The United States has a long history of betraying “allies” and going back on agreements. A few examples include:
–The decision recognise Philippine independence from Spain only to then replace Spain as the imperial overlord of The Philippines.
–The covert Wall Street funding of the Bolshevik Revolution in the USSR only to then wage a Cold War on the Soviet Union.
–The staunch opposition of the US Congress to going to war with Germany to being an enthusiastic participant in the Second World War.
–The strong US alliance with Saddam’s Iraq followed by two major wars against Saddam’s Iraq.
–The support of the Afghan Mujaheddin and Taliban followed by the Taliban’s overthrow by the US in 2001.
–Fighting Serbian/Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević in the early/mid 1990s only to embrace him during the 1995 Dayton Accords and then going to war against him and ousting him in 1999.
–Opposing the the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s only to covertly support them against Vietnam and the USSR throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
These are just the most strident examples of US betrayal and hypocrisy on a very long list.
Because of this, it goes without saying that the US has set a clear precedent for going back on deals seemingly entered into in a spirit good faith on both sides. Iran just experienced Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) in spite of the UN finding that Iran is fully compliant with the original agreement and in spite of the protestations of Washington’s traditional European allies.
This has led many in Iran to voice a resounding scepticism regarding the Korean peace process insofar as many Iranian commentators do not feel that Kim Jong-un should place an ounce of trust in Donald Trump or any other American leader. While the US may betray the DPRK, using the JCPOA as a specific precedent is ultimately misleading and unhelpful for the following reasons.
The DPRK is geographically fortunate and Iran is geographically cursed
The north east Asian region that is home to the DPRK is among the most stable in the world. South Korea, China, Russia and Japan are nations whose societies and governments are not only wealthy and strong but incredibly stable to the point of being largely predictable. None of these countries are prone to aggressive war and while China and Russia are too powerful for the US to actively destabilise without causing a world war to end all world wars, Japan and South Korea are close US allies.
The fact that the DPRK has not been invaded by the United States since the 1950s is as much because of America’s fear of starting a new war beside the Chinese and Russian nuclear armed superpowers as it is by the DPRK’s own nuclear deterrent which in any case will likely soon be a thing of the past. Likewise, South Korea and Japan have sought to avert such a war as they realise that they would be the penultimate victims of such a conflict, along with North Koreans themselves.
By contrast, the US has invaded and continues to occupy Afghanistan and parts of Iraq with total impunity. Iran’s neighbors to the east and west are therefore filled with US bases, as are the anti-Iranian Arab monarchies a short boat ride across the Persian Gulf. Likewise, with Iraq being the only thing standing between Iran and Syria’s border, it is fair to say that Iran is surrounded by hostile US assets throughout its region.
So while Iran’s region is one that the US has a long history and present stance of treating recklessly, in recent decades, the US has tended to tread more lightly in the DPRK’s region. Because of this, there is less of a danger of the US using the Korean peace process as a delaying tactic before inevitably reverting to a policy of pressure as was the case with the JCPOA from the beginning – however cynical this might sound.
It’s the “Israel” Lobby, Stupid!
While the DPRK has always been a staunch supporter of Palestine and indeed goes much further in terms of rhetorical support for Palestine than most Arab states in 2018, North Korea is ultimately very far removed from the Palestine conflict both in terms of geography and in terms of its ability to influence the situation militarily, financially or diplomatically. As a state whose population is 0% Muslim and 0% Jewish, there is also no strong emotional attachment to the issue in the way that there is in Iran. For the DPRK, the issue is one of many anti-imperialist causes rather than one of opposing confessional imperialism and standing up for the rights of Muslims to worship in some of their holiest sites that are currently under occupation.
By contrast, Iran is not only nearer to Palestine than is the DPRK in terms of geography but Iran has armed allies in Syria and Lebanon, two states which both border occupied Palestine. Because of this, the always powerful and increasingly right-wing “Israel” lobby in the United States leverages its influence against Washington to force the development and implementation of American foreign policy that tends to be a carbon copy of Tel Aviv’s official policies.
Because Donald Trump had close links to many Zionists even before becoming President, it shouldn’t be a surprise that if all US Presidents tend to follow the lead of the “Israel” lobby, that Trump should take things that much further and follow the most extreme elements of the lobby. As Tel Aviv is pursuing stridently anti-Iranian policies under the Netanyahu regime, so too is the United States.
While there is a right-wing staunchly anti-communist Korean lobby in the US, its power is nothing when compared to the “Israel” lobby. Therefore, peace in Korea could be a vote winner because of the clear Cold War style optics of detente, while it could in no way be described as a vote loser the way that anti-Zionist policies could see the “Israel” lobby waging open war against an American political candidate.
The Obama factor
Finally, there is the most petty but nevertheless very real factor of Donald Trump tending to oppose anything and everything championed by Barack Obama and his political allies. While Donald Trump’s peace process with the DPRK has all the trappings of the made for T.V. Presidency that is the Trump administration, Obama’s JCPOA was always a source of contention for Trump. In fact, just about everything from health reform to foreign policy is a source of contention for Trump if the policies in question have anything to do with Barack Obama. Thus, it is not difficult to see why the JCPOA was an extremely easy target for Trump irrespective of any other global developments.
Conclusion
Iran has suffered the perfect storm of living in a neighbourhood that the US treats with less respect even than its Latin American backyard, combined with being on the receiving end of the well oiled and incredibly well funded “Israel” lobby’s wrath. When one then realises that Donald Trump loves most things “Israeli” and hates just about all things Obama, it is frankly surprising that Trump didn’t withdraw from the JCPOA sooner than he did.
By contrast, even if the US rejected the peace process, the US cannot realistically do much more to the DPRK apart from sanctions, sanctions and more sanctions. When one then realises that sanctions clearly cannot go much further than they already have, one realises that a hostile US policy towards the DPRK would amount to little more than a protracted war of words that would not have changed the status quo. Furthermore, China and Russia would simply not tolerate a major war on their border and the South Korean and Japanese people feel exactly the same way, as would the 32,000 American servicemen still stationed in South Korea.
When you combine these harsh realities with the fact that making peace with the DPRK makes Trump look Presidential and strong at home while going against Tel Aviv is something of a political death sentence for any US leader, it is clear that while the JCPOA was doomed from the beginning, the Korean peace process will likely succeed in some form, even if it takes a form less desirable than the optimistic proposals discussed earlier today.
I recently was asked to speak at an online conference entitled Deep Truth: Encountering Deep State Lies. My panel addressed Understanding Zionism: Deconstructing the Power Paradigm and my own topic was How Jewish Power Sustains the Israel Narrative. Working on my presentation, I was forced to confront the evolution of my own views on both the corruption of government in the United States and the ability of powerful domestic lobbies to deliberately distort the perception of national interests to benefit foreign countries even when that activity does terrible damage to the U.S.
My personal journey began half a century ago. I became part of the U.S. national security state after being drafted for the Vietnam War when I graduated from college in 1968. I was at the time, vaguely pro-war, having bought into the media argument that international communism was mounting a major threat in southeast Asia. I also found the anti-war student movement distasteful because I was acquainted with many of its spokesmen and knew that they were chiefly motivated by a desire to avoid the draft, not due to any perception that the war itself was wrong or misguided. I knew a lot about the Punic Wars but precious little about former French Indochina and I suspect that those chanting “Ho-ho-Ho Chi Minh” might have known even less that I did.
Because I spoke some Russian, I wound up in an army intelligence collection unit in West Berlin for three years where I and my fifty or so comrades did absolutely nothing but drink and party. It was my introduction to how government really works when it was not working at all and it did provide me with GI Bill money to go to grad school. After my PhD came a relatively easy transition to CIA given the fact that my degree was so obscure that no one but the government would hire me.
The journey from an army unit that was asleep at the wheel to the CIA, which was in full downsizing crisis mode post-Vietnam, was educational. Whereas the army was too bloated and complacent even to fake it, the Agency was fully capable of creating crises and then acting like the defender of American interests as it worked to resolve the various situations that it had invented. The war against Eurocommunism, which I was engaged in, was hyped and billed as the next great threat against the American way of life after the Vietnam blunder, swallowing up resources pointlessly as neither France, nor Spain nor Italy ever came close to entering the Red orbit.
As I climbed up the CIA ladder I also noticed something else. There was the equivalent of a worldwide conspiracy to promote threats to keep big national security-based government well-funded and in place. When I was in Turkey I began to note considerable intelligence liaison reporting coming from the Israelis and others promoting their own agendas. The material was frequently fictional in nature, but the danger was that it was being mixed in with more credible reporting which gave it traction. U.S. government consumers of the reporting would inevitably absorb the dubious viewpoint being promoted that Arabs and Iranians were fundamentally untrustworthy and were in bed with the Soviets.
There was considerable negative reporting on Saddam Hussein also coming out of Israel and motivated by his support of the Palestinians. Some of this ultimately surfaced in the Pentagon’s Paul Wolfowitz-Doug Feith assessments of “intelligence that had been missed” which eventually became pretexts for the catastrophic Iraq War. I later learned that both Feith and Wolfowitz had a virtually revolving door of Israeli intelligence officials and diplomats running through their Pentagon offices in the lead-up to that war.
It did not take much to connect the dots and realize that Israel, far from being a friend and ally, was the principal catalyst for the many missteps that the United States has made in the Middle East. U.S. policy in the region was being deliberately shaped around Israeli concerns by American Jews ensconced in the Pentagon and White House who certainly knew exactly what they were doing. No one should blame the Israelis for acting in their own self-interest, but every loyal American should blame the Libbys, Feiths and Wolfowitzes for their willingness to place Israeli interests ahead of those of their own country.
After my departure from government in part over my disagreement with the Iraq War, this willingness to place the United States in peril to serve the interests of a foreign country began to bother me, and there is no country that manipulates the U.S. government better or more persistently than Israel. I gradually became involved with those who were pushing back against the Israel Lobby, though it was not generally referred to in those terms before Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer produced their seminal work The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in 2006.
It does not take a genius to figure out that the United States is deeply involved in a series of seemingly endless wars pitting it against predominantly Muslim nations even though Washington has no vital interests at stake in places like Syria, Libya and Iraq. Who is driving the process and benefiting? Israel is clearly the intended beneficiary of a coordinated effort mounted by more than 600 Jewish organizations in the U.S. that have at least as part of their programs the promotion and protection of Israel. Ironically, organizations that promote the interests of a foreign government are supposed to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) but not a single pro-Israel organization has ever done so nor even been seriously challenged on the issue, a tribute to their power in dealing with the federal government.
Those who are in the drivers’ seat of the Israel promotion process are what some would describe as the Israel Lobby but which I would prefer to call a subset of the Jewish Lobby, which in itself is supported by something I would designate Jewish Power, an aggregate of Jewish money, control over key aspects of the media and entertainment industries plus easy access to corrupted politicians desirous of positive press and campaign donations. This penetration and control of the public discourse has resulted in the creation of what I would refer to as the official “Israel narrative,” in which Israel, which claims perpetual victimhood, is reflexively referred to as “the only democracy in the Middle East” and “Washington’s closest ally and friend,” assertions that are completely false but which have been aggressively and successfully promoted to shape how Americans view the Israeli-Arab conflict. Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation are invariably described as “terrorists” both in the U.S. and Israel.
Jewish Power is a funny thing. If you read the Jewish media or the Israeli press, to include Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post, you will find frequent references to it, nearly always seen as completely laudable. Bottom feeder Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard recently boasted that “Jews should not apologize for being so rich, controlling the media or influencing public debate…they have earned it… never apologize for using your strength…”
For many Jews like Dershowitz, Jewish power is something to be proud of, but they also believe that it should never be noticed or examined by non-Jews. Gentile criticism of Jewish collective behavior is something that must continue to be forbidden, just as the expression “Israeli Lobby” was largely taboo before Walt and Mearsheimer. Israeli partisans regularly engage in the defamation of individuals, including myself, who do not conform to the taboos as anti-Semites or holocaust deniers, labels deliberately used as weapons to end discussion and silence critics whenever necessary.
So why do I think that we have to start talking about Jewish Power as opposed to the euphemism Israel Lobby? It is because the wars in the Middle East, which have done so much to damage the United States and were at least in part arranged to benefit Israel, have been largely driven by wealthy and powerful Jews. If America goes to war with Iran, as is increasingly likely, it will be all about Israel and it will be arranged by the political and financial services Washington-Wall Street axis, make no mistake.
To my mind, Israel is America’s number one foreign policy problem in that it is able and willing to start potentially catastrophic wars with countries that it has demonized but that do not threaten the U.S. And those doing the manipulating are bipartisan Jewish oligarchs with deep pockets that support the multitude of pro-Israel organizations, think tanks and media outlets that have done so much to corrupt America’s political process. Hollywood producer Haim Saban, a principal Democratic Party supporter, has said that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. Principal GOP funder casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who served in the U.S. Army in World War 2, has said that he regrets that service and would have preferred to be in the Israel Defense Forces. They as well as others, including fund manager Paul Singer and Home Depot’s Bernard Marcus, are Jews laboring on behalf of the self-proclaimed Jewish State while the neoconservatives, fiercely protective of Israel, are also nearly all Jewish. Asserting that the fact that they are Jews acting for a Jewish state should be irrelevant as they are also doing what is good for America, as is commonly done by their apologists, is logically inconsistent and borders on absurdity. As for the frequently cited Bible belt Christian-Zionists who support Israel, they are, to be sure, numerous, but they do not have the access to real power in the United States that Jews have.
Jewish Power is also what has in part driven the United States into a moral cesspit. Israeli snipers shoot dead scores of unarmed Gazan demonstrators and hardly anyone in Washington has anything to say about it. America’s Ambassador to Israel, an Orthodox Jewish lawyer named David Friedman who has multiple ties to Israel’s illegal settlements, uses his position to defend Israel, ignoring U.S. interests. Last week he held a press conference in which he told reporters to “shut their mouths” in their criticism of Israel’s slaughter of Gazans.
When a young Palestinian nurse is deliberately targeted and killed while treating a wounded man, it hardly appears in the U.S. media. Arab teenagers are shot in the back while running away from Israeli gunmen while a young woman is sentenced to prison for slapping an Israel soldier who had just shot her cousin and was invading her home. Heavily armed Israeli settlers run amok on the West Bank, beating and killing Arabs and destroying their livelihoods. That is what Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all about and that is precisely the kind of a nation that America should not want to become, but unfortunately the role of Washington as Israel’s obedient poodle has our once great country moving in the wrong direction. This has all been brought about by Jewish Power and it is time to wake up to that fact and address it squarely.
It is clear by now that US President Donald Trump’s remark on Thursday as he was setting out for the Group of 7 (G7) summit in Canada on the readmission of Russia into the grouping was not an off-the-cuff remark.
On Saturday, the American leader revisited the idea, insisting that it would do a world of good for G7 countries and the world – and for the United States, in particular. (The G7 is comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States.)
That Trump launched the trial balloon after a discussion at the G7 gathering is important. Trump suggested certain progress in that direction had been made behind closed doors:
“It has been discussed. We didn’t do votes or anything, but it has been discussed. Some people like the idea of bringing Russia back in. This used to be the G8, not the G7…. I think it would be an asset to have Russia back in. I think it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for Russia. I think it would be good for the United States. I think it would be good for all of the countries of the current G7.”
Trump also said: I think the G8 would be better. I think having Russia back in would be a positive thing. We’re looking for peace in the world. We’re not looking to play games…. I would rather see Russia in the G8 as opposed to the G7.
The American leader also implied that Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 prompting its expulsion from the G7 and imposition of economic sanctions against Moscow, doesn’t have to be an obstacle. He pinned much of the blame for the Crimea standoff on his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump said:
“Well, you know, you have to ask [US] President [Barack] Obama, because he was the one that let Crimea get away. That was during his administration. And he was the one that let Russia go and spend a lot of money on Crimea, because they’ve spent a lot of money on rebuilding it. I guess they have their submarine port there and such. But Crimea was let go during the Obama administration.
“And, you know, Obama can say all he wants, but he allowed Russia to take Crimea. I may have had a much different attitude. So you’d really have to ask that question to President Obama — you know, why did he do that; why did he do that. But with that being said, it’s been done a long time… I would say that the G8 is a more meaningful group than the G7, absolutely.”
So what was Trump getting at? To be sure, the context is important. Trump used the G7 meeting to pile pressure on his major Western allies, threatening to cut off US’ trade ties with them unless they acceded to his demands on “fair and reciprocal” trade and a no-tariffs, no-subsidies global trade order.
His unilateral call for Russia’s reintegration into the G7 was a reminder that Trump has options. This is one thing. Second, Trump spoke following Austria’s confirmation that it has transmitted a proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin for an early summit with him. (Putin has since said that “the ball is in the US’ court.”)
Trump has opened a Pandora’s box with his pro-Russia call. And he couldn’t be unaware that the sanctions issue is key to Russia’s readmission into the G7.
In fact, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promptly retorted: “We have discussed Russia’s participation (in G7). In my view, there is a need for significant progress in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements [concerning a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine], so for now I don’t see any possibility of Russia’s participation.”
The G7 final communiqué also took a tough line on sanctions, warning to “take further restrictive measures in order to increase costs on Russia.” It also demanded that Moscow should “cease its destabilizing behavior to undermine democratic systems and its support of the Syrian regime.”
On balance, Trump is creating the raison d’etre of a summit meeting with Putin, which in normal times would have caused an uproar in the US. But why shouldn’t Trump alone have no high-level meeting with Russia because of sanctions?
America’s major Western allies, including Germany, France, Italy and Japan – show no such compunctions. By raising the bar to a new high threshold – Russia’s readmission into the G7 – Trump has won greater acceptability for a possible summit with Putin.
Unwittingly, perhaps, he’s also brought to the fore another big question: Are the sanctions against Russia relevant anymore now that it’s effectively “business as usual” between Russia and other Western powers?
On Thursday, the chiefs of the general staff of the US and Russia – General Joseph Dunford and General Valery Gerasimov – met in Helsinki to discuss US-Russian relations, Syria and international security issues.
The paradox here is that the Europeans expect the US to stand up to Russia, but have no qualms about doing business with Russia themselves. And while there is an apparent growing body of EU members that stand for lifting sanctions against Russia, no one wants to bell the cat apart from Trump.
Trump has repeatedly made the point that if Western allies want the US to lead on security matters, they must reciprocate by shoring up his vision of “America First.” At the final G7 press conference before leaving Canada for Singapore for his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump sounded confident that he is getting his way on trade issues.
Trump is thus building his case to be among the most underrated American presidents in modern history. In a momentous week, he has decisively pushed forward his agenda of “fair and reciprocal” trade, prepared the ground to re-engage Russia and is now headed for what appears to be a successful opening with North Korea.
Any one of these achievements, if capped, would make for a brilliant presidential legacy.
BIG PICTURE: The paperback edition of biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, was 233 pages long. The first three chapters described a problem.
The final two chapters were titled “What Needs to be Done” and “What Can You Do?” They were followed by an Appendix of examples of letters readers might send to influential individuals. In other words, 83 pages of that book (more than a third) was an unabashedly political discussion.
These pages reiterated that the future was bleak. Overpopulation threatened America, the American way of life, and the “very lives” of US citizens (pp. 135, 138, 172, 180, 182).
The “only hope for survival,” was “drastic worldwide measures” lest civilization itself go “down the drain.” The “time of famines” had arrived (pp. 134, 143, 145, 148, 157-9, 161, 165, 198).
50 years later, we know Ehrlich’s apocalyptic predictions were wildly off target. Half a billion people did not starve to death during the 1970s. Instead, via ingenuity and technology, humanity grew more food and got better at transporting it to wherever it was desperately needed.
Americans weren’t forced to “slaughter” their dogs and cats so that pet food protein could be fed to the “starving masses.” Luxury taxes weren’t placed on diapers, and a powerful new arm of the US government wasn’t created to “take whatever steps are necessary,” in order to bring that country’s birth rate in line with its death rate. In 1968, there were 200 million Americans. Today, there are 326 million (pp. 134, 137-8).
Ehrlich’s fanaticism was on stark display when he described overpopulation as a cancer:
We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival. (pp. 166-167)
In this regard, he declared that America should have pressured the Indian government to sterilize “all Indian males with three or more children”:
We should have volunteered logistic support in the form of helicopters, vehicles, and surgical instruments. We should have sent doctors to aid in the program…Coercion? Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause. (pp. 165-166)
TOP TAKEAWAY: Fifty years after The Population Bomb appeared, few people remember that it advocated dispatching US helicopters so that Indian peasants could be kidnapped & forcibly sterilized.
Speech of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on May 25, 2018, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 18th anniversary of the Liberation of Lebanon.
In Any Upcoming War, Hezbollah will Surely Defeat Israel
[…] Despite all the intimidation, all the threats, all the blockades, (despite the inscriptions on the) lists of terrorist organizations, the (campaigns of) defamation, all these efforts (to weaken Hezbollah and diminish its popularity in Lebanon) have been in vain. Therefore, we have a community, a people who, prior to 2000, were worthy of victory, and that is why God granted us victory (on May 25, 2000), and He gave us the victory of 2006, and we remain, by the grace of God, the strongest and the most glorious, because we are worthy of it.
Myself, personally, when I talk about the future … Of course, we always say that we do not rush to war, but we do not fear it. The (Israeli) enemy is always threatening, promising, erupting, (trying to) terrorize us, but when we talk about the possibility of a war (against Israel) – may God take this perspective away from this country and this region –, whether during internal meetings or other, I speak of our victory with certainty, because God, with whom we were and with whom we still are, stands by our side. He never left us nor abandoned us, because our people, our community, our Resistance, are there and are worthy to be granted victory by God, the Most High and the Exalted. This is the fundamental point of strength on which we base ourselves and rely. […]
Resistance in Lebanon and Palestine Not For Sale
(First, the US are exerting) pressure on our popular base to punish it (for its support for Hezbollah), psychological, moral, financial, economic pressures, meant to dislocate, reduce and weaken it.
Second, (there is pressure on) our friends and allies to scare them and induce them to distance themselves (from us), because of fears (of sanctions).
Third, and this is the fundamental and most important goal, (these sanctions are intended to) cut our funding sources, what they refer to as the drying up of the funding sources of Hezbollah, of the Resistance in Lebanon and of the Resistance movements in the region. But this is not something new, they work at it since 1990. We are on the list of terrorist organizations since the 1990s. It is in order to dry our funding sources that continuous pressure is exerted against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is our main support. And that is a mark of honor for the Islamic Republic of Iran, this gives it a high rank and status.
Today, what is the US problem with Iran? You’ve seen the 12 demands of the US Secretary of State (Mike Pompeo) for them to reconsider their relations with Iran. Among the 12 demands… What do they really want from Iran? That it becomes a weak country, without missiles, without civil nuclear power, excluded of the Middle East’s (issues), that takes no responsibilities and has no involvment nor influence at the regional level, that it becomes, like many countries, an enslaved country. That if (Washington) requires (Iran) 100 billion, they would pay it cash. If (Washington) wants to appoint or depose a President, a King or a Prince, (Iran) would comply at once. That’s what they want from Iran. That’s what they did in Iran at the time of the Shah.
Anyway, among the US demands, there is cessation of support to Resistance movements that (Washington) characterizes as terrorist. And (Pompeo) mentioned Hezbollah and Palestinian Resistance movements. Thus, one reason of these pressures against Iran is that it assumes (the responsibility of Resistance to Israel).
Likewise, (the sanctions) are pressuring any contributor or benefactor who can bring money or donations to this Resistance, its organizations, its (families of) martyrs, its wounded, its orphans, its Resistors, its infrastructure, its capacity… This is their goal (to dry any financial support for Hezbollah).
This is part of the struggle. I do not mean just to describe its aspects, but also to determine our responsibility (against these measures). They are part of the confrontation, of the current battle. And we, psychologically, have to understand (the goals of) our enemy and realize that this is part of the current struggle.
It goes without saying that when the Resistance in Lebanon stood since 1982 and proclaimed its rejection of continued Israeli occupation of Lebanon –which is also a US occupation–, its rejection of the American-Zionist project in Lebanon, either as an occupation, or the imposition of political control, policy management or peace agreements with the enemy… (When) we reject this and struggle, fight and sacrifice, and inflict a defeat on this enemy… When Israel is the primary project for the United States and its military forward base in the region, and that you cross their path, confront them and defeat the army (reputed) invincible, when you humble and expel it from your territory, humiliated, defeated, running (for their lives)… When you cause a strategic turning point in the Arab-Israeli struggle because of what happened in 2000, with its repercussions inside occupied Palestine and the launch of the Intifada… When you are responsible for a huge cultural transformation in the region… When you face the American project, as happened again in 2006, the new Middle East project which, according to Condoleeza Rice, was being born before our eyes… When you raise against the US-Israeli projects and contribute to their collapse – I do not pretend that we have ruined them alone, but we helped to make them fall to some extent, according to places, battlefields and countries… When you are a force that denies US and Israeli hegemony over Palestine, in Lebanon and the countries of the region… When you are a force demanding your rights to sovereignty, authentic sovereignty, not sovereignty as a slogan (devoid of reality)… Every day, the Israeli enemy violates our airspace. Yesterday, it hit Syria from Lebanese skies. Where are the (pseudo) sovereignists? (I mean genuine) sovereignty! When you are a force that demands and truly works for the sovereignty, freedom, liberation (of your territory), for its independent decision, not submitting to the United States or anyone else in this world, (when you claim) that the people of each country is sovereign at home, and must take decisions by its own in his country… When you do not allow neither the US nor Israel to put their hands over a (single) inch of your territory at the border, or one (single) cubic meter of your (territorial) waters, or a (single) drop of your oil, it is natural that this enemy will see the threat (you represent for him), for its projects, for its hegemony, for its interests, (because you are) a force that defends your people, your nation and your Community and it will not sit idle in front of you. It will (try to) fight you, kill you, launch wars against you, it will plot against you, etc., etc., etc. Then from there, it will submit you to an economic and financial blockade, (put you on) the list of terrorist organizations, dry your funding sources, etc. So that’s (a full) part of the struggle.
And those of our brothers, among our noble families, merchants, businesses, organizations, associations, affected by (the sanctions), they must consider the damage as part of the struggle. This is exactly the same as for the family that offers a martyr, who has an injured or a partial or total paralysis, who sees their house bombed during the war and who ends up in a camp. In the same way, this is part of the sacrifices required by this battle, and those affected and disabled (by sanctions and inscription on the list of terrorist organizations) must consider this damage, firstly at the personal and psychological level, as part of the sacrifices (required), we have to consider this as part of the sacrifices on the path (of Resistance) that we took, we must consider that this is part of the battle and face it.
How to cope with it? In order to face (these measures), the essential point, as we have said in some (previous) battles, is to defeat the purpose (of sanctions). We cannot respond to these inscriptions on the list of terrorist organizations (and the resulting sanctions) by similar measures, because we have neither banks nor US currency, nor do we exchange dollar, euro or any such thing. But we have to frustrate their purpose. What is it? Their goal is to shake our resolve, the determination of our people and our popular base. They want to engage our will, our determination and our resolve, our perseverance and persistence on this path, on this line and on this position. As long as we remain resolute, determined and steadfast, (their sanctions) have no weight. And may God make the best out of it.
True, there will be damage, we will suffer losses, but this is part of the required sacrifices, like the martyrs, the wounded, demolished homes and factories that were destroyed during the war. After that, God the Almighty and the Exalted compensated, international assistance helped rebuild, the State assumed its share of responsibility, we took our responsibility, but it’s part of the path (of Resistance we chose).
So far, the experience showed (our enemies) that death, murder, wars, massacres, destruction, refugees, and all that was inflicted on us, to us and to our people in Lebanon, in no way diminished our commitment, our resolve and our determination. And therefore, now, I say that these measures will lead to no result. They do not delay nor accelerate anything. They cause damage, this is natural. As I said, it’s like all the other sacrifices: when a martyr falls, the father, mother and wife are grieving, the woman becomes a widow, the mother becomes *** (word untranslatable designating the mother who lost her child), children become orphans. We are human beings, we have feelings, but it’s part of the struggle. We endure, we rely on it to go ahead, and we shape victories over these losses. We do not stop, we are not scared, we are not afraid.
Now I want to return to the point that I mentioned at the beginning, I said I would come back to it. Before 2000, the capacities of the Resistance were very modest. And now it is true that the capacities of the Resistance are very large, and it needs money, no doubt. But in the worst case, in the worst case, say this inscription on the list of terrorist organizations and financial and economic siege manage to cut a large portion of that money, or even all of the money. I declare to the US, its allies in the region and the Israeli enemy: you are very wrong in understanding the Resistance and the people.
Wherein lies this error? It stems from their culture. It is that they see their friends (allies) and the people in general as mercenaries. Every man, every individual, for the United States and its allies or instruments, is not considered a man. They consider them, as we joked before, like an S with two bars (dollar sign). Money. How much are you worth? How much do we have to pay to buy your voice (in elections)? $100? $1,000? $3,000? Or is it that (on the contrary), your voice is not for sale? Can your position be reversed with money, with suitcases (full of banknotes)? If one brings you suitcases, will you move from one position to another? Or is it that (on the contrary), your position cannot be bought, it’s not for sale? They see the world only through the prism of money. They do not believe in principles. If they are told that such people are people of principle, patriots, they will ask you to explain the meaning of “principle”, “patriot”, “humanity”. (They are unaware of and unable to understand) these concepts, they have no existence for them. What matters for them is the work, money, weapons trade, how much money you have, how many yachts, how many banks, how much is your oil, how much credit you have in the banks, etc. This is your value. Your value is not your good deeds, as the prophetic tradition says: “The value of a man lies in his good deeds.” Your value is the balance of your bank account.
Their mistake is to consider the Resistance as mercenaries of Iran, for example. Since Iran gives money (to Hezbollah), just like Syria, they believe that we are mercenaries, that we are fighting as mercenaries, and that if they deprive us of our money, we will stop fighting and change our position. This is their fundamental error.
This Resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and the region, those people who demonstrate every Friday in Gaza are not mercenaries. They are defenders of a cause. These Resistors, and their people, their fellow countrymen, their families, their popular base and all who are with them, (Washington and its allies) must know that they are people of principle, patriots, humanists, defenders of a cause in which they believe (fervently), and for which they fight and are willing to sacrifice, and sacrifice their dearest ones and their children. They are ready to live their entire lives in the worst conditions for their cause to triumph. Such people cannot be defeated neither by lists of terrorist organizations, nor by sanctions, nor by a financial siege or by drying up their sources of money.
When you fight, in Lebanon and Palestine, those opposed to the Israeli enemy, a popular will, a popular Resistance and a popular culture, you are unable to inflict a defeat on them, regardless of any measure you can implement. That is why their (economic) battle (against us) is lost in advance.
But the condition for that, like in the military war, as in all previous challenges, is that we become aware of the essence of this (economic) war, that we understand their motive and goals, that we endure and that we make its objectives fail. And this is easy. Because if we maintain our determination, our resolve and our will, they will not be able to do anything.
Denunciation of Morocco and tribute to Algeria & Soudan
Even (the US attempt) to isolate (Hezbollah) in the region (will be in vain). The fact that such country has no links with us, that another breaks relations with us, than another yet (accuses us) under a thousand false pretexts, as did Morocco just a few weeks ago without any basis of truth.
(Morocco) said that the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs visited Iran, and submitted a folder to the Foreign Minister of Iran about the involvement of Hezbollah with the Polisario Front. The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs promised to keep me informed, and he did. I asked where is the folder, but there is no folder! The Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs did not even provide a single file or piece of paper, although they claimed to have provided evidence and documents, but they refused to give even the sheet that… He had a sheet in his hand, from which he was reading (to the Iranian minister) the names (of Hezbollah members allegedly involved with the Polisario): so and so, so and so, so and so, so and so. (The Iranian minister) asked for the sheet, but (the Moroccan Minister) refused. Even this piece of paper (he read), he refused to give it!
Well, where is the evidence, where are the facts? Do you have videos, recordings, witnesses? Who are your witnesses? But there is absolutely nothing. (Morocco) said that so and so, so and so, so and so, so and so from Hezbollah… Moreover, some of these (Hezbollah members) have no involvement in the security and military operations, and these brothers mentioned work in very remote locations from each other, so it is clear that it is the Israeli intelligence that provided the names to Morocco, but there is no link between these (Hezbollah) brothers. (Morocco is merely asserting emphatically that) Hezbollah supports the Polisario, and it breaks its ties with Iran, (just like that).
While we have no relationship with the Polisario, not even political relations. I do not even take a position on this issue, that we have not studied, and on which we have no position, neither negative nor positive. In truth, there is no relationship between us, not even political, we have no contact, but we will see Morocco accuse us of having received the Polisario in Lebanon, of having visited them in their town –I do not even remember its name, it was the first time I was hearing of it–, of having provided them with support, training, training camps, weapons, etc.
Anyway, these accusations and actions are futile, they will have no result in terms of resolution and determination of the Resistance. Before 2000, when the Resistance has triumphed and achieved this feat of which we celebrate the 18th anniversary today (Lebanon’s Liberation), it had no regional relations. There was Iran and Syria, nothing else. We could have friendly relations with the Embassy of Algeria, the Sudanese Embassy, such or such country, but we did not have regional relations. Rather, many did not even dare to open links or contacts with us, because since 1992, we are on the list of terrorist organizations.
Therefore, all these measures of political, diplomatic and financial siege, this intimidation, I say to our enemies that it will not change anything. The Resistance that has shaped the victory of 2000, this glorious and resounding victory that imposed on the (Israeli) enemy to get out humiliated and crushed, with no clause, without any conditions, without any concession whatsoever (only by the force of arms, as Hezbollah refused any negotiations with Israel), the Resistance is stronger today, more powerful, more robust, even regarding the determination, faith, principles, soul, mind, until the new generations that you think (corrupted by materialism).
It is this new generation that fought in 2006, and much of our martyrs are part of the generation born in the 1990s. And today, it is also the case for the great battle that was conducted in the region (Syria). When you participate in the fight against the American project in the region, in Syria… We are proudly and publicly involved in this crucial battle. And it is during such a commemoration (on May 25) that I announced our entry into this battle several years ago (in 2013). And we said then that the US and its allies have gathered the takfiris from all around the world to bring down Damascus and the Syrian State, and I said in a speech like this, without vis-a-vis, that the Syrian leadership, the Syrian people and the Syrian army and its allies would never allow Damascus to fall, whatever sacrifices were required.
Today, on the occasion of the holiday of the Resistance and Liberation, which we celebrate to commemorate the South(-Lebanon) Liberation, today also, we address Syria, the Syrian leadership, the Syrian Arab Army, the Syrian people and all their loyal allies, and we congratulate them for the liberation of Damascus, the Damascus suburbs and the whole Damascus area in its entirety, freed from any danger and any (terrorist armed) organization, especially during this last battle against ISIS and the glorious victory that took place there, and now that all Syria goes from success to success, successes that set up the next stage (of reconstruction). Those who (like Hezbollah) take such positions must bear the consequences, and I declare that we are stronger, more determined and more present, and with God’s grace, these (diplomatic sanctions) will have absolutely no effect. […]
In any analysis of contemporary international politics it pays to be cautiously pessimistic. As the default mode one can generally expect that any way in which things can go wrong to threaten the peace and security of the planet, they will. Anticipation of improvement is a chump’s bet.
That’s why the analyst’s gut instinct rebels at any indication that things overall may be moving in a positive direction, however haltingly or indirectly. But consider:
European populism marches on: Viva l’Italia! The European Union’s (EU) favorite Sicilian, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, tied to whack the M5S/Lega coalition. The hit failed. Now Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone – too big to be smacked around like Greece – joins the populist bloc centered in the Visegrád Group, plus Austria. This has particular importance with respect to the EU’s (and Germany’s) disastrous open door migration policy.
Europe’s anti-Russia sanctions: American pressure on Europe with respect to trade with Iran, added to Trump’s new tariffs, feeds resentment across Europe, especially in powerful Germany, which especially objects to Washington’s threatening sanctions on companies participating in Nord Stream 2. It may be too soon to guess how soon the EU will pull the plug on anti-Russian sanctions, but there’s something in the air when even the likes of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker can say that “Russia-bashing has to be brought to an end.” Italy’s voice will be key.
At the epicenter of each one of these earthshaking developments is one man: Donald Trump.
It would be inaccurate to say that these are even moves of the US government, of which Trump is only in partial control. With the permanent government – not to mention some of his own appointees – seeking to undermine him at every step, Trump seems to be resorting to the one tool he has at his personal disposal: disruption.
Let’s remember that, especially in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, those who voted for Trump wanted something radically different from business as usual. They voted for him because they wanted a bull in a china shop, a wrecking ball, a human hand grenade, a big “FU” to the system.
Maybe that’s what we got.
To be sure, none of the foregoing itemized developments is dispositive. But taken together they point to a remarkable confluence of good omens, at least from the point of view of those who wanted to shake up, even shatter, the cozy arrangements that have guided the so-called “liberal global order.”
But those whose careers and privileges, and in some cases their freedom and even lives, depend on perpetuating that order will not go gentle into that good night. They are getting nervous. This means in particular the elements of the US-UK special services, their Democratic and GOP Never-Trump fellow travelers, the Trump-hating fake news media, and the bureaucratic nonentities in Brussels (not only at the European Commission but at NATO headquarters).
If past is prologue, the Empire will strike back – hard and dirty.
One is reminded of the past seven years of war in Syria, where every time the US indicated a willingness to disengage, or when Syrian forces had made major military gains, then – BAM! – a chemical weapons attack immediately and without evidence is attributed to government forces, followed by renewed cries of “Assad is killing his own people! Assad must go!” (This is a ploy that goes back at least to the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Every time a negotiated ceasefire seemed to be taking shape, another “Serb mortar attack” on civilians took place, leading to calls for NATO military action.)
FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia (June 14 to July 15): Given the huge expense and effort Russia has put into the World Cup as a favorable showcase to the world, it will be a tempting target. Let’s remember that the unconstitutional ouster of Ukraine’s elected government took place as Putin’s attention was presumably distracted by his pride and joy, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The 2008 attack by Georgia’s then-president, Mikheil Saakashvili, on South Ossetia, was launched while the world’s eyes were focused on the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Both initiatives led to a strong counteraction by Moscow, leading in turn to worsened relations between Russia and the west – including Russia’s suspension from the G8 in 2014. (Though in the fevered imagination of western Russophobes, Putin was the one using the games as a cover, not the other way around.) A provocation could be directed against the FIFA events themselves – perhaps a terrorist attack by ISIS operatives reportedly being ferried out of the Middle East to Russia – or something elsewhere timed to coincide with matches being played all over Russia.
Ukraine: Regarding President Petro Poroshenko’s actions, everything must be put into the context of upcoming presidential elections in 2019. Poroshenko has to find a way to get into a runoff, presumably against Yulia Tymoshenko. The most beneficial thing he could do would be somehow to pull a rabbit out of his hat and achieve a peace deal in the Donbas. But chances of that are slim to none, as it would require flexibility from Kiev that Poroshenko can’t afford to show lest he be accused of being a Russian puppet. Conversely, he can up the ante with the Russians and hope the West will line up behind him. Perhaps the recent fake news murder fiasco regarding the still very much alive Arkady Babchenko was to have been one such ploy but it misfired. But there are other options, such as a provocation along the line of control in the Donbas (the newly delivered US Javelin missiles are handy, as is the Dutch MH17 report), maybe a covert attack on the Kerch bridge, as well as other less obvious possibilities.
Incident between NATO and Russian forces: NATO forces are stepping up provocative maneuvers on Russia’s doorstep in the Baltic and Black seas – purely to deter Moscow’s aggression, mind you. An incident could occur as any time, either by accident or on purpose. Either way, it would be the hostile Russians’ fault for putting their country so close to our bases and the venues of our military exercises.
Assassination: One of Putin’s well-known predilections is for killing, or at least attempting to kill, anyone who might displease him. Or like Assad with his chemical weapons, maybe Putin kills just for the sheer, malicious fun of it. The list of victims is long: Babchenko (except, not), the two Skripals (except, not them either), political opponents like Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Yushenkov, muckraking journalists like Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova, former chekist Aleksandr Litvinenko, RT network founder Mikhail Lesin, crusading lawyers like Stanislav Markelov and Sergei Magnitsky, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and so on. A well-timed rub out of a suitably visible figure would have a salubrious impact on any annoying moves towards east-west rapprochement. No evidence is needed – the mere identity of the victim would be irrefutable proof of Putin’s guilt.
Regarding the last item, assassination, it should always be kept in mind that in the end the man threatening to upset the apple cart of the liberal global order isn’t Putin – it’s Trump. That suggests an ultimate solution that might become tempting if The Donald’s continued functioning at higher than room temperature becomes just too much to endure.
As Joseph Stalin is reputed to have remarked, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.” Trump, who for many powerful people is quite a problem indeed, has been recklessly compared to Jean-Marie Le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin – even to Hitler and Mussolini. In an American context, to Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, and George Wallace. Let’s note that each of those three Americans was the target of assassination. Jackson (someone Trump is known to admire) survived by a failure of his attacker’s pistols, hailed by some at the time as miraculous. “The Kingfish” was killed. Wallace was crippled for life.
There is reason to think that Trump is well aware of the fate of the last American president who so threatened the habitual order of things and the entrenched, ruthless establishment that profits so mightily from it. He has repeatedly indicated his interest in releasing the full file on Jack Kennedy’s assassination, then backed off from it for undisclosed reasons. The shooting death of the president’s brother Robert Kennedy, who had he been elected president in 1968 would have had the opportunity to reopen the investigation into his brother’s murder, is back in the news with Robert Kennedy, Jr., expressing doubt about the official conclusion that his father was killed by Sirhan Sirhan.
If anyone thinks there is any length to which Trump’s enemies will not go, think again.
Stories of wartime heroism abound in Hollywood movie history, the gung-ho, swashbuckling images that saturate our cinema screens promote US military personnel to cult figures, ‘saving the world’.
It is the victory of fantasy over realism that distances the American public from the horrors of war.
Wars that are never on US soil but waged in distant lands, but always in the “interests of national security”. Consent is manufactured for these wars by fabricating fear and insecurity, the amplification of terrorism threats as the ever-present danger menacing the American people, held at bay by military intervention at an imagined ‘source’.
“US airstrikes on Syria were in the “vital national security and foreign policy interests” of the United States” President Trump told Congress, after the tripartite alliance of US, France and UK had unlawfully attacked Syria. An attack carried out under the pretext of a trumped-up charge of chemical attacks by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the last moments of Douma’s liberation from Saudi-financed and UK-promoted extremists, Jaysh al-Islam.
Cinema is escapism and Hollywood excels in distracting a public already bamboozled by a corporate media’s expert distortion of fact to generate the narratives that instil fear and dehumanize the latest foe in the foreign policy crosshairs.
In Saving Private Ryan, the horror of battle is surround-sound deafeningly conveyed. Unremitting reality confronts our sensibility, the scream of bullets tearing into flesh, the clamour of the dying; nothing is left to the imagination. It is full frontal war.
In the movie, a detail of American soldiers is dispatched to France to bring Private Ryan home to his mother after General Marshall learns that his three brothers were killed in action. We are led to believe that the assuaging of Mama Ryan’s grief is of paramount national importance. It is an all-American feel-good-factor movie with the familiar “true grit”, the hard-bitten courage of ‘real men’ fighting to save the world and their own souls. As the movie’s tagline informs us: “In the last great invasion of the last great war, the greatest challenge for eight men… was saving one.”
As US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, said recently, when trying to explain away the wholesale devastation in Raqqa following a sustained bombing campaign by the US-led coalition – “we are the good guys and the innocent people on the battlefield know the difference” – I doubt the “innocent people” who were deliberately targeted by the coalition “precision” bombs would agree. The proclaimed war on terror, in this case Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), invariably results in the massacre of innocent people whose mangled remains are dismissed as “collateral damage” in another US campaign that protects “national security”.
A campaign fought illegally in the skies above or on the ground of a sovereign nation that has never presented a threat to US security. Syria has effectively been defending US and European “national security” for seven long and tortuous years. The hordes of extremists under a variety of monikers are armed, financed and equipped by our governments and their allies in the Gulf States, to enable regime change in Syria, but you would never know it from the rhetoric they use to drown out their responsibility.
Syria is stemming the terrorist tide within its territory and the SAA is fighting and dying to contain the threat. Alongside its allies, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah – Syria is sacrificing everything to prevent the spread of a cataclysmic contagion that has been created and imposed upon them by the nations whose claims of moral superiority ring hollow when confronted by the bloodshed they leave in their wake.
The SAA is dehumanized and criminalised by media in the West, it is reduced to ‘Assad’s army”, a ‘Shia militia’ – portrayed as a ‘murderous squad of sectarian thugs’. Nothing could be further from the truth, in my experience. I have met with many families of martyred soldiers who have given their lives to defend their homeland, their people, their honour and their way of life. They fight because “a fallen building can be rebuilt, but a fallen homeland is lost forever.”
There are thousands of ‘Mama Ryans’ in Syria, brave, fearless women who have suffered indescribable loss but who remain steadfast, proud of their children’s role in protecting their future. Om Al Fouz from Taldara, close to Salamiyah, has lost five sons in the genuine “war on terror”.
“When I lost the first one, I felt as if I had broken my back, I lost the second one only fifteen days later – I thought my heart had broken. Then the third, the fourth, the fifth, each time I grew stronger”.
Om Al Fouz also told me: “I have 25 grandsons, I am ready to give all my children for this battle. We are all ready to be martyred, this is our country, our dignity, our honour, our morals. We will never leave this country to anyone else”.
I met Hala in January 2018 in Salamiyah. Hala is a beautiful young girl whose husband was killed fighting with the SAA to defend her hometown and her country. Like so many families in Salamiyah, Hala expressed great pride her husband’s martyrdom but the sadness in her eyes told me she has lost her love and the father of her child.
Her husband, Fadi Afif al-Qasir, was killed defending Western Salamiyah from Nusra Front. He was 31 years old. Hala proudly showed me their wedding photographs, a stunning young couple just beginning their married life with so many hopes and dreams.
Hala told me: “When they called him to serve the homeland, he left immediately so he could defend his land, to defend his land, to defend his values……so that Syria’s voice could reach all of the countries, so that peace for Syria could prevail, so that peace would not only happen for us, so peace would be for all countries. What is entering here that we are fighting against, it is going to go outside of Syria, and if it went outside of Syria it is going to destroy all the people. So, my husband, Fadi Afif al-Qasir he offered his soul, he offered his heart, he offered his blood, to redeem the homeland”.
I also met Hannah Al Ayek and her family early in 2018 in Salamiyah. Her son, Saed Nizar, was not even 22-years-old when he was killed. Saed had been a helicopter engineer with the Syrian Arab Air Force. He was killed on 22 January 2013. He was on board a helicopter ferrying supplies into the base when it was brought down by a Free Syrian Army TOW missile, according to his family.
Hannah said to me: “Your coming here and talking to me about my son gives us strength. We beg you to take our voices as far as you can. My son and all our Martyrs have sacrificed themselves for the world, not just for Syria. Maybe they don’t all have the same face, but they do have the same soul.”
Every family I met with and interviewed made similar statements. Ahmed Jabr lost his 23-year-old son, Mohammed, on the 4 March 2013, fighting with the SAA against IS in Qaryatayn.
Ahmed told me: “We have a great army and we represent the army. The army represents us and they have sacrificed so much but thank God we have the victory on our side. They brought every foreign terrorist in the universe to our country. It is the Western countries bringing us this terrorism. Thank God we stand by our Army as one hand. Our Army defends the whole Arab world and the World from this terrorism because it will spread from Syria to the World.”
The SAA is made up of conscripts. In many cases ordinary young men and women have taken up arms to defend their people, as in Salamiyah surrounded on four sides by IS, Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and a variety of extremist splinter groups. These soldiers are often inexperienced in military strategy and combat. They are facing a professional force of battle-hardened mercenaries, well equipped with more sophisticated weapons and machinery thanks to their sponsors in the West and Gulf States.
We in the West owe an infinite debt of gratitude to these young men and women who have resisted the terrorist spawn of our own imperialist nations. There will be no ‘Private Ryan’ films depicting their courage and bloodshed. There will be no commemorative statues erected in Washington or London in honour of their sacrifices. There will be no recognition of their unity, no acknowledgement of their dignity in Western media.
It falls upon us, the people, to salute these heroes, these defenders of humanity who have given their lives to prevent us living their torment. This is not some romantic vision of a world of complex nuances and multi-faceted truths, it is the realistic admission that without the SAA, we would be awash with extremism from the Euphrates to the Thames. Far from the din and cacophony of Hollywood generated conflict, these soldiers are the quiet heroes who have undeniably earned “the right to go home”.
On the eve of his visit to Austria, President Vladimir Putin told the press: Russia has not the least intention of sowing dissent within the European Union. On the contrary, it is in Moscow’s interests that the EU, its biggest trading partner, remain as unified and thriving as possible.
As usual, after the Malaysian government admitted that the evidence of Russian involvement in the downing of flight MH17 was inconclusive, the anti-Russian propaganda campaigns were reduced to slim pickings. It was precisely for this reason that the more cutting-edge Western media were so happy to latch onto the murder of the blogger in Kiev. It was precisely for this reason that the very ones who had so desperately hyped that whole episode were so indignant when they realized that they had fallen victim to a bit of ruthless Ukrainian creative license.
But let’s get back to Russia’s secret plots against Europe. Interestingly, when you trace back the source of most of the warnings about the Russian plots to divide Europe, they seem to emanate from Great Britain. In other words, they are coming from a government that has decided to pull out of the EU but is now trying to direct its foreign policy.
Allegations of Russian plans to fragment Europe have been heard from both the head of Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency as well as from spokesmen from the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR). Judging by its name, one might be forgiven for assuming that was supposed to be a pan-European organization. But actually that’s just what’s written on the shingle they hang outside their door, because in fact this “think tank” is headquartered and funded in London.
It turns out that the most prominently schismatic states in Europe also hold wildly anti-Russian stances. Neither Great Britain, nor, shall we say, Poland could be suspected of a dearth of official Russophobia. Both of them, each in their own way, are trying to ruin the lives of those countries that form the core of the EU. Both have closed their doors to refugees and both are bravely waging war against an “influx” of natural gas that theoretically has nothing to do with them. Poland, which gets 17 billion euros a year from the EU budget, has the audacity to be demanding reparations from Germany. Britain, which slammed its doors shut in order to avoid chipping in to fund the EU, is valiantly battling Brussels in order to hold on to its economic perks in Europe.
And in this context, the EU’s biggest common ally — the US — is becoming an increasingly big problem. Washington has unleashed an economic war, not only against Russia and Iran, but also against the countries of Europe. But in the propaganda being rolled out for the European audience, the picture of the world looks like this:
The European Union’s main enemies are Russia and China. It’s true that they do want to trade with Europe and are offering enticements to encourage this, but one mustn’t believe them. Because it is a known fact that they are conducting a hybrid war — invisibly and unprovably — against Europe. Russia is such a wily combatant that one can’t ever prove anything — but you have to believe that it’s true. The European Union’s biggest friend is still the US. And yes, it’s true that they are currently trying to run their friends out of town in order to make a quick buck. But it’s solely President Trump who is to blame for that. Just be patient: soon the next president will come and fix everything right up. And it’s also true that no one can say when that next president will be in office, or what his name will be, or what he will do. And of course everyone remembers the Obama administration’s ceaseless attempts to foist an entirely colonial “transatlantic partnership” on Europe. But once Trump’s gone everything will be different — you just have to believe.
And this “you just have to believe” has recently become the main leitmotif of all the anti-Russian propaganda. Since the preferred narrative about the spy, the blogger, and airliner haven’t panned out, the proof of Russia’s malice is increasingly being repackaged as a kind of spiritual evidence. As the Guardian put it so aptly — “We do not need Russia to poison people in a British city to recognise the expanding threat to common values posed by Vladimir Putin’s hostile, corrupt regime.”
But then how can one explain that in reality, the opposite is true, that Russia actually needs a unified, rich and strong European Union? This isn’t rocket science, people — you don’t need to invoke “values” and chant the mantra of “you just have to believe.”
Russia needs a rich EU, because a rich trading partner has a more purchasing power, which gives Russia a positive trade balance with the EU.
Russia needs a unified EU, because a unified Europe that manages its own security issues from a centralized headquarters will present far fewer problems for Moscow than a string of feckless “friends of the US” along Russia’s western borders.
Russia needs a sovereign EU, because the anti-Russian trade sanctions serve no economic purpose for the EU whatsoever — and once Europe establishes sovereignty we will quite likely see those sanctions lifted.
And it is no coincidence that Austria was the first foreign country that Vladimir Putin visited after his inauguration.
That country is European, rich, and neutral (therefore not a member of NATO) and has been a staunch advocate for the rollback of Europe’s anti-Russian policy.
In other words, in Austria you can see a potential model for the kind of independent European Union that Russia would like to deal with in the twenty-first century.
And this is why the ones who are now so fervently preaching about “shared values” and “Western unity” when faced with the treachery of those natural-gas pipelines and that Eurasian trade route are actually demanding that Europe do itself a disservice by remaining deferential.
Should decidedly anti-British government organisations be found across the United Kingdom to be funded and directed by Russians, we could only imagine the reaction. Even whispers of hints of Russian influence have resulted in legislation, sanctions and quite literally years of punditry warning of the Kremlin’s insidious reach.
When the tables are turned, it is clear London, Washington and Brussels understand the inappropriateness of one nation interfering in the internal affairs of another.
Yet this acute awareness has not informed US or European foreign policy, including components of what could be called “soft power,” or influence operations. While soft power implies non-coercion, in practice it is always used in conjunction with coercive means toward exacting concessions from targeted nations.
Hiding US Funding
In the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand, a growing army of such influence operations has formed the foundation of an opposition to the current government. It is an opposition that without its current funding and support from abroad otherwise would not exist.
Just as was done for years against nations like Syria, Libya, Ukraine and Egypt (nations to have recently suffered or nearly suffered the impact of Western-sponsored regime change), Thailand faces long-term interference in its internal affairs as a direct result of these influence operations.
The opposition in Thailand itself is minute and unpopular. However the organisations supporting them enjoy a veneer of credibility owed primarily to their efforts to obfuscate from audiences their foreign funding and their actual role in organising and leading the opposition.
One example can be seen in the local English-language newspaper, the Bangkok Post. Its article, “The fight for basic rights,” interviews the American founders of a supposed nongovernmental organisation called, “Fortify Rights.” Fortify Rights has consistently used its platform to support anti-government protests under the pretext of defending human rights.
Nowhere in the interview are Matthew and Amy Smith asked where their money comes from and how, as Americans, it is their moral imperative to involve themselves in critical issues faced by Asia.
Throughout the interview, the Smiths repeatedly admit to reporting back to the United States government, including testifying before US Congress and lobbying in Washington for issues related to Myanmar’s ongoing refugee crisis. The interference in Asia by a nation residing on the other side of the planet seems almost taken for granted by both the Smiths and the interviewer, as if the United States is imbued with the authority to arbitrate universally.
On social media, when the topic of US government funding was raised, Matthew Smith categorically denied receiving US government funding. He would refer to additional questions regarding his organisation’s funding as “trollish.”
However, Fortify Rights’ 2016 annual report (PDF), as pointed out to Smith himself, includes government funding from the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the US Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy ().
Other controversial sponsors of Fortify Rights include convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Matthew Smith not only knows that NED is funded by and serves as an intermediary for the US government, (thus making Fortify Rights a recipient of US government funding), he is undoubtedly aware of how controversial such funding is across Asia, a region sensitive to outside interference after centuries of European and more recently, American colonisation.
Implications of NED Funding
NED’s own website admits on its frequently asked questions page that:
NED is a private, non-profit, grant-making organization that receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress through the Department of State. Although NED’s continued funding is dependent on the continued support of the White House and Congress, it is NED’s independent BOARD OF DIRECTORS that controls how the appropriation is spent.
NED itself admits that it is funded through the US State Department. It claims that its board of directors, not the US government itself, then determine how those US tax dollars are spent.
A look at NED’s board of directors only further implicates organisations like Matthew Smith’s Fortify Rights in deep impropriety merely hiding behind “rights” advocacy.
It includes people representing political and business interests involved in some of the greatest injustices purveyed by the United States during this generation, including Elliott Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad (who served as US ambassador to Iraq during the US occupation) and Vin Weber described by some (including themselves) as Neo-Conservatives who promoted the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and have promoted other wars of aggression around the globe both before and since.
Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in ousting the elected government of Ukraine in 2014 through a violent coup spearheaded by Neo-Nazi political parties and their militant wings, also serves on NED’s board of directors, along with Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post who clearly finds herself in a conflict of interest between reporting the truth and promoting organisations and agendas underwritten by the NED she chairs.
Another commonality is shared among NED’s board of directors; their use of “human rights” and “democracy” as pretexts for the wars of aggression and regime change they have promoted and helped execute, which reveals the true purpose, whether Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights knows or admits it or not, of both NED’s existence and the desired outcome of the work it funds around the globe.
NED in Thailand
Fortify Rights is by far not the only front operating in Thailand under the sponsorship of US government-funded NED.
It coordinates with other fronts as well, including media outlets like Prachatai based in Bangkok (whose director also serves as an NED Fellow), Isaan Record based in Thailand’s northeast, and BenarNews covering Thailand’s deep south. All three disingenuously portray themselves as independent local media. They have intentionally taken steps to obfuscate their US government funding from their Thai readers. Prachatai has only disclosed its foreign funding once in 2011, and only on its English-language website.
Each media front specialises in seizing upon and exploiting social and economic tensions to bolster opposition to the current government. Before the 2014 coup ousted the previous, US-backed government of Yingluck Shinawatra, these same media organisations used their platforms to smooth over injustices and emerging tensions threatening that government’s stability.
NED-funded Fortify Rights also works closely with fellow US funding recipient Thai Lawyers for Human Rights who not only provide free legal services for anti-government protesters, but provide resources and leadership to the protests themselves. The protesters portraying themselves as “pro-democracy” activists, fail to disclose their foreign funding to potential followers. They also avoid questions regarding how their foreign funding violates democracy’s prerequisite of self-determination independent of foreign interference.
Other NED-funded organisations operating in Thailand include iLaw, Cafe Democracy, Media Inside Out Group, Book Re:public, Thai Netizens Network, the ENLAWTHAI Foundation and the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF).
Many of these US government-funded organisations play a direct role in demanding policy changes. Currently in Thailand, protests demanding regime change are also led by US government-funded organisations.
The implications of foreign funded organisations attempting to influence Thailand’s policy or its political future are troubling. Many of the individuals working for these US government-funded organisations on their social media accounts frequently comment on their opposition to “Russian influence” in their US sponsors’ internal affairs, apparently failing to appreciate the irony of what their own work represents.
They also fail to appreciate the irony of portraying themselves as “independent” and working for “nongovernmental organisations,” despite being both dependent on wealthy and influential foreign sponsors as well as working on behalf of foreign governments.
Through their connections with equally compromised organisations and individuals in Thailand’s media, they have written promotional pieces about their supposed work, like in the Bangkok Post, without disclosing their foreign funding to readers.
At other times, complicit individuals within the Thai media have attempted to write pieces defending or dismissing US government-funding when public outcry begins to rise.
Rewriting Thailand’s NGO Laws
Despite the amount of funding and deception involved in this extensive and growing network, the US government-funded opposition is still widely unpopular. It would not be necessary for the Thai government to restrict their activities, let alone uproot and expel them as neighbouring Cambodia has (understandably) done.
Should Thailand simply rewrite its NGO laws to demand the same degree of scrutiny and transparency of these organisations as they themselves demand of targets of US government pressure, their already unpopular message would lose even more credibility and support across Thai society.
Prachatai, for example, being forced to disclose its US government funding at the header or footer (or both) of every article it writes would mean Prachatai finally practising the integrity and transparency it demands of targets of its daily propaganda. Likewise, those like writers at the Bangkok Post writing promotional pieces about Fortify Rights, should be obligated to disclose the organisation’s foreign funding somewhere within the body of the article.
Were these organisations as dedicated to the principles of transparency, freedom, democracy and human rights as they claimed, all of this information would already be freely and repeatedly provided to readers. If these organisations truly believed US, UK and Canadian government funding was benign or beneficial, they would not have gone through such extensive efforts to obfuscate and spin it to begin with. If anything, they would use such funding as a selling point.
Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights would not deceive people on social media by playing off of a technicality in which his US government money is essentially laundered through the NED before reaching him.
As the US continues accusing Russia of interfering in its internal political affairs, measures and consequences it attempts to level against Moscow could easily be cited and adopted by other nations across the globe to deal with the very real interference the US is engaged in within their respective borders.
The double game the US is playing regarding its own interference around the globe and accusations of interference it has levelled against Moscow, prove there is nothing benign at all about its agenda and activities. In turn, this calls into question all those organisations whose existence depends on annual contributions from this malignant political order.
Those truly dedicated to helping people will seek to independently fund their work by finding support from the local communities they claim to represent. If people are unwilling to fund Matthew Smith and Fortify Rights at the local level, it is likely Smith and his organisation are not truly working in the benefit of these communities, and instead, for interests diametrically opposed to them.
In the past few weeks – un-reported in the scandal/crisis-pre-occupied American main stream media – New Mexico has become the epicenter of an on-going national controversy: how to responsibly manage the tons of radioactive waste accumulated at all the nuclear energy reactors around the country so far in the Nuclear Age.
Why, New Mexicans and others around the country are asking, has this region suddenly become the potential target destination for all of America’s radioactive waste?
Will the Shimkus Bill ‘Bring Death to New Mexico’?
New Mexico cattle rancher Ed Hughs is one of the many around that state and the country who think so.
Having, with his neighbors, just successfully fought off a proposed deep bore hole nuclear waste depository next to his ranch in Quey County, NM, Hughs told a recent Roswell, New Mexico NRC meeting to rousing applause,
“There are a lot of questions that have not been answered. One of the questions, how do you retrieve if there are accidents? How do you monitor? How do you repair? Those questions have not been answered. So I guess in summing up I want to say that the Holtec and Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and I agree with an earlier statement that, you know, you aren’t bad people in the sense that you are trying to do us harm, but you are making a huge mistake…. You are in fact proposing to bring death to New Mexico.”
Yucca Redux and the ‘Fukushima Freeway’
The Congressional trigger to this rising national controversy is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 2018, HR 3053, known as the Shimkus Bill, which recently passed the House on its way to the Senate.
It calls for restarting the failed Yucca Mountain Project in Nevada, and establishing a system of Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) sites for radioactive waste around the country until Yucca is operational.
First on the list of possible ‘temporary’ CIS nuke dumps is a site proposed by Holtec International and the local Eddy-Lea Alliance just outside Hobbs, New Mexico. It’s just over the border from Andrews, Co., Texas – where another high level nuke waste dump is also being proposed by Waste Control Specialists, which already operates a controversial toxic materials dump in the area.
In early may, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a series of five so-called ‘scoping’ meeting around New Mexico to take public comments on the Holtec/Eddy-Lea site proposal.
Proponents of the dump tout it as a regional economic boon and a patriotic service to the nation.
Opponents see it as a public health, environmental and economic disaster waiting to happen that could ruin the region’s thriving dairy ranching, pecan growing and oil drilling industries.
Planned to eventually hold more metric tons of waste than Yucca Mtn. itself will be designed for, the Hobbs site could well become – if the Yucca site never gets built – America’s de facto national dump site, and make the region a national ‘nuclear sacrifice area.’
The region targeted for the proposed ‘interim’ radioactive waste storage sites is already known to the region’s population as ‘nuclear alley.’
Welcome to Nuclear Alley
Nuclear Alley is on the edge of one of the world’s richest and – currently on pace to be – most productive petroleum patches: the Permian Basin, which straddles the New Mexico-Texas border.
We traveled there recently for our forthcoming documentary series on the shutdown and decommissioning of California’s last remaining nuclear energy plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. We also wanted to express our support of the groups resisting the ill-conceived consolidated interim storage agenda.
Along with the coming cascade of waste from other scheduled nuclear power reactor shutdowns around the country, California’s radioactive waste could well be headed for New Mexico… if the proposed Holtec and WCS ‘Consolidated Interim Storage’ sites are licensed by the industry-captured NRC.
Oil Patch Central
To get to this region we flew into Midland, Texas. The thriving city is a prime beneficiary of the area’s present oil- and gas-fueled economic boom. As we got off the plane, we entered a bustling airport space dominated by a battery of animated electronic screens showing glitzy ads – not for consumer goods – but for the region’s thriving, readily available, fracking and oil drilling services and products.
From Midland we headed to Eunice, New Mexico, an epicenter of New Mexico’s Nuclear Alley. To get there, we drove through endlessly flat countryside dotted every few yards stretching to the horizon with temporarily dormant or busily functioning oil pumps.
Rose Gardner is a feisty Hispanic grandmother and co-founder of the Alliance for Environmental Strategies organization in opposition to the Holtec dump. In keeping with her name, she runs a flower shop on the Main Street of Eunice.
The little town’s local landscape is dominated by the presence, just five minutes up the highway, of Waste Control Specialists’ toxic waste materials site – where WCS is proposing adding a new CIS ‘parking lot’ nuclear dumpsite.
Just next-door to WCS is the Urenco uranium enrichment facility, which supplies much of the fuel for the country’s nuclear power reactors. [A January, 2018 NRC Inspection Report noted both a security violation and the loss of criticality controls at this Urenco plant.]
Both proposed sites are about 40 miles from the now infamous Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), where more than 171,000 waste containers are stored in salt caverns 2,100 feet underground.
Touted as the demonstration ‘Flagship’ model for the feasibility of long-term deep geological radioactive storage facilities for nuclear weapons waste, and advertised to last for thousands of years, WIPP experienced underground fires and explosions on February 14, 2014, after only 15 years of operation.
The disaster caused a major radiation release of plutonium and americium that contaminated at least 22 workers. The release was tracked by monitors and acknowledged by DOE as far away as 26 miles.
Reports the LA Times“the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according to a Times analysis. The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.”
Diagnosed as being caused by the use of the use of ‘organic cat litter’ in the storage barrels, the WIPP disaster was dubbed a ‘comedy of errors’ by commentators around the world. Not to worry. Sustaining such huge potential costs (that are charged to the state of New Mexico) WIPP is now again accepting waste – presumably packed with the right brand of inorganic kitty litter.
Cui Bono?
Guiding us on a tour of the local Eunice roadside attractions, Rose showed us a sprawling, sun-baked trailer park, on land owned by a local politician. The bleak dusty field is home for many of the workers at the town’s two dominant facilities.
If WCS succeeds in getting an NRC license for a CIS site here, the workers’ ranks will expand, and so will the trailer park owner’s profits. That’s one of the ‘economic benefits,’ Rose noted to us wryly, that are loudly touted by the region’s CIS advocates.
“This crap that could kill us!”
Speaking at the NRC’s first regional meeting in Roswell, Gardner told the standing-room-only crowd,
This isn’t the right thing to do. It’s an injustice to this state, to this community…. Most of the people in this area are like me, Brown-skinned or darker. We’re already poor. We don’t have insurance. We speak another language and we’re at least 50 percent here. And that’s an environmental injustice because they’re basically saying it’s okay… because those people aren’t going to speak up, because they can get run over just like they’ve been run over for the last several hundred years.
I’m here to tell Holtec, ‘Hell No, we don’t want it!’ I am so sick and tired of all these big companies coming into New Mexico or close to my town in Eunice, wanting to give us all this crap. This crap that could kill us!
New Mexico as ‘National Sacrifice Area?’
Leona Morgan, a fiery young Diné [Navajo] community organizer and co-founder of New Mexico’s Nuclear Issues Study Group, expands on Rose’s points.
“Starting with uranium mining and milling,” she says, “to modern weapons production, uranium enrichment, and storage of low-level and transuranic wastes, New Mexico has been targeted as a national sacrifice zone for too long,”
“New Mexico is the birthplace of nuclear colonialism,” Morgan points out. “We have been impacted by just about every step in the nuclear fuel chain! We did not generate this waste from nuclear reactors that is intended to come here. So why should we take it? As a state with many indigenous nations and people of color, and being at the tail end of several measures of quality of life, it is environmental racism at its core to keep dumping on New Mexico. And it’s time to stop!”
Speaking to the NRC meeting in Hobbs, New Mexico, Morgan gave a greeting in her native language and went on to remind the group that they were assembling on land originally stolen from the Mescalero Apache and Comanche tribes. “The things I want to talk about,” she said, “have to do with indigenous rights across the nation.“
“How many of you from the NRC or any of the regulating Agencies are aware,” she asked, “of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Or, for that matter, any of the elected officials here, how many of you know about this document called the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples passed in 2008?”
She scanned the crowd.
“Okay, let the record show no hands going up. How many of you are aware of the Organization of American States’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?“
She glanced around at the blank official faces.
“Okay, again, nobody’s hands went up. This was passed in 2016 and so I’d like to read directly from this Declaration.”
She went on to quote language from the Declarations’ Articles declaring that
Article 19: Indigenous peoples are entitled to be protected against the introduction of abandonment, dispersion, transit, indiscriminate use or deposit of any harmful substance that could negatively affect indigenous communities’ lands, territories, and resources.
And that
Article 22: The indigenous law and legal systems shall be recognized and respected by the national, regional, and international legal systems
“The reason I’m reading this,” she told the meeting, “is because it cites that the Federal Government needs to recognize tribal law.”
“Specifically with my tribe, the Navajo nation, we have a law against the transport of radioactive materials through our lands.
“So, if this transport should occur, it’s directly violating our tribe’s laws that were put in place because of all the history and the health impacts of the horrendous things that the United States did, not just going back to the genocide of our people but more recently, the exploitation of uranium on our lands.
“And so we have a law against uranium mining and we have a law against transport because we’ve already suffered the impacts from these industries for United States imperialism and capitalism. And so that did not benefit our people. We wrote these laws for the protection of our future generations, however, they are not being respected here.”
Based on indigenous historical experience, it would be a pleasant surprise if such legal provisions were ruled to be within the scope of the NRC’s consideration of the Eddy-Lea/Holtec license application for their proposed project.
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
The Eddy-Lea Alliance Project’s point man and lead salesman is John Heaton, a former member of the NM state legislature and current Chairman of the Alliance.
The Alliance is a limited liability corporation made up of 8 people appointed by the Councils of Hobbs, Lea, Eddy and Carlsbad counties. According to its promotional material it was “Formed Under the Local Economic Development Act (LEDA) for Economic Development Purposes in 2006 & to Respond to Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Proposal from DOE.”
Heaton qualifies as what Eric Hoffer called a ‘True Believer’ in his 1951 best seller of that title. Heaton’s energetic sales-pitch is persuasive… at least to the uninformed.
As Heaton tells it, seeing opportunity in a recommendation by Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’ Nuclear Future for creation of ‘consent-based’ Centralized Interim Storage sites around the country, the Alliance believed it had secured what Heaton calls ‘an ideal site.’ It’s located 35 miles outside the town of Hobbs, and about equidistant from the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) outside Carlsbad.
Although ‘consent-based siting’ was recommended by Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission, the DOE has not finalized rules for how a state or community gives or denies consent. Already some cities have forced construction of highway bypasses around their metropolitan jurisdictions.
New Mexico’s ‘High Nuclear IQ’ vs. ‘Fear Mongering’
Heaton describes the proposed Eddy-Lea site as ‘dry’ and ‘seismically stable.’ In addition he says, because of all the existing neighboring facilities in Nuclear Alley, “we have what I call an area of the country with a very high nuclear IQ. The local population understands nuclear materials,” he claims, “and know they can now be handled competently.”
“This is deja vu for us,” an irritated Heaton told the NRC in its Hobbs meeting. “We went through this same thing with WIPP. We went through all the fear mongering. WIPP has shipped more than 12,000 shipments and traveled over 14 million miles. That’s like going to the moon and back 28 times, without a serious accident and absolutely no release.”
However, there are many members of that regional ‘high nuclear IQ population’ Heaton refers to who also remember that – touted as the country’s flagship deep geological nuclear waste repository, designed to remain secure for ten thousand years – WIPP suffered an explosion and release of plutonium in 2014, after a mere15 years of operation.
An ‘Ideal Site’ for Holtec
Having secured their ‘ideal site,’ the Alliance issued an RFP to potential contractors and chose Holtec. “Because,” Heaton says, “they are a great company with a fabulous record [and] have the best, safest, most secure system in the world.”
Joy Russell is a Holtec Vice President and nuclear engineer who is proud, she told us, of being both a West Point graduate and a co-designer of the Holtec transport cask modeled by the scaled-down inflatable replica being toured around the state by opponents as the growing Halt Holtec campaign gathers momentum.
She boasts that her company has been in the radioactive waste storage business for over 30 years, and that “sixty per cent of nuclear plants in the U.S. use Holtec dry storage equipment.”
“We have an impeccable safety record,” Russell told an NRC community meeting in Roswell, NM. “None of our equipment has ever experienced a safety issue, ‘leak,’ as you so call it.
But, I would like to point out,” she told the Roswell auditorium – packed 5-1 with opponents of the proposed project – in a tone dripping with ill-concealed condescension, “spent nuclear fuel is not a liquid, it can’t ‘leak’.”
Opponents cite a number of disquieting facts, which call Heaton and Russell’s confident public relations assertions into question.
Halt Holtec!
A group of New Mexico and Texas organizations, including the Nuclear Waste Study Group, the SEEDS Coalition, and Alliance For Environmental Strategies, started a ‘Halt Holtec’ campaign. They toured an inflated, scaled-down model of the kind of transport cask proposed by Holtec that would carry thousands of shipments of highly radioactive waste shipments through the nation’s towns and metropolitan areas on dilapidated highways, bridges and railway lines for the next 20 years or more.
One significant result of their campaign is that on Monday, May 21, the Albuquerque City Council, in a 4-3 vote, approved what it called a ‘memorial’ against the transportation of nuclear waste through the Albuquerque metropolitan area.
Similar measures by other municipalities and counties along the potential shipment routes around the country are in the works.
The Halt Holtec Campaign has quickly gathered strong momentum surprising both to its organizers, and the Holtec dump proponents, whose claim of ‘wide-spread regional public support’ has been totally debunked by the turnout in opposition to the project. Public statements have so far run 5-1 ‘against’ the proposed site in all five New Mexico NRC meetings.
At the recent series of NRC community meetings, this opposition was strong from a wide cross section of New Mexico and Texas demographic sectors, including Native American Tribes, growers, ranchers, the Jewish and Christian faith communities, and the powerful oil and gas fracking industry.
A regional leader of that booming industry is the Fasken Oil and Ranch company, which has been in business since 1913. Their representative, Jimmy Carlisle, explained his company’s position to the visiting NRC officials.
I work for Fasken Oil and Ranch based in Midland. We are an oil and gas company, but we also are a major landowner in the State of Texas.
We own some 200,000 net acres in the State of Texas. Our largest ranch is a 165,000 acre contiguous ranch just north and west of Midland.
The WCS site definitely comes into play in this discussion. The Holtec side, however, has the same issues … groundwater issues.
On our ranches [we depend on] everything we look at: we look at vegetation, we look at soil characteristics, we look at moisture in the soil, but the thing we watch the closest is the quantity and the quality of our groundwater.
Our company is the first one really in West Texas that made the determination to get off of use of fresh water in our drilling and fracking operations and we started recycling produced water and using brackish water as a result.
So we believe firmly that the freshwater issue is a major significance that has to be addressed.
Stressing that the State Engineer’s Office lacks definitive maps of the ground water aquifer locations in New Mexico, Carlisle told the NRC panel, “We’re not alone in this fight.”
Explaining that it had taken ‘less than two hours to get four letters of opposition from major landowners in West Texas, Carlisle concluded,
Groundwater, folks, is the lifeblood of the ranching business. If you don’t have groundwater you’d just own dirt. Think about that for a second.
The bottom line is we believe that this [Holtec] application and the WCS application need to be withdrawn.
A group letter from oil industry representatives to Holtec warned that Holtec and the Eddy-Lea Alliance would ‘need more money than God’ to compensate them if their project damaged the thriving drilling industry in the oil- and gas-rich Permian Basin, which is currently on pace to become the world’s most booming region of petroleum production.
“I don’t intend to let this thing run over us.”
Randy Prude, an influential county commissioner from Midland, Texas, told the Roswell NRC meeting that he had spent $2000 of his own money to fly Fasken representative Jimmy Carlisle and other opposition speakers to the event.
“I intend to organize all the ranchers and all the commissioner’s courts and everybody in all the governments in all this whole region,” Commissioner Prude went on.
I will tell you, I am an odd duck, I am a Republican — (Laughter) and this is not a Republican or a Democrat issue, this is an important issue to all of us….
I just cannot tell you the horror that could happen if we ever have an accident. And so I intend to organize all of our governments that are willing to listen….
I am going to get to all the ranchers and all the ranch oil men to contact their commissioners and their mayors and their representatives, house representatives, senators, and so forth, and I don’t intend to let this thing run over us.
The Permeable Permian
The contentions by dump proponents that the Eddy-Lea/Holtec site is ‘dry and seismically stable’ were repeatedly debunked by facts presented by opposing speakers.
Activists visiting the site, despite Heaton’s attempts to stop them, discovered clear signs that it contains a ‘playa,’ where seasonal rain water collects, feeding the ground water deposits and aquifer below.
The region’s most famous tourist attraction – the Carlsbad Cavern – was formed by such a subterranean body of water, the Capitan Reef Aquifer.
“It’s hard to think of a worse place to choose for placing an interim waste site,” consulting geologist Dr. Steve Schafersman told the meeting.
The area is surrounded by aquifers, some close, some far. The sediments and the sedimentary rock are porous and permeable. The thin barrier they claim is on the top is not sufficient. It’s just like the WCS site, which is really no better. So this is not a good place to put a hazardous waste site, especially one for nuclear waste.
There are soluble rocks below the site, limestone and rock salt. There is karst limestone in the area, which is a soluble limestone that develops caverns, the caverns collapse and sinkholes develop.
It is conceivable that a sinkhole would collapse and take down the depository with it, which would be a terrible, colossal tragedy. In addition there is the soluble Salado formation below that.
In West Texas unplugged wells carry fluids to this formation, the salt dissolves, and sinkholes develop. This is a matter of fact.
An Earth-Shaking Announcement of Seismic Significance
Several of the opposition speakers referred to a recently-published, peer-reviewed study in the March 16, 2018 issue of Nature, with the catchy title, ‘Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.’
The study by Southern Methodist University geophysicists Jin-Woo Kim and Zhong Lu reported literally earth-shaking findings.
It showed that, in the last two and a half years, large sections of the four Texas counties they studied, spanning a 4000-square-mile area, had shown ‘vertical deformation,’ that is, sunk or uplifted as much as 40 centimeters or nearly 16 inches.
“The ground movement we’re seeing is not normal. The ground doesn’t typically do this without some cause,” said co-author Zhong Lu, a recognized global expert in satellite radar imagery research.
“These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water,” Lu declared.
Co-author Jin-Woo Kim notes that, “This region of Texas has been punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s and our findings associate that activity with ground movement.”
In fracking, liquid is injected into bore holes under pressure, then extracted, causing uplift while the wells are in operation, and subsidence when they are abandoned.
The researchers’ Nature article states,
… the rapid subsidence is likely induced by the freshwater impoundments from the nearby abandoned wells. During our field trip, we observed numerous recent ground fissures…. These growing fissures can allow the rainwater to swiftly flow down to the Salado formation and promote the dissolution of the salt layers. [ Thus causing subsidence. ]
Although their analysis focused on just that one 4000-square-mile area, Kim says, “We’re fairly certain that when we look further, and we are, that we’ll find there’s ground movement even beyond that.”
The area they’ve studied so far lies just adjacent to the two proposed storage sites in New Mexico and Texas.
The Oil Drilling and Fracking Connection – Oil & Nuclear Waste Don’t Mix
Evidence of the links between oil and gas extraction and earth movement are clear. Researching an unprecedented swarm of earthquakes in Oklahoma and Texas, a 2016 Stanford University study published in Science found a direct connection between a quake series in Texas in 2012 and 2013, which included the largest on record, and the high volume injection of wastewater into oil and gas fracking wells that happened between 2005 and 2007. The high pressure forced water into fault zones and triggered the subsequent quakes, the study showed. Read more
One of the people Commissioner Randy Prude flew in to speak at the Roswell meeting was Cody Rogers. “I am an ex-Navy nuke,” he told the NRC. “I have operated nuclear reactors for eight years. I am a huge proponent of nuclear power. I think we need it. We have 99 operating nuclear reactors. We do not have anywhere to dispose of the spent fuel. This is a major, major problem and we have to fix it.
“I know we need a site” Rogers told the group. But the Eddy-Lea/Holtec site, he said emphatically, “is not it.”
“We [the U.S.] are on the cusp of being the world’s largest energy producer, okay. We are going to control oil very soon. We are going to control our own destiny. So West Texas is one of the most valuable places in the world right now, especially in the United States, and, because of this I implore you to look up the study from SMU. West Texas is sinking… fast!
“I know we need a site. This is not it. If this thing sinks and we get something like the WIPP accident, that was never supposed to happen, the environmental impact is forever, and if we lose West Texas oil, natural gas, the people of Roswell, the people of New Mexico, the people of Texas, the United States, we’re done.
”We’re not going back to Saudi Arabia and getting their oil. We need independence and this site is sinking and I truly believe that we need to look at that and study its environmental impact.”
Reputations and Rap Sheets
Opponents stress that entrusting the economic and environmental future of this area to companies with corporate histories like those of Holtec and Waste Control Specialists is a highly risky proposition.
Growth Industry
With aging reactors closing down around the country in an accelerating cascade – and with no ‘national permanent geological repository’ for their accumulated SNF in sight – decommissioning and radwaste storage are on pace to become major growth industries for some time to come.
Holtec’s visionary head Dr. Krishna Singh is positioning his huge company, based in Camden, New Jersey, to dominate both industries, as well as to be a leader in the manufacture of small modular reactors (SMRs), the failing nuclear energy industry’s latest bid for survival.
Back in October 2010, based on the results of a criminal investigation of bribery, conducted by its Office of Inspector General (OIG), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) debarred Holtec International, Inc. for sixty days. And fined it $2 million.
Holtec agreed to pay a $2 million administrative fee and submit to independent monitoring of its operations for one year.The TVA Board’s Audit, Risk, and Regulation Committee and TVA management fully supported the OIG’s recommendation to create a suspension and debarment process and submit Holtec to that process. TVA’s Supply Chain organization and Office of General Counsel worked collaboratively with the OIG to achieve this milestone in TVA history. Why wasn’t the company permanently debarred? A subsequent Department of Justice document seems to suggest that a TVA employee may have been bribed by Holtec to falsify a financial disclosure report. Read more.
Meanwhile, just miles away on the other side of the state border in Texas, Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and its new French partner Orano each have their own checkered pasts.
WCS was founded in 1989 as a landfill company by Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who controlled it until his death in 2013. During that time, Simmons used his financial muscle and political connections to morph the site into a licensed low level waste dump with some highly questionable maneuvers.
His generous support for then Texas Governor, now Energy Secretary Rick Perry, no doubt eased his path. Critics allege that “Radioactive Rick” Perry appointees at key regulatory agencies bent rules on WCS’s behalf, including the Texas Water Development Board’s altering of maps showing that Simmons’ waste facility is located over part of the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies and supplies drinking and agricultural water for eight western bread basket states. Another water body, the Dockum Aquifer lies nearby as well. Many Texas environmental officials resigned in protest.
For its part, WCS’s new partner Orano, parent company of Orano USA, is a recent reincarnation of the radically reorganized French government-owned struggling reactor maker AREVA, after years of business losses brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.
These are the strange bedfellows hoping to profit from the nuclear energy industry’s decline by making New Mexico’s ‘nuclear alley’ America’s de facto radioactive waste repository for the foreseeable future.
There are several things wrong with this scenario, not the least of which, as noted, is that poor and minority residents make up a large portion of the population in and around ‘Nuclear Alley.’
Until and unless the existing Nuclear Waste Policy Act is changed by currently proposed, but not yet enacted legislation, licensing of these CIS sites will be illegal. This is because the Act requires that a permanent repository is approved before any consolidated interim storage site can be licensed.
If the NRC were to license the sites without a central repository being established, they would likely become in effect the national dump, because utilities would probably stop lobbying for – and lawmakers could be less inclined to authorize funding for – establishing a central repository.
If that happens, thousands of shipments of deadly radioactive waste will be moving daily along rail and truck transportation corridors, through our nation’s population centers, for decades to come.
A Shell Game of Nuclear Russian Roulette on Wheels
Eddy-Lea/Holtec project proponents are fond of citing the transport record claimed by the Navy, which proudly states that it has been shipping both new and used nuclear fuel cross-country by rail for over 60 years without mishap.
However the Navy admits that, “All shipments [are] classified (security) and invoke the Department of Transportation (DOT) National Security Exemption (49CFR173.7b).” It claims that 850 spent fuel containers have been safely shipped from March, 1957 to the present.
However, no radioactive labels and placards are ever used in these boxcar and flatcar shipments, and there is no advance notification given to authorities along the route, so reports of any incidents that may have occurred would also be classified – secret for ‘security reasons.’
Those 850 shipments over 6 decades are far fewer than the estimated 17,000 shipments it would take to move the projected 173,000 metric tons of radioactive SNF from US nuclear plants to the Eddy-Lea/Holtec site across the entire lower 48 states in the coming years.
Government documents show that other details of Navy shipping methods make them significantly different than those anticipated for the Shimkus Bill’s proposed nation-wide rail, highway and barge transport network:
+ Transport has been along only one specific rail route;
+ The Navy uses a different containment system than the Holtec transport cask;
+ Each Navy transport cask holds just 1/10th of what is planned for each Holtec spent fuel canister.
Itemizing Nuclear Transport Risks
Kevin Kamps from the Washington DC-based group Beyond Nuclear traveled to New Mexico to show his organization’s solidarity with the Halt Holtec movement and to share knowledge gained from a professional life spent campaigning for nuclear safety.
His hand-out list of the documented high risks involved in transporting highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, whether by train, truck, or barge, on rails, roads, or waterways included “high-speed crashes into immovable objects, like bridge abutments, or high-temperature long-duration fires, or long-duration underwater submergence.”
“Intentional attacks,” he warned, “such as by anti-tank missiles or shaped charges, could also breach shipping containers and release their contents into the environment.”
Since Holtec has claimed in its license application that any and all NRC certified canisters can be accommodated at this facility, Kamps explained, not only rail-sized shipping containers must be worried about, but also legal weight limits for the truck casks which would travel on interstate highways throughout the country.
“X-Ray Machines that can’t be Turned Off”
Contrary to Holtec VP Joy Russell’s reassurance that, since spent fuel shipments aren’t liquid, “they can’t leak,” all shipments would emit dangerous gamma and neutron radiation for several yards in every direction, dissipating with distance. Because of the large expense and added weight necessary to provide shielding against these gamma and neutron emissions, the NRC has set ‘allowable’ limits.
“But,” Kamps reminded the meeting, “Allowable does not mean safe. Any exposure to ionizing radioactivity carries a health risk, and these risks accumulate over a lifetime.”
According to NRC guidelines, at six feet away from the container’s exterior surface, a dose rate of 10 millirem per hour is allowed – about one to two chest x-rays’ worth per hour.
At the exterior surface of the container, the allowable dose rate increases dramatically to 200 millirem per hour. That’s 20 to 40 chest x-rays’ worth.
But workers, such as truck drivers, locomotive engineers, inspectors, security guards, and the like, who come in very close physical proximity into the shipping container would be exposed to the highest radiation dose rates.
Even innocent passersby and bystanders in the general public would also be exposed, including those who live close to transport routes exposed to large numbers of shipments going by over time.
Some people, Kamps noted, such as pregnant women, should not be exposed to any radiation dose that can be avoided due to the high risk of harm caused to the fetus in the womb.
He reported that the state of Nevada, based on federal government data, has documented 49 incidents of accidental surface contamination on these highly radioactive waste shipments between the years of 1949 and 1996.
And in France, Areva Corporation has had many hundreds of externally contaminated shipments, a full one-quarter to one-third of all shipments bound for the La Hague reprocessing facility. On average, these French contamination incidents emitted 500 times the allowable radiation dose rates. One even emitted 3,300 times the allowable dose rate.
De Facto National Dump in Disguise?
But, perhaps the greatest danger to be considered by New Mexicans, Kamps, warned, is the “question of temporary versus permanent.”
This is the danger, Kemps says, of so-called centralized or consolidated interim storage facilities becoming actually de facto permanent surface storage parking lot dumps.
Holtec-ELEA have applied for a permit to NRC to store irradiated nuclear fuel here for 40 years. But this time period could, as they admit, be extended to 120 years.
But, Kamps’ research shows that, on page 12 of a January 27th, 2017 report that Holtec prepared and submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Andrew Griffith over company Vice President Joy Russell’s signature, Holtec’s response to the DOE request for proposal on centralized interim storage, stated that “the CIS should have a minimum service life of 300 years.”
“How can 40 years be called temporary, let alone 300?” Kemps asked the gathering. “That’s longer than the United States has been a country.”
“So, just to end with some political reality,” he said, “If this waste comes out here, it would turn out to be one New Mexico member of the United States House of Representatives versus 434 others for it to ever move again. And in the U.S. Senate it would be a vote of 98 against 2.”
“So,” Kemps concluded, “folks had better think about this deeply before it’s allowed to come out here.”
‘Chernobyl in a Can’
Expanding on the theme of transportation risks, EON producer, Mary Beth Brangan pointed out that “Every one of these canisters that would be coming would contain roughly as much cesium alone, as was released in the Chernobyl accident. Every canister. […]
“My partner and I are here,” Brangan told the meeting, “because we’re very, very concerned about this. And I want to assure you there are other Californians who do not want to send their radioactive waste here.
“We don’t want to do that for a great many reasons but the first one is its environmental racism, and we really object to the concept of putting anymore of the burden of the nation’s radioactivity on your communities,” she said to appreciative applause.
We were not the only concerned Californians who came to the NRC’s New Mexico scoping meetings to say, “We don’t want our radioactive waste dumped on you.”
Another was Southern California urban planner and community organizer Torgen Johnson, whose efforts helped shut down San Onofre’s reactors. He flew in to the Albuquerquemeeting to show support for the Halt Holtec Campaign and network with regional organizers.
“The New Mexico people hammered Holtec and the NRC,” he reported. “They didn’t need our help, but they welcomed our solidarity. It was so great and encouraging to hear these well-informed, passionate and articulate people expressing the same concerns we have at the other end of the potential rail line.”
Johnson says he heard testimonies from down-winders of the 1945 Trinity test with long, tragic family histories of cancer and health impacts. Being among them, he says, deepened his understanding of the human rights, social justice and environmental issues at stake, and his commitment to continued public education about them.
What impressed him, he says, is the realization of the “Link between the low income, red and brown people in New Mexico and wealthy white people in Southern California – both being victimized by the plans and decisions of Holtec and the NRC.”
“Its a representative cross-section of America” he says, “united against the onslaught of the nuclear waste disposal industry.”
Sharon and Ace Hoffman, whose efforts had also contributed to the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant, attended several of the meetings to share their experience and voice their solidarity with the Halt Holtec movement.
“We are very happy that San Onofre is closed,” Sharon Hoffman said. “It is a really bad place for the waste. But that doesn’t mean that we solve the problem by moving it to a different place. We have to look at the transportation. We are talking about moving the most dangerous stuff on the planet all over the country. And if we moved it all today, we would have more tomorrow.
“So the real question here is, when are we going to shut down all these plants and stop making more waste? That’s really the problem.
“This is a beautiful place,“ she concluded. “And it might be contaminated forever. This is not something that you want to take on for the rest of the country. Yes, you can help the rest of the country. You can say, stop making this, and then let’s figure out together the best thing to do with what is left.”
“I am a stakeholder,” Ace Hoffman told the assembly. “I am from Carlsbad. Not Carlsbad, New Mexico; Carlsbad, California, which is about 15 miles as the crow flies, or the plutonium flies, from San Onofre. So it was very important to me that we do something about this waste.”
Based on his experience of the NRC’s actions during the controversy about shutting down San Onofre, Hoffman warned his New Mexico counterparts, “don’t expect anyone to be telling you the truth about what is possible or what is going to happen. And I strongly advise — even though I would love to get rid of the waste, and I would love to find a sucker that will take it — don’t be that sucker.”
From the Mouths of Babes…
But it was the little daughter of artist and prominent Halt Holtec campaigner Noel Marquez who perhaps best summarized New Mexico’s majority view that emerged from the 5 meetings held around the state on the Elea-Holtec proposed dump site.
When the moderator, Chip Cameron offered to hold the mike for her, she responded, “I can hold it myself. Thank you.”
Handling the mike with confident ease, she continued, “My name is Pakeia Marquez and I am 11 years old. I’m here on behalf of unborn kids and born kids like me. I think this whole situation is very important because it affects everything and everybody. It affects the plants and wildlife around here.
“I have recently been writing an essay about ecosystems. I read that ecosystems can be very easily poisoned through water, air, and soil. Water, if all this radiation leaks into the water, everything that’s living needs water. It’s going to suck up all of that, and it’s going to get poisoned. Who is going to, like, you know, reimburse us for it?
“You may think you might be solving a problem, but really you’re just creating more problems to solve, and they might just be forever, and you might just not be able to solve them.
“Please remember that I cannot vote,” she told the NRC officials. “So please do vote against this horrible mistake. Thank you.”
The applause was loud and long as Pakeia Marquez made her way back to her seat.
Nearly every day, we are bombarded with “news” about problems in Venezuela. And certainly, there are problems, such as food and medicine shortages and skyrocketing inflation. But there is something that is downplayed.
What the press downplays, if it mentions it at all, is the very real and significant ways that US sanctions have contributed to these problems facing Venezuela and how these sanctions are making it nearly impossible for Venezuela to solve these problems.
What the press also fails to mention is the even greater humanitarian issues confronting Venezuela’s next-door neighbor, Colombia – the US’ number one ally in the region and, quite bizarrely, the newest “global partner” of NATO from Latin America. And, the US is very much responsible for these issues as well, but in quite different ways.
The fact is that, by a number of measures, Colombia has one of the worst human rights situations on earth, but you would never know this from watching the nightly news.
In addition, Colombia has one of the largest internally displaced populations on earth at well over 7 million – second only to Syria. And, a disproportionate number of these internally displaced are indigenous and Afro-descendants.
Moreover, Colombia ranks 5th in the world for the number of children internally displaced by conflict, with two million boys and girls internally displaced. Quite shockingly, Colombia ranks 3rd in the world for the number of children murdered, with 715 children murdered just last year. Such statistics have led Save The Children to conclude that Colombia is “one of the worst countries to be a child and adolescent in the world.”
Colombia is also one of the worst countries in the world to be a social leader, such as a human rights defender, union leader, indigenous or Afro-Colombian leader. Thus, even after the signing of a peace deal between the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas in 2016, social leaders are being murdered at an alarming rate. Indeed, over 200 social leaders have been killed just since January of 2017. Last year was in fact the worst year on record for human rights defenders in Colombia, with 120 killed in 2017.
Of course, the US has a large responsibility to bear for this awful situation in Colombia, as it has been the intellectual author behind Colombia’s brutal, decades-long war against its own people and has provided billions of dollars of material aid to this war effort. Indeed, since 2000, the US has given Colombia $10 billion in mostly military assistance as part of its counter-insurgency program known as ‘Plan Colombia.’ During the Plan Colombia years, the Colombian military attempted to boost US military assistance by murdering civilians in cold blood and passing them off as left-wing guerillas. It is now believed that the military killed 10,000 civilians in this grisly “false positive” operation.
But the US is also behind an even darker force than the Colombian military – that is, the Colombian paramilitary death squads. While those who live in the more remote parts of Colombia are painfully aware of the paramilitaries’ presence and brutality, the paramilitaries are now a well-kept secret in the more well-to-do parts of Colombia’s big cities and even more so outside of Colombia. Indeed, the Colombian and US governments deny the very existence of these paramilitary groups, and the compliant press is happy to oblige in keeping this dirty secret.
Recently, Colombia’s most prominent human rights defender, Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., spoke about the paramilitary phenomenon of which he is an expert. As he explains, “There are clandestine or semi-clandestine arms of the State, which are the paramilitary groups. Today, it is not tolerated that you refer to them as such, but I still call them paramilitaries, because that is the appropriate term.”
Father Giraldo describes the origin of the paramilitary death squads, a force developed by the United States before the left-wing guerrillas even came into existence in 1964. As Father Giraldo explains:
“In 1962, when Guillermo León Valencia was president, a mission of the North American army, of a special school of war in North Carolina, created after the Second World War to maintain the security of the United States, arrived in Colombia… They analyzed the situation in Colombia and left secret instructions, ordering the Colombian government to begin training mixed groups of civilians and the military, and preparing them for paramilitary terrorist activities to combat the sympathizers of communism.”
“… President Valencia, on Christmas day of the year 1965, issued Decree 3398 with which he changed the name of the Ministry of War to [the Ministry of] Defense, and authorized forming groups of civilians as auxiliaries of the armed forces, the legal basis of paramilitarism.”
“… The United States began to direct the entire security apparatus in Colombia and its agencies… first with 400 officers of the US Army; today there are at least 800. The paramilitarism that was created at that time, with all the legal support, has been reaffirmed.”
Of course, as Father Giraldo has explained on numerous occasions, the ostensible “sympathizers of communism” targeted by the paramilitaries are trade union leaders, human rights defenders, peasant leaders, and Catholic priests who advocate on behalf of the poor. As for Catholic priests, over 80 have been murdered since 1984 for the crime of advocating on behalf of the poor.
It is now becoming more evident than ever from the fact that there is now a rise in the murder of such social leaders, as well as mass forced displacement, after the disarming of the FARC guerrillas, that it, is the paramilitaries which are responsible for the lion’s share of such human rights abuses in Colombia. But again, you would have no idea about this from reading the newspapers or watching the nightly news. And, Colombians who are suffering at the hands of the paramilitaries are painfully aware of the conspiracy of silence around this issue.
Indeed, when I was recently in Colombia for the first round of the presidential elections, our delegation met with a number of residents of the small town of Suarez (Cauca Department) which had just lost three members of their community to paramilitary violence. One of the members of the community desperately asked us, “what can we do to let the world know of the continued existence of the paramilitaries?” I answered that we have been trying to do just that for many years, though few will hear us out on this issue.
While we were in Colombia, a campaign coordinator for Gustavo Petro, a Colombian presidential candidate, was murdered by paramilitaries the day before the election, and the paramilitary group known as ‘Aguilas Negras’ (Black Eagles) issued a general threat against the supporters of Petro for president just a few days before the May 27 vote.
If Colombia’s very real human rights and humanitarian crises were given nearly the attention that the problems in neighboring Venezuela receives, the US and Colombian government would at least have some incentive to improve the situation in Colombia and to go after the paramilitary groups which continue to haunt that country. The near complete silence about the staggering violence in Colombia is critical in allowing that violence to continue. Indeed, the paramilitaries have always depended upon being able to operate in the shadows, and the US press is more than happy to oblige them in this effort.
Dan Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is the author of ‘The Plot to Attack Iran.’
… At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.
Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you. … Read full article
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 