Canute Can't Trump the Tides of Climate Change

Why Fighting Donald Trump On Climate Change Is A Waste Of Time

by Captain Paul Watson - Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

November 15, 2016

Before everyone gets overly upset about Donald Trump and climate change consider this one thing: Donald Trump’s denial of climate change is irrelevant.

Climate change is a scientific reality and the denial of climate change as a problem does not make the threat go away. The reality cannot be changed by the personal beliefs of the President of the United States. This is akin to King Canute demanding that the tide cease to rise. When he failed to force the Ocean to his will, he proclaimed,

“Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.”

Presidents, like kings, have no authority over Nature.

And when you really think about, just what is the difference between a president that denies climate change and a Prime Minister who acknowledges it, yet acts as if he is denying it?

It is of course the politically correct thing to acknowledge climate change as a reality but none of these world leaders are actually doing the ecologically correct thing and doing something about it.

Greenpeace sent me, and thousands of others, a message yesterday. They see Trump as an opportunity to raise funds. This was the Greenpeace message:

This week, so many people have reached out about how they can help — and there are many ways you can get involved, but one of the most direct ways for us to prepare for the threats to our climate, communities, and planet is by making a donation to Greenpeace today. The road ahead will not be easy. Trump’s upcoming presidency poses a direct and real danger to our climate, our environment, and our democracy. But, Greenpeace is not going anywhere. We’re not giving up — and we are ready for this fight.

Today I received this message from the Environmental Defense Fund:

Everything that we’ve fought so hard to accomplish in the past eight years is under attack, and we must not waste any time fighting back. Join the fight to protect our environmental legacy by making your first online gift to EDF this weekend.

Also today, there was a message from the Sierra Club:

The next four years will be decided by how hard we fight right now. We are launching an emergency campaign to stop Trump’s efforts to derail everything we’ve achieved. Monthly giving is the best way to support our fight. Become a Wilderness Guardian today.

I’m not sure how making contributions to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and EDF is going to stop Trump. Not much was accomplished over the last eight years outside of promises on paper and some nice speeches by some politicians.

What will people receive in return for their donations? Certainly not any influence over Trump or the Republican Congress.

My question is this. Just how is President-elect Donald Trump any different than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

There is this myth that Trudeau is doing something to address climate change. He’s not. His energy policies are not much different than former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Trudeau has not stopped development and extraction in the Tar Sands, he’s pro-pipeline, pro West Coast tanker traffic and pretty much pro anything that is going to profit the energy corporations. He even denied that the devastating fires earlier this year in Alberta were linked to climate change and chastised Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May for suggesting that it was.

But at COP 21 he said he was going to take real action on climate change.... like someday — maybe, or maybe not.

What has the U.S. under Obama done? I mean really! Trump will not diminish the Obama, Bush and Clinton efforts. He would actually have to try hard to do less than they did.

I very vividly remember that it was Al Gore who refused to sign the Kyoto Accord and I also remember everyone in Canada and Australia giving the Americans hell for not signing that accord, yet the Canadians and the Australians were creating more greenhouse gas emissions per capita than the Americans at the time and continued to do so.

So it seems that signing a climate change agreement is more important than actually doing something about the problem and acknowledging climate change and doing nothing about it appears to be more significant than denying it and doing nothing about it.

Many people will now throw their energies into fighting Trump on this issue and this will make leaders like Turnbull in Australia and Trudeau in Canada look relatively good while they do nothing more substantial than Trump in reality.

We humans do love our illusions

Fighting Trump on this issue will also serve to send a message to all those who voted for him that he’s their man. Making the Libs, the Greenies and the Lefties angry is something that will endear him even more in their minds. They want him to be seen as the climate change denying hero. Instead we need to ignore him because climate change deniers are irrelevant to reality. By challenging the deniers, we validate them, we engage them and thus they are taken even more seriously.

Donald Trump is not really a stupid man, although he plays the role quite well. He knows damn well that climate change is real but he needs to tell his base what they want to hear and challenging him on this helps him to send that message even stronger.

Trump is not a scientist and therefore does not need to score any points with science. He is a politician wooing people who he knew wanted to hear the message that climate change is a hoax and, as is his way, he embellished it with a silly explanation that the Chinese created it. Does he really believe that? Of course not, but he wanted the people who want to hear him deny climate change to think that he does. It’s called politics, also known as the ‘art of the possible’.

Confronting Trump on climate change achieves less traction than ignoring him. Saying he is a dunce with the science does not hurt him, in fact it only makes him stronger with his base and his base has demonstrated that science pulls very little weight when it comes to their self interested priorities.

What he and his climate change denying constituents will not be able to ignore is when Mother Nature continues to slap them in the face harder and harder than the year before. They can only ignore super-storms, floods, drought, rising sea levels, devastating fires, etc., for so long until the realization that something is not quite right sinks through their hard skulls into that area of their brain that can comprehend consequences

Trying to get a politician, any politician, to actually withdraw from energy addiction is akin to trying to get a hardcore junkie to lay off the needle.

The Greenpeace, Sierra Club and EDF message state that Trump poses a direct and real danger to our climate, our environment, and our democracy.

But does he? The threats to our climate, our environment and our democracy have been the same threats for decades, well before Trump. He did not just jump out of the bushes to scare us with these threats. Are the Native Americans at Standing Rock being pepper sprayed and beaten because of Trump? Did the Deepwater Horizon disaster happen because of Trump? And what could be a greater threat to our environment than BP’s disaster in the Gulf and the fact that they were never really punished. If I deliberately or even accidentally poured just one barrel of oil into the harbor I would be in jail. This double standard is not Trump’s creation.

I think the oligarchs would love nothing better than to scapegoat Donald Trump for their sins. He is, after all, a loose cannon in their eyes. They would much rather replace him and most likely they will. Mike Pence would be a better fit for them and they know it. Not as good as Hillary Clinton, but more manageable than Trump.

These COP conferences are accomplishing absolutely nothing but talk, talk, talk and more freaking talk. We’re up to COP 22 now with this recent meeting in Morocco and without the charisma and energy of a Nichola Hulot with COP 21, hardly anyone has even heard of COP 22.

How many COP’S will there be before anything substantial is actually done. COP 33? COP 57? These charades are simply cop-outs from action.

Not one of these COP gab-fests has shut down a single coal fired generating plant or a single pipeline. Not one.

The only thing that excites any government appears to be the possibility of imposing a tax. Politicians love taxes and carbon taxes are just another scam to secure tax dollars. Carbon trading is yet another scam.

There is not a single nation that is undertaking the effort to realistically and effectively address climate change.

Is anyone shutting down fracking, drilling, open pit mining, deep water exploration? No. Is there a single nation cutting subsidies to energy companies or to the destructive fishing industries? No. Will we stop slaughtering 65 billion animals a year to reduce a carbon footprint that is even greater than that of transportation? Hell no, “I like my hamburger” is the answer.

Is there a single world leader ready to make economic sacrifices for the environment? Absolutely not.

“Oh but....,” say my critics, “there are great educational programs underway.” How’s that working? Not that great?

Some want us to waste our energies battling Trump The climate change Denier as if that’s going to accomplish anything. It won’t. When will we stop reacting to the circuses so we can actually focus on taking the initiative?

My point is that Donald Trump simply is no worse and no better than all the rest of these so-called leaders whose agenda is to serve the corporations and to enrich themselves.

He won’t do much but he will most likely do just as much meaning very little as Trudeau, Turnbull and May have done, or will do.

The North American Free Trade Deal happened under Clinton. The Trans-Pacific Trade Deal was an Obama goal. Trump is against it. Fracking was initiated and supported by Obama and Clinton. The embarrassment of the Dakota Access Pipeline is happening under the Obama administration.

Would Hillary Clinton have stopped it if elected? Would she actually do a damn thing to address climate change if she had won? The evidence indicates that she would have done everything to maintain the status quo which has brought all these problems to us and will present much greater problems in the near future.

I did not vote for Trump but I’m not going to pretend that on this issue, i.e. climate change, anyone else would mean anything different.

I can see fighting Trump on women’s issues, LGBT+ issues, immigration issues and many more important social issues. I will support any such efforts with both passion and action BUT I have no intention of fighting Trump on climate change. To do so would simply be a distraction away from the fact that not one goddamn world leader is actually doing anything at all to address the problem. I have no intention of contributing to making them all look good compared to Trump.

Because when it comes to climate change Trump is on par with Trudeau, Turnbull, May, Hollande, Abe, Putin, and the leaders of China, Brazil, Mexico and everyone else meaning that they all are pursuing agendas that are contrary to the reality of climate change.

So where do we look for answers?

People of passion, of imagination, courage and commitment. People like Elon Musk, Gildo Pastor, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron, Ethan Brown, Cyrill Gutch, John Paul DiJoria, Chief Raoni, Dale Vince, Naomi Klein, Jasmine Thomas, Wangari Maathai and so many others.

Individual passion. Individual imagination. Individual initiative. Individual courage. These are the keys to our survival.

Depending on a politician to solve any of these problems is like depending on an oil executive to promote solar energy. It is simply not in their interest or as Bill Clinton once put it, “It’s the economy stupid.”

That is a fact. Politicians serve the economy. They do not serve the Environment. It’s like asking a high school history teacher to teach advanced math. They won’t do it because they can’t do it.

We need to look beyond the limited horizons of elected officials because the answers are to be found well beyond their restricted and blinkered worldview.

To paraphrase Matthew in Matthew 22:21 “Render to the Donald the things that are the Donald’s.”

Climate change is not one of his things and never will be. It is our thing, those of us who understand the consequences and thus it is our responsibility to explore and invent alternatives and to fight the technologies, not the hired mouthpieces of these destructive technologies.

Follow Captain Paul Watson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/captpaulwatson

Indecent Exposure: Trump Reveals America

The Real Face of Washington (and America) - Thank You, Donald Trump

by Tom Engelhardt - TomDispatch

January 3, 2017   

Know thyself. It was what came to mind in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory and my own puzzling reaction to it. And while that familiar phrase just popped into my head, I had no idea it was so ancient, or Greek, or for that matter a Delphic maxim inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo according to the Greek writer Pausanias (whom I'd never heard of until I read his name in Wikipedia). Think of that as my own triple helix of ignorance extending back to... well, my birth in a very different America 72 years ago.

Anyway, the simple point is that I didn’t know myself half as well as I imagined. And I can thank Donald Trump for reminding me of that essential truth. Of course, we can never know what’s really going on inside the heads of all those other people out there on this curious planet of ours, but ourselves as strangers? I guess if I were inscribing something in the forecourt of my own Delphic temple right now, it might be: Who knows me? (Not me.)

Tomgram: Engelhardt, It Can Happen Here (In Fact, It Did!)

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: After a brief respite, we’re back to face the age of Trump. Thank you for your remarkable generosity as last year ended. Your donations have helped us in what will certainly be tough times. Just a small reminder: as emails from TD readers indicate, our newest Dispatch Book, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, catches our grim moment in a remarkable way. I urge those of you who haven’t yet purchased a copy to do so and help support our growing line of books. Remember as well that in return for a donation of $100 or more as 2017 begins ($125 if you live outside the USA), you can get a signed, personalized copy of the book. You won’t regret it. Check out our donation page for the details. Tom]

The Real Face of Washington (and America) - Thank You, Donald Trump

by Tom Engelhardt

Consider this my little introduction to a mystery I stumbled upon in the early morning hours of our recent election night that hasn't left my mind since. I simply couldn’t accept that Donald Trump had won. Not him. Not in this country. Not possible. Not in a million years.

Mind you, during the campaign I had written about Trump repeatedly, always leaving open the possibility that, in the disturbed (and disturbing) America of 2016, he could indeed beat Hillary Clinton. That was a conclusion I lost when, in the final few weeks of the campaign, like so many others, I got hooked on the polls and the pundits who went with them. (Doh!)

In the wake of the election, however, it wasn’t shock based on pollsters’ errors that got to me. It was something else that only slowly dawned on me. Somewhere deep inside, I simply didn’t believe that, of all countries on this planet, the United States could elect a narcissistic, celeb billionaire who was also, in the style of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a right-wing “populist” and incipient autocrat.

Plenty of irony lurked in that conviction, which outlasted the election and so reality itself. In these years, I’ve written critically of the way just about every American politician but Donald Trump has felt obligated to insist that this is an “exceptional” or “indispensable” nation, “the greatest country” on the planet, not to speak of in history. (And throw in as well the claim of recent presidents and so many others that the U.S. military represents the “greatest fighting force” in that history.)

President Obama, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John McCain -- it didn’t matter. Every one of them was a dutiful or enthusiastic American exceptionalist. As for Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, she hit the trifecta plus one in a speech she gave to the American Legion’s national convention during the campaign. In it, she referred to the United States as “the greatest country on Earth,” “an exceptional nation,” and “the indispensable nation” that, of course, possessed “the greatest military” ever. (“My friends, we are so lucky to be Americans. It is an extraordinary blessing.”) Only Trump, with his "make America great again," slogan seemed to admit to something else, something like American decline.

Post-election, here was the shock for me: it turned out that I, too, was an American exceptionalist. I deeply believed that our country was simply too special for The Donald, and so his victory sent me on an unexpected journey back into the world of my childhood and youth, back into the 1950s and early 1960s when (despite the Soviet Union) the U.S. really did stand alone on the planet in so many ways. Of course, in those years, no one had to say such things. All those greatests, exceptionals, and indispensables were then dispensable and the recent political tic of insisting on them so publicly undoubtedly reflects a defensiveness that’s a sign of something slipping.

Obviously, in those bedrock years of American power and strength and wealth and drive and dynamism (and McCarthyism, and segregation, and racism, and smog, and...), the very years that Donald Trump now yearns to bring back, I took in that feeling of American specialness in ways too deep to grasp. Which was why, decades later, when I least expected it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it couldn’t happen here. In actuality, the rise to power of Trumpian figures -- Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia -- has been a dime-a-dozen event elsewhere and now looks to be a global trend. It’s just that I associated such rises with unexceptional, largely tinpot countries or ones truly down on their luck.

So it’s taken me a few hard weeks to come to grips with my own exceptionalist soul and face just how Donald Trump could -- indeed did -- happen here.

It Can Happen Here

So how did it happen here?

Let’s face it: Donald Trump was no freak of nature. He only arrived on the scene and took the Electoral College (if not the popular vote) because our American world had been prepared for him in so many ways. As I see it, at least five major shifts in American life and politics helped lay the groundwork for the rise of Trumpism:

* The Coming of a 1% Economy and the 1% Politics That Goes With It: A singular reality of this century has been the way inequality became embedded in American life, and how so much money was swept ever upwards into the coffers of 1% profiteers. Meanwhile, a yawning gap grew between the basic salaries of CEOs and those of ordinary workers. In these years, as I’m hardly the first to point out, the country entered a new gilded age. In other words, it was already a Mar-a-Lago moment before The Donald threw his hair into the ring.

Without the arrival of casino capitalism on a massive scale (at which The Donald himself proved something of a bust), Trumpism would have been inconceivable. And if, in its Citizens United decision of 2010, the Supreme Court hadn’t thrown open the political doors quite so welcomingly to that 1% crew, how likely was it that a billionaire celebrity would have run for president or become a favorite among the white working class?

Looked at a certain way, Donald Trump deserves credit for stamping the true face of twenty-first-century American plutocracy on Washington by selecting mainly billionaires and multimillionaires to head the various departments and agencies of his future government. After all, doesn’t it seem reasonable that a 1% economy, a 1% society, and a 1% politics should produce a 1% government? Think of what Trump has so visibly done as American democracy’s version of truth in advertising. And of course, if billionaires hadn’t multiplied like rabbits in this era, he wouldn’t have had the necessary pool of plutocrats to choose from.

Something similar might be said of his choice of so many retired generals and other figures with significant military backgrounds (ranging from West Point graduates to a former Navy SEAL) for key “civilian” positions in his government. Think of that, too, as a truth-in-advertising moment leading directly to the second shift in American society.

* The Coming of Permanent War and an Ever More Militarized State and Society: Can there be any question that, in the 15-plus years since 9/11, what was originally called the "Global War on Terror" has become a permanent war across the Greater Middle East and Africa (with collateral damage from Europe to the Philippines)? In those years, staggering sums of money -- beyond what any other country or even collection of countries could imagine spending -- has poured into the U.S. military and the arms industry that undergirds it and monopolizes the global trade in weaponry. In the process, Washington became a war capital and the president, as Michelle Obama indicated recently when talking about Trump’s victory with Oprah Winfrey, became, above all, the commander in chief. (“It is important for the health of this nation,” she told Winfrey, “that we support the commander in chief.”) The president’s role in wartime had, of course, always been as commander in chief, but now that’s the position many of us vote for (and even newspapers endorse), and since war is so permanently embedded in the American way of life, Donald Trump is guaranteed to remain that for his full term.

And the role has expanded strikingly in these years, as the White House gained the power to make war in just about any fashion it chose without significant reference to Congress. The president now has his own air force of drone assassins to dispatch more or less anywhere on the planet to take out more or less anyone. At the same time, cocooned inside the U.S. military, an elite, secretive second military, the Special Operations forces, has been expanding its personnel, budget, and operations endlessly and its most secretive element, the Joint Special Operations Command, might even be thought of as the president’s private army.

Meanwhile, the weaponry and advanced technology with which this country has been fighting its never-ending (and remarkably unsuccessful) conflicts abroad -- from Predator drones to the Stingray that mimics a cell phone tower and so gets nearby phones to connect to it -- began migrating home, as America’s borders and police forces were militarized. The police have been supplied with weaponry and other equipment directly off the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, while veterans from those wars have joined the growing set of SWAT teams, the domestic version of special-ops teams, that are now a must-have for police departments nationwide.

It’s no coincidence that Trump and his generals are eager to pump up a supposedly “depleted” U.S. military with yet more funds or, given the history of these years, that he appointed so many retired generals from our losing wars to key “civilian” positions atop that military and the national security state. As with his billionaires, in a decisive fashion, Trump is stamping the real face of twenty-first-century America on Washington.

* The Rise of the National Security State: In these years, a similar process has been underway in relation to the national security state. Vast sums of money have flowed into the country’s 17 intelligence outfits (and their secret black budgets), into the Department of Homeland Security, and the like. (Before 9/11, Americans might have associated that word “homeland” with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but never with this country.) In these years, new agencies were launched and elaborate headquarters and other complexes built for parts of that state within a state to the tune of billions of dollars. At the same time, it was “privatized,” its doors thrown open to the contract employees of a parade of warrior corporations. And, of course, the National Security Agency created a global surveillance apparatus so all-encompassing that it left the fantasies of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century in the dust.

As the national security state rose in Washington amid an enveloping shroud of secrecy (and the fierce hounding or prosecution of any whistleblower), it became the de facto fourth branch of government. Under the circumstances, don’t think of it as a happenstance that the 2016 election might have been settled 11 days early thanks to FBI Director James Comey’s intervention in the race, which represented a historical first for the national security state. Argue as you will over how crucial Comey’s interference was to the final vote tallies, it certainly caught the mood of the new era that had been birthed in Washington long before Donald Trump’s victory. Nor should you consider it a happenstance that possibly the closest military figure to the new commander in chief is his national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency until forced out by the Obama administration. No matter the arguments Trump may have with the CIA or other agencies, they will be crucial to his rule (once brought to heel by his appointees).

Those billionaires, generals, and national security chieftains had already been deeply embedded in our American world before Trump made his run. They will now be part and parcel of his world going forward. The fourth shift in the landscape is ongoing, not yet fully institutionalized, and harder to pin down.

* The Coming of the One-Party State: Thanks to the political developments of these years, and a man with obvious autocratic tendencies entering the Oval Office, it’s possible to begin to imagine an American version of a one-party state emerging from the shell of our former democratic system. After all, the Republicans already control the House of Representatives (in more or less perpetuity, thanks to gerrymandering), the Senate, the White House, and assumedly in the years to come the Supreme Court. They also control a record 33 out of 50 governorships, have tied a record by taking 68 out of the 98 state legislative chambers, and have broken another by gaining control of 33 out of 50 full legislatures. In addition, as the North Carolina legislature has recently shown, the urge among state Republicans to give themselves new, extra-democratic, extra-legal powers (as well as a longer term Republican drive to restrict the ballot in various ways, claiming nonexistent voter fraud) should be considered a sign of the direction in which we could be headed in a future embattled Trumpist country.

In addition, for years the Democratic Party saw its various traditional bases of support weaken, wither, or in the recent election simply opt for a candidate competing for the party’s nomination who wasn’t even a Democrat. Until the recent election loss, however, it was at least a large, functioning political bureaucracy. Today, no one knows quite what it is. It’s clear, however, that one of America’s two dominant political parties is in a state of disarray and remarkable weakness. Meanwhile, the other, the Republican Party, assumedly the future base for that Trumpian one-party state, is in its own disheveled condition, a party of apparatchiks and ideologues in Washington and embattled factions in the provinces.

In many ways, the incipient collapse of the two-party system in a flood of 1% money cleared the path for Trump’s victory. Unlike the previous three shifts in American life, however, this one is hardly in place yet. Instead, the sense of party chaos and weakness so crucial to the rise of Donald Trump still holds, and the same sense of chaos might be said to apply to the fifth shift I want to mention.

* The Coming of the New Media Moment: Among the things that prepared the way for Trump, who could leave out the crumbling of the classic newspaper/TV world of news? In these years, it lost much of its traditional advertising base, was bypassed by social media, and the TV part of it found itself in an endless hunt for eyeballs to glue, normally via 24/7 “news” events, eternally blown out of proportion but easy to cover in a nonstop way by shrinking news staffs. As an alternative, there was the search for anything or anyone (preferably of the celebrity variety) that the public couldn’t help staring at, including a celebrity-turned-politician-turned-provocateur with the world’s canniest sense of what the media so desperately needed: him. It may have seemed that Trump inaugurated our new media moment by becoming the first meister-elect of tweet and the shout-out master of that universe, but in reality he merely grasped the nature of our new, chaotic media moment and ran with it.

Unexceptional Billionaires and Dispensable Generals

Let’s add a final point to the other five: Donald Trump will inherit a country that has been hollowed out by the new realities that made him a success and allowed him to sweep to what, to many experts, looked like an improbable victory. He will inherit a country that is ever less special, a nation that, as Trump himself has pointed out, has an increasingly third-worldish transportation system (not a single mile of high-speed rail and airports that have seen better days), an infrastructure that has been drastically debased, and an everyday economy that offers lesser jobs to ever more of his countrymen. It will be an America whose destructive power only grows but whose ability to translate that into anything approaching victory eternally recedes.

With its unexceptional billionaires, its dispensable generals, its less than great national security officials, its dreary politicians, and its media moguls in search of the passing buck, it’s likely to be a combustible country in ways that will seem increasingly familiar to so many elsewhere on this planet, and increasingly strange to the young Tom Engelhardt who still lives inside me.

It’s this America that will tumble into the debatably small but none-too-gentle hands of Donald Trump on January 20th.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Tom Engelhardt

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Satya Sagar, Richard Kastelein, Christina Nikolic January 4, 2017

This Week on GR

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

January 2, 2017

Happy New Year to all following the western, or Gregorian calendar. It's important to remember, time is relative and calendars mutable; like other things we may regard as solid, (say economic systems) nothing is changeless, nor eternal.

Take India's rupee; late last year, prime minister Narendra Modi launched, depending upon your point of view, an either visionary, or draconian demonetization program aimed, he says, at "black money, terrorism, and tax evasion." His critics however wonder if there's not more behind the unprecedented move to take both the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, workhorses of the nation's currency accounting for more than 85% of cash transactions, off the street and onto a controlled grid.

Listen. Hear.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker whose clarion English language articles on demonetization, 'Death by Demonetisation' and 'Demonetisation: The Sultan of Sophistry'  have appeared on this side of the World via the Kerala-based news website, CounterCurrents.org, among other places.

Satya Sagar in the first half.

And; it's not only India witnessing an economic paradigm shift. Across the planet, Bitcoin and its many imitators, had been received as both a halyard of hope to rescue upward mobility for the embattled middle and working classes, and harbinger of an impending doom, promising chaos by delivering the economy into the hands of internet fraudsters and shadowy networks of web gangsters.

Though the early application of cryptocurrencies had problems, the implementation of a more sophisticated Blockchain 2.0 database insures a more secure regimen. But, there's more to ushering in a new age of money than ones and zeroes, what's needed too is a social and necessarily political framework, a context from which the new system can operate. That's were the Blockchain Party comes in.

Richard Kastelein is a media and technology activist, educator, and entrepreneur. He's the publisher and editor-in-chief of Blockchain News, a co-founder of Blockchain Partners, director of The Hackitarians Foundation, and now moves into the political sphere with BCP, the Blockchain Party.

Richard Kastelein and bringing new politics to the new money in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will not be joining us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of some of the good things the coming week promises on in and around the streets of our town, and beyond there too, Christina Nikolic will instead step into the breach. But first, Satya Sagar and putting an biometric thumb in the eye of India's financial system.

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/

An Escalating War Against Alternative News

The War Against Alternative Information

by Rick Sterling - Consortium News

January 1, 2017 

 

The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. 

Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of United States to UN, 

Security Council meeting on Syria, Sept. 25, 2016. Power advocates 

escalating U.S. military involvement in Syria. (UN Photo)

Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.

 

Noam Chomsky: People's Tribunal on the Iraq War, Day Two

The People's Tribunal on the Iraq War, Day Two: Noam Chomsky

by TRNN 

January 1, 2016

On Day 2 of the CODEPINK #IraqTribunal, participants provided testimony on the lies that were used to invade Iraq.

Chicago's Resolute Resistance to Gun Violence

Eternal Hostility: a New Year’s Resolution

by Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Non-Violence

January 1, 2017

This New Year’s Eve, 750 heavy wooden crosses were distributed to a gathering of Chicagoans commemorating the victims of gun violence killed in 2016. Rev. Michael Pfleger and the Faith Community of St. Sabina Parish had issued a call to carry crosses constructed by Greg Zanis.

The crosses, uniform in size, presented the name and age and, in many cases, a facial photo of the person killed.
One of more than 750 crosses carried in a 
Chicago rally commemorating homicide 
victims on New Years Eve - Photo: Ed Juillard

Some who carried the crosses were relatives of the people killed. As the group assembled, several sobbed upon finding the crosses that bore the names and photos of their loved ones.

Those carrying the heavy crosses along Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” of high end shops and restaurants knew that other arms than theirs were aching…aching with longing for loved ones who would never return. In 2016, more people were killed in Chicago by gun violence than in New York City and Los Angeles combined. The number killed represented a 58% increase over the number killed in 2015. “How could this happen?” – was the question asked on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.

It was a year of social service program shutdowns driven by the Governor’s office in Springfield. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s description of a triplet of giant evils, each insoluble in isolation from the others, helps us identify an answer to the Tribune’s question. King spoke of the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism. Training for, and the diversion of money to, wars overseas was a crisis inextricable from the race crisis at home, as were policies promoting radical wealth inequality. Representative Danny Davis, of Chicago, whose grandson was killed by gun violence in 2016, insists that “poverty was fueling the city’s bloodshed, and that Chicago needed to make investments ‘to revamp whole communities.’”

Poverty and racism clearly interact: Blacks and Latinos comprise 56% of the incarcerated population, yet only 30% of the U.S. population. A report documenting the rates of incarceration for whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in the Illinois state prison system notes that over half of this prison population is black. For every 100,000 people in the state, 1,533 black people are imprisoned as compared to 174 white people and 282 Hispanic people. The consequences of incarceration affect entire communities: former prisoners are restricted in terms of employment, their families are disrupted, housing becomes unstable, they become disenfranchised, and stigmas persist.

Yet we ignore the militaristic triplet at our peril. Gun violence in Chicago is condemned, as it should be, and yet a message to every one of the 9,000 Chicago Public School children participating in U.S. military junior ROTC programs is that killing is acceptable if you are following orders, or avenging the honor or advancing the goals of a loyal group. Killing of civilians by the U.S. military is considered regrettable but acceptable “collateral damage.” These killings eliminate “high value targets”. The mere suspicion of harboring a targeted person in a home, restaurant, or mosque becomes an excuse for an airborne drone attack to execute whole families or communities. Ironically, this policy enacts an airborne version of a drive-by shooting.

Soldiers who have seen combat are less likely to praise the virtues of military life. “The myth is that the military teaches discipline,” say the Chicago area Veterans for Peace, in their ‘education not militarization’ campaign. “The reality is that the military teaches children to follow orders without question and to use the military solution to conflict resolution – that is, death and destruction.”

President Obama had tears in his eyes in January, 2016, calling for relief from record breaking shootings and killings in the U.S. Yet 2016 became a record breaking year for U.S. export of weapons to other countries. The U.S. is responsible for nearly 33% of worldwide weapon exports—by far the top arms exporter on the planet.

“Arms deals are a way of life in Washington,” writes William Hartung.

“From the president on down, significant parts of the government are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. …American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms. And the Pentagon is their enabler… In its first six years, team Obama entered into agreements to sell more weaponry than any administration since World War II.”

Carrying a cross along Michigan Avenue yesterday, I thought of the terrible slaughter in World War I that killed 38 million people. Elites, weapon makers, and war profiteers drove millions of men into the trenches to fight and die in the war that was to end all wars. In 1914, mired in mud, war-weary and miserable, troops on both sides took matters into their own hands. For a brief, yet magnificent time, they enabled the “Christmas truce.” One account relates how some German troops began singing one of their carols, and British and other troops then sang a carol from their side. As voices wafted across the no-man’s land, troops began calling out to one another.

“Time and again during the course of that day, the Eve of Christmas, there were wafted towards us from the trenches opposite the sounds of singing and merry-making, and occasionally the guttural tones of a German were to be heard shouting out lustily, 'A happy Christmas to you Englishmen!' Only too glad to show that the sentiments were reciprocated, back would go the response from a thick-set Clydesider, 'Same to you, Fritz, but dinna o'er eat yourself wi' they sausages!'”

“The high command on both sides took a dim view of the activities and orders were issued to stop the fraternizing with varying results. In some areas, the truce ended Christmas Day in others the following day and in others it extended into January.”

Dr. King said, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit, and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.” The soldiers in those trenches went out into their no-man’s land and showed the world one way to end wars. They should never have had to. It was left to them to venture into the no-man’s land, risking exposure to the others’ fire and their generals’ punishment for disobeying orders.

No matter what gang is issuing the orders to kill, whether a massive military power or a smaller group that has acquired weapons, we can all claim our right not to develop, store, sell or use weapons. We can claim our right not to kill and not to live with the memory of having killed. “Declaring eternal hostility” to the fear, greed and hate which are our real enemies seems to be our true hope. We can lay aside forever the futility of killing. We can be hopeful and determined that our resources and ingenuity are directed toward meeting human needs.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

Disappearing Social Security: Fleecing the Last of the Lambs

The Coming Assault on Social Security

by Dave Lindorff - CounterPunch

December 30, 2016

The first assault of the Trump administration and Republican Congress on Social Security has been launched. It comes in the form of a new report by the Congressional Budget Office, which these days is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Congressional Caucus.

Using some financial sleight-of-hand, the report pushes forward by two years the date its ideologically driven experts claim Social Security benefits will exhaust the Trust Fund, and since Social Security is required to be self-financing, the date at which, barring adjustments by Congress in program funding and/or benefit payment levels, promised benefits would be cut by what the CBO claims will have to be 31%.

Such a cut would clearly be a staggering blow to the finances and livelihoods of nation’s retirees, dependents and the disabled.

This end-of-the-year CBO report is at odds with a report issued earlier this year by the Trustees of the Social Security Administration, which projected that the Trust Fund, barring any changes in taxes or benefit payments, would be tapped out in 2033, and that at that point benefits, barring some fixes in Social Security financing, would have to be cut by an also horrific but far lower 21% (with the remaining 79% of benefit payments being covered by current employee FICA taxes being paid into the system).

How did the projection on Social Security move from a cut in benefit payments of by just over a fifth being required in 17 years to a cut by almost a third being required in just 15 years?

Well, the CBO decided, in its wisdom, that the estimates of economic trends being used by the SSA’s Trustees — a group about evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees, with Democrats having a slight edge — were too optimistic.

Specifically, for example, the CBO gnomes are projecting that the interest rate on 10-year Treasury notes will only be at 1.7% in 2026, rising to just 2.3% in 2046. Since the Trust Fund — composed of FICA taxes paid by workers — is invested by law entirely in these 10-year notes, that’s a pretty low rate of return to be projecting. In contrast, the Trustees, in their 2016 report earlier this year, projected 10-year rates in 2016 of 2.4%, rising to 2.7% in 2031. For the record, the 10-year rate today is 2.51%, well above even the Trustee’s projection, and almost a percentage point higher than the latest CBO figure for the year.

The CBO is also projecting a slower rate of wage growth than did SSA Trustees, and thus is predicting a lower amount of FICA tax payments into the fund, as well as a further decline in labor participation rates and productivity growth, and other factors that all point to reduced contributions to the Trust Fund going forward.

Remember, though, that the Trump campaign and the Republican Senate and House candidates running for election, have been all about boosting jobs, raising incomes and lowering taxes, all of which should logically, if it were to come to pass, improve Social Security finances, not worsen them.

This leaves us with only two ways to look at the new CBO report, which will now be cited ad nauseam by Republicans in Congress as a reason to cut back on Social Security benefits and on annual inflation adjustments to those benefits, to raise the retirement age for receiving full benefits (a disaster especially for poor workers who cannot continue the hard physical labor many of their jobs require), and to raise the FICA tax rate, already a regressive flat 6.2% for employees and employers. Either Trump and Congress are not really going to try to boost jobs and income, or are going to try using measures like deregulation and trade sanctions on imports that will not work, or the CBO is just providing a fraudulent projection to give a boost to Republican plans to gut Social Security.

So what’s really going on here?

It’s classic scare tactics.

The Republican game, one in which they are, as always, being shamelessly supported by many conservative Democrats, as well as by nearly every financial advisor in the financial industry, and by financial industry lobbyists, is and has been to frighten younger workers into thinking that they are never going to receive Social Security benefits by the time they reach retirement age.

Photo frankieleon | CC BY 2.0

The goal is to drive a wedge between older workers and retirees on the one hand, who are looking at Social Security benefits as the mainstay of their lives in retirement (half of all Americans have no retirement savings — no IRA or 401(k) and no pension — and of those with savings, the average amount is $60,000 per family, according to the Economic Policy Institute, enough to pay out just $2400 per year in interest for life), and younger workers, who are being told Social Security will be going bust before they retire.

In 2016, according to the Social Security Administration, 61 million Americans, or about one-fifth of the country’s population and nine our of 10 of the nation’s elderly and disabled, are receiving Social Security benefits. Of these, 48% of couples and 71% of single retirees depend on those benefits for 50% or more of their income. Furthermore, 21% of retired married couples and 43% of single retirees depend on those benefits for 90% or more of their income. Cutting Social Security benefits, or reducing them by stealth through continued under adjustment for inflation each year, will wreak havoc with their lives.

Meanwhile the 75-year-old system, which has never missed a payment, has long been supported by all workers, young and old, first because of confidence that it will pay promised benefits, and equally importantly, because children and grandchildren paying into the system know that it is supporting their parents and grandparents, and helping to keep them out of poverty and also off the backs of their offspring. There is, in other words, an inherent solid logic in seeing Social Security as a national good for people of all ages.

The Republican strategy is to destroy this universal support by convincing the young that their FICA taxes are going into a black hole and that those funds won’t be available for them when it’s their turn to retire.

The idea is to pretend that Social Security is like an investment in stocks and bonds, and that the return is not very good in comparison to investing money in privately managed accounts (that’s what the Wall Street financial community wants: to get their hands on all those FICA funds totalling nearly a trillion dollars a year!).

But Social Security is not like a 401(k) fund. It is a government program funded by taxes and with benefits set by Congress. It is a wholly political construct, and it will be whatever the public demands it to be. Sadly, because most of the corporate media have bought into the Republican-led scam that Social Security is just an investment program with a poor return, many Americans are losing confidence in its future. And so for years, during which, as even now, small tweaks in the funding of the program could have made the program fully solvent right through the period when a large population of Baby Boomers will be increasing benefit outlays, and into the foreseeable future, and that in fact would allow it to be expanded (European public retirement programs pay benefits that are about twice as large as those paid by the US Social Security system!), nothing has been done.

Make no mistake: this CBO report is the opening salvo of an all-out assault on Social Security, as Republicans, now thanks to Trump’s presidential win, seek to take advantage of their full control of the levers of power in Washington for at least the next two or more likely four years, try to do as much damage to the program as possible.

The only answer is for progressives to organize massively in support of this last and most critical piece of the old New Deal legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt. It will require massive protests in Washington and major cities of the country, incessant pressure on all elected officials, and a concerted educational program so that all Americans understand that this program is critical to their and their parents’ and grandparents’ survival.

The truth is that despite a decade of dithering by Republicans and limp Democrats also anxious to cut the program’s cost on behalf of their Wall Street contributors, Social Security could be fully funded for another 75 years or more by simply eliminating the cap on income subject to the FICA tax (currently only the first $118,500 of income is taxes, rising to 127,200 next year), so that all income is taxed, and benefits could even be expanded by adding a small transaction tax of a fraction of a percent on all short-term stock trading (a measure that would not impact long term investors or retirement funds).

It is a critical time for this organizing to begin because the attack on Social Security promises to be rapid and brutal. On the upside, rallying and organizing around a defense of this program can be the core of a new progressive movement that can address all the key issues facing us in the year and presidential term ahead. Just as an example, it would be difficult to rescue, and impossible to expand Social Security benefits if Trump and Congress go ahead with announced plans to expand spending on the military instead of cutting military spending.
 

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

More articles by:Dave Lindorff

Obama's Grizzly Tale of Russian Hack Fails Sniff Test

Exit Obama in a Cloud of Disillusion, Delusion and Deceit

by Craig Murray

December 31, 2016

I had promised myself and my family that on this holiday I would do nothing but relax. However events have overtaken my good intentions. I find myself in the unusual position of having twice been in a position to know directly that governments were lying in globe-shaking events, firstly Iraqi WMD and now the “Russian hacks”.

Anybody who believes the latest report issued by Obama as “proof” provides anything of the sort is very easily impressed by some entirely meaningless diagrams.

William Binney, who was Technical Director at the NSA and actually designed their surveillance capabilities, has advised me by email.

It is plain from the report itself that the Russian groups discussed have been under targeted NSA surveillance for a period longer than the timeframe for the DNC and Podesta leaks. It is therefore inconceivable that the NSA would not have detected and traced those particular data flows and they would be saved.

In other words, the NSA would have the actual hack on record, would be able to recognise the emails themselves and tell you exactly the second the transmission or transmissions took place and how they were routed. They would be able to give you date, time and IP addresses. In fact, not only do they produce no evidence of this kind, they do not even claim to have this kind of definite evidence.

Secondly, Bill points out that WikiLeaks is in itself a top priority target and any transmission to WikiLeaks or any of its major operatives would be tracked, captured and saved by NSA as a matter of routine. The exact route and date of the transmission or transmissions of the particular emails to WikiLeaks would be available. In fact, not only does the report not make this information available, it makes no claim at all to know anything about how the information was got to WikiLeaks.

Of course Russian hackers exist. They attack this blog pretty well continually – as do hackers from the USA and many other countries. Of course there have been attempted Russian hacks of the DNC. But the report gives no evidence at all of the alleged successful hack that transmitted these particular emails, nor any evidence of the connection between the hackers and the Russian government, let alone Putin.

There could be no evidence because in reality these were leaks, not hacks. The report is, frankly, a pile of complete and utter dross. To base grave accusations of election hacking on this report is ludicrous.

Obama has been a severe disappointment to all progressive thinkers in virtually every possible way. He now goes out of power with absolutely no grace and in a storm of delusion and deceit. His purpose is apparently to weaken Trump politically, but to achieve that at the expense of heightening tensions with Russia to Cold War levels, is shameful.

The very pettiness of Obama’s tongue out to Putin – minor sanctions and expelling some diplomatic families – itself shows that Obama is lying about the pretext. If he really believed that Russia had “hacked the election”, surely that would require a much less feeble response. By refusing to retaliate, Russia has shown the kind of polish that eludes Obama as he takes his empty charisma and presentational skills into a no doubt lucrative future in the private sector.

All Sound No Fury: Still Waiting for "Russia Hack" Details

Details Still Lacking on Russian ‘Hack’

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News

December 29, 2016

Amid more promises of real evidence to come, the Obama administration released a report that again failed to demonstrate that there is any proof behind U.S. allegations that Russia both hacked into Democratic emails and distributed them via WikiLeaks to the American people.



President Obama in the Oval Office

The New York Times, which has been busy flogging the latest reasons to hate Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, asserted,

“The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security released a report on Thursday detailing the ways that Russia acted to influence the American election through cyber-espionage.”

But the actual report fell far short of “detailing” much at all about how the disclosures of the Democratic National Committee’s manipulation of the primaries to hobble Sen. Bernie Sanders and the contents of Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches ended up at WikiLeaks and ultimately became available to American voters.

Most of the 13-page FBI/DHS report was devoted to suggestions on how Internet users can protect their emails from malware, but there was little new that proved that the Russians were the source of the Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks.

The tip-off to how little proof was being offered came in the report’s statement that “The U.S. government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed.” When you read a phrase like “the U.S. government assesses,” it really means the U.S. government is guessing – and the report notably uses a passive tense that doesn’t even assert that the Russians did the leaking.

A well-placed intelligence source told me that there’s little doubt that elements of Russian intelligence penetrated the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, but the Russians were far from alone. Indeed, placing various forms of malware on computers is a common practice, as average folks who periodically take their laptops to an I.T. professional can attest. There’s always some kind of “spyware” or other malicious code to be discovered.

The source said the more debatable issue is whether Russian intelligence then turned over the emails to WikiLeaks, especially given that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and an associate, former British Ambassador Craig Murray, have stated that the material did not come from the Russian government. Murray has suggested that there were two separate sources, the DNC material coming from a disgruntled Democrat and the Podesta emails coming from possibly a U.S. intelligence source, since the Podesta Group represents Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.

Future ‘Details’

So, The New York Times misled its readers by claiming that the FBI/DHS report released Thursday was “detailing” how the Russians carried out the operation, and a separate Times article essentially acknowledged that the details were still to come.

“A more detailed report on the intelligence, ordered by President Obama, will be published in the next three weeks, though much of the detail — especially evidence collected from ‘implants’ in Russian computer systems, tapped conversations and spies — is expected to remain classified.”

In other words, the FBI/DHS report really didn’t have much in the way of details and the “more detailed report” – due out before President Obama leaves office on Jan. 20 – will still be hiding “much of the detail” to justify Obama’s retaliation against Russia including new sanctions and expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats or intelligence officers from the United States.

But the Times article does inadvertently make the interesting admission that the U.S. government has penetrated Russian computers, much as the U.S. government accuses Russia of doing to U.S. computers.

But the data purloined by these U.S. “implants” and other clandestinely obtained evidence – assuming there really is any – won’t be something that the American people will get to see.

The shell game will continue up to the start of the Trump administration with the apparent goal to hem in President Trump from trying to reach out to Russia to avert a costly and dangerous New Cold War.

But the evidence so far released by the Obama administration still amounts to “trust us.”


[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Escalating the Risky Fight with Russia” and “Summing Up Russia’s Real Nuclear Fears.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Washington's Demented Inn-Keepers

ConSciences of Humanity

by Mazin Qumsiyeh - Popular Resistance

Dec 30, 2016 

Thomas Merton wrote: "Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it – because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it – his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst." 


John Kerry is delusional if he thinks he can temporarily curb the appetite of those who believe in an ideology of conquest, subjugation and exceptionalism (“chosen people”) to save “Zonism”. His claim that Shimon Peres told him that 78% of Palestine is enough and that they should let the Palestinians have the other 22% is simply not believable.

Shimon Peres never changed his views from his youth as a disciple of Ben Gurion (Rabin and the two of them masterminded the ethnic cleansing and destruction of 500 towns and villages between 1948 and 1950). To his last breath Peres was a racist, a bigot, and an unrepentant war criminal (not to mention his build-up of Israel’s arsenal of WMD). He always believed Jews are smarter, chosen, and are entitled to rule over greater Israel and like his mentor, he thought a two-state support is mostly for propaganda.

Like his Zionist colleagues whether they believed in God or not, (and most of them did not) or they were “left” or “right”, he believed in something they consider more important than all of that: the unity and destiny of the chosen “Jewish people” (a myth no more true than “the Muslim people”, the “white people” or the “Christian People”).

This tribal racist thinking infects “left” and right Zionist Jews alike. The only difference between left Zionists like Kerry and Right Zionists like Trump’s son-in-law is merely over tactics (such as timing of applying force and timing of applying diplomacy) not ultimate goals. The even bigger delusion is that it is possible to exploit the differences between the Zionists over tactics to save Israel from historical trends that are inevitable and as predictable as a sunrise.

We heard the delusional parameters Kerry copied from the Clinton parameters which in turn were ones with a genealogy that goes back to Ben Gurion of the 1920s, (public speeches not his private diaries and letters to his son where he articulated the same vision of greater Israel as his right wing critics and explained that speaking of partition is merely for outside public consumption and that actions on the ground is what matters to achieve the goal of a Jewish empire/Greater Israel).

Now here are six parameters based on reality instead of the Kerry delusional parameters:

1) There never is and never was any justification for colonialism whether Jewish colonialism here or white colonialism in South Africa. Corollary is that Zionism is racism and is not compatible with peace.

2) There are 12.5 million Palestinians (50% inside Palestine) in the world and no peace can happen without return of refugees, self-determination and full equality (negated by a concept of a Jewish state or a Muslim state or a Christian state for that matter).

3) Colonialism has one of only three outcomes/models:

a) win by the natives at great cost (Algerian model),

b) genocide of natives (Australia, USA, New Zealand model),

c) integration in one country for all its inhabitants (including descendants of the colonizers).

Since options (a) and (b) are virtually impossible here and now (21st century) that leaves option (c) which is in any case the most common outcomes in similar cases. Dozens of countries in central and south America, Canada, Southeast Asia, and South Africa follow that pattern. A “two-state” mirage is just that and will never happen/can never happen, (see my book “Sharing the Land of Canaan” to explain why; available at: http://qumsiyeh.org/sharingthelandofcanaan/ ).

4) Zionism existed before creating the “Jewish state” and will survive after it is ended and becomes a democratic state for all its citizens and the returning refugees. It is an ideology of parasitism and “chosenness” that transcends geography and speaks of contentedness of all Jews around the world and their mutual interest and bonding. Zionists who live in other countries (including those that shape US’s foreign policy whether executed by a democrat or a republican) readily tell you that Israel is their insurance policy that they could always go to if there are “troubles”. It is sort of like the island of the pirates of the Caribbean that was a safety net. Any Jew who challenges such notions and believes that Jews can be American or German and should be loyal citizens of their own countries first or that Israel should be treated like any other country and and forced to comply with International law, (including allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands) is looked at as a self-hating Jew. Hence John Kerry and Madeline Albright and people like them who “discover” their “Jewishness” would not want to be called “self-hating” and they do everything to help Zionism, (of course from the “left” angle of tactics as Trump will do it from the “right” angle).

5) In the near future, US policy will continue unchanged as it was since 1967 and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (Israel lobby ensured scuttling the fact that it was a deliberate attack). The US has been and will continue to subvert US interests in favor of Zionist interests. That the mainstream media and Hollywood are managed by Zionists (whether "left" or right) will probably help this trend continue until the US declines as a world power significantly more (largely due to this Zionist parasitism). The Palestinian and Arab leadership would be wiser to hitch their wagons to different horses before they end-up like Saddam Hussain and Qaddafi. China, Russia, and Iran are certainly not the most desirable countries but at least those horses are not chained by the Zionist masters and watch their own interests instead of Israel's. 

 The big fuss over Obama's abstention and Kerry speech is blown out of proportion: Since 1967, every US President has allowed a very few/rare UN Security Council Resolutions directed, (mildly and without sanctions) against Israeli policies. Obama has allowed the fewest (one in 8 years) Carter allowed the most (14 in 4 years): LBJ 7, Nixon 15, Ford 2, Reagan 21, GHW Bush 9, Clinton 3, GW Bush 6, Obama 1.

None of these had any significance in changing the steadfast policy that the US supported Israel, shielded it from |International law, and funded its aggression. You cannot credibly claim you do not like your son beating other children with clubs that you keep buying for him!

6) You can fool all the people some of the time or some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. The internet has begun to fray the Zionist hegemony of the media. Note that even in the most moderate of media outlets like PBS, they bring left and right Zoionists to argue but they never allow you to hear from anti-Zionist or post-Zionist. Other media outlets are owned and operated by either left Zionists (e.g. New York Times, CNN) or right wing Zionists (e.g. Fox News). But more and more people are seeing this and the jig is coming up and that is why Zionists moved to using their lobbies to legislate silence, (criticism of Zionism becomes “anti-Semitic”). In doing so the Zionists do not care that they are moving Western governments to become undemocratic, (curbing free speech). Their short term calculation, that this helps their cause, will just as surely backfire as their pushing the US to enter World War I in exchange for getting the Balfour and Cambon declarations or pushing the US to go to war on the Iraqi people.

The former partially led to WWII which was not good for anyone, and the latter cost US taxpayers $3 trillion and ended up benefiting Iran. Before that the push for the war on Lebanon strengthened Hizbollah. After that came the Zionist push for the war on Syria, (ostensibly to break the Shia crescent of Lebanon-Syria-Iran, and Yemen) hoped to “win” and drive Arab states into the lap of Zionism. But every push has a counter-push and every action has a reaction, (basic physics as basic human psychology).

Some Zionists can *talk* about partition but show me one of their leaders who publicly acknowledge that we native Palestinians, (Christians and Muslims) have rights of sovereignty. The reason they can’t is that if they recognize our rights even just over Ramallah, their whole ideology collapses. After all, what is the difference between that and recognizing our rights in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth etc Hence the two state idea remains a figment of an imagination to lead to peace like the mirage of the desert will not lead to water.

What does it take to change dynamics? Challenge both versions representing Zionist interests: Clinton’s and Trump’s, (Peres’ and Netanyahu’s). Work for a global uprising against those who actually appoint such puppets. That remains the 1% versus the 99%. Our message to all people, (starting with Jews and Israelis who still support Zionism): end your delusions, join the 99% and let us work for a better world where justice prevails and all are treated with dignity and respect regardless of their religious belief, (or lack thereof). As Martin Luther King Jr once said “we either live together as fellow human beings or perish together as fools.”

For an example of real mobilization for change, see the Zapatistas. 

ConSiences of Humanity Conference organized by Zapatistas. A great step in what we have always called for a global intifada against the racist capitalist systems https://floweroftheword.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/ezln-inauguration-of-the-gathering-the-zapatistas-and-consciences-for-humanity/

Is Team Trump Instructing this New Year’s Grinch OFAC to Destroy JCPOA? by FRANKLIN LAMB
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/27/is-team-trump-instructing-this-new-years-grinch-ofac-to-destroy-jcpoa/

[OFAC is Office of Foreign Assets Control in the US Treasury Department run by a Zionist and JCPOA is now commonly referred to by Zionist media as the Iran deal]

Why Obama waited 8 years to take on Netanyahu http://mondoweiss.net/2016/12/obama-waited-netanyahu/

A videotape from 1961 where Benjamn H. Freedman (a Jewish American who converted to Christianity) tells a bit of history that is relevant to current events https://youtu.be/x8OmxI2AYV8

People's Tribunal on Iraq War

The People's Tribunal on the Iraq War, Day Two: Stacy Bannerman

by TRNN

December 30, 2016

On Day 2 of the CODEPINK #IraqTribunal, participants provided testimony on the lies that were used to invade Iraq.

Letters to the Crowley Maritime Corporation Re: The Salish Sea

Letter to the Crowley Tugboat Corporation

by Ingmar Lee - 10,000 Ton Tanker

December 29, 2016

Hello,

I am writing from near Bella Bella, BC, Canada, on the British Columbia Central Coast Inside Passage. Recently, an American ATB tugboat, the "Nathan E Stewart" (NES) and its petroleum tanker-barge, " DBL 55" ran aground and sank near here, causing a significant slick, and resulting in a more than $100 million 'clean-up' effort that continues to this day.

Since the grounding, and sinking of the NES, the Texas-based Kirby Corp. which owns the vessels, has had its "special waiver" privileges - which allowed its Alaska-bound ATB tankers to travel without Canadian Pilots aboard via the BC Inside Passage - revoked, and, as we understand it, its regular petroleum- traffic business up our coast has been replaced by the Crowley tugboat, "Washington."

Of course, we care deeply for our magnificent, pristine coastal waters and have been watching this busy American tug-tanker traffic which ply our coast with great concern. We have been tracking this business by AIS for a number of years.

So it is of great concern, and it is the reason that I write to you now, that your tug, the "Washington" appears to have shut off its AIS locator beacon, and is now travelling up and down our coast invisible to our regular ship tracking devices.

Whereas prior to the wreck of the Nathan E Stewart, ordinary mariners were able to easily track the Alaska-bound petroleum tanker business as it plied our coast, now, since the wreck, we can no longer see that traffic.

Could you please explain whether the "Washington" is, in fact travelling without broadcasting its AIS position?

If so, this would be a very serious safety and environmental concern to all of us who live alongside of, and love our Canadian Inside Passage waters.


Sincerely,

Ingmar Lee
Bella Bella, BC
Canada