WikiLeaks: Remembering the Reasons for the Persecution of Julian Assange

Remembering the Crimes of the Powerful Exposed by Wikileaks’ Julian Assange

by Alison Weir  - MintPresss News

via IAK

June 11, 2019

Assange’s “crime” was revealing deep, embarrassing, sometimes deadly, malfeasance by numerous actors, including the U.S. government, the media, the Democratic Party-Clinton machine, and Israel.

Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has finally been imprisoned, an objective long sought by powerful parties he helped to expose over the past dozen years.

Assange’s “crime” was revealing deep, embarrassing, sometimes deadly, malfeasance by numerous actors, including the U.S. government, the media, the Democratic Party-Clinton machine, and Israel.

Wikileaks revealed the U.S. government’s cover-up of torture, cruelty, the killing of civilians, spying on its own citizens and others. It exposed Democratic Party cheating and manipulation, the fraudulence of “Russiagate.” It unmasked Israeli plans to keep Gaza on the brink of collapse, to use violence against Palestinian nonviolence, to make war upon civilians. All of this will be detailed below.

Without Wikileaks’ exposés, many of these actions would quite likely have remained hidden from the general public, as the perpetrators hoped.

The actual charge against Assange is allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning “to commit computer intrusion,” violating a somewhat problematic law with what one expert terms “overly expansive wording.”

The government seems to have resorted to this charge after the Justice Department had concluded in 2013 that it could not charge Assange for publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs (which revealed various U.S war crimes detailed below), because government lawyers said this would also require charging various U.S. news organizations and journalists.

The Washington Post reported that Justice officials “realized that they have what they described as a ‘New York Times problem.’ If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper.”

Even the current charge, when examined closely, turns out to be problematic on free press grounds. As Glenn Greenwald notes: “Assange is charged with helping a source preserve anonymity, a common practice by investigative reporters.”

Assange is being held in a maximum-security prison in London that has been called the UK’s Guantanamo. It has been used to detain alleged terrorists, sometimes indefinitely.

Assange’s recent dramatic arrest in Britain has elicited excellent articles by a number of writers – including Chris Hedges, Jonathan Turley, Pepe Escobar, Ray McGovern (also here), John Pilger, Jonathan Cook, David Swanson, and Paul Craig Roberts. Many of these were published by Consortium News, which, unlike mainstream media and journalism organizations, has been regularly covering the escalating persecution of Assange for his Wikileaks revelations.

This article will quote from these valuable articles and others, and will also present additional information about Wikileaks’ exposés on Israel, which have largely gone unmentioned.

The arrest

Journalist Pepe Escobar writes that April 11th, the date of Assange’s arrest, “will live in infamy in the annals of Western ‘values’ and ‘freedom of expression.’ The image is stark. A handcuffed journalist and publisher dragged out by force from the inside of an embassy…”

“The U.S. magically erases Ecuador’s financial troubles, ordering the IMF to release a providential $4.2-billion loan. Immediately after, Ecuadorian diplomats ‘invite’ the London Metropolitan Police to come inside their embassy to arrest their long-term guest.

“Let’s cut to the chase. Julian Assange is not a U.S. citizen, he’s an Australian. WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based media organization. If the US government gets Assange extradited, prosecuted and incarcerated, it will legitimize its right to go after anyone, anyhow, anywhere, anytime.

“Call it The Killing of Journalism.”

Media attacks and the black propaganda campaign against Wikileaks

Many others in addition to Escobar have noted that the persecution of Assange threatens all journalists. Yet, the media have a history of largely opposing or ignoring Assange.

As Chris Hedges reports:

“Once the documents and videos provided by Manning to Assange and WikiLeaks were published and disseminated by news organizations such as The New York Times and The Guardian, the press callously, and foolishly, turned on Assange. News organizations that had run WikiLeaks material over several days soon served as conduits in a black propaganda campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.”

John Pilger describes this campaign:

“In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the US Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”.

This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of ‘exposure [and] criminal prosecution’ and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech.

Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.”

Pilger writes in a more recent article: “Assange’s principal media tormentor, The Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called ‘the greatest scoop of the last 30 years.’ The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.

With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.

When Assange was still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, Harding joined police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”

Media watchdog FAIR reports that virtually all the mainstream media, from left to right, have cheered Assange’s recent incarceration, concluding: “It seems clear he shares virtually nothing in common with those in positions of influence in big media outlets, who have been only too happy to watch his demise.”

The Onion, which satirizes the tone and format of typical news outlets, summarizes Assange’s real “crime” in an article entitled Media Condemns Julian Assange For Reckless Exposure Of How They Could Be Spending Their Time. The piece includes an imaginary quote from Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor:

“It’s abundantly clear that Mr. Assange was focused on exposing documented evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan without so much as a thought for the journalists who faithfully parroted the U.S. military’s talking points when we could have been investigating information that ran contrary to that narrative—does he realize how that makes us look?”

Media half-truths

British journalist Jonathan Cook lays out the media’s sins of omission and commission.

“For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and ‘experts’ telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a ‘mainstream’ voice was raised in his defense in all that time.

From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of Wikileaks – a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record.

Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper.

The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden. They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the charges, only for them to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda.

They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden….”

Cook concludes: “This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russia-gate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the U.S. Deep State doing everything in its power to crush WikiLeaks and make an example of its founder.”

What caused the US government and others to desire Assange and Wikileaks’ destruction? Let’s look at what they revealed.

Assange’s Wikileaks exposes Israel

Wikileaks published a number of diplomatic cables and emails that exposed Israeli plans and actions, and U.S. collusion, that Israel and its partisans wished to keep hidden. Below are some of them.

Israel planned to keep Gaza on “brink of collapse”

In 2008 Wikileaks published a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Washington, that Israel had designated Gaza as a “hostile entity.”

The cable said: “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed [to U.S. officials] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”

The U.S. cable, classified “secret,” recommended that the U.S. try to persuade Israel to abandon this policy. The cable said that the U.S. should encourage Israel to “review its present policies (as requested by the Office of the Quartet Representative and the PA) while pressing the Israelis to approve as much funding each month as possible under security constraints…”

Israel used control over Palestinian money to control Gaza

The leaked cable also described how Israel used its control over Palestinian currency to control Gaza. The cable said Israel’s “monetary policy towards Gaza is consistent with its declaration that Gaza is a ‘hostile entity.’

The cable reported that Israel “believes that maintaining the shekel as the currency of the Palestinian Territories is in Israel’s interests.”It reported that Israel “treats decisions regarding the amount of shekels in circulation in Gaza as a security matter.” Requests by Palestinian banks to transfer shekels into Gaza are approved or denied by the National Security Council (NSC), an organ of the Israeli security establishment, not by the Bank of Israel.

The cable reported that Israel’s NSC “has the final say in permitting new liquidity into Gaza” and used this power to suppress Gaza’s economy.The cable reported that Israel had decided “that Gaza should receive just enough money for the basic needs of the population but it is not interested in returning the Gazan economy to a state of normal commerce and business.”

Israel colluded with PA and Fatah

A 2007 U.S. diplomatic cable, also marked secret, revealed the way in which Israel was using the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The cable, from the U.S. embassy, reported information given the by Israeli Security Agency (ISA) Head Yuval Diskin to U.S. officials.

Diskin was concerned that Fatah’s weakness compared to Hamas “bodes ill for Israel,” especially since Israel had “established a very good working relationship” with the Palestinian Authority. He said that PA security agencies were sharing almost all the intelligence they collected with Israel. Diskin said: “They understand that Israel’s security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank.”

Israel planned violence against Palestinian nonviolence

A 2010 U.S. cable published by Wikileaks was entitled: “IDF PLANS HARSHER METHODS WITH WEST BANK DEMONSTRATIONS.”

The cable, again from the U.S. embassy, reported that Israel was greatly concerned by Palestinian nonviolence.

A diplomat wrote: “Less violent [Palestinian] demonstrations [were] likely to stymie the IDF. As MOD Pol-Mil chief Amos Gilad told USG interlocutors recently, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”

The cable reported that an official “expressed frustration with ongoing demonstrations in the West Bank.” He said that the IDF would start to be “more assertive in how it deals with these demonstrations, even demonstrations that appear peaceful.”

The cable reported that the official said Israel would “start sending trucks with ‘dirty water’ to break up these protests, even if they are not violent… (NOTE: dirty water is a reference to the IDF’s chemically treated water that duplicates the effects of skunk spray. End note.)”

The cable reported that Israeli officials had ordered the Palestinian security force commanders “that they must stop these demonstrations or the IDF will.”

Israel’s nuclear monopoly, helping Israel by opposing Assad

Wikileaks posted an email memo to Hillary Clinton saying: “What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly.

“The memo recommended:

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability [sic] is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”

It reported: “Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests.” 

The 2012 memo was apparently by James P. Rubin, assistant secretary of state during the Bill Clinton administration (and husband of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour). Rubin emailed it to Hillary Clinton, who then forwarded it to her aide to print out for her.

Susan Rice worked to protect Israel at the UN

Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch reported on diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. They showed Rice working to stymie a UN investigation into Israel’s 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza, an investigation that led to the Goldstone report.

“In one pointed cable,” Lynch wrote, “Rice repeatedly prodded U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to block a recommendation of the board of inquiry to carry out a sweeping inquiry into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.

“In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the president of the International Criminal Court, Sang-Hyun Song, that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with the United States at a time when the new administration was moving closer to the tribunal. ‘How the ICC handles issues concerning the Goldstone Report will be perceived by many in the US as a test for the ICC, as this is a very sensitive matter,’ she told him, according to a Nov. 3, 2009, cable from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.”

Another cable reveals that “Rice assured Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during an Oct. 21, 2009, meeting in Tel Aviv that the United States had done its utmost to ‘blunt the effects of the Goldstone Report’ and that she was confident she could ‘build a blocking coalition’ to prevent any push for a probe by the Security Council, according to an Oct. 27, 2009 cable.”

Lynch wrote that the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks “provide a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the U.N. as American diplomats sought to shield Israel’s military from outside scrutiny of its conduct during Operation Cast Lead.”

They “also demonstrate how the United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an ‘independent’ U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.”

Eizenstat worked to influence Hillary on Israel

A 2015 Wikileak consisted of an email from former U.S. Ambassador to the EU Stuart Eizenstat to top Clinton foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan that was also sent to Hillary Clinton. The email revealed Eizenstat’s close ties to Israel and is another example of how advisors like Eizenstat and Rubin work to influence Clinton’s positions.

Eizenstat had held numerous influential positions in both Israel and the U.S., including Chief Domestic Policy Adviser under President Jimmy Carter and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton.

His bio states that Eizenstat “served as the presidents’ special representative on Holocaust-related issues and negotiated major Holocaust restitution agreements with a number of European countries, and at the time of his ambassadorial nomination, he sat on the following boards: the Weizmann Institute of Science, The Jerusalem Foundation, Brandeis University, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council for Excellence in Government Center for National Policy, the Overseas Development Council, the International Management and Development Institute, the American Jewish Committee and the UJA Federation of Greater Washington. He was chairman of the Feinberg Graduate School of the Weizmann Institute and served on the board of directors of Hercules Incorporated; PSI Energy, Inc.; and the Israel Discount Bank of New York.”

For his work, the Government of Israel presented Eizenstat with the Courage and Conscience Award.

Eizenstat noted in his email that the widely known Obama-Netanyahu animosity placed “Hillary in an extremely difficult position, caught between the President she served and the organized parts of the Jewish community.” He advised her on how to maneuver this.

Eizenstat wrote: “Permit me to suggest some points she might make. By way of background, I have very deep connections to the State of Israel and to its elected officials and leading academics. I go to Israel two to three times a year, perhaps 50 times since my first visit in 1965. My grandfather and great-grandfather are buried in Israel, and I have scores of relatives and friends there.”

Eizenstat explained his central role in U.S.-Israel policies:

“During the Clinton Administration, I was responsible for the economic dimension of the peace process, working with Yasir Arafat, the Jordanians and the Israeli government…” He said that he co-chaired with Dennis Ross the Jewish People’s Policy Institute of Jerusalem (JPPI), a think tank funded by the Jewish Agency and major American Jewish federations and foundations, “focusing on strategic challenges facing Israel and the Diaspora around the world.”

Eizenstat recommended that Hillary “should stress the enduring commitment of the United States to Israel’s security interests, not only direct military threats, but attacks against Israel in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, on campuses in the U.S. and Europe. She should express grave concern for the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe and violent attacks by radical Islamic terrorists (Obama refuses to use this term; she will need to decide what language to use and then stick with it)…

“Third, and critically, she should express a strong feeling that Israel MUST remain a bipartisan issue, as it has been since its formation. She should sharply criticize those in the U.S. and in Israel who are injecting Israel into a partisan context…”

Hillary’s campaign team advised that she only talk about Israel at private fundraisers

Wikileaks published emails showing that in 2015 Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was concerned that mentioning Israel during election speeches would alienate Democratic party activists.

Campaign manager Robby Mook emailed that they “shouldn’t have Israel at public events.” He was especially concerned about “activists.”

After some debate about strategy, speechwriter Dan Schwerin suggested a basic text for her to use that omitted Israel. He said, “Then she can drop in Israel when she’s with donors.”

Israeli general admits that US and Israeli security interests “often clash”

A 2009 diplomatic cable describing a meeting Assistant Secretary of Defense Ambassador Alexander Vershbow with senior Israeli defense officials in Israel reported that an Israeli general “acknowledged the sometimes difficult position the U.S. finds itself in given its global interests, and conceded that Israel’s security focus is so narrow that its QME concerns often clash with broader American security interests in the region.”

The cable also showed Israeli officials promoting the belief that Iran was about to acquire nuclear weapons. The cable shows that US diplomats were skeptical, the report including the parenthetical comment: “It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States.”)

Israeli Chief of Staff reveals Israel is preparing for a war against civilians

Wikileaks posted a Dec. 23, 2009 secret diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv that described a briefing by IDF Chief of General Staff Lt General Gabi Ashkenazi of a U.S. Congressional delegation consisting of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D, MO), Representative Steve Israel (D-NY), and Representative Tim Murphy (R, PA).

The cable reported: “Ashkenazi began the meeting by expressing his appreciation for the Committee’s support for Israel over the years.”

Ashkenazi “said he is preparing the IDF for a big war” and said that the next battle would be conducted in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

The cable also quoted Ashkenazi as telling the US representatives “the IDF cannot allow a situation in which it is restricted from operating in urban areas,” suggesting that the Israeli military would be even more violent than its invasion of Gaza a year before, in which Israeli forces killed about 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, many of them children. Middle East expert Juan Cole writes: “Planning to bomb civilian areas with foreknowledge that you will thereby kill large numbers of civilians is a war crime.

Ashkenazi admitted that “there were mistakes made.” The report said:

“He noted that Israeli soldiers were also hit by mistake. The same tank battalion that hit the house of Dr. Abul Eish and killed his two daughters also hit an IDF infantry unit.”

Cole reports that Ashkenazi had told a delegation “that Israeli unmanned drones had had great success in identifying rocket emplacements in southern Lebanon, and that it had been aided in this endeavor by the US National Security Agency, which spies on communications.”

According to Cole, “Israel could have a peace treaty with Syria and Lebanon tomorrow by giving back the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms, and by accepting a two-state solution. Instead, its Dr. Strangeloves are planning out massive bombings of areas thick with innocent civilians and willing to subject Tel Aviv to two months worth of rocket fire.”

The impact of Israel’s actions on the U.S.

Cole discussed what this could mean for the United States:

“Nor will the United States be held harmless from the blowback in the region caused by another Israeli war of aggression. Before September 11, Israel hawks used to make fun of Americans who warned that eventually there would be hell to pay for the Israeli strangulation of the Palestinians (for the argument, see this posting). And, imagine what a war would do to gasoline prices and to the world economy.”

Cole concluded: “My deepest fear is that US support for Israeli militarism, and the terrorism that support inevitably engenders, will be what finally finishes off the civil liberties enshrined in the American Constitution.”

Former US Treasury Undersecretary and journalist Paul Craig Roberts worries that this is already in process:

“As the grand jury [for Assange] was secret because of ‘national security,’ will the trial also be secret and the evidence secret? Is what we have here a Star Chamber proceeding in which a person is indicted in secret and convicted in secret on secret evidence? This is the procedure used by tyrannical governments who have no case against the person they intend to destroy.”

Israel misled the public about Hamas; Israel opposes a lasting ceasefire

Another secret US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks reported on a trip to Israel by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (R-NY). Gillibrand’s group was briefed on “the Gaza security situation” by the IDF Southern Command and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) on September 2nd and 3rd, 2009.

(At the time, Gillibrand was facing an upcoming fight to retain her position in the Senate in what was expected to be a close election in 2010 – she had been appointed by the governor to the seat after Hillary became Secretary of State).

The cable reported: “Israel Major General Yoav Gallant told the CODEL [Congressional Delegation] that the Southern Command’s role is to manage the threat from Gaza.”

While Israel publicly portrays Gaza as filled with extremists who hate Israel because of Islamic extremism, the Wikileaks disclosure shows that privately its officials tell a different story.

Gallant was quoted as telling Gillibrand: “Sixty percent of Gaza’s population is under the age of twenty and the average income is one-twenty-fifth of the average income of Israelis in Sderot (a relatively poor Israeli town). Gaza has no natural resources except for fishing. Those factors would be reason enough for Gazans to fight, even without religious extremism.”

Gallant admitted that Israel opposed a lasting ceasefire with Hamas, since “a lasting ceasefire is likely to lead to a stronger Hamas.”

An Israeli official said that one of the reasons that Fatah couldn’t make concessions to reconcile with Hamas was “because of the U.S. position,” suggesting that the US has played a role in the continuing division between Hamas and Fatah.

The briefing disclosed that Israeli officials were displeased that Egypt didn’t always do what Israel government told it to do. An Israeli official complained “that Shin Bet and the Mossad gave Egyptian intelligence the names of the top 300 smugglers in the Sinai, but Egypt did not act against any of them.”

While Israel always blames Hamas for any and all violence against Israel, the cable revealed that privately Israeli officials are aware that other, newer groups are often responsible.

Israeli Officials said that these groups “oppose the rule of Hamas,” which has tried to suppress them.

Israel & US decide to hide delivery of US bunker-busting bombs to Israel (for targeting Iran)

A secret 2009 diplomatic cable reported on the “Executive Session of the 40th Joint Political Military Group (JPMG)”. The US group was led by Andrew Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. They met with top Israeli officials.

The cable reported that the combined group decided that the upcoming delivery of GBU-28 bunker busting bombs to Israel “should be handled quietly to avoid any allegations that the USG [United States Government] is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran.”

The cable also reported: “The GOI [Government of Israel] made the case for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

Israeli was concerned about Russia & Turkey

The same 2009 secret cable reported that Israel was extremely concerned about Russia, reporting:

“The GOI [Government of Israel] was not confident that Moscow will be helpful in any Iranian sanctions effort — GOI participants opined that Russia is considered a ‘mystery’ with respect to their views on Iran. The GOI raised the Russian S-300 sale to Iran, noting that the transfer is still pending. GOI participants argued that Moscow seeks a return to superpower status.” (This suggests that Israel’s continual concern about Russia could be a factor in the promotion of the widespread – and dangerous – anti-Russia discourse in the US.)

Israel was also worried that Turkey wasn’t toeing the Israeli line:

“The GOI raised the current direction the Government of Turkey has taken toward Syria and Iran — and away from Israel. Israeli participants argued that Turkey has been supportive of Hamas in Gaza while pursuing a more ‘Islamic’ direction with the goal of becoming a regional superpower. The GOI argued that the Turkish military is losing its ability to influence government decisions and strategic direction. After this past year, GOI participants said they have a ‘bad feeling’ about Turkey.”

Efforts “at the highest levels” of the US government to remove restrictions for Israelis concerning dual citizenship

The same 2009 secret cable discussed above also revealed that there were efforts at the top levels of the US government to allow dual Israel citizens in the US to have access to sensitive technology:

“The GOI raised the issue of dual citizenship within the context of access to sensitive technology. U.S. participants acknowledged Israeli concerns, noting that the issue is being worked at the highest levels of the USG to reach consensus on how to proceed.”

(Dual citizenship used to be prohibited in the United States until this was overturned in 1967 on behalf of Israel; Abe Fortas was the swing vote.)

Since 2006 Wikileaks has exposed a multitude of misdeeds of governments throughout the world (e.g. exposing corruption in Kenya.) Below are some of the exposés about the U.S.

Exposing US war crimes

Iraq and Afghanistan

Chris Hedges reports: “The half a million internal documents leaked by Manning from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, provided copious evidence of the hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence, and routine use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation by the U.S. government in its foreign relations and wars in the Middle East. Assange and WikiLeaks allowed us to see the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this, they became the empire’s prey.”

Jonathan Turley writes:

“The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the famous Pentagon Papers case.

“He cannot discuss how Democratic and Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program.”

Below are some of the Wikileaks revelations about U.S. war crimes, as reported by BBC:

“One of the Wikileaks documents shows the US military was given a video apparently showing Iraqi Army (IA) officers executing a prisoner in the northern town of Talafar.

“The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him,” states the log, which also names at least one of the perpetrators.

“In another case, U.S. soldiers suspected army officers of cutting off a detainee’s fingers and burning him with acid…..

“In one incident in July 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed by a helicopter, about half of them civilians, according to the log.

“Another record shows an Apache helicopter gunship fired on two men believed to have fired mortars at a military base in Baghdad in February 2007, even though they were attempting to surrender. The crew asked a lawyer whether they could accept the surrender, but were told they could not, “and are still valid targets”. So they shot them.”

The Guardian also summarized some of the Wikileaks’ revelations: 

* US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

* A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

* US and UK officials insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

“The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.

“As recently as December the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”

“The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record “no investigation is necessary” and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.

“In two Iraqi cases postmortems revealed evidence of death by torture. On 27 August 2009 a US medical officer found “bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs and neck” on the body of one man claimed by police to have killed himself. On 3 December 2008 another detainee, said by police to have died of “bad kidneys”, was found to have ‘evidence of some type of unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen’.

“A Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times this week that under its procedure, when reports of Iraqi abuse were received the US military ‘notifies the responsible government of Iraq agency or ministry for investigation and follow-up’.

“The logs also illustrate the readiness of US forces to unleash lethal force. In one chilling incident they detail how an Apache helicopter gunship gunned down two men in February 2007.

“The suspected insurgents had been trying to surrender but a lawyer back at the base told the pilots: ‘You cannot surrender to an aircraft.’ The Apache, callsign Crazyhorse 18, was the same unit and helicopter based at Camp Taji outside Baghdad that later that year, in July, mistakenly killed two Reuters employees and wounded two children in the streets of Baghdad.”

In reading about the actions in Iraq, it’s important to remember that pro-Israel neocons were a major factor in the U.S. invasion.

Democratic primaries rigged to oust Bernie Sanders

Wikileaks stated that it had “exposed how those at the top of the U.S. Democratic Party had worked tirelessly to tilt the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton as she faced off against Bernie Sanders in the race to be the Democrat presidential candidate.

“These revelations eventually prompted the resignation of five of the most senior members of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the Democratic Convention, including DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Hedges reports: “Assange, who with the Manning leaks had exposed the war crimes, lies and criminal manipulations of the George W. Bush administration, soon earned the ire of the Democratic Party establishment by publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials. The emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“The Podesta emails exposed the donation of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State, to the Clinton Foundation.

“It exposed the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe. It exposed Clinton’s repeated mendacity. She was caught in the emails, for example, telling the financial elites that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best positioned to manage the economy, a statement that contradicted her campaign statements.

“It exposed the Clinton campaign’s efforts to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Trump was the Republican nominee.

“It exposed Clinton’s advance knowledge of questions in a primary debate.

[These were given to Hillary by prominent Democratic activist and former CNN commentator, now Fox News pundit Donna Brazile. The scandal quickly blew over. Salon reported in 2016 that Brazile was “far-from-contrite” and “recycled her discredited claims that the hacked emails that exposed her perfidy against presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders were somehow altered by Russian intelligence agents.” Turley points out that Brazile is “now back on television, but Assange, however, could well do time.”]

“It exposed Clinton as the primary architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.”

CIA Spied on American citizens & friendly nations

Hedges reports: “WikiLeaks has done more to expose the abuses of power and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. In addition to the war logs and the Podesta emails, it made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency and their interference in foreign elections, including in the French elections.”

“[Wikileaks] intervened to save Edward Snowden, who made public the wholesale surveillance of the American public by our intelligence agencies, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Snowden leaks also revealed that Assange was on a U.S. ‘manhunt target list.’” (More on Snowden here.)

Wikileaks’ publication of Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed, “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency,” revealed that the CIA “had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.”

The documents revealed that the CIA’s “exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”

Misleading the public about “Russiagate”

Hedges notes: “The Democratic leadership, intent on blaming Russia for its election loss, charges that the Podesta emails were obtained by Russian government hackers, although James Comey, the former FBI director, has conceded that the emails were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary. Assange has said the emails were not provided by ‘state actors.’”

Pilger reports: “The Guardian published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.”

The Vault 7 documents revealed that some of the CIA’s tools enabled it to make hacking, emails, etc. appear to come from a different source, calling into question claims about alleged Russian hacking.

Former top CIA analyst Ray McGovern and former NSA Technical Director William Binney, in a detailed article disputing Russiagate contentions, wrote that Wikileaks’ Vault 7 documents revealed that the CIA had the ability to “break into computers and servers and make it look like others did it by leaving telltale signs (like Cyrillic markings, for example).”

(For more on Russiagate see this, this and this.)

U.S. plans for regime change in Syria and Venezuela

John Pilger writes that Wikileaks documents provided “the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown. It is all available on the WikiLeaks site.”

British military’s secret document calling investigative journalists “a major threat”

Pilger reports: “A decade ago, the Ministry of Defense in London produced a secret document which described the ‘principal threats’ to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.”

Assange’s Wikileaks revealed all this to us, and more.

Extradition to the US could place Assange’s life in danger

And now Assange is in “Britain’s Guantanamo,” awaiting possible, perhaps probable, extradition to the U.S. If this happens, his lawyers say, “he may risk torture and his life would be in danger.” UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has issued a statement warning that extradition “could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Melzer urged the British Government “to refrain from expelling, returning or extraditing Mr. Assange to the United States or any other jurisdiction, until his right to asylum under refugee law or subsidiary protection under international human rights law has been determined in a transparent and impartial proceeding granting all due process and fair trial guarantees, including the right to appeal.”

Numerous organizations, as reported by journalist Elizabeth Vos, have opposed his prosecution, including the ACLU, The Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Center for Investigative Journalism, Amnesty Ireland, Committee To Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Union of Journalists, the The Knight First Amendment Institute and Digital Rights Watch.

Yet, he remains in prison, while the mainstream media and others applaud this.

The bottom line

Consortium News asks: “If Your Country Were Committing War Crimes Would You Want to Know?” One thing is clear. The perpetrators don’t want Americans to know and are trying to shoot the messenger.

But to prevent countless lives from being destroyed abroad, and eventually, at home, it’s essential that Americans learn the profoundly disturbing actions that Wikileaks revealed. And then for everyone, across the political spectrum, to demand that these actions stop.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

Source | IAK




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Saving Canada's Coasts from Regulatory Capture: Senate Votes Down New Impact Assessment Act

This Bill Cannot Stand. Rescue The New Impact Assessment Act Before It's Too Late.

by Sierra Club.ca

June 11, 2019

In spite of what has been referred to as a "flood" of evidence from fishing organizations, indigenous leaders, and environmental groups, the Senate has voted down an amendment to fix the new Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69.

The amendment proposed by Senator Cordy in response to overwhelming criticism of the Bill from Atlantic Canadians, would have prevented offshore boards from chairing assessment panels that will determine where, when, and if oil drilling will go ahead in Canada's Atlantic waters.

As you know, I have little faith in the ability of offshore boards to credibly assess the risks of offshore drilling.

(For more, see my presentation [copied below] and that of many others who presented to the Senate's Energy, the Environment, and Natural Resources Committee when they travelled to Halifax, St. John's, and St. John).

• Because of what this will mean for Canada's Atlantic waters, the whales, fish, and fisheries that need protection from oil drilling, this Bill cannot stand.

• Because the fallout from this will be rubber-stamping of 100 new exploratory wells and massive, seismic programs off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, this Bill cannot stand.

• Because Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore oil and gas ambitions will produce enough greenhouse gas emissions to produce almost 10% of the global carbon budget to keep us within the 1.5-degree Celsius limit, this Bill cannot stand.

With your help, we can get our elected leaders to fix this Bill before the government rises for the summer. But we don't have much time.

Please write now.

Thank you for taking action.

Gretchen Fitzgerald - National Program Director

Gretchen Fitzgerald, National Programs Director, Sierra Club Canada Foundation:

I would like to acknowledge that we are on unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.

My focus today is to ask you that the offshore petroleum boards have less, not more, power under the new Impact Assessment Act.

Sierra Club Canada Foundation is a national grassroots organization with the mission to empower people to be leaders in protecting, restoring and enjoying a healthy and safe environment.

Sierra Club has been involved in the development and amendments of environmental assessment laws since their inception in Canada. We have participated in numerous environmental assessments over the years, including the cleanup of the Sydney Tar Ponds, the Muskrat Falls mega hydro project, the Digby Quarry, and various offshore oil and gas projects off the East Coast.

Because of this experience, we know that offshore boards do not have the mandate or the expertise that would enable them to assess accurately and without bias offshore oil and gas projects.

The phase-out of fossil fuel development and the just transition for those affected by this change is what the Senate Energy Committee should be holding hearings on today.

Offshore oil and gas development usually occurs over the time scale of decades, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has told us all that we do not have decades, as you are all very well aware. We have a matter of 11 to 12 years to prevent a climate crisis and limit global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to the IPCC report issued last fall, the final tick box is political will for achieving these safe levels. As senators you must be part of this will.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador plans to increase oil and gas development off its coast with potentially devastating impacts on climate and our oceans. Calculations performed by my colleague’s organization, Ecology Action Centre, indicate that if Newfoundland and Labrador develop oil and gas reserves as proposed in its advanced 2030 document on the way forward on oil and gas, this single province will be responsible for almost 10 per cent of the global allowable GHG emission budget to keep our planet within 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To us, it is not a weakness but a strength that the Bill C-69 will require us to take into consideration the impact of proposed projects on our obligations to meet climate targets. The early planning phase proposed in Bill C-69 is also a step in the right direction because it will engage community members and Indigenous communities earlier in the process and allow them a window into planned projects that will affect them.

Sierra Club Canada Foundation has concerns about Bill C-69 in that it does not go far enough to ensure there is science-based decision making by requiring independent review of assessment reports or by ensuring that decision making on proposed projects happens free from political interference.

Bill C-69 does not commit to ensuring we uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples by obtaining free, prior and informed consent. It does not propose a method for engaging in collaborative consent processes, a concept proposed by the expert panel on Bill C-69.

Given the reason for engaging in the process of drafting a new Impact Assessment Act was to make environmental assessments credible again. We are very concerned about giving greater powers to the offshore boards as is proposed in the draft bill.

The offshore petroleum boards have a dual mandate to promote oil and gas development and to protect the environment and the safety of workers.

Members of the boards are often drawn from the fossil fuel sector and do not have expertise in protecting the environment, ecology and endangered species or in reflecting the concerns of other marine industries such as fishing and tourism.

Some examples of poor decision making on behalf of the offshore boards in recent memory include having no rules in place that would halt attaching a drill to the seafloor when there were nine-metre waves occurring off Newfoundland last November, resulting in an estimated spill of 250,000 litres of oil into our oceans, not a single drop of which has been recovered. We do not know the death toll of seabirds caused by this spill.

Another bad example is allowing seismic blasting to proceed when critically endangered blue whales were migrating into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 2010. There is growing evidence that seismic blasting can be devastating for marine mammals and other ocean life.

Recently, the Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board issued a call for bids for oil exploration that includes Sable Island National Park Reserve. This would allow drilling within one nautical mile of this precious island.

Perhaps there is no greater example of the failure of offshore boards to deal with the impact of oil and gas development than allowing offshore oil and gas to occur in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The Gulf of St. Lawrence is bounded by the coasts of five of Canada’s ten provinces. The Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Innu and Inuit people have fished and travelled in the gulf for thousands of years.

The Newfoundland Offshore Board is responsible for issuing calls for bids and permitting oil and gas development in its section of the gulf, even though this is a single shared ecosystem.

A spill in the gulf could impact the coast of five provinces, threaten multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries. Noise from seismic blasting, chronic pollution and a major spill from oil development in the gulf could spell the extinction for critically endangered whales and other threatened species in the gulf.

We are particularly concerned about the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. They had major deaths in the gulf two years ago.

A recent scientific paper indicates that the Gulf of St. Lawrence, because it is such a unique place, where arctic waters and the warm gulf stream waters mix, will be greatly impacted by climate change. It may be more than any other marine ecosystem on this planet.

Scientists warn that the warming of waters in the gulf may create hypoxic or low oxygen levels that will not enable it to sustain life in some areas.

In spite of these multiple threats and calls for a moratorium from numerous organizations and the chiefs of Indigenous communities in the gulf, the offshore petroleum board has allowed oil and gas exploration to continue.

Offshore petroleum boards should not be getting more power under the new Impact Assessment Act. Certainly, they should not be able to appoint two members to a review panel or even chair an assessment panel. Our recommendation is that they would play an advisory role to assessments but not sit on review panels at all.

The influence of the oil industry over the drafting of Bill C-69, which has already been weakened, is making it difficult to see how the government will accomplish its mandate to make assessments credible again.

We know as practitioners that this influence will be brought to bear once impact assessments are undertaken for specific projects. Giving more power to offshore boards in Bill C-69 is simply a bridge too far.

In conclusion, our major recommendation to the committee today is to limit the role of offshore boards in reviewing offshore oil and gas projects. Thank you very much.

Senator Mercer: My question is actually a fairly simple one. It should have been directed at the previous panel as well. We have done some things right, though, even without heavy regulations being in place.

The regular route of whales coming into the Bay of Fundy was constantly having trouble with shipping. Industry came up with a solution to move the shipping route coming into the Bay of Fund and over to Saint John, New Brunswick, farther east and closer to Nova Scotia. Guess what? That is where the whales aren’t. Since they have moved that, there have been very good results with fewer incidents of ship/whale encounters in the Bay of Fundy.

At all our committees we tend to end up hearing the bad news stories. I wish people would tell us some of the good news stories, and that is a good news story.

Ms. Fitzgerald: Yes. We are very heartened to see that there are seven new baby right whales were born over the winter months. They are coming back, but they are coming back through a pathway of hazard. You will be hearing presentations on the impact of seismic on marine mammals later today.

The noise from that blasting is so loud that it can be heard halfway to Europe. If we are blasting off Newfoundland, as we plan to do this spring, and if we are blasting for the next 10 years, as we are proposing to do off Nova Scotia, those whales all the way down the seaboard will be hearing that noise and experiencing it as a constant stress. It is a blast that happens every 10 to 14 seconds.

It is like having a strobe light in your face for days, to weeks, to months. That is the comparison because whales use sound as we use vision to find their mates, to find their babies and to find their food. The impacts of seismic are far reaching.

I am glad to see the shipping industry is taking action. The rapid action of the fishing community in response to the deaths of whales in the gulf is wonderful to see.

We need to understand the scope of what we are doing with regard to ocean noise, offshore oil and gas development, and their impacts on global biodiversity and the entire seaboard.

It is interesting to note that in the United States there has been action to limit this development unlike in Canada.

Senator Simons: My question is for Mr. Butler this morning. We have heard from other witnesses as we have been around the country that we need to strengthen language in the bill around science, scientific integrity, scientific analysis. But I do not think anybody has given us much language around specific amendments.

You referenced a report that some of your organizations that you have partnered with had written about strengthening the language around science. And I am wondering if you have the text of that, could you share it with the clerk, could you read to us? What would you have us do to give to you the assurance that scientific credibility is given its due weight in the process?

Mr. Butler: Thank you for your question. I mean my main frustration with IA or EA over the years has been the quality of the document that the whole process centres around and that is it quantity but not quality. It is pages and pages of description without much analysis, without, I would, say good peer-reviewed science.

So finding a way to make the document that should ultimately be the guide to the project, more scientifically credible, is crucial.

And we had some early proposals in our submission to the expert panel that toured the country that the government appointed. I am happy to share our submission. I think at that time we were still exploring how the process could be improved, but when I reread the expert panel’s recommendations on science, I thought they were very good.

So I think if you are looking for guidance on how to make the act stronger with respect to science and make science a key part along with traditional knowledge, be it Indigenous knowledge or community knowledge, then the expert panel which is a distillation of 1,000 presentations, I think that is a good place to look.

The Chair: Senator Carignan.

[Translation]

Senator Carignan: My question is about the composition of the list recommended by the board. I’m trying to understand your concern about bias. Looking at your list, I see that the word “oil” appears on it. I know that the mandate and composition of this board is based on an agreement between Canada and Nova Scotia, that the members are appointed by both governments and that they have a mandate for environmental analysis. So there is an expertise that has developed within this organization. People will be appointed by this office or, in any case, will be on a list.

However, there are the provisions of clause 2 that indicate that appointees must not be in a conflict of interest and must maintain an appearance of bias. I’m a little uncomfortable with this question. I’m trying to find a balance between seeking the expertise of an individual or group without necessarily giving the appearance of bias. I have difficulty with the fact that the board is recommending a list of members to be selected by the minister. The members selected must not be in a conflict of interest. So it can create a fear of institutional bias, from the public perspective. What do you propose? Ultimately, the minister will have to choose someone. Is it better to proceed as illustrated by The Globe and Mail this morning, when the Prime Minister makes a choice after considering potential contributions or support?

[English]

Ms. Fitzgerald: I have a few responses. I just think it is dangerous to make an analogy between Indigenous rights holders and the fossil fuel industry.

[Translation]

Senator Carignan: However, it is in the legislation. The body that will decide, according to the legislation, could be indigenous groups, which are considered a body. They could do an impact assessment and measure the impact on indigenous rights. It is set out in the legislation....

The Chair: Senator Carignan, let the witness answer the question.

Senator Carignan: It’s dangerous to make an analogy, but that’s what’s stated in the legislation. I’m taking it as it is; I didn’t write it.

[English]

Ms. Fitzgerald: With Indigenous peoples, I think we in Canada are in a process in acknowledging reconciliation and the truth of history that they are the rights holders. I hope the role of the fossil fuel industry is a different one on this land.

That is why I think it is appropriate. Actually it is not even in place as far as the expert panel recommended with regard to the bill.

One must be very careful making a parallel between Indigenous rights holders and the fossil fuel industry. It is a very different legal standing. I would hope in the process of reconciliation that is acknowledged by the entire Senate.

You asked with regard to fairness. What would be a good list for the minister to use to select unbiased panellists I think is the heart of the question.

Before I go to answering that, you talked about fairness. I don’t know the story, but apparently the federal government has appointed or cherry-picked a new commission, it sounds like from what you are suggesting.

We feel the same way with regard to offshore boards and their role. They will pick people whether or not it is conscious. It is not about individuals. It is about being part of a process, a system and learning. By being part of an industry that is what you know and that is where you are most expert and comfortable. This would be all people. It is called regulatory capture.

We saw that with the pipeline assessment of Energy East. It blew up in the face of the government because that regulatory capture became too flagrant. It did not pass the sniff test for Canadians.

We would not want to see that happen again on review panels for offshore oil and gas. It was a regulatory fail from all perspectives whether or not you wanted that pipeline to go ahead.

One of the best panels I have seen selected independent experts linked to universities. They had expertise in planning, ocean environments and geology. This was the Digby Quarry panel. They were selected from independent academic institutions. With that, as you were mentioning, there could be seats for Indigenous rights holders as well if acceptable to those communities.

That would be the gold standard. It would achieve the level of credibility the government says it is trying to achieve here.

The Chair: Do you want to add something?

Mr. Butler: We recognize the expertise of the regulator, but there are ways to integrate their expertise into the process without putting them on the panel. We have other regulators like Transport Canada, DFO and Environment Canada. They are regulators that are not on the panel.

There is more I would like to say on that topic, but I will stop.

Senator Woo: Let me get to the heart of your recommendation to reduce the power of the offshore boards on review panels.

We actually heard a rather curious recommendation from one of the oil companies yesterday, saying that projects in the offshore should not have mandatory review panels but should be allowed to go through the Impact Assessment Agency itself as an option. I want you to comment on that idea. It is a curious recommendation because it seems to go against their interests.

On your point about consistency, which is a fair one, one could argue that having two offshore board members out of the five on the review panel is in fact consistent with what the rest of the bill is trying to do with CNSC and with the new NEB. The chair issue is separate. The NEB are advocates, calling for the possibility of somebody from the new NEB to be the chair of that review panel. That would be consistent as well.

To the extent that we already have the possibility of CNSC and NEB members in a minority position on review panels for their projects, why would we not have a minority of C-NSOPB and C-NLOPB members in those review panels?

Mr. Butler: Our colleagues in the rest of the country are more comfortable with the situation. That does not make it any easier for us to accept here, given our experience with the petroleum boards. This is actually an increase in their influence over the process.

I would say that allowing a petroleum board member to chair a panel is inconsistent. I would encourage this committee to make an amendment so that is not allowed. If your argument is to be consistency, you need to use that argument all the time and not be inconsistent in your use of the consistency argument.

Lisa Mitchell pointed out to me the other scenario. There could be two petroleum board appointees on a panel and a third industry person on the panel, perhaps with an oil and gas industry background. This would result in a majority of members on the panel.

If the purpose here is to make EA credible and to try to generate greater social licence, regardless of who are these individuals, that will not help.

Senator Massicotte: I certainly share your comments that this is the most significant challenge we have in our generation. The consequences are immensely serious, and I am a bit discouraged by our little progress so far.

Be that as it may, let me talk to you about an issue though. Obviously, markets are determined by supply and demand. I want to seek your comment, but, in my opinion, it does not change one iota of CO₂ in the air if we import our oil and gas, as Quebec does to a large agree, or we produce it locally. Therefore, whether nor not we build another pipeline will not change our situation on global CO₂.

We should do more but not on the supply side. In other words, everybody talks about supply but I say that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that we have to reduce consumption, which means the government should do a lot more to discourage us or to encourage us to find innovation to consume a lot less CO₂.

Would you agree with that?

Mr. Butler: I think it is everything. I would say that it is.

Senator Massicotte: So what if you build or do not build? Do you think we will have a shortage of oil and gas in the world? In other words, on the supply side, if you are convinced that the world will not run out of oil and gas, it makes no difference whether we increase the supply of oil and gas from the oil sands, let’s say. Therefore that issue is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that we have to reduce our consumption of CO₂.

Mr. Butler: Maybe my colleague wants to jump in here. I think it is both a question of supply and consumption. We have to tackle it at all ends.

I appreciate your acknowledgement of science. We should acknowledge the critical situation we are in and try to do everything we can to address it.

If you live in Nova Scotia, you will know about coastal flooding. I was in a fish shop two days ago and the guy was telling me that in the silver hake trawls they are now finding fish they have never seen before, such as John Dory and other species from southern waters. We are really seeing the impacts here.

Senator Massicotte: Let me be specific. Let’s say Trans Mountain and let’s say we build it or do not build it. If we build it, maybe some Canadian consumers will consume that oil and gas. If they do not consume it, I suppose, with the world supply, we will just ship it in as we are doing currently in Quebec to a large part.

Mr. Butler: That is the argument that what we do here does not make a difference because they are building more coal plants in China. We will never solve the problem if we take that attitude. Somebody has to lead.

Ms. Fitzgerald: It would be rare on a global issue as important as climate change, if you think of the other global issues where Canada is active internationally, for Canadians to throw up their hands and say, “We can’t play a role.”

Senator Massicotte: I do not recommend that though.

Ms. Fitzgerald: What we do does matter. By shifting supply, we are helping our communities with the challenge ahead and hopefully helping those workers that will be affected through just transition plans.

I think we also send a strong signal to what we want in this world. We are actually part of a global movement that is shifting this way.

I do not think pointing fingers is the way to solve any problem. I am so proud of some of the things Canada has done internationally to help with global crises. This is one where what we do does matter.

Senator McInnis: I join with Senator Mercer and Senator MacDonald in welcoming all the senators to Nova Scotia. It is nice to see the sun breaking through. It is nice to see you, Mark Butler. I have talked to you on the phone in the past on issues, and I truly appreciate what both of your organizations do.

Here in Nova Scotia, and, of course, in Newfoundland, we have vast oil and gas resources. I have the figures back in my office in Ottawa, but there are huge amounts of resources which will ultimately be produced.

I could predict pretty much what you were going to say this morning. I know who you are and what you represent, and I appreciate what you do. At the same time, I think you will all agree that we have natural resources and we do need an economy. All of us today should also recognize that we need a protected environment.

I do not want to make this too general, but I want to hear from particularly your two organizations. Where is the reasonable ground to meet this? We have to produce and do what we can with the natural resources we have particularly in the energy sector. Where is the ground from where we can go forward?

Ms. Fitzgerald: I guess the ground would be meeting and exceeding our existing climate targets. Unfortunately we are not in a place where we can say we are doing it as Canadians. I think it would be looking to that. Assessments show time and time again that the emissions from the oil and gas sector are a great hindrance to achieving those targets.

We are here to talk about Bill C-69. Incorporating a good assessment of the climate impacts in what we are doing would be a step in that direction, I would argue.

You said there are huge amounts of resources. There are also huge amounts of renewable resources in our energy efficiency resources. I was at a presentation yesterday that was ostensibly about fracking in Nova Scotia. The most exciting part of what I heard was about solar. There are tons of other things we should be doing that is about the economy.

Climate assessments are showing time and time again that the economy will be devastated by climate change. We have to meld those two goals. This bill is a step in that direction if it remains strong.

Mr. Butler: I am very passionate about this topic. I care a lot about the prosperity of Nova Scotia. I see our job is not just to hug trees but to hug people. We need to care about both.

If Nova Scotia cannot make the transition away from fossil fuels, I question if any jurisdiction can do it. We have abundant resources here. They are not just fossil fuels, but tidal, wind, small-scale biomass and even some hydro.

We can do it here. I think that is the direction we should be heading in and I think that is where prosperity lies.

There was a billion dollar offshore proposal. It was not oil and gas; it was Beothuk wind. In the end it did not go ahead. I am not sure of the reasoning. I would love to know why. It was a billion dollars and it was not oil and gas. It was the wind. It was offshore. It was European pension money coming in looking to develop wind offshore.

Those are the kinds of opportunities I think we should be pursuing. Those projects should go through a rigorous environmental assessment too to protect the environment and industries that currently rely on the ocean like fishing.

Senator Patterson: First of all, let me say that I am delighted to be in Nova Scotia. I was counsel for the Ecology Action Centre in 1972 on the Quinpool Road project. Hopefully I have some credibility with you guys.

For Ms. Fitzgerald, I have a real quick question. Seismic blasting every 10 to 14 seconds for days, weeks and months. Which is it? Days, weeks or months? What other evidence are we going to get today?

Ms. Fitzgerald: I think you are going to be hearing from Dr. Hal Whitehead, a professor at Dalhousie University who is an expert in marine mammals.

It depends on the project. Perhaps it is a really short-term project, but it tends to be weeks or months. It depends.

If you look at the maps of seismic planned for Newfoundland and Labrador and for Nova Scotia in particular, there is a nine-year plan that would entail blasting over a large swath of the entire Scotian Shelf. It is large geographic areas over time.

Senator Patterson: Both of you have advocated, to my surprise, a reduction in the role of offshore boards. I understand there are some concerns about the board appointment process.

I believe that Nova Scotians should be looking at the impact of development and protection of the environment in their waters.

On the role of a life-cycle regulator on a panel, we heard from the Nunavut Impact Review Board, where I come from, about this issue of balancing roles as an impact assessor, licensor and life-cycle regulator.

NIRB said that the way our system was designed meant that things had less certainty during environmental assessment. When they are on the ground and projects are actually operating, the precautionary approach we take yields new information that allows us to adjust in terms of approval, as needed, as the project goes ahead.

We have many instances where that has become necessary when something that in theory seemed like a good idea and then, when it goes to licensing, does not work as expected. We go to an alternate means of still allowing the project to go ahead and protect the environment.

I would like to ask a question of both of you. Would it not be important for life-cycle regulators to have familiarity with the project and use their knowledge of the project, the promises made in the assessment phase and their expert knowledge to manage potential issues as they occur throughout the life of a project? That is the logic of it.

With all respect, university professors will not have knowledge whether the promises made in impact assessment were actually realized during the life of the project.

Ms. Fitzgerald: I guess I would argue that sequential learning from experience is not happening with regard to environmental assessment now. In the offshore in particular we are not learning from past mistakes.

It would be appropriate if there were a requirement. For instance, if we have learned from past projects that there is methyl mercury contamination downstream from mega hydro, then what do we know for future assessments? If we know that when you try to attach to a well in nine-metre waves there might be a major spill, perhaps we should have some regulations about that.

I am not seeing that happening with the offshore petroleum boards frankly. Definitely, with regard to seismic blasting, we have a code of practice right now but we do not even have regulations for that.

I am not seeing the learning from science or the learning from experience. International experts evaluated what happened with the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They looked at what is happening here in Canada and said that the risk assessment was 10 to 100 times off what it should be, from what they can tell from looking at our assessments.

It is inadequate. If that sequential learning is to happen, it would be best housed in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Environmental Assessment Agency and the Impact Assessment Agency, whatever it is renamed, and not within the boards with regard to protecting the environment.

As we have tried to convey, the boards have expertise with regard to the industry. They have way less expertise with regard to meeting our climate targets and protecting our obligations to the environment, endangered species, Indigenous people and endangered species.

The Chair: Could you please send us the BP report on the comparison with the gulf?

Ms. Fitzgerald: Yes.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Sea Lice "Epidemic" in Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region

Unprecedented salmon lice epidemic 

by Dan Lewis - Clayoquot Action

May 30, 2019

Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region wild salmon are heavily infected with sea lice from Norwegian salmon farming giant Cermaq.

This is an emergency situation pushing wild salmon stocks in the region towards rapid extinction unless the open-net pen salmon farms stop breeding sea lice.

Researchers sampling wild smolts are finding up to a 100% infection rate, with counts as high as 20-50 lice per smolt—this is unprecedented in BC.

One to three lice is a fatal load for tiny young salmon without protective scales. This means salmon farms are pushing Clayoquot Sound wild salmon to extinction.


Photo Tavish Campbell Coastal Photography

Lice are out of control

Wild salmon began leaving rivers around March 1st to start their lives at sea. This outmigration will continue until the end of June, and the fish will be rearing in nearshore waters during the summer. Sea lice numbers on Cermaq’s Clayoquot salmon farms have been up to 5 times over the threshold set by DFO. When drug treatments fail to keep numbers below the threshold, companies are expected to harvest infested fish in time to protect wild salmon. Cermaq has clearly failed to do this—for the second year in a row.

Making matters worse DFO staff report that DFO sea lice regulations are unenforceable. Their hands are tied as sea lice pour out of the farms. The salmon farming industry helped write these regulations.

Clayoquot Action on the frontlines

Clayoquot Action has been on the frontlines of this crisis. Our Clayoquot Salmon Investigation (CSI) volunteer crews have been in the field observing Cermaq’s emergency harvest of heavily lice-infected salmon, while collecting samples for our new virus monitoring program. Meanwhile in the office we’ve been working hard to get the story out in the media—here’s one example of the coverage quoting campaigns director Bonny Glambeck, and another featuring CA footage.

Clayoquot Action members have been sending a message to Ottawa, which is pushing politicians to act. Tofino’s MP Gord Johns (NDP Fisheries critic) has been challenging the Minister in the House of Commons. Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has sent a warning letter to Cermaq, but this is not enough.

It’s time to demand that Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson take a stand for wild salmon. He needs to immediately amend the salmon farm Conditions of License coastwide to make them enforceable, with stiff penalties for companies that put wild salmon at risk of infection with deadly sea lice. This must include every farm over the limit today.

Add your voice today!

 

Show Minister Wilkinson that you are not going to stand by and let sea lice from salmon farms destroy BC’s wild salmon! Please send your letter today—add how this makes you feel to add even more impact.

Dan Lewis is Executive Director of Clayoquot Action.

Photo courtesy of Tavish Campbell Coastal Photography

UK Election Meddling Campaign Proven (Culprits Don't Deny It!)

Forget Russia-gate, now it's US-gate! US Election Meddling Extends to Britain

by Dave Lindorff - This Can't Be Happening

June 10, 2019

So now we have pompous Mike Pompeo, America’s current Secretary of State, on a visit to the UK, assuring a group of British Jewish leaders in a closed-door meeting that the US would work to prevent Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn from becoming prime minister if his party were to win enough votes in the next national parliamentary election to get the opportunity to try and form a new British government.

In a recording leaked to the Washington Post, Pompeo assured a group of Jewish leaders in Britain yesterday that the US government would “push back” against Corbyn becoming prime minister in such a case, working behind the scenes to prevent a victorious Labour party from voting in Corbyn as Prime Minister.

US Secretary of State (and chief foreign
election meddler) Mike Pompeo, helping
Benjamin Netanyahu with his latest election challenge.

In the British parliamentary system, the party with the most votes after an election, if it wins an outright majority, or, as the Conservatives did in the last election, a plurality of votes and then is able to successfully cobble together a majority by bringing in other parties, then can use that majority to elect a new prime minister. Normally the new PM is the leader of the party that won the most votes, but that need not be the case.

A questioner on the tape is heard asking Pompeo, “Would you be willing to work with us to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the UK?” — an obvious reference to a rabid ongoing campaign in the largely conservative UK media and among zionist groups in the UK to tar Corbyn as an anti-semite because of his outspoken defense of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Pompeo, obviously not aware he is being taped, appears to suggest in his answer on the leaked recording that the US would seek to prevent Corbyn from becoming PM.

“It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected,” he says.

“It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things [presumably making life ‘difficult for the Jews in the UK’] to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”

This — an acknowledgment that the US would try to influence the selection of Britain’s parliamentary leader — is truly an astonishing statement coming from a top US government official, and particularly a secretary of state. I mean we all know that the US routinely messes with elections all over the third world, and even in European countries, but our leaders don’t normally admit it, even in private, preferring to tout the US as a paragon of “democratic values.”

Imagine if Corbyn were Prime Minister in 2020, and his foreign minister were caught on tape in the US telling a group of black leaders or Muslim leaders that his government would try mightily to prevent Donald Trump from winning re-election?

Oh, I know, he or she would immediately be given a ticker-tape parade in San Francisco, New York and Boston! But seriously, much of the nation, and the media, would go ballistic.

Of course, AIPAC, Israel’s lobbying organization in the US. does exactly that kind of thing every election year, but still, as a matter of decorum and at least the pretense of respect for other nations’ sovereignty, one doesn’t expect to hear a secretary of state talking about such crude interference in the democratic process in another country, particularly in a nation which is America’s closest ally aside from perhaps outright dependencies like Taiwan or Dubai.

Not surprisingly, the response in the UK has been mostly outrage.

A Labour Party official told the British Guardian newspaper, “President Trump and his officials’ attempts to decide who will be Britain’s next prime minister are an entirely unacceptable interference in the UK’s democracy.”

The dust-up over Pompeo’s leaked remarks should be recalled as one contemplates the absurd obsession among Democrats here about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election continues apace.

Yet certainly nothing Russia is accused of doing — like buying ads allegedly intended to promote division in the US on Facebook, or using bots to promote disharmony on various social media platforms — comes close to what Pompeo is proposing doing: actually using the full weight of the US government, with its ability to offer gifts of free weapons or conversely to impose punitive tariffs, not to mention making available the nefarious abilities and persuasive powers of the CIA and NSA to prevent the selection of a chosen party leader as prime minister following victory in an election (Pompeo was CIA director before becoming Secretary of State).

The hubris of this grotesque Tea Party Congressman-turned “top diplomat” is simply appalling.

One would have thought any self-respecting British Tory politician would have instantly denounced Pompeo’s suggested intrusion into the workings of the British electoral system, but so far there hasn’t been a peep from any of that party’s leaders, who no doubt actually support the idea of the US preventing their nemesis Corbyn from ever moving into 10 Downing Street.

His comments may, however, have the effect of bolstering support for Corbyn among Labour’s rank-and-file. Corbyn has already survived several concerted attempts from the Blairite faction of his party to unseat him as party leader, always emerging stronger from those attacks. My guess is the same thing will happen here, when a clumsy outsider from across the Atlantic offers to do the same thing.

Meanwhile American liberals should keep this incident in mind as they continue to wallow in the self-destructive effort to conjure up a fake story line that the Russians “stole” the 2016 election for Trump by undermining Hillary Clinton’s campaign, when in fact it was the Democratic Party leadership and Clinton herself who blew that election. Those leaders are well on the way to blowing the next one, too, for example by refusing to hold a a presidential debate focused on the existential issue of climate change.

Pompeo may think he has to “save” the Jews of Britain from Corbyn and Britain from the anti-Brexiters in the Labour Party, but at the rate things are going here in the US, nobody is going to have to come in from the outside to “save” America from a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2020. The Democrats, with their continuing whining about Russiagate, look like they’ll manage that all by themselves.

Palestinian Resistance Icon Ahmed Tamimi Speaks with George Galloway

Palestinian Resistance Icon Ahmed Tamimi

by George Galloway - Sputnik Orbiting the World

June 9, 2019

Ahed Tamimi’s main crime was to attract attention to a conflict in the occupied West Bank which most want to keep quiet. George Galloway welcomes her on his ‘Sputnik Orbiting the World’ show.

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Western Shadows: Resisting the New Fascism in Nicaragua

Nicaragua in the Shadow of Western Fascism

by Tortilla con Sal

May 21, 2019

Current US and EU foreign policy embodies fascism in terms of its aspect combining corporate power with State power and policy.

In her Sorbonne University exam results, French philosopher Simone Weil scored better than Simone de Beauvoir or Jean-Paul Sartre. She well understood the varieties of Western fascism and imperialism. So it’s worth paying attention to her remark that Europeans were shocked by Nazi crimes because the Nazis did to them what Europeans did to the people in their colonies. Weil’s remark was hardly news to people in the majority world, but it bears repeating to people in North America and Europe now.

Current US and EU foreign policy embodies fascism in terms of its aspect combining corporate power with State power and policy. The glitzy contemporary version prioritizes monopoly corporate finance and media as a means to achieving what the US and EU elites want, avoiding the mass destruction of war with uncertain global outcomes against obdurate, determined antagonists. That is the underlying meaning of contemporary sanctions and psychological warfare against Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and, in Latin America, against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, this reality is self-evident given the nature of US and EU proxies. The US and the EU support repressive organized-crime regimes in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina and those regimes’ counterparts among the political opposition of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. A corollary of that support is the inability of these subaltern political blocs to tell the truth or honor agreements, exactly like their overseers in North America and Europe.

Examples abound of this reality. Early in 2018 the Venezuelan opposition was on the point of signing an agreement with President Nicolas Maduro’s government but dropped out at the very last minute on orders from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Similarly, the US authorities unilaterally abandoned the process easing tensions with Cuba after years of negotiations and just recently they intensified sanctions by activating previously unused measures under the notorious Helms-Burton Act.

In Colombia, the latest violation of the increasingly debased peace agreement has been the re-arrest of Jesus Santrich on phony narcotics charges after his release under the agreement’s key judicial provision, the Special Peace Jurisdiction. That abuse of the agreement follows over 120 murders of demobilized FARC fighters by Colombia’s army and their narco-terror paramilitary allies. Similar gross bad faith characterizes right-wing abuse of judicial practice in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador and the desperate, unsuccessful maneuvers of the opposition in Bolivia against the presidential candidacy of Evo Morales.

This is the regional context for the political negotiations here in Nicaragua between President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government and the US bought-and-paid-for opposition. In contrast to the political opposition in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, the talks are not even with elected politicians. The US controlled opposition representatives have deliberately excluded electorally bankrupt right-wing political parties from the talks The opposition negotiators are almost without exception individuals from organizations dependent one way or another on US financial support.

The Nicaraguan government has accepted talks with these unrepresentative opposition figures in a process mediated by the Papal Nuncio and a delegate from the Organization of American States. The discussions have been continuing formally since March this year with some progress on issues like the conditional release of prisoners convicted of crimes during last year’s failed coup attempt, the return of opposition supporters who fled the country last year, electoral reforms and reinforcing existing constitutional guarantees. All of these are important concessions by the government.

For their part, the opposition refuses to commit either to renouncing future violence or to a joint call with the government for an end to sanctions damaging the Nicaraguan economy. Nor do they seem open to agreeing on a mechanism guaranteeing the implementation of any final agreement that may be reached. In effect, they seem to think the threat of continuing US sanctions and even intervention exonerates them from making any meaningful concessions.

As the talks wear on, the government’s good faith contrasts more and more strongly with the opposition’s bad faith, both to the majority of Nicaragua’s people and to the mediating delegates. As a smokescreen for their perfidy, the opposition periodically stages distractions either via media theatricals or calculated violence. The latest example of this has been a series of attacks by opposition prisoners in the penitentiary where they are detained. But the Nicaraguan authorities preempted the propaganda value of those attacks by inviting the Red Cross to monitor conditions for those prisoners, a measure which has undercut the opposition’s false claims of abuse.

Two things remain absolutely clear at this stage of the failed US and EU attempts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Firstly, people supporting the Nicaraguan opposition are accomplices to profoundly anti-democratic, anti-humanitarian Western government efforts at regime change against a successful progressive government. Secondly, like their fascist counterparts in Venezuela and Colombia, the Nicaraguan opposition is treacherous quislings committed to serving and obeying foreign corporate interests. They have nothing to offer in response to the impeccable national human development plan of President Ortega’s Sandinista government.

Everything suggests that the opposition delegates are determined to find an excuse either to walk away from the current talks or to renege on any eventual agreement. President Ortega’s government negotiators have already made and implemented important concessions but are sticking to their demand that the opposition call for an end to sanctions. In the end, a final agreement may well be reached, but the US and EU owners of Nicaragua’s opposition will never let them honor it. In fact, it may not be entirely true that Nicaragua’s opposition has no plan for their country: they want to be the rulers of a neoliberal hell like Honduras or Haiti.

RELATED:
Blood of Augusto Sandino Runs Through Nicaragua's Veins: Ortega