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A live broadcast of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro’s speech at an army commemoration event was cut off abruptly due to a reported explosion. Servicemen lined up on the square could be seen fleeing in disarray.
Seconds before the address was cut off, Maduro and the officials standing beside him can be seen looking up in the air. There have been unconfirmed reports on social media that a drone was spotted in the skies and at least two blasts were heard by the witnesses. Maduro has reportedly been evacuated from the scene.
A Caracas source cited by Sputnik reported that the incident was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Maduro.
Freelance Venezuelan journalist Roman Camacho reported on Twitter, citing “unofficial sources,” that a drone loaded with C4 (a type of plastic explosive) was detonated near the presidential box. Several army cadets were injured, but neither Maduro, nor any of his cabinet members have been hurt in the resulting explosion, he wrote.
Naomi Klein has published a lengthy critique of an important feature essay appearing in the New York Times Magazine on August 1, 2018: Losing Earth: The decade we almost stopped climate change, by Nathaniel Rich, with photos and video by George Steinmetz. Klein’s commentary on the Times magazine article is published on August 3 in The Intercept, where she is a regular columnist.
The Times essay argues that the world lost the battle against global warming during the years of the 1980s, a time when scientists began loudly warning of a global warming emergency requiring immediate and radical action to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Klein correctly argues against the central tenet of the essay—that “human nature” was to blame for the failure to respond to the now-evident emergency.
Intercept editors placed the word ‘capitalism’ in the title of Klein’s critique: Capitalism killed our climate momentum, not ‘human nature’. But Klein dismisses the compelling argument against capitalism in her very critique.
Klein writes,
“But simply blaming capitalism isn’t enough. It is absolutely true that the drive for endless growth and profits stands squarely opposed to the imperative for a rapid transition off fossil fuels…”
This is followed by,
“But we have to be honest that autocratic industrial socialism has also been a disaster for the environment, as evidenced most dramatically by the fact that carbon emissions briefly plummeted when the economies of the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.”
But who in the world argues today that the authoritarian socialist countries of the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, or China provide an example for countering the global warming emergency (though importantly, scientists in the Soviet Union were always in advance of their Western counterparts in understanding the danger)? It’s a bogus argument that, as her very article shows, actually dismisses socialism as a path forward.
By ‘socialism’, we are speaking of a planned, social economy operating under democratic, citizen control in which the expansion imperative of outmoded capitalism is constrained and eventually eliminated.
Klein goes on to attack one of the few socialist experiments taking place in the world:
“And as I wrote in [her 2014 book] This Changes Everything, Venezuela’s petro-populism has continued this toxic tradition into the present day, with disastrous results.”
Here, Venezuela, a country ravaged and underdeveloped by imperialism for several centuries, is supposed to be the standard bearer of the fight against global warming. Yes, the Bolivarian Revolution underway in Venezuela since the late 1990s should be faulted for not reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuel exports. But Klein’s article lets the imperialist countries of North America, western Europe and the Asia-Pacific (Japan and Australia) off the hook. Those countries are the prime guilty parties, not the countries of the global south and not the long-passed authoritarian socialist countries.
So what is Naomi Klein’s alternative to the ‘capitalism’ identified in her article title? She offers the ‘novel’ but lame phrase ‘democratic eco-socialism’ and goes on to write,
“Countries with a strong democratic socialist tradition — like Denmark, Sweden, and Uruguay — have some of the most visionary environmental policies in the world. From this we can conclude that socialism isn’t necessarily ecological, but that a new form of democratic eco-socialism, with the humility to learn from Indigenous teachings about the duties to future generations and the interconnection of all of life, appears to be humanity’s best shot at collective survival.”
Denmark and Sweden? These are militarized countries that happen to be in the forefront of imperialism’s new cold war against Russia and China. Denmark is a direct partner in the ongoing U.S. wars being waged in the Middle East. Sweden is a major armaments producer. Both countries are experiencing the rise of extreme-right movements (though not to the degree as that in Ukraine). The rise of the far-right in Europe is a direct consequence of the aggressive, imperialist foreign policies of NATO, a fact that escapes nearly every left-wing writer on the subject.
Denmark is a significant fossil fuel producer and exporter. It is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the operations of its capitalist and imperialist economy. Sweden, another middle imperialist power, derives more than 35 per cent of its energy from nuclear power. Both countries are examples of the madcap, expansion dynamic of capitalism which is taking the world to ruin. Sweden’s IKEA corporation could serve as trophy symbol of this productivist and consumerist expansion.
In her article, Klein targets “neoliberalism”1 and “unregulated capitalism” as the source of the global warming emergency”. According to her, the problem can be traced to the onset of “neoliberalism” beginning around 1980. This fits with her argument that the militarized, imperialist countries of Denmark and Sweden offer a path forward for humanity. But it is capitalism per se, not its episodic variants, that is to blame.
None of what Klein writes in this latest article is new. She has long held up the Scandinavian countries as leaders in combating climate change. Similarly, she has favorably cited the militarized and fossil fuel-soaked Germany as an environmental leader. What may be new are the discussions and published responses to Klein’s article by her fellow liberal environmentalists and by the eco-utopians of the ecosocialist school of thought. We shall see.
Ever since the publication of This Change Everything, ecosocialists have had nothing but praise for Klein’s misleading ideas in which she posits a social democratic, green capitalism (otherwise known as ‘democratic socialism’ become ‘democratic eco-socialism’) as a path of salvation from the global warming emergency. One reason for this commonality of ideas is that Klein and the ecosocialists take little or no account of the extreme danger to a warming world of imperialist war and militarism. (They also share a dismissal of the urgency of radically reducing all the productivist waste and excess common to present-day capitalism.)
Imperialist war and militarism as well as the rise of social and national inequalities are insurmountable barriers to mitigating the worst of the global warming emergency now fully washing over the world. There will be no mitigation of global warming and its harsh consequences if the expansion dynamic of capitalism is not curtailed and eventually eliminated.
That can only be done by an informed and mobilized global population, using the levers of political power to refashion human civilization. Our common goal must be the creation of a planned, social economy providing meaningful human development while respecting humanity’s utter dependence on a healthy natural environment.
Note: [1] ‘Neoliberalism’ is the nonsensical term used by most Western leftists and by liberal academia in the West to describe the rise of globalized capitalism beginning the mid-1970s.
Background articles by Roger Annis:
(find these and other on the ‘Feature articles‘ page of A Socialist In Canada)
* Andreas Malm’s ‘Fossil Capital’ unearths the origin of capitalism’s attachment to fossil fuels but finishes with the shallow outlook of ecosocialism, May 12, 2018
* Has the world entered a sixth, great extinction era? If not, could capitalism soon take us there?, Jan 24, 2018 (Here as pdf: Has the world entered a sixth, great extinction era?)
* Welcome to The Anthropocene, are environmentalists equipped to respond?, Sept 14, 2016
With patented angst, Noam Chomsky opined on President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to an agreeing Amy Goodman:
“But there’s been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It’s autocratic, undoubtedly.”
Earlier in their DemocracyNow! interview, the main talking points were established via a video clip of a dissident former official from Ortega’s Sandinista Party: Ortega’s “entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.”
Left out of this view is why the US has targeted Nicaragua for regime change.
One would think that a neoliberal regime, especially if it were authoritarian and repressive, would be just the ticket to curry favor with Washington.
Since Ortega’s return election victory in 2006, Nicaragua had achieved the following, according to NSCAG, despite being the second poorest country in the hemisphere:
+ Second highest economic growth rates and most stable economy in Central America.
+ Only country in the region producing 90% of the food it consumes.
+ Poverty and extreme poverty halved; country with the greatest reduction of extreme poverty.
+ Reaching the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition by half.
+ Free basic healthcare and education.
+ Illiteracy virtually eliminated, down from 36% in 2006.
+ Average economic growth of 5.2% for the past 5 years (IMF and the World Bank).
+ Safest country in Central America (UN Development Program) with one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.
+ Highest level of gender equality in the Americas (World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017).
+ Did not contribute to the migrant exodus to the US, unlike neighboring Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
+ Unlike its neighbors, kept out the drug cartels and pioneered community policing.
Nicaragua targeted by the US for regime change
Before April 18, Nicaragua was among the most peaceful and stable countries in the region. The otherwise inexplicable violence that has suddenly engulfed Nicaragua should be understood in the context of it being targeted by the US for regime change.
Nicaragua has provoked the ire of the US for the good things its done, not the bad.
Besides being a “threat” of a good example, Nicaragua is in the anti-imperialist ALBA alliance with Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and others. The attack on Nicaragua is part of a larger strategy by the US to tear apart regional alliances of resistance to the Empire, though that is not the whole story.
Nicaragua regularly votes against the US in international forums such as challenging retrograde US policies on climate change. An inter-ocean canal through Nicaragua is being considered, which would contend with the Panama Canal. Russia and China invest in Nicaragua, competing with US capital.
The NICA Act, passed by the US House of Representatives and now before the Senate, would initiate economic warfare designed to attack living conditions in Nicaragua through economic sanctions, as well as intensify US intelligence intervention. The ultimate purpose is to depose the democratically-elected Ortega government.
Meanwhile, USAID announced an additional $1.5 million “to support freedom and democracy in Nicaragua” through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to overthrow the democratically elected government and “make this truly a hemisphere of freedom.” That is, freedom for the US empire.
Holding Nicaragua to a higher standard than our own government
Although Chomsky echoes the talking points of the USAID administrator Mark Green about “Ortega’s brutal regime,” he can’t quite bring himself to accept responsibility for regime change. Chomsky despairs, “it’s hard to see a simple way out at this point. It’s a very unfortunate situation.”
Chomsky is concerned about corruption, repression, and autocracy in Nicaragua, urging the democratically elected president to step down and run for re-election. Need it be mentioned that Chomsky chastised leftists who did not “absolutely” support Hillary Clinton? It is from this moral ground that the professor looks down on Nicaragua.
These charges of corruption and such are addressed by long-time solidarity activist Chuck Kaufman:
+ The World Bank, IMF, and EU countries have certified Nicaragua for its effective use of international loans and grants; funds were spent for the purposes they were given, not siphoned off into corruption.
+ Kaufman asks, “why a police force that in 39 years had not repressed the Nicaraguan people would suddenly go berserk,” while videos clearly show the violence of the more militant opposition.
+ Ortega won in 2006 with a 38% plurality, in 2011 with 63%, and 72.5% in 2016. The Organization of American States officially accompanied and certified the vote. Kaufman notes, “Dictators don’t win fair elections by growing margins.”
Alternatives to Ortega would be worse
Those who call for Ortega’s removal need to accept responsibility for what comes after. Here the lesson of Libya is instructive, where the replacement of, in Chomsky’s words, the “brutal tyrant” and “cruel dictator” Qaddafi has resulted in a far worsesituation for the Libyan people.
Any replacement of Ortega would be more, not less, neoliberal, oppressive, and authoritarian. When the Nicaraguan people, held hostage to the US-backed Contra war, first voted Ortega out of office in 1990, the incoming US-backed Violeta Chamorro government brought neoliberal structural adjustment and a moribund economy.
The dissident Sandinistas who splintered off from the official party after the party’s election defeat and formed the MRS (Sandinista Renovation Movement) are not a progressive alternative. They are now comfortably ensconced in US-fundedNGOs, regularly making junkets to Washington to pay homage to the likes of Representative Iliana Ros-Lehtinenand Senator Marco Rubio to lobby in favor of the NICA Act. Nor do they represent a popular force, garnering less than 2% in national elections.
When the MRS left the Sandinista party, they took with them almost all those who were better educated, came from more privileged backgrounds, and who spoke English. These formerly left dissidents, now turned to the rightin their hatred of Ortega, have many ties with North American activists, which explains some of the confusion today over Nicaragua.
The world, not just Ortega, has changed since the 1980s when the Soviet Union and its allies served as a counter-vailing force to US bullying. What was possible then is not the same in today’s more constrained international arena.
Class war turned upside down
Kevin Zeeseof Popular Resistance aptly characterized the offensive against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua as “a class war turned upside down.” Nicaragua was the most progressive country in Central America with no close rival. Yet some North American left intellectuals are preoccupied with Nicaragua’s shortcomings while not clearly recognizing that it is being attacked by a domestic rightwing in league with the US government.
Noam Chomsky is a leading world left intellectual and should be acclaimed for his contributions. His incisive warning about the US nuclear policyis just one essential example. Nevertheless, he is also indicative of a tendency in the North American left to accept a bit too readily the talking points of imperialist propaganda, regarding the present-day Sandinistas.
There is a disconnect between Chomsky’s urging Nicaraguans to replace Ortega with new elections and his longtime and forceful advocacy against US imperialist depredations of countries like Nicaragua. Such elections in Nicaragua would not only be unconstitutional but would further destabilize a profoundly destabilized situation. Given the unpopularity and disunity of the opposition and the unity and organizational strength of the Sandinistas, Ortega would likely win.
Most important, the key role of Northern American solidarity activists is to end US interference in Nicaragua so that the Nicaraguans can solve their own problems.
The rightwing violence since April in Nicaragua should be understood as a coup attempt. A significant portion of the Nicaraguan people have rallied around their elected government as seen in the massive demonstrations commemorating the Sandinista revolution on July 19.
For now, the rightwing tranques (blockades) have been dismantled and citizens can again freely circulate without being shaken down and threatened. In the aftermath, though, Nicaragua has suffered unacceptable human deaths, massive public property damage, and a wounded economy with the debilitating NICA Act threatening to pass the US Senate.
Roger Harris is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas, a 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization.
You can’t throw a rock in establishment media circles these days without hitting a hand-wringing empire loyalist who is in the middle of an existential crisis about the US president hurting Jim Acosta’s feelings.
They act like Trump saying mean words about mainstream media outlets worth billions of dollars is some kind of horrible, horrifying threat to the very fabric of society against which everyone should be marching in the streets and protesting.
Meanwhile this same administration is taking actual steps toward imprisoning a journalist for practicing journalism, and these same empire loyalists are either ignoring it or cheering it on. And I’d just like to have a quick rant about how absolutely deranged that is.
The journalist in question is of course WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. This administration has reportedly been scheming to find a way to charge Assange with crimes since shortly after Trump took office, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirming that Assange’s arrest is a priority and President Trump confirming that he’d support Sessions in that endeavor. Trump’s now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made vitriolic diatribes against WikiLeaks as CIA Director, making headlines by giving the outlet the nonsensical title of “non-state hostile intelligence service.” Trump’s now-National Security Advisor has advocated destroying WikiLeaks with cyber warfare. Vice President Pence visited Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno and reportedly discussed Assange’s stay at the Ecuadorian embassy, just weeks before news broke that the Moreno government is taking steps to evict Assange from that same embassy and hand him over to British law enforcement where he can be extradited to the United States.
And what are Trump’s political opponents doing about this unparalleled threat to freedom of the press? What are they doing to prevent a prosecution which would set a precedent allowing for any journalist anywhere to be imprisoned for publishing government leaks? Why, they’re attacking its target, of course. They are promoting Trump’s agenda.
This is what has become of the so-called “Resistance”, the astroturf political performance cooked up by David Brock and other Democratic Party manipulators in a ham fisted attempt to harness the revolutionary spirit and enthusiasm of the Bernie Sanders movement and channel it toward bolstering the donkey head of America’s two-headed one-party system. I often see it jokingly referred to on Twitter as #TheAssistance, because it seems like when it comes down to opposing Trump where it actually matters like his military expansionism, Orwellian surveillance powers or trying to imprison journalists, Trump’s ostensible opposition on what is ostensibly the other side of the political aisle is always seen skipping merrily along with him, hand-in-hand. Assistance is certainly a far more accurate label.
Meanwhile whenever someone who actually opposes Trump voices support for Assange or WikiLeaks on any online forum, it isn’t long before comments start flooding in about how Assange is a Russian agent, a rapist, a white supremacist, a pedophile, a fascist, and any other nonsense they can dream up to throw at him. Whenever one of them shows up in my notifications helping Trump manufacture consent for the fascistic agenda of imprisoning a journalist, all I want to say is “Dude. You dropped your MAGA hat.”
Because they absolutely are supporting and facilitating Trump’s agenda. It isn’t an agenda that fits in with either the Fox News narrative or the MSNBC narrative, since Trump supporters are generally supportive of WikiLeaks these days while those who hate Trump generally despise it, but it’s there clear as day whether it fits the partisan narratives or not. Clintonites (and an annoying number of progressives and leftists as well) have been manipulated into blaming WikiLeaks for Trump’s presidency, which due to the raving hysteria that has been injected into the response to this fairly conventional Republican administration makes it easy to spin them as unforgivably evil, but whom does that hurt exactly? Certainly not the Trump administration, which is clearly pulling out all the stops to imprison Assange.
No, attacking and smearing a journalist (and Assange is most certainly a journalist per definition) whom this administration is actively targeting only serves this administration. All you’re doing is lubricating the way for that great leap toward Orwellian dystopia by helping to get the public cheering for something which will make it easier for the US government to imprison journalists who expose government malfeasance. You’re attacking Trump’s enemies for him. You’re cheering on Trump’s depraved agenda, and encouraging others to cheer with you.
So by all means, mock them for this absurd behavior wherever you see it. Whenever you see someone who’s still raging over Hillary Clinton’s loss attacking WikiLeaks, ask them what turned them into such Trump fangirls. Ask them why they’re helping their buddy Trump imprison dissident journalists. On social media, photoshop a MAGA hat onto their profile pic for them to help them better express their support their Based God Emperor. If Democrats are going to help manufacture support for Donald Trump’s agendas, let’s at least make them own it.
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JUNE 5, 2018 marked the 51st anniversary of Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. But, unlike the massive popular mobilization that preceded the anniversary of the Nakba (the catastrophic destruction of Palestine in 1948) May 15, the anniversary of the occupation hardly generated equal mobilization.
The unsurprising death of the “peace process” and the inevitable demise of the “two-state solution” has shifted the focus from ending the occupation per se, to the larger and more encompassing problem of Israel’s colonialism throughout Palestine. The grassroots mobilization in Gaza and the West Bank, and among Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab Desert, are, once more, widening the Palestinian people’s sense of national aspirations.
Thanks to the limited vision of the Palestinian leadership, those aspirations have, for decades, been confined to Gaza and West Bank.
In some sense, the “Israeli occupation” is no longer an occupation as per international standards and definitions. It is merely a phase of Zionist colonization of historic Palestine, a process that began over 100 years ago, and carries on to this date.
“The law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian considerations; it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application,” states the International Committee of the Red Cross website.
It is for practical purposes that we often utilize the term “occupation” with reference to Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land occupied after June 5, 1967. The term allows for the constant emphasis on humanitarian rules that are meant to govern Israel’s behavior as the occupying power.
However, Israel has already, and repeatedly, violated most conditions of what constitute an “occupation” from an international law perspective, as articulated in the 1907 Hague Regulations (articles 42-56) and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.
According to these definitions, an “occupation” is a provisional phase, a temporary situation that is meant to end with the implementation of international law regarding that particular situation.
“Military occupation” is not the sovereignty of the occupier over the occupied; it cannot include transfer of citizens from the territories of the occupying power to occupied land; it cannot include ethnic cleansing; destruction of properties; collective punishment and annexation.
It is often argued that Israel is an occupier that has violated the rules of occupation as stated in international law.
This would have been the case a year, 2 or 5 years after the original occupation had taken place—but not 51 years later. Since then, the occupation has turned into long-term colonization.
An obvious proof is Israel’s annexation of occupied land, including the Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian East Jerusalem, in the early 1980s. Those decisions had no regard for international law, humanitarian or any other.
Israeli politicians have, for years, openly debated the annexation of the West Bank, especially areas that are populated with illegal Jewish settlements, which are built contrary to international law.
Those hundreds of settlements that Israel has been building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not meant as temporary structures.
Dividing the West Bank into three zones, areas A, B and C, each governed according to different political diktats and military rules, has little precedent in international law.
Israel argues that, contrary to international law, it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza; however, an Israeli land, maritime and aerial siege has been imposed on the Strip for over 11 years. With successive Israeli wars that have killed thousands, to a hermetic blockade that has pushed the Palestinian population to the brink of starvation, Gaza subsists in isolation.
Gaza is an “occupied territory” by name only, without any of the humanitarian rules applied. In a recent 10-week period alone, over 130 unarmed protesters, journalists and medics were killed and 13,000 wounded, yet the international community and law remain inept, unable to face or challenge Israeli leaders or to overpower equally cold-hearted American U.N. vetoes.
The Palestinian occupied territories have, long ago, crossed the line from being occupied to being colonized. But there are reasons that we are trapped in old definitions, leading among them is American political hegemony over the legal and political discourses pertaining to Palestine.
One of the main political and legal achievements of the Israeli war—which was carried out with full U.S. support—on several Arab countries in June 1967 is the redefining of the legal and political language on Palestine.
Prior to that war, the discussion was mostly dominated by such urgent issues as the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to go back to their homes and properties in historic Palestine.
The June war shifted the balance of power completely, and cemented America’s role as Israel’s main backer on the international stage.
Several U.N. Security Council resolutions were passed to delegitimize the Israeli occupation: UNSCR 242, UNSCR 338, and the less talked about but equally significant UNSCR 497.
242 of 1967 demanded “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces” from the territories it occupied in the June war. 338, which followed the war of 1973, accentuated and clarified that demand. Resolution 497 of 1981 was a response to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. It rendered such a move “null and void and without international legal effect.”
The same applied to the annexation of Jerusalem as to any colonial constructions or any Israeli attempts aimed at changing the legal status of the West Bank.
But Israel is operating with an entirely different mindset.
Considering that anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli Jews now live in the “occupied territories,” and that the largest settlement of Modi’in Illit houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews, one has to wonder what form of military occupation blue-print Israel is implementing, anyway?
Israel is a settler colonial project, which began when the Zionist movement aspired to build an exclusive homeland for Jews in Palestine, at the expense of the native inhabitants of that land in the 19th century.
Nothing has changed since. Only facades, legal definitions and political discourses. The truth is that Palestinians continue to suffer the consequences of Zionist colonialism and they will continue to carry that burden until that original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
#Gaza: Don't cry for us, pity us, feel sorry for us or be angry for us! Don't even do anything! Just keep watching us rising from the depth of debris, rubble and destruction to resist and struggle for our own right to exist! It's either death with dignity or a decent life!
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This amounts to approximately $23,000 for each Jewish Israeli family of four. The bill also mandates that NASA work with the Israeli Space Agency, despite accusations of Israeli espionage – In 2015 a Caltech scientist revealed that the Chair of Israel’s National Committee for Space Research had illegally acquired classified information.
Also yesterday, the Senate voted a Defense bill that provides $550 million to Israel.
Senate gives Israel billions and
US taxpayer one to the nads
While Israeli media have reported on the legislation, mainstream U.S. news media have failed to inform Americans about the money to Israel.
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, issued a statement saying:
“AIPAC appreciates the leadership of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) and Ranking Member Robert Menendez (D-NJ) along with the authors of the bill, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Coons (D-DE).”
The bill is currently also making its way through the House of Representatives. If the House passes it, as expected, it will be sent to President Trump to sign into law.
According to a YouGov poll conducted by Germany’s DPA news agency, 42% of Germans support a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in the country.
After over 70 years, Germans have apparently had enough of the U.S. troop presence in their country, the second largest presence of U.S. troops abroad after Japan.
According to a YouGov poll conducted by Germany’s DPA news agency, 42% of Germans support a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in the country with 37% of Germany wanting them to stay and 21% undecided. Currently, Germany hosts close to 35,000 U.S. soldiers and between 30 and 40 U.S. military bases.
The poll also found that support for withdrawal came from across the German political spectrum.
For instance, 67% of voters from the left-wing Die Linke party were found to support a U.S. troop withdrawal while 55% of the far-right, nationalist AfD party also expressed support for their removal.
The Green party of Germany also backed withdrawal by 48%. Support was lowest among voters of the CDU party, the political party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at 35%.
Other findings from the poll show that there is little popular support among Germans for militarism in general, but particularly U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent demand that NATO members such as Germany work to increase their military spending to a new target of 4% of national GDP. Some German political analysts have asserted that Trump’s demand is aimed at increasing European purchases of U.S.-manufactured weapons systems.
On this point, however, the poll found that only 15% of Germans support increasing military spending to just 2% of GDP. Furthermore, 36% of Germans feel that the country already spends too much on military spending. Yet, despite the lack of support for increasing military spending among Germans, Merkel stated on Thursday that, after a “very fundamental” discussion during the recent and “very intense” NATO summit, Germany must spend more on NATO defense.
Even though he has pushed Germany and other NATO countries to push for increased military spending despite a lack of popular support, Trump could still prove an unlikely ally for Germans eager to see at least a reduction in the number of U.S. troops stationed throughout the country.
U.S. Military Personnel Deployments by Country. Source | Visual Capitalist
Indeed, just two weeks ago, Trump was allegedly very surprised to learn the high number of American soldiers stationed in Germany. According to a report in the Washington Post, Trump’s surprise prompted him to ask the Department of Defense to analyze the feasibility of conducting a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of the U.S. troop presence stationed in Germany.
However, U.S. government officials have seemed to have talked Trump out of actually taking action on a withdrawal of troops from Germany. Notably, U.S. military officials, such as retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges who commanded U.S. Army Europe until late last year, have asserted that any reduction in the U.S. military presence in Germany would be a “colossal mistake.”
Hodges further claimed that Russia, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin, would emerge the “big winner” and that any reduction of the American military presence in Germany would “embolden Russia in terms of its adventurist, intimidating foreign policy.”
In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he also expressed confidence that Trump’s suggestion of a troop withdrawal was just a negotiating tactic and that,
“Pentagon planners would agree to keep troop levels in Germany on the current scale.”
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
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Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi is free after eight months in an Israeli prison. While her bravery in confronting occupying Israeli soldiers has been celebrated around the world, Western media outlets have gone to great lengths to portray her as an aggressor. We speak to Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, whose latest book is The Battle for Justice in Palestine.
Injuries are reported, but nothing like the murderous assault suffered by the Turkish flagged, Mavi Marmara, engaged in a similar attempt at penetrating Israel's naval blockade in 2010.
And; George Orwell famously described the battle for a remembering of crimes committed by society's overlords as the Memory War. Today, the reality of wars occurring around the planet seem too removed from the consciousness of the World's most powerful and belligerent nations to illicit the universal outrage and action required of their citizens to end them. We have it seems lost the memory war, and perhaps too surrendered our collective conscience.
This week coming offers another chance; it marks the annual remembrance of the 1945 atomic destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Women in Black will hold their annual vigil in remembrance of Hiroshima-Nagasaki this Tuesday, August 7 at high noon below the tourist information office across from the Empress Hotel.
Terry Wolfwood is Director and co-founder of the Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation, and a writer, photographer, and long-time activist who has traveled from the highlands of Mexico to the gates of Gaza and beyond in pursuit of peace, social justice, and women’s rights. Her articles have appeared at Briarpatch, Peace News, and Third World Resurgence among other places, and she's the local coordinator for Victoria’s Women in Black.
Terry Wolfwood and the power of remembering in the second half.
And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to get up to in and around our town for the coming week. But first, Jon Elmer and the deadly 2010 taking of the humanitarian relief ship, Mavi Marmara.
Two people from Al Awda (The Return) have been released, but most of the crew and participants are still in unlawful detention at Givon prison in Israel.
We are still gravely concerned for their safety and well-being as we had no contact with most of them as of 14:00 CEST today.
We continue to demand that our boat and the medical supplies on board reach their rightful recipients, Palestinian civil society in Gaza.
Although the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) claim that the capture of our vessel happened ‘without exceptional incident’, eye-witness Zohar Chamberlain Regev reports that at the time of boarding:
“People on board were tasered and hit by masked IOF soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception.”
We urgently need to know the details of who was injured and how seriously, and what treatment they are receiving, if any. A military attack on a civilian vessel is a violent act and a violation of international law. Taking 22 people from international waters to a country which is not their destination constitutes an act of kidnapping, which is also unlawful under the international Convention of the Law of Sea.
From the time we lost contact around 13:15 local time on Sunday, we know that the IOF blocked all communication signals, including satellite phones. We are very concerned about this violation of journalists’ right to report freely and we remain gravely concerned about their ability to keep their professional equipment and their storage media. As Australian journalist Chris Graham recently observed,
“Bad things happen when good people stay silent, as history well records. But horrendous things happen when media are prevented from scrutinizing the actions of a state.”
Two of our participants who are Israeli citizens have been charged with attempting to enter Gaza and conspiracy to commit a crime, and were released on bail this morning. One of them, boat leader Zohar Chamberlain Regev, reports seeing blood on the deck of the Al Awda as the last participants were being dragged off the ship.
In comparison with the violence routinely directed at Palestinian civilians, including at fishers from Gaza, and the violent capture of Palestinian fishing boats, yesterday’s seizure and kidnapping may not be the most serious of Israeli crimes. What these violent acts have in common is that there is no accountability demanded by other governments and Israel continues to enjoy total impunity.
We call on national governments, civil society and international organizations to demand that Israeli authorities immediately release our boat so that we can deliver our much-needed medical supplies on Al Awda and the fishing boat itself to the rightful recipients in Gaza.
Detailed specification of our exact cargo on board are available on request.
Israel’s capture of the lead boat in this Gaza-bound flotilla may seem like a predictable outcome to some, but that doesn’t make it any less violent nor any less illegal. Our second boat Freedom will follow Al Awda within a day or two, and the Freedom Flotilla will continue until the blockade ends and Palestinians of Gaza regain their full freedom of movement.
Details about detainees still in prison, including their last videos and personal statements, can be found on our website and Facebook pages: www.facebook.com/FreedomFlotillaCoalition/
It is no coincidence that some of the world’s most ardent imperialists are behind the cynical exploitation of one heinous murder — of British MP Jo Cox — to enable global mass-murder as well as human trafficking under the pretext of “ethical” and “humanitarian” intervention.
LONDON – Just over two years ago, the senseless and savage murder of British Labour Party MP Jo Cox stunned Britain and much of the world. After her death, families, friends and colleagues pledged that her memory would live on, thanks in part to the memorial funds posthumously set up in her honor.
Among those memorial funds, the Jo Cox Fund is by far the most notable, having greatly surpassed its £1.5 million ($1.97 million) fundraising goal. That money, according to the fund’s GoFundMe page, was divided among three organizations that had been “close to her [Cox’s] heart:” the Royal Voluntary Service, Hope Not Hate, and the White Helmets of Syria, with funds raised in excess of that goal being used to establish the Jo Cox Foundation.
Though Jo Cox was undeniably a vocal supporter of all three of those causes, the past two years have revealed a concerted effort on the part of powerful interests, including globalist billionaires and prominent figures of the Western political elite, to exploit Cox’s death for the purpose of furthering the long-standing Western agenda of effecting regime change in Syria.
These figures – George Soros, Bill Gates and the Clintons among them – have used their influence and their vast resources of capital in order not only to help enact the “humanitarian” regime change model in Syria, but to shield from criticism their assets in the country, including suspected child traffickers profiting from the misery of Syrian children.
The crux of this effort centers around the controversial “humanitarian” group that fraudulently calls itself the Syrian Civil Defense, better known as the White Helmets, whose ties to both terrorist elements within the Syrian opposition and Western governments pushing for Syrian regime change have been well-documented.
Through their receipt of money raised from the Jo Cox Fund and the group’s well-publicized efforts aimed at commemorating Cox’s death, the murdered MP’s posthumous and saint-like reputation has been instrumental in shielding the group from legitimate criticisms both within the U.K. and beyond, preventing genuinely independent inquiries into the group’s dubious activities in Syria and its documented receipt of over £38.4 million ($50.3 million) in U.K. government funds.
This is Part I of a three-part series on the life and legacy of Jo Cox, focusing on the establishment of the Jo Cox Fund 24 hours after her dreadful murder on June 16, 2016 — a fund that designated among its causes the multi-million-dollar government-financed White Helmets, whose primary purpose has been to escalate unlawful NATO state-proxy and direct military intervention in Syria. We focus on the originators of this fund and the extent to which they influence Western policy on Syria and elsewhere. It is no coincidence that some of the world’s most ardent imperialists are behind the cynical exploitation of one heinous murder to enable global mass-murder as well as human trafficking under the pretext of “ethical” and “humanitarian” intervention.
Who was Jo Cox?
Prior to her untimely and tragic death, Jo Cox was a “tireless advocate” for the Syrian opposition following the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian conflict, even going so far as to promote Western military intervention to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Indeed, Cox consistently called for the U.K. to unilaterally establish a “no fly zone” in Syria with U.S. support and argued that the U.K. military could achieve an “ethical solution” to the Syrian conflict by intervening in the war in order to “compel” the Syrian government to negotiate.
Cox was deeply connected to the Fabian Society, the claimed representative of “modern Labour” in the U.K. This society has certainly furthered U.K. imperialist politics, which included the “patriotic funding of war machines,” according to author Dr. P. Wilkinson, who analyzed the impact of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader in 2015 upon the Blairite factions within the party. While the Fabian Society can lay claim to some good work on child poverty, as an example, more recently it has been instrumental in the expansion of Global Britain’s economic and military interests.
In pursuit of U.K./NATO military intervention, Cox vocally denounced Assad and — throughout her short career in Parliament — had maintained that the Syrian president had “helped nurture ISIS [Daesh] and been its main recruiting sergeant.” She had also asserted that the Syrian government had killed seven times more civilians than the infamous terror group and the hundreds of other militant, extremist groups and foreign mercenaries in Syria at the behest of their backers among NATO member states and Gulf States with Israel as their hospital wing, treating armed militants, including Nusra Front in Israeli medical centres.
Cox’s precarious positioning of facts upon a mountain of misleading information has been discredited over time, as the Syrian Arab Army and its allies have waged a successful and authentic “war on terror” inside Syria and on its borders. All such wild accusations and Coxian theories have been eroded with each liberation of occupied Syrian territory and reintegration of armed militants into Syrian society via the Russian-brokered Amnesty and Reconciliation agreements.
Cox failed to pinpoint the U.K. Government’s involvement in the bankrolling of the various extremist and terrorist factions that invaded Syria from 2011 onwards. Armed militants, who have committed all manner of atrocities against the Syrian people, Cox claimed to defend. Cox, like so many regime-change promoters, had never been to Syria. She relied upon the narratives emerging from Syria produced by the U.K. FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office)-manufactured and financed White Helmets and a number of other U.K. state-funded entities on the ground in Syria. The U.K. Government was engineering a shadow state inside the borders of a sovereign nation and Cox supported this blatant violation of international law either deliberately or unwittingly.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Cox claimed that Syria was not another Iraq. This is a familiar mantra often repeated by those who support the regime change war in Syria and one that is verifiably false. It appears that Cox had never perused the Bush/Blair communications revealed in the Chilcot report that demonstrated the progression from Iraq to Iran and Syria in the U.K./U.S. drive towards hegemony in the region. Syria was in Bush’s crosshairs, as described in a TIME article, as far back as 2006 but this was overlooked by Cox. Tony Blair must have been proud of the efforts made by Cox to expand “Global Britain’s” interests inside Syria:
Above is a presentation slide showing just one of the Bush/Blair communiques as revealed by the Chilcot report. Blair suggests offering Syria and Iran a “chance at a different relationship,” one that would be soured by President Assad’s refusal to comply with the conditions of that “different relationship” — conditions included favoring the Qatar/Turkey oil pipeline preferred by the U.S. coalition. Assad said “no,” and he said “no” to abandoning his allies in the region or reneging on his commitment to the Palestinian cause. In 2002, Blair had even included an honorary knighthood in his early sweeteners to persuade Assad to embrace the “different relationship.” Blair soon changed tack when it was recognized that Syria would not abandon its principles so easily. Plan B, which was regime change, was put into effect.
Cox voted against the proposed bombing of Syria in 2015, not because she thought it was a bad idea but because she wanted David Cameron’s government to go further and send British troops into Syria to save the “moderates.”
In October 2015, Cox co-wrote an article with Andrew Mitchell, former Conservative Secretary of State for International Development (2010-12) and Libya war-hawk. The article was published in The Guardian, whose record on manufacturing consent for U.K. state “humanitarian” intervention is legendary. The title said it all – “British Forces could help achieve an ethical solution in Syria” (emphasis added).
Cox and Mitchell argued that Syria was this generation’s moral test, its “responsibility.” With little regard for the reality on the ground in Syria, Cox and Mitchell merged the threat of international terrorism with the perceived threat from the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army. The Labour and Tory MPs laser-focused on the refugee “crisis.” No context was provided, only emotional humanitarian flag-waving that ignored the fact that the refugee crisis was actually caused by a far greater percentage of non-Syrian refugees driven from Libya, Central Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq by previous NATO “ethical interventions.” Cox and Mitchell erased the U.K. government’s criminal record under international law with customary virtue-signalling.
“…[T]here is nothing ethical about standing to one side when civilians are being murdered and maimed. There was no excuse in Bosnia, nor Rwanda and there isn’t now.”
Like so many neocons, Cox fundamentally argued that the only pathway to peace was the removal of Assad and victory for the “rebels.” They gave little or no consideration to the reality that this would inevitably lead to the rise of violent sectarianism under an alleged “moderate” Islamist governance, which would plunge Syria into the same terrorist vacuum that Libya has been dealing with since NATO’s “ethical solution” reduced that prosperous sovereign nation down to a failed state.
Even after Cox’s untimely death, her colleagues insisted that her “legacy” should be Britain going to war in Syria. Just prior to her death, Cox had been working on a paper entitled “The Cost of Doing Nothing.” Posthumously this paper was completed by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, ex-military chair of the Foreign Affairs committee, and Alison McGovern, a Blairite MP who was elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group “Friends of Syria,” founded and previously chaired by Jo Cox.
According to a report by journalist and academic Paul Dixon, “the report was due to be published on the day of the Chilcot inquiry on 6 July 2016, to counter growing British scepticism about foreign military interventions.” Tugendhat, in particular, had argued (in a 2015 paper entitled “Clearing the Fog of Law”) against the human-rights laws that, in his opinion, curtailed and restricted British military action, he argued that “judicial imperialism should urgently be reversed.”
In an article written for the Telegraph, Tugendhat stated that “his friend” Jo Cox would “never want Britain to withdraw from the world — we must be ready to intervene.” A jingoistic argument was deployed by Tugendhat to justify British imperialism:
“We wanted to show that Britain’s history of intervention, military and otherwise, is common to both our political traditions and has been an integral part of our foreign and national security policy for over two hundred years.”
During her life, Cox had been an advocate of war to bring peace in Syria. Furthermore, as this article series will show, her monstrous murder has been weaponized and politicized by the neocon war hawks in British politics in order to further the imperialist ambitions of the U.K. government in Syria and beyond. Significant media coverage, for instance, has been given to Cox’s “compassion,” but little coverage has been given to her pro-interventionist policies — which she often promoted in apparent ignorance of reality and historical context. The use of the “humanitarian” pretext to promote war is hardly a new concept, but the sudden and shocking death of Jo Cox has been exploited in order to elevate it and shield it from honest criticism. Indeed, one could argue that to criticize Jo Cox posthumously is akin to questioning a “Saint.” Who could find fault with her campaign against “genocide,” her pleas for safe havens for refugees, her apolitical stance on the world’s “inhumanity?”
Nevertheless, despite the possibility of being labeled insensitive and cynical, the question that should be asked is who determines the meaning of the terms so liberally used by Cox and her colleagues? What are the implications of this humanitarian hyperbole for U.K. government policy? Indeed, in the past, misplaced or even misleading “compassion” has been used to encourage us not only to betray the principles of international law but also to justify the escalation of armed conflict that has brought only greater inhumanity.
In the case of Syria, such pro-interventionist “humanitarians” have largely promoted policies that have only deepened the suffering for the vast majority of Syrian people. What diplomatic efforts have been deployed? What rational, Syria-centric, political resolution has been proposed for discussion? What respect has there been for the self-determination of the Syrian people?
As an example, both Cox and the White Helmets were committed advocates of a No-Fly Zone over Syria — the White Helmets still are, of course. Despite the very real risk of escalating tensions with Russia, which intervened at the request of the Syrian government in September 2015, Cox argued strongly, in 2015, for a No-Fly Zone, defying even possible UN vetoes:
“This is not about escalating a conflict directly to take on Russia. This is about a deterrence effect to stop the Syrian regime targeting their own civilians.”
A “No-Fly Zone” is recognized by many acclaimed journalists and analysts as nothing less than a “declaration of war.” Even Hillary Clinton, neocon warhawk extraordinaire, conceded the certainty that a No-Fly Zone would kill more Syrian civilians:
“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defenses, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk — you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”
The precedent of Libya stands as a horrifying example of the death and destruction that is a consequence of such a policy, yet Cox was willing to endorse such wholesale devastation, which would inevitably affect more innocent lives in Syria and further fragment an already destabilized nation. Notably, she did so by promoting “humanitarianism,” despite the clearly inhuman consequences of such a policy.
Furthermore, Cox campaigned tirelessly for refugee rights. However, she did not highlight the British Government’s role in creating the refugee crisis in Syria by financing, promoting and equipping the “moderate” opposition that drove civilians from their homes and into refugee status. Neither did she highlight the British government’s role in NATO-member-state interventions that further exacerbated the refugee crisis in countries like Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Central Africa.
Beyond the conflict itself, Syrians have endured almost eight years of crippling economic sanctions, sanctions that were imposed by the U.K. and its allies in the U.S. regime-change coalition. As history has shown time and again, sanctions never damage a target government but instead wind up punishing the innocent people who resist any kind of foreign meddling in their sovereign affairs.
These particular sanctions have decimated the Syrian state medical sector, by destroying hospitals and reducing the nation’s ability to treat its population for all manner of chronic illness and to counter the trauma of an externally waged war. Why did Jo Cox never argue that these sanctions should be lifted, if she truly cared for the plight of the Syrian people? Indeed, why were the solutions she supported largely policies that — in practice — would deepen and prolong the conflict, and why did she invoke the well-being of the Syrian people to promote them?
Jo Cox and the White Helmets
Beyond her public calls for intervention, Cox also founded and co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) “Friends of Syria” from 2015 until her death a year later. She was again partnered in this endeavor by Andrew Mitchell, who was also co-chair of the APPG.
During that time, Cox hosted several events on behalf of the group, many of them promoting pro-regime-change speakers from groups like the European Council on Foreign Relations and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. More recent events hosted by the group have included speakers from the U.S. think-tank Atlantic Council, largely funded by U.S. weapons manufacturers; and the filmmakers of the second Oscar-nominated White Helmets documentary, Last Men in Aleppo, a revisionist project that attempted to erase from public consciousness the existence of Nusra Front and over 50 other extremist groups that occupied East Aleppo for almost five years.
Watch | Channel 4 tribute to Jo Cox, honoring the White Helmets as “impartial, neutral rescuers”
In promoting the White Helmets, the “Friends of Syria” group was following Cox’s lead, as Cox herself was a vocal supporter of the group and was instrumental in getting the group nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Indeed, a few months before her death, Cox had written a “heartfelt” letter to the Nobel Prize committee, asserting that “in the most dangerous place on earth these unarmed volunteers [of the White Helmets] risk their lives to help anyone in need regardless of religion or politics.”
Cox’s promotion of the White Helmets to win the Nobel Peace Prize gained the support of several notable celebrities – George Clooney and Daniel Craig, among others – as well as 20 other British MPs. The group was eventually nominated for the prize as a result, but failed to muster enough support to win the award, which instead went to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for the FARC peace deal.
Thus, the inclusion of the White Helmets as beneficiaries of the Jo Cox Fund is certainly in keeping with the Syria policy and narratives that Cox had promoted during her time as a public figure. However, what stands out is not only the extent to which the Jo Cox Fund has been posthumously exploited to continue funding the White Helmets. What is perhaps more striking is the history of the fund’s originators and their deep connections to some of the world’s most powerful individuals and influential “philanthropic” organizations.
Instant exploitation
Within five days of Cox’s murder, the White Helmets PR agency, Syria Campaign, had produced another in a long line of slick marketing campaigns. This time they announced “8 Reasons why Syrians will never forget Jo Cox.” Those eight reasons tied in perfectly with the U.K./U.S. Coalition “regime change” agenda. They included calls for “real action” to protect the Syrian “people;” not seeing Syria as Iraq; the root cause of killing and extremism in Syria is…. Assad; breaking the ubiquitous sieges (those allegedly created by Assad, not by the extremist factions, naturally); welcoming refugees; lobbying the UN to support unlawful intervention; and ensuring that U.K. foreign policy objectives of toppling the elected Syrian government are not allowed to fall from the parliamentary agenda.
What a perfect example of exploitation of a dramatic and shocking event by an organization established by a Syrian-in-exile oil baron, Ayman Asfari who has also provided financial backing to the Conservative Party in the U.K. Almost £ 700,000 since 2009. Asfari is a member of the Leaders Group, an “elite circle of donors” who are regularly invited to lunch with Tory Party influencers in return for £50,000 per year. Asfari is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Squad (SFO) in the UK on allegations of extensive bribery and corruption in the oil and gas industry for the last three years, according to the Electoral Commission.
British MP Wafic Saïd left, former Prime Minister David Cameron,
center, and Ayman Asfari, right. Photo | Saïd Foundation
Asfari is another elite mover and shaker whose influence over the view of the Syria conflict landscape packaged and presented in the West is considerable, particularly within sectors that will influence UK Government policy or support it.
Andrew Mitchell, perhaps best known in the U.K. for the “plebgate” saga, has systematically used Cox’s untouchable status to counter public concern over the true role of the White Helmets in Syria and their status as a “complete propaganda construct,” as described by eminent journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger.
The ever-increasing evidence of the White Helmets’ allegiance to Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) and a plethora of other equally brutal extremist groups; their participation in sectarian, extra-judicial executions by the “moderate” armed groups; and their lobbying for war in Congress, the UN and in Parliament are dismissed with the broad brush of Jo Cox’s living endorsement of this very British organization. Cox’s death has been exploited to render any investigation into the White Helmets an inhumane practice. In life and apparently even in death, Cox was and is an integral part of the White Helmet protection cartel.
The seamless transition from Jo Cox to a number of her acolytes and colleagues who have carried her interventionist baton forward has been remarkable. Following glowing tributes from global luminaries — such as former U.S. President, and drone warfare advocate, Barack Obama — significant others have moved into pole position to ensure the longevity of Cox’s policies.
Sara Brown, wife of former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, stepped up to praise the “female” White Helmets who appeared miraculously, shortly after criticism that the group was a sectarian, extremist and fundamental organization that would do nothing to further women’s rights in Syria. At the same time as Brendan Cox (Jo’s husband) was special advisor to Gordon Brown (2009-11), Jo Cox had helped Sara Brown to establish the Maternal Mortality Campaign, which aimed to raise awareness of babies dying needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth.
Move forward to 2017 and the creation of the Jo Cox-inspired centrist campaign group “More United,” which crowdfunds to support “progressive” election candidates across all parties in the U.K. According to Bess Mayhew, chief executive of More United:
“We are doing something unheard of in British politics: we want people across the political spectrum to agree and unite around the values we share. We have supporters, we have money, we have a long-term plan, and we’re mobilising a digital disruption of the politics of the status quo.”
Crowdfunding for “ethical” intervention-approved candidates who will ensure the protection of Global Britain’s imperialist road map and all its associated constructs, including the White Helmets.
With the Jo Cox Fund, public sentiment has been harnessed and monetized for the benefit of establishment elite “charity” schemes that effectively fund the assets who are enabling a violent regime-change war that has been waged for almost eight years inside Syria.
The billionaires behind the Jo Cox Fund
The Jo Cox Fund was set up, only 24 hours after the MP’s death, by four of Cox’s “friends” in London , who said they had set up the fundraiser in “close collaboration” with Cox’s husband, Brendan Cox. Cox’s “friends” that co-founded the fund are as follows, along with the organizational affiliations they freely provided on the fund’s page: Nick Grono (CEO, The Freedom Fund), Tim Dixon (MD, Purpose), Mabel van Oranje (Chair, Girls Not Brides), and Gemma Mortensen (Chief Global Officer, Change.org). Two of those four, Nick Grono and Mabel van Oranje, would go on to serve on the board of the Jo Cox Foundation.
However, these four figures — upon closer examination — are clearly much more than just four grieving friends of the late MP who just happen to also serve prominent roles on well-known non-governmental organizations and charities. In reality, all four are deeply connected to some of the most powerful interests in the world, many with nefarious agendas, that have long sought to hijack NGOs and other humanitarian organizations and weaponize them in the service of major political goals, including regime change targeting “rogue states.”
Of the four founders of the Jo Cox Fund, there is perhaps no one that epitomizes these types of connections more than Mabel van Oranje, nee Wisse Smit. Though often touted as a human-rights advocate for her role in organizations like Girls Not Brides and War Child Netherlands, a closer examination of van Oranje’s history reveals not only deep connections to some of the world’s most powerful people but also past connections to previous Western-backed regime-change operations.
Van Oranje and Cox were both “recognized” by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Cox was honored posthumously as a WEF Young Global Leader while van Oranje was named a WEF Global Leader for Tomorrow in 2003 and listed among its Young Global Leaders in 2005. The overlap of mutual award ceremonies among the organizations and individual players who form the ever-expanding imperialist network are brought into sharp relief by this examination of the Jo Cox Fund and those who breathed life into it. Certainly, there are very few globalist entities that epitomize the well-heeled financial, economic and corporate mafia sectors more than the WEF.
However, van Oranje is much more notable among the soft-power complex elite — not for her role at Girls Not Brides nor other NGOs — but for co-founding the European Council on Foreign Relations, a globalist pan-European think-tank whose members are a mix of EU politicians and top figures in the European media. However, the ECFR is more than just a think-tank, given that it is essentially an extension of one powerful and controversial billionaire, George Soros, whose Open Society Foundation was largely responsible for providing the ECFR’s initial funding.
The Soros connection only deepens as one examines van Oranje’s past. Indeed, van Oranje was the director of EU Affairs of Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) beginning in 1997 until 2002, when she became International Advocacy Director for the Open Society Institute’s branch in London. Notably, George Soros is one of the chief funders behind the most prominent NGOs and other “humanitarian” organizations that have consistently promoted Western military intervention in the Syrian conflict.
Furthermore, van Oranje’s private life makes her connections to some of the world’s leading globalists even more clear. In 2004, while working for the OSI, Mabel Martine Wisse Smit (maiden name) married the late Prince Fiso of the Netherlands, son of Queen Beatrix — a regular Bilderberg attendee — and the grandson of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands – the German-born Dutch royal who co-founded the Bilderberg Group in 1954.
Yet, of van Oranje’s innumerable connections to powerful billionaires and the global elite, her most striking connection — in the context of Syria at least — was perhaps one of her first. In 1993, van Oranje — at the age of 25 and just out of university — founded the European Action Council for Peace in the Balkans and served as its CEO until 1997, when she left to join Soro’s OSI.
Despite its name appearing to advocate for “peace” in the Balkans, the group van Oranje founded was instead stocked with powerful U.S. political figures who advocated for anything but peace in the Balkan states. For instance, some of the members of the group’s executive council included Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; Frank Carlucci, Deputy CIA Director under Carter and National Security Advisor and Deputy Secretary of Defense under former U.S. President Ronald Reagan; Max Kampleman, head of Reagan’s nuclear weapons team; and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Other key members and influencers working within the upper echelons of van Oranje’s council include Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and board member of Human Rights Watch, and Aryeh Neier, co-founder of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1978 and long-time president of Soros’ OSI. Human Rights Watch is a prominent NGO that uses its “humanitarian” exterior to push pro-intervention agendas that are promoted by the governments and billionaires who fund and support it. For instance, HRW was awarded $100m to expand its global presence over a 10 year period by Soros and his associated organizations in 2010, and has formed a critical part of the “humanitarian” pro-military intervention lobby since the 1990s. HRW also has close ties to U.S. intelligence and is one of the many CIA outreach agents designed to provide, yet again, cover for the Pentagon’s military fist inside the velvet glove of “humanitarian” concerns.
peace activist and author of The Dirty War on Syria.
How van Oranje was able to furnish her newly founded action council with such powerful figures, particularly just after finishing her senior year of college only months prior, is a testament to the strength of her connections, even before she began work for Soros’ elite power-protectionist group or became a member of the Dutch royal family.
Unsurprisingly, the European Action Council for Peace in the Balkans issued a call in 1995, under van Oranje’s leadership, for “an end to the arms embargo against Bosnia, the withdrawal of the UN forces from Bosnia and an effective NATO air campaign.”
Despite being an alleged “council for peace,” the van Oranje-led group demanded that any “air campaign” be both “strategic and sustained,” not “pinprick strikes.” In other words, this group called for an intense, brutal and long-lasting bombing campaign of the country, much like the type of bombing campaign promoted for use in Syria by groups like Crisis Action — with members such as van Oranje and Mortensen of the Jo Cox Fund, as well as Jo Cox herself before her death. At the time, the van Oranje-chaired group on the Balkan conflict had also asserted that “a failure to act will be disastrous for the people of Bosnia, for the U.S., and for our vital interests in Europe” — the familiar clarion call to war in the interests of a “national security” under no threat from the country in the crosshairs.
Nick Grono and the Clintons
Van Oranje is hardly the only Jo Cox Fund co-founder with a well-heeled foothold in the elite camp. Nick Grono, another co-founder of the fund, had worked with Jo Cox at an anti-slavery NGO, the Freedom Fund. Grono, who was appointed the group’s CEO in January of 2014, had also previously served in key posts at the NGO Walk Free, also aimed at ending modern-day slavery. Grono had also been Deputy President and Chief Operating Officer at the cutting edge “conflict resolution and prevention” cartel commonly known as the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Nick Grono greets Pope Francis in 2013. Photo | Freedom Fund
The ICG board is comprised of a cadre of well-known elites such as Frank Giustra, longtime philanthropic partner of Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation; Carl Bildt; Emma Bonino; former NATO Chief Wesley Clark; George Soros; Alexander Soros — the list is extensive of those who are immensely influential in the globalist circles. Furthermore, the funding for ICG is paid by the United States government through the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and grants made on behalf of the U.S. Congress to foreign political organizations. Other Western countries, like the Netherlands, also contribute. Notably, Mabel van Oranje is also a past member of ICG. Once encased in such a gilded cage, it is easy to build upon such connections and to expand, as a philanthrocapitalist, into the most lucrative areas of humanitarian need.
The Freedom Fund was first announced by former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2013 annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York. It was founded with $30 million provided by three “philanthropic” foundations of powerful billionaires and financial interests: Humanity United, a foundation funded by Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pamela; the Legatum Foundation, the development arm of the Legatum group, a global private investment firm connected to mega-banks JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs; and the Minderoo Foundation, the foundation of Australian mining oligarch and the country’s richest man Andrew Forrest and his wife Nicola.
The Freedom Fund was described as an “ambitious seven-year effort to raise and deploy $100 million or more to combat modern-day slavery.” It was Bill Clinton who announced the fund’s creation, stating that,
“This is a huge deal and we should all support this.”
Nick Grono was given the helm early on in the fund’s voyage, serving as its inaugural CEO. It is worth mentioning that the sincerity of Clinton’s enthusiasm for combating slavery and human trafficking is suspect, given that he was a regular visitor on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet and has intervened on at least one occasion to protect known child traffickers.
Grono is also on the board of van Oranje-chaired group Girls Not Brides and was the inaugural CEO of the anti-slavery NGO Walk Free, which conveniently interlocks with the anti-slavery movement contained within Freedom Fund. Notably, Tim Dixon, another Jo Cox Fund founder, is co-founder of Purpose Europe, a branch of the Avaaz-fostered behavioral-change experts that market themselves as a “non-profit” while accepting donor contributions from some of the most influential foundations and political “change” drivers, such as Google. According to Cory Morningstar, a pioneer researcher into the NPIC (Not for Profit Industrial Complex):
“Where, under the organization Avaaz, the public hasn’t acquiesced to an airstrike on Syria, the New York public relations firm Purpose Inc. has stepped in.”
Tim Dixon, pictured left, co-founded Purpose Europe.
Dixon’s connections will be covered in greater depth in Part 2, but it is worth noting here that Dixon also connects into the van Oranje network. Under Dixon’s tutelage and according to his LinkedIn profile, Purpose “incubated” van Oranje’s Walk Free Foundation that is now listed among the high-profile “partners” on the Purpose website.
The flotilla of anti-slavery activists and sponsors who floated Freedom Fund were Humanity Utd, Minderoo, Legatum Foundation who were then joined by the Stardust Fund, the C & A Foundation, and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which granted $10 million to the Freedom Fund over five years “to scale its anti-slavery work, with a particular focus on tackling the exploitation of children.”
These groups continue to back Freedom Fund, which also receives significant funding from the U.K. government and UBS, the multinational Switzerland-based investment bank.
A seminal paper written by Janie A. Chuang, an American professor of law, highlighted the pitfalls and risks involved in this particular area of philanthrocapitalism, a term Chuang invented in her essay. Chuang argues that “deep financial resources and access to powerful networks” give the philanthrocapitalists tremendous power to “shape the future trajectory of the anti-trafficking movement.” However, Chuang warns that this also gives these soft power moguls the ability to reconfigure and distort the landscape of global anti-trafficking policy-making and to contain it within a very limited power base that will monopolize the “market” and control the outcome.
The more sinister aspect of this overlap is that these capitalist NGO chains depend upon their ability to generate a revenue stream that sustains their positioning at the top of the fundraising pyramid. To what extent is the control they have over sectors of human suffering influenced by their need to meet the pay grade of their directors and board members? To what extent will these foundation-controlled NGOs sacrifice the agendas of their wealthy and powerful sponsors in favor of integrity and genuinely humanitarian objectives? In a nutshell, these anti-trafficking organizations depend upon human trafficking for their success, status and impact in an oversubscribed market.
In the next installment of this series, the role of these NGOs, and the Jo Cox Fund in particular, will be examined as it relates to the Syrian conflict. As described above, many of the very players involved with the Jo Cox Fund and associated NGOs are much involved with the public-relations campaign to elevate and protect groups like the White Helmets and other dubious elements of the Syrian opposition, an effort that has its origin in the NATO intervention in the Balkan states in the 1990s. As will be explored, the current efforts of those groups and individuals within Syria not only act as a cover for Western intervention but also cover the dark side of these “humanitarian” NGOs, particularly their possible involvement in the trafficking of Syrian children.
Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Support Vanessa via Patreon.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
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