It's Pipelines, Not Putin Fueling Ukraine Fraticidal War

Did Iran Just Knife Putin in the Back?

by Mike Whitney - CounterPunch

On Thursday, Ukraine’s parliament passed a law that will allow foreign investors to lease up to 49 percent of Ukraine’s transit pipelines and underground gas storage facilities. The bill, which had failed to pass just weeks earlier, was approved by the slimmest of margins, 2 votes, suggesting that there might have been some arm twisting or bribery behind the scenes. The new law is a victory for the Obama administration and western elites who want to control the flow of gas from Russia to the EU, set prices, and make sure that transactions continue to be denominated in dollars.

Here’s a little more background from an article in Reuters:

“Ukraine’s parliament approved a law on Thursday to allow gas transit facilities to be leased on a joint venture basis with participation from firms in the European Union or United States….The government has said the joint venture will bring in investment and remove the need for the South Stream pipeline, which Russia’s Gazprom is building to take gas to southeastern Europe across the Black Sea, avoiding Ukraine.

If South Stream is built, it threatens to deprive Ukraine’s badly strained budget of the transit fees that it currently receives from Russia for gas heading towards Europe.

The EU imports 30 percent of its natural gas needs from Russia, and about half of that comes via Ukraine, with some already having been diverted through the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea.” (“Ukrainian parliament backs bill to open gas pipelines to EU, U.S. firms”, The Star)

You can see that the bloody, fratricidal conflict in Ukraine has nothing to do with democracy, sovereignty or even “evil” Putin. It’s all about gas and pipelines. It’s all part of Washington’s grand plan to put a wedge between Russia and the EU, control the flow of vital resources, and establish NATO bases on Russia’s western flank. The fact that the article mentions South Stream is particularly revealing. The Obama administration is doing everything in its power to sabotage South Stream so that Russia will be unable to bypass trouble-making Ukraine and sell its gas directly to countries across Europe. (Here’s a map of South Stream.)

Washington doesn’t want free trade between neighbors. Washington wants every drop of Russian gas to pass through its tollbooth so it can maintain a stranglehold on Europe’s economy and on Moscow’s revenues. 

Here’s more on South Stream from Bloomberg:

“The $46 billion South Stream project, spearheaded by OAO Gazprom, is on hold and will probably remain in limbo for years as Russia continues to foment armed conflict in eastern Ukraine and the EU retaliates with bans, Eurasia Group said.

That means the war-torn country will remain a key transit point for about half of Gazprom’s shipments to Europe, according to the New York-based risk research group. The EU previously had mixed positions on South Stream. With Russian troops massing near the Ukraine border, the bloc now has little choice but to stand united in opposition.

“There’s no way Europe is going to put South Stream negotiations back on the table now, given the larger geopolitical context of the Ukraine crisis,” Emily Stromquist, a Eurasia analyst in London, said in an interview.

The proposed 2,446-kilometer (1,520-mile) pipeline would run under the Black Sea and enter the EU in Bulgaria. That would end Gazprom’s dependence on the Ukrainian gas-transit system.” (“Putin’s Pipeline Bypassing Ukraine Is at Risk Amid Conflict”, Bloomberg)

So, you see, the US is using every trick in the book to prevent Russia from selling its gas to the EU.

But, why?

Because the US is left out, that’s why. Washington doesn’t want what’s best for the EU or Russia. Washington want what’s best for Washington. What they want is to pivot to Asia by pitting Moscow against Brussels, thus, creating the pretext for deploying cat’s-paw NATO to Ukraine so they can point their missiles at the Russian capital and bully everyone in the region. That’s the plan.

By the way, the claim that “Russia is massing troops by the Ukrainian border” is nonsense. An International team of inspectors was sent to Russia to check things out and here’s what the found:

“No instances of violations by Russia along the Ukrainian border had been registered by the inspectors,” the ministry said. “The last four months have witnessed 18 separate inspections along the Ukrainian border with the Russian Federation, all in line with the Vienna Open Skies Treaty and the Vienna agreement of 2011.” (RT)

See? It’s all baloney, just like most of what you read in the western media about Ukraine is baloney. In fact, there have been a number of excellent articles written on the topic just recently, notably articles by Ron Unz and Karel Van Woldferen. Having done considerable research on the topic, businessman and political activist, Unz is amazed at, what he calls “the utter corruption and unreliability of the mainstream American media”, adding that “the events of the last dozen years should have bankrupted any faith we have in our government or media.” (“American Pravda: Who Shot Down Flight MH17 in Ukraine?“, The Unz Review)

In a similar vein, Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam, Karel Van Wolferen, takes aim at both the media and the state, but saves his most devastating salvo for Washington:

“America’s history,” he says, “since the demise of the Soviet Union, of truly breathtaking lies: on Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Libya and North Korea; its record of overthrown governments; its black-op and false flag operations; and its stealthily garrisoning of the planet with some thousand military bases, is conveniently left out of consideration. ... Decent Europeans cannot bring themselves to believe in the dysfunction and utter irresponsibility of the American state.” (“The Ukraine, Corrupted Journalism, and the Atlanticist Faith“, Karel Van Wolferen, The Unz Review

Both articles are worth reading in full.

In any event, readers would be well advised not to trust anything they read in the media about Ukraine. It’s all bunkum. Just like the ridiculous article, that popped up in the Guardian last week (that was intended to start World War 3) is bunkum. Here’s the scoop: Last Thursday, journalists from the Guardian and the Telegraph reported that a convoy of Russian military trucks and armored vehicles crossed the border into Ukraine.

Here’s a clip from the article in the Guardian:

“The Guardian saw a column of 23 armoured personnel carriers, supported by fuel trucks and other logistics vehicles with official Russian military plates, travelling towards the border near the Russian town of Donetsk – about 200km away from Donetsk, Ukraine.

After pausing by the side of the road until nightfall, the convoy crossed into Ukrainian territory, using a rough dirt track and clearly crossing through a gap in a barbed wire fence that demarcates the border. Armed men were visible in the gloom by the border fence as the column moved into Ukraine. Kiev has lost control of its side of the border in this area.

The trucks are unlikely to represent a full-scale official Russian invasion, and it was unclear how far they planned to travel inside Ukrainian territory and how long they would stay. But it was incontrovertible evidence of what Ukraine has long claimed – that Russian troops are active inside its borders.” (“Aid convoy stops short of border as Russian military vehicles enter Ukraine”, Guardian)

“Incontrovertible evidence”, you say? No photos, no satellite imagery, no nothing. We are asked to believe that two professional journalists didn’t even have a workable cell phone with which they could take a picture. That’s incontrovertible evidence?

Shortly after the alleged incident, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko issued a statement saying “that his country’s armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that the Guardian saw moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.”

Got that? So, now they not only SAW the phantom convoy they also blew it up. Not bad for a day’s work.

Okay, so where are the prisoners? Where are the blown up hulks of the armored vehicles? Where are the casualties? Where’s eyewitness testimony of the people who first appeared on the scene? Where’s the photographic proof from US satellites that were combing the area at the time? There’s has to be something to substantiate a claim as serious as this; a claim that could lead to a declaration of war on Russia.

Nothing. They have nothing; not a shred of hard evidence. It’s all just fluff.

This is sadly reminiscent of the bogus claims of “mobile weapons labs” and “aluminum tubes” that were used launch the war on Iraq. Similarly, all the media fell in line, reiterating the same basic narrative with zero evidence.

Here’s a blurb form the New York Times:

“The government of Ukraine, pushing to oust pro-Russian rebels from their last enclaves in the east while nervously eyeing a stalled Russian aid convoy, said on Friday that its force had destroyed a number of Russian military vehicles that it said crossed into Ukraine late Thursday through a border area controlled by the separatists.” (NYT)

And the Telegraph:

“There was growing concern over the Ukraine crisis on Friday night after Kiev claimed to have destroyed parts of a column of Russian military vehicles, with Nato accusing Moscow of launching an “incursion”. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, told David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that government artillery had destroyed a “considerable part” of a small military convoy that entered the country.” (Telegraph)

And the Kyiv Post:

“Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian military vehicles in the country’s east, a day after a column was spotted moving across the border. Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron by phone that his country’s armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that the Guardian saw moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.” (Kyiv Post)

Propagandize. Wash. Repeat.

Russia’s Defense Ministry basically laughed off the allegations as politically motivated lies saying:

“No Russian military column that allegedly crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border at night or during the day ever existed….Such statements – based on fantasies, or journalists’ assumptions, to be precise – should not be subject for a serious discussion by top officials of any country,” said Major General Igor Konashenkov. (RT)

Ask yourself this, dear reader, if Russia had sent armored personnel carriers across the border into Ukraine, do you really think they’d do it on the same freaking day they were trying to get a green light for their humanitarian convoy? And if they did; do you really think that Poroshenko would give the humanitarian convoy the go-ahead?

Of course, he wouldn’t. He’d be too busy declaring war on Russia. But he’s not declaring war on Russia nor has he stopped the humanitarian convoy.

Why? Because he knows that the whole story is bullshit, that’s why. His behavior proves its a lie.

PIPELINE POLITICS

If you follow pipeline politics, there was a development last week that will blow your socks off. In a nutshell: Iran sold out and switched over to the dark side. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this from World Bulletin:

”As the Ukraine crisis puts Russia and Europe at odds, leaving Europe with no choice but to search for alternative natural gas resources, Iran looks likely to fulfill Europe’s demand. Iran’s deputy oil minister Ali Mejidi has indicated that the Nabucco Project, which was presented as an alternative to Russian gas with the potential of fulfilling a large proportion of Europe’s need before being put on hold last year, is now back on track.

Speaking to Russian press, Mejidi confirmed that two separate delegations were sent to Europe. “With Nabucco, Iran can provide Europe with gas. We are the best alternative to Russia,” he said. Mejidi also said that though a number of routes to deliver the gas to Europe were being considered, Turkey was the “right address.”

The Nabucco project, which was first presented in 2002, plans to pump gas to Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The project will also pump 31 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani and Iraqi natural gas to Europe.” (“Iran to provide Europe with alternative to Russian gas”, World Bulletin)

Wow. What a kick in the teeth that is. This is a huge blow not just to Putin, but to everyone who seeks a multi-polar world run by sovereign nations who believe in the rule of law.

How did this happen? And why is Iran climbing into bed with the Great Satan instead of pushing for their original plan which was to build a pipeline from Iran-Iraq-Syria? Could it be that Uncle Sam is going to make sure that that pipeline never gets built? Is that why Washington is letting a couple thousand homicidal maniacs (ISIS) run around Syria and Iraq lopping off heads and wreaking havoc; so it will be impossible to lay pipe or transit gas?

It sure looks that way, but there’s more too. Check out this blurb from an article by William Engdahl:

“In 2009, the Emir of Qatar went to Damascus to negotiate an agreement with President Bashar Assad for a Qatari gas pipeline from their huge offshore gas field, North Dome, which is contiguous with the Iranian South Pars field in the waters of the Persian Gulf dividing the two countries. The South Pars/North Dome field is the world’s largest gas field, shared between Iran and Qatar….. Qatar’s proposition to Assad was to build a gas pipeline that would bring Qatari gas through Syria and into Turkey, a close Qatari ally. Assad refused, citing Syria’s strong energy relations with Russia.

In March 2011, Assad signed another gas pipeline deal: this time with arch-Qatar enemy, Iran. Qatar is fundamentalist Sunni and home to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is fundamentalist Shiite Muslim and Iraq is ruled by a Shiite Prime Minister. Both Iran and Iraq back Assad in the current war for control of Syria. The Iranian gas pipeline would extend from its Persian Gulf field through Iraq and through Syria. No sooner was the ink dry on the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline when a full-scale terror war, financed by Qatar to the tune of billions of dollars, exploded across Syria.

Now Russia has stepped in, after the failure of Qatar, the Saudis and Turkey to topple the Assad regime and replace it, either with a fundamentalist Wahabite Saudi regime or a fundamentalist Salafist Muslim Brotherhood, one that would do business with them and not with Russia.” (“Syria attraction: Russia moving into Eastern Mediterranean oil bonanza”, William Engdahl, RT)

In other words, if you don’t do what your told to do, and sign on the bottom line; then we’ll start a terrorist war in your backyard and you’ll get nothing. Isn’t that what’s happening to Syria?

You bet, it is. Still, that doesn’t explain why Iran sold its former friends down the river. For clues to that, we need to look back to before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected and the western media was all atwitter about what a “moderate” he was. (Moderate is a euphemism that is usually applied to US puppets.) It all started back in September, 2013, when Rouhani opened up a channel for talking with Obama. It was obvious from the get-go that the White House figured they had a guy in Tehran, they “could work with”. Here’s a little background for the incident the pundits called “the phone call”:

“President Barack Obama and new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke by telephone on Friday, the highest-level contact between the two countries in three decades and a sign that they are serious about reaching a pact on Tehran’s nuclear program….

As president, Rouhani is the head of the government but has limited powers. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the ultimate authority in Iran with final say on domestic and foreign policy, though Rouhani says he has been given full authority to negotiate on the nuclear issue….

In his speech to the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Obama cautiously embraced Rouhani’s gestures as the basis for a possible nuclear deal and challenged him to demonstrate his sincerity. However, the failure to orchestrate a handshake between the two leaders that day, apparently because of Rouhani’s concerns about a backlash from hardliners at home, seemed to underscore how hard it may be to make diplomatic progress.” (“Obama, Iran’s Rouhani hold historic phone call”, Reuters)

Of course, they couldn’t shake hands, because they are supposed to be mortal enemies. But, clearly, Rouhani has been busy behind the scenes cozying up to Obama. And it’s paid off too. Check this out from UPI:

“Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressed delegates gathered for an economic forum in the Iranian capital. He said sanctions pressure has eased in coordination with multilateral negotiations over Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

Iran under the terms of a multilateral agreement reached in November can export around 1 million barrels of oil in exchange for curbing nuclear research activity. Rouhani said moving forward with nuclear talks with the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France, plus Germany, should bring benefits to the international community.

“Western and eastern countries are telling us the sanctions have harmed them and their removal will benefit all,” he said.

The Iranian Oil Ministry said Tuesday its oil sales for the first four months of the year were up 5 percent when compared with last year.” (“Iran: Easing sanctions brings global relief”, UPI)

Iran’s fictional “nuclear program” had nothing to do easing sanctions. The whole thing is a red herring. The nuclear program is just a stick the US uses to beat up Tehran whenever they get the urge. Here’s what’s really happened: Washington agreed to ease up on the sanctions if Iran caved in on the gas deal, which it did. Now the US-backed Nabucco pipeline is back in business, while Russia’s South Stream is on the rocks.

You got to admit: US really knows how to play smash-mouth politics when it has to.

One last thought: The only way Washington would do a deal with arch-enemy Iran, is if there was some other country they hated even more.

That would be Russia.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Getting to the Truth on the Mt. Polley "Spill"

The Unlikely Truth

by David Clow

Judge for yourself about the Mount Polley/Imperial Metals mining tailings ponds spill as you are taken through the four relevant locations to the story - the mine itself, Hazeltine Creek, Lake Quesnel at the blowout point, and Lake Polley.

Water sample results from the above location will be posted at:
http://davidclow.ca

Go to: https://www.facebook.com/david.clow.90 for ongoing updates.

Ontario "ICE"- Wynne Government and CBSA Stage Mass Immigration Raids

Anger grows at Ontario involvement in Immigration Raids

by NOII

Toronto - Migrant justice group No One Is Illegal - Toronto is organizing an emergency rally and launching a petition against the Kathleen Wynne government after Ontario Provincial Police and the Ministry of Transportation racially profiled and forcefully ID'd immigrants, colluding with Canada Borders Services Agency (CBSA) in the Keele-Finch area last week. 

CBSA has confirmed that at least 21 people were detained under the excuse of "vehicle safety checks", and now face separation from their families, endless detentions and deportation.

PETITION: http://chn.ge/1lbFvON (includes quotes from detainees)

WHAT: "Wynne, don't do Harper's dirty work!" emergency rally
WHEN: 12pm, Monday, August 18th, 2014
WHERE: Ontario Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services (responsible for OPP)
WHO: Friends, family members and supporters of detained immigrants, and community organizations

Though some reports suggest more than 50 people, CBSA has confirmed that at least 21 people were arrested on their way to work in the GTA this week. The undocumented workers were ambushed by armed officers in a series of surprise early morning sweeps.

Early in the morning on August 14th, Ontario Provincial Police and Ministry of Transportation officers along with immigration enforcement officers racially profiled and pulled over undocumented day-laborers on their way to work under the guise of a traffic stop. 

 

All the passengers in the car were coerced into giving up their ID's and many are now being detained at the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre at 385 Rexdale. The raids occurred in the Jane-Wilson, Keele-Wilson and Weston-401 areas.

Most of the detained were asked to sign documents waiving their rights which were not fully translated. As a result, at least one person faces deportation on Tuesday morning. The rest are now caught in Canada's system of indefinite detention which the United Nations found to be in violation of international laws and conventions in a legal opinion released last month. 

 

The UN found that Canada's immigration detention review system is arbitrary, unfair, and lacks a clear limit on the length of detention, leading some people to be detained for over 10 years without charge. 

 

Since the current federal government came to power, over 85,000 migrants have been detained without charge or trial.

 

 

 

No One Is Illegal - Toronto
Media Advisory
August 17, 2014

Media Contact: 

Syed Hussan, 416 453 3632

Riddles, Lies, and Lives: Century of Disaster

Century of Disaster: Riddles, Lies, and Lives - from Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali to Albert Einstein and Barbie

by Eduardo Galeano  - TomDispatch

Stalin 

He learned to write in the language of Georgia, his homeland, but in the seminary the monks made him speak Russian.

Years later in Moscow, his south Caucasus accent still gave him away.

So he decided to become more Russian than the Russians. Was not Napoleon, who hailed from Corsica, more French than the French? And was not Catherine the Great, who was German, more Russian than the Russians?

The Georgian, Iosif Dzhugashvili, chose a Russian name. He called himself Stalin, which means “steel.”

The man of steel expected his son to be made of steel too: from childhood, Stalin’s son Yakov was tempered in fire and ice and shaped by hammer blows.

It did not work. He was his mother’s child. At the age of 19, Yakov wanted no more of it, could bear no more.

He pulled the trigger.

The gunshot did not kill him.

He awoke in the hospital. At the foot of the bed, his father commented:

“You can’t even get that right.”

[The following passages are excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s history of humanity, Mirrors (Nation Books).]

Tomgram: Eduardo Galeano, A Lost and Found History of Lives and Dreams (Some Broken)

Who isn’t a fan of something -- or someone? So consider this my fan’s note. To my mind, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano is among the greats of our time. His writing has “it” -- that indefinable quality you can’t describe but know as soon as you read it. He’s created a style that combines the best of journalism, history, and fiction and a form for his books that, as far as I know, has no name but involves short bursts of almost lyrical reportage, often about events long past. As it turns out, he also carries “it” with him. I was his English-language book editor years ago and can testify to that, even though on meeting him you might not initially think so. He has nothing of the showboat about him. In person, he’s almost self-effacing and yet somehow he brings out in others the urge to tell stories as they’ve never told them before.

Call it charisma if you want (though I still remember a professor of mine pointing out, in reference to Chinese leader Mao Zedong, that what’s charisma to one is zilch to another). Explain it as you will, from Memory of Fire, his three-volume history of the Americas, to his recent Children of the Days, a kind of prayer book for our time, he’s never stopped telling us our own stories in ways we haven’t heard them before.

At some point in Galeano’s life as a collector of stories, history decided to trust him and spilled its secrets to him. In 2009, he returned the favor by writing one of the great books of this century, Mirrors, a history of humanity in 366 episodes, from our first myths to late last night. Thanks to his publisher, Nation Books, and his devoted literary agent, Susan Bergholz, I’ve chosen 12 of my own favorites from that work for your summer pleasure. Think of this post as a Galeano-esque mini-history of our last century of turmoil through a kaleidoscope of “characters,” human and inanimate -- and then get your hands on Mirrors and read the whole thing for yourself. Tom

 

Century of Disaster: Riddles, Lies, and Lives -- from Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali to Albert Einstein and Barbie

by Eduardo Galeano

 

 The Ages of Josephine

At nine years old, she works cleaning houses in St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi.

At 10, she starts dancing for coins in the street. At 13, she marries.

At 15, once again. Of the first husband she retains not even a bad memory. Of the second, his last name, because she likes how it sounds.

At 17, Josephine Baker dances the Charleston on Broadway. At 18, she crosses the Atlantic and conquers Paris. The “Bronze Venus” performs in the nude, with no more clothing than a belt of bananas.

At 21, her outlandish combination of clown and femme fatale makes her the most popular and highest-paid performer in Europe.

At 24, she is the most photographed woman on the planet. Pablo Picasso, on his knees, paints her. To look like her, the pallid young damsels of Paris rub themselves with walnut cream, which darkens the skin.

At 30, she has problems in some hotels because she travels with a chimpanzee, a snake, a goat, two parrots, several fish, three cats, seven dogs, a cheetah named Chiquita who wears a diamond-studded collar, and a little pig named Albert, whom she bathes in Je Reviens perfume by Worth.

At 40, she receives the Legion of Honor for service to the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation.

At 41 and on her fourth husband, she adopts 12 children of many colors and many origins, whom she calls “my rainbow tribe.”

At 45, she returns to the United States. She insists that everyone, whites and blacks, sit together at her shows. If not, she will not perform. At 57, she shares the stage with Martin Luther King and speaks against racial discrimination before an immense crowd at the March on Washington.

At 68, she recovers from a calamitous bankruptcy and at the Bobino Theater in Paris she celebrates a half-century on the stage.

And she departs.

Photograph: Saddest Eye in the World

Princeton, New Jersey, May 1947.

Photographer Philippe Halsman asks him: “Do you think there will be peace?”

And while the shutter clicks, Albert Einstein says, or rather mutters: “No.”

People believe that Einstein got the Nobel Prize for his theory of relativity, that he was the originator of the saying “Everything is relative,” and that he was the inventor of the atom bomb.

The truth is they did not give him a Nobel for his theory of relativity and he never uttered those words. Neither did he invent the bomb, although Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been possible if he had not discovered what he did.

He knew all too well that his findings, born of a celebration of life, had been used to annihilate it.

Father of the Computer

Alan Turing was sneered at for not being a tough guy, a he-man with hair on his chest.

He whined, croaked, stuttered. He used an old necktie for a belt. He rarely slept and went without shaving for days. And he raced from one end of the city to the other all the while concocting complicated mathematical formulas in his mind.

Working for British intelligence, he helped shorten the Second World War by inventing a machine that cracked the impenetrable military codes used by Germany’s high command.

At that point he had already dreamed up a prototype for an electronic computer and had laid out the theoretical foundations of today’s information systems. Later on, he led the team that built the first computer to operate with integrated programs. He played interminable chess games with it and asked it questions that drove it nuts. He insisted that it write him love letters. The machine responded by emitting messages that were rather incoherent.

But it was flesh-and-blood Manchester police who arrested him in 1952 for gross indecency.

At the trial, Turing pled guilty to being a homosexual.

To stay out of jail, he agreed to undergo medical treatment to cure him of the affliction. The bombardment of drugs left him impotent. He grew breasts. He stayed indoors, no longer went to the university. He heard whispers, felt stares drilling into his back.

He had the habit of eating an apple before going to bed.

One night, he injected the apple with cyanide.

Red Emperor

I was in China three years after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. No one talked about it. It was a state secret.

I saw Mao paying homage to Mao. In Tiananmen Square, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Mao presided over an immense parade led by an immense statue of Mao. The plaster Mao held his hand high, and the flesh-and-blood Mao answered the greeting. From an ocean of flowers and colored balloons, the crowd cheered both.

Mao was China and China was his shrine. Mao exhorted all to follow the example set by Lei Feng and Lei Feng exhorted all to follow the example set by Mao. Lei Feng, a young Communist apostle of dubious existence, spent his days consoling the sick, helping widows, and giving his food away to orphans. His nights he spent reading the complete works of Mao. When he slept, he dreamed of Mao, his guide for every step. Lei Feng had no girlfriend or boyfriend because he did not waste time on frivolities, and it never occurred to him that life could be contradictory or reality diverse.

Fidel

His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like Granma, no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices.

And in that his enemies are right.

But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders’ bullets,

he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane,

he survived 637 attempts on his life,

his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony,

and it was not by Lucifer’s curse or God’s miracle that the new country managed to outlive 10 U.S. presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.

And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.

And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.

And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.

And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.

Ali

He was butterfly and bee. In the ring, he floated and stung.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, refused to put on a uniform.

“Got nothing against no Viet Cong,” he said. “Ain’t no Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”

They called him a traitor. They sentenced him to a five-year jail term, and barred him from boxing. They stripped him of his title as champion of the world.

The punishment became his trophy. By taking away his crown, they anointed him king.

Years later, a few college students asked him to recite something. And for them he improvised the shortest poem in world literature:

“Me, we.”

Walls

The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain...

In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them.

Little is said about the wall the United States is building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

Practically nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be 15 times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland by the kingdom of Morocco, and is 60 times the length of the Berlin Wall.

Why are some walls so loud and others mute?

Barbie Goes to War

There are more than a billion Barbies. Only the Chinese outnumber them.

The most beloved woman on the planet would never let us down. In the war of good against evil, Barbie enlisted, saluted, and marched off to Iraq.

She arrived at the front wearing made-to-measure land, sea, and air uniforms reviewed and approved by the Pentagon.

Barbie is accustomed to changing professions, hairdos, and clothes. She has been a singer, an athlete, a paleontologist, an orthodontist, an astronaut, a firewoman, a ballerina, and who knows what else. Every new job entails a new look and a complete new wardrobe that every girl in the world is obliged to buy.

In February 2004, Barbie wanted to change boyfriends too. For nearly half a century she had been going steady with Ken, whose nose is the only protuberance on his body, when an Australian surfer seduced her and invited her to commit the sin of plastic.

Mattel, the manufacturer, announced an official separation.

It was a catastrophe. Sales plummeted. Barbie could change occupations and outfits, but she had no right to set a bad example.

Mattel announced an official reconciliation.

Lied-About Wars

Advertising campaigns, marketing schemes. The target is public opinion. Wars are sold the same way cars are, by lying.

In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson accused the Vietnamese of attacking two U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf.

Then the president invaded Vietnam, sending planes and troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his popularity skyrocketed. The Democrats in power and the Republicans out of power became a single party united against Communist aggression.

After the war had slaughtered Vietnamese in vast numbers, most of them women and children, Johnson’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, confessed that the Tonkin Gulf attack had never occurred.

The dead did not revive.

In March 2003, President George W. Bush accused Iraq of being on the verge of destroying the world with its weapons of mass destruction, “the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Then the president invaded Iraq, sending planes and troops. He was acclaimed by journalists and by politicians, and his popularity skyrocketed. The Republicans in power and the Democrats out of power became a single party united against terrorist aggression.

After the war had slaughtered Iraqis in vast numbers, most of them women and children, Bush confessed that the weapons of mass destruction never existed. “The most lethal weapons ever devised” were his own speeches.

In the following elections, he won a second term.

In my childhood, my mother used to tell me that a lie has no feet. She was misinformed.

Riddle

They are the most important members of our family.

They are gluttons, devouring gas, oil, corn, sugarcane, and anything else that comes their way.

They own our time: bathing them, feeding and sheltering them, talking about them, and opening the way for them.

They reproduce faster than we do, and are 10 times as numerous as they were half a century ago.

They kill more people than do wars, but no one condemns the murders, least of all the newspapers and television channels that live off their advertisements.

They steal our streets. They steal our air. They laugh when they hear us say: “I drive.”

Lost and Found

The twentieth century, which was born proclaiming peace and justice, died bathed in blood. It passed on a world much more unjust than the one it inherited.

The twenty-first century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessor’s footsteps.

In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon.

But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed.

If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced.
Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting.

Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America’s most distinguished writers. He is the author of a three-volume history of the Americas, Memory of Fire, and most recently, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. He is the recipient of many international prizes, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. These excerpts are taken from his history of humanity, Mirrors, translated by Mark Fried.

This post is excerpted from Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone Copyright © 2009 by Eduardo Galeano; translation copyright © 2009 by Mark Fried. Published by Nation Books, a member of the Perseus Group, New York, N.Y. Originally published in the Spanish language in 2008 by Siglo XXI Editores (Spain and Mexico) and Ediciones del Chanchito (Uruguay). By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York City, and Lamy, N.M. All rights reserved.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.

Copyright 2014 Eduardo Galeano

Boots on the Ground Back in Iraq

Back in Iraq: We Only Want to Save You

by Danny Schechter - ICH

New York, New York -  Welcome back to Iraq -- complete with our ever present WMD's -- Weapons of Mass deception.

Suddenly, the country we never wanted to have to think about again is back in the news and on our military agenda. So, after a few denials that troops would not, never, and no way be sent, sure'nuff, U.S, boots are back on the ground, but to play a very different "mission."

Of course, it's not combat, assures Secretary of Defense Hagel who was wearing his tennis clothes when he met with GIs. That is, no doubt, why we are pounding that country with bombs again.

To signal that we are not back in the days of the war for Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon announced its latest humanitarian effort with a tweet, that, in the media world we are now part of, maybe the equivalent of a whimper not a neocon bark.

Once again, we are the good guys charging in to protect and defend, save and rescue. You saw the alarmist stories.

This report was on RTE in Ireland;

"Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis.
They buried some alive and took women as slaves, as US warplanes again bombed the insurgents.

Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity."

But, then, predictably, there was this coda that put the story in question: "No independent confirmation was available of an event that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help."

It sounded like the story a few weeks back that had ISIS vowing to impose female genital mutilation on every woman they met. Happily, it was later repudiated.

This is not to say that ISIS is not brutal says Edmund Ghareeb of the Center for Global Peace at American University.

"Where have people been? Certainly some of the recent reporting of the carnage by IS is sensationalized, but their brutality is all too real. But critically, it's been happening for years in both Iraq and in Syria, where is should have been confronted. In Syria, ancient Christian churches were destroyed, nuns and bishops were kidnapped and priests were killed. In Syria and Iraq, many belonging to different religions, sects and nationalities were killed or forced to flee at the hands of extremists and criminals. This was widely ignored in large part because many in the region and in the west were so focused on attacking the Assad government.

"As for U.S. intervention, the danger is that it may further hurt the Iraqi people and fragment Iraq altogether in the name of this humanitarian intervention."

Now, we have US troops flying into the mountain that we were told was packed to overflowing with 40,000 desperate refugees facing starvation.

What happened when their saviors finally arrived?

Here's USA Today:

"WASHINGTON — A review by U.S. special operations troops of conditions on Iraq's Mount Sinjar on Wednesday has determined that the conditions of a religious minority seeking refuge there are better than believed and may not require a U.S.-led evacuation, the Pentagon said...

"Based on this assessment the interagency has determined that an evacuation mission is far less likely. Additionally, we will continue to provide humanitarian assistance as needed and will protect U.S. personnel and facilities."

Comments Jason Ditz on anti-war.com;

"The Pentagon is trying to manage the narrative by simply saying the rescue mission "appears unnecessary," but the fact that it was used to start a US war remains, and the State Department is doubling down, trying to spin the lack of a crisis as vindication of the war."

Of course, protecting Americans was the first reason cited for this intervention.

So noted the political scientist Michael Brenner, without first noting that the City of Erbil is a major center for U.S. Oil companies and their employees:

"The first thing to say is that we should not confuse purpose with justification. Thursday night, Obama explicitly stated that protection of Americans in Irbil (and implicitly Kurdistan) was the reason for acting against advancing IS forces.

This is not entirely convincing; evacuation could be a logical alternative. Obviously, there are other aims, inter alia in the immediate, securing access to the air and support facilities we have established at the airport that are crucial to any future operations -- including supplying the Peshmerga, e.g. keeping open your military options; to shore up Kurdish morale; to send a message to IS and its allies that any future campaigns in that direction that they contemplate would not be a cakewalk. The President said none of this due to his anxieties about making about making implicit commitments that he is not sure that he could meet."

What they are doing, says Brenner, is dipping into an old playbook "trying to lay the groundwork for revival of the Sawah Awakening movement among Sunni tribes that had suppressed al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia in 2006-2008." That effort was based on a vicious counter-insurgency campaign with plenty of pay-offs to our robed "allies."

Clearly, in the aftermath of the ISIS victories, this maneuver decisively failed.

No matter, for Obama, it was soon back to the golf course on Martha's Vineyard, the Kennedy and then Clinton vacation playground he has made his own. Maybe he feels like he can relax because the British and French are shipping in weapons to the US trained Peshmerga, whether they need them or not. After all, they, too, have to promote their "humanitarian" cred.

What's missing from the media narratives that focus on these forever changing daily incidents, is the deeper reality, that US intervention has not saved Iraq but destroyed it, with more than a million dead, unrepresentative and unaccountable governments and enough war crimes to keep international courts busy for decades.

To understand the depths of the destruction and Iraqi despair, you need the perspective of long time Iraq watchers like The Independent's Patrick Cockburn whose new book is titled, "The end of a country, and the start of a new dark age."

He writes;

"Iraq has disintegrated. Little is exchanged between its three great communities – Shia, Sunni and Kurd – except gunfire. The outside world hopes that a more inclusive government will change this but it is probably too late.

The main victor in the new war in Iraq is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) which wants to kill Shia rather than negotiate with them. Iraq is facing a civil war that could be as bloody as anything that we have seen in Syria and could go on for years."

Who is ultimately responsible for this? We can blame Saddam Hussein, but he's long gone, or Osama bin Laden who is swimming with the fishes.

More likely, as is most often the case, blame the victims for the crimes, but accepting responsibility is not something that Washington is ever willing or able to do. It seems like we would rather keep arming the "rebels" in Syria, the Israeli army or the Ferguson, Mo. police.

Perhaps that's why all we hear on TV news shows us a chorus for more killing, to save "civilization" from "those People, "the heathens, of course. Never mind that Iraq was the original home of civilization.

It is summer time and the living is easy. Besides, we have dead celebrities to mourn in these dog days of August.

News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film WMD about deceptive media in Iraq and wrote “When News Lies” about U.S. media war coverage. (Select Books, 2006.) He blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits the media issues site, Mediachannel.org. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org - http://www.newsdissector.net

A Trip to Likely: Been to Hell

Been to Hell

by Alexandra Morton

[For complete report with photos, please see original here.]

Today I went to see the Mt Polley mining disaster for myself. First Nations that I have worked with sampling for European farm salmon viruses called me. I don't know anything about the mine tailings that exploded out of the Mt Polley tailings pond on August 4th, but I know evasive government behaviour when I see it.

Archeologist Adam Kantakis stands below a dropoff. He will be assessing the damage to the archeological record at this site for the Williams Lake band.

 Frankly, I don't believe that this massive injection of mine tailings into pristine Quesnel Lake is not dangerous to life.


My objective with this trip was to take samples of the water and sediment and I wanted to meet the people caught by this. Yesterday I went out on Quesnel Lake where 1/4 of this years Fraser sockeye are expected to return. Chris Blake of Williams Lake was our guide. She has fought for the natural world of this area for decades and knows the people and the place well.

Kim Goforth, a longtime resident on the shores of Quesnel Lake generously took us out in his boat.

There were piles of the smashed forest torn out by the explosive torrent of mining waste that came down Hazeltine Creek on the beach where we met the boat between Hazeltine and Horsefly.

As we approached Hazeltine Creek where the tailings had pushed into the lake there was a log boom, trying to contain the massive amount of wood. There were no signs on the boom.

This is my first view of Hazeltine Creek. On August 3, 2014 this was a tiny creek, meandering through the forest. First Nations once chose to make this place a village site for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Now the forest had been replaced by a wide expanse of grey dust.

Kim Goforth, told us that when the mine waste water hit Quesnel Lake it produced a wave recorded 8 km away at the Quesnel hydro monitoring station in Likely. Here is the data on that.

Julia Banks, Natural Resources Coordinator, with the Soda Creek First Nation told us First Nations were not notified that this had happened to their territory.

There was no communication from Imperial Mines, or government that millions of mining waste had ripped through their territory and polluted Quesnel and Polley Lakes.

The mine is a guest in this territory and yet they did not think to inform their host that one of the biggest mining disasters in history had just taken place on top of an old village site, affecting their most significant food resource.

Kevin Logan was part of the crew, also wanting to see this first hand.

The first thing we did was try to get a sample of mining waste sediment off the bottom of the lake using a special device that snaps shut when it hits bottom. Kim watched his sounder and when we saw the bottom of the lake rise steeply - we dropped the grabber.

When the grabber hit bottom there was an explosion of fine particles, the jaws snapped shut, I pulled it up and had a sample from the bottom of Quesnel Lake. I scooped the sediment into a sterile jar.

Next I took water samples in sterile containers with pre-measured fixative.

To fully understand what is going on in this lake, will require far more than a few samples, but these will give a snap shot of the situation and help First Nations downriver chart their next steps.

When we landed on the beach and Jake the dog was first ashore. We walked the small dirt road through the Raft Creek campsite, towards Hazeltine Creek. There were no signs.

I entered a place that felt like hell. You did not want to touch anything, breath, or sit down. This place had once been so inviting it had been chosen as home to First Nations long ago. It was so sweet and lovely that there were picnic tables nearby, berries were ripe and a few flowers still blooming, but everything about the place had changed. The land was grey and cracking, and the leaves on the trees were grey. It hurt to know I was a member of the species that had done this, created a wasteland, that I believe to be toxic, where life was once diverse and generous.Alex Hazeltine

It was a cauldron of grey thick liquid running through mining tailings. The unimaginable force of the billions of litres of mining waste had scoured the stream bank down over 10 meters down in some places.

What are these strange new landscapes? Pock-marked, caked substrate looked like bubbles had burst as it was drying. There were burnt-looking formations that bore no resemblance to anything I have seen, formed as the tailing waste reacted to oxygen.

What made this burn mark in the middle of the drying sludge wasteland?

What was the most painful to see were the animal tracks, and there were a lot of them. What did these creatures think as they stepped into the present wasteland after generations of sweet, lush forest?

Here you can see an animal walked down to the mining sluice and apparently walked into the liquid. There are no return tracks, so it must have walked up or downstream becoming soaked in it.


AMA government that lets this happen despite the clear warnings, is a government that does not care about the people who elected them and pay their salaries. Our society is sick with an addiction to money and in places and times like this it shows. Are we really so unintelligent that this is the only way we can do business? Imperial Mines really does not know how to build a berm designed to hold water? It seems clear that it is well-known that earthen berms are not meant to hold water. But this company can't do business using engineering solutions that would have protected people and the land? This was a place that made food, that people sought out to nourish their souls. This is not a wise use of the resources of the this province. This is not, at all, a smart way to do business. This is sloppy, foolish, wasteful, and downright meanspirited towards the children of all species. Creating hell on earth is immoral.

Wake up BC and make sure government hears from you that this is not acceptable. This is exactly the same collosal stupidity I have fought for 25 years to protect wild salmon from farm salmon disease. Government knows the risk of allowing viruses to spread from feedlots, but they don't do anything about it. Well, this kind of government behaviour has to stop because we need our planet intact. We need a functional living world to survive. This kind of pillaging economy cannot be allowed to be the monster that denies the right to life on earth. This is not a true and sustainable economy.

As we drove away we stopped at the Horsefly River. Clear, clean, wholesome. All the salmon that come to this place will have swum past the waste on the sea floor that I sampled. They will have swum through the plume of mine tailings still pouring 13 days later into Quesnel Lake. No one knows what will happen to them and everyone and everything that needs them. Imperial Mines has risked so much just to make more money.

P.S. to the CEO and owner of Grieg Seafood - don't think for one minute that I am distracted from finding out why the salmon you put into the Concepcion Point farm are dying.


See more at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2014/08/been-to-hell.html#sthash.Y740Wvie.dpuf

Sucked Back Into the Vortex: Saving Iraq from Itself Again

"They Pulled Me Back In"

by Eric Margolis

Armed humanitarianism 2.0. That’s our new western version of old-fashioned 19th century imperialism, now feminized by President Barack Obama’s lady advisors, painted pink and accompanied by the kind of soft piano music you hear in ads for women’s products.

Last week, the Obama administration latched onto the plight of Iraq’s Yazidis who were being persecuted by those awful ISIS folks – just in jolly good time to divert attention from the massacre in Gaza.

How handy. All three US networks and the increasingly shackled BBC were ordered to drop Gaza reporting and refocus their camera teams on the suffering Yazidis and, all of a sudden, Iraq’s fleeing Christians.

This was a brilliant media ploy. The world, which was furious at the US for enabling Israel’s savaging of Gaza and killing of almost 2,000 Palestinians, switched its attention to the hitherto unknown Yazidis, and to Iraqi Christians. No one in the US had ever heard of Yazidis but that was ok. Uncle Sam to the rescue.

No mention was made that Iraq’s Christians had been safe and sound under President Saddam Hussein – even privileged – until President George Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq. We can expect the same fate for Syria’s Christians if the protection of the Assad regime is torn away by the US-engineered uprising. We will then shed crocodile tears for Syria’s Christians.

The US and Europe suddenly cheered the ostensible US-French-British `rescue mission.’ Interestingly, those old colonialists, the French and British, were so quick to get involved in oil-rich Iraq: the Brits sent in some of Her Majesty’s Killers, the renowned Special Air Service, or SAS. France and Britain are sending arms to the Kurdish militia known as `pesh merga.’ Australia, now under a hard right government, may follow suit.

Around 1900, Imperial Britain, France and Russia all claimed the right to intervene in the Levant to supposedly protect its Christians. Such a useful excuse.

America thrilled to see the US Air Force dropped food and water to Yazidi refugees. Even this cynical writer was cheered to see US military power helping the oppressed.

But what of the 1.8 million oppressed Palestinians in Gaza, cut off by Israel and Egypt from food, water, medical supplies and power? What about the millions of refugees in Syria created by western attempts to overthrow its Assad dynasty for backing Iran? What of millions of internal refugees from the Afghan and Iraq Wars?

Well, Washington did just announced a temporary halt in resupplying deadly US-made Hellfire air to ground missiles to Israel, which has used up its once large supply blowing apart Palestinians in Gaza. Like the fake arms-delivery suspension by the US to Egypt’s brutish regime, it will soon be lifted when public attention has turned elsewhere.

There are 5.5 million Palestinian refugees. What are a handful of Yazidis compared to this sea of homeless? The number and plight of those Yazidi refugees were wildly exaggerated by the western powers to justify their re-intervention in Iraq.

Lurid reports of ISIS cruelty may well be true, but this old cynic suspects they are being used and exaggerated to justify intervention. After all, we saw the similar untruths about Saddam’s regime and al-Qaida’s “threat to the entire globe.”

This kind of stuff, much loved by the British, goes back to bogus stories from 1914 of German soldiers spiking Belgian babies on their bayonets. Or, remember the baloney about Kuwaiti babies thrown from their incubators by beastly Iraqis?

Now, the biggest dolts in the US Republican Party like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and my hometown’s own Peter King, claim the US homeland is threatened by pipsqueak ISIS while they try to provoke a real war with Russia over Ukraine.

To show just how bizarre US Mideast policy has become: US warplanes are dropping aid to Iraq’s Yazidis (considered devil worshippers by many Iraqi), while they bomb Zaidi tribesmen in northern Yemen who are battling its US-installed military junta in Sa’ana. Yazidis, Zaidis, it’s all very confusing, like those pesky Slovaks and Slovenes.

Meanwhile, the White House has ousted its Shia sock puppet in Baghdad, Nuri al-Maliki, in favor of a newer, even more obedient satrap. Maliki was foolish enough to actually believe he was prime minister of Iraq and refused to allow US troops to stay there indefinitely.

Big mistake, Nuri. But shed no tears for him: his vicious death squads murdered and tortured large numbers of Sunni. One of their favorite interrogation tools was an electric drill applied to the kneecap. US generals in Iraq used Shia death squads (patterned on those of El Salvador, a war I covered) to crush Sunni resistance. Now, it’s payback for the Sunnis.

Iraq’s next leader is another CIA-blessed politician who will be expected to make his nation safe for western oil companies. We see the same process in Afghanistan where CIA central casting has produced two ‘candidates’ for president.

As for de facto autonomous Kurds, they have been a western protectorate since 2003 and would be fully independent today were not for fear of a violent reaction by the irritable Turks. Israel has supplied the Kurds with arms since 1970.

Interestingly, the Kurds are now exporting oil directly to Israel though a Turkish pipeline and tanker while the regime in Baghdad, cut out of payments, fumes. There’s long been talk of an Israeli air base in Kurdistan.

“Just when I though I was out, they pulled me back in.” Michael Corleone’s plaintive line from the “Godfather” is Obama’s tune today. He’s only returning to Iraq for purely humanitarian reasons, a story that markets well to female (mainly Democratic) voters. And because the ISIS Saracens will overrun the Bible Belt soon unless Obama acts.

Never mind that the US armed and trained ISIS in Jordan to overthrow Syria’s regime. Now they have gone rogue and must be stopped by a new humanitarian crusade.

So back go American troops into the hellhole of Iraq, an act that defies both military and political logic. But US elections are on the horizon and Hillary Clinton is out there blasting Obama for having left Iraq in the first place. Hillary has just fully aligned herself with Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu and asserts US troops should have stayed in Iraq…..she who is married to a notorious wartime draft dodger. Republicans are beating the same drum.

Remember the ‘tar baby’ from Uncle Remus’s slave stories of the Deep South. All who touch him get stuck. Well, that’s Iraq for you – in spades. Instead of tar, it’s sticky oil. Obama should have stayed out of Iraq. But politics forced him back in.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2014

Normalized Police Brutality and the Militarization of "Keeping the Peace"

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Talks Police Brutality with Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

by TRNN

This week on "The Global African," host Bill Fletcher, Jr. sits down with activist, icon and change-agent Rev. Lennox Yearwood. They discuss police brutality in the Black community, the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the Rev's own brush with law enforcement.

Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, a Senior Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and a Contributing Editor at AlterNet. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Right Turn (Hill & Wang, 1986). Most of his research focuses on how economics and politics affect institutions and vice versa. His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History. He is a long time Contributing Editor to The Nation and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the Historical Society and the International Journal of Political Economy.

Illustrated Ethnocide: Israel's Criminality in Gaza

Israeli war crimes in Gaza

by Jim Miles - PalestineChronicle.com

Israel reveals its true colours and true aspirations every time it attacks Gaza (or any other self-perceived enemy) as being the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, even to the degree - as the references above indicate - to the act of genocide. The western world/Washington consensus group are guilty of enormous war crimes in their full complicit support of Israel, regardless of the rhetoric expressing their concern over the deaths, while they continue to supply Israel with its military needs.

From all the terror inflicted by Israel on the Gaza Palestinians I can only ask what kind of God would permit this? Is this permitted by the God that ‘gave’ the land to Israel? For a people who were to be a shining light for others? Could God not as equally well take the same land away as the atrocities against other human beings increase in magnitude and frequency?

How many rationalizations does it take to blind oneself to the savagery and murder of innocent citizens, women, and children? How is it that the Gospel of Israel is so readily inculcated into a whole nation such that they cheer the deaths of the ‘other’? And how does that same Gospel spreads its wings over many in the western Washington consensus who somehow remain blind to the human savagery and misery of Israeli actions?

Israel will certainly survive militarily as they have many nuclear weapons with various delivery systems. But can such a militarized racist society survive its own internal contradictions for long? Can the false rhetoric of wanting peace, of being the eternal victims, of being surrounded by hateful ‘others’ continue to over-ride the obvious brutality of the various Gaza operations? What can the world not see about the past seven decades of Israeli intentions to ethnically cleanse ‘their’ land of the Palestinian people?

The current “Defensive Edge” operation is not an anomaly, but part of the ongoing demonization of the people of Gaza, with the mainstream media/political rhetoric trying to create a split between the citizens and Hamas. It is all a part of the ethnic cleansing process, really having very little to do with defending themselves against Hamas’ errant rockets, or protecting themselves from terrorists of any stripe. The West Bank has been subdued, aided and assisted by the Vichy dictatorship rule of Abbas working along with the Israeli forces. Gaza has refused to accommodate the wishes of Israel by folding its hands and acquiescing to all the Israeli demands; instead, with nowhere to go, and resistance obviously not being futile, they struggle against the overwhelming firepower of Israel.

The many demonstrations around the world indicate two significant trends. The first is the obvious that Israel does not really care about anyone else’s opinion and will operate mainly within the needs of their internal political structures and their long term goals of occupying all the lands of Palestine. The second is that perhaps the world is waking up with abhorrence to the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza, an awakening that has slumbered for years, but with this renewed violent episode in a time when western/Washington consensus rule is fully showing its true colours of political-economic-military dominance of the rest of the world. This has led to increased awareness globally about the militarization and domination of people’s lives, about the racist nature of the Israeli attacks, and about the lack of validity about Israel’s claims of victimhood and its desire for peace.

Perhaps the fall-out from this will be in terms of ‘blow back’. The boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement will very likely receive more attention, not so much from governments, but from an increasing number of concerned citizens. With that will go the recognition that what Israel says, its ‘hasbara’ attempts to persuade others what a wonderful place Israel is, will fall now upon ears deafened by the rockets, missiles, and bombs that have fallen on Gaza - and the resulting screams, tears, and cries that are seldom heard within mainstream media.

A highly militarized Israeli society guarding Palestinians in bantustan like areas could survive for quite some time. Hope carries forward that somehow the Israelis will create their own fully dysfunctional state that will be forced to change its actions (BDS, pariah status…..) and seek a non-violent solution by accommodating all peoples within its boundaries.

The New World Battlefield Coming to a City Near You!

Gaza, Ukraine and US preparations for urban warfare

by Bill Van Auken - WSWS

For more than a month, the world has watched in horror as the Israeli military has pounded the densely populated and impoverished territory of Gaza with bombs, missiles and shells, while deploying tens of thousands of troops against a trapped population.

This sustained onslaught has killed nearly 2,000, wounded over 10,000 more and left nearly half a million people displaced by the massive destruction of homes and basic infrastructure.

"Policing" the G20 - Toronto 2010

While receiving far less media coverage, similar atrocities are unfolding in eastern Ukraine, where the US-backed Kiev regime has launched its military, with key support from autonomous fascist militias, in a savage siege of the major cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The death toll there has doubled in the last two weeks, pegged by Wednesday’s exceedingly conservative United Nations estimate at 2,086, with at least 5,000 more confirmed wounded.

Here too hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes in what is emerging as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing by the right-wing nationalists in Kiev. And, as in Gaza, hospitals and schools have been shelled, killing patients and children.

Images from both Gaza and Ukraine of the lifeless and maimed bodies of children, of older men and women weeping beside the ruins of homes and apartment blocks, and of innocent men and women cut down by shrapnel while leaving their homes or going to find food or water for their families, have shocked and appalled working people all over the globe.

In other quarters, however, these events are being closely watched with dispassionate and professional interest.

This is the case in the offices of senior political and military figures in Berlin and other European capitals, which have backed the Kiev regime’s “anti-terrorist” campaign against the population of eastern Ukraine.

The governments of Europe have remained silent even as the media has been forced to admit that virtually the entire ground offensive in this war of repression is being carried out by far right and neo-Nazi militias. These include the Azov Battalion, which, as the Sunday Times of London notes “has as its symbol the wolf’s hook that was used by Nazi storm troopers and is now banned in Germany.”

By their own admission, these fascist militias have attracted neo-Nazi and white supremacist recruits from a number of other countries, including Sweden, Italy, France, Canada and Greece. While there has been a hue and cry about the alleged danger of European Islamists going to fight in Syria and then returning to Europe, no such concerns have been raised about those gaining combat experience in eastern Ukraine. Under conditions of rising social tensions on the continent, there is undoubtedly among some layers of Europe’s ruling elite a feeling that battle-hardened fascist thugs may prove useful in the not too distant future.

The closest attention to the events in Gaza and Ukraine, however, is being paid by the Pentagon, which is up to its elbows in blood in both of these wars. The US military has the closest relations with the Israel Defense Forces, which Washington funds to the tune of $3 billion annually.

The Pentagon recently asked Congress for another $19 million—on top of $23 million already allocated—to train and equip Ukrainian National Guard units. In the midst of the “anti-terror” offensive in the east of the country, the US military last month rushed a team of specialists in “strategy and policy” to Kiev to evaluate this bloody campaign.

Both of these conflicts provide real-life laboratories for what is increasingly a top priority of the Pentagon—the preparation of US forces for urban warfare.

As far as Israel goes, this is nothing new. In 2001, the US built an Urban Warfare Training facility for the IDF in the Negev desert at the cost of $266 million. The 7.4-square-mile simulated city is used for joint training exercises involving Israeli and US special forces units, who share techniques that they have learned, respectively, in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Donetsk and Luhansk, the Pentagon is overseeing something that it views with even greater interest—a full-scale siege of a modern city and a center of the industrial working class of over a million people.

Combat in large cities is central to the military doctrine that is being developed by the US armed forces. This is spelled out in a document entitled “Megacities and the United States Army: Preparing for a complex and uncertain future,” which was released in June by the Army’s Strategic Studies Group and endorsed by its chief of staff, Gen. Raymond Odierno.

Predicting that it is “highly likely that megacities [described as metropolitan areas with populations of more than 10 million] will be the strategic key terrain in any future crisis that requires U.S. military intervention,” the report reveals that the Pentagon has conducted “case studies” and “field work” in preparation for such interventions in: Dhaka, Bangladesh; Lagos, Nigeria; Bangkok, Thailand; Mexico City, Mexico, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil … and New York City.

Describing the conditions that it anticipates will require US military intervention, the report warns, “As inequality between rich and poor increases … Stagnation will coexist with unprecedented development, as slums and shanty towns rapidly expand alongside modern high-rises. This is the urban future.”

“Radical income disparity,” is further described as the foremost “driver of instability” in these far-flung urban areas.

In other words, the Pentagon brass is seeking to prepare the US military for directly counterrevolutionary interventions aimed at quelling popular revolts that it sees as the inevitable consequence of the unprecedented social inequality created by world capitalism in crisis.

The inclusion of New York City in its “case studies” serves to make explicit that these preparations are directed at revolutionary developments not only in Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Latin America, but most critically within the United States itself.

This goal of preparing the US military to suppress popular rebellion inside the US has also been pursued with a series of provocative “urban warfare training” exercises conducted in major US cities in recent years. There was also the opening earlier this year in Virginia of a US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group training center that consists of a mock American town, replete with office buildings, a church, a sports stadium, a subway stop and a train station. The Army said that the $96 million center is designed to realistically “replicate complex operational environments and develop solutions.”

The Pentagon’s preparations go hand-in-hand with the militarization of supposedly civilian police forces, which are almost universally outfitted with SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) squads armed to the teeth for modern warfare, like those deployed against St. Louis residents protesting the police murder of Michael Brown.

The slaughter in Gaza and Ukraine represents a warning to the working class in the US and all over the world. The same financial and corporate oligarchy that supports these wars is prepared to employ murderous violence to defend its system against a revolutionary challenge from the working class.

It is clear that the ruling classes and their military commands are getting ready for such an eventuality. The working class must prepare itself accordingly.

Picturing the Devastation of the Mount Polley Tailings Spill

Photos: I Went to the Mount Polley Mine Spill Site

by Carol Linnitt - DeSmog Blog Canada

It’s Monday, August 11th, and both my gumboots are dangerously sinking into the muck I’m trying to cross.

I took far too bold a step towards a sturdy log ahead as I’m trying to cross a sludge river left behind in the wake of the Mount Polly mine tailings pond breach.

Now I’m balanced precariously, one boot in front, one behind, and trying not to topple into the muck beneath that could contain high levels of arsenic, mercury, zinc, lead and selenium – all toxins and heavy metals stored in the breached tailings pond fed by the Imperial Metals gold and copper mine near Likely B.C.

It has been one week since the waste pond wall breached, sending an estimated 10 million cubic metres (or 10 billion litres) of waste water and 4.5 million cubic metres of sandy sludge into the Hazeltine Creek that feeds Quesnel Lake. (For comparison, the Kalamazoo oil spill in Michigan totaled an estimated 3.3 million litres).

A field of debris and dried sediment from the Imperial Metals tailings pond 

can be seen pouring out of what once was Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake. 

Photo by Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions.

It’s at the convergence of the Hazeltine and Quesnel Lake that I now find myself, arms outstretched to maintain my balance, and sinking.

I finally manage to rock myself back far enough to regain balance on my back foot. I gently maneuver my front foot back and forth to relieve the suction around my boot. If I topple over I will plunge my bare hand into the sludge which, at this stage, contains an unknown mixture of chemical compounds known to cause cancer and birth defects. I didn’t know this until later, but even short-term exposure to selenium can cause respiratory problems like pulmonary edema or bronchial pneumonia.

A mud boulder sits in the deep sludge from the Mount Polley mine tailings pond. 

Photo by Carol Linnitt.

Like everyone else around here, I have imperfect knowledge of just what health effects to fear in the wake of the spill.

Maybe I should have worn that damn mask.

But that might have rubbed my guide, local carpenter Tate Patton, the wrong way.

Tate Patton, resident of Likely, B.C. lives on the shore of Lake Quesnel.  

Photo by Carol Linnitt.

Like a lot of local residents, Patton doesn’t like to play up the ‘disaster porn’ aspect of the accident. Having an out-of-towner tromping around in the wreckage taking selfies with a garish facemask is exactly what most residents are looking to avoid.

Despite the anger aroused by the incident at the Mount Polley tailings facility, a lot of folks in the community around Likely, B.C. want to focus on recovery, rather than regret.

What was once the Hazeltine Creek is now 

a contaminated field of sludge and debris. 

Photo by Carol Linnitt.

There was no chance of traversing the deep muck, I realized, not without waders.

I manage to back track successfully to more solid ground. I survey my surroundings for another route closer to what remains of Hazeltine Creek. No dice.

Soft silty mud from the spill. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

The spill caused a massive mudslide down the once humble creek bed, expanding its width from a mere six feet, to an incredible 150 metres.

As the material from the tailings pond flooded down the creek it tore at the surrounding forest, stripping the bank of trees, boulders and vegetation. The debris field at the mouth of the Hazeltine Creek stretches for more than a kilometer across.

A portion of the debris field shows the massive amounts of trees 

pulled down by the flood of tailings pond water and waste. 

Photo by Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions.

Ropes slung to the shore are used to contain the stacks of limbless trees, stripped of their branches and bark from their violent tumble down the creek.

Ropes secured to the shore contain the debris field in Quesnel Lake. 

Photo by Carol Linnitt.

The mixture of sediment, fine sand, chemicals and heavy metals that collects at the bottom of tailings ponds is known as “slurry.” According to Gerald MacBurney, a former tailings foreman at the Mount Polley mine, the water from the tailings pond is less of an environmental concern than the slurry. “That’s where all the nasty stuff is,” he told me.

Tate Patton, who brought me to Hazeltine Creek, said it took hours for the tailings pond to drain out, the roaring sound of the flood carrying down Quesnel Lake for over six hours.

“I live about five or six miles down the lake and you could hear the sound from there for hours until the wind switched direction and you couldn’t hear it as well,” Patton said.

For several hours the tailings waste and debris poured into Quesnel Lake, one of the world’s deepest glacial fjord lakes. To this day no one knows quite how deep the lake is. The deepest recorded measurement reached down 610 metres. The lake is home to a quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon and is world famous for its brightly coloured rainbow trout among fly fishers.

Debris stretches across the shore near the mouth of the Hazeltine Creek. 

Photo by Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions.

Temperatures of the water flowing out of Quesnel Lake can quickly fluctuate eight degrees, leading hydrogeologists to theorize about complex water currents and circulation within the waterbody.

Patton said the depth of the lake is a bonus when it comes to dilution of the spill materials. “We have a lot of pluses,” he said. “The water is deep, the levels are high right now, and we haven’t had much rain.”

When the floodwaters subsided, a wide river of slurry and mud had entirely replaced Hazeltine Creek, leaving fluvial fans of sludge along low-lying areas and trailing into Quesnel Lake.

Sludge from the spill carries out into Quesnel Lake. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

At the base of the creek the floor of the lake quickly drops out. Sediment from the spill poured out into the depths leaving only a plume of suspended solids, visible only from the air, behind.

What remains of the spill on land sits caked in tailings waste. No clean up or dredging of the creek bed or debris area is expected until additional pumping of tailings waste from Polly Lake is complete.

Tate Patton points to beaver tracks in mud from the spill. Photo by Carol Linnitt.

Patton pointed at a beaver track in the drying mud. “Lots of animal tracks around here,” he said.

Bloomberg journalist Christopher Donville (left), Tate Patton (centre) and 

author Carol Linnitt (right) journey back to the town of Likely. The debris field 

is just visible in the background. Photo by Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions.

We took a final survey of the scene as the sun retreated behind Mount Polley. Patton stopped the boat on the way back in to dislodge broken sticks and branches from the outboard motor.

“That’s a camp site, over there,” he said, pointing to an area not more than two kilometres from the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. “They were evacuated. Must have been terrifying,” he said. “Must have been loud.”

This article is published as part of a joint-venture between the Vancouver Observer and DeSmog Canada.
All images by Carol Linnitt and Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions.