, after the Nagasaki ‘A-bomb’ and the official end of the WWII: all those crimes and horror to satisfy its unbridled obsession with controlling the world.

Tens of millions of lives already lost.

Why should they spare some 298 of those on MH17?

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.

29 July, 2014
GreanvillePost.com

Deleted BBC Report. “Ukrainian Fighter Jet Shot Down MHI7″, Donetsk Eyewitnesses

By Global Research News

The original BBC Video Report was published by BBC Russian Service on July 23, 2014.

In a bitter irony, The BBC is censoring its own news productions.

Why did BBC delete this report by Olga Ivshina?

Is it because the BBC team was unable to find any evidence that a rocket was launched in the area that the Ukrainian Security Service (“SBU”) alleges to be the place from which the Novorossiya Militia launched a “BUK” missile?

Or is it because every eyewitness interviewed by the BBC team specifically indicated the presence of a Ukrainian military aircraft right beside the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 at the time that it was shot down?

Or is it because of eyewitness accounts confirming that the Ukrainian air force regularly used civilian aircraft flying over Novorossiya as human shields to protect its military aircraft conducting strikes against the civilian population from the Militia’s anti-aircraft units?

Highlights of Witness statements (see complete transcript below)

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when …

Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.

Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].

 

Video: The Catastrophe of #MH17: #BBC in the Search of the “#BUK”

by slavyangrad.wordpress.com

Introductory Paragraphs to the BBC Video Report

Intro of BBC Report (For Full Transcript see below)

The “black boxes” of the crashed Malaysian Boeing have finally been transferred into the hands of the experts. However, how much can they tell us?

The recorders logged the coordinates and the heading of the aircraft at the time of the incident and may have recorded the sound of the explosion. However, they will not tell us what exactly caused the explosion.

The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from Russia.

The Ukrainian Security Service has published photographs and a video, which, in its opinion, prove that the Boeing was shot down with a “BUK” missile.

BBC reporter Olga Ivshina and producer Oksana Vozhdayeva decided to find the place from which the missile was allegedly launched.

Original BBC Video Report: Preserved by Google Web-cache

Transcript of the BBC Video Report
DPR Representative: Here it is.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The black boxes from the crashed Boeing are finally being transferred into the hands of the experts. However, how much can they tell us?

The recorders logged the coordinates and the heading of the aircraft at the time of the incident and may have recorded the sound of the explosion. However, they will not tell us what exactly caused the explosion.

The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when …

Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.

Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from the direction of Russia.

Vitaliy Naida, Department of Counterintelligence of SBU [Ukrainian Security Service]: This was a BUK M1 system from which the aircraft was shot down. It came to Ukraine early in the morning on the 17th of July. It was delivered by a tow truck to the city of Donetsk. After that, it was redeployed from Donetsk, as part of a column of military equipment, to the area of the city of Torez, to the area of Snezhnoye, to the area of Pervomaisk.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian Security Service has published photographs and a video, which, in its opinion, prove that the Boeing was shot down with a “BUK” missile. We attempted to verify these photographs and information at the location.

One of the photographs showed a landscape not far from the city of Torez, on which smoke could be seen coming from the presumed location of the missile’s launch. We attempted to find this location, and it appears that we were successful.

We are now on the outskirts of the city of Torez. Behind me, approximately five kilometres away, is the city of Snezhnoye. And the landscape here matches the landscape that we can see on the photograph published by the Ukrainian Security Service.

To find the place from which the smoke was allegedly coming from, we adopted as markers these three poplars and the group of trees. Presumably, this is the place that can be seen on the photograph published by the SBU. And here are our markers: the three solitary poplars and the small group of trees in the distance.

The smoke that can be seen on the photograph came from somewhere over there [pointing behind her], behind my back. The SBU believes that this is a trace coming from the launch of a “BUK” missile.

However, it must be noted that there are here, approximately in the same place, the Saur-Mogila memorial, near which the fighting continues almost unabated, and a coalmine. It turns out that the smoke with the same degree of probability could have been coming from any of these locations.

Having circled around the nearby fields, we were unable to find any traces of a missile launch. Nor did the local inhabitants that we encountered see any “BUK” either.

At the ruins of an apartment building in the city of Snezhnoye, the topic of the jet fighters that may have been escorting civilian aircraft comes up again. A bomb dropped from above took away the lives of eleven civilians here.

Sergey Godovanets, Commander of the Militia of the city of Snezhnoye: They use these civilian aircraft to hide behind them. It is only now that they stopped flying over us – but, usually, civilian aircraft would always fly above us. And they hide [behind them]. [The experience in] Slavyansk had demonstrated that they would fly out from behind a civilian aircraft, bomb away, and then hide, once again, behind the civilian aircraft and fly away.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: The commander of the local militia emphasizes that they have no weaponry capable of shooting down a jet fighter [flying] at a significant height. However, he says that if such weaponry were to appear, they would have tried to.

Sergey Godovanets: If we know that it is not a civilian aircraft, but a military one, then – yes.

Olga Ivshina, BBC: So, could the Boeing have been shot down by the militias that had mistaken it for a military aircraft? There is as yet no unequivocal confirmation of either this or any other version [of what took place]. The international experts are just beginning their work with the information obtained from the crashed airliner. It now appears that it is difficult to overstate the importance of this investigation. Olga Ivshina, BBC.

The Catastrophe of #MH17:

#BBC in the Search of the “BUK” – The Video Report Deleted by BBC

Translation by: Valentina Lisitsa
http://slavyangrad.wordpress.com
29 July, 2014
Global Research

Watch: Al Jazeera’s “Massacre at Dawn” Gives Glimpse of Horror in Shujaiya

By Shahd Abusalama

My body shakes as tears fall out of control after watching the first minute of Al Jazeera’s 22-minute documentary on the Shujaiya massacre which Israel committed in the eastern Gaza City neighborhood a week ago today, killing dozens and flattening the entire area.

Thinking that the footage contained in Massacre at Dawn is just a fraction of the horror makes it even worse. No wonder Israel prevented media from covering the brutality that our people endured there.

(Readers in the United States can watch the documentary with English subtitles here. It can also be watched on Al Jazeera Arabic without subtitles.)

I tried to put myself to sleep as only sleep can give me a break from the pain. My attempts failed. So I got up to share with you the most heartbreaking scenes that keep playing back once I close my eyelids.

“My son is gone!”

The mother’s voice at 3:35 in the video saying, “My son is gone! Mahmoud is gone” echoes in my mind.

The mother was running, escaping death along with her son. Her son suddenly is shot and falls. She stops despite that Israeli forces were still shooting.

She risks her life to rescue him and starts screaming, “My son got injured. My son is dying. Help!” But no ambulances are allowed there. Finally a man comes, carries her son and they continue running. I don’t know if they survived.

Watch the traumatized elderly man at 5:58 who stutters, out of breath, “There was shelling. Everything was bombed.”

“We were stuck in the house while bombings everywhere. My son was killed and my hand got injured,” he says (my translation). “My son is still over there [in the house]. We were sitting together. I went to the toilet. I returned to find blood flooding out of his neck. He has been bleeding since the morning.”

Listen to the cries of the man at 7:00 who tries to prevent the camera from filming him, refusing to appear broken. “Instead of [us] feeding our babies with milk, they sent them rockets!” he exclaims.

The reporter asks him, “Do you have a house here?” He replies, “I have a house and I lost my four kids,” trying to hide his tears from the camera.

“Are they kids? Don’t worry. Speak so the world can see what we’re suffering here,” the reporter says. So the man tries hard to continue with a voice choked with tears, ”They’re kids. I don’t know where they are!” They might be lost, or dead, or under the rubble, some people took them or they evaporated, he says.

Listen to the woman at 8:05 who is running and screaming like mad: “Our house collapsed over us while were inside. We left, miraculously” (my translation).

Orphaned child

Then comes the injured child Bisan Daher on her hospital bed at 9:35, whose condition is like countless others who were the only survivors of their massacred families. She lost her parents and her siblings.

At 10:20, a man is crying with his children: “We were sleeping at the house normally. I don’t know how, the house was shelled all of a sudden. And shelled once again. I got out to find my wife dying in the hallway” (my translation).

His son at 10:35 says (my translation): “Our house was destroyed and my mother was killed. We took her to hospital but she became a martyr. She was looking through the window of my sister’s room when a missile hit the apartment below us and killed her. And our house was destroyed, how will we live?”

At 10:55, the boy’s sister says, “We weren’t doing anything. I woke up after a ‘warning’ rocket hit our house. Only seconds later, we found Mom dying in the hallway. We started screaming, calling for ambulance to rescue her but she was already dead. May she rest in peace.”

“Just like in 1948!”

At 12:28, a man who is fleeing says (my translation), “At al-Mansoura street, we were running in between bodies, torn pieces are on both sides, everywhere. Houses collapsed over their inhabitants. Worse than Sabra and Shatila.”

Another man escaping with his family says at 16:10: ”Just like in 1948! We are fleeing again. Let the world hear this. This is a new exodus.”

Within the scene of people fleeing Shujaiya, an elderly man paralyzed by shock is unable to run. His son retrieves him and carries him on his back, as he says, “May God get revenge of them [Israel].”

‪#‎GazaUnderAttack‬: As you watch this, just remember that this is just a glimpse of the indescribable horror endured by our people in Shujaiya.

That’s why Israel didn’t want its ugliness to be reported to the world and prevented media from entering the area as they were massacring civilians.

Remember that these people are the voices who had a chance to be heard. They were luckier than others, who suffered and were killed amidst the world’s silence.

Shahd Abusalama, 23, is a Palestinian artist, a blogger and an English literature graduate living in Gaza City.

28 July, 2014
Electronicintifada.net

 

VIDEO: In Memory of Salem Shammaly

By International Solidarity Movement

28 July, 2014
Palsolidarity.org

In honour of the memory of Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) has published all the raw footage, taken by Mohammed Abedullah, of Salem’s murder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZxbziFV5w

Yesterday during the ceasefire, Salem’s body was finally able to be recovered and buried after five long days. Salem’s cousin, Mohammed Al-Qattawi, explained that Salem’s body was so badly decomposed that his mothers, sisters, and friends couldn’t bare to see him to say goodbye.

So many families are now trying to bury their children, their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends. The first cemetery the family went to was full to capacity. The second cemetery was able to help them, but they were forced to open an already used grave, to place Salem in. In the last 20 days, over 1,058 Palestinians have been killed.
On the 20th of July, Salem and his family left the Shajiya neighbourhood at dawn after the Israeli military began shelling homes and destroying the area.

The ISM contacted Salem’s sister, Shireen, and asked her if she could tell us more about her brother, and what happened to him and their family.

“With the rest of the people, we headed towards the city center assuming that it would be a safe place. After the announcement of the truce, we heard a call through a local radio station from other family members who were stranded in the region; among them was our cousin.

Salem then disappeared for two days. We went daily to the al-Shifa Hospital to look at the records to check if they received any information about him, whether he was wounded in the hospital or a martyr, but we had no luck. My father kept asking relatives and neighbors and everyone he would meet to find out where his son could be.
On the 22nd of July in the morning, the power supply came back, which only lasts for three hours a day at my house. We connected the mobile phones and the laptop as well as the lamps so we could charge them in preparation for the night. My sister opened her Facebook account to read about the happenings of last night and to keep updated with news and pictures and about the invasion of Shajiya.

She found a video that drew her attention titled ‘Israeli sniper killing wounded civilian’. Once she opened the video, my other sister, who was sitting next to her, screamed and said, “this is Salem’s voice. I swear, its Salem’s voice.”

We waited until the video completed buffering and saw Salem walking, helping the paramedics to rescue the injured. Then, one of us screamed and called for our father, “Dad, Salem is alive, come!”

We got a chair for our father, sat down, and all concentrated on the laptop screen waiting for the end. Suddenly the camera was distorted and then it settled on Salem lying on the ground. We all became quiet and speechless. We sat calmly and our father said, “thank God, Salem was wounded. Maybe the foreigners took him to a hospital…” But before my father could finish his sentence, Salem was shot the third and fatal shot.

Salem was a young man in the prime of his youth. He had dreamt to live his life like any other at his age. He was handsome and affectionate and could never hide what was in his heart. He has been waiting to grow up and to marry and have a family. We were waiting for him to grow up in order to assist our sick father and to support our family. He did not like politics at all. He was only in interested in his family and football.

Why did they kill him in this brutal way? He was shot in broad daylight and, during the time of truce, the only thing in his hand was a cheap mobile phone. Was he shot by an Israeli sniper who discovered that he did not pose any threat or danger? Then why did they not leave him in order to regain consciousness or to be rescued? Why did they shoot a second and third bullet?!

God, if he was part of the resistance then we would have said that it was the path that he had chosen, but he had no relationship with them.

Is it not enough that they have deprived us from his joyful presence? Why are they also depriving us from the chance to say goodbye to him and to bury him? Where are the people who call and urge for human rights initiatives? Where is Switzerland, the backer of the Geneva Conventions, which provides for the protection of human rights?

Look at us, do we not look like humans? How are we so different from them? Where are your laws and your organizations and your promises? If you cannot enforce the laws promised, then why create them? We see that animal rights are applied in a more fair and equal manner than what you call “human rights”.

To The family Of The One Thousandth Victim Of Israel’s Genocidal Slaughter In Gaza

By Ilan Pappe

I do not know yet who your loved one was. She might have been a baby a few months old, or a young boy, a grandfather or one of your children or parents. I heard about your loved one’s death from Chico Menashe, a political commentator on Reshet Bet, Israel’s main radio station.

He explained that the killing of your loved one, as well as turning Gaza neighborhoods to rubble and driving 150,000 people from their homes, is part of a well-calculated Israeli strategy: this carnage will destroy the impulse of Palestinians in Gaza to resist Israeli policies.

I heard this while reading in the 25 July edition of the supposedly respectable Haaretz the words of the not so respectable historian Benny Morris that even this is not enough.

He calls the genocidal policies so far “refisut” — feebleness of mind and spirit. He demands far more massive destruction in the future with the knowledge that this is how you behave if you want to defend your “villa in the jungle,” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Israel.

Inhuman wilderness

Yes, I am afraid to say the Israeli media and academia are fully behind the massacre apart from few, hardly audible voices in this inhuman wilderness. I am not writing this to tell you that I am ashamed — I long ago dissociated myself from this state ideology and do all I can as an individual to confront and defeat it. Probably it has not been enough; we are all inhibited by moments of cowardice, egotism and maybe a natural impulse to take care of our family and loved ones.

And yet I feel the urge today to make a pledge to you, which none of the Germans my father knew during the time of the Nazi regime was willing to make to him when the thugs committed genocide against his family. This is not much of a pledge at your moment of grief, but it is the best I can offer and saying nothing is not an option. And doing nothing is even less than an option.

This is 2014 — the destruction of Gaza is well documented. This is not 1948 when Palestinians had to struggle hard to tell their story of horror; so many of the crimes Zionist committed then where hidden and never came to light, even until today. So my first and simple pledge is to record, inform and insist on the truth.

My old university, University of Haifa, has recruited its students to disseminate Israel’s lies all over the world using the Internet, but this is 2014 and propaganda of this kind will not hold water.

Pledge to boycott

But surely this is not enough. I pledge to continue the effort to boycott a state that commits such crimes. Only when the Union of European Football Associations throws Israel out, when the academic community refuses to have any institutional ties with Israel, when airlines hesitate to fly there, and when every outfit that may lose money because of an ethical stance in the short-term understands that in the long run it will gain both morally and financially — only then we will begin to honor your loss.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has had many achievements and continues its tireless work. The obstacles still include the false allegation of anti-Semitism and the cynicism of politicians. This is how an honorable initiative by British architects to force their colleagues in Israel to take a moral stance rather than be accomplices in the criminal colonization of the land was blocked at the last moment.

Similar initiatives were sabotaged elsewhere by spineless politicians in Europe and the United States. But my pledge is to be part of the effort to overcome these hurdles. The memory of your loved one will be the driving force, together with the vivid memory of the suffering of the Palestinians in 1948 and ever since.

Slaughterhouse

I do it all egotistically. I really pray and hope that in this worst moment of your life when Palestinians stand in Shujaiya, Deir al-Balah or Gaza City, gazing at the slaughterhouse created by Israeli warplanes, tanks and artillery, you would not lose hope in humanity.

This humanity even includes Israelis, those who do not have the courage to speak but who express their horror in private as my overflowing email and Facebook inboxes attest, as well as the small handful who demonstrate publicly against the incremental genocide in Gaza.

It also includes those not born yet who perhaps will be able to escape a Zionist indoctrination machine that teaches them, from cradle to grave, to dehumanize the Palestinians to such a level that the burning alive of a sixteen-year-old Palestinian boy fails to move them or shatter their belief in their government, army or religion.

Defeated

For their sake, mine and yours, I wish we can also dream of the day after — when Zionism will be defeated as the ideology that governs our lives between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea and we all have the normal life we crave for and deserve.

So I pledge today not to be distracted even by friends and Palestinian leaders who still foolishly pin their hopes on the long-gone “two-state solution.” If one has the impulse to be involved in bringing regime change in Palestine, the only reason to do this is for a struggle for equal human and civil rights and full restitution for all those who are and were victimized by Zionism, inside and outside the beloved land of Palestine.

May whoever is your loved one rest in peace knowing that their death was not in vain — not because it will be avenged and revenged. We do not need more bloodshed. I still believe there is a way of bringing evil systems to an end with the power of humanity and morality.

Justice also means bringing the murderers who killed your loved one and so many others to court, and we must pursue bringing Israel’s war criminals to trial in international tribunals.

It is a far longer way and, at times, even I feel the impulse to be part of a force that uses hard power to end the inhumanity. But I pledge myself to work for justice, full justice, restorative justice.

This is what I can pledge — to work to prevent the next stage in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

28 July, 2014
Electronicintifada.net

Not Just Numbers: Online Memorial Publishes Names, Faces of Palestinians Killed In Gaza

By Ali Abunimah

Qassem Talal Hamdan, 23, was killed on 13 July 2014 in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. An engineering student, his “dream was to be a successful engineer to build and develop his country.”

Iman Khalil Abed Ammar was just nine years old. She was killed on 20 July in the Shujaiya massacre along with her brothers, four-year-old Asem and thirteen-year-old Ibrahim.

Mahmoud Abdel Hamid Elzowidi, 23, and Mohammad Khalid Jamil Elzowidi, 20, were among five members of their family killed on 19 July when Israel bombed their house in Beit Hanoun.

These are the names of just six of the more than 1,000 Palestinians known to have been killed in almost three weeks of relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, during a twelve-hour “humanitarian truce,” the full extent of the mass destruction Israel has inflicted was revealed as people were able to re-enter neighborhoods such as Shujaiya, and dozens more bodies were pulled from under the rubble. Many people are still missing.

Afraid that the names of those slaughtered by Israel would get lost in the staggering statistics of death, two women have set up the website Humanize Palestine (humanizepalestine.com) as an online memorial to Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks.

Bayan Abusneineh and Dana Saifan are both recent graduates of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and have both been active in Students for Justice in Palestine.

I spoke with Abusneineh, who told me that she and Saifan got the idea to start the project after seeing many graphic images of the bodies of Palestinians who had died violent deaths circulating through social media.

“Initially when everything was happening it was necessary for people to see these graphic images, to know the reality of what is going in Gaza,” Abusneineh explained. “But then I started thinking about those three Israeli settler youths who were kidnapped – their faces were everywhere. Generally, when Israelis are killed, their bodies are not shown. You only see smiling faces, and that creates empathy.”

Abusneineh said that Humanize Palestine was intended to serve first and foremost “as a reminder and memorial for our own community. People were already making an effort to put names out there, and we saw them sharing some of the images of friends and relatives when they were alive, so our project is another way to bring them together.”

But she also says she hopes that people outside the Palestinian community will “see it and understand better who Palestinians are. This is how they lived. This is how their lives were ended.”

I asked Abusneineh how she and Saifan verify the images, names and other information they publish on the site, and she talked about the process: “We started just compiling images about a week ago on a Google document and we realized we could make something bigger. We started going through Twitter, Tumblr, trying to get verification. People were sharing pictures of family members and we got into contact with them as well.”
“When we find someone circulating information, we try to find multiple pictures of the person matched to a name,” she explained. “We check to see if the name is on a list of casualties on a credible website. If we can’t find a match, we don’t use the image. We also try our best to match information up with stories published in the media. There have been a lot we didn’t use.”

Still the effort is not perfect, Abusneineh acknowledges, which is why she thinks it is crucial to see Humanize Palestine as a community effort. Several people have helped to refine, correct and track down information, and there is now an email address on the site for people to send in submissions.

“We’ve had a lot of people contribute pictures saying these are my cousins, this is their picture and this is what happened to them, and we’re hoping to put those up too.” Others have even sent in art work and poetry.
The website also includes Palestinians who may have been combatants, such as brothers Mustafa Abd El Hadi Abu Mur, 20, and Khaled Abd El Hadi Abu Mur, 23 who, the site says, “died together in Rafah in defense of their nation.”

Abusneineh acknowledges that the site is a lot of work, but she sees value in it becoming a permanent memorial if the community effort can be built and maintained.

Although she agreed to speak to The Electronic Intifada in order to explain the goals of Humanize Palestine, Abusneineh says that she and Saifan have not put their own names on the website itself, “because we want the focus to be entirely on the people whose lives we write about.”

The website features not only Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, but victims of Israeli army and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank as well.

“We don’t want it just to be when a huge massacre happens. People still die every day because of the occupation. So we hope to continue,” she says.

Ali Abunimah is Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

28 July, 2014
Electronic Intifada

The Empire Economy Does Not Serve The Economy Or People

By Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers

As US Empire fades, we must choose our path forward

World history is filled with empires, e.g. the Roman and Byzantine empires, the European colonial empires, various ancient Iranian empires, the Arab Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union to name a few. These historic empires have one thing in common: they no longer exist. As the lifecycle of empire wanes, rather than being a benefit to the home country, sustaining empire becomes more expensive than it is worth.

While the US economy and military remain the largest in the world, the economy is faltering and losing its vitality. Chalmers Johnson, a CIA analyst who became a critic of the agency and author of a series on US Empire, writes :

“Thirty-five years from now, America’s official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now. We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face-to-face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy.”

The US began as a colony of European empires, especially of England, and then evolved into its own North American Empire. Thomas Jefferson called the United States an “empire of Liberty” when he purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803. As “Manifest Destiny” took root, the US stole land of Indigenous peoples, appropriated Texas and Oregon and then went onto California. The Mexican War and Texas cessation took 55% of Mexico’s pre-1836 territory including lands in present day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming as well as Texas through its cession from Mexico.

The modern US Empire has its roots in the Spanish-American War when the US occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines and in the two World Wars. Since World War II, the United States has been a growing global imperial power at war—somewhere—every year. Seymour Melman wrote in March of 2003: “Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy.” This has been a prime cause of the hollowing out of the domestic economy.

Rather than fixing the infrastructure, which the American Society of Civil Engineers ranks in its annual report card as a D+, the federal government’s “financing is lavished without stint to promote every kind of war industry, and foreign investing by U.S. firms.” As Seymour points out “there is no public ‘space’ for dialogue on how to improve the quality of our lives. Such topics are subordinate to ‘how to make war.’”

Economy and Empire

An empire must keep its client states happy as well as its transnational corporations profitable. This has resulted in a foreign policy designed for corporate interests and foreign oligarchs. The Wikileaks documents show US secrecy often hides crimes , abuses and unethical behavior linked to corporate interests; it also hides actions of a government that operates not for the public interest but for the profits of transnational corporations ; and that is why secrecy is often necessary. We see this most glaringly in the rigged trade agreements being negotiated in secret except for hundreds of corporate advisers who work with the US Trade Representative in writing the agreements.

The flood of migrants coming from Central America is blowback from US foreign policy in the region. Just as NAFTA undermined the Mexican economy, Central American trade agreements have done the same for that region. Further, US support for brutal governments who impoverish their people and support for coups against governments that try to create greater equity have made these nations very difficult to live in. Even US drug policy adds to the misery in these countries. People desperate to survive come North in the hopes of finding a better life. While some cities, most recently Vancouver, seek to become sanctuary cities that protect immigrants, the Obama administration takes the approach of criminalization and deportation .

Not only does Empire foreign policy undermine the federal budget, with 55% of discretionary spending going to the military, but it also undermines the US economy as jobs are shipped overseas and corporations hide trillions of dollars in assets overseas to avoid paying taxes (see, for example, this article, Boycott Walgreens: The Tax-Dodger On The Corner ) . Empire economics does not serve the workers in the US or abroad and does not serve the security of people as safety nets are shredded as austerity is needed to fund weapons and war.

The cost of war has escalated. Just one weapons system, the F-35, a fighter jet that has been grounded because it does not work, has cost $49 billion per year since the program begin in 2006. Hayes Brown of Think Progress made a list of what that money could have been spent on instead. It could have bought a mansion for every homeless person, fed every school child in the US, funded every humanitarian crisis or provided global security through the UN or provided funding to rebuild America.

The economic impact of Empire policy is going to take a new turn as nations become allies outside of US influence. This week was the beginning of an alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) officially launched the BRICS Development Bank . This comes at the same time that 78 nations have called for a new era where there is respect for the sovereignty of nations and policies that seek economic, environmental and social justice. Many nations of the world are fighting back against US hegemony.

Empire Economy Causing Unrest

Not only are governments challenging US dominance, but people are fighting back as well. A wave of revolts, not only in the US but around the world, against big finance capitalism that allows transnational corporations to dominate the world economy has the power structure, including bankers , on heightened alert. The US military has been spending tens of millions since 2008 in the Minerva Project studying how protest movements develop and go viral. This week we learned the military was studying how to control emotions by manipulating social media . We also learned that spy agencies also have tools to manipulate social media in order to control people.

And, we see their fear in the harsh way they handle protests against Empire policies. Last week in Syracuse, a nonviolent protester against drones and grandmother of three, Mary Anne Grady Flores, was sentenced to one year in jail . You can see video of her moving sentencing speech here . After her sentencing, another drone protester was convicted and is also facing a year in jail. Flores was released on bail pending appeal , but 7 subsequent drone protesters were hit with heavy bail after they were arrested.

The Empire advocates should be afraid. Earlier this year a war was stopped when people united to oppose the attack on Syria. Currently, the Israelis cannot hide their war crimes, even if the media does not report them. We are developing our own media tools that can stop and expose the realities of wars

The former Assistant Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts reviews the realities of the failing US economy , piercing the veil of false media reporting on a non-existent “recovery” and tying it to the Empire economy, asking:

“In view of this reality, why is Washington pushing its puppet in Kiev toward war with Russia? Why is Washington pushing NATO to spend more money and build more bases on which to deploy more troops in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, especially when Washington’s contribution will be the largest part of the cost? Why is Washington re-entering the Middle East conflict that Washington began by inciting Sunni and Shia against one another? Why is Washington constructing new naval and air bases from the Philippines to Vietnam in order to encircle China?

“If Washington is this unaware of its budget constraints and its financial predicament, it cannot be long before Americans experience economic catastrophe.”

The Arc of US Empire Shows Decline

The last 100 years of Empire and imperialism brought the US great wealth, creating the largest economy in the world which the IMF values as $17 trillion or one-quarter of the global economy. Today, the US economy is struggling with high unemployment, record numbers of Americans dropping out of the job market, large trade deficits and declines in many measures of standard of living. At the same time, other countries, most notably China, India, Brazil and Russia, are beginning to challenge the US.

As noted earlier, these countries along with South Africa joined together to create the BRICS development bank to challenge the World Bank and IMF, which are dominated by the US and its western allies. This may be the most important challenge to US economic dominance since 1945 especially when combined with bilateral agreements between countries that omit the US dollar, weakening its position as the reserve currency of the world.

Alfred W. McCoy, author of Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State , convened a global working group of 140 historians to consider the fate of the US as an imperial power. He predicts four scenarios for the future of the United States, all leading to the end of Empire.

First on the list is economic decline. He writes that “three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of world trade, the decline of American technological innovation, and the end of the dollar’s privileged status as the global reserve currency.” The scenario ends with:

“After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world’s reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late.”

The second is fear of oil shock by the leadership which explains the US’ current extreme energy extraction boom even though it threatens the environment and public health. McCoy writes that the waning economic power of the United States has caused it to lose control of the world’s oil supplies. In 2010, he pointed out that while the US was still a gas guzzler, “China became the world’s number one energy consumer this summer, a position the U.S. had held for over a century.”

Further he emphasized the rising power of Iran and Russia, two countries the US is belligerent with, saying that by 2025 they will “control almost half of the world’s natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the National Intelligence Council has warned , in just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could ‘emerge as energy kingpins.’” Competing with them through extreme energy extraction, under the “all of the above” energy strategy, will come at tremendous cost to the ecology of the US and the planet.

The third scenario is what our last article on Empire examined : Military Misadventure. McCoy writes : “Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. … These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.” He points to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with war threatened in Pakistan.

McCoy describes how with the US military “stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions rising in Israel, Iran, and Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous military crisis abroad are multifold.” Since writing this, the US military is stretched even thinner with more military crisis areas, e.g. Libya, Syria, the Ukraine and Russia unfolding. Each could grow into a wider conflict.

The final scenario is World War III in the Asian Pacific which he described as having previously been “America’s Lake,” but which is now challenged by China. The US fears China as, he notes, “the Pentagon reported that Beijing now holds ‘the capability to attack… [U.S.] aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean’ and target ‘nuclear forces throughout… the continental United States.’”

The Wikileaks cables that were published after McCoy’s article further describe the fears of the US as a declining world power in the face of China. A March 24, 2009 State Department cable describes a meeting between Secretary of State Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd held in Washington, DC. During the meeting Clinton complained about how difficult it was to take action against China asking “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” Rudd says Australia was playing close attention to China and building up its Navy in response. He urged the US and its allies to pull China into US-dominated structure of state relations, “while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong.”

No doubt this conversation was one of many that led to Obama’s Asian Pivot and the increased focus on negotiating the China-less Trans-Pacific Partnership thus encircling China militarily and economically. McCoy, writing prior to these policy changes, predicts vast resources being spent on the full “spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.” He describes this including not just traditional military weapons but “a new digital network of air and space robotics, advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance.” All of this preparation for conflict with China comes at the expense of the faltering domestic economy and indebted federal budget.

These scenarios describe the decline of US Empire and each has the potential for tremendous negative effects on the domestic economy as the decline occurs. McCoy finds that “every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in American global power by 2025 than anything Washington now seems to be envisioning.”

How quickly do empires unravel? McCoy writes a warning:

“Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.” (Note: the year of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.)

Creating a Different Future

Of course, it does not have to be this way. The people of the United States can educate themselves about these realities and mobilize to force the government to take a very different course. Chalmers Johnson presents a different vision :

“If, however, we were to dismantle our empire of military bases and redirect our economy toward productive, instead of destructive, industries; if we maintained our volunteer armed forces primarily to defend our own shores (and perhaps to be used at the behest of the United Nations); if we began to invest in our infrastructure, education, health care, and savings, then we might have a chance to reinvent ourselves as a productive, normal nation.”

Melman argues that to achieve this “We must come to grips with America’s State Capitalism and its Permanent War Economy. Failing that, there is no hope for any constructive exit.” Johnson does not see this scenario as likely, but it is up to us to make it likely, to recreate the world as we want it to be. The crisis of American Empire is an opportunity for a new course of action that can save us, and the world.

There has been more than 100 years of people seeking to end war as a means of solving conflicts between nations and peoples. A new campaign, World Beyond War , is seeking to organize a global movement to end war. They are raising money for a billboard campaign that will build on the opposition to war, teach that ‘war cannot end war’ and let people know there is a movement for them to join.

While ending war and US Empire would be monumental changes, they seem reasonable when we look at the predicament of the United States: the economy is failing, the world is looking for alternatives to the US dollar, the US military has not won a major war since World War II and is stretched thin around the globe, the cost of military equipment has skyrocketed, the traditional energy supply is uncertain and risky, the people and nations around the world are revolting and public opinion in the US opposes war and militarism.

On a positive note, as we write this the US House of Representatives just voted in a bipartisan landslide 370 to 40, to require the President to come to Congress to get authorization to renew the war in Iraq. Last year a war in Syria was stopped when it became clear Congress would not support it – after citizen pressure. The people have more power than we realize.

Now is the time to build our power and use it. Let’s organize to end Empire and militarism and create an alternative democratized economy that puts the needs of people and the planet first.

This is Part II of a series on Empire. Part I: U.S. Empire Reaches A Breaking Point Time to End It

27 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

Half of Humanity Launches a New World Economic Order

By Dennis Small

July 22—In mid-July, as the planet was being wracked by growing war horrors in eastern Ukraine, Iraq, and Gaza, and by economic depression caused by the death throes of the trans-Atlantic financial system, heads of state representing half of humanity gathered in Brazil and took the first steps toward creating a New World Economic Order.

The leaders of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), met on July 16 in Fortaleza for the VI BRICS Summit, and the next day they were joined by the heads of state of South America in the capital city Brasilia. The BRICS account for 43% of the world’s population and 27% of the planet’s land area; when Ibero-America is added in, they jointly represent 48% of the human race, and one third of the Earth’s land area (Figure 1).

At the summit and its numerous associated bilateral and multilateral meetings, that half of humanity adopted a project that is premised on rejecting the current casino financial system, and replacing it with one providing credit for high-technology development projects; on educating and training youth to meet the growth challenges of the future; on full respect for national sovereignty, banishing the imperial policy of regime change and wars; and on explicit promotion of the common good among nations—the Westphalian principle.

“History tells us the law of the jungle isn’t the way of human coexistence,” Chinese President Xi Jinping stated on July 16.

“Every nation should obey the principle of equality, mutual trust, learning from each other, cooperating and seeking joint benefits … for the construction of a harmonious world, sustained peace, and joint prosperity.”

The British Queen was not pleased by these developments, seeing in them an existential threat to the Empire. Lyndon LaRouche was pleased—for the same reason. For 40 years, the renowned American statesman has devised programs, and organized for them internationally, of global financial reform and great development projects—most recently his “Four New Laws To Save the U.S.A. Now!”—of precisely the sort that have now been placed on the agenda by the BRICS.

“The BRICS and allies are building a world system based on real value, not phony paper value,” LaRouche stated July 18.

“They are deciding what real value is, and they are imposing it, which is the cost of the productive powers of labor in a changing situation.”

The underlying problem that we have to deal with today, LaRouche elaborated, is the “asymmetry of value in the world,” which is coming from two distinct systems that are operating with a different logic and different metrics: They are totally incompatible.

The first system is the trans-Atlantic system. “These bastards,” LaRouche stated, “who hold pieces of paper that they say are worth quadrillions, and they’re prepared to kill for that,” as the case of Argentina’s battle against the vulture funds shows, as does the pro-vulture ruling of the Aristotelian idiot otherwise known as Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. What these people are holding, this paper, LaRouche added, is absolutely worthless. “It’s like taking rags out of a bucket and trying to sell them”; or even worse, it’s just the promise of future delivery of derivatives on those rags, that they’re saying actually has value.

This is the dead hand of the past, trying to stop humanity from creating any future for itself.

On the other side, we have an emerging system, incompatible with the first, which is building a market based on real value. And real value, LaRouche elaborated, comes from, and is measured by, the development of the productive powers of labor—that is, through the introduction of scientifically created new technologies, implementing productive processes which increase the energy-flux density through the physical economy in such fashion as to immensely increase the productive powers of labor. That new system will create a process whereby the increase in energy-flux density will itself increase at an accelerating rate.

This role of technological progress and scientific advance, LaRouche specified, is what the human species uniquely does. Such creativity is actually the source of value in an economy, and it is the way in which our action to create the future defines present value. It is the central concept of the American System of Political Economy, on which the United States was founded.

The decisive strategic question today, LaRouche concluded, is whether the United States will join that emerging New World Economic Order, or will remain joined at the hip to the British Empire—as it is under the impeachable President Barack Obama—and bring destruction down upon itself and the rest of the world. The same existential issue faces Europe.

Building a Nuclear Future
The BRICS Summit issued a 72-point Fortaleza Declaration (see below), which announced the formation of a New Development Bank (NDB), initially capitalized at $50 billion, to fund infrastructure projects in BRICS and other countries; as well as a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with $100 billion to help nations deal with capital flight and other forms of financial warfare.

Most international commentators have engaged in endless contortions, dissecting sentences from the Fortaleza Declaration and speeches at the summit, to try to determine whether these new BRICS institutions are meant to merely complement the British Empire’s International Monetary Fund and other institutions, or to replace them with a new financial architecture. But the answer to that question lies not in parsing written or spoken words, but in the intent behind the creation of the new institutions, which is best reflected in two fundamental issues which were pervasive throughout the discussions: the future and youth, and nuclear energy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was most eloquent on the first of these, emphasizing to the plenary session of the Summit “the uniqueness of BRICS as an international institution. For the first time, it brings together a group of nations on the parameter of ‘future potential,’ rather than existing prosperity or shared identities. The very idea of BRICS is thus forward-looking.” He urged the BRICS to now go beyond “being summit-centric,” proposing that the youth of the BRICS nations should take a lead in expanding people-to-people contact between their nations. He suggested establishing a BRICS Young Scientists’ Forum, setting up BRICS language schools “to offer language training in each of our languages,” and exploring the creation of a BRICS University.

Modi concluded:

“Excellencies, we have an opportunity to define the future—of not just our countries, but the world at large…. I take this as a great responsibility.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin struck a similar note in comments to the press on July 17, evaluating the results of his trip:

“The BRICS are all young states, and the future belongs to the young.”

As for the issue of nuclear energy, discussion of it and conclusion of numerous concrete deals permeated the summit and related bilateral meetings, especially those of Russia’s Putin with Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff. This, despite the fact that the Fortaleza Declaration itself—in many ways a “consensus document” typical of such international gatherings—does not mention the matter, other than to defend Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

The true measure of value in an economy, LaRouche has emphasized, is the impact of science and technology in continually increasing the energy-flux density of the productive processes. Although the required science-driver for the world economy is the development of thermonuclear fusion energy, the current insistence on nuclear fission among the BRICS and allied countries is highly significant, as it reflects a commitment to raising the economy’s overall energy-flux density.

Far better than any monetary or GDP-based measure, energy-flux density and other physical economic parameters best indicate the BRICS’ direction.

Figure 2 shows nuclear energy as a percentage of total electricity generation—which is an indicator of overall energy-flux density—in a number of BRICS countries (Russia, India, and Brazil), as compared to representative European countries (Germany and Spain), looking at both current and projected levels. In the case of Germany, for example, the British Empire’s criminal green policy of de-nuclearization has already led to a drastic collapse of nuclear from 28% of total electricity in 1990, to 15% today. The German government of Angela Merkel has adopted a policy of reducing that to zero by the year 2020! Spain is almost as bad.

Compare that to what Russia has done, increasing its proportion of nuclear from 11% in 1990 to 18% in 2013, with a policy of raising that proportion to some 27% by 2030. Other BRICS countries have smaller proportions of nuclear to total electricity today, but they are defiantly committed to a nuclear future. Brazil, for example, plans to increase nuclear from 3% to 15% by 2030. As President Rousseff stated just before the summit began: “Our countries are among the largest in the world, and they cannot be content, in the midst of the 21st Century, with any kind of dependency. Recent events demonstrate that it is essential that we seek for ourselves our scientific and technological autonomy.”

South Africa has also just announced that it is resuming its nuclear program, with plans to build six new nuclear plants (see article in this section).

It is of note that China has the largest nuclear construction program in the world today—a distinction which in the 1970s went to the Roosevelt-created Tennessee Valley Authority. In fact, of the 66 nuclear plants currently under construction worldwide, 50 of them are in the BRICS countries. In other words, 43% of the world’s population is constructing 75% of the world nuclear plants; or, the rate of nuclear construction is 4.3 times greater per capita in the BRICS than in the rest of the world.

The reality is, of course, much starker than those simple numbers indicate, because nuclear energy is being actively destroyed in much of the trans-Atlantic sector (and Japan), as a direct result of the British Empire’s suicidal green policies. The BRICS and allies have made it clear that will have none of it: They have taken the British Queen’s green agenda, as reflected in the Copenhagen Resolution, and thrown it in the trash can.

LaRouche put a fine point on it:

“What about Frau Merkel of Germany?” he asked July 18. She represents the worthless view of value; she’s tearing down nuclear energy, destroying her economy and making it absolutely worthless, he said. “What’s the value of her opinions? Not much.” The BRICS and Ibero-America are building a world market based on real value, and they are already far more productive than Europe and the United States, which insist on values being set by some crazy judge—Scalia in the Argentine case.

Great Infrastructure Projects
Also reflective of the BRICS’ focus on real value, was the emphasis placed on creating a credit system to fund major infrastructure investment. Two important such projects moved forward in and around the BRICS Summit.

The first was the idea of fulfilling the centuries-old dream of building a transcontinental railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America (Figure 3). This took shape in the discussion between Chinese President Xi and Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, and then with Brazil’s President Rousseff. An agreement was reached to open bidding for foreign, including Chinese, companies, to participate in the construction of one critical segment of that project: the “T”-shaped Palmas-Campinorte-Annapolis/Campinorte-Lucas route in central Brazil.

The importance of that segment within the overall project is clear from Figure 4, a schematic map first published by EIR back in 1988. The northern terminus of Palmas is a stone’s throw from the famous Carajás project in the middle of the Amazon jungle, the world’s largest (and purest) iron ore deposit, which is now connected by rail only to the Atlantic port of São Luis. Once built, the western rail terminus of Lucas would then be halfway to the Brazil-Peru border, where the projected rail line would link up with a Peruvian branch that would cross the Andes at Saramirisa—the lowest pass in that giant mountain range—and from there, to one or more Peruvian ports for shipment across the Pacific Ocean. This would drastically cut shipping time and costs from Brazil (and other Southern Cone countries like Argentina) to Eurasian powerhouses like China, India, and Russia.

Even greater efficiencies and growth and productivity can be achieved as this South American Transcontinental Railroad is able to connect directly by rail with Asia, as high-speed maglev rail lines are constructed and opened up through the Darién Gap and the Bering Strait (Figure 3).

There are various possible routes for a South American Transcontinental Railroad. (The one under discussion among China, Brazil, and Peru centers on São Paulo-Santa Fé do Sul-Cuiabá-Porto Velho-Pucallpa-Saramirisa-Bogotá-Panamá. Another viable option is São Paulo-Santa Fé do Sul-Santa Cruz-Desaguadero-Saramirisa-Bogotá-Panamá, which has long been studied.) In fact, earlier versions of precisely this project were drawn up by the Intercontinental Railway Commission, started by U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine, which employed U.S. Army engineers to survey and project lines tying the United States through to Argentina and Brazil, presenting a completed map of the intended route project to President William McKinley in 1898 (Figure 5). The strongly pro-American System McKinley commemorated Blaine’s plans as the future of humanity, speaking in 1901 at the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo—where McKinley was shot dead in a British-run operation.

Another great project, the construction of an Interoceanic Canal through Nicaragua (Figure 6), was announced on July 9 by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The massive project will be carried out by the Chinese company HKND, but President Putin also made an unannounced stopover in Nicaragua on July 12, on his way to the BRICS Summit, to offer Russia’s support. The canal will run 173 miles from the mouth of the Brito River on the Pacific Coast in southeastern Nicaragua, to the mouth of the Punta Gorda River on the Caribbean side. It will include two locks, and 65 miles of it will pass through Lake Nicaragua, and have a projected passage time of 30 hours, coast to coast, for the 5,100 of the largest ships in the world that will be able to use this canal.

Project engineers report that over 50,000 construction workers will be required, and that once in operation it will generate 200,000 jobs, including its sub-projects (airport, two ports, tourist center, etc.).

President Ortega, in announcing the selected route, stated that the country’s entire educational system was being revamped to produce the engineers and skilled workers that the project will require, He also held up a book containing the feasibility studies for constructing such a canal produced by the United States government and adopted by the U.S. Congress 118 years ago, in 1896, detailing the benefits such a canal would bring.

The irony was lost on no one. China is actively involved in massive job-creating economic projects in Central America—the United States’ proverbial “back yard”—while the U.S. under Obama has helped destroy that area with his policy of drug legalization, on top of decades of the British Empire’s free-trade economic devastation. Today, one-third of the population of El Salvador has been forced to emigrate to the U.S., in a desperate search for the means of survival; while official unemployment in neighboring Honduras now surpasses 60%.

The broader commitment to infrastructure development was emphasized in the last of the multiple historic summits which took place in Brasilia in mid-July, that of the heads of state and special representatives of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), who met with Chinese President Xi and the Unasur heads of state on July 17. Their joint declaration (see below) emphasized the “important opportunity for mutual development” which exists, announcing

“the establishment of a broad partnership of equality, mutual benefit, and common development between China and Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The New Development Bank
There is little question that the New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingent Reserve Agreement (CRA) are the seed crystals of an entirely new, international financial architecture—although a major political battle lies ahead in order to force this policy through, over the violent objections of the City of London and Wall Street, including their agents within some of the BRICS countries. The founding document of the NDB cautiously sticks to the idea that the NDB and CRA are only meant to “complement” existing institutions like the IMF; but the principles on which they were founded not only contradict those of the IMF, but mutually exclusive.

Most significant, the NDB is clearly geared to lend money for real development, without the hated austerity conditionalities and green policies associated with the IMF and World Bank. For example, the CELAC-China joint declaration contains a radical departure from IMF/World Bank conditionalities, calling “to make good use of the concessionary loans granted by China, in accord with the necessities and priorities of the recipient countries…. We stress the importance of building and modernizing infrastructure.”

Argentine President Fernández, who was given featured billing (after host Rousseff) at the BRICS-Unasur Summit, issued the clearest call for a new world financial order: “We, sirs, are posing then, a new global financial order, one that is not just fair and equitable, but indispensable…. What we demand from the world, is precisely the creation of a new global financial order which will permit sustainable and global economic growth…. Thus, the appeal to all nations is to join forces in this real crusade for a new global political, economic and financial organization that will have positive social, political, economic, and cultural consequences for our nations.”

President Putin—who, like Argentina’s Fernández, is no stranger to being the target of economic warfare—presented a complementary proposal: “BRICS nations should cooperate more closely in commodities markets. We have a unique resource base: Our nations hold 30-50% of global reserves of various resources. Therefore, we believe it is imperative to develop cooperation in mining and processing, and organize a center for training experts in the metals industries in BRICS nations.”

Such an agreement would break the British Empire’s stranglehold on world commodities, and their ability to speculate with nations’ livelihood and their very existence.

To be viable for these purposes, the NDB and CRA would have to function with a firewall against the cancerous dollar-denominated system. It is noteworthy that the NDB is authorized to both receive additional capitalization in non-dollar currencies in the future, as well as to issue loans to BRICS and other nations in non-dollar currencies.

Once three, four, or more countries are involved in great projects receiving such non-dollar loans, a new currency will have in effect been created, in which fixed exchange rates among the national participants will also follow. That step alone would instantly bring about a return to the pre-1971 Bretton Woods system of fixed (predictable) exchange rates, wiping out, with the stroke of a pen, trillions of dollars of speculation on currency futures.

But for the NDB to be able to truly take on the tasks of global reconstruction, the United States must become a full partner in its capitalization and functioning as the centerpiece of a global Hamiltonian credit system, of the sort specified in LaRouche’s Four Laws. Today’s “dollar,” which is no longer the sovereign currency of the United States, but rather a supra-national betting instrument under the control of the British Empire, must also return to its proper role as the Treasury-issued “greenback.”

In short, the central strategic question posed by the mid-July BRICS Summit, is: When will the United States rid itself of President Obama, and return to the American System policies it was founded on, and which half of humanity, led by the BRICS, is now implementing?

Narendra Modi http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/2014_20-29/2014-29/pdf/14_4129.pdf

Vladimir Putin http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/2014_20-29/2014-29/pdf/15-16_4129.pdf

Xi Jinping http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/2014_20-29/2014-29/pdf/17_4129.pdf

Cristina Fernandez http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/2014_20-29/2014-29/pdf/18_4129.pdf

LaRouche’s record http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/2014_20-29/2014-29/pdf/19-21_4129.pdf

 

New World Disorder: Emerging Division Between East And West Threatens To Plunge The Globe Into Chaos

By Michael Snyder

In general, over the last several decades the world has experienced an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. The opening up of relations with China and the “end of the Cold War” resulted in an extended period of cooperation between East and West that was truly unique in the annals of history. But now things are shifting.

The civil war in Ukraine and the crash of MH17 have created an enormous amount of tension between the United States and Russia, and many analysts believe that relations between the two superpowers are now even worse than they were during the end of the Cold War era. In addition, the indictment of five PLA officers for cyber espionage and sharp disagreements over China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea (among other issues) have caused U.S. relations with China to dip to their lowest point since at least 1989.

So could the emerging division between the East and the West ultimately plunge us into a period of global chaos? And what would that mean for the world economy?

For as long as most Americans can remember, the U.S. dollar and the U.S. financial system have been overwhelmingly dominant. But now the powers of the east appear to be determined to break this monopoly.

Four of the BRICS nations (China, Russia, India and Brazil) are on the list of the top ten biggest economies on the planet, and they are starting to make moves to become much less dependent on the U.S.-centered financial system of the western world. For example, just last week the BRICS nations established two new institutions which are intended to be alternatives to the World Bank and the IMF…

So in their summit, from July 14 to 16, the five BRICS announced two major initiatives aimed squarely at increasing their power in global finance. They announced the launch of the New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, that will offer financing for development projects in the emerging world. The bank will act as an alternative to the Washington, D.C.—based World Bank. The BRICS also formed what they’re calling a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a series of currency agreements which can be utilized to help them smooth over financial imbalances with the rest of the world. That’s something the IMF does now.
Clearly, the idea is to create institutions and processes to supplement — and perhaps eventually supplant — the functions of those managed by U.S. and Europe. And they would be resources that they could control on their own, without the annoying conditions that the World Bank and the IMF always slap on their loans and assistance.
This comes at a time when both China and Russia are seeking to emphasize their own currencies and move away from using the U.S. dollar so much.

Even in the Western media, it is being admitted that China’s yuan is “a growing force in global finance”, and according to CNBC the use of Chinese currency in international trade is growing very rapidly…

Of the German companies profiled, 23 percent are using the renminbi to settle trades, up from 9 percent last year, while usage in Hong Kong rose to 58 percent from 50 percent and to 17 percent from 9 percent in the U.S.
Usage of the renminbi among French companies – a new addition to this year’s list – was high at 26 percent.
And of course Russia has been actively pursuing a “de-dollarization strategy” for months now. Each new round of economic sanctions pushes Russia even further in the direction of independence from the U.S. dollar, and Gazprom has been working hard to get large customers to switch from paying for natural gas in dollars to paying for natural gas in euros and other currencies. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Russia Is Doing It – Russia Is Actually Abandoning The Dollar”.

At this point, it seems clear that Russia plans to permanently decouple from the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system. Just today we learned that Vladimir Putin plans to make Russia less dependent on U.S. companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and any future rounds of sanctions are likely to cause even more damage to U.S. firms that do business in Russia.

But potentially much more troubling for the U.S. economy is the startling deterioration in the relationship between the Obama administration and China. Some analysts are even describing this as “a tipping point”…

One day, the United States indicts five PLA officers for cybercrimes; the next, the United States claims victory in WTO disputes over car tariffs and rare earth minerals. All this is happening while the United States promises enduring support for Asian allies, and it has moved openly to challenge the legitimacy of Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China is busy creating facts on the ground and water. Last month, a $1 billion Chinese oil rig set up operations in territorial waters claimed by Vietnam. In the East China Sea, Chinese SU-27 fighter jets have come within 100 feet of Japanese surveillance aircraft.

This was all capped at the recent Shangri-La Asian Security dialogue in Singapore (Asia’s annual defense-ministers meeting): Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel bluntly described China’s behavior as “destabilizing, unilateral actions.” The PLA deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong, accused the United States of “hegemonism.”

The mood has soured, more than the usual ups and downs of big-power relationships.
The question now is not whether a “new type of relationship” is in the offing, but rather, whether U.S.-Chinese relations have reached a tipping point.
Most Americans could not care less about what China is doing in the South China Sea, but to the Chinese this is a very, very big deal. In fact, China just sent a surveillance vessel to Hawaii as a bit of payback for what they regard as U.S. “provocations” in the region.

In the old days, China would have probably never have done such a thing. But China is gaining confidence as the gap between the U.S. military and the Chinese military rapidly closes…

Away from the Chinese military’s expanding capabilities in cyberspace and electronic warfare, Beijing is growing the size and reach of its naval fleet, advancing its air force and testing a host of new missiles, the Pentagon said Thursday.
An annual report to Congress on China’s evolving military capability concluded that the modernization was being driven in part by growing territorial disputes in the East and South China seas, as well as by Beijing’s desire to expand its presence and influence abroad.
In fact, the Chinese military has grown so powerful that we are now seeing headlines such as this one in The Week: “China thinks it can defeat America in battle”.

And the Russian military has made tremendous strides as well. Putin has been working hard to modernize the Russian nuclear arsenal, the Russians now have a “fifth generation” fighter jet that is supposedly far superior to the F-22 Raptor, and they have nuclear submarines that are so incredibly quiet that the U.S. Navy refers to them as “black holes”.

If Russia and China stay united, they are more than capable of providing a counterbalance to U.S. power around the globe.

But even if military conflict is not in our immediate future, the breakdown in relations between East and West could still have a dramatic impact on the global economy.

Over the years, the U.S. and China have developed a highly symbiotic relationship that fuels a tremendous amount of economic activity all over the planet. Each year, we buy hundreds of billions of dollars of products from the Chinese. Just imagine what our stores would look like if we took everything that was “made in China” out of them. And after we send them giant piles of our money, we beg the Chinese to lend it back to us at ultra-low interest rates. This arrangement has allowed China to become extremely wealthy and it has allowed Americans to enjoy a massively inflated standard of living fueled by ever increasing amounts of debt.

So what happens if this relationship starts breaking down?

Without a doubt, it could potentially lead to global chaos.

So keep a close eye on this emerging division between the East and the West. It could end up being far more important than most Americans would ever dare to imagine.

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs

22 July 2014
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