The Further Adventures of Agent Couch Potato: Our Man in "Somewhere in Britain" Back in the News

The tragi-comedy that is “Brown Moses”

by BlackCatte - Off Guardian 

August 18, 2015

[Eliot Higgins is back, "proving" Russia did it again! This revisiting of Off Guardian's coverage to forearm readers of news to expect on the MH17 tragedy to come in the next weeks. - Ape]

The story of the unemployed office-worker, of strictly average abilities drawing lines on grainy photos with Paint and having the PTB hail him as a cyber-genius is the basis for a great unwritten novel. A bleak, black farce for our time. A modern-day “Our Man in Havana“, with screen caps from Google Earth replacing the sketches of vacuum cleaner parts.

Bottom line is Eliot Higgins, aka BrownMoses, aka one-man ‘research group’ Bellingcat is funny. He just is. And there’s nothing much his would-be promoters can do about that. They try to sell him as a gritty ‘citizen journalist’, but he doesn’t have the face or the CV for it, and it always falls flat. Even casual conversation with him reveals the embarrassing truth that his “research”, so lauded in the popular media, consists of entry-level computer skills and an awful lot of smoke-blowing. You or I or literally anyone over the age of seven with internet access could do it. If we thought it was worth while.

Which mostly we wouldn’t.

His “BUk research” is little more than “oh look there’s that lorry again” type photo comparison. Eliot, believing his own publicity, really doesn’t seem to understand that there’s nothing to show this particular and much-photographed BUK (or any BUK anywhere for that matter) had anything whatsoever to do with MH17. He doesn’t get that all he actually has is a lot of random pix downloaded from the internet. His MSM backers do understand this, but try to elide it and hope none of us notice.

But when Eliot tries to venture beyond this things only get worse. Remember his claims to have “proved” the Russians photoshopped their satellite pics? The MSM are blurry on details of how he did this, because they are so damning to his and their credibility, and try to market his findings as marvellous but unspecified techy-magic.

But the cringe-making truth is Eliot just pasted the Russian satellite pics into FotoForensics.com and pressed “upload”. You can go there and do the same thing yourself right now if you want. It’s an open site for kids and nerds and ‘conspiracy-theorists’ to play on.

And even then Eliot got his shit so wrong the guy who runs the site described his results on Twitter as “how to not do image analysis.”

"How not to do image analysis" founder of #FotoForensics says about @bellingcat's "Russian fake" satellite images. https://t.co/jJZFfwai6k

— TruthSeeker (@phil4truth) June 2, 2015

On a personal level it’s not Eliot’s fault he’s funny. It’s easy to see he’s had his head turned, been flattered and funded into being the disposable shill for dodgy claims and ludicrous propaganda that the real players do not want permanently attached to themselves or their legacies. Eliot, the bewildered chappie from Somewhere in the UK, can be paid to disseminate their more shameful nonsense, and can be duly made a scapegoat/laughing stock when they are done with him. To that extent, he’s just another (if willing) victim. But at the same time he’s selling lies that help promote war and death and injustice. And this makes him a legitimate – as well as happily an easy – target for analysis and critique.

NEO have recently done just such analysis, which we reprint here…

Who is the West’s Lead MH17 Investigator?

by Ulson Gunnar

As tensions once again build in eastern Ukraine where a fragile ceasefire appears to be on the brink of collapsing and the deadly contest of wills between East and West begins anew, the West’s prize propaganda story, downed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 has again taken center stage. As part of a much wider campaign to demonize Russia and justify further encroachment east, attempts to cement the narrative that Russia was responsible for the incident before long-awaited investigations present their findings is well underway.

While Russia has provided all documented evidence it possesses since the incident first occurred, data including recordings and radar readouts from NATO and Ukraine have been suspiciously withheld. Instead of presenting documented evidence, the United States and its partners in NATO have worked tirelessly to stand up innuendo and baseless accusations in its place.

Perhaps understanding that appealing to the emotions of the general public rather than their intelligence and reasoning seemed a better strategy to achieve the swaying of global opinion against Russia. And perhaps a lack of actual evidence, or perhaps the existence of self-incriminating evidence has forced the United States and its collaborators to op for this alternate tack.

While Russia drew upon its intelligence community and military assets to acquire and analyze information regarding the MH17 tragedy, the United States and NATO, despite their immense resources have turned instead to literally the most unqualified individual within their borders to lead its own unofficial “investigation.” Since the US and NATO have clearly decided to try Russia in the court of public opinion, it is only suitable that the investigation unfolds there as well.

Meet Detective Couch Potato

Leading American and NATO efforts to manage public perception regarding MH17 is professional couch-potato Eliot Higgins. Previously a laid-off government worker living in the United Kingdom, Higgins began blogging from home under the pen name “Brown Moses.”

His work was not entirely malicious at first. By applying objectivity and serving as a resource compiling vast amounts of information regarding the conflict in Syria he acquired a large following. His work apparently caught the attention of corporate and state media operations, and in particular, the London Guardian.

It was his association there and an apparent financial arrangement was struck alleviating his unemployment and causing Higgins to cash in his objectivity to use his somewhat unique brand of citizen journalism as a sort of trojan horse. The established media of the US, UK and much of Europe has consistently betrayed and subsequently lost the trust of the public. By cultivating “alternative journalists” to repeat mainstream lies disguised as alternative commentary, it is hoped that lost ground in manipulating the general public can be gained back.

Despite Higgins’ complete lack of forensic, military, geopolitical and academic background he is endlessly deferred to and given column space throughout the largest Western papers, magazines and online journals.

Finding “Facts” Between the Cushions

When in August of 2013 chemical weapons were used in an attack near the Syrian capital of Damascus, the United States and its European allies immediately blamed the Syrian government. With unprecedented speed, the decision to topple the Syrian government through direct military intervention was made. Yet just as fast as the US declared its intents, its pretext for war was dismissed by a skeptical public. When it came time to produce evidence, it was withheld (and is to this day) under the excuse that revealing it would compromise how it was gathered and thus jeopardize future operations.

Higgins, in tandem with hired defense contractor Dan Kaszeta, were tasked with building a body of lies inside the void left by the United States’ official refusal to release what they claimed they knew about the attacks.

When award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh released his own report on the attack, the closest, most accurate and most credible account to date of what actually happened along the outskirts of Damascus during the summer of 2013, Higgins and his supporters throughout the establishment media shamelessly wrote Hersh off as old fashioned and out of touch.

Unlike Higgins, however, Hersh’s report was based on intelligence and security professionals working in the United States government and their reports drawn from some of the best information available … not compilations of YouTube videos, Google Maps, dubious e-mail conversations with unverified anonymous individuals and amateur photographic “forensics.”

Is Reading Stains on the Sofa Really Analysis?

Higgins’ attention now follows wherever the Western media needs it most. Lately that has been in eastern Ukraine. He has been the star non-witness cum non-expert regarding all matters Ukraine and in particular, MH17. Since the United States and the rest of NATO refuses to release what evidence they claim they have (again), it has been up to Higgins and the growing mainstream media circus surrounding him to once again fill the void.

This explains why Higgins consistently only finds faults with Russia’s side of the story. At one point Higgins accused Russia of using Photoshop to doctor satellite images it provided to better illustrate the state of the battlefield when MH17 was downed.

German paper Spiegel consulted a real expert to refute Higgins and his “Bellingcat research group’s” accusations. When Jens Kriese, a researcher and professional image forensics expert, was asked what his thoughts were on Higgins’ use of the analysis tool FotoForensic.com, he responded by saying:

…[FotoForensic.com’s] founder Neal Krawetz also distanced himself from Bellingcat’s conclusions on Twitter. He described it as a good example of “how to not do image analysis.” What Bellingcat is doing is nothing more than reading tea leaves. Error Level Analysis is a method used by hobbyists.

Of course, the practice of “reading tea leaves” is based part on fraud, part on superstition, using one’s fears, ignorance and insecurities to gain advantage over them either socially or financially or both by claiming to hold exclusive insight into what otherwise random tea leaves are telling one about their future fortunes. And that is precisely what Higgins and his dubious methods are all about.

He is compiling otherwise random and/or irrelevant facts and interpreting them under the guise of being an “expert” knowing that the general public lacks the experience or expertise to know whether he is being truthful or not.

Russia’s evidence can and should be examined and scrutinized. But those that accuse Russia of downing MH17 are not even underpinning these accusations with their own evidence, but instead, resort to the intentional misinterpretation of circumstances, events and evidence presented by others to suit an already predetermined conclusion.

Like Syria in regards to claims Damascus was behind the deadly 2013 chemical attack, or before that in Iraq where the United States claimed the government in Baghdad maintained a dangerous arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction,” the US is again convicting its enemies of crimes with a suspicious lack of evidence.

When the United States and Europe find their media, the voice representing their collective civilization across the rest of the globe, deferring to an unemployed couch potato to bolster baseless lies through the blatant, intentional and systematic abuse of research and analysis, new lows have been plumbed that only reflects further on the depravity and intellectual destitution the once champions of science and reason have arrived at.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Future Still Bright, Despite Nuclear Fears

I Refuse to Believe in a Nuclear War over Syria and Oil

by F. William Engdahl - NEO

Feb. 25, 2016

In this most bizarre of seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East, wars ultimately over something as stupid as control of oil, a most alarming report has surfaced introducing the nightmare scenario of nations using tactical nuclear weapons to secure their aims.

That were it to happen would be the most stupid thing the human race has done to date to destroy itself. Given the implications and what is being reported it warrants more than close scrutiny.

It’s a report from a serious US journalist, citing an anonymous “source close to Putin” that a nuclear war pitting Russia against USA, NATO, Turkey and Saudi Arabia is possible. I refuse to believe in such a nuclear war over Syria and I want to say why.

The Report

On February 18, Robert Parry, an American investigative journalist of unusually high-quality, one who uncovered explosive details about the 1980’s illegal US Government Iran-Contra scandal among other stories, wrote the following alarming note on his website:

“A source close to Russian President Vladimir Putin told me that the Russians have warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Moscow is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons if necessary to save their troops in the face of a Turkish-Saudi onslaught. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, any such conflict could quickly escalate into a full-scale nuclear confrontation.”

I have followed Parry’s research since the 1990’s and find it to be of high professional quality.

Parry’s report was then picked up by Alexander Mercouris for the Russia Insider website. Mercouris is also an unusually serious and careful analyst of events Russian. He added to the Parry report his own details of a February 11 unusual meeting of the highly-important Russian Security Council, followed by a series of military exercises arranged at short notice in their Southern Military District, which look like they were “intended to prepare the Russian military for rapid action at short notice against Turkey should the need arise.”

The Saker, the pen-name of an equally-highly-respected and knowledgeable military analyst, one whose writings on Russia since the US-organized coup d’etat in Ukraine in early 2014 have been exceptionally sober, while reprinting the Mercouris article on his blog, openly disagreed with the Parry report and the Mercouris analysis. On February 20 The Saker wrote, “I don’t see any scenario short of a massive US/NATO attack under which Russia would use her tactical nuclear weapons.” He also cited a translation of Russian doctrine on use of nuclear weapons:

§27: The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use against her and (or) her allies of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons in a way which would threaten her very existence as a state. The decision to use nuclear weapons is taken by the President of the Russian Federation.

My belief

I want to state something completely different about the report on possible use of nuclear weapons over the conflict in Syria. I refuse to believe there will be a nuclear war over Syria and oil. Full stop!

The conflict in Syria is essentially a conflict between two persons–Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and his neighbor, Bashar Hafez al-Assad, President of Syria, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, General Secretary of the ruling Ba’ath Party and Regional Secretary of the party’s branch in Syria. This is NOT World War III, and I refuse to believe it will become World War III. It is a conflict between two people, Assad and Erdoğan.

If we recognize this reality about the nature of the Syrian conflict, we begin immediately to relativize what’s going on. The problem is that there is a faction in the West drooling at the prospect of engineering a nuclear war with Putin’s Russia and willing to manipulate Erdoğan, Saudi Prince Salman, and anyone and everyone they can deceive to reach that end. They tried and failed in Ukraine.

The problem, a most fundamental problem which I now see more clearly in hindsight, is, when understood in this light, it was an initial error, if an understandable one. Russia’s leadership decided to intervene militarily at the end of September for a complex of reasons I believe, some in defense of Russian military security, some for reasons of Russia’s standing or perceived standing in the world, some for complex psychological reasons going deep into Russian history. All that led Russia to accept the plea of one of the two parties in that Syrian conflict, to make a military war against the terrorists, which were in reality the extended arm of the second party, Erdoğan.

That error has now played into the hands of the war faction in NATO and beyond, a faction in the West that desperately wishes to destroy Russia along with China as a positive force for good in the world.

It matters not whether a trusted person in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle passed that message to Robert Parry about using tactical nuclear weapons should Erdogan’s army invade Syria and threaten the lives of an estimated 20,000 Russian military personnel. Russia’s military action in Syria fed the world more energy of war, killing, hate. That, the world urgently needs less of.

As I stated in a recent interview for the Russian state Sputnik News media, there are no winners in war, by the very nature of war. Everyone in this war is deceiving, playing Machiavellian games — Erdogan, Salman and his son, Prince Salman, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, John Kerry, Obama, David Cameron, Hollande.

Russia is in a most risky situation in Syria if it and its leading people have any illusion that the other actors are reasonable. Hate knows no reason. Syria’s Bashar al Assad cannot win this conflict with Turkey’s Erdoğan. Nor can the most sophisticated air power of Russia win it for him.

That being said, now we have an absurd situation with thousands of nervous Turkish military, standing, armed and peering across the border into Syria. Alongside that stupid spectacle, we have the recent deployment of Saudi Air Force jets now sitting at the Incirlik Air Base–106 miles away from the Russian airbase at Khmeimim, near Latakia, Syria. The Saudi jets sit alongside some 5,000 airmen and the various military jets of the United States Air Force 39th Air Base Wing, and of the Turkish Air Force, along with F-15E jets from the British Royal Air Force that arrived in November, 2015 to join the “attack on ISIS.” It’s worth noting also that Incirlik Air Base today is one of six European NATO airbases holding a stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.

The Turkish Incirlik Air Base (Red Star) near the Syrian border is one of six European NATO bases which hold tactical nuclear weapons.

As I detail in my newest book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy, dealing with the complex, decades-long unholy alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood death cult and the CIA, going back to Saudi Arabia in the early 1950’s, the conflicts between Syria’s Assad and Turkey’s Erdogan have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

That’s a fact, no matter who else has decided to join in on either of the two sides. It reminds much like in a barroom brawl once the first beer bottle is hurled. It has not to do with killing of Christians–Orthodox or Catholic or other, despite the recent talks between the Roman Pope and the Moscow Patriarch. It has not to do with a war of Sunni Wahhabists against Shi’ite or Alawites.

The secret: It’s about the oil, stupid!

The poorly-understood reason for this conflict over Syria and over the entire Middle East is a conflict to control its oil–Syria’s reportedly huge oil reserves in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights; Iraq’s huge oil reserves in Kirkuk and elsewhere; Libya’s significant oil reserves and Qatar’s vast gas reserves. They all want the oil–British and US circles, French circles, Saudis, Turks, Syrians, Israelis, Iraqis–all. A good part of the NATO conflict with Russia is also about oil and gas. And even China’s ongoing conflict with her neighbors and with the United States in the South China Sea is significantly about oil.

The Syria conflict in this light must be seen for what it is: it’s essentially a conflict between two persons, Assad and Erdoğan, over control of oil and the vast sums of money from oil. It is not the beginning of World War III as that Pope in Rome said in Jose Marti Airport in Cuba last year. That is why I refuse to believe there will be a nuclear war over Syria and its oil.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Time Is Running Out: Analysis of Obama's Guantánamo Closure Plan

Time’s Running Out: My Analysis of the Guantánamo Closure Plan Delivered to Congress by President Obama 

by Andy Worthington

24.2.16

I wrote the following article — as “President Obama Delivers Guantánamo Closure Plan to Congress; Will It Work?” — for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

For further commentary on President Obama’s plan, listen to me on The Monocle Daily, and also check out my interview on Sputnik.

Yesterday (February 23, 2016), President Obama delivered a long-awaited plan to Congress, prepared by the Department of Defense, laying out in detail how he proposes, with the help of lawmakers, to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay — where 91 men are still held — before he leaves office.

As explained in a White House briefing that accompanied the plan, the four main points of the plan are as follows, and our comments are below each point.

1. “We’ll continue to securely and responsibly transfer to other countries the 35 detainees already approved for transfer. This process involves extensive and careful coordination across our federal government to ensure that our national security interests are met when an individual is transferred to another country. We insist, for example, that foreign countries institute strong security measures.”

We say:

Get on with it!

24 of the 35 men approved for release but still held were approved for release at least six years ago, by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office for the first time in January 2009. It is an absolute disgrace that anyone approved for release should be held for so long after they were first told that the US no longer wanted to hold them. We note that 20 of these men are Yemenis, and that the entire US establishment believes that it is unsafe to repatriate any Yemeni prisoners, but we also note that new homes have been found, in the last year and a half, for 36 Yemenis, and we urge the administration to speed up the release and relocation of these men, and of the four non-Yemeni nationals approved for release by the task force, if they cannot be safely repatriated.

The other eleven men were approved for release in the last 25 months by Periodic Review Boards, set up in 2013 to review the cases of all the prisoners not already approved for release or facing trials. Again, nine of these men are Yemenis, while the other two are from Libya and Afghanistan, but all should be released as swiftly as possible, to third countries if they cannot be sent home.

2. “We’ll accelerate the periodic reviews of remaining detainees to determine whether their continued detention is necessary. Our review board, including representatives from across government, will look at all relevant information, including current intelligence. If certain detainees no longer pose a continuing significant threat, they may be eligible for transfer to another country.”

We say:

This is hugely important, as we have been saying since last year when looking at plans for the closure of Guantánamo. The Periodic Review Boards have, to date, approved 18 prisoners for release out of the 21 cases in which decisions have been reached. Unfortunately, it has taken 27 months to get to this point, and there are still 43 men awaiting reviews — or, in a handful of cases, the decisions of reviews that have already taken place. For all of these men, reviews need to take place before President Obama leaves office, and the process therefore needs to be speeded up considerably. It is reassuring to see the administration, for the first time, conceding that it needs to “accelerate” the PRBs, but now we need to see that happen.

In addition, it is worth noting that the success rate of approving prisoners for release after their PRBs is 86%, a rate that is profoundly impressive in and of itself, but is even more significant when it is considered that these are men described by President Obama’s task force in 2010 as “too dangerous to release,” or men who were put forward for trials until the basis for trials largely collapsed under scrutiny by US appeals courts. The men were described as “too dangerous to release,” even though the task force admitted it had insufficient evidence to put them on trial, and the PRBs have belatedly been establishing, therefore, that this was an irresponsible categorization, as they are not in fact “too dangerous to release” after all.

3. “We’ll continue to use all legal tools to deal with the remaining detainees still held under law of war detention. Currently, 10 detainees are in some stage of the military commissions process — a process we reformed in my first year in office with bipartisan support from Congress. Still, these commissions are very costly and have resulted in years without a resolution. We’re therefore outlining additional changes to improve these commissions, which would require Congressional action.”

We say:

We are disappointed to hear that the military commissions are continuing, as they are clearly not fit for purpose. Ongoing proceedings are largely stalled, because the system is so broken, and of the eight convictions already secured, mostly via plea deals, four have already been overturned on appeal, and more may not survive judicial scrutiny. We believe that federal courts are the only appropriate venue for trying those accused of terrorism, and point out how successfully the US courts have dealt with terrorism cases in the last 14 years.

We are intrigued by the suggestion, in the plan, that the administration is “considering whether there are … legislative changes … that might enable detainees who are interested in pleading guilty in Article III courts, and serving prison sentences according to our criminal laws, to do so.” We think that could be useful, and hope that Congress will work with the administration on this.

We are also interested in hearing that some prisoners might be transferred for prosecution in other countries, something that, in some cases, might well have been constructive had it happened years ago — in the cases of a small number of men accused of acts of terrorism in other countries, for example.

4. “We’re going to work with Congress to find a secure location in the United States to hold remaining detainees. These are detainees who are subject to military commissions, as well as those who cannot yet be transferred to other countries or who we’ve determined must continue to be detained because they pose a continuing significant threat. We are not identifying a specific facility today.”

We say:

We wish the president every success in working with Congress, although we note that, if lawmakers continue to obstruct him needlessly and opportunistically, as they have since they first passed laws prohibiting him from bringing any prisoners from Guantánamo to the US mainland for any reason, the he should heed the advice of former White House Counsel Greg Craig, and Cliff Sloan, the former State Department envoy for Guantánamo closure, who, in November, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, entitled, “The president doesn’t need Congress’s permission to close Guantánamo,” in which they stated, “Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has exclusive authority to determine the facilities in which military detainees are held. Obama has the authority to move forward. He should use it.”

Of course, we have no enthusiasm for anyone being held without charge or trial, whether at Guantánamo, or on US soil, but we recognize that the administration will continue to argue that some of the men described as “too dangerous to release” should continue to be held. We regard it as essential that this number is as small as possible — hence the need to speed up the PRB process — and we also, crucially, believe that, on US soil, these men will have the ability to challenge the basis of their detention in the courts with more success than they had at Guantánamo, where the habeas corpus legislation was cynically shut down by appeals court judges.

When the Associated Press wrote about this three weeks ago, officials speaking off the record spoke about 24 men being moved to the US, including those facing trials. That is still more than we would hope for, as our research and that of intelligence analysts suggests that no more than eight men, in addition to those facing trials, were involved in activities harmful to US national security, but it is considerably better than the 56 men who, currently, are not approved for release.

In closing, and reiterating what we have said above, the best thing that can happen now is for the Periodic Review Boards to be speeded up considerably, not only in the interests of justice for those awaiting reviews, but as the best way of making sure that as few men as possible — and only those genuinely accused of terrorist activities — are held as the end of Obama’s presidency approaches, and the uncertain process of electing the next president begins.

When that next inauguration happens, on January 20, 2017, it would be better for justice and for America’s standing in the world if the prison at Guantánamo Bay were already closed for good.


Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here).

He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Lithium Wars: Electric Cars Spark Next Energy Race

Electric Car War Sends Lithium Prices Sky High

by James Stafford - OilPrice.com

23 February 2016

With lithium prices skyrocketing beyond wildest expectations, talk heating up about acquisitions and mergers in this space and a fast-brewing war among electric car rivals, it’s no wonder everyone’s bullish on this golden commodity that promises to become the ‘’new gasoline”.

Moreover, land grabs, rising price predictions, and expectations of a major demand spike are leaping out of the shadows of a pending energy revolution and a new technology-driven resource era.

For once, we have agreement across the board on a commodity: Demand for lithium will continue to rise throughout the year--and beyond--spurred by the rise of battery mega/gigafactories and a burgeoning energy storage business that will change the way we live.

That’s why Goldman Sachs calls lithium the “new gasoline”. It’s also why The Economist calls it “the world’s hottest commodity”, and talks about a “global scramble to secure supplies of lithium by the world’s largest battery producers, and by end-users such as carmakers.”

In fact, as the Economist notes, the price of 99%-pure lithium carbonate imported to China more than doubled in the two months to the end of December—putting it at a whopping $13,000 per ton.

But what you might not know is that this playing field is fast becoming a battlefield that has huge names such as Apple, Google and start-up Faraday Future throwing down for electric car market share and even reportedly gaming to see who can steal the best engineers.

Apple has now come out of the closet with plans for its own electric car by 2019, putting it on a direct collision course with Tesla. And Google, too, is pushing fast into this arena with its self-driving car project through its Alphabet holding company.

Then we have the Faraday Future start-up—backed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting--which has charged onto this scene with plans for a new $1-billion factory in Las Vegas, and is hoping to produce its first car next year already.

Ensuring the best engineers for all these rival projects opens up a second front line in the war. They’ve all been at each others' recruitment throats for months, stealing each other’s prized staff.

And when the wave of megafactories starts pumping out batteries—with the first slated to come online as soon as next year--we could need up to 100,000 tons of new lithium carbonate by 2021. It’s an amount of lithium we just don’t have right now.

The war is definitely on, and lithium prices are the immediate and long-term beneficiary. It all depends on batteries, so it all depends on lithium.

The Lithium Oligopoly Ends Here, In Nevada

This is where the lithium oligopoly ends. It's where new entrants to the lithium mining game step in to forge a very lucrative future.

Right now, lithium isn't even traded as a commodity; rather, it is managed through an oligopoly of three or four major global suppliers who have managed supply and demand for decades. That's why everything is priced on a contract basis.

This year could see that change, which makes it a prime time to get in on lithium.

"The few major suppliers who have so far been responsible for all lithium supply and demand are not going to be able to meet new demand. This is why 2016 will be a very interesting year for anyone with the foresight to see the end of this oligopoly and the potential decoupling of lithium from other commodities," Dr. Andy Robinson, COO of Pure Energy Minerals (OTMKTS:HMGLF), told Oilprice.com.

Producers are now working quickly to stake their claims and position themselves strategically to become key suppliers.

The current market turmoil has created a once in a generation opportunity for savvy energy investors.
Whilst the mainstream media prints scare stories of oil prices falling through the floor smart investors are setting up their next winning oil plays.

So far, so good. Pure Energy, for one, is the only player in Nevada that has managed a conditional agreement with a company building the world’s largest battery factory, which is located only four hours from Pure Energy’s proposed mine.

There has been other movement in this space as well--broader, global movement that gives us even more reason to be bullish on lithium.

The fourth quarter of 2015 and the beginning of this year have seen a lot of talk about Australia's mining giant Rio Tinto considering entering the hot lithium space.

A Major Long-Term Game

This is an energy revolution that is still in its early days, but it’s such a hot commodity right now that chances to get in on the long-term game are narrowing by the day. And Nevada—ground zero in this revolution--is already raking in the benefits because it is the only U.S. state that both produces lithium and holds vast new resource potential.

In 2013 alone, Nevada doubled lithium production capacity, according to the USGS--and that is just the tip of the iceberg given all of the new exploration going on and the fast and furious land-grabbing.

The next wave of battery factories are expected to increase global battery capacity by some 150% by 2020. Within this prediction, electric vehicles will have a projected 20-30% compounded annual growth rate through 2025, so the demand for lithium appears endless.

Some say the lithium market is already at a supply deficit, and the rising prices make new projects even more attractive.

The lithium oligopoly is already a dinosaur, and new lithium projects on highly prospective land forwarded by companies with lower market caps and strong management are what investors will be looking for.

The brine is the place to be, and right now Pure Energy has the only brine resource in North America. It is also directly adjacent to the only producing lithium mine in North America, Albermarle Silver Peak Mine (NYSE:ALB). Lithium sourced from brine, or salty water, is the most cost-effective out there because it is easier and cheaper to extract.

There are billions of reasons to be bullish on lithium, and bullish on Nevada. Goldman Sachs gets it. Not only will lithium feed massive portable energy storage applications, but it will be a "key enabler of the electric car revolution and replace gasoline as the primary source of transportation fuel.”

This commodity that isn't yet a commodity in trading terms is about to break free from the oligopoly. Get there first.

Syria Coverage and the Swamp of Third Campism

Green Left Weekly's Coverage of Syria and the Swamp of Third Campism

by Roger Annis and Bill Burgess (Vancouver) and Felipe Stuart (Managua)  - A Socialist in Canada

Feb 23, 2016 

It was very disappointing to read Tony Iltis’ new article (Feb 20) on the war in Syria. The article situates Green Left Weekly with one foot planted firmly in the ‘two imperialisms fighting it out’ swamp of the various ‘third camp’, ‘plague on all your houses’ analysts of events in Ukraine and Syria.

Syrian Kurdish YPG soldiers at checkpoint
in northern Syria (Hasim Soylemez, Cihan)

Tony begins the article by declaring the existence of a “global rivalry” between the U.S. and Russia which supposedly explains events in Ukraine and Syria. He returns to the same theme later in referring to the two countries as the “two superpowers”* in today’s world. This presentation of Russia is very much at odds with the world as it actually exists, as Renfrey Clarke and Roger Annis argued in some detail in a recent essay in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Tony writes: “The war in Syria is a multi-sided civil war and regional war, which involves brutal conflict between proxies of the rival global and regional powers, as well as their growing direct involvement.”

This argument is a combination of inaccuracy, vagueness and downright error. It avoids the one, central thing which must be said by any serious analyst of the situation in Syria, which is that the key driver of Syria’s descent into warfare has been the regime change agenda of the large imperialist powers allied with reactionary regional powers including Saudi Arabia.

Yes, the government of Bashar Al-Assad bears responsibility for the carnage of the past four years in Syria. It has a history of suppressing authentic, popular, political forces, not least the Kurds. It has a history of collaboration with imperialism and its grossly unequal and undemocratic social and political order in the Middle East, including the ongoing denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people. But today, any hope of change to this legacy of imperialist domination in the Middle East requires vigorous opposition to the political and military interventions that have wrecked the countries of the region ever since the Iraq war of 2003 and before that. The false line of the Syrian civil war as a front of a battle of the two supposed imperial titans, the U.S. and Russia, is a barrier to building such opposition.

Russia does not run with the pack of imperialist predators. There is a reason why it is in imperialism’s target sites, and that’s because it is a country capable of standing up to imperialist diktat and defending its interests if not those of its allies. Understand this is not a repudiation of the class struggle. It does not deny understanding of Russia as an unequal, capitalist society, or that it is a major contributor to the global ecological crisis (and let us not forget that recognizing Russia’s role in the global climate crisis means that Russia must be won to solutions to this same crisis). On the contrary, it is recognition of the class struggle on all its levels, forms and dimensions in the best traditions of the lessons and experiences of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Communist International in Lenin’s time. Call it ‘thinking dialectically and rejecting formulaic simplification of epochal class struggles’.

Failure to recognize the real intricacies of the anti-Russia imperialist offensive, linked as it is to regime change wars to preserve U.S. domination in Western Asia and North Africa, explains the indifference of many far-left thinkers to the progressive importance of the shift from a unipolar, U.S.-dominated world to a multi-polar world. This stance leads to many serious errors, such as dismissing the enormous value of anti-imperialist initiatives in Latin America such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) or the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA – Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América). After all, many left purists claim, these are merely just another form of ‘collaboration between capitalist regimes’.

Tony also writes: “The US attitude towards the Rojava revolution remains ambiguous. While coordination of US air strikes with YPG/J ground assaults against ISIS has been effective, the US and other Western powers have accepted NATO member Turkey’s blockade of Rojava. US provision of light arms and ammunition to the YPG/J has only slightly mitigated this — being considerably less than the weapons provided to the Islamist militias.”

There is nothing ambiguous about the U.S. stance on Kurdish national rights. U.S. policy and strategy is consciously deceptive and manipulative. There is an important revolutionary dynamic to the struggle of Kurds in Syria and those of its Kurdish allies in Turkey and Iraq. Washington easily recognizes this and intends to undermine it. It does so simultaneous to the bloody military offensive of U.S. NATO ally Turkey against Kurds in that country and Turkey’s threats to attack Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq.

Furthermore, Washington is not interested in a peaceful compromise in Syria. Its agenda for Syria is the same ‘regime change’ agenda with which it has destroyed much of the Middle East. The U.S. is not interested in stabilizing the Middle East, only in dominating the region no matter the human and ecological costs. Western imperialism is indifferent to the national and social aspirations of Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Persians, and other peoples in the region. The partition of Iraq and Syria with the emergence of new, Saudi-type petro states (including regions currently held by ISIS) is likely its preferred outcome to the chaos it has inflicted on that part of humanity. Washington’s supposed support for the Syrian Kurds is a tool it can bring to bear in pursuit of such policies.

Russia’s intervention, in alliance with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah of Lebanon, and increasingly de facto with Kurdish forces, is undertaken explicitly to counter the imperialist regime change agenda. It has thwarted U.S. plans, something which only third camp diehards fail to see and welcome. This is underlined most recently in an interview with Syrian Democratic Council (MSD) Co-President İlham Ehmed, published on ANF News on Feb 22, 2016 (part two of an interview; part one was published on Green Left Weekly). She explains that the Kurdish movement in Syria would be satisfied with a federal political arrangement for Syria and that the recent, parallel military gains of the Syrian government and Kurdish movement hold out the possibility of such a political solution in for the country.

Tony is correct to argue against his fellow third campers that Kurdish forces in Syria have the right and the duty to accept military aid, including from the U.S., as part of the struggle for Kurdish self-determination. But this policy will come at a very high price if they become dependent on U.S. aid. Of course, their leaders are clearly aware of this danger, as evidenced by their increasing collaboration with the Syrian army and with its close ally, Russia.

Tony haws written separately, “There is not an alliance between YPG and Assad forces”, throwing in a flippant comment about armchair “‘experts’ of the Western left”. He provides an unsourced, undated and out-of-context one-sentence quotation to make his argument and then complains that his argument is failing to convince. But the Turkish and international press is full of examples of statements by the YPG of tacit agreements with the Syrian government and armed forces. Today alone features concerns expressed by Britain and by Turkey of what seems obvious to everyone but Tony. His description of the struggle in Syria against regime change and the battering ram of the rightist and fascist militaries backing the overthrow of Syria’s government as being marked by a “militarily useless” Syrian military and a spontaneous stepping into the breach by Kurdish (YPG) forces is laughable.

How does Tony’s thesis saying there are no tacit alliances square with the recent decision of the YPG to open an office in Moscow and to give the event much publicity in its press? Why does he choose to ignore this? The YPG decision parallels that of the HDP, which also opened an office in Moscow, in December 2015. It did so, moreover, with even greater bravado by opening it in the aftermath of the shooting down of the Russian fighter jet by Turkey on November 24. The HDP stood in solidarity with the Russian government on the matter, enduring enormous, resulting pressure from the right-wing regime in Ankara, including threats to lift the Parliamentary immunity of the HDP’s elected deputies. This is another fact conveniently ignored by Tony and Green Left Weekly.

Here is a news item from six months ago that Tony can use to brush up on his facts (or he can check today’s news) from Al Jazeera, Aug 15, 2015:

A Syrian Kurdish official has told Al Jazeera that the government of President Bashar al-Assad could be a partner if it commits itself to a democratic future.

Currently involved in battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria, Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, have long denied links with the Damascus government. However, the two sides could have a much more collaborative road ahead.

We could provide Tony with many examples of how a ‘collaborative road ahead’ has come to pass between the Syrian government and Syrian Kurds (ever so delicately, of course, due to Syria’s past record of repression of the Kurdish national movement). But we’re kind of pressed for time, what with keeping up with the encouraging news of imperialism’s humiliations and frustrations of regime change plans in Syria as possibilities for ceasefire and political negotiations grow.

We appreciate very much the review by Nick Fredman on the Green Left listserve of the article appearing in February 9, 2016 in Red Flag, the publication of the Socialist Alternative in Australia, ‘The politics of the Kurdish struggle’. We reproduce that below.

* The term ‘superpower’ came into vogue via the Chinese government more than 50 years ago when in its conflict with the Soviet Union of the day, it developed a thesis of the Soviet Union as ‘social imperialist’ and it labeled the Soviet Union an equal threat to the world as that of imperialism. This thesis was every bit as bankrupt as the ‘state capitalism’ thesis of the International Socialists which preceded the Chinese fantasy by several decades. Today, remnants of these bankrupt ideas endure in the form of description of the Russian Federation as “imperialist”.

Extensive coverage of the unfolding political situation in Syria and Turkey is provided on the website The New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond.

* * *

[GreenLeft discussion], Sun Feb 21, 2016, posted by: Nick Fredman, re: ‘The politics of the Kurdish struggle‘, published in Red Flag (Socialist Alternative, Australia), Feb 9, 2016

I don’t want to take up the details of who’s doing what to whom and what source to trust or not in northern Syrian, but more general points about what this Red Flag article purports to be about: The Kurdish struggle as a whole, and not the Syrian struggle or the Kurdish aspects of it. I particularly want to take strong issue with Mike’s claim on Facebook that the article is “balanced”.

This is the first thing about the Kurdish struggle in Red Flag or Socialist Alternative’s previous publication that they’ve produced in 20 years, apart from a reprint of a pretty good US Socialist Worker article last year on the bombings in Turkey and the HDP. For a long-running national liberation struggle of a nation of 35-40 million people, that has drawn millions into activity, that’s centrally important to the future Middle East, that has a radical leftist current hegemonic within it, that has a large diaspora in Australia, we might question the balance of this meagreness of coverage, but I’ll focus on this article as such, and make several general points.
Turkey. The article is 1800 words long. It has 40 words on the current situation in Turkey, and 780 on the current situation in Syrian. As the article outlines, 40% of Kurds reside in Turkey, and about 5% in Syria. The article makes no mention of the HDP and barely alludes to the mass struggle and repression happening in the country obviously central to the Kurdish question, and doesn’t mention who’s leading the resistance. This is totally lacking in balance not to mention basic solidarity.

Balance of Kurdish and leftist views. The article quotes 190 words from Syrian-Kurdish anarchist Shiar Neyo on how repressive and reactionary, “in the same vein as the Baathists” the system in Rojava is. There’s no indication, however, of how representative or reliable this person is, no sourcing of his claims about repression. (Red Flag unlike many publications including Green Left never seems to link to anything to allow readers to investigate its claims for themselves, by the way). There are no quotes from the PKK-led current except for one quote purporting to indicate how nationalist is the PYD. That quote is unsourced and I cannot seem to find anywhere. This is totally unbalanced.

“Ethnic cleansing”. This term is blithely tossed around by many, including on the left and including unfortunately by Mike. It’s an extremely serious charge akin to genocide. To accuse fellow socialists of it one should be extremely careful. A faux objective “there are reports of”, without any reference to what and where those reports are, let alone to the detailed refutations of them, isn’t at all balanced.

Solidarity activity. Armstrong crosses himself with a statement that socialists should oppose the terrorist listing the PKK and the repression in Turkey. But as far as I can see, Socialist Alternative haven’t lifted a figure to support the solidarity rallies, the petition agasinst the listing of the PKK http://liftthebanonthepkk.org/ or the open letter to defend Turkish academics http://australiansforkurdistan.org/2016/01/20/open-letter-of-support-for-victimised-academics-in-turkey/. Modest efforts though these are, they are basic solidarity, which people who don’t “uncritically cheerlead” the PKK or anyone else can find a little time for. In Melbourne these include serious, widely respected leftists such as Colin Long, Rob Stary and John Tully. To piously announce what socialists should “of course” do then not do any of it, isn’t very balanced.

Maybe most fundamentally, “No road forward”. To Armstrong the PKK-led current aren’t socialists who might be making some mistakes in a complex struggle, or socialists who’ve adopted an unexpected theoretical basis in Murray Bookchin’s ideas that might lead to some problems; even that they’ve socialist who unfortunately haven’t yet had the benefit from the revolutionary wisdom of Mick Armstrong. To him, they’ve nationalists who have no value at all. Nothing to learn from building a mass base of millions of people in four states. Nothing to learn from building the most successful mass left party in Turkey in decades. Nothing to learn from experiments in mass self-organisation in Rojava. For someone who leads a few hundred people in one of the richest and most stable countries in the world to categorically announce this is idealist dogmatic sectarianism of the highest order I’d suggest, not balance.

I can only conclude that this article isn’t really about the Kurdish question at all, but to reinforce Socialist Alternative’s self-appointed role as the only heroic defenders of the Syrian revolution, at one with their contact railing against the western supporters of Assad, a virtually non-existent category in Australia. Socialist Alternative does some good work and can organise a big conference, but they unfortunately have an instrumentalist, highly sectarian position on some questions, seemingly designed to steel and inoculate their cadres; their frankly crazed position on violence against women a case in point. It’s unfortunate Mike is so taken in by them on this question. [end]

Canadian Companies' Support of Morocco's Illegal Occupation of Western Sahara

Canadian Companies buying Non-renewable Resources from Moroccan-occupied West Sahara

by Yves Engler - Dissident Voice

February 23rd, 2016

In violation of international law two major Canadian companies are buying the non-renewable resources of Africa’s last remaining colony.

Saskatoon’s PotashCorp and Calgary’s Agrium have partnered with Morocco’s state-owned OCP to export phosphate mined in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory in northwestern Africa that was ruled by Spain until 1975. When the Spanish departed, Moroccan troops moved in and a bloody 15-year war drove tens of thousands of Sahrawi into neighboring Algeria, where they still live in camps.

No country officially recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The UN calls it “occupied” and the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the Rome Statute prohibit an occupying power from exploiting the resources of territories they control unless it’s in the interest of, and according to, the wishes of the local population.

In 2002 the UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Hans Corell described the exploitation of Western Sahara’s natural resources as a “violation of the international law principles applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.”

Over the past few years PotashCorp has been the largest customer of Western Sahara phosphates, buying 750,000 tonnes of rock annually. To deflect from its complicity in violating international law, the company says OCP’s operations benefit the Sahrawi people. A 2014 PotashCorp statement claimed:

OCP has established a proactive affirmative action campaign to the benefit of the local people and, importantly, is making significant economic and social contributions to the entire region. As a result, we believe those who choose to make a political statement about OCP are effectively penalizing Saharawi workers, their families and communities.

For its part, the POLISARIO Front national liberation movement claims these deals with OCP contravene international law and prop up Morocco’s control. So does the African Union. An AU Summit last June denounced Morocco’s ongoing occupation of Western Sahara, specifically highlighting its “illegal exploitation of the Territory’s natural resources.”

International solidarity activists have called on businesses to stop exploiting Western Sahara’s resources. In response companies in Australia and Norway have agreed not to buy phosphate mined there. The Ethical Fund of Vancity, B.C.’s largest credit union, divested from PotashCorp in response to its refusal to stop purchasing Western Sahara phosphate. So have several European pension funds and banks.

When the Council on Ethics for Norway’s $800 billion pension fund decided to divest of PotashCorp in 2011 it explained:

This is not only due the fact that the local population is not receiving the benefits; the current manner of exploitation is also contributing to maintaining an unresolved situation and consequently, Morocco’s presence in a territory over which it does not have rightful sovereignty. In the view of the Council, there is a concrete, mutually beneficial relationship between OCP’s violations of norms and the companies purchasing phosphate from Western Sahara.

The world’s top exporter of the mineral, OCP is Morocco’s largest industrial company. King Mohammed VI oversees it.

Last May the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland and Meritus Mutual Funds submitted a motion to PotashCorp’s annual general meeting asking the company to initiate an independent assessment of its human rights responsibilities in Western Sahara and to make it public. The vote failed, but the issue is unlikely to go away.

PotashCorp and Agrium have a choice. They can further sully their reputations by contributing to Sahrawi oppression or stop purchasing the non-renewable resources of a people seeking self-rule.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada in Africa: 300 years of aid and exploitation

Read other articles by Yves.

There Oughtta Be An App: Watching Forests Disappear in Real Time

Coming Soon: A Mobile App for Detecting Deforestation as It Happens

by Taylor Hill - TakePart

Feb 23, 2016

A scientist develops technology that combines high-resolution satellite imagery and software to alert authorities of illegal logging in near real-time.

What if you could catch illegal loggers before they swing the ax?

Like Tom Cruise in Minority Report—arresting murderers just before they kill—the key is the technology (or weird, genetically mutated mind readers in the case of the sci-fi thriller). For the world’s forests, researchers have developed a satellite-based alert system that detects logging within a week of or just hours after trees start falling and, in some cases, before clear-cutting even begins. The new tool, developed by University of Maryland geographer Matthew Hansen, is a significant improvement on existing information-gathering tools that conservationists are already using to fight deforestation.

For instance, Brazil’s Real Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER) tool takes images from NASA’s Terra satellite and alerts officials of large-scale land clearing. But the images beamed back to Earth are low-resolution, unable to show small-scale deforestation or changes in tree cover.

Hansen’s team is using images from NASA’s two active Landsat satellites, which send back high-resolution photos of every spot on Earth every eight days. These pictures contain 70 pixels for every one pixel the Terra satellite camera captured, meaning researchers would be able to determine land changes in areas the size of a baseball diamond, instead of across 10 football fields.

 Top: Comparison of deforestation detected on-site in Peru 

by older Terra satellite data; bottom: new high-resolution images 

from Landsat data. (Image: Google Earth basemap; data: 

WRI/UMD/Google/NASA/USGS via Global Forest Watch) 

 

Scientists already use the high-resolution images to calculate annual tree losses, but Hansen and his team developed software that can break down the millions of images in just seconds, giving near real-time looks on small-scale deforestation.

The program can detect small disturbances such as a zigzagging road through untouched forests—often a precursor to clear-cutting—and small tree-cutting activity in parks, on privately owned property, or around indigenous communities.

“It’s really something we see that can be used as an early warning and hopefully give people a jump-start on taking action to combat deforestation as it occurs—not just after the fact,” said Mikaela Weisse, research assistant at the Global Forest Watch, a Washington D.C.–based environmental group.

Weiss said Global Forest Watch is planning to put deforestation alerts on its website staring March 2. The system will show any alerts dating back to January 2015, and on each successive satellite pass over the same area—every eight days—the software will determine if trees have disappeared. If so, a pixel will turn red over the newly deforested area, and an alert will be issued.

Weiss said Global Forest Watch followers can sign up for emails that will alert them when specific regions, parks, and indigenous areas are being impacted and how often.

“We’re hoping to get this type of monitoring into government efforts and into the hands of companies that monitor industries like palm oil plantations,” Weiss said.

Frances Seymour, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told the journal Nature that “in the context of law enforcement, timeliness is everything. A couple weeks later, not only is the forest gone, but so is the equipment and all the evidence you might be able to use for a successful prosecution.”

But the real-time satellite imagery needs on-the-ground confirmation. Clouds can block out views of rainforest canopies for months at a time, and the evidence needs to be verified.

Lilian Pintea, vice president of conservation science at The Jane Goodall Institute in Virginia, has been working with Global Forest Watch on an app that will put near real-time alerts in the hands of local communities equipped with smartphones and tablets.

Pintea worked on a NASA-funded project that used Hansen’s forest-change-monitoring program to examine chimpanzee habitat health in Africa. The three-year grant will put 500 mobile devices in the hands of community representatives, park rangers, and others to help crowdsource a habitat health index across the chimps’ entire range.

“By identifying forest areas in the process of being exploited or converted to other land uses, local stakeholders will have a chance to do something about it instead of just documenting deforestation,” Pintea said.

“Improving both our eyes in the sky while in the same time empowering local communities and decision makers to access and use this information is a great model that will assure that new technologies and big data are actually used to improve conservation decisions.”

 Taylor Hill is an associate editor at TakePart covering environment and wildlife.

Shikma's System of Torture: Israel's "Gitmo" Revealed in Rights Group Reports

Rights Groups Reveal Systemic Torture of Palestinian Detainees

by Emily Mulder - Ma'an News Agency (IMEMC)

February 24, 2016

A joint investigation launched by Israeli rights groups, into practices in Israel’s Shikma prison, has revealed -- once again -- that "systemic" violations are taking place against Palestinian detainees.

Representatives of B’Tselem and HaMoked reported, in a Tuesday press hearing, that routine abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners in Shikma’s interrogation center in the southern city of Ashkelon.

Affidavits and witness accounts documented by the Israeli rights groups showed that nearly all of 119 Palestinians interrogated at the facility experienced either physical violence, sleep deprivation, threats, or solitary confinement, with a number of detainees subjected to a combination of degrading treatments. Other abuses included exposure to extreme temperatures or being bound to a chair by hand and foot, while 77 percent of detainees were prevented from seeing a lawyer for all or some of their time in Shikma.

While Israeli security agency Shin Bet facilitated interrogations, B’Tselem and HaMoked said the degrading conditions were upheld by Israel’s prison service, which created “prison conditions to match the interrogation plan designed to break a detainee’s spirit.”

Medical and mental health professionals in Shikma “greenlighted” the desires of interrogators, often handing a detainee back over for interrogation, after receiving physical and mental treatment for injury from earlier interrogations, regardless of the detainee’s condition.

The higher-ups in Israel’s military, meanwhile, turned a blind eye to abuse by Israeli soldiers or police of detainees en route to Shikma, and Israeli military judges “effectively sanctioned” the continuation of abusive measures after Palestinians were detained.

Citing the actors involved at all stages of interrogation and detention at Shikma, the groups said: “They are all party, in one form or another, to various aspects of the cruel, inhuman, degrading and abusive treatment to which Palestinian detainees are subjected at the Shikma facility and elsewhere.”

Israel’s use of the PA to carry out torture

Included in the stratum of actors who facilitated cruel and degrading measures against Palestinian detainees in Shikma prison were interrogators from the Palestinian Authority.

Of those sampled, 39 detainees were interrogated by the PA prior to their detention by Israeli forces. Adi Awawdeh, a 21-year-old student from the occupied West Bank town of Karmah, was one of them. “I was detained by the PA for about 70 days,” Awawdeh said in his affidavit collected by HaMoked and B’Tselem.

“With the Preventive [Security Force] there was physical and mental torture. I suffered a lot. I was in solitary confinement for 40 days, with endless interrogation. Then they put me into what we call the refrigerator -- a small room about 90 cm wide and two meters long.

“They put you in there barefoot, with very thin clothes, and keep up a current of very cold air. You feel like you’re in a refrigerator. The walls and floor were very cold. You sit there with nothing but a bottle of water. There’s no toilet. ... I was there for three days,” Awawdeh said.

“The interrogators hit me with their hands all over my body. Two held me down and the rest hit me. They threatened me with sexual assault but didn’t follow through on it.

“You can’t stay silent. You’ll tell them whatever they want just to be done and get out of there. That’s why I told them what they wanted and not the truth.

He went on: “In the end, I was released [from PA custody] with a fine and restrictions, and told that the Jews would yet come and get me. A week later, the Israelis arrested me.”

Awawdeh was one of 26 detainees to report the use of PA interrogation records by Israeli interrogators, 14 of whom said they were tortured by the PA during interrogations.

B’Tselem and HaMoked said by using such reports, Israeli interrogation authorities indirectly participated in torture by “knowingly using information obtained through use of torture -- usually cruel and severe -- by Palestinian Authority interrogators against the self-same detainees.”

‘No willingness to tackle systemic problems’

B’Tselem and HaMoked’s findings in Shikma prison have been reported in Israeli prisons across the board. While facilitated by the state, the groups said state organizations repeatedly refuse to acknowledge the existence of the systemic abuse of Palestinian detainees.

Noga Kadman of B'Tselem said at Tuesday's briefing it was crucial to recognize that cases of torture or mistreatment are generally misrepresented by Israeli authorities as isolated incidents.

Such cases are often disregarded as “individual interrogators” who were pressured to use such tactics in “ticking bomb cases,” Kadman said.

“That’s terminology that we hear very often, that it was some sort of desperate situation,” Kadman added.

However, Kadman said torture and abuse are the “routine” measures orchestrated by Shin Bet, and backed by every other state body that comes into contact with such cases.

“One of the consistent things that you will see … is the fact that this is an orchestrated regime. It’s not some sort of individual initiative by an individual jailer, warden, or interrogator,” B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli added. 

 “The approval to use these kind of 'special interrogation measures' comes from the Attorney General, or higher-ups in the hierarchy.”

Daniel Shenhar, a lawyer for Hamoked who has aided Palestinians in taking countless of the above violations to court, said military investigations into the violations are ultimately useless.

“We’ve written the Attorney General’s office, addressing systemic sleep deprivation -- which is common in almost every interrogation -- about the strange five legged chairs that [...] make it almost impossible to bear an interrogation. Unfortunately this door was shut in our face.

“There seems to be no willingness to tackle systemic problems by the Israeli authorities.” 

Who's the Real War Party? Transcending the False Clinton-Sanders Dichotomy

Why We Must Transcend the Clinton-Sanders Debate: The Middle East in US Foreign Policy

by Ramzy Baroud 

February 24, 2016 

As US liberals and some leftists are pulling up their sleeves in anticipation of a prolonged battle for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, the tussle becomes particularly ugly whenever the candidates’ foreign policy agendas are evoked. Of the two main contenders, Hilary Clinton is the obvious target. She is an interventionist, uncompromisingly, and her term as Secretary of State (2009-2013) is a testament to her role in sustaining the country's foreign policy agenda under George W. Bush (as a Senator, she had voted for the Iraq war in 2002) and advocating regime change in her own right.

Her aggressive foreign policy hit rock bottom in her infamous statement upon learning of the news that Libyan leader, Muammer Gaddafi, was captured and killed in a most savage way.

“We came; we saw; he died,” Clinton rejoiced during a TV interview, once the news of Gaddafi’s grisly murder was announced on October 20, 2011. True to form, Clinton used intervention in the now broken-up and warring country for her own personal gains, as her email records which were later released, publicly indicated.

In one email, her personal advisor, Sidney Blumenthal congratulated her on her effort that led to the ‘realizing’ of ‘a historic moment,” - overthrowing Gaddafi - urging her to “make a public statement before the cameras (and to) establish yourself as in the historical record at this moment.” She agreed, but suggested that she needed to wait until “Qaddafi goes, which will make it more dramatic.”

Her rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters, of course, pounce on the opportunity to discredit Clinton, which is not entirely difficult. But many have argued that, although Sanders is promoted as the more amiable and trustworthy, if compared to Clinton, his voting record is hardly encouraging.

“Sanders supported Bill Clinton’s war on Serbia, voted for the 2001 Authorization Unilateral Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), which pretty much allowed Bush to wage war wherever he wanted (and) backed Obama’s Libyan debacle,” wrote Jeffery St. Clair. 

Aside from supporting the US’ current position on Syria, Sanders has “voted twice in support of regime change in Iraq,” including in 1998.

“It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime,” the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 read.

On Israel, Sander’s legacy is very similar to that of current President, Barack Obama. He seemed to be relatively balanced (as ‘balanced’ as Americans officials can be) during his earlier days in various official capacities, a position that became more hawkish with time. It behooves those who argue that Sanders is the lesser of two evils to examine the legacy of President Obama, whose sympathy with the Palestinians was underscored by his friendship with the late Palestinian Professor Edward Said, and Professor Rashid al-Khalidi.

The trappings and balances of power, however, led Obama to repeatedly grovel before the Israeli Lobby in Washington DC, and he has stalwartly backed Israel’s wars against Gaza. More Palestinians died at the hand of Israel during Obama’s terms than those killed during the administration of W. Bush, who was an adamant supporter of Israel. Still, the current administration is negotiating an increase in US funding of Israel to exceed, and by far, the current 3.7 billion dollar a year.

As odd as this may actually sound, as First Lady, Clinton, too, was criticized for not being firm enough in her support for Israel, before shifting her position in supporting Israel, right or wrong, just before she eyed a Senator position representing the State of New York.

Not that many are ignorant of Sanders’ less-than-perfect past records, but some are rushing to Sanders’ side because they are compelled largely by fear that a Clinton White House would spell disaster for the future of the country, not just in the area of foreign policy, but domestic policies as well.

It is this train of thought that has compelled leading Leftist professor, Noam Chomsky, to display support for Sanders, and, if necessary, even Clinton in swing states to block Republican candidates from winning the presidency.

Chomsky, of course, has no illusions that Sanders’ self-proclaimed socialist title is even close to the truth. He is not a socialist, said Chomsky in a recent interview with Al Jazeera, but a “decent, honest New Dealer.” Thanks to the massive repositioning of the American political system to the Right, if one is a New Dealer, one is mistaken for a ‘raving leftist.”

To a degree, one can sympathize with Chomsky’s position considering the madness of the political rhetoric from the Right, where Donald Trump wants to ban Muslims from entering the country, and Ted Cruz is advocating ‘carpet bombing’ Middle Eastern countries to fight terrorism. But, on the other hand, one is expected to question the long-term benefit of the lesser of two evils approach to permanent, serious change in society. Chomsky had, in fact, made similar statements in previous presidential elections, yet America’s foreign and domestic policies seems to be in constant decline.

If seen within the larger historical context, US foreign policy, at least since the end of the Second World War, has been that of ‘rolling back’ and ‘containing’ perceived enemies, ‘regime change’ and outright military intervention. The tools used to achieve US foreign policy interest have rarely ever changed as a result of the type of administration (the lesser of two evils, Democrat, or a raging Republican) but varied, largely based on practical circumstances.

The rise of the Soviet Union as a global contender after WWII, made it difficult for the US to always resort to war as a first choice, fearing an open confrontation with the pro-Soviet bloc and possibly a nuclear war. It was Henry Kissinger that helped navigate America’s imperial interests at the time, resorting to most underhanded and, often, criminal tactics to achieve his goals.

But the demise of the USSR has opened up US appetite for global hegemony like never before. The US’s interventionist strategy became most dominant throughout the 1990s, to the present time. If Republican or Democratic administrations differed in any way, it was largely in rhetoric, not action. Whereas Republicans justified their interventions based on pre-emptive doctrines, Democrats referenced humanitarian interventionism. Both were equally deadly and, combined, destabilized the Middle East beyond repair.

The Presidency of Obama is hardly a significant departure from the norm, although his doctrine – ‘leading from behind’, at times and aerial bombardment as opposed to ‘boots on the ground’ and so on – is mostly compelled by circumstances and not in the least a departure from the policies of his predecessors.

While US administrations change their tactics, infuse their doctrines and adapt to various political conditions, wherever they intervene in the world, massive, complex disasters follow.

Clinton might have come, saw and Gaddafi was brutally murdered, but the country has also descended into a ‘state of nature’ type of chaos, where extreme violence meted out by militant brutes and managed by western-backed politicians, have taken reign.

Similar fates have been suffered by Iraq, Yemen and Syria - one sanctioned, invaded and occupied, another served as a war front for the US war on al-Qaeda, the third was groomed for intervention many years ago, in publicly available documents prepared by pro-Israel American neoconservative organizations.

Thus, it is essential that we understand such historical contexts before, once more, delving into impractical political feuds that, ultimately, validate the very US political establishment which, whether led by Republicans or Democrats, have wrought unmitigated harm to the Middle East, instability and incalculable deaths.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

Vladimir Putin on Cessation of Hostilities In Syria

Vladimir Putin’s Address On The Cessation Of Hostilities In Syria

via Information Clearing House

Feb. 24, 2016

Vladimir Putin’s address following adoption of a joint statement by Russia and US on Syria.

The President made a special address following the adoption of a joint statement by the Russian Federation and the United States of America, as co-chairs of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), on the cessation of hostilities in Syria.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin:

Friends, I just had a telephone conversation with President of the United States of America Barack Obama. The phone call was initiated by the Russian side, but the interest was certainly mutual.

During our conversation, we approved joint statements of Russia and the US, as co-chairs of the ISSG, on the cessation of hostilities in Syria. Adoption of the statement was preceded by intensive work by Russian and American experts. We also made use of the positive experience we accumulated over the course of cooperation in eliminating chemical weapons in Syria.

Our negotiators held several rounds of closed consultations. As a result, we were able to reach an important, specific result. It was agreed that the cessation of hostilities in Syria commences at 00:00 (Damascus time) on February 27, 2016 on terms and conditions that are a part of the Russian-American statement.

The essence of these conditions is as follows: by 12:00 pm on February 26, 2016, all parties warring in Syria must indicate to the Russian Federation or our American partners their commitment to the cessation of hostilities. Russian and American troops will jointly delineate the territories where these groups are active. No military action will be taken against them by the Armed Forces of the Syrian Arab Republic, Russian Armed Forces and the US-led coalition. In turn, the opposition will cease all military action against the Armed Forces of the Syrian Arab Republic and other groups supporting them.

ISIS, Jabhat Al-Nursa, and other terrorist organisations designated by the United Nations Security Council, are excluded from the cessation of hostilities. Strikes against them will continue.

It is fundamentally important that Russia and the US, as co-chairs of the ISSG, are prepared to launch effective mechanisms to promote and monitor compliance with the ceasefire by both the Syrian Government and the armed opposition groups.

To achieve this goal, we will establish a communication hotline and, if necessary, a working group to exchange relevant information. Russia will conduct the necessary work with Damascus and the legitimate Syrian leadership. We expect that the United States will do the same with regard to their allies and the groups they support.

I am sure that the joint actions agreed upon with the American side will be enough to radically reverse the crisis situation in Syria. We are finally seeing a real chance to bring an end to the long-standing bloodshed and violence. As a result, humanitarian access to all Syrian citizens in need should be made easier.

Most important is the creation of conditions for launching a long-term political process through a broad inter-Syrian dialogue in Geneva, under the auspices of the UN.

Unfortunately, recent history has many examples where one-sided actions not sanctioned by the UN, which favour short-term political or opportunistic interests, have led to dramatic results. These examples are on everyone’s lips: Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen.

Against this background, Russian-American agreements on the cessation of hostilities in Syria, and their joint implementation in coordination with all nations participating in the International Syria Support Group, can become an example of responsible actions the global community takes against the threat of terrorism, which are based on international law and UN principles.

I would like to hope that the Syrian leadership and all our partners in the region and beyond will support the set of actions chosen by representatives of Russia and the US.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Terry Wolfwood, Gary Charbonneau, Janine Bandcroft Feb. 24, 2016

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

February 23, 2016

Far from the media spotlight, nestled on the western reaches of Africa, a bitter drama is daily enacted. For more than forty years, the Saharawi people have lived in desperation, caught in an enforced limbo, imprisoned by circumstance.

Worse perhaps than the stunted existence imposed upon them is the relative obscurity of their plight; while other causes gain celebrity spokespeople and benefit concerts, the Saharawi struggle for liberation is largely forgotten.

Documentary film director, Lara Lee hopes her newly released film, 'Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara' will prove some remedy to that; as do the folks hosting this week's Café Simpatico at 1923 Fernwood Road.

Listen. Hear.

Long-time Victoria-based activist and organizer, Terry Wolfwood will present the Western Canadian premier of 'Life is Waiting' this Friday evening. As well as being a writer, photographer, and intrepid world traveler, covering ground from the highlands of Mexico to the apartheid walls of the West Bank, Western Sahara, and beyond in pursuit of peace, social justice, and women's rights, Terry is also the Director and co-founder of the Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation. Her articles have featured in Briarpatch, Peace News, and Third World Resurgence amongst other places, and she serves as the local coordinator for Victoria's Women in Black.

Terry Wolfwood in the first half.

And; people are not the only creatures wrongly imprisoned for the benefit of others. Though we like to think of ourselves out here on the shores of the majestic Pacific as being capable of appreciating both the immeasurable beauty of the place we live in, and the sanctity of the creatures who share this great privilege with us, there is still here in 2016 a place here where it's possible to go and see whales kept in swimming pools. What history will make of this we can only guess, but for now there is an effort to bring this practice to an end.

Gary Charbonneau is a Vancouver-based independent filmmaker and entrepreneur. He made news recently for being sued by the Vancouver Aquarium. The people running the Aquarium are seeking an injunction in BC court to have Charbonneau's film, 'Vancouver Aquarium Uncovered' pulled from YouTube, Vimeo and at Charbonneau's website, claiming he violated their copyright by using materials found on their website.

Gary Charbonneau and the Vancouver Aquarium's attempts to put the covers on Vancouver Aquarium Uncovered in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of the coming week from our city's streets, and beyond there too. But first, Terry Wolfwood and 'Life is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara.'

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Wednesday, 1-2pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.