Barack Obama’s Great Tower of Nothing: Gentrification on a Presidential Level
Photo Source Jason Scragz | CC BY 2.0
By Hugh Iglarsh | CounterPunch | November 2, 2018
In Chicago, a low but persistent rumbling is heard these days, especially on the South Side. It is Frederick Law Olmsted, America’s greatest landscape architect and the planner of what would become the city’s Jackson Park, turning in his grave and muttering Victorian imprecations against Barack Obama and his eponymous foundation.
Why? Before we get to that, let’s see what Olmsted wrote back in 1871 (the year of the Great Chicago Fire), when Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and other southern lakefront precincts – what would now be classified as inner-city neighborhoods – were still remote, barely settled suburbs of a fast-growing city:
There is but one object of scenery near Chicago of special grandeur or sublimity, and that, the lake, can be made by artificial means no more grand or sublime. By no practical elevation of artificial hills, that is to say, would the impression of the observer in overlooking it be made more profound. The lake may, indeed, be accepted as fully compensating for the absence of sublime or picturesque elevations of land.
There are three elements of scenery however, which must be regarded as indispensable to a fine park to be formed on your site, the first being turf, the second foliage, the third still water. For each of these you are bound, at the outset, to make the best of your opportunities, because if you do not, posterity will be likely to lay waste to what you have done, in order to prepare something better.
Prophetic words. The Obama Foundation, together with city government and the University of Chicago, is now indeed laying waste to one of Olmsted’s major urban landscaping accomplishments, and not in order to replace it with something better.
If Obama, the U. of C. and City Hall have their way, a large chunk – two square blocks, to be exact – of Jackson Park, one of the jewels of Chicago’s 19th century park and boulevard system, will be repurposed, denuded and rendered unrecognizable. If the deal goes through as planned, the private and unaccountable Obama Foundation will be allowed to lease 19.3 acres of prime lakefront land forever for the grand total of one dollar. This stolen public space will house the Obama non-Library, formally dubbed the Obama Presidential Center. (Breaking news: On Wednesday, the Chicago City Council unanimously approved the deal transferring control of the parkland to the Obama Foundation and committing the city to costly “road and pedestrian improvements.” The foundation plans to break ground in 2019, pending federal approval and resolution of lawsuits filed by park protectors, as described below.)
The centerpiece of the OPC, hereafter referred to as the Great Tower of Nothing, is a 235-high foot high structure (that’s 50 feet taller than Rockefeller Chapel, the reigning monument to money and ego in Hyde Park) that is as cold and ugly as avarice itself. Although originally marketed as a presidential archive, the huge and handsomely endowed OPC will house no papers or artifacts of the Obama administration and, for reasons not fully elucidated, will have no connection to the National Archives and Records Administration. The actual presidential papers will be stored, at least temporarily, in an abandoned furniture store in a distant and uninviting suburb of Chicago, which apparently will not be open to the public.
The bunker-like edifice, towering over a newly enlarged golf course, will instead serve the Obama Foundation as “an ongoing project where we will shape, together, what it means to be a good citizen in the 21stcentury.” It is becoming abundantly clear that in the Age of Trump, useful citizenship training will center on theory and practice of civil disobedience and mass resistance. But this is not the sort of “ongoing project” the Obama Foundation seems to have in mind. There is talk about “cultivating the next generation of leaders,” which suggests a long-term goal of using corporate largesse to churn out more triangulating Wall Street Democrats in the Clinton-Obama mold. To skeptics, it is not readily apparent how this content-free non-library, really just a big clubhouse sheltering the vaguely purposed foundation and fundraising apparatus of an ex-president who rarely speaks up on public issues, will secure our rights and liberties in an era of encroaching fascism.
Aware perhaps of the project’s political and historical irrelevance, the Obama Foundation insists that the Great Tower of Nothing will bring new life and energy to a comatose neighborhood. The OPC be a “new landmark for the Southside and an economic engine for the city of Chicago, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, creating thousands of jobs – and will help to continue the revitalization of historic Jackson Park.”
These claims are typical pie-in-the-sky developer talk. Yes, the Obama un-library may well turn out to be an engine of development, but not in a way that will benefit the 99 percent. Quite the contrary, as we will see. And as for redeveloping Jackson Park: “No matter how they describe it, they’re taking away parkland,” says the redoubtable Herb Caplan, whose tiny Protect Our Parks group is suing to stop construction of the project, charging that it’s an “institutional bait-and-switch” designed to privatize the commons. This sets a terrible precedent for Chicago’s public lakefront, which by a city mandate going way back to 1836 is pledged “to remain forever open, clear and free of any buildings, or other obstruction whatever.”
So what is the underlying purpose of this over-scaled, oddly empty complex, which may end up costing as much as $1.5 billion to build and endow, all to convert a rare spot of green in an under-parked city into yet another heavily trafficked, highly paved, tightly controlled space? I think it’s pretty clear, if you look at the players, history and trends. It’s all about gentrification, i.e., ethnic cleansing, which is already taking place in Chicago at a pace never before seen.
I contend that the plutocrat-funded Obama Foundation and Presidential Center play the same role in the long-term transformation of the city’s southern lakefront that the Obama presidency did in American politics: that of putting a faux-progressive smiley face on the ugly underlying realities of institutionalized inequality, capitalist skullduggery and white privilege. As others have noted, this white elephant on the lake is actually a Trojan horse, using understandable but misplaced racial pride and identity politics and a fuzzy do-gooder mission statement to mask a real estate scheme that is all about neighborhood flipping and displacement of the poor.
A little historical context will help clarify things. In 1980 – about when Harold Washington was contemplating his historic mayoral run – Chicago’s black population peaked at nearly 1.2 million. The Urban Institute estimates that by 2030, that number will drop to 665,000 – an astonishing 45 percent decline over 50 years. According to journalist and researcher Alden Loury, “The restrictive covenants, red lining and white flight of yesterday have been replaced by stiff resistance to affordable housing, high-cost housing that effectively prices out some people of color, and disinvestment in communities of color regardless of their economic heft.” The result is that the 20thcentury’s Great Migration of African-Americans from the South has become the 21stcentury’s Great Exodus from Chicago, a shift in direction driven by the same virulent, undying racism.
The University of Chicago, which engineered the Jackson Park non-library bid, is the institutional driving force of the Great Tower of Nothing. The University, which used federal urban renewal (or as James Baldwin liked to say, “Negro removal”) funds to boot thousands of mostly minority families out of Hyde Park and nearby Kenwood during the 1960s, no doubt sees the Jackson Park complex as an outpost of its own campus, projecting its identity southward and creating a larger buffer zone for its intensively policed, bubble-like neighborhood. It also serves to reinforce the university’s deep and marketable connection to the Obamas (Barack taught at the law school; Michelle had an executive position at the medical school) and to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party they personify. But there is more at stake here: Since the OPC project was launched, the U. of C. has announced its intentions of building a 1,200-bed student housing complex nearby, as well as a “boutique hotel.” These ventures would be an unthinkable risk for the cautious institution were it not for the billionaire-funded and city-subsidized boondoggle anchoring the site.
It’s all about property values, tax revenues and “desirable” demographics. Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s one-time chief of staff and currently Chicago’s notorious Mayor One Percent, speaks no other language. But what does Obama, Rahm’s old boss and staunch friend, say about all this?
At a community meeting this past winter, Obama commented: “We’ve got such a long way to go in terms of economic development before you’re even going to start seeing the prospect of significant gentrification. Malia’s kids might have to worry about that.”
If you can get past the dripping condescension of that remark, you encounter its Trump-like disingenuousness. Gentrification has long since begun oozing south of the Midway, the wide boulevard that once formed the university’s southern border. Woodlawn, south of Hyde Park, was declared the third hottest neighborhood in the nation for the first half of 2017, with median housing values rising 18% in that time, according to the City Lab website.
If it wished to, the Obama Foundation could make a strong statement regarding the evils of gentrification and displacement. But that’s not what the Foundation is about.
What it is about is raising money, great gobs of cash, principally by tapping the obscenely rich. In 2017, the Obama Foundation solicited no less than $232.6 million. Million-dollar donations have come from such checkered sources as financier Ken Griffin (Illinois’ richest man, who also gave $20 million to the campaign of Bruce Rauner, the state’s reactionary Republican governor), Goldman Sachs, Bill Gates and George Lucas – whose own attempt to blot the lakefront with a monument to self only recently went down to defeat, as I hope this one does too.
Why the super-wealthy are so eager to contribute to a paper-free “library” and artifact-free “museum” in a part of Chicago they are unlikely to visit is a question that invites speculation. One possible answer is that Obama is redeeming his chits from eight years of meritorious service to the ruling class, including his unstinting if unsuccessful devotion to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an arrangement that would have transferred huge amounts of what was once quaintly known as national sovereignty to our transnational corporate overlords. It was just about the only piece of legislation that Obama was willing to get on the mat and fight for. No wonder he’s expecting and receiving concrete manifestations of gratitude, especially from the tycoons who went unindicted and fully bonused-up after the 2008 meltdown, winding up bigger and stronger and more arrogant than ever.
What we do know is what the oligarchs paying the bills don’t want or like. This includes attacks on the economic and political forces of gentrification, which they view as progress, or advocacy for affordable housing, or acknowledgment of systemic inequality and injustice, or demands for radical change on behalf of – among others – the many poor and disenfranchised people on the South Side. This fundamental class bias – this need to be, as the professional fundraisers say, “donor-friendly” – explains the most puzzling gaffe so far by the Obama Foundation: its failure to negotiate a community benefits agreement with local organizations, which would increase consultation with neighbors and ensure that at least some needs are met and some fears allayed. This is one of the project’s multiple ironies: that Barack Obama, the one-time South Side community organizer, is now thwarting a South Side community from empowering itself and taking part in decisions that will affect it for generations. No longer needing the community’s votes, Obama plays the paternalistic benefactor, giving the neighborhood what he and his rich friends and expert staff know it really needs, and who cares what the non-degreed riff-raff think.
If billionaires want to throw their money away on a gold-plated cultural non-asset like the Obama Presidential Center, who am I to say nay? It is, after all, a free country, especially for those who own it. But let the fat cats put the non-library where, if it can’t do actual good, it will at least do less harm. There are hundreds and thousands of empty lots on the South and West Sides of Chicago, places where construction of any kind would be a plus, bringing some measure of hope and attention to depleted and forgotten neighborhoods. Jackson Park is literally the worst possible location for job creation, despite the Foundation’s claims. There can be no spin-off construction on what technically remains public parkland, no next-door retail or restaurants or residences. Yes, there will be some jobs attached, but they will be classic examples of what author David Graeber terms “bullshit jobs,” PR and legal and security and administrative sinecures that are at best unnecessary and at worst pernicious and/or absurd: e.g., well-paid fundraisers raising funds to hire more fundraisers to raise more funds, ad infinitum. The Obama Foundation and other Establishment-blessed philanthropies of its type are expressly designed to manufacture a certain kind of liberal bullshit. By turning stark social and economic conflicts into fundable, non-threatening “programming,” they lubricate the squeaky gears of the social order rather than confronting its stubborn contradictions. The astronomical salaries paid to Obama Foundation leadership – in 2017, the executive director and CEO earned a combined $1.48 million – suggest that the organization is unlikely to pit itself against the capitalist inequities that shred the social fabric and are the bottom line in the South Side’s racialized poverty equation.
I earlier described the Obama Foundation’s Jackson Park follies as a Trojan horse, but perhaps Potemkin village is the better metaphor. The proposed complex is a spectacle that symbolizes community life and culture and memory and scholarship and public purpose without actually containing anything of historical value – just as the Obama administration symbolized progressive politics and racial advancement, concealing its chronic and self-neutering passivity, dead-centrist philosophy and unquestioned allegiance to the powers that be behind a façade of faux-populist rhetoric and wispy good intentions.
Chicago doesn’t need this hollow monument to gentrification, elitism and privatization on its lakefront. We as a nation don’t need more crumbs from the tables of the billionaires who choke and starve us, or more tainted foundation dollars turning angry activists into tame “social entrepreneurs.”
What we do need is tough, radical, grassroots democracy – which is to say, the community itself, and not self-appointed champions with their own agenda, taking on the strategic neglect and cancerous disinvestment that constitute slow-motion ethnic cleansing. In the unlikely event that Barack Obama really wants to make life better for all on the South Side of Chicago, he will need to come down from his sky-scraping glass and concrete fortress and join those on the ground, listening to what they say. If Obama could do that, which at this point he cannot, he might come to the sobering conclusion that his world is not their world, his friends are not their friends, and his hopes and dreams, as embodied in his fraudulent and destructive non-library, are built on their despair.
Hugh Iglarsh is a Chicago-based writer and editor who loves libraries and museums, but not fake ones. This essay began as a soapbox rant he gave at the annual Bughouse Square Debates, sponsored by the Newberry Library. He can be reached at hiiglarsh@hotmail.com.
A Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela? A Case Study into NGO Mercy Corps
By Nina Cross | Venezuelanalysis | October 31, 2018
Following a sharp increase in Venezuelan migration since 2015, the corporate mainstream media, alongside the governments of the US, EU and Colombia, is aggressively pushing the narrative of a “humanitarian crisis,” at the same time that Western NGOs flock to set up shop along the Colombian border.
But what if NGOs are being used to influence how the movement of people from Venezuela into Colombia is being shaped and reported, and what’s more, if they are directly benefiting from this situation? To explore the idea, we focus on one such NGO, US-based Mercy Corps, which recently announced an expansion of its operations on the Colombo-Venezuelan border.
Mercy Corps’s budget for global operations, on the order of US $500 million (according to its 2017 annual report), includes funding from US and EU government agencies. Its financiers have included the UK’s International Department of Development, which has regularly sent aid via Mercy Corps to rebel-held areas in Syria. Other funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.
In March 2018, Mercy Corps carried out a “rapid needs assessment” (RNA) of Venezuelan migrants arriving at two main points along the Colombian border. The information gathered was used to “demonstrate” the dangers involved during and after crossings from Venezuela, and the reasons for leaving the country. It is in response to this second question that the people interviewed by Mercy Corps all say the same thing: they are migrating due to an economic crisis in Venezuela, which is linked to hyperinflation.
Independent UN experts, as well as other commentators, have shown on many occasions that the causes of this economic crisis have been significantly exacerbated by the economic sanctions imposed for years upon Venezuela by the US, as well as clarifying that the crisis in Venezuela is economic, not humanitarian. Even US State Secretary Mike Pompeo recently admitted that the sanctions “sometimes have an adverse impact on the people of Venezuela.”
However, Mercy Corps is not concerned with narratives that expose US and EU complicity, and as such, its recommendations fail to include the most obvious point: end the sanctions and stop the hostility towards Venezuela as they are inflicting hardship on its population.
Instead, Mercy Corps’ RNA identified 3 basic needs to be met by the Colombian government: a path to legal entry into Colombia that did not involve passports, the legal right to work in Colombia with the same wages and protections as Colombians and access to shelter, food and water. It is on this third point which Mercy Corps looks to fish for substantial (tax-free) donations and financing from the Global North.
In April, the Colombian government agreed that migrants could register, without passports, at any of the 500-plus checkpoints it would set up along the border over a two month period, to end in June. The reason given was to see how many Venezuelans were entering Colombia. The checkpoints were spread along the 1,500 mile border. Any information supplied by migrants at the checkpoints would be retained by NGOs, not passed to government departments.
By August, the Colombian government agreed that nearly half a million Venezuelans could remain in Colombia for up to two years, look for employment and have access to basic services. The reason given for this change was to accommodate humanitarian needs.
This shift in policy was a reversal of the government’s ruling in February, when up to 3,000 Colombian soldiers were stationed along the border to check for passports. This tightening of rules was referred to as a “diplomatic closure” and the government claimed in a short time the number of migrants fell by 30%.
Yet within a few weeks Bogota U-turned its policy to allow the unhindered movement of Venezuelans, and NGOs such as Mercy Corps were conscripted to enable the process. The new policy of the Colombian government met exactly the needs identified by Mercy Corps, suggesting that the campaign for this migration was an international, organised effort.
In October of this year, Mercy Corps announced they are expanding their services on the border, including providing migrants with a debit card to purchase products. Yet, one out of every three Venezuelans attended by Mercy Corps did not see any improvements to their diet in the two weeks since arriving to Colombia, and 12 percent reported that it had worsened.
Since the Colombian government changed its policy, the number of people leaving Venezuela has increased, according to the Migration Policy Institute, an organisation affiliated to the EU.
As the exodus expands, the humanitarian needs of migrants grow more urgent.
Humanitarian crisis? Mercy Corps as a propaganda tool
The situation of Venezuelan migrants is now being called a “regional humanitarian crisis,” creating a picture of unimaginable catastrophe that needs external intervention.
This escalating crisis narrative of an expanding exodus is placing Venezuela under intense scrutiny. While punishing Venezuela with sanctions from the front, and promoting a migration crisis from behind, the EU and US, with the cooperation of Colombia, are attempting to box Venezuela into a more isolated and vulnerable position.
Colombia has enjoyed close ties with the EU, and soon after changing its policy on Venezuelan passports, it became a NATO partner, further cementing its EU and US dealings. This ballistic development means that the consequences of border conflict, fuelled by a recent movement of 5,000 extra troops to the Catatumbo border region, should be taken very seriously.
Meanwhile, Mercy Corps has consistently driven a narrative of a full-blown humanitarian crisis and rampant violence under President Maduro, including unfounded allegations of repression and torture. For instance, the NGO has made the unsubstantiated, hyperbolic claim on their website that “newborns in Syria have a better chance of survival than those born in Venezuela today,” wich clearly looks to stoke the fire.
Harnessing its “independent charity voice,” Mercy Corps is playing its part as a propaganda tool in vilifying the Venezuelan government, enabling its US and EU funders to continue their sanctions, which only worsen the economic hardship of average Venezuelans, the root cause for leaving their country, as explained in Mercy Corps’ own needs assessment. And whilst all this goes on, Mercy Corps gleefully rakes in ever greater funding so as to “attend” to the “humanitarian crisis” they, together with the mainstream media, have played a key role in manufacturing.
Political interference and profit from Mercy Corps
However, beyond playing a role in the international media war, Mercy Corps is intimately linked to the Washington policy-making establishment that has formulated the US policy of illegal, unilateral sanctions.
Mercy Corps is connected to the influential US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) through its CEO Neal Keny-Guyer, who declared earnings of $460,000 just for his Mercy Corps role in 2017. Apart from being a member of the CFR, he also serves as chairman for Interaction, the US’ largest alliance of NGOs and sitting on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragility, Violence and Conflict. The CFR, a virtual who’s who of America’s wealthiest and most powerful people, claims it “helps policymakers” on “international peace and stability,” whilst actually pushing Washington’s neoliberal agenda and interests around the world.
The president of the CFR is Richard Haass, Middle East advisor under George Bush, and advisor to Colin Powell under George W. Bush. On his 2016 election win, Donald Trump publicly considered Haass as an advisor.
The CFR president recently displayed his frustration that US-backed military coups and UN- sanctioned military intervention in Venezuela, all of which would create a further migratory exodus, were taken off the table, despite ongoing rumours from the White House, Bogota, and even Brasilia, that they may be be possible.
In February the CFR made a Preventive Action Plan which recommended more economic sanctions for Venezuela, and in May more US sanctions were imposed.
Whilst sanctions have helped create the conditions which drive people out of Venezuela, US government aid has flowed to NGOs in Colombia, to which Mercy Corps has taken its chunk.
Mercy Corps’ 2017 financial statement shows that the organization benefited from US $464,452,000 in governmental grants and private backing alone, only spending $139,876,000 in humanitarian relief and $46,699,000 in humanitarian recovery. Of this humanitarian relief, the vast majority was spent on the mysteriously entitled “subgrant” category, and only $21,753,000 on actual materials and supplies for migrants.
Aid and NGOs: Assets of US policymakers
The CFR also included an aid plan for Venezuela which called for State Department funding for the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration (PRM), an organisation which finances Mercy Corps.
In August, the US announced an aid plan at the United Nations Assembly General (UNGA), matching the plan set out by the CFR.
Additionally, in an April article the CFR also suggests “…bypassing the government, if enough aid is provided by the United States, the Lima Group, and the EU to enable people to bring some back into Venezuela.”
The CFR continues: “While not the ideal means to provide humanitarian aid inside Venezuela, smuggling is a well-established activity and effectively closing the border to the influx of such aid would significantly add to the discredit of the Maduro government.”
Indeed, the CFR is explicitly advocating illegal smuggling as a means of destabilizing the elected government in Caracas. Meanwhile, smuggling is a problem for Venezuela, but not in the terms described by the CFR. On the contrary, Venezuela has suffered from extensive smuggling of subsidized goods and fuel into Colombia, exasperating shortages and as such generating more inflation.
Mercy Corps: A toy in the US imperialist toolbox
This game played by think-tanks and policymakers reveals Washington’s glaring double-standards vis-a-vis Venezuela. While they help to create and exploit the need for basic foods and medicines in another hemisphere, roughly 45,000 of their own people die each year through lack of health care. Around 30 million Americans have no medical cover at all, roughly the population of Venezuela, which has health care written into its constitution.
Every year a further 2 million Americans travel out of the US for treatment they cannot afford at home. Some will die if they do not find treatment abroad, but instead of being a crisis, this is termed ‘medical tourism.’
At the same time, the US is deporting tens of thousands of Hondurans, while more attempt to cross the border into the US every day, a legacy of Hillary Clinton’s 2009 adventurism.
Yet, we are constantly told to believe that Washington cares about migrants and the well-being of Venezuelans.
While US policymakers play games around Venezuela, with toys from the imperialist toolbox, along with their EU friends, it is no wonder Maduro fears assassination.
This article is a combination of two texts by Nina Cross, the first of which was published by the Morning Star, edited by Venezuelanalysis.
US takes leap of faith toward Taliban
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | October 31, 2018
According to reports, the Taliban disclosed on Tuesday that five former Guantanamo inmates from their leadership hierarchy have joined their political office in Qatar. This dramatic development signals that the talks between the Taliban and the US are getting under way seriously in search of an Afghan settlement.
The five former Guantanamo inmates were top figures in the Taliban regime in the 1990s and close confidantes of late Mullah Omar – former interior minister Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, former army chief Muhammad Fazil, former governor of Balkh and Laghman Noorullah Noori, Taliban’s deputy intelligence chief Abdul Haq Wasiq and Taliban’s communication chief Nabi Omari.
They were released from Guantanamo Bay by the Barack Obama administration after 12 years of incarceration in 2014 in exchange for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was held hostage by the Taliban for nearly five years. The five Taliban leaders were shifted from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar where they have been in protective custody of local authorities. If they are indeed joining the Taliban’s political office in Doha, it can only be with the approval of the Qatari authorities and the acquiescence of the US.
The stunning part is that these five Taliban leaders once carried the stigma in the US eyes of having been closely associated with the al-Qaeda. Indeed, Washington had all along anticipated that a time would come when the hardcore Taliban leadership would need to be constructively engaged. That alone explains why the (Afghan) Taliban was thoughtfully excluded from the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Washington took the plea that the Afghan Taliban is an insurgency with control over vast swaths of territory and aspirations to govern the country. It conveniently left the door open to negotiate with them and reconcile them, hopefully, when the time came.
Evidently, the Trump administration assesses that that time has come. The induction of the dreaded 5 Taliban leaders with al-Qaeda links to mainstream peace talks follows the recent visit of the new US special representative Zalmay Khalilzad to Pakistan and Qatar. Khalilzad is a diplomat in a hurry and is raring to negotiate peace even if it involves interlocutors who might have been closely associated with the al-Qaeda in the 1990s.
(Guantanomo Bay detention camp)
Indeed, it shows Khalilzad’s cold realism and pragmatism as a veteran diplomat, while on the other hand also the sense of urgency within the Trump administration that a settlement must be negotiated as quickly as possible.
There is no evidence that the Kabul government has been consulted or is party to this development in Qatar. Khalilzad will be proceeding on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, since Afghan polity is hopelessly fragmented and it must be a bitter pill for the Kabul elite to accept that the five Guantanamo Bay inmates are back in political circulation as top protagonists.
On the contrary, Khalilzad is working in close consultation with Islamabad. The release of the former No 2 in Taliban hierarchy Mullah Baradar by Pakistan last week (at Khalilzad’s instance) synchronizes with the development in Qatar. Clearly, Pakistan is positioning Mullah Baradar also in anticipation of the commencement of the fateful talks in Qatar in a very near future.
(Mullah Baradar)
Time is running out, because Afghanistan is due to hold presidential election in April 2019. The US is intensely conscious that another puppet government elected through a farcical election charade and post-election gerrymandering will lack legitimacy and even spell doom for the country. The sensible thing will be to bring the Taliban to the forecourt and get them involved in the upcoming political contestation.
How that is going to be possible in the limited time ahead remains to be seen. In all respects, a tricky and dangerous transition looms ahead – ominously reminiscent of the UN-sponsored transition in 1992 from communist rule to the Mujahideen, which collapsed in spectacular failure.
Once the Qatar talks begin in right earnest, the last ounce of legitimacy left in the Kabul set-up will drain away. The pressure will increase on filling the power vacuum that will inevitably arise. However, compared to 1992, the good part is that while the Afghan Mujahideen were split into rival groups, with some such as the Jamiat way out of the orbit of Pakistani control, that is not the case with the Taliban. Pakistan is in a position to shepherd them in the right direction.
But Pakistan will expect the US to reciprocate by taking into consideration its sensitivities and interests – especially, the revival of the old full-bodied relationship between the two countries. Read an opinion piece, here, in today’s Dawn newspaper underscoring the criticality of Washington and Islamabad moving in tandem in search of a ‘joint solution’ through the coming 6-month period in order for Khalilzad’s talks to be fruitful and productive.
Ansarullah rejects US mediation in efforts to resolve Yemen conflict
Press TV – October 31, 2018
The Houthi Ansarullah movement has opposed a US proposal for mediation in efforts to resolve the conflict in Yemen, holding Washington responsible for the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen.
Mohammed al-Bakhiiti, a member of Ansarullah’s Political Council, told Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam news network on Wednesday that peace would be restored to Yemen if the US ended its war on the impoverished country.
He also expressed his objection to any solution to the Yemen crisis that ignores the country’s independence and sovereignty.
On Tuesday, American officials called for a ceasefire in Yemen and demanded that the sides to the conflict come to the negotiating table within a month.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the US had been watching the conflict “for long enough,” and that he believed Saudi Arabia and the UAE were ready for talks.
“We have got to move toward a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future,” he said. “We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”
Mattis’ call was later echoed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who urged the coalition to stop airstrikes in Yemen’s populated areas, saying the “time is now for the cessation of hostilities.”
Bakhiti further stressed that Washington’s proposed solution for the Yemen conflict included dividing the country.
Mattis’ plan, supported by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is meant to achieve goals that have not been attained during the war on Yemen, he added.
The only solution to the crisis is intra-Yemeni talks and non-interference by foreign parties, the Houthi official said.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a brutal war against Yemen in an attempt to reinstall the country’s former Riyadh-allied regime and crush the Houthis.
The Western-backed war, however, has so far failed to achieve its stated goals, thanks to stiff resistance from Yemeni troops and allied Houthi fighters.
The offensive, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and led to famine as well as a cholera outbreak in the import-dependent state. Tens of thousands of people have also lost their lives in the conflict.
‘Horrendous’: New York Times Attacks Inter-Korean Peace Process
Sputnik – 31.10.2018
On Monday, the New York Times reported that South Korean President Moon Jae-in is succeeding where all of his predecessors have failed — in engaging North Korea and convincing the country to give up its nuclear weapons program.
However, the article isn’t complimentary, quoting a South Korean newspaper that claimed Moon is Kim Jong Un’s most effective spokesperson.
The New York Times article also quotes an American think tank analyst stating that Moon is a “bad moon on the rise,” quoting an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song.
Simone Chun, a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute and a member of the Korean Peace Network, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear Tuesday to discuss how the US corporate media continues to attack the historic progress towards peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“What this article is suggesting is that Kim Jong Un is either manipulating Moon Jae-in or Moon Jae-in is the unwitting fool falling for deception,” Becker said.
“In the article, they even describe Moon Jae-in as ‘the agent of North Korea.’ It’s a very carefully crafted editorial position designed to sabotage Moon Jae-in’s effort to bring about peace on the Korean peninsula,” Becker added.
In September, North and South Korea signed a joint agreement, proclaiming an end to the state of war. The two nations agreed to cease large-scale artillery exercises and military flights near the demarcation line and make efforts to denuclearize the peninsula.
However, according to the New York Times article, “[A]s Mr. Moon has pushed to deepen ties with Pyongyang, the backlash from his critics has been swift. A major South Korean newspaper this month called him the ‘chief spokesman for Kim Jong-un,’ and an American commentator, quoting Creedence Clearwater Revival, recently referred to him as a ‘bad Moon on the rise.'”
“If Mr. Kim wanted to change his image from nuclear madman to mature negotiator, it’s unlikely he could have found a better agent than Mr. Moon,” the article stated.
The South Korean newspaper being referenced is chosun.com, “one of the most right-wing newspapers in South Korea–and, according to a recent poll, the least trusted media,” Chun told Radio Sputnik. The Creedence Clearwater quotation comes from Gordon Chang, a “notorious right wing” columnist, she added.
“It is a shame [that the] New York Times is giving a platform for the very ultra right-wing and minority voices who are afraid of [the] Korean peace process and who are trying to sabotage the current peace talks,” Chun told Sputnik.
“Based on these two sources [cited by the New York Times ], there isn’t much credibility on this particular article. The image they create is that president Moon is somehow a spokesperson for Chairman Kim. Nine out of 10 Koreans in recent polls support the peace process. I would argue that it’s the Korean people [themselves] who are behind the peace process. The big picture, you see here, is a growing, orchestrated chorus of America’s right wing think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and CSIS, in conjunction with the minority voices in South Korea, who are now in the process of sabotaging and trying to discredit Moon. I think it is very important to, as your media [Sputnik] is doing, respond to this horrendous claims,” Chun added.
“If this peace plan between the two Koreans has the support of 90 percent of the Korean people and is going so well for Donald Trump, a Republican president, why would the New York Times place an article like that?” Kirikou asked.
“This is a propaganda piece that found its way into the New York Times,” he added.
“The author of the [New York Times ] article is actually Korean,” Chun responded, also adding that the author has taken a conservative viewpoint when it comes to foreign policy over recent years.
“The New York Times, when it comes to foreign policy, has often taken a conservative position” as well, Chun added.
Last week, Seoul, Pyongyang and the UN Command (UNC) on Monday agreed to withdraw firearms and military posts from the village of Panmunjom, known as the Joint Security Area, in the Demilitarized Zone, in what Chun called a “historic attempt” that reveals that the “two Koreas are very determined [to make peace.]”
“The two Koreas and the UNC agreed to take measures of withdrawing firearms and military posts from the JSA by October 25, and for the following two days, the three parties will conduct a joint verification,” the South Korean Ministry’s of National Defense news release said, according to the Yonhap news agency.
In June, Kim also reached an agreement with US President Donald Trump, stipulating that North Korea would make efforts to promote complete denuclearization of the peninsula in exchange for freezing US-South Korean military drills and a potential removal of US sanctions.
Syrian FM: US Seeks to Prolong Conflict in Syria
Al-Manar | October 30, 2018
Under the pretext of protecting Kurds, the US is setting up military bases and aerodromes in Syria’s east, which signals their intention to prolong the armed conflict, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told a press conference on Monday.
SANA news agency quoted Muallem as saying that the US is using its base in Al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border to train former members of the ISIL terrorist organization in order to include them later into units fighting against the Syrian army.
The foreign minister noted that the government forces and their allies are “the only real force fighting against ISIL groups and al-Nusra front extremist group on the Syrian territory.”
Muallem also said that terrorists from the al-Nusra group still remain in the area where the Idlib demilitarized zone should have been established.
“This is a signal that Ankara does not want to fulfill its obligations in the framework of Russian-Turkish agreements on Idlib,” he said.
The foreign minister noted that Idlib, located 320 kilometers from Damascus, remains under the control of terrorists who are supported by Turkey and the West, Tass news agency reported.
“We remain in close coordination with Russian friends regarding the situation in Syria’s north-west,” he added. Muallem also reminded that the agreement on Idlib is temporary, and the Syrian government has a legal right to return the province under its sovereignty.
According to the Russian-Turkish memorandum signed in Sochi on September 17 after talks between the presidents of Russia and Turkey, the demilitarized zone 15-20 kilometers deep in Idlib should have been established by October 15. However, Turkey asked to postpone joint patrolling in Idlib due to its inability to guarantee security from its side.
Censorship? By The U.S. Women’s National Democratic Club? You Bet!
By J. Michael Springmann | American Herald Tribune | October 29, 2018
Say It Ain’t So, Joe! The author’s book, Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb is more toxic than the controlled wave of migrants flooding the Continent over the past few years. It is more toxic than the carefully-organized migrant “caravans” now marching to the United States. On October 24, 2018, through the efforts of a contact, the Women’s National Democratic Club (WNDC) in Washington, D.C. invited this writer to speak about his book at a luncheon on November 29. However, mirabile dictu, on October 26, the Club reneged on its invitation.
Why? The book asks awkward questions, names names, and provides deep background on unrestricted, uncontrolled migration. It is a carefully-researched analysis of how and why millions of people, mostly from South and Southwest Asia and North Africa, poured into the European Union. The work delves into America’s Forever War against the Arab and Muslim worlds, detailing how the United States destroyed country after country. Blaming shadowy Islamists for the problem, Washington concealed the activities of its own intelligence services and those of other countries in carefully herding the unfortunates out of their homelands and onto a foreign continent. Its 354 footnotes, draw from contemporary press articles and Kelly Greenhill’s scholarly investigation of the subject, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press: 2010), buttress the author’s investigations, arguments, and conclusions.
These ideas are anathema to the American Establishment. Of which, the WNDC evidently thinks it is a member.
Nevertheless, in an effort at damage control, the author’s friend had suggested to the WNDC that talking about Goodbye, Europe? would be useful to their membership in understanding the situation in Europe as well as the columns of aliens, not quite in army division strength, now marching on America. She had emphasized this author’s background as immigration attorney, service as a diplomat, and activity as political commentator on international affairs. She further noted that this writer’s experience provided a certain amount of gravitas, commenting:
Mr. Springmann’s position…would offer WNDC attendees a rare (unfortunately rare, as mainstream media and elected officials are not addressing the nuances and complexities of this mass migration), opportunity to go beyond soundbites, fear and the narrow ‘discussion’ that has been framed not only in Europe but in the US as well…
And the WNDC’s Reply? Here’s Marisha Kirtane, the Club’s Strategic Communications Director, in her own words:
My concern is more the tone in which migrants were talked about in the abstract for the book, and how they seemed to be characterized…. Why do migrants represent an ethnopolitical nightmare? Where is the data that suggests that most migrants are men?…But there’s a good chance that it is a very individual point of view by someone who is a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
Miss Kirtane obviously didn’t read the book (even though this writer had supplied the WNDC with a copy). If she had seen the volume, she would have noted that the book was, in part, dedicated to the migrants: … To the unfortunate millions driven from their homes by American foreign policy. These were individuals and families weaponized as migrants, pushed into foreign lands and cultures they did not understand… Just as obviously, she didn’t read any of the comments about the work posted on Amazon. If she had, she would have learned from the former director of the Voice of America’s Arabic Service that:
… I consider [this]one of the very rare books that are so deeply and extensively researched and so widely and authentically sourced. It discusses frankly and uninhibitedly the worldwide wave of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers which flooded many European countries and threatened to break on our shores. The author unearthed the roots of the problems which caused that human deluge of millions. Mr. Springmann lays the blame on many factors including turmoil, political instability, unemployment, poverty, aspiring to better life and mainly violence and wars in Asian, North African and, in particular, Middle Eastern countries. He stresses that the major cause of the outflow of that flood is the United States’ foreign policy which he claims is bent on using the migrant waves as a “mass destruction weapon… It is timely and comes in a propitious moment when the American debate on immigration, refugees and border protection is heating up. The book is a warning shot which directs attention to the migrant problems and as a reminder that solutions are urgently needed. The author offers some reasonable ones.”
So Why Is There Censorship? Simple. The book and planned address criticize American foreign policy. You know, of invading and destroying countries with which the United States is at peace. Besides its century-long history of overthrowing democratic governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States has crushed Arab and Muslim regimes in Southwest Asia which apartheid Israel sees as abominations. The Democratic Party as well as the members of the WNDC have supported these actions. If they haven’t, this writer has heard nary a word of criticism directed against former presidents James Earl Carter (D-Ga.), William Jefferson Clinton (D-Ark.), or Barack Hussein Obama (D-HI.). The Democrats intensely dislike anyone linking their wars and their support for wars to their politicians, who, in their eyes, stand for hope and change.
There is also censorship because the WNDC can’t or doesn’t want to grasp the causes of the migrant waves in Europe and the Americas: the nearly complete destruction of entire countries and their political systems, with attendant imposition of highly undemocratic regimes in their place. Naturally, decent, hard-working common folk want to leave.
But that’s not the only reason for censorship. It gets worse. The WNDC (and the far too many people who think like they do) love the sub rosa import of cheap, easily exploited labor. (It’s really slave labor but the War Between the States abolished slavery, don’t you know.) Moreover, they’re votes to be had. These can be illegal ones (since the U.S. doesn’t have a national identity card and efforts to require proof of citizenship at the polls are always deemed unconstitutional). Or they can be legal ones, as the result of amnesty or marriage to an American citizen. The key word is gratitude to the political party that let the migrants in.
But, some people fight back. Mostly on the Continent. In Goodbye, Europe?, the author reviews right-wing, populist parties, country by country. He notes that anti-EU, anti-migrant Marine Le Pen and her then-Front National garnered 30% of the French presidential vote in 2017. Anti-immigrant Geert Wilders’ Union Party for Freedom (PVV) became the second-strongest party in the Dutch parliament in 2017. Angela Merkel, the woman who opened Europe to migrants. and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took an unprecedented drubbing in Germany’s September 2017 general election. But the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), anti-EU and anti-migrant went from nothing to nearly 13% of the vote. According to an E-mail from a German friend October 28, 2018, Merkel’s CDU and the SPD, the Socialists, again got pounded in that day’s Hesse State elections, losing 10 percentage points each, with the AfD taking a projected 14% of the ballots cast.
Don’t you dare question. However, in Europe, just as in the United States, anyone who probes the migrant wave, its causes, or its supporters is denounced as a racist, a hatemonger, a Neo-Nazi, or worse. Peter van Buren, author and former American diplomat, recently queried the rapid mobilization of the migrant caravans moving towards the U.S. just before mid-term elections. Posting on Facebook, he asked how 7,000 people came together overnight. He wanted to know who or what is supplying them with food and water. Consequently, he was hit with astonishingly fact-free emotional outbursts. (When this writer was assigned to Saudi Arabia, he drank three liters of water a day. Imagine the task of daily providing 21,000 liters of potable water to these people.)
Some of this help seems to be coming from the Mexican government. NBC news reported October 28 that “For the first time an arm of the [Mexican] federal government seemed to be directly helping the migrants advance rather than trying to diminish the caravan. In this case Grupo Beta, Mexico’s migrant protection agency, gave rides to stragglers and passed out water.”
Conclusion. Americans live in the past. They believe in exceptionalism. They believe in their inalienable right to tell others what to think and what to do. And they’re wrong.
My contact who reached out to the WNDC believes that the U.S. (and Europe) should admit anyone, regardless of their education level or qualifications. After all, she noted, the Irish and others came to the United States in the 19th century. They came for the most part as single people who would later send for their families. They came, she commented, because they had no future at home. Well, in the 19th century, America was a continent-wide wilderness filled with lots of trees and Red Indians, soon to be extirpated for their inconvenient existence. Today, with more than 300 million people of various ethnicities and strong, diametrically-opposed political beliefs, the U.S. is becoming unmanageable.
On the other hand, Canada and Australia are selective about their immigrants. Unlike the U.S., they put a premium on what the new immigrant can bring to the county: funds and education. After all, we live in a high-technology society dependent on high level skills and knowledge.
American exceptionalism goes back to the 17th century when John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, said “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” In a speech given in 1974 at the Political Action Conference, President Ronald Reagan expatiated on what Winthrop meant: “We are, indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.” According to Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy (October 11, 2011), “Most statements of ‘American exceptionalism’ presume that America’s values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration. They also imply that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.”
That’s a myth. Any Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Libyan, or Syrian can confirm that. Most of Latin America can, as well.
Flowing from exceptionalism is the American desire to control the world’s political systems–for their own good. Look at the United Nations and U.S. vetoes of resolutions critical of Israel. See the steady advance of outmoded NATO to Russia’s borders. Consider the chain of alliances which U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles forged in the 1950s. Contemplate America’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Reflect on sanctions imposed on Russia and Iran but not Israel or Saudi Arabia. America knows best doesn’t it?
No. And that’s why the WNDC censored this writer’s talk. People with limited knowledge and a specific agenda wanted to control someone else’s message. They wanted this control to ensure that their speech and only their speech would be heard. In 21st century America, freedom of speech applies to only certain words from certain groups. George Orwell’s 1984 came 30 years early.
J. Michael Springmann is an attorney and former diplomat with the US Department of State. As a diplomat, he spent five years in Germany, two years in India, and nearly two in Saudi Arabia. Now a writer and political commentator, Springmann is also the author of Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World.
US sanctions on Hezbollah aim to punish Lebanon: Observers
Press TV – October 28, 2018
The US has imposed new sanctions on Hezbollah, but observers say Lebanon as a whole will be affected by the punitive measures.
Earlier this week, the administration of US President Donald Trump imposed a new round of sanctions on Hezbollah targeting individuals and international organizations that do business with the resistance group.
Economist Louis Hobeika said he thought “it is difficult to punish Hezbollah without punishing all of Lebanon.”
“No area fully belongs to Hezbollah. The southern suburb of Beirut is not confined to Hezbollah, so how will the sanctions apply here?” Hobeika told Arab News in remarks published Saturday.
Political activist Ali Al-Amin, the director of Janoubia news website, said the outcome of the US decision could be “disastrous” for Lebanon.
“Is the purpose of the sanctions to embarrass the Lebanese government and state?” he wondered.
In the May parliamentary elections, Hezbollah and its political allies won more than half of the seats at the legislature in a major victory for the party.
Former Lebanese lawmaker Fares Souaid told Arab News that the new sanctions are part of a series of US bans meant to “turn the party (Hezbollah) into a burden on the Lebanese after Hezbollah has come forward as a security guarantee for Lebanon.”
The US has its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf on board in cranking up pressure on the Lebanese leaders over their association with Hezbollah, and they all take their cue from Israel.
Israeli leaders have threatened that they would view the Lebanese state as part of Hezbollah in a future war with the resistance movement.
In May, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the Hezbollah leadership jointly with members of the so-called Terrorist Financing and Targeting Center (TFTC), which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE.
Hezbollah was formed following the Israeli regime’s invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing occupation of its southern parts in 1980s, and currently constitutes Lebanon’s de facto military power.
Since then, the movement has helped the national army retake the occupied regions from Tel Aviv and thwart two Israeli acts of aggression in 2000 and 2006.
The movement has also been playing a significant role in the Syrian army’s fight against Takfiri terror groups, including Daesh and Nusra Front, thus preventing the spillover of the war into Lebanon.
The New Cold War may never arrive
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | October 28, 2018
An old Italian friend and a noted Sinologist based in Beijing representing a Vatican paper, Francesco Sisci wrote apropos an article I had posted on Facebook yesterday Donald Trump Meets the End of the Empire authored by Douglas Macgreggor, an ex-US Army decorated combat veteran and an author (National Interest, October 24, 2018):
“Napoleon famously said three things win a war: money, money, money. The word “soldier” comes from soldo, the pay of the soldiers in the renaissance. If the US doesn’t straighten its economy what can it do globally? And if it doesn’t soon, what will China do? With WW 2 the solution in some countries was the war that canceled all debts with massive inflation…”
To my mind, the last sentence in Sisci’s observation will be a last-ditch option for President Trump, because if it fails, that may also mean the end of the United States of America as a nation. And Trump has a rational mind, as his attitude toward Kim Jong-Un or Mohammed bin Salman would testify.
I discount World War 3 in the thermonuclear age. Rivalries will play out below the threshold of wars in which there are no winners.
World nuclear war scenario
That is what makes Macgregor’s article noteworthy. The signs are that Trump is already thinking in terms of cuts in budget expenditure, including the defence budget. In a pithy sentence, Macgreggor highlights the paradigm: “Get ready. “America first” in foreign and defense policy is about to begin. Defense cuts are on the way.”
Macgreggor gives food for thought for Indian pundits who are wildly ecstatic that a US-China New Cold War is about to erupt, which will provide India a historic opportunity to emerge as America’s “counterweight” to China in the Asian context. This is actually a hackneyed thesis dating back to the late K. Subrahmanyam. The George W. Bush presidency brilliantly succeeded in drilling into the mind of the wooly-headed Indians a seductive thought that the US is determined to make a first class world power out of India.
But realism dawned when it became obvious that Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ was not getting anywhere. The idea became moribund when President Trump arrived in Asia in November 2016 in a watershed regional tour to explain to a stunned ASEAN and Asia-Pacific audience that he’s dead serious about America First.
Of late, Trump’s ‘tariff war’ with China has lifted the sagging morale of our pundits, many of whom are disillusioned with the Wuhan summit between Modi and Xi Jinping and yearning for a New Cold War. They blithely assume that the logical conclusion of the ‘tariff war’ will be the New Cold War. It doesn’t occur to them that while Trump is mad, there is also a method in his madness. There’s more than a 50:50 chance that the ‘tariff war’ may end before the campaign for the US presidential election 2020 peaks – with Trump declaring ‘victory’, of course, as he did on DPRK’s denuclearization and missile capability.
At any rate, for argument’s sake, is the contemporary world situation ripe for the US to launch a New Cold War against China (or Russia for that matter)? Unlike in the Cold War era of the past century, there is no bipolar struggle on a global scale today. It is impossible to persuade most countries to come to the barricades when they are grappling with their own national priorities – and for most of them China also happens to be the main driver of growth and development, be it in Latin America or Africa or the Asia-Pacific.
The US cannot inject ideology into its competition with China. On the one hand, China is an avid globalizer and proponent of free trade and WTO and a flag carrier at the Davos World Economic Forum, while on the other hand, US’ claim to ‘exceptionalism’ no longer carries credibility with the world community. Meanwhile, the entente with Russia, the alliance with Pakistan, the interdependency with European economies, the diversified relationships in the Middle East and Africa, etc. give China so much ‘strategic depth’ that it is impossible to ‘isolate’ it.
Most important, unlike the former Soviet Union, China understands the mystique of the market and how to leverage it. By the way, a cold war also costs money. Who will step forward to finance the New Cold War? Mohammed bin Salman? No way. Trump himself is notoriously averse to opening his wallet. The Bretton Woods institutions have outlived their utility, too.
From a historical perspective, presiding over a great power in decline is a very difficult thing to handle. Trump is doing remarkably well in the given situation. His tantrums and grandstanding are expedient, diversionary steps become necessary through bluster and rhetoric, but he’s largely getting away with it. The bottom line is, Trump has not started any new war – and to my mind, he has no intentions, either. A withdrawal from Syria, drawdown in Afghanistan and an end to the carnage in Yemen – incidentally, all these were legacies of the Obama era – are on cards.
The intolerable tensions vis-à-vis North Korea (which, again, were an old festering wound) have been dying down – and Trump was willing to take a lot of flak for it in terms of personal attacks and lampooning by detractors.
In sum, Trump has been largely navigating with his America First compass. In the coming period, this can only become more explicit, especially if Trump gets through the November 6 midterm elections intact with no big shift against him in the power equilibrium in the US Congress enabling a further consolidation of his grip on the Republican Party.
US Midterm Election: Impact on Relations with Russia
By Peter KORZUN | Strategic Culture Foundation | 28.10.2018
The US official statements are often extremely tough and sometimes even bellicose but, like it or not, Russia is an international actor a dialog is inevitable with. National Security Adviser (NSA) John Bolton, a known anti-Russia hawk, visited Moscow on Oct. 22-23. He never sounds friendly but the intensity of his contacts with Russian officials is impressive enough. It was the third time in four months he held talks with high-placed Russian officials, including a five-hour conversation with the Russian counterpart and talks with defense and foreign ministers. Before the recent visit, he came to Moscow in June and met Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev in Geneva.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to visit Washington in early 2019. The invitation has not been yet formally accepted and the scheduling is still to be ironed out. Before that the Russian and US leaders will meet in Paris at the WWI Victory centenary commemorations on November 11. This meeting will be special. A very important event – the US midterm election on Nov.6 – may change the background. If Republicans win or retain the majority in both houses, President Trump will go to Paris relieved of a heavy load with his position much strengthened. No more talks about an impeachment caused by “Russiagate”. Obstructing him in Congress won’t be an easy walk Democrats hope for. The deep state would be frustrated but it will have to reconcile with reality. The president will have much more wiggle room for achieving his foreign policy goals, especially when it comes to Russia. It does not mean he’ll lift the sanctions or change his stance on the INF Treaty. It means that despite many things that divide them, the parties could have a dialog on major international and bilateral issues. Some of them will continue to be points of contention but some may turn into areas of cooperation. The two powers could have working relations to address the agenda of mutual interest and that’s what they lack at present.
Henry Kissinger had little sympathy for Communists and was no friend of the USSR. Nevertheless, in the capacity of national security adviser and state secretary he pioneered the policy of détente. He is still trying to upend the bilateral relationship. The Soviet Union and the United States were no friends but rather competitors. This fact did not prevent them from being dialog partners to large extent thanks to Mr. Kissinger’s efforts. The worst was prevented, the balancing of the brink of conflict never resulted in real shooting and arms control was effectively in place. Mr. Bolton could do the same. As one can see, he maintains the contacts against all the odds. President Trump and his NSA believe it makes sense. Richard Nixon stood out for his ability to resist outside influence and make independent foreign policy decisions. So is President Trump. There are similarities between the two. Parallels are drawn. President Putin and President Trump both believe in the virtue of the nation state and see a lot of shortcomings of the “supranational globalism” project.
Donald Trump’s opponents realize that. They are trying hard to prevent the undesired outcome on Nov.6. The “migrant caravan” is moving across Mexico to the US southern border to provoke the president into taking decisive steps, such as using the military to hold the migrants’ wave. If force is used, Trump’s opponents will raise hue and cry about it, using it for propaganda purposes. If not, the president will fail to keep his pre-election promises to protect the national borders, frustrating Republican voters. No doubt, the “migrants’ caravan” is a well-orchestrated provocation timed with the midterm election. The NGO People Without Borders claims to be the organizer but obviously somebody is providing funds using it as a cover. The money to feed these people as they were crossing the territories of Honduras, Guatemala and a part of Mexico did not fall from the sky. Nobody of “caravan migrants” was suffering of hunger and thirst.
Some US media are already spreading around the stories to make readers sympathize with the would-be “victims” and see everything President Trump does in a negative light – a plot to deliver a blow at the time of election. Some media believe the “caravan” is linked to Democrat donors. George Soros the ubiquitous is reported to be behind the action along with Brian Roberts, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Comcast. True or not, evidently a group of very influential people is using the “caravan” for political purposes. This is a real national security threat they want the president to turn a blind eye on while opposing the imaginary threat allegedly coming from Moscow. Russia’s experts realize well what the problems the US president has to face with his policies being subverted by powerful opponents. On the other hand, it can’t wait for better times forever. Anyway, the outcome of the Nov.6 election will impact a lot of things, including the prospects for US-Russian relations.
Harmless Mail Bomb Scare Suspect Arrested
By Stephen Lendman | October 27, 2018
Is the targeted individual a legitimate suspect or a convenient patsy? Most likely the latter, but it remains an open question. How could an ordinary person access mailing addresses of prominent Trump critics sent harmless mail bombs?
On Friday, Justice Department office of public affairs director Sarah Flores tweeted: “We can confirm one person is in custody” – identified as Cesar Sayoc Jr., arrested in Plantation, Florida.
A white van belonging to him was also seized as potential evidence. On Friday, two more non-exploding mail bombs were discovered, 14 so far in total.
The latest ones were sent to former Obama DNI James Clapper, Dem Senator Cory Booker, and major Dem donor Tom Steyer. Sayoc reportedly has a prior arrest record, making him an ideal patsy.
Beginning on October 22, harmless mail bombs began to be delivered to prominent undemocratic Dem Trump critics.
None exploded. No one was hurt, the mailings intended to sow fear, create alarm, and make headlines.
They likely intended to influence the outcome of the November midterm elections, undemocratic Dem dark forces likely behind them, hoping to regain control of the House and/or Senate.
A separate article called the staged mailings reminiscent of post-9/11 anthrax attacks.
They killed five people, injured 17 others, and temporarily shut down Congress, the Supreme Court, and other federal operations.
Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill was wrongfully implicated as a “person of interest” but was never charged.
His home was repeatedly raided by FBI agents, his phone tapped, and he was subject to intensive surveillance for more than two years
He sued the Justice Department and was awarded $4.6 million for violating his privacy, leaking false and inflammatory information, costing him his job and reputation for blasting his name all over the media for days.
At an August 2002 news conference, he strongly denied involvement in the anthrax attacks he had nothing to do with.
Six years after being wrongfully named a “person of interest,” the Justice Department exonerated him, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor, saying by letter to his lawyer Thomas Connolly:
“(W)e have concluded, based on laboratory access records, witness accounts and other information, that Dr. Hatfill did not have access to the particular anthrax used in the attacks, and that he was not involved in the anthrax mailings.”
In 2008, the FBI named biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins as the “anthrax killer,” no formal charges ever filed against him. No evidence suggested his culpability.
He and Hatfill were targeted as convenient patsies, wrongfully shifting state-sponsored blame onto them.
In his important book on the anthrax attacks, titled “The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy,” Graeme MacQueen connected the incidents to 9/11.
Evidence in his book sheds important light on dark forces behind the anthrax attacks, explaining:
They were carried out by multiple perpetrators, not a “lone wolf,” as falsely claimed, a state-sponsored conspiracy.
Responsible parties were Washington insiders, involved in planning the 9/11 attacks, staging a coup d’etat to seize executive power through intimidation of Congress and US civil society.
The 9/11 and related anthrax attacks were the beginning of Washington’s global war OF terror, not on it, raping and destroying one country after another – what false flags are all about, diabolical aims in mind for launching them.
Is Sayoc a convenient patsy like Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins, falsely charged with harmless mail bombs he had nothing to do with? The fulness of time will tell.
Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” – http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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- LAPD Pilot Will Track Vehicles In San Fernando Valley
- Britain’s Online Censorship Law Now Comes With a Crisis Plan for Your Posts
- NATO’s “Nordic model” brings Arctic confrontation closer to Russia’s nuclear bases
- Using nuclear weapons, the US-Israeli alliance still can’t beat Iran
- Sunset on the Quality of Western Propaganda: Arrival of the Dr Strangelove Moment
- Ukrainian general accused of protecting crime bosses
- US-‘Israel’ alliance faces growing rupture after midterms
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
