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Seizure of Syria-bound tanker is all about Jeremy Hunter’s bid to become PM — Former UK Ambassador to Syria

By Peter Ford – July 5, 2019

Technically the measure will find UK Foreign Office lawyers to defend it, but other lawyers will deem the action illegal. While sending oil to Syria may be illegal under US law it is not illegal under EU law. The far-fetched justification seems to be that the Banyas oil refinery in Syria provides financial benefit to the Syrian government, is therefore subject to EU sanctions, and thus any contact with it whatever is sanctionable. An Iranian lawyer would point out that if the EU had intended its restrictions to prevent oil shipments to Syria it could easily have adopted a relevant regulation. It didn’t.

For five years until now since Banyas was sanctioned tankers have been making their way past Gibraltar heading for Banyas and the UK has not seen fit to intervene. Why now?

This is obviously Hunt trying to look macho; the UK currying favour with Trump to get a better trade deal.

This will increase tension with Iran, of course, at precisely the wrong moment, when even the US by its own admission is looking for a ‘workaround’ for Iranian oil shipments to China. How do we think Iran is more likely to react – by meekly kowtowing, or doubling down in some way ?

Ordinary Syrians are suffering greatly because of the impact of US oil sanctions. Hospitals don’t have fuel to power their generators. Car drivers have to queue for up to 12 hours to get petrol. We should be proud of ourselves…..Hunt on the Today BBC radio programme this morning refused to say if he considered fox hunting cruel. Bravo, macho man! Putting the boot into a prostrate Syria as well.

Spain may not be best pleased at this reminder of UK colonial arrogance. A spanner Macho Man has thrown into the Brexit works?

July 5, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Russia has ‘political will’ for arms reduction deal, but ball is in US’ court – Putin

RT | July 4, 2019

Russia does not seek an arms race, only protection, Vladimir Putin said shortly after suspending the INF treaty in a mirror response to the US. Moscow is open to a new arms reduction deal, but the US must reciprocate, he added.

In an extended interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily on Thursday, Putin pointed to the gargantuan difference between the US and Russian defense budgets, to dismiss the notion that Moscow could want to enter an arms race.

“Compare how much Russia spends on defense – some $48 billion, and how much the US spends – over $700 billion. Where is the arms race? We will not let ourselves be dragged into such a race, but we must ensure our security,” Putin said.

Reaching a comprehensive arms reduction agreement is what Moscow is striving for, but Washington doesn’t seem as willing, he said.

“Russia has the political will to work on this. Now it’s the US’ turn,” Putin said.

He pointed out that Moscow never heard back from the Trump administration after offering to sign a joint declaration on the inadmissibility of nuclear war in October, the same month Trump announced his intention to unilaterally withdraw from the cold-war era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

Washington cited Russia’s alleged violations as it dismantled the cornerstone of European security, accusations that Moscow vehemently denied. In a mirror response, Russia has suspended the treaty as well. Putin signed the corresponding bill into law on Wednesday.

The treaty banned nuclear and non-nuclear ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of up to 5,000km.

After pulling the US out of the INF, Trump signaled that he would like to thrash out a trilateral nuclear pact that would also include China. The US president said that he discussed the possibility of striking such a “three-way-deal” in a phone call in May.

In spite of this rhetoric, Trump has been aggressively expanding the already immense US nuclear arsenal, spending billions of dollars on its build-up.

Last week, Trump bragged about the US war industry churning out “brand new nuclear weapons” that he “hopefully” will never use.

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

EU choices for top posts a reflection of policies that led to its current mess

By John Laughland | RT | July 3, 2019

In spite of everything that has happened in the EU in the last five years, its member states contrived to select four politicians who embody total continuity with all the policies that led the EU into this mess in the first place.

None of the recent calamities have persuaded the bloc to even slightly alter its course. Not the rise of anti-system parties in Italy, Germany, France, Finland and elsewhere. Not the rise of patriotic forces in Poland and Hungary. And not Brexit, which in economic terms is equivalent to the loss of not one member state but 20, and which will destroy the current EU budget arrangements.

The four men and women whose appointments were hammered out on Tuesday are all determined to create a “United States of Europe” (to quote the future new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen) and therefore to proceed with the very same European integration which is causing so much internal stress in EU member states and its institutions. Moreover, three of the four come from the core EU states, the original founder members in 1951, with no one from the “new Europe” in Eastern or Central Europe. It is as if, in this time of deep crisis, the EU wanted to return to its sources from nearly 70 years ago, instead of re-inventing itself afresh to face the new challenges of the 21st century.

The most striking announcement is of course that of the top job, the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen as Commission president. Because the Commission has a monopoly over the whole legislative and executive process in the EU institutions, this body is the motor which drives the whole machine. The parliament, by comparison, is powerless. The fact that Germany has now acquired control of the most important EU institution is remarkable, not least because it is the first time a German has held this post since the very first Commission president, Walter Hallstein, who had the job between 1958 and 1967. In the intervening decades, and especially since 1990, Germany has emerged as the hegemonic power in the EU and nothing is decided in Brussels without Berlin’s agreement.

Germany also dominates the European Parliament: four out of the seven groups in the parliament, and therefore over two-thirds of the members, are led by Germans. As Angela Merkel prepares to leave office in Berlin, therefore, she can be sure that her legacy will live on, and indeed increase, in Brussels and Strasbourg, where the EU institutions will be controlled by her closest political allies and heirs.

Ursula von der Leyen’s specific contribution, apart from her nationality and her status as a close ally of Angela Merkel, is that she is a committed supporter not only of the concept of a federal Europe but also of an EU army. As defense minister, she previously announced plans to invest €130 billion in Germany’s military over 15 years, and a 10 percent increase in 2019 to bring it up to €50 billion a year. If this re-militarization is dressed up in “European” clothes, then Cold War tensions on the European continent will only rise, something Mrs von der Leyen clearly wants: she is notorious for being one of the worst anti-Russian hawks in Germany and Europe.

Things are hardly better with the least important of the four nominations, that of Josep Borrell as foreign policy chief. Just as von der Leyen has said that Russia is no longer a partner, so Borrell described Russia as “an old enemy” in May: Russia summoned the Spanish ambassador in Moscow to the Foreign Ministry to protest. Borrell shares with von der Leyen a dogmatic yet self-contradictory belief in a “European defense compatible with Nato”: Nato is in reality dominated by the United States. And although he has been critical of the attempt by the US government to force regime change in Caracas, Borrell nonetheless supports the “recognition” of Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela: like his position on defense, this halfway house is also self-contradictory because if Guaido really were the legal president of Venezuela, as Borrell claims, then the young US puppet would have every right to remove Nicolas Maduro by force.

Charles Michel, the new president of the European Council, is the second Belgian to have occupied this essentially honorific post: Herman van Rompuy was appointed as the first president in 2009.  (The second was Donald Tusk; Michel is the third.) It is often said of Belgium that it has seven parliaments but no state: now Michel will have 27 governments but still no state. It would be difficult to imagine a more conformist politician than Charles Michel: this born liberal has never uttered an original word in his life. Moreover, like Ursula von der Leyen, he has EU politics in his blood. Like Ernst Albrecht, Ursula von der Leyen’s father, who was a senior official at the European Commission before he became minister president of Lower Saxony (Ursula was born in Brussels and went to the European School), Charles Michel’s father, Louis, was a Belgian foreign minister and European commissioner. Two out of yesterday’s four appointments are therefore dynastic, emphasizing the caste-like European political class, to which one should perhaps add Josep Borrell who is a former president of the European Parliament and a former president of the European University Institute in Florence.

In short, none of the four shines as a personality while several of them have been embroiled in financial scandals – Borrell for failing to declare a €300,000 a year consultancy job in 2012 and Lagarde for approving a state payout to a friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. Leyen has often been accused of incompetence as a minister, more concerned with her perfect hairdo than with running the German Army. All four have survived in politics, in most cases for decades, precisely because they have never deviated from the party line and have instead got where they are by doing as they are told.

As for the man elected president of the European Parliament on Wednesday, he has no power at all.  What little power the European Parliament has is vested in its members. David-Maria Sassoli’s election drives a further nail into the coffin of the principle of political representation because he represents a spent force in Italian politics. As a member of the Democratic Party, he stands for the old order which was swept away in Rome in 2018 when the new-left 5 Stars and new-right League built an alliance to thrust aside the old parties. Above all, Sassoli was vice-president in the previous parliament and therefore his election now is also an expression of continuity.

In short, faced with an existential crisis and a severe lack of credibility, the EU’s message to its voters and the world is: Business as usual.

John Laughland has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has taught at universities in Paris and Rome as a historian and specialist in international affairs.

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Trump is finished with the Afghan war

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | July 4, 2019

There could be several ways of interpreting the US State Department’s decision on Tuesday to designate the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, which imposes economic sanctions on the group and anyone affiliated with it. What is absolutely certain is that this is by no means an altruistic decision by Washington.

The BLA is based in Afghanistan and has been waging a violent armed struggle against Pakistan for the past decade and a half upholding the right of self-determination of the Baloch people and demanding the separation of Balochistan province from Pakistan, apart from being involved in ethnic-cleansing of non-Baloch minorities in Balochistan.

Curiously, the BLA’s timeline (starting from 2004) has been co-terminus with the US’ occupation of Afghanistan. It is inconceivable that the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan were unaware of the BLA’s subversive activities or who were its mentors. Islamabad has been shouting and screaming from the rooftop all this while that its adversaries exploited the group as a proxy to destabilise Pakistan.

Put differently, the timing of the State Department decision banning the BLA is noteworthy. Why now, at this juncture?

These are extraordinary times when almost anything and everything that the US does in the Greater Middle East would have an eye on Iran with which it is locked in an epochal rivalry. Can it be that by making this gesture, Washington hopes to recruit Pakistani military and intelligence to strengthen further its ‘maximum pressure’ strategy against Iran? The possibility cannot be ruled out.

Of course, this is not to suggest that Pakistan will make hostile moves against Iran. Although Pakistan-Iran relations have been highly problematic through the past four decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and their mutual animosity kept frothing from time to time, things never reached a flashpoint as both sides observed certain ground rules of how far to go and what not to do. In the present context, Pakistan will take utmost care not to get entangled in the US-Iran standoff.

Having said that, there is a vital US-Pakistani convergence over Iran that cannot be overlooked, either. That is, when it comes to the Afghan situation. Iran has made it clear that if the US attacks it, it will retaliate against American assets all across the region. There have been two statements at least by senior US officials lately that Iran is moving against American assets in Afghanistan. Iran, of course, has stoutly rejected the allegation, but the US is paranoid — and not without reason.

The point is, apart from the traditional links with the Shi’ite groups in Afghanistan, Tehran also has dealings with the Taliban. Coincidence or not, Washington moved against the BLA within days of an incident in the eastern Afghan province of Wardak on June 26 in which two US soldiers were killed by the Taliban in an ambush.

The incident took place only a day after after Pompeo stopped in the Afghan capital, Kabul, for daylong talks with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani as well as other senior leaders and opposition politicians to discuss two topics, namely, the US’ ongoing efforts to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban and the potential that Iran has to carry out actions that would jeopardise the US exit strategy out of Afghanistan. (Read a report in Geopolitics magazine entitled Two Topics Dominating Pompeo’s Visit to Afghanistan.)

In fact, the US apprehends that an extremely dangerous situation is arising in Afghanistan even as the withdrawal of American troops accelerates. President Trump disclosed in an interview this week with Tucker Carlson on FOX television that the US troop level has come down to 9,000 from 16,000 already. Trump made no bones about the fact that he is finished with the war in Afghanistan.

At one point in the interview, Trump bursts out, “I’d like to just get out.” Trump claims that he intends to keep a “very strong” intelligence presence in Afghanistan. He couldn’t care less anymore whether there will be a broad-based government in Kabul or a Taliban takeover. He’s well past that point of agonising. At one point, Trump implied to Carlson — who also happens to be an inveterate critic of America’s “endless wars” — that he no longer trusts the judgment or integrity of the military commanders. (By the way, Carlson accompanied Trump to the meeting with North Korea Kim Jong-Un in Panmunjom while NSA John Bolton was sent away to Mongolia.)

This is where Pakistani help becomes critical. Ghani’s government lacks legitimacy but the holding of a presidential election in September, as planned, depends heavily on a settlement with the Taliban. The US expects Pakistani help in three directions: one, persuading the Taliban to reach an agreement at the Qatar talks without any further delay; two, enabling the US to withdraw the troops expeditiously and in an orderly fashion; and, three, creating politico-security conditions to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power in Kabul. Of course, it is a tall order.

The Americans know that Iran can escalate in Afghanistan anytime it wishes. Afghanistan falls within the domain of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, commanded by the legendary general Qassem Soleimani who was the bête noire of the US and Israel in Iraq and Syria. Of course, if Soleimani creates a hopeless situation like in Vietnam (which forced the US into a humiliating retreat from the rooftop of the American embassy in Saigon), that will be highly damaging for Trump politically in the midst of his campaign for the 2020 election. And that is precisely why Trump is impatient to cut loose and get out from Afghanistan without even waiting for the implementation of any peace agreement with Taliban.

All this should be a morality play for the Indian strategists and policymakers as they pick up the debris of their own Afghan policies and its $2 billion price tag, which has been predicated so heavily through the past decade and a half on the US strategy. Equally, this should be a wake-up call for the Indian lobbyists who still want to bandwagon with the US in other regional theatres such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives or Nepal. (See blog US eyes Sri Lanka as its military logistics hub.)

For sure, the Afghan war has not ended. Trump recalled poignantly that the 9/11 attacks were not staged by Afghans but the Hindu Kush provided the plotters a “lab for terrorists”. Now, the US can only take the word of the Taliban that such a thing will not repeat. Washington’s best hope will be that Pakistan will keep an eagle’s eye to ensure that the terrorists from Afghanistan will not come visiting the US.

In turn, that is going to create an interdependency between the US and Pakistan. The IMF bailout, the ban on the BLA, the near-certainty that Pakistan is off the hook at the upcoming plenary of the Financial Action Task Force, an official visit by Prime Minister Imran Khan to the White House  — these are the starters from the US side. Pakistan is highly experienced in dictating the terms of engagement with the US.

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Airlines no longer avoiding Iran airspace despite US ban: Official

Press TV – July 4, 2019

Iran’s top aviation official says that major international airlines have been returning to skies south of the country after a brief hiatus caused by an Iran-US military escalation in the region.

Siavosh Amir Mokri, who heads Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company, said on Thursday that the number of flights using Iranian-controlled skies above the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman had increased over the past several days to reach its normal level of 840 flights a day.

The official said the increased use of the airspace came despite a notam (Notice to Airmen) issued by US Federal Aviation Administration on June 21 which banned flights from using skies above the region.

The notam came after Iran shot down an intruding American drone which officials said had violated the country’s airspace above the Persian Gulf waters.

The move caused a serious escalation in military tensions between Iran and the United States and caused major airlines, including British Airways, KLM and Lufthansa, to follow the FAA instructions and stop to use the Iranian airspace.

However, Amir Mokri said carriers had reversed the decision as they have noticed that security in the Persian Gulf has been restored. He said that returning to the Iranian airspace would also be more economic for the airlines.

“That tension is gone and airline companies have understood that the country’s airspace is still safe,” he said, adding that the number of international flights using the Iranian airspace had decreased to 800 a day, down five percent, since the downing of the US drone by Iran.

The official said Iran had lodged an official complaint with the International Civil Aviation Organization over the FAA notam as it inflicted losses on the country. He said Iran’s total revenues from overflight fees in the last Iranian calendar year which ended in March topped $180 million.

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

UK seizes ‘Syria-bound oil tanker’ in Gibraltar on suspicion of violating EU bans

Press TV – July 4, 2019

The British overseas territory Gibraltar says it has seized a supertanker on suspicion of carrying crude oil to Syria in violation of European Union (EU) sanctions against the Arab country.

In a statement released on Thursday, Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said the territory’s police and customs agencies, aided by a detachment of British Royal Marines, had seized the Grace 1 vessel.

Gibraltar, he added, had reasonable grounds to believe that the tanker was carrying its crude oil shipment to the Banyas refinery in Syria.

“That refinery is the property of an entity that is subject to European Union sanctions against Syria,” Picardo said. “With my consent, our port and law enforcement agencies sought the assistance of the Royal Marines in carrying out this operation.”

A British Foreign Office spokesman welcomed what he called a “firm action by the Gibraltarian authorities, acting to enforce the EU Syria Sanctions regime,” which has been in place against the Arab country since 2011.

UK media claimed Refinitiv Eikon mapping indicates the ship had loaded “Iranian oil” on April 17 and sailed a longer route around the southern tip of Africa instead of via Egypt’s Suez Canal.

Syrian and Iranian officials have not yet commented on the report.

Spain: Tanker detained by on U.S. request to Britain

Later in the day, acting Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said Gibraltar detained the supertanker Grace 1 after a request by the United States to Britain.

Borrell was quoted by Reuters as saying that Spain was looking into the seizure of the ship and how it may affect Spanish sovereignty as it appears to have happened in Spanish waters.

Spain does not recognize the waters around Gibraltar as British.

Britain’s Foreign Office did not respond to a request for comment.

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Koch and Soros Team Up For World Peace! WTF?

Corbett • 07/04/2019

In case you haven’t heard, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation have teamed up to help launch a new Washington think tank. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft will be “an action-oriented think tank that will lay the foundation for a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint.” So what gives? What’s the real agenda here? And what does this mean for those who hold a principled anti-war stance. Join James as he explores these issues on The Corbett Report today.

SHOW NOTES
In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy

Kinzer on The White Helmets

Previous Corbett Report coverage on Soros

The Quincy Institute homepage

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Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube

July 4, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Video | | Leave a comment

A race against time

Tilman Ruff’s life mission is to help rid the world of nuclear weapons
By Robert Fedele | Australian Nursing and Midwifery Journal | January 23, 2019

In 2007, Associate Professor Tilman Ruff and a small group of antinuclear activists founded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in Melbourne. In 2017, the global nongovernmental organisation captured the first Nobel Peace Prize born in Australia after years drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and driving a historic UN prohibition treaty. In June 2019, Ruff, and fellow ICAN co-founder, Dimity Hawkins, were awarded Order of Australia Honours for their advocacy on nuclear disarmament.

Tilman Ruff’s life’s mission to help end nuclear weapons traces back to growing up in Melbourne in the 1980s living with the genuine fear that nuclear war could strike at any moment.

His family background passed on a profound awareness of the impacts of war.

“My family were German Christians living in communities in Palestine,” Professor Ruff explains. “My great grandparents married there. They were in turn displaced, imprisoned, and quite a few of them were killed in both World Wars and then brought to Australia as prisoners and locked up until 1947.

“So the indiscriminate trauma, loss, madness and horror of war and its terrible legacy across generations was something I heard from my grandmothers and my old people all the time.”

As an adolescent, several empowering experiences shaped Professor Ruff’s activism, including joining the movement to end Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and setting up the world’s first Amnesty International high school group in 1970 to support the release of a young man imprisoned for writing a political slogan on a wall.

They made the then 15-year-old Ruff truly believe he could make a difference.

A Public Health and Infectious Diseases Physician, Professor Ruff’s diverse career has included establishing the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne, where he currently teaches on public health dimensions and nuclear technology, and a longstanding position as the International Medical Advisor for Australian Red Cross.

Looking back to his early days as a medical student, he reveals the presence of nuclear weapons struck him as “the most urgent global health threat and most demanding of urgent health professional attention.

“Many of us had this daily visceral fear that nuclear war could happen at any time. It was a palpable reality in your life.”

Professor Ruff suggests the birth of his daughter in 1982 added an emotional dimension that spurred him further to want to make the world a safer place for generations to come.

Soon he joined the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for contributing to the end of the Cold War, where he became inspired by how effective and influential evidence-based advocacy imparted by health professionals could be.

Professor Ruff maintains overwhelming evidence shows nuclear war would cause catastrophic consequences and make it impossible to provide any effective health or humanitarian response.

The evidence is epitomised by the World Health Organization (WHO), which commissioned an expert group in 1983 to examine the issue and labelled nuclear war the greatest immediate threat to human health and welfare, with no health service in the world capable of responding to the devastation even a single nuclear weapon could inflict on a city.

“Nuclear weapons are different from any other weapons in two ways,” Professor Ruff says.

“One is the simple scale of the destruction. There have been single nuclear weapons built and tested that contained four times the explosive power of all explosives that have been used in all wars throughout human history.

“Of course, they’re qualitatively different too in producing radiation that transcends borders, that transcends its effects across generations, effects that can’t be undone, increasing the risk of cancer and genetic damage and chronic disease long-term for the lifetime of those exposed.”

Professor Ruff says recent scientific evidence points to nuclear weapons triggering climate disruption and a nuclear winter. Specifically, less than 1% of the world’s nuclear weapons targeted on cities would loft so much soot and smoke into the atmosphere that it would blanket the globe in darkness and cool the climate, decimating agriculture for decades and putting billions at risk of starvation across all corners of the globe.

“It doesn’t matter where they get used. It doesn’t matter whether you’re targeted by them or not. The idea that these gargantuan instruments of destruction could provide security for anybody is completely evidence free.”

The evolution of ICAN in Melbourne in 2007 was sparked by intense frustration and despair among members of IPPNW, and its Australian affiliate the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW), that nuclear disarmament had fallen off the radar.

Importantly, Professor Ruff and his cofounders were encouraged by the success of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and felt it could be replicated for nuclear weapons.

The plan was not to recreate a new organisation but instead form a coalition of existing organisations fixed on developing a treaty to ban nuclear weapons on account of their shattering humanitarian consequences.

“It’s got to be global, it’s got to engage young people, and balance horror, humour, hope and humanity,” Professor Ruff recalls of the group’s philosophy.

Fittingly, years of raising awareness about the dangers of nuclear weapons reached a pivotal point in July 2017 when the ICAN-led treaty to ban nuclear weapons was adopted by 122 countries at the United Nations in New York.

The treaty prohibits the use of nuclear weapons, their development, testing, stockpiling, production and threat of use, underlining that any use of these weapons contravenes the rules of international humanitarian law.

Unsurprisingly, the world’s nuclear-armed states – Russia, France, US, India, North Korea, UK, Pakistan, China and Israel – boycotted the treaty, as did many of their close allies like Australia. “They’re not only not disarming they’re actually investing massively in adding new capacities and modernising those weapons,” Professor Ruff says.

As the treaty negotiations unfolded at the UN General Assembly in New York, Professor Ruff says stories told in person by victims and survivors of nuclear bombings in Japan, together with survivors of nuclear testing around the world including Indigenous test survivors from Australia, exposed the reality of nuclear weapons like nothing else.

The room burst into joy when the treaty was adopted.

“It was a very emotional moment,” Professor Ruff recalls. “These are normally very formal and dry proceedings. When the vote happened, 122 to 1, the room just erupted with hugs, tears of joy. It was one of the most extraordinary moments you could ever witness.”

To date, 70 states have signed the treaty and 23 have ratified it.

It will enter into force once 50 states have signed and ratified it.

“It’s not the final perfect all-in-one solution that’s going to magically get rid of nuclear weapons overnight,” Professor Ruff concedes.

“But it’s the best thing that the rest of the world that doesn’t own the weapons could do.”

Professor Ruff is adamant the treaty marks a major step forward of historic significance, and through growing international support and an increased focus on stigmatisation, can finally help rid the world of nuclear weapons.

If anything, the fierce and bitter opposition expressed by the nuclear-armed states in the wake of the treaty has further reassured him.

“They wouldn’t do that if this didn’t matter. If this didn’t put them on notice and on the defensive.”

Professor Ruff praised the involvement of key health professional federations from around the world, such as the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and World Medical Association (WMA), in helping to reinforce how nuclear weapons pose a planetary health threat of the highest magnitude.

In this vein, he believes real change can only occur by influencing government policy and all health professionals, including nurses and midwives, should champion the power of health evidence.

“Our responsibility as health professionals is not just to alleviate suffering and try and cure diseases but to prevent illness, keep people and our communities healthy and be advocates.”

Several months after the treaty, ICAN was awarded the first Australian-born Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Norway for its efforts.

“It was hugely important, humbling and just wonderful for a couple of reasons, apart from just the fact this has been blood, sweat and tears for me, endless nights and weekends, 365 days a year for more than a decade and for 20 years before that,” Professor Ruff reflects.

“It provides really important attention to the urgency of the issue and the need to make progress. It provides historic recognition for the importance of the treaty and gives enormous encouragement to civil society and governments.”

Disappointingly, Professor Ruff says the glaring lack of support and recognition from Australia’s leaders, both for the treaty and Nobel Peace Prize, remains difficult to comprehend.

“Basically, our policy is that we might need the US to use nuclear weapons on our behalf and we actually provide, through facilities and personnel assistance, for the possible use of nuclear weapons. That’s a completely immoral position. We’re part of the problem, not the solution.”

Regardless, Professor Ruff says the Nobel Peace Prize has opened doors and allowed ICAN to spread its message further.

The immediate task rests in getting as many states to sign and ratify the treaty as possible to strengthen its legal and political force. Pressure will also be ramped up on financial institutions, such as several of the big banks, invested in companies that make nuclear weapons.

In Australia, the strategy will likely focus on getting the next Labor Party government to join the treaty, given its current policy platform from 2018 which commits Labor in government to sign and ratify the Ban Treaty.

Professor Ruff says its imperative civil society organisations, including unions, band together to push for elimination.

While decades have passed since he was a youth growing up in Melbourne with the threat of nuclear war hovering Professor Ruff remains visibly determined to close the final chapter.

“Objectively, the danger of nuclear war is growing,” he declares.

“There’s no question that if these weapons are retained they will one day be used and we absolutely have to get the job done before that happens.”

THE FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  • Nuclear weapons release vast amounts of energy in the form of blast, heat and radiation, with no adequate humanitarian response possible
  • A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people and the use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate and cause widespread famine
  • Nuclear weapons have been used twice in warfare – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing more than 210,000 innocent civilians
  • Nine countries possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons, with the US and Russia keeping about 1,800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert, ready for launching within minutes.

Learn more about the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

July 3, 2019 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

US eyes Sri Lanka as its military logistics hub

Sri Lankan presidential aspirant Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the radical Buddhist monk Gnanasara Thera of Bodu Bala Sena. File photo.
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | July 3, 2019

The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on 21st April in which 259 people were killed and over 500 injured were initially attributed to the Islamic State (IS). But no hard evidence is available to substantiate such a reading and it remains an open question as to the perpetrators.

The Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena may have somewhat de-mystified the topic this week. On July 1, Sirisena charged at a public function that drug traffickers are behind the Easter Sunday bomb attacks. The following day he ordered the arrest of former Defense Secretary Hemasiri Fernando and the Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara for their failure to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks despite prior knowledge of the attacks.

What lends enchantment to the view is that the United States had brilliantly succeeded in deploying to Sri Lanka the personnel of the Indo-Pacific Command within a couple of days of the Easter Sunday attacks on the pretext of investigating and assisting in Colombo’s upcoming fight against the IS. Historically, Sri Lanka is chary of allowing foreign military presence on its soil, but in this case Washington pressed home the deployment, since the ruling elite in Colombo was on the back foot, incoherent and in disarray in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

In political terms, what Sirisena may have done this week is to reverse the ‘internationalisation’ of Sri Lanka’s terrorism problem. Indeed, for tackling a local drug mafia, Sri Lanka doesn’t need the expertise of the US’ Indo-Pacific Command.

This is just as well because in the downstream of the Easter Sunday attacks in April, Washington also began pushing hard for the signing of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Sri Lanka, which Pentagon has traditionally demanded as the pre-requisite of establishment of military bases in foreign countries. (The SOFA establishes the rights and privileges of American personnel present in a host country in support of a larger security arrangement.)

Unsurprisingly, the Sri Lankan opinion militated against the SOFA project and suspected its real intentions. A huge uproar followed in the Sri Lankan media. Without doubt, the SOFA became yet another template of the power struggle between the staunchly nationalistic Sirisena and the famously ‘pro-western’ prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The net result is that the project which the US hoped to conclude in absolute secrecy, got derailed once the draft SOFA document under negotiation got somehow leaked to a Colombo newspaper. Interestingly, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was scheduled to travel to Colombo following his recent visit to New Delhi was compelled to cancel the visit once it became apparent that the SOFA project has become a hot potato.

Meanwhile, the Empire strikes back. A case has been filed in the US District Court in central California by an American law firm claiming damages on behalf of alleged victims of human rights abuse during the war against separatist LTTE ten years ago. The plaintiffs have targeted Gotabaya Rajapaksa, then wartime defense chief and the younger brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, as well as several government agencies, including military intelligence, the Criminal Investigation Department, the Terrorism Investigation Division, and the Special Intelligence Service, including some serving officials.

Of course, this is a blatant American attempt to put into jeopardy Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s plan to run for president in the upcoming Sri Lankan election in December. Gotabaya was a US citizen at the time of the war against the LTTE. He has dual citizenship and his request renouncing American citizenship is pending with Washington. Now, the catch is, the lawsuits in California could delay his bid to renounce his US citizenship, in which case he would not qualify to run for president under Sri Lankan electoral laws. Washington has tripped Gotabaya.

The US is making sure that the Rajapaksa family will not regain the calculus of power in Colombo following the December poll. Equally, the trial in California can expose former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as well — and even entangle Sirisena who had a direct role as acting defence minister in the final stages of the war. Clearly, Washington is interfering in the December election in Sri Lanka in a calibrated manner with a view to strengthen the prospects of a pro-American candidate such as Wickremesinghe or the Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera who can be trusted to put the signature on the SOFA.

The US is determined to push ahead with the signing of the SOFA leading to the establishment of long-term American military presence in Sri Lanka. In August 2018, USS Anchorage, a Seventh Fleet vessel, and a unit of Marines visited the port of Trincomalee. In December 2018, the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis visited Trincomalee as part of the Pentagon’s plans to establish a logistic hub there for the US Navy. A Mass Communication Specialist on board USS John C. Stennis in a dispatch to the US Navy official web portal wrote:

“The primary purpose of the operation is to provide mission-critical supplies and services to U.S. Navy ships transiting through and operating in the Indian Ocean. The secondary purpose is to demonstrate the U.S. Navy’s ability to establish a temporary logistic hum ashore where no enduring U.S. Navy logistic footprint exists.”

The US disclaims any intention to set up military bases in Sri Lanka. This is factually true — except that it is sophistry. The US plan to use Sri Lanka as a ‘military logistics hub’ involves supportive measures that facilitate any American military operation in the Asia-Pacific region. Actually, this is well beyond the solitary use of a particular harbour such as Trincomalee as a military base. The point is, the entire island nation is being transformed into a ‘military logistics hub’.

Never before has there been such blatant US interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. Washington tasted blood in the successful regime change project in January 2015 and it never looked back. The interference is so very extensive today that it is destabilising the Sri Lankan situation which is already highly polarised.

This is happening only due to India’s passivity bordering on acquiescence. The containment strategy against China in the Indian Ocean has become a common endeavour for Washington and Delhi. Is it in India’s long term interests that Sri Lanka is being destabilised, even if in the short term the Chinese Navy might be put to some difficulties in the Indian Ocean?

India’s medium and long term interests lie in regional stability. Its influence as a regional power is linked to regional stability. India cannot overlook that China has legitimate interests in our region. The US is a faraway power and is also in decline. It doesn’t make sense for India to bandwagon with the US in South Asia. A far more realistic approach will be to work with China and expand and deepen the common interests in regional security and stability.

July 3, 2019 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

North Korea Nuclear Freeze? Finally, a Realistic Proposal

By Thomas L. Knapp – Garrison Center – July 2, 2019

As President Donald Trump met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un for the third time at the end of June — becoming the first sitting US president to visit North Korea — the New York Times ran a piece suggesting the appearance of a new option on the proverbial table: A negotiated “nuclear freeze” rather than just another cycle of fruitless US demands for  “de-nuclearization.”

The response from National Security Advisor John Bolton came swiftly via Twitter: “Neither the NSC staff nor I have discussed or heard of any desire to ‘settle for a nuclear freeze by NK.’ This was a reprehensible attempt by someone to box in the President.”

If Bolton and the National Security Council HAVEN’T discussed the possibility,  they haven’t been doing their jobs. And if anyone’s being “boxed in” by having the idea called to public attention, it’s not Trump, it’s Bolton, who prefers saber-rattling theatrics for his hawkish friends on Capitol Hill to actually safeguarding the US.

There are really only two viable paths forward for improved US-North Korea relations.

One is for the US to start minding its own business: Withdraw US troops from and end all defense guarantees to South Korea, unilaterally lift sanctions on the North, and let the region work out its own problems without further American interference. Highly unlikely, at least for the moment.

The other is a “nuclear freeze” under which Kim keeps his existing nuclear arsenal but refrains from building more weapons, in return for sanctions relief and the US getting, and staying, out of the way of improving relations and closer ties between Pyongyang and Seoul.

That second option is eminently doable. It would cost the US  nothing of real value. In fact, rightly handled, it would immediately reduce US “defense” outlays — a peace dividend, if we can keep the Military-Industrial Complex’s grubby hands off it.

Any US policy toward North Korea must account for two facts:

First, nuclear powers don’t give up their nukes. Only one, South Africa, has ever done so, and that regime didn’t face external foes on any large scale. North Korea has effectively been at war since the late 19th century, first against Japanese occupation, then against the South and the US from 1950 until now. Expecting Kim Jong-un to give up the ultimate deterrent to future invasions — by the US, by the South, by Japan, or even by current allies like China and Russia — is simply unrealistic. It’s not negotiable. The US knows it’s not negotiable. The only reason to even make the demand is to intentionally keep relations hostile.

Secondly, in the case of the United States, Kim has historical evidence as to what giving up his nukes might portend. He saw Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi deposed and killed after they gave up their (never successful) nuclear weapons efforts. Kim would presumably prefer to remain alive and in charge.

A nuclear freeze agreement would not, in and of itself, produce peace. But it would be a giant step in that direction.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).

July 2, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Who Won the Debate?

Tulsi Gabbard let the genie out of the bottle

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 2, 2019

Last Wednesday’s debate among half of the announced Democratic Party candidates to become their party’s nominee for president in 2020 was notable for its lack of drama. Many of those called on to speak had little to say apart from the usual liberal bromides about health care, jobs, education and how the United States is a country of immigrants. On the following day the mainstream media anointed Elizabeth Warren as the winner based on the coherency of her message even though she said little that differed from what was being presented by most of the others on the stage. She just said it better, more articulately.

The New York Times’ coverage was typical, praising Warren for her grasp of the issues and her ability to present the same clearly and concisely, and citing a comment “They could teach classes in how warren talks about a problem and weaves in answers into a story. She’s not just wonk and stats.” It then went on to lump most of the other candidates together, describing their performances as “ha[ving] one or two strong answers, but none of them had the electric, campaign-launching moment they were hoping for.”

Inevitably, however, there was some disagreement on who had actually done best based on viewer reactions as well as the perceptions of some of the media that might not exactly be described as mainstream. The Drudge Report website had its poll running while the debate was going on and it registered overwhelmingly in favor of Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Likewise, the Washington Examiner, a right-wing paper, opined that Gabbard had won by a knockout based on its own polling. Google’s search engine reportedly saw a surge in searches linked to Tulsi Gabbard both during and after the debate.

On the following day traditional conservative Pat Buchanan produced an article entitled “Memo for Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi,” similar to a comment made by Republican consultant Frank Luntz “She’s a long-shot to win the presidency, but Tulsi Gabbard is sounding like a prime candidate for Secretary of Defense.”

Tulsi, campaigning on her anti-war credentials, was indeed not like the other candidates, confronting directly the issue of war and peace which the other potential candidates studiously avoided. In response to a comment by neoliberal Congressman Tim Ryan who said that the U.S. has to remain “engaged” in places like Afghanistan, she referred to two American soldiers who had been killed that very day, saying “Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? Well, we just have to be engaged? As a soldier, I will tell you that answer is unacceptable.”

At another point she expanded on her thinking about America’s wars, saying “Let’s deal with the situation where we are, where this president and his chickenhawk cabinet have led us to the brink of war with Iran. I served in the war in Iraq at the height of the war in 2005, a war that took over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniforms’ lives. The American people need to understand that this war with Iran would be far more devastating, far more costly than anything that we ever saw in Iraq. It would take many more lives. It would exacerbate the refugee crisis. And it wouldn’t be just contained within Iran. This would turn into a regional war. This is why it’s so important that every one of us, every single American, stand up and say no war with Iran.”

Tulsi also declared war on the Washington Establishment, saying that “For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.”

Blunt words, but it was a statement that few Americans whose livelihoods are not linked to “defense” or to the shamelessly corrupt U.S. Congress and media could disagree with, as it is clear that Washington is at the bottom of a deep hole and persists in digging. So why was there such a difference between what ordinary Americans and the Establishment punditry were seeing on their television screens? The difference was not so much in perception as in the desire to see a certain outcome. Anti-war takes away a lot of people’s rice bowls, be they directly employed on “defense” or part of the vast army of lobbyists and think tank parasites that keep the money flowing out of the taxpayers’ pockets and into the pockets of Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin like a perpetual motion machine.

In the collective judgment of America’s Establishment, Tulsi Gabbard and anyone like her must be destroyed. She would not be the first victim of the political process shutting out undesirable opinions. One can go all the way back to Eugene McCarthy and his opposition to the Vietnam War back in 1968. McCarthy was right and Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the Democratic Party were wrong. More recently, Congressman Ron Paul tried twice to bring some sanity to the Republican Party. He too was marginalized deliberately by the GOP party apparatus working hand-in-hand with the media, to include the final insult of his being denied any opportunity to speak or have his delegates recognized at the 2012 nominating convention.

And the beat goes on. In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, fixed the nomination process so that Bernie Sanders, a peace candidate, would be marginalized and super hawk Hillary Clinton would be selected. Fortunately, the odor emanating from anything having to do with the Clintons kept her from being elected or we would already be at war with Russia and possibly also with China.

Tulsi Gabbard has let the genie of “end the forever wars” out of the bottle and it will be difficult to force it back in. She just might shake up the Democratic Party’s priorities, leading to more questions about just what has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past twenty years. To qualify for the second round of debates she has to gain a couple of points in her approval rating or bring in more donations, either of which is definitely possible based on her performance. It is to be hoped that that will occur and that there will be no Debbie Wasserman Schultz hiding somewhere in the process who will finagle the polling results.

Yes, to some critics, Tulsi Gabbard is not a perfect candidate. On most domestic issues she appears to be a typical liberal Democrat and is also conventional in terms of her accommodation with Jewish power, but she also breaks with the Democratic Party establishment with her pledge to pardon Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. She also has more of a moral compass than Elizabeth Warren, who cleverly evades the whole issue of Middle East policy, or a Joe Biden who would kiss Benjamin Netanyahu’s ass without any hesitation at all. Gabbard has openly criticized Netanyahu and she has also condemned Israel’s killing of “unarmed civilians” in Gaza. As a Hindu, her view of Muslims is somewhat complicated based on the historical interaction of the two groups, but she has moderated her views recently.

To be sure, Americans have heard much of the same before, much of it from out of the mouth of a gentleman named Donald Trump, but Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years. It is essential that we Americans who are concerned about the future of our country should listen to what she has to say very carefully and to respond accordingly.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

July 2, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli attack on Syria is a message for Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump at Osaka on June 29, 2019
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | July 1, 2019

Although G20 summit in Osaka achieved nothing and there were no breakthrough decisions, a pleasant feeling had appeared momentarily that in the disjointed world situation, all the participants in the event at least reconfirmed their commitment to continue efforts to improve the global trade system, including work to reform the WTO. The G20 summits are generally convergent occasions and Osaka was no different.

The ensuing meditative reveries lingered on through Sunday like an opium-induced blurring of Romantic imagination out of Thomas De Quincey. However, by early Monday it dawned that life is real as the news broke that just past midnight Israeli jets stealthily approaching Syria via Lebanese air space had rained missiles at multiple targets in the suburbs of Damascus and Homs.

According to latest reports, sixteen people, including a baby, were killed and 21 others suffered injuries, including a month-old baby girl, who suffered burns and facial wounds. At one stroke, Israel demolished the chimera of global governance that the G20 symbolises. The missile attack constituted the violation of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of two UN member states — Lebanon and Syria. Israel committed a war crime by killing innocent unarmed civilians.

How is global governance possible without a rule-based order? The relentless promotion of trade war, protectionism and militarism that we are witnessing brings to mind the famous coinage of Thomas Hobbes — Bellum omnium contra omnes ( “the war of all against all”).

Yet, the much-awaited meeting between Trump and Putin at Osaka on Friday, which closely followed the ‘trilateral’ meeting of the national security advisors of the US, Russia and Israel in Jerusalem on Tuesday, was widely expected to produce some convergences regarding Syria and the situation around Iran.

Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, US National Security Adviser John Bolton, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev at a trilateral summit at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem on June 25, 2019.

Israel had hyped up the meeting of the NSAs and during a joint press conference with the visiting secretary of the Russian national security council Nikolai Patrushev, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had boasted that “security cooperation between Russia and Israel has already contributed much to the security and stability of our region and has made a fundamental difference in the situation in the region.”

But it was only typical Israeli bluster. In fact, today’s missile attack is an act of ‘coercive diplomacy’ by Israel. The Israelis are showing that they have neutralised the Russian S-300 missile system which is supposedly guarding Syrian air space. This is Israel’s angry riposte to Russia’s refusal to break up with Iran in Syria.

On the Israeli missile attack on Monday, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, “We are establishing the facts now. We do not know what happened there. We want to gain insight into it, but the necessity to respect and execute the UN Security Council’s operating resolutions, that no one cancelled, is our principle which we will proceed from when assessing actions of any players in the region.”

Suffice to say that the Russian-Iranian axis in the Syrian conflict has far from outlived its utility — although the two countries would each have its specific interests in the Syrian situation. Thus, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disclosed today in Moscow that another trilateral summit on Syria between Russia, Iran and Turkey is due to take place in the near future.

To quote Peskov, “They raised the issue at the meeting of President Putin and Erdogan (at Osaka). They did talk about such a summit. It is understood that it will be held soon.” There are also media reports that Turkey will host the trilateral summit in July. The previous such summits took place in Sochi (November 2017), Ankara (April 2018), Tehran (September 2018) and Sochi (February 2019). Evidently, the raison d’être of the Russia-Turkey-Iran format remains even in the conditions of the current US-Iran standoff.

No doubt, the situation in Idlib province in northeast Syria is fraught with profound contradictions, which need to be reconciled urgently. This is one thing. (Read an insightful report by Xinhua news agency, here, on the strong undercurrents in the Idlib situation.)

However, the big picture out of all this is that although Putin had a “good meeting” with Trump in Osaka on Friday and they held “very business-like and pragmatic” discussions that “covered practically the entire range of issues of mutual interest” (in Putin’s words), all he would say was that the discussions on regional conflicts were “overall… useful consultations.”

Putin sounded frustrated that Washington has shown no intentions even to expand economic ties with Russia or tap the vast potential of bilateral trade. He noted, “That is why I have no idea if they (Trump administration) will do anything or not. At any rate, one thing is sure — we are not going to ask for anything. No means no. And if there is interest, we will respond in kind and do everything we can to turn the situation around.”

Of course, the two presidents have instructed their respective foreign ministers to launch consultations on a New START treaty. But even here, Putin noted, “I do not know if those consultations will lead to the extension of the New START treaty, it is too early to speak about it.”

The paradox lies herein. For Trump, the prime consideration in the period ahead will be that there are no serious hiccups on the foreign policy front that might upset his apple cart during his campaign for the November 2020 election. The Victory Day Parade in Moscow’s Red Square next May offers a great photo-op for him, which he wouldn’t want to miss. But basically, Trump went to Osaka wearing velvet gloves with a focused mind on creating foreign-policy underpinnings for his bid for a second term as president.

Israel certainly factored in the inconclusive meeting between Trump and Putin while launching the missile strike on Damascus. It is a stark reminder that Israel will continue to fuel the tensions over Iran’s presence in Syria and draw Trump into it.

July 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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