Russia, China keep the ‘dragon in the fog’
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | July 8, 2020
Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a phone conversation today with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Beijing will “continue to work” with Moscow in “firmly supporting” each other’s efforts “rejecting external sabotage and intervention” so as to “preserve their respective sovereignty, security and development rights, and well safeguard their shared interests.”
This signifies the consolidation of a new template in the Russian-Chinese alliance, which appeared in the most recent months — mutual support to push back at the covert operations by western intelligence agencies to destabilise the internal situation in the two countries.
An quasi-alliance rooted in dynamic economic partnership — trade touched $110 bn last year — and intensifying cooperation and coordination in the foreign policy arena takes a big leap forward, as the two countries join hands to strengthen their political systems. Beijing’s interest to highlight it speaks for itself.
Xi’s phone call to Putin took place in the backdrop of the Russian constitutional referendum and the law on ensuring security in Hong Kong last week. Prima facie, one metaphor is common to them — the “dragon in the fog”, a Chinese concept to portray a strong player in an incomprehensible space who can strike at his competitors at any moment from an unexpected angle.
The metaphor was recently used by a Russian political analyst Alexey Chesnakov (who previously served as a Kremlin aide) to sum up the quintessence of the Russian referendum, which allows Putin notionally to seek two more six-year terms. As Chesnakov put it, President Putin “wants to remain a ‘dragon in the fog’ until the end of his presidency.”
Chesnakov explained that the sheer prospect of Putin remaining in power beyond 2024 would also send an unmistakable signal to the international community that the Russian leader is confident about remaining at the helm of affairs in his country for at least the next decade.
Coming to the Hong Kong legislation too, the leitmotif is the ‘dragon in the fog’. The new law strengthens China’s national unity and territorial integrity. The four categories of criminal offence outlined in the law are: secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities and collusion with foreign and external forces to endanger national security. In essence, the legislation will keep western intelligence guessing.
The western legal scholars’ principal argument is that the new law weakens the “one country, two systems” principle. But the paradox here is that while western critics put the accent on the “two-systems” part, Beijing estimates that it is the “one-country” leg that has dramatically weakened in the recent years due to the upheaval in Hong Kong.
Beijing had two options to bring about greater harmony — use of force to pull back the “two systems” concept from racing away or, alternatively, strengthen the “one country” part by providing security underpinnings. Beijing opted for the latter course after a great deal of deliberation.
The crux of the matter is that Beijing wants to keep Hong Kong as the financial hub of Asia, while at the same time strengthening the city’s security and stability. Of course, the interference of the western intelligence agencies — primarily British, Australian and American intelligence — to fuel the protests in Hong Kong formed the context.
Hong Kong has a long history of being the base camp of western intelligence agencies in the Asia-Pacific. Much has been written about the western intelligence agencies’ covert operations out of Hong Kong before, during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China.
In the case of Russia, too, western intelligence activities are showing signs of making another determined push for a post-Putin scenario in the Kremlin. The West’s calculation is that if Putin were to step down in 2024, he would very soon become a “lame duck”. Like in Hong Kong, western intelligence has developed extensive networks within Russia through which it is feasible to fuel unrest if political uncertainties coalesce with social and economic grievances. The Russian counter-intelligence is very well aware of this danger.
Putin has outwitted the western game plan to destabilise Russia. The constitutional amendment allows him to seek another two six-year terms and he intends to keep everyone guessing. Keeping the western adversaries guessing is also what the Chinese security law in Hong Kong hopes to achieve.
The western intelligence operating out of the city henceforth comes under direct scrutiny of Beijing. Recruitment of local agents, planning and mounting operations inside China, or inciting unrest in Hong Kong to weaken China — such covert operations become far more difficult and risky for the US, British and Australian intelligence. Interestingly, Xi used the expression “external sabotage and intervention” in his conversation with Putin today.
Beijing and Moscow have voiced strong support for each other’s moves to strengthen national security. On June 2, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said,
“We note that the national referendum on constitutional amendments, a major event in Russia’s political calendar, is going on smoothly. Results released by the Central Elections Commission reflect the Russian people’s choice. As Russia’s friendly neighbour and comprehensive strategic partner of coordination for a new era, China will always respect the development path independently chosen by the Russian people and support Russia’s efforts to realise lasting stability and promote socioeconomic development.
“We stand ready to work together with the Russian side to act on the consensus reached by our heads of state, deepen all-round strategic coordination and mutually-beneficial cooperation in various areas, and bring greater benefits to our two peoples.”
On the same day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in Moscow, “We noted the entry into force of the law on ensuring national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC on July 1, 2020 by the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China.
“In this context, we would like to reaffirm that Russia’s position of principle on the situation in Hong Kong remains unchanged. We respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the PRC and consider all issues pertaining to Hong Kong to be China’s domestic affair. We are against any attempts by external forces to interfere in relations between the central government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC.”
Cooperation between the Russian and Chinese security agencies in the realm of internal security can only stem from a high level of mutual understanding at the highest level. Significantly, on July 4, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov poured cold water on President Trump’s invitation to Putin to attend a G7 summit in the US, calling it a “flawed” idea.
Moscow has any number of legitimate reasons to distance itself from Trump’s invite, but what Ryabkov chose was very telling. He said, “The idea of the so-called expanded G7 summit is flawed, because it is unclear to us how the authors of that initiative plan to consider the Chinese factor. Without China, it is just impossible to discuss certain issues in the modern world.”
In effect, Rybakov thwarted Washington’s move to isolate China. Trump’s advisors were naive to estimate that Moscow could be baited to join its containment strategy against China. Ryabkov publicly administered the Kremlin’s snub.
US policy against Lebanon not to weaken but strengthen Hezbollah: Nasrallah
Press TV – July 7, 2020
The Secretary General of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has censured the US interference in the country’s internal affairs, saying Washington’s hostile policy against Lebanon will not weaken the popular movement but will strengthen it.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made the remarks during a televised speech broadcast by the Arabic-language al-Manar satellite television station in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Tuesday.
Nasrallah blasted the US ambassador to Lebanon for “openly” meddling in the country’s domestic affairs and called on the Lebanese government to stand up against US provocations.
“The US ambassador to Lebanon has been openly interfering in our internal affairs. The US meddling in Lebanon is rejected and the Lebanese state must move in this regard,” the Hezbollah chief said.
“Your policy in Lebanon won’t weaken Hezbollah but will strengthen it and that blockade on Lebanon is futile, my advice is to abandon this policy,” Nasrallah underlined.
Moreover, the Secretary General of the Lebanese resistance movement lashed out at the US ambassador and said, “Don’t give lectures on human rights especially that your country is the great violator of human rights worldwide,” adding that, “Your country has funded terrorism in the region.”
In an interview with Saudi-owned al-Hadath television news network last week, US Ambassador to Beirut Dorothy Shea said Washington has “great concerns” over Hezbollah’s role in the Lebanese government.
The US has labeled the entire Hezbollah a terrorist organization and levied several rounds of sanctions on the Lebanese resistance movement as well as its top officials.
Hezbollah’s growing popularity in the Arab and Muslim world after the resistance movement shattered the Israeli military’s myth of invincibility during the 33-day military offensive on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 has been a matter of serious concern for the Tel Aviv regime and its Western allies.
The resistance movement’s heroic defense as well as its vehement opposition to any foreign intervention in Lebanon’s domestic affairs has turned the group into a major stakeholder in the country’s political and military domains.
‘Why are you afraid of Iran?’
During the televised speech on Tuesday, Nasrallah also dismissed accusations that Hezbollah wants to turn Lebanon into another Iran and said, “Iran is a self-sufficient model, why are you afraid of this model?”
The Hezbollah chief stressed that the hard living conditions and the economic crisis Lebanon has been witnessing require a national approach and exerting united efforts by all Lebanese parties.
Since October, Lebanon has been in a financial crisis that has seen businesses close and prices and unemployment soar. The Lebanese pound has also continued to plummet against the US dollar.
Lebanese protesters have resumed demonstrations, demanding early Parliamentary elections and tougher measures to fight corruption and the return of looted state funds.
Nasrallah went on to say on Tuesday that the movement could use all its capabilities in agricultural and industrial sectors to help overcome the country’s current economic crisis.
“As Lebanese people, we have to unite efforts in agriculture and in finding markets for our crops. And the same thing applies to the industry,” he said, adding, “We in Hezbollah, we call on the Lebanese to revive the agricultural and industrial sectors as one of the major factors of steadfastness.”
The Hezbollah leader concluded his speech by condemning the Israeli plan to annex significant portions of the occupied West Bank, saying, “Lebanon’s current crisis must not divert us from supporting the Palestinian cause especially now as the Zionist regime is planning to annex areas of the West Bank and Jordan Valley.”
The contentious plan — which would allow Tel Aviv to annex about 30 percent of the West Bank — is in accordance with a Middle East scheme drawn up by the administration of US President Donald Trump and unveiled in January on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The scheme — which Trump calls the deal of the century — largely gives in to Israel’s demands while creating a Palestinian state with limited control over its own security and borders, enshrining the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital.”
The US-backed annexation scheme has drawn international criticism and triggered waves of protest rallies around the globe.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set July 1 as the date for starting the annexation plan’s implementation, but the move faced delays amid internal rifts and as Tel Aviv awaits a green light from Washington.
“Woke” America is More Asleep to Injustice Than Ever
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 06.07.2020
To drive home just how superficial and empty recent protests in America are and how little besides further division and destruction will become of them – take the fate of two fictional characters recently put in the spotlight by baying activists – PepsiCo’s “Aunt Jemima” breakfast food brand and Mars Incorporated’s “Uncle Ben’s” rice products.
Both came into the crosshairs of “woke” America. Both fictional characters will now no longer be used.
It might appear like a huge victory for “woke” America.
CNN in their article, “The Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging its racist past, will be retired,” would claim:
Quaker Oats is retiring the more than 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo, acknowledging its origins are based on a racial stereotype.
“As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations,” the Pepsi-owned company said in a statement provided to CNN Business.
And the London Guardian in their article, “Uncle Ben’s rice firm to scrap brand image of black farmer,” would claim:
The rice company Uncle Ben’s is to scrap the image of a black farmer the brand has used since the 1940s and could change its name, as companies react to growing concerns over racial bias and injustice.
The parent company, Mars, said Uncle Ben was a fictional character whose name was first used in 1946 as a reference to an African American Texan rice farmer.
While there is no doubt that both fictional characters represented stereotypes and are rooted in America’s racist past – “woke” America’s belief that somehow this was a priority or some form of victory begs belief. So does the fact that those opposed to expanding mobs and their “cancel culture” have crafted the most anemic counterpoints.
Some claim that the fictional characters were either inspired or portrayed by real African Americans who profited from the branding.
What neither side mentioned was the very real abuses both companies are guilty of – abuses that are both inhumane and rooted in extraordinary, inexcusable, and thus far utterly unaddressed racism.
PepsiCo and Mars Sponsor/Profit From Slavery and Mass Murder
Both “woke” America as well as those trying to form opposition to it have entirely missed the fact that PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – two multi-billion dollar businesses – are literally engaged in modern day slavery to create their products while sponsoring policy think-tanks that have engineered wars targeting African nations, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands and open-air slave markets where black people – today – are sold into bondage.
This would seem to be a much greater transgression against black people than their crude depictions in company branding and demands much more serious action than merely adjusting marketing strategies – such as demanding boards of directors to resign or full-spectrum, permanent boycotts for these businesses and their many subsidiaries and brands.
Unfortunately for “woke” America, fictional characters are a priority taken head-on all while activists blissfully munch on chocolate bars made by cocoa harvested by African slave labor and sip on drinks made by a corporation which sponsors US wars abroad in which blacks are mass murdered and enslaved.
Your Mars Inc. Chocolate Comes from Slave Labor
If you enjoy chocolate snacks like 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Mars, and Milky Way bars, the chocolate you ate most likely came from a developing nation with dismal working conditions and in many cases, child and slave labor.
Mars Inc. along with Nestle, Hersey, and many other chocolate companies, source cocoa from Africa and especially the nations of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.
A Washington Post article published just last year titled, “Cocoa’s child laborers,” would note:
Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor.
The article elaborated, noting:
About two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa where, according to a 2015 U.S. Labor Department report, more than 2 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions.
When asked this spring, representatives of some of the biggest and best-known brands — Hershey, Mars and Nestlé — could not guarantee that any of their chocolates were produced without child labor.
Black children used as labor and under conditions and for wages bordering slavery to produce cocoa Mars Inc. knowingly uses in its products – and makes billions of dollars off of – seems like a much bigger issue than what is undoubtedly offensive labelling practiced by Mars Inc. through its “Uncle Ben’s” brand.
Indicative of the carefully controlled nature of ongoing protests is how the Washington Post has reported on Mars Inc.’s genuinely offensive, even criminal predation on black labor in Africa in the past as well as Mars Inc.’s offensive branding more recently, but failed to link the two in its most recent reporting – thus artfully avoiding a genuinely “woke” readership and any genuine damage real protests and boycotts would have on Mars Inc. and other corporations whose interests Washington Post regularly serves as a voice for.
Big-Biz like PepsiCo and Mars Inc. are an Affront to All
Mars Inc. – alongside PepsiCo, Nestle, and Hersey – was also involved in funding anti-labelling campaigns to prevent legislation from passing that would force food manufacturers to inform consumers their products contained genetically modified organisms (GMO).
Corporations spending money to hide dangerous ingredients from consumers endangers everyone’s health – black and white, left and right.
Mars Inc., PepsiCo, and others defend such campaigning, claiming that such legislation would be “costly” – as would ensuring all of their ingredients are ethically procured and free of child and/or slave labor.
Yet Mars Inc., PepsiCo, and others are multi-billion dollar businesses. The Mars family which owns Mars Inc. consists mostly of family members who are billionaires – not mere millionaires – but billionaires.
Their daily “concerns” include ensuring their sprawling 82,000 acre ranches have enough water and that they receive the most lenient penalties when crashing their Porsche SUV’s into vans carrying families.
Mars Inc. and other multi-billion dollar businesses can afford to do better, simply at the cost of being slightly less well-off billionaires or perhaps even being demoted to millionaires – yet they simply and deliberately choose to profit off the backs of poorly informed consumers at home and exploited/enslaved labor abroad.
If what Mars Inc. and PepsiCo contributed to was only limited to cultivating ignorant consumers at home and using slave labor abroad it would be bad enough. And if America’s “woke revolution” was serious about justice, Mars Inc. and PepsiCo would be on the chopping block for much more than their crude, racist marketing, and would have more demanded of them.
But that is not all Mars Inc. and PepsiCo are contributing to.
Sponsoring Warmongering and Mass Murder in Africa (and everywhere else)
Both PepsiCo and Mars Inc. are sponsors of policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution whose “scholars” and “fellows” churn out the blueprints for US wars which are then rubber stamped by the US Congress and sold to the public by the corporate media.
Brooking Institution’s 2019 annual report (PDF) lists both companies – PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – as sponsors as were both companies in 2011 (PDF).
Brookings and its corporate-sponsored staff worked diligently in 2011 to help sell the US military intervention in the North African nation of Libya. It was a key institution involved in creating and spreading the notion of “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect” used as flimsy cover for a long-planned US desire to effect regime change in Libya.
As early as February 2011, the Brookings Institution published articles and papers like, “United States Must Take Lead on Libya,” in which Brookings “Senior Fellows” – funded by the likes of PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – made the nascent calls for US military intervention that would eventually lead to the US arming militants openly and carrying out air strikes across the nation.
Indeed, the US armed militants in eastern Libya – a hotbed for racism and extremism and the epicenters of Al Qaeda in the country – as well as provided roving bands of armed gangs air support as they swept the nation.
When Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was violently swept from power later that year, the estimated 2.5 million Africans from across the continent he took in, providing housing and living wages to, found themselves being hunted by US-backed militants.
To explain the blatant and explosive racism that predictably swept Libya in the wake of the US-backed war, articles like the CS Monitor’s “How Qaddafi helped fuel fury toward Africans in Libya,” would claim:
Many experts – and African migrant workers themselves – say the animosity stems from anti-African racism found throughout the Arab world. But some say the anger has been made much worse by Mr. Qaddafi’s moves to buy the loyalty of black Libyans from the south of the country as well as his decades-long efforts to build Africa-wide patronage networks at great cost to the country’s Arab majority.
In other words – the CS Monitor and the Western “experts” it cited claim Qaddafi “fueled fury toward Africans” by merely spending resources to help them. It is an oblique attempt to justify the racism-driven genocide US-backed militants carried out during their “victory lap” in Libya.
Black Africans living in Libya were either driven out of the country, across the Mediterranean and into Europe to face hardship and racism there or either mass murdered in Libya or rounded up and enslaved.
The Western media – partners with institutions like Brookings – denied this at first – or attempted to excuse it like the CS Monitor – but eventually covered the fallout US military intervention in Libya and its long-planned regime change agenda triggered.
Reuters in their article, “African workers live in fear after Gaddafi overthrow,” would admit:
Tens of thousands of foreign workers have fled Libya since the armed revolt against Gaddafi’s 42-year-rule began in February, with Africans afraid they have become targets for fighters who accuse them of being mercenaries for Gaddafi.
This antipathy appears to have spread to all Africans, leaving them vulnerable to attacks, robbery and other abuse by the gun-toting, mostly young, fighters who ousted Gaddafi.
Identity cards of nationals from Chad, Niger, Mali, Sudan and other African states have been found on the bodies of gunmen who anti-Gaddafi fighters say were paid to confront them.
The BBC in its article, “Libya migrant ‘slave market’ footage sparks outrage,” would admit:
Migrants trying to reach Europe have spoken of being held by smugglers and forced to work for little or no money.
The footage released by CNN appears to show youths from Niger and other sub-Saharan countries being sold to buyers for about $400 (£300) at undisclosed locations in Libya.
While these media sources covered the fallout of the 2011 US military intervention, they were careful not to link the fallout directly to the intervention.
The US war against Libya was a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately engineered by Western think tanks funded by big-business like PepsiCo, Mars Inc., and many others, rubber stamped by politicians in Washington – both Democrat and Republican – and eagerly sold to the public by the corporate media.
And even as recently as 2016, Brookings “Senior Fellow” Shadi Hamid in a piece published on Brookings’ site titled, “Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong,” would remain insistent in defending the US-led war and the decimated, racist, and dysfunctional Libya left in its wake.
He argues that if the US didn’t intervene, Qaddafi would have successfully eliminated the racist extremists in eastern Libya and particularly in Benghazi who would eventually carry out genocide against Libya’s black population. Hamid simply omits any mention of this or who actually was based in Benghazi and instead refers to them merely as “protesters.”
Thus, PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – alongside oil corporations and weapons manufacturers – are funding an institution that not only engineers and eagerly promotes wars, they fund an institution that is utterly unapologetic about the calamity these wars cause – including wars like in Libya ending tragically for 2.5 million black Africans.
“Woke” America needs to be conscious enough to recognize the true injustice underpinning American society. It is very likely that as protesters in America and online around the globe rail against “Aunt Jemima” and “Uncle Ben’s” many activists are eagerly enjoying many of the other products produced by and profiting PepsiCo and Mars Inc. – oblivious to the fact that the ingredients are procured through child and slave labor in Africa and the profits are directed into promoting wars that leave blacks abroad dead, displaced, or enslaved. And as long as this is the case, nothing of any genuine substance will ever change in America or across the wider Western World.
If real justice is what Americans – all Americans – want, they need to truly wake up to this fact first.
Are the Democrats a Political Party or a CIA-Backed Fifth Column?
By Mike Whitney • Unz Review • July 5, 2020
How do the Democrats benefit from the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests?
While the protests are being used to paint Trump as a race-bating white supremacist, that is not their primary objective. The main goal is to suppress and demonize Trump’s political base which is comprised of mainly white working class people who have been adversely impacted by the Democrats disastrous free trade and immigration policies. These are the people– liberal and conservative– who voted for Trump in 2016 after abandoning all hope that the Democrats would amend their platform and throw a lifeline to workers who are now struggling to make ends meet in America’s de-industrialized heartland.
The protests are largely a diversion aimed at shifting the public’s attention to a racialized narrative that obfuscates the widening inequality chasm (created by the Democrats biggest donors, the Giant Corporations and Wall Street) to historic antagonisms that have clearly diminished over time. (Racism ain’t what it used to be.) The Democrats are resolved to set the agenda by deciding what issues “will and will not” be covered over the course of the campaign. And– since race is an issue on which they feel they can energize their base by propping-up outdated stereotypes of conservatives as ignorant bigots incapable of rational thought– the Dems are using their media clout to make race the main topic of debate. In short, the Democrats have settled on a strategy for quashing the emerging populist revolt that swept Trump into the White House in 2016 and derailed Hillary’s ambitious grab for presidential power.
The plan, however, does have its shortcomings, for example, Democrats have offered nearly blanket support for protests that have inflicted massive damage on cities and towns across the country. In the eyes of many Americans, the Dems support looks like a tacit endorsement of the arson, looting and violence that has taken place under the banner of “racial justice”. The Dems have not seriously addressed this matter, choosing instead to let the media minimize the issue by simply scrubbing the destruction from their coverage. This “sweep it under the rug” strategy appears to be working as the majority of people surveyed believe that the protests were “mostly peaceful”, which is a term that’s designed to downplay the effects of the most ferocious rioting since the 1970s.
Let’s be clear, the Democrats do not support Black Lives Matter nor have they made any attempt to insert their demands into their list of police reforms. BLM merely fits into the Dems overall campaign strategy which is to use race to deflect attention from the gross imbalance of wealth that is the unavoidable consequence of the Dems neoliberal policies including outsourcing, off-shoring, de-industrialization, free trade and trickle down economics. These policies were aggressively promoted by both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as they will be by Joe Biden if he is elected. They are the policies that have gutted the country, shrunk the middle class, and transformed the American dream into a dystopian nightmare.
They are also the policies that have given rise to, what the pundits call, “right wing populism” which refers to the growing number of marginalized working people who despise Washington and career politicians, feel anxious about falling wages and dramatic demographic changes, and resent the prevailing liberal culture that scorns their religion and patriotism. This is Trump’s mainly-white base, the working people the Democrats threw under the bus 30 years ago and now want to annihilate completely by deepening political polarization, fueling social unrest, pitting one group against another, and viciously vilifying them in the media as ignorant racists whose traditions, culture, customs and even history must be obliterated to make room for the new diversity world order. Trump touched on this theme in a speech he delivered in Tulsa. He said:
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”
Author Charles Burris expanded on this topic in an article at Lew Rockwell titled America’s Monumental Existential Problem:
“The wave of statue-toppling spreading across the Western world from the United States is not an aesthetic act, but a political one, the disfigured monuments in bronze and stone standing for the repudiation of an entire civilization. No longer limiting their rage to slave-owners, American mobs are pulling down and disfiguring statues of abolitionists, writers and saints in an act of revolt against the country’s European founding, now re-imagined as the nation’s original sin, a moral and symbolic shift with which we Europeans will soon be forced to reckon.”
The statue-toppling epidemic is vastly more disturbing than the the looting or arson, mainly because it reveals an ideological intensity aimed at symbols of state power. By tearing down the images of the men who created or contributed to our collective history, the vandals are challenging the legitimacy of the nation itself as well as its founding “enlightenment” principles. This is the nihilism of extremists whose only objective is destruction. It suggests that the Democrats might have aspirations that far exceed a mere presidential victory. Perhaps the protests and riots will be used to justify more sweeping changes, a major reset during which traditional laws and rules are indefinitely suspended until the crisis passes and order can be restored. Is that at all conceivable or should we dismiss these extraordinary events as merely young people “letting off a little steam”?
Here’s how General Michael Flynn summed up what’s going on on in a recent article:
“There is now a small group of passionate people working hard to destroy our American way of life. Treason and treachery are rampant and our rule of law and those law enforcement professionals are under the gun more than at any time in our nation’s history… I believe the attacks being presented to us today are part of a well-orchestrated and well-funded effort that uses racism as its sword to aggravate our battlefield dispositions. This weapon is used to leverage and legitimize violence and crime, not to seek or serve the truth…. The dark forces’ weapons formed against us serve one purpose: to promote radical social change through power and control.”
I agree. The toppling of statues, the rioting, the looting, the arson and, yes, the relentless attacks on Trump from the day he took office, to Russiagate, to the impeachment, to the insane claims about Russian “bounties”, to the manipulation of science and data to trigger a planned demolition of the US economy hastening a vast restructuring to the labor force and the imposition of authoritarian rule; all of these are cut from the same fabric, a tapestry of lies and deception concocted by the DNC, the Intel agencies, the elite media, and their behind-the-scenes paymasters. Now they have released their corporate-funded militia on the country to wreak havoc and spread terror among the population. Meanwhile, the New York Times and others continue to generate claims they know to be false in order to confuse the public even while the people are still shaking off months of disorienting quarantine and feelings of trepidation brought on by 3 weeks of nonstop social unrest and fractious racial conflict. Bottom line: Neither the Democrats nor their allies at the Intel agencies and media have ever accepted the “peaceful transition of power”. They reject the 2016 election results, they reject Donald Trump as the duly elected president of the United States, and they reject the representative American system of government “by the people.”
So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty: Which political party is pursuing a radical-activist strategy that has set our cities ablaze and reduced Capitol Hill to a sprawling war zone? Which party pursued a 3 year-long investigation that was aimed at removing the president using a dossier that they knew was false (Opposition research), claiming emails were hacked from DNC computers when the cyber-security company that did the investigation said there was no proof of “exfiltration”? (In other words, there was no hack and the Dems knew it since 2017) Which party allied itself with senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA, NSA and elite media and worked together collaboratively to discredit, surveil, infiltrate, entrap and demonize the administration in order to torpedo Trumps “America First” political agenda, and remove him from office?
Which party?
No one disputes the Democrats right to challenge, criticize or vigorously oppose a bill or policy promoted by the president. What we take issue with is the devious and (possibly) illegal way the Democrats have joined powerful elements in the Intelligence Community and the major media to conduct a ruthless “dirty tricks” campaign that involved spying on members of the administration in order to establish the basis for impeachment proceedings. This is not the behavior of a respected political organization but the illicit conduct of a fifth column acting on behalf of a foreign (or corporate?) enemy. It’s worth noting that an insurrection against the nation’s lawful authority is sedition, a felony that is punishable by imprisonment or death. Perhaps, the junta leaders should consider the possible consequences of their actions before they make their next move.
What we need to know is whether the Democrat party operates independent of the Intel agencies with which it cooperated during its campaign against Trump? We’re hopeful that the Durham investigation will shed more light on this matter. Our fear is that what we’re seeing is an emerging Axis–the CIA, the DNC, and the elite media– all using their respective powers to terminate the Constitutional Republic and establish permanent, authoritarian one-party rule. As far-fetched as it might sound, the country appears to be slipping inexorably towards tyranny.
If US attempts to seize Iranian tankers carrying oil to Venezuela now, de-escalation will be more difficult than ever
By Scott Ritter | RT | July 3, 2020
To expand its “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign targeting Iranian oil and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, the US has a warrant to seize the cargo of four tankers heading to Venezuela. We should expect the worst.
Just weeks ago, in May and June, the world watched with bated breath as Iran dispatched five tankers carrying cargoes of gasoline and chemicals desperately needed by the Venezuelan nation, starved as it was of the ability to refine its own gas, due to the US’ stringent economic sanctions. While protesting the move, Washington did nothing to stop it, beyond sanctioning the ships involved. In what appears to be a replay, the Iranian government has now engaged four ships – the Bella, Bering, Pandi and Luna – to deliver approximately 1,163,000 barrels of gasoline to Venezuela.
In an effort to prevent this, the US government sought, and obtained, a federal forfeiture warrant on the grounds that the sale of the cargo violates the law regarding economic activity conducted by or on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC), previously designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization. The Iranian government has condemned the issuing of this warrant as an act of piracy.
How exactly the warrant will be executed, and what the consequences of such an action will be are scenario dependent. One possible scenario would be for the US to attempt a replay of last year’s gambit to bribe an Iranian ship’s captain to steer his vessel to a country that would then impound the tanker and its contents on behalf of the US.
The Iranian ship in question, a tanker named the Adrian Darya, had been seized by the UK on suspicion of violating EU sanctions regarding the sale of oil to Syria, and held in the port of Gibraltar. Iran, in retaliation, seized a British tanker operating in the Strait of Hormuz. After behind-the-scenes negotiations, a Gibraltan judge ordered the Iranian vessel to be released – but not before the US Justice Department had issued a warrant for the seizure of the ship.
Using the warrant as a stick, the State Department had its Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, contact the Iranian captain by email and offer him several millions of dollars to, in effect, defect with his ship and its cargo. The State Department was using a 1984 program known as ‘Rewards for Justice,’ which had been expanded under the Trump administration to target the IRGC by offering rewards of up to $15 million for information that led to the disruption of illicit Iranian activity.
In the case of the Adrian Darya, the effort failed. However, according to information contained in the complaint filed in support of the warrant, the owner of two of the ships engaged in the transport of gas to Venezuela, the Bella and Bering, both sailing under Liberian registry, indicated that he was concerned over what he called “the American threat.” The Iranian middlemen involved in the transaction had pressured him into undertaking the voyage and had offered to purchase the vessels outright, if needed. The key question for all involved is how the captains of any of the four vessels currently underway would respond if subjected to a similar solicitation of money as was made to the captain of the Adrian Darya.
Even if the US wasn’t able to entice a defection from one or more, possibly all, of the targeted tankers, the threat of seizure alone might suffice to compel the captains to abort their journeys and either return to their ports of origin, or seek to transfer the contents of their respective vessels to other tankers willing to complete the task of delivering the gasoline to Venezuela.
The consequences of a ship’s defection would more than likely be treated by Iran as the equivalent of having the vessels boarded and seized in international waters, as the end result – the confiscation of the ship’s cargo – would be the same.
Given past precedent, it is highly likely that Iran would conduct a tit-for-tat seizure of a vessel of similar capacity that was either sailing under the US flag or carrying a US-destined consignment. This would be a risky move that would probably lead to some sort of confrontation between the Iranian and American navies and might very well escalate into a general regional conflict.
Another option is that the tankers would seek to complete their mission by sailing in international waters with their onboard automatic identification system – a transponder that enables the ship’s movements to be tracked by other vessels using satellites – turned off.
This has been the practice that Iranian and Chinese vessels have engaged in during the delivery of Iranian oil to China in violation of US sanctions. Considered a very risky and dangerous move that could result in a collision with other vessels, it also makes a ship difficult to track and therefore interdict.
The US could respond by placing a screen of US naval vessels just outside Venezuelan territorial waters, creating a de facto blockade that the four tankers would have to run if their respective deliveries were to be made. Whether or not the US would actually attempt a boarding and seizure is another question, as it could be seen as a violation of international law. Moreover, the potential for direct conflict with the Venezuelan navy and air force would be high, given their practice of seeking to escort Iranian tankers once they arrive in Venezuelan waters.
In the past, both Iran and the US have shown restraint in seeking to avoid any major force-on-force confrontation between their respective militaries, knowing that once initiated, de-escalation would be difficult, and the transition to a general regional war all but assured. The social, economic, and political costs to all parties involved would be prohibitively high – a universally accepted reality that usually serves as a deterrent against rash action by either Iran or the US. But the present time finds US President Donald Trump in the political fight of his life, with polls indicating a difficult, uphill fight for re-election in November.
By undertaking this attempted delivery of gasoline to Venezuela, the Iranian government has placed Trump in a dilemma that he’s worsened by seeking, and getting, a warrant for the seizure of the involved tankers. Any inaction on the part of the US will be seized on by Trump’s political opponents as a sign of his impotence as a national leader, while a seizure that results in a war with Iran would destroy any chance of the post-pandemic economic recovery he’s betting on to help carry him to victory this fall.
Once again, the world is forced to watch while its collective future is decided not in terms of what is best for the global collective, but in terms of how an action is best interpreted from an American domestic political perspective.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Caracas Bashes UK Court for Seeking ‘to Strip Venezuela of Its International Gold Reserves’
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 03.07.2020
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza has lambasted the British High Court’s move to recognise Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the president of the Latin American country.
Arreaza tweeted on Thursday that Caracas “rejects the opinion” of the UK court, which “seeks to strip our country of its international gold reserves at the Bank of England, and will initiate the corresponding legal procedures to appeal such an absurd decision.”
According to Arreaza’s attached press release from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, “President Nicolas Maduro […] has requested that Venezuelan judicial bodies initiate the necessary procedures to punish those involved in the theft of Venezuelan gold and to ensure that justice is done.”
The statement comes after the British High Court said in a ruling that the UK government “has unequivocally” recognised Guaido as Venezuelan president, adding that “there is no room for recognition of Mr Guaido as de jure president and of Mr Maduro as de facto president.”
The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), in turn, argued that London, which maintains diplomatic relations with Caracas, “recognised” the government of the elected president despite calling him “illegitimate.”
The BCV also cautioned that the UK recognising Guaido would be a violation of international laws and an “impermissible intervention in the affairs of Venezuela”.
Right now, the Bank of England holds about $1.13 billion worth of Venezuelan gold, refusing to give Maduro’s government access to it or transfer the gold to another bank.
In May, the BCV filed a legal claim in a commercial court in London to try to force the Bank of England to transfer Venezuela’s gold reserves to fund the nation’s coronavirus response.
Venezuela’s push to release its frozen gold assets in the UK began after the US and other western countries refused to recognise the results of the 2018 presidential election in Venezuela, in which Maduro secured an overwhelming victory for another term amid an economic meltdown in the country.
After the US slapped a raft of economic sanctions against Venezuela, the South American nation’s financial assets were frozen in a number of foreign countries. The situation worsened after Guaido proclaimed himself interim president contesting Maduro’s claim to the country’s gold assets, including those in the UK.
UK court recognizes Juan Guaido as ‘unequivocally’ Venezuela’s president in legal fight for tons of gold
RT | July 2, 2020
The UK High Court has ruled that Venezuela’s legitimate president is in fact its self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaido, and not the elected Nicolas Maduro, in a bizarre legal battle for $1 billion of gold bullion.
The Bank of England (BOE) holds close to $2 billion of Venezuela’s gold for safekeeping. With both the Venezuelan government and the opposition laying claim to the fortune, the High Court has been tasked with deciding who deserves the funds, and said on Thursday that the UK “unequivocally recognizes” self-proclaimed leader Guaido as president.
“Whatever the basis for the recognition, her majesty’s government has unequivocally recognized Mr Guaido as president of Venezuela,” Justice Nigel Teare said on Thursday. “It necessarily follows that her majesty’s government no longer recognizes Mr Maduro as president of Venezuela.”
Venezuela’s central bank wants the gold back so it can be sold to buy medicine and equipment to battle Covid-19. It has said the funds would be transferred to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to ensure it isn’t used for anything else, but the opposition objects to this and claims Maduro wants to use the money to pay off his foreign allies.
Guaido, who has self-identified as the country’s interim president since 2019, with backing from Western nations, claims the gold is his to control and alleged the bank would be “financing torture” if Maduro won. The British government is among more than 50 nations that have recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s leader.
A lawyer for Venezuela’s central bank said that they would appeal the judgement which “entirely ignores the reality of the situation on the ground.”
The BOE rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw the gold in January, which was reportedly at the request of US officials. This prompted Venezuela’s central bank to file a claim against the BOE in May. Its case points to the fact that the UK Foreign Office maintains full diplomatic relations with the Maduro government, arguing that the UK can’t have these relations while also recognizing someone else as the head of state.
The Venezuelan government first made moves to remove its gold stores after the 2018 election, which Maduro won and the opposition boycotted. Boris Johnson, who was then the foreign minister, said at the time that the UK “may have to tighten the economic screw on Venezuela,” and with further US sanctions placed on the country, its central bank informed the UK bank that it wished to take its gold back.
Iran resumes gas exports to Turkey after pipeline fixed
Press TV – July 1, 2020
The Iranian Oil Ministry says it has resumed exports of natural gas to Turkey despite reports in the media suggesting that exports could stop for good because of price disputes.
A spokesman of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said on Wednesday that Turkey had finished repair work on a pipeline that came out of service after an explosion on March 31, allowing Iran to resume exports.
“Exports have resumed now that repairs on gas export pipeline in the Turkish territory have finished,” said Mohammad Asgari, adding, “Iran’s gas exports to Turkey is going on as before.”
The announcement puts an end to weeks of speculations about a potential decision by Turkey to halt imports of natural gas from Iran.
Reports in April had suggested that Turkey was unwilling to repair the damaged pipeline because it was unhappy with the price of gas supplied from Iran.
Those reports said a sudden fall in international oil prices, which are used as a benchmark to determine gas prices, had caused Turkey to press Iran for a fresh negotiation on gas prices.
Authorities in Turkey had denied there was a major issue with the price, insisting that repair work on the pipeline had been delayed because of the spread of the new coronavirus in the region.
That comes as oil prices have rebounded in recent weeks mainly because of an international agreement to cut the output.
Turkey is entitled to receive around 8.5 billion cubic meters of gas from Iran each year under a 25-year contract which began in 2001.
Based on the agreement, any change in oil prices would take at least six months to have an effect on the price of gas delivered by Iran to Turkey.
If Suez Canal Blocks Iran’s Aid Ships to Lebanon & Syria, Strait of Hormuz Will Be Closed: Al-Akhbar Report
Al-Manar | July 1, 2020
Amid the squeezing US economic blockade on Lebanon and Syria, the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to aid allies and provide them with the basic consumption items by all means.
The Lebanese daily newspaper, Al-Akhbar, reported Wednesday that Iran has offered to sell oil to Lebanon which would pay in the national currency in return, adding that the Iranian ships are ready to sail without any political or geographical barrier.
In this context, the paper pointed out that the Iranians have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in case the Suez Canal is blocked to the aid ships heading to Lebanon and Syria, citing a positive Egyptian stance in this regard.
The Iranian offer, expected to leave Tehran losing hundreds of millions of dollars, is inexactly viewed in Lebanon, according to the Al-Akhbar report Hezbollah has informed the Lebanese authorities it will help finalize the deal when they approve it.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s latest speech tackled the Iranian offer on the basis of a promise his eminence received from the Supreme Leader Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Al-Akhbar mentioned.
Impeachment Reminder of Our Toxic Foreign Aid
By James Bovard | Ron Paul Institute | Monday June 29, 2020
Foreign aid to Ukraine helped spur the Democrats’ effort to impeach and remove President Trump earlier this year. Ukraine was supposed to be on the verge of great progress until Trump pulled the rug out from under the heroic salvation effort by US government bureaucrats. Unfortunately, Congress has devoted a hundred times more attention to the timing of aid to Ukraine than to its effectiveness. And most of the media coverage pretended that US handouts abroad are as generous and uplifting as congressmen claim.
US foreign aid has long fueled the poxes it promised to eradicate — especially kleptocracy, or government by thieves. A 2002 American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.” Windfalls of foreign aid can make politicians more rapacious, which economists have dubbed the “voracity effect.”
Early in his presidency, George W. Bush promised to reform foreign aid, declaring, “I think it makes no sense to give aid money to countries that are corrupt.” Regardless, the Bush administration continued delivering billions of dollars in handouts to many of the world’s most corrupt regimes.
Barack Obama proclaimed at the United Nations in 2010 that the US government was “leading a global effort to combat corruption.” The Los Angeles Times noted that Obama’s “aides said the United States in the past has often seemed to just throw money at problems,” while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that “a lot of these aid programs don’t work” and lamented their “heartbreaking” failures. But Obama promised during his 2008 campaign to double foreign-aid spending, which obliterated efforts to reform failed programs. In 2011, congressional Republicans sought to restrict foreign aid going to fraud-ridden foreign regimes. Secretary of State Clinton wailed that restricting handouts to nations that fail anti-corruption tests “has the potential to affect a staggering number of needy aid recipients.”
Regardless, the Obama administration continued pouring tens of billions of US tax dollars into sinkholes such as Afghanistan, which even its president, Ashraf Ghani, admitted in 2016 was “one of the most corrupt countries on earth.” The governor of Kandahar denounced his own government officials and police officers as “looters and kidnappers.” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), declared that “US policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption” in Afghanistan.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, the United States has provided more than $6 billion in aid to Ukraine. At the House impeachment hearings late last year, a key anti-Trump witness was acting US ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. The Washington Post hailed Taylor as someone who “spent much of the 1990s telling Ukrainian politicians that nothing was more critical to their long-term prosperity than rooting out corruption and bolstering the rule of law, in his role as the head of US development assistance for post-Soviet countries.” A New York Times editorial lauded Taylor and State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent as witnesses who “came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted their lives to serving their country.”
Their testimony spurred Eric Rubin, president of the American Foreign Service Association, to bewail that “this is the most fraught time and the most difficult time for our members” since Sen. Joe McCarthy’s accusations of communism in the 1950s. A Washington Post headline echoed him: “The diplomatic corps has been wounded. The State Department needs to heal.” But not nearly as much as the foreigners supposedly rescued by US bureaucrats.
The Wall Street Journal reported on October 31 that the International Monetary Fund, which has provided more than $20 billion in loans to Ukraine, “remains skeptical after a history of broken promises [from the Ukrainian government]. Kiev hasn’t successfully completed any of a series of IMF bailout packages over the past two decades, with systemic corruption at the heart of much of that failure.” The IMF concluded that Ukraine continued to be vexed by “shortcomings in the legal framework, pervasive corruption, and large parts of the economy dominated by inefficient state-owned enterprises or by oligarchs.” That last item is damning for US benevolent pretensions. If a former Soviet republic cannot even terminate its government-owned boondoggles, then why was the US government bankrolling them? While many members of Congress could not find Ukraine on a map, far fewer could have offered any coherent explanation of what US aid bought in Ukraine.
Transparency International, which publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, shows that corruption surged in Ukraine in the late 1990s (after the United States decided to rescue that country) and remains at abysmal levels. Ukraine now ranks in the bottom tier on the list of most corrupt nations, with a worse rating than Egypt and Pakistan, two other major US aid recipients notorious for corruption.
Actually, the best gauge of Ukrainian corruption is the near-total collapse of its citizens’ trust in government or in their own future. Since 1991, the nation has lost almost 20 percent of its population as citizens flee abroad like passengers leaping off a sinking ship. But as long as Kiev was not completely depopulated, US bureaucrats could continue claiming to be on the verge of achieving great things.
The House impeachment hearings and much of the media gushed over those career US government officials despite their strikeouts. It was akin to a congressional committee’s resurrecting Col. George Custer in 1877 and fawning as he offered personal insights in dealing with uprisings by Sioux Indians (while carefully avoiding awkward questions about the previous year at the Little Bighorn).
Foreign aid is virtue-signaling with other people’s money. As long the aid spawns press releases and photo opportunities for presidents and members of Congress and campaign donations from corporate and other beneficiaries, little else matters. Congress almost never conducts thorough investigations into the failure of aid programs despite their legendary pratfalls. As the Christian Science Monitor noted in 2010, AID “created an atmosphere of frantic urgency about the ‘burn rate’ — a measure of how quickly money is spent. Emphasis gets put on spending fast to make room for the next batch from Congress.” Martine van Bijlert of the nonprofit Afghanistan Analysts Network commented, “As long as you spend money and you can provide a paper trail, that’s a job well done. It’s a perverse system, and there seems to be no intention to change it.” The “burn rate” fixation produced endless absurdities, including collapsing school buildings, impassable roads, failed electrification projects, and phantom health clinics. SIGAR’s John Sopko “found a USAID lessons-learned report from 1980s on Afghan reconstruction but nobody at AID had read it.”
Perverse incentives
“Fail and repeat” was also AID’s motto in Iraq. After the 2003 invasion, AID and the Pentagon paired up to spend $60 billion to rebuild Iraq. As long as projects looked vaguely impressive at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, AID declared victory. Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), listed some of the agency’s farcical Iraq success claims at a 2011 hearing: “262,482 individuals reportedly benefited from medical supplies that were purchased to treat only 100 victims of a specific attack; 22 individuals attended a five-day mental-health course, yet 1.5 million were reported as beneficiaries; … and 280,000 were reported as benefitting from $14,246 spent to rehabilitate a morgue.” Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq’s minister of planning, denied in 2009 that US aid for relief and reconstruction had benefitted his country: “Maybe they spent it, but Iraq doesn’t feel it.” An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity noted that, according to top Iraqi officials, the biggest impact of US aid was “more corruption and widespread money-laundering.”
After driving around the world, investment guru Jim Rogers declared, “Most foreign aid winds up with outside consultants, the local military, corrupt bureaucrats, the new NGO [nongovernmental organizations] administrators, and Mercedes dealers.” Mercedes-Benz automobiles became so popular among African government officials that a new Swahili word was coined: wabenzi — “men of the Mercedes-Benz.” After the Obama administration promised massive aid to Ukraine in 2014, Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son, jumped on the gravy train — as did legions of well-connected Washingtonians and other hustlers around the nation. Similar largesse ensures that there will never be a shortage of overpaid people and hired think tanks ready to write op-eds or letters to the editor of the Washington Post whooping up the moral greatness of foreign aid or some such hokum.
Bribing foreign politicians to encourage honest government makes as much sense as distributing free condoms to encourage abstinence. Rather than encouraging good governance practices, foreign aid is more likely to produce kleptocracies. As a Brookings Institution analysis observed, “The history of US assistance is littered with tales of corrupt foreign officials using aid to line their own pockets, support military buildups, and pursue vanity projects.” Both US politicians and US bureaucrats are prone to want to continue the aid gravy train regardless of how foreign regimes waste the money or use it to repress their own citizens.
US government leaders are far more concerned with buying influence than with safeguarding purity. Foreign aid is often little more than a bribe for a foreign regime to behave in ways that please the US government. One large bribe naturally spawns hundreds or thousands of smaller bribes, and thereby corrupts an entire country. The impeachment of Trump was driven by the specific favor that Democrats claimed he had requested from the Ukrainian president, not from seeking favors per se.
When it comes to the failure of US aid to Ukraine, almost all of Trump’s congressional critics are like the “dog that didn’t bark” in the Sherlock Holmes story. The real outrage is that Trump and prior presidents, with Congress cheering all the way, delivered so many US tax dollars to Kiev that any reasonable person knew would be wasted.
Foreign aid will continue to be toxic as long as politicians continue to be politicians. There is no bureaucratic cure for the perverse incentives created by flooding foreign nations with US tax dollars. If Washington truly wants to curtail foreign corruption, ending US government handouts aid is the best first step. Counting on foreign aid to reduce corruption is like expecting whiskey to cure alcoholism.
Connecting the Dots
By Larry Romanoff • Unz Review • June 24, 2020
It often happens that events we view as isolated occurrences are connected as integral parts of a much larger picture, often as part of a wide-ranging plan, and frequently with important social, economic, and/or political implications which become evident only when seen in total. The several topics of this essay add a necessary context to all major social, commercial, and geo-political events of recent decades, which may help us in connecting dots. For this, it is extremely important to realise and understand that in these matters there are no accidents, that ‘crises’ (other than things like volcanic eruptions) do not just happen, and that the final result of any crisis, however it may appear, was the result intended.
As one example, this many decades ago, we noticed that in our city in Canada one brand of American convenience store seemed to have a habit of opening new stores within a stone’s throw of the existing ‘mom and pop’ variety stores (as they were then called), these shiny and attractive new shops inevitably resulting in the closure of our traditional community stores with the resulting loss of livelihood of the owner-families. It was a surprise to learn later that this practice existed in all cities in Canada and it eventually became clear that each such apparently minor event reflected the gradual execution of an astonishingly predatory plan to not only become established in another country but to progressively eliminate all existing competition in doing so. The dawning of this realisation came too late for authorities to take preventive action, resulting in the destruction of what had been an important part of Canada’s community cultural landscape.
In a different category, and more recently, we learned that during a period of ten or more years ending around 2015, GlaxoSmithKline engaged in an enormous tax and marketing fraud in China[1][2], involving billions of RMB in massive and systemic bribery and falsified accounts, the discovery punctuated by the company’s China CEO Mark Reilly fleeing the country on the first plane to England “on a previously-planned business trip”, and intending to remain there “to help with the investigation from that end”.[3] Lacking additional information, we tend to view this revelation as a domestic issue involving the typical group of ‘a few bad apples’. But with a bit of investigation we discover that GSK carried on a series of virtually identical criminal adventures simultaneously in the US and other countries as well, having been fined billions of dollars in the US alone for repeated occurrences. This additional knowledge substantially amends our perception of the picture. When, with a bit of additional investigation, we discover that all the major pharma companies have repeatedly engaged in a wide range of criminal activities resulting in fines totaling tens of billions of dollars in the US alone, our appreciation of GSK’s activities in China, and of the entire landscape of big pharma, are much altered and more accurate. We now know something we didn’t know before, and we now understand we are not dealing with a few bad apples in an isolated if unfortunate event, but with an industry corrupt to its core, worldwide. [4][5]
Similarly, we learned that Apple, the darling of the US stock market and of iphone fans everywhere, was being hounded by the Chinese commercial authorities, this time over warranty periods, Chinese law categorising Apple’s ipad as a computer requiring a two-year warranty with Apple insisting the ipad was a phone and refusing to comply. Following stringent insistence and a huge public outcry, Apple was eventually forced to conform.[6][7] Reading this as an isolated occurrence, we might judge this as a technical domestic argument of little consequence but, with a bit of investigation, we discover that Apple’s warranties had been under fire for years throughout Europe (and other countries) for precisely the same reasons and with precisely the same outcome – Apple stubbornly flouting the consumer laws of dozens of countries.[8][9] With this additional information, our perception of Apple’s behavior in China assumes a different flavor. We no longer see a simple dispute between a retailer and a socialist government with perhaps sticky laws, but a multinational corporation suffused with sufficient arrogance to not only challenge but attempt to dictate consumer laws and warranty policies to all sovereign nations where it does business. To say nothing of some bold tax dodges.[10] Further investigation reveals that, of all computer and mobile phone companies, only Apple appears to take this position. We now have a more accurate picture of the international IT landscape and Apple’s position within it, our sympathy for Apple’s difficulties in China certainly moderating if not transforming into outright hostility.
In each case, our understanding has been substantially amended because we can see the whole picture and we now know something we did not know before. It is true for a great many occurrences in the world, of many different kinds, that these are not single disconnected events but are related in a set pattern and to a set purpose. Simply put, if one house burns down on a street, that’s unfortunate; if two houses burn down on that street, that’s a coincidence; if five houses burn down on that same street, that’s a plan.
Thus, for many of the world’s events, most especially those containing strong social, economic and/or geo-political effects, it behooves us to bypass the mass media who force-feed us with only carefully-selected sound bytes, and to engage ourselves in a bit of independent research to discover whether these apparently disconnected events are in fact related in a larger context. It is necessary to bypass the media because the absence of connection between these apparently disparate (but related) events is not accidental; the media coverage by design and intent renders it impossible for the general public to connect the dots.
The Official Narrative
In attempting to understand social, economic and geo-political events, there is a second matter demanding our attention, that of the initial mass media coverage, because this often betrays secrets of an event that might otherwise be unknown.
Consider: if there is an explosion in a shopping mall somewhere, at first neither we nor the relevant authorities know anything. It might have been caused a gas line leak, perhaps from faulty maintenance, or stored chemicals, or perhaps a disgruntled citizen set off a bomb. At first, we don’t even know what, much less having a clear idea of who or how, or why, and it takes time to ferret out these details and form a sensible working theory of that event. If it appears that persons were responsible, the authorities require additional time to determine why and who, then begin their search.
But, if we are paying attention, it often happens that immediately upon the occurrence of such an event, the mass media present us with a full-blown story lacking only small details, a more or less complete description of what, how, who and why, a story that could not possibly be known at that stage. Not only is the media description immediate, but it is universal and unanimous, with all apparently unrelated media presenting the same story line, often verbatim, with no disagreement on any significant elements, these uniform storylines sometimes flooding the news for days, weeks, and even months.
Such a unanimous flood can occur only with all participants reading from the same script, prepared beforehand and readied for simultaneous release. In the above case, there are only two possibilities:[1] The story, if true, could be known only by the perpetrators or, [2] the story is a fabricated falsehood, taking the microphone to pre-empt independent rational thought by the public and force the discussion into desired channels, resulting in the elimination of critical public analysis and preventing the truth from escaping confinement.
At one time, not so long ago, this was impossible. But today, with the intense concentration of media ownership across all continents, (and with the increasingly strong censorship of the social media) we have only five or six people, all colleagues, controlling perhaps 90% of all media content and with a powerful financial influence on the remainder.
As one ready example, we could review the unfortunate flight of Korean Airlines 007 in 1983, a Boeing 747 which was shot down by Russian aircraft when it ventured about 500 kilometers off-course and perilously close to some Russian military installations. The media response was immediate and universal that “the Russians” killed hundreds of innocent passengers, and a great deal else. I don’t want to dwell on this here but, if you would like some personal entertainment, you might enjoy doing some thorough research on this event. One of the more entertaining issues was that the water was shallow where the aircraft eventually went down, and the Russians searched thoroughly but located only a few bodies of the crew. No hundreds of innocent passengers. One other discovery was hundreds of pairs of new sneakers and a great deal of new clothing still folded in its original packaging. But no bodies. The official response was that when the aircraft was hit by the missiles, the decompression “sucked all the passengers out of their clothes”, then presumably folding and packaging their clothing. Mother Nature is nothing if not neat and tidy.
The events of 9-11 were certainly one of these, with the entire final version of the “official story” appearing the next day in all the Western media, all verbatim including the who, how and why. SARS and ZIKA fit this pattern in every respect, and COVID-19 also fit very well as do the seven biological pathogens unleashed on China during the past two years alone. With the 2019 swine flu, the entire Western media knew instantly that Chinese “criminal gangs” and “pork speculators” were for unknown reasons infecting all of China’s pigs, although no evidence ever surfaced to support any part of their story. If we review the media coverage for many notable events in our recent history, the pattern is the same. We are then facing the only sensible conclusion that those events were executed as part of a plan with the unanimous media coverage arranged well in advance – and with the knowing participation of the media owners.
Normally, subsequent contradictory theories arise over time as we learn details and assemble the pieces in what might be a more logical and sensible combination but, in these cases, all contradictions are first ignored by the mass media, then condemned as “conspiracy theories”, those presenting them unanimously mocked and derided. The more attention these contradictory theories generate, and the more that serious flaws are exposed in the official story, the louder the derision and more vicious the condemnation, again unanimous and universal. Moreover, as these theories gain traction, the underlying facts are increasingly ignored in exchange for attacking their proponents. If we don’t like the message, we kill the messenger. There is no shortage of examples of historians, authors, various experts, being hounded to bankruptcy, infamy, and even death, merely for publishing (or even attempting to publish) inconvenient truths. This process is now so well-established that whenever we see accusations of ‘conspiracy theories’ we can be certain that a government or a corporation has something to hide.
As time passes, the public become inundated with what we term “the official narrative”, most tending to believe a story repeated daily for weeks from dozens of apparently independent and reputable sources, to the point where the matter is no longer news and dissenting opinions are lost in the haze. It then becomes almost impossible for hidden truths to emerge and, even if they do emerge, it is too late to significantly alter the public conviction or to obtain the required critical mass of dissention for a re-examination of the facts. It is said that if we hear a lie five times, especially from five different sources, we will believe it as true and will later be astonishingly reluctant to alter our opinion even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. This is one of the fundamental tenets of all propaganda.
In so many past instances, generally involving malfeasance, the US government or some branch of it quickly took the initiative to promulgate an “official story” that it wanted the public to accept, always with widespread media and scientific or other support. It isn’t usually difficult to distinguish between these crafted tales and other situations where the truth of an event innocently emerges as facts are sequentially discovered. One sure sign that we are being told a story is when “the official narrative” appears much too soon – before any actual facts emerge that would support the hypothesis, a ploy necessary to pre-empt independent conclusions and prevent more realistic or more factual versions from gaining traction.
Directed Channels of Discourse
There is one other item that serves to actively prevent our connecting the dots and forming correct conclusions about events, this being an intense and coordinated media focus to direct public discourse into desirable channels and away from the key issues. As a simple example, some years ago there were intense debates about the future of the Euro, with growing public opinion that the group currency was a failed experiment and European nations should revert to their original national currencies. But the mass media spawned a flood of debate centered on a wide range of options more or less titled “What is the best way to save the Euro?”, forcing public debate into a context where continuation of the Euro was assumed as immutable and all discussion focused on methods of preservation. Of course, the real question was “Should the Euro be saved?”, but those raising this question were ignored, mocked, derided, and painted as traitors to Europe.
If we pay attention to the mass media on the occurrence of many events, it is easy to see that we are often being propagandised and programmed to see the world through the same pair of eyes – the pair our masters want us to look through. It is a most effective tool of public manipulation, with most of us unaware this thought control is taking place. As Noam Chomsky noted in discussing propaganda[11], “The smart way . . . is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” In simple terms, if you can focus the public on asking the wrong questions, you needn’t worry about the answers.
A Brief Case Study in Connecting Dots
In 2001, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease ravaged the British farming industry. Exports from the UK of live animals, meat and dairy products were banned by other nations, and the government ordered a mass slaughter of millions of animals. The losses to British farmers were nearly incalculable, with a great many farmers going bankrupt or otherwise put out of business, and some farmers committing suicide in anguish over their losses. Within six months, almost 4 million animals had been slaughtered and their carcasses burned. Oddly, in the face of this enormous disaster, the government refused to hold a public inquiry into the outbreak, announcing instead three small separate investigations, the results of which would not be made public. A similar event occurred again a few years later. It was later admitted that the pathogen for this disease had gone “missing” from Porton Down and Pirbright, the UK’s two primary L-4 bio-weapons labs, the government then claiming “animal rights activists” had entered these military-guarded labs, stolen huge amounts of pathogen and released it. No information as to why they might do such a thing. The outcome of the UK foot and mouth disease outbreaks was to eliminate small farmers and turn over the UK’s beef supply to a few billionaire owners of Big Agra.
I won’t provide more detail here, but I have written a brief article covering this, the details of which will shock you.[12] As one example, for months prior to the outbreak the UK government was scouring the country for all loose volumes of timber admittedly to be used to burn the carcasses of the millions of cattle soon to become infected and slaughtered.
But so far, even to a suspicious mind, no clear evidence of malfeasance and no conspiracy. But we have other layers of dots here. It seems that immediately prior to this disastrous outbreak of a deadly biological pathogen, there was a ‘simulation’ dealing with precisely this eventuality, exactly the same as that held prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and including most of the same players, most notably Pirbright who were the admitted source of the bovine pathogen and also who had developed and held patents on five coronavirus varieties, I believe the same five that infected the US and then the world.
And yet another layer of dots. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho wrote a report in the Institute of Science in Society, dated September 24, 2001, entitled “Foot & Mouth Outbreak, GM Vaccine and Bio-warfare”. It was after her report that investigations by the Evening Chronicle discovered papers leaked from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that confirmed the simulation which had been secret to that point. Readers may recall this is the same Dr. Ho who called for a full investigation into the possible genetic engineering and dissemination of the SARS virus, the evidence eventually conclusive that SARS emerged from a lab.
Let’s turn to the swine flu outbreak in China in 2019 where the nation’s pork was raised by hundreds of thousands of small farmers much as the beef in the UK. With 50% of the livestock slaughtered, American firms had an open door to take control of China’s pork supply. In this case the effort failed because the Chinese government, not being a party to the pathogen, immediately provided financing and other assistance for the small farmers to rebuild their herds.
However, if we research the outbreaks of animal pathogens around the world – swine flu, bird flu, the evidence seems to indicate that the expansion of Big Agra follows closely on their heels. This is an apparently natural occurrence, given that small competitors have been eliminated while market demand remains constant – unless this occurs more than once or twice. When these outbreaks inexplicably appear repeatedly on all continents with Big Agra in the background, we have dots to connect. I do not possess details of every outbreak of an animal pathogen in all countries for the past ten or twenty years, but I have a powerful suspicion that if we correlate these with the growth in market share of the world’s few Big Agra companies, we would receive a surprise.
Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.
Notes
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/business/international/china-rules-glaxo-bribes-sex-tape-whistleblower-cautionary-tale.html
[2] https://money.cnn.com/2014/09/19/news/china-gsk-bribery/index.html
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-glaxo-settlement-idUSBRE8610S720120702
[4] https://fortune.com/2016/03/31/big-pharma-fines/
[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/drug-giants-fined-11bn-for-criminal-wrongdoing-8157483.html
[6] www.china.org.cn/business/2013-03/31/content_28407911.htm
[7] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-apology-idUSBRE9300DM20130402
[8] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2367484
[9] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48730/how-does-apples-two-year-warranty-in-europe-work
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/apple-pay-back-taxes-eu-ruling-ireland-state-aid
[11] Noam Chomsky [2013]. “How the World Works”, p.234, Soft Skull Press
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Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples. … continue
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