Still Lying After All These Years: Iraq War Proto-Propagandist Miller's Revisionist Memoir

Judith Miller’s Blame-Shifting Memoir

by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

  April 7, 2015


U.S. intelligence veterans recall the real story of how New York Times reporter Judith Miller disgraced herself and her profession by helping to mislead Americans into the disastrous war in Iraq. They challenge the slick, self-aggrandizing rewrite of history in her new memoir.


Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller

MEMORANDUM FOR: Americans Malnourished on the Truth About Iraq

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: A New “Miller’s Tale” (with apologies to Geoffrey Chaucer)

On April 3, former New York Times journalist Judith Miller published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths: Officials Didn’t Lie, and I Wasn’t Fed a Line.” If this sounds a bit defensive, Miller has tons to be defensive about.

In the article, Miller claims, “false narratives [about what she did as a New York Times reporter] deserve, at last, to be retired.” The article appears to be the initial salvo in a major attempt at self-rehabilitation and, coincidentally, comes just as her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, is to be published today.

In reviewing Miller’s book, her “mainstream media” friends are not likely to mention the stunning conclusion reached recently by the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other respected groups that the Iraq War, for which she was lead drum majorette, killed one million people. One might think that, in such circumstances – and with bedlam reigning in Iraq and the wider neighborhood – a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, so to speak, might prompt Miller to keep her head down for a while more.

In all candor, after more than a dozen years, we are tired of exposing the lies spread by Judith Miller and had thought we were finished. We have not seen her new book, but we cannot in good conscience leave her WSJ article without comment from those of us who have closely followed U.S. policy and actions in Iraq.

Miller’s Tale in the WSJ begins with a vintage Miller-style reductio ad absurdum: “I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.” Since one of us, former UN inspector Scott Ritter, has historical experience and technical expertise that just won’t quit, we asked him to draft a few paragraphs keyed to Miller’s latest tale. He shared the following critique:

Miller’s Revisionist History

“Judith Miller did not take America to war in Iraq. Even a journalist with an ego the size of Ms. Miller’s cannot presume to usurp the war power authorities of the President of the United States, or even the now-dormant Constitutional prerogatives of Congress. What she is guilty of, however, is being a bad journalist.

“She can try to hide this fact by wrapping herself in a collective Pulitzer Prize, or citing past achievements like authoring best-selling books. But this is like former Secretary of State Colin Powell trying to remind people about his past as the National Security Advisor for President Reagan or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“At the end of the day Mr. Powell will be judged not on his previous achievements, but rather on his biggest failure – his appearance before the United Nations Security Council touting an illusory Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction threat as being worthy of war. In this same vein, Judith Miller will be judged by her authoring stories for the ‘newspaper of record’ that were questionably sourced and very often misleading. One needs only to examine Ms. Miller’s role while embedded in U.S. Army Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, hunting for weapons of mass destruction during the 2003 invasion, for this point to be illustrated.

“Miller may not have singlehandedly taken America and the world to war, but she certainly played a pivotal role in building the public case for the attack on Iraq based upon shoddy reporting that even her editor at the New York Times has since discredited – including over reliance on a single-source of easy virtue and questionable credibility – Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. The fact that she chose to keep this ‘source’ anonymous underscores the journalistic malfeasance at play in her reporting.

“Chalabi had been discredited by the State Department and CIA as a reliable source of information on Iraq long before Judith Miller started using him to underpin her front-page ‘scoops’ for the New York Times. She knew this, and yet chose to use him nonetheless, knowing that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fully as eager to don the swindlers’ magic suit of clothes, as was the king in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale. In Ms. Miller’s tale, the fairy-tale clothes came with a WMD label and no washing instructions.

“Ms. Miller’s self-described ‘newsworthy claims’ of pre-war weapons of mass destruction stories often were – as we now know (and many of us knew at the time) – handouts from the hawks in the Bush administration and fundamentally wrong.

“Like her early reporting on Iraq, Ms. Miller’s re-working of history to disguise her malfeasance/misfeasance as a reporter does not bear close scrutiny. Her errors of integrity are hers and hers alone, and will forever mar her reputation as a journalist, no matter how hard she tries to spin the facts and revise a history that is highly inconvenient to her. Of course, worst of all, her flaws were consequential – almost 4,500 U.S. troops and 1,000,000 Iraqis dead.”

Relying on the Mistakes of Others

In her WSJ article, Miller protests that “relying on the mistakes of others and errors of judgment are not the same as lying.” It is almost as though she is saying that if Ahmed Chalabi told her that, in Iraq, the sun rises in the west, and she duly reported it, that would not be “the same as lying.”

Miller appears to have worked out some kind of an accommodation with George W. Bush and others who planned and conducted what the post-World War II Nuremburg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime,” a war of aggression. She takes strong issue with what she calls “the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war.”

Does she not know, even now, that there is abundant proof that this is exactly what took place? Has she not read the Downing Street Memorandum based on what CIA Director George Tenet told the head of British Intelligence at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002; i. e., that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of making war for “regime change” in Iraq?

Does she not know, even at this late date, that the “intelligence” served up to “justify” attacking Iraq was NOT “mistaken,” but outright fraud, in which Bush had the full cooperation of Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin? Is she unaware that the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence at the time, Carl Ford, has said, on the record, that Tenet and McLaughlin were “not just wrong, they lied … they should have been shot” for their lies about WMD? (See Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.)

Blame Blix

Miller’s tale about Hans Blix in her WSJ article shows she has lost none of her edge for disingenuousness: “One could argue … that Hans Blix, the former chief of the international inspectors, bears some responsibility,” writes Miller. She cherry-picks what Blix said in January 2003 about “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”

Yes, Blix said that on Jan. 27, 2003. But Blix also included this that same day in his written report to his UN superiors, something the New York Times, for some reason, did not include in its report:

“Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable.

“Our inspections have included universities, military bases, presidential sites and private residences. Inspections have also taken place on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest, on Christmas day and New Years day. These inspections have been conducted in the same manner as all other inspections.” [See “Steve M.” writing (appropriately) for “Crooks and Liars” as he corrected the record.]

Yes, there was some resistance by Iraq up to that point. Blix said so. However, on Jan. 30, 2003, Blix made it abundantly clear, in an interview published in The New York Times, that nothing he’d seen at the time justified war. (The byline was Judith Miller and Julia Preston.)

The Miller-Preston report said: “Mr. Blix said he continued to endorse disarmament through peaceful means. ‘I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of inspections,’ he said. …

“Mr. Blix took issue with what he said were Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents. …

“He further disputed the Bush administration’s allegations that his inspection agency might have been penetrated by Iraqi agents, and that sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad, compromising the inspections. Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech. ‘There are other states where there appear to be stronger links,’ such as Afghanistan, Mr. Blix said, noting that he had no intelligence reports on this issue.”

Although she co-authored that New York Times report of Jan. 30, 2003, Judith Miller remembers what seems convenient to remember. Her acumen at cherry picking may be an occupational hazard occasioned by spending too much time with Chalabi, Rumsfeld and other professional Pentagon pickers.

Moreover, Blix’s February 2003 report showed that, for the most part, Iraq was cooperating and the process was working well:

“Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming. …

“The inspections have taken place throughout Iraq at industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites. …

“In my 27 January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences. …

“The presentation of intelligence information by the US Secretary of State suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes.

“I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect.

“We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection.”

Blix made it clear that he needed more time, but the Bush administration had other plans. In other words, the war wasn’t Blix’s fault, as Judy Miller suggests. The fault lay elsewhere.

When Blix retired at the end of June 2004, he politely suggested to the “prestigious” Council on Foreign Relations in New York the possibility that Baghdad had actually destroyed its weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War in 1991 (as Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of the WMD and rocket programs assured his debriefers when he defected in 1995). Blix then allowed himself an undiplomatic jibe:

“It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 per cent certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where they are.”

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

William Binney, former Technical Director, National Security Agency (ret.)

Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA

Daniel Ellsberg, former State and Defense Department official, associate VIPS

Frank Grevil, former Maj., Army Intelligence, Denmark, associate VIPS

Katharine Gun, former analyst, GCHQ (the NSA equivalent in the UK), associate VIPS

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan, associate VIPS

Brady Kiesling, former Political Counseler, U.S. Embassy, Athens, resigned in protest before the attack on Iraq, associate VIPS.

Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003.

Annie Machon, former officer, MI5 (the CIA equivalent in the UK), associate VIPS

David MacMichael, former Capt., USMC & senior analyst, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former Capt., Army Infantry/Intelligence & CIA presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, Maj., former U.S. Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)

Greg Thielmann, former Office Director for Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Peter Van Buren, former diplomat, Department of State, associate VIPS

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.) & US diplomat (resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq)

Health Emergency Reveals Mumia Abu-Jamal's "Special" Prison Treatment

Mumia's Specialized Mistreatment: Emergency Illness Exposes Lies In Abu-Jamal Case

by Linn Washington Jr.  - This Can't Be Happening

The recent emergency hospitalization of Mumia Abu-Jamal arising from alarming failures to address his chronic illnesses has exposed the inaccuracy of an assertion long made by adversaries of this inmate whom many around the world consider a political prisoner.

Mumia Abu-Jamal as he looked before and after his untreated diabetic crisis, during which he lost over 50 lbs.

His adversaries charge that Abu-Jamal receives special treatment in prison.

That’s true, but not in the way Abu-Jamal adversaries mean it.

When an ambulance delivered Abu-Jamal to the intensive care unit of a hospital outside of the Pennsylvania State prison where he is serving a life sentence, he was on the doorstep of a diabetic coma – a condition that is often fatal. Abu-Jamal’s blood sugar level was 779, which is just shy of the diabetic coma level of 800. Additionally, his sodium levels were also highly elevated, another condition with potentially dire medically results.

If Abu-Jamal is as pampered in prison as adversaries assert, his diabetic condition would not have festered as it did dangerously for several months necessitating his emergency hospitalization. In reality, the ‘special treatment’ adversaries proclaim is actually specialized mistreatment.

Routine blood tests register blood sugar levels and Abu-Jamal had reportedly received multiple blood tests inside the prison infirmary during treatments this year for illnesses including a full-body outbreak of eczema that caused painful itching and burning.

Yet, no evidence has been released by state authorities to counter charges from Abu-Jamal’s family and far-flung supporters that prison medical personnel did not aggressively address Abu-Jamal’s elevated blood sugar levels which would have been recorded on those tests. Prison medical personnel did not address Abu-Jamal’s diabetic condition with medications or changes in the typical high-starch/high-sugar diet regularly served to prisoners, including prisoners with diabetes.

Further, Abu-Jamal’s family and supporters, who, despite obstacles, visited with him before, during and after that emergency hospitalization, said he had suffered an adverse reaction to medication prison personnel prescribed for the eczema. That medication produced severe swelling in Abu-Jamal that caused his skin to rupture. The rupture produced open sores that required antibiotics.

“Mumia said he is burning inside from head to toe from that skin rash. He was still burning when he was sent back to the prison from the hospital for that diabetic shock,” said Pam Africa, director of the Philadelphia-based International Friends and Family of Abu-Jamal, who saw the ailing Abu-Jamal after his return from the hospital. Africa said Abu-Jamal has lost over 80-lbs since early January and is frail.

“Mumia said other inmates have the same skin rash. He said over 100 people inside that prison have diabetes.”

Far from the ‘special treatment’ adversaries complain about, Abu-Jamal apparently received the same substandard medical care as all inmates in the Pennsylvania State prison system.

The Pennsylvania state prison system spends over $217-million of its $2-billion dollar budget on medical care, according to a report from the PEW Foundation. Medical personnel comprise over 970 of the nearly sixteen thousand persons working for the Pennsylvania State prison system according to a state Department of Corrections report.

Underscoring the fact that Abu-Jamal does not receive “special treatment,” prison authorities quickly removed Abu-Jamal from that hospital ICU, despite his grave diabetes and other conditions, returning him to the same prison infirmary where he had initially received medically deficit care – including the failure to properly diagnose and treat his diabetes for weeks.

Professor Cornell West, the activist academic, blasted the “chronic medical neglect and malpractice by prison staff” in a broadcast public service announcement supporting better medical treatment for Abu-Jamal and other inmates.

Abu-Jamal’s wife Wadiya was more blunt. She suggested that the medical neglect in her husband’s case could be deliberate.

“This is execution by medical neglect and mistreatment,” she said in a statement. (Abu-Jamal spent nearly thirty years on Death Row where he was subjected to intense campaigns for his execution from police unions and conservative politicians…campaigns that included illegal and unethical actions.)

“Mumia was sent back to the prison, without an expert medical diagnosis or a treatment plan or his sugar levels under control. He was transferred back to the prison infirmary with a temperature of 102 degrees, to the same people who knew for weeks and didn’t treat his [diabetes] before he collapsed and went into diabetic shock,” she stated.

Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the December 1981 fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. That death sentence came during a trail that was fundamentally unfair according to an extensive review by Amnesty International plus examinations by many other legal experts.

Pennsylvania state courts have consistently rejected Abu-Jamal’s appeals, finding not a single flaw in his conviction despite those same courts overturning hundreds of death sentences due to errors by police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors and even judges. In Abu-Jamal’s case, courts have rejected solid evidence that police and prosecutors illegally withheld evidence of innocence and coached prosecution witnesses to give false testimony. Those fair trial rights robbing violations in Abu-Jamal’s trial are the same violations that have led those same Pennsylvania state courts to grant appeal relief to other inmates – more evidence that Abu-Jamal has endured specialized mistreatment.

Federal courts, for their part, found just a single flaw in the death penalty deliberations by the trial jury, a determination that led to an upending of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. Elimination of the death penalty produced his current sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Life in prison without parole sentences, like Abu-Jamal’s, are considered a form of torture by many around the world.

In September 2014, PEN International, the association of writers, approved a resolution at its world congress, calling for a legal review of Abu-Jamal’s life sentence. “International jurisprudence is moving towards recognition that a life sentence without parole…may amount to torture or other cruel inhuman or degrading punishment,” that PEN resolution noted. The German PEN branch proposed that resolution.

Abu-Jamal’s adversaries dismiss claims that he’s been subjected to constant mistreatment, including this latest medical episode. However, that stance is refuted by repeated examples of mistreatment that began at the scene of that 1981 crime.

During that incident leading to his arrest, Officer Faulkner shot Abu-Jamal in the chest, gravely wounding him in the lung and liver. Yet, police kept Abu-Jamal at the crime scene for nearly 30-minutes, as his lungs filled with blood, before transporting him to an emergency room just a few blocks away for treatment. Police immediately took Faulkner to that same hospital ER minutes away from the crime scene.

Police beat Abu-Jamal at the crime scene and in the emergency room, evidence shows. Police though have denied any crime scene beating but acknowledged “inadvertently” ramming Abu-Jamal’s head into a pole multiple times and dropping him while putting him into a police wagon.

Abu-Jamal, in an affidavit issued in 2001, stated that at the crime scene “I was pulled to my feet and then rammed into a telephone pole, beaten where I fell and thrown into a paddy wagon…Upon arrival [at the emergency room] I was thrown from the wagon to the ground and beaten.”

Police and prosecutors have maintained that Abu-Jamal’s confession, that helped seal his conviction, was made in that hospital ER. Suspiciously, existence of that alleged confession did not surface until weeks after the murder of Faulkner when police were investigating a complaint from Abu-Jamal about police beating him at the crime scene and hospital. Abu-Jamal has steadfastly denied uttering any confession.

Supporters of Abu-Jamal have presented Pennsylvania prison authorities with a list of demands that includes initiation of an “independent investigation” of prison healthcare. “The state’s medical services have been so neglectful – even abusive – that its entire healthcare operations warrant review,” states one item on that list of demands.

This demand for an investigation of prison health care cites the “unexpected and unexplained sudden death” last year of Phil Africa, an inmate from Philadelphia who was a member of the MOVE organization.

While supporters of Abu-Jamal have renewed their demand for his release, a study of prison healthcare spending by PEW released last year called for consideration of releasing inmates over 55-years-old as a way of reducing soaring prison costs – particularly health care costs. On April 24th Abu-Jamal turns 61-years-old. Pennsylvania ranks among the Top 10 states holding the highest number of older inmates.

“Many states have adopted medical or geriatric parole policies that allow for release of older, terminally ill or incapacitated inmates,” that PEW report stated.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Anthony Fenton, Gail Davidson, Janine Bandcroft April 8th, 2015

This Week on GR

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

As wars and rumours of war continue, the so-called Obama Doctrine requires a level-eyed assessment. That "doctrine," as experienced in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, consists of arming everyone you believe an enemy of your enemy, and hoping for the best!

The result is disaster multiplied everywhere it is applied. Chaos, destruction, and death outright, with homelessness, hunger, and disease waiting in the wings. The ideals and best intentions of the project Washington and its allies intone mean nothing to the people caught in the maelstrom; their only hope is for the fighting to stop.

 Listen. Hear.

But thousands of miles removed from the suffering, the Pentagon, as announced yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, is readying for more war, "expediting" arms shipments to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the GCC to replenish their depleted stocks.

Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher, former journalist, author, and PhD candidate studying the political economy of Canada-Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC relations. Anothony co-authored, with Yves Engler, 'Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority,' and his many articles have been featured by the Asia Times Online, The Dominion, Foreign Policy in Focus, Inter Press Service News, Mother Jones, and Upside Down World.

Anthony Fenton in the first half.

And; were he an independent actor, perhaps Canada's prime minister would have a doctrine named for him too; but as it stands, quisling Stephen Harper's foreign policy is dictated to him from Washington, and elsewhere. What Mr. Harper's handlers are telling him to do is entangle Canada in war-fighting in the Middle East, regardless of the consequences, and in spite of the damage that does to both the locals living beneath the barrage, and Canada's international reputation.

Gail Davidson is a Member of the Law Society of British Columbia and founder of 'Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada.' An outspoken critic of the war against Afghanistan and those that have followed, Gail, and the international organization, Lawyers Against War, have argued against the legal "justifications" of the so-called Global War on Terror, and call for the arrest of the criminals waging it.

Gail Davidson examining the thin ice beneath Stephen Harper's assumptions of war-making legitimacy in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of good things to do on our city's streets, and beyond there too, in the coming week. But first, Anthony Fenton and Yemen; next in The Long War's crucible.

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. And now heard at Simon Fraser University's http://www.cjsf.ca . He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

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

Obama Doctrine's Epic Fail: Arm Them All, and Hope for the Best

Failure of Obama Doctrine

by Ramzy Baroud  - Arab News

To suggest that the US policies in Yemen were a “failure” is an understatement. It implies that the US had at least attempted to succeed. But “succeed” at what? The US drone war had no other objective aside from celebrating the elimination of whomever the US hit list designates as terrorist.

But now that a civil and a regional wars have broken out, the degree of US influence in Yemen has been exposed as limited, their war on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the larger context of political, tribal and regional rivalry, is insignificant.

For a long time, the US seemed invulnerable to what even Yemen analysts admit is an intricate subject to understand, let alone attempt to explain in a straightforward manner. The US drones buzzed overhead independent from all of this. They “took out” whomever they suspected was Al-Qaeda affiliated. President Barack Obama was even revealed to have approved of a “secret kill list,” and agreed to consider counting casualties in such a way that “essentially designates all military-aged males in a strike zone as military “combatants.”

In fact, a timeline of events that have befallen poverty-stricken Yemen shows a strange phenomenon, where US involvement in that country operates parallel to but separate from all other horrific events, violence, suffering and politicking. Sure, the shadowy US war had augmented the suffering, demoralized the nation and undermined whatever political process was under way, especially after the Yemeni version of the Arab Spring in early 2011. However, the US paid little heed to Yemen’s fragile alliances and the fact that the country was on a fast track toward civil war, worse a regional war, directly or by proxy.

The responsibility of mending broken Yemen was left to the United Nations. But due to the regional situation, UN envoys had little margin for meaningful negotiations. But the US continued with its war unabated, arming whomever it deemed an ally, exploiting regional differences, and promoting the power of Al-Qaeda in ways that far exceeded their presence on the ground. 

It saw Yemen as a convenient “war on terror,” enough to give Obama the tough persona that American voters love about their presidents, without the high risk of military quagmires like the ones that his predecessor, George W. Bush, created in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was hardly that simple.

Even a “clean” drone war activated from faraway places is rarely enough to guarantee results. Set aside the moral responsibility of torturing an already wounded nation, the US seemed to lack understanding of how its actions frustrate and contribute to regional conflicts. Its exasperation of Iraq’s sectarian fault lines following the 2003 invasion, leading to a massive civil war few years later, was a lesson unlearned. That “divide and conquer” backfired badly. Empowered and brutal US-supported Shiite government that took revenge on Sunni tribes and communities across Iraq following the war met their match with the rise of a brutal, so-called “Islamic State” in more recent years, turning Iraq, and of course Syria, into a savage battleground.

Gone are the days in which US policies alone dictated the course of history in the Middle East. The Iraq war was catastrophic at so many levels, lead among which is relegating direct military intervention as a way to achieve strategic and political ends.

The Obama doctrine was an attempt at combining use of US military influence (while scaling down on direct military intervention), on the one hand, and regional and international allies on the other, to sustain US ascendency in the region as much as possible.

What seemed like a relative success in Libya with the ousting of Muammar Qaddafi was too difficult to duplicate in Syria. The stakes there were simply too high. Regional rivals like Iran, and international rivals like Russia were too resistant to any open attempt at overthrowing the Assad regime. And with the rise of IS, Assad had suddenly be re-casted into a different role, becoming a buffer, although still designated as an enemy. John Kerry’s statement about willingness to engage Assad signaled a massive turnabout in US policies there.

Now, with a preliminary nuclear deal agreed upon by Iran and US and its allies, chances are the US, although will carry on with its saber-rattling (as Iran will surely do as well) there is little chance that Obama will enact any major shift in his regional policies. To the contrary, his administration is likely to retreat; further hide behind its allies to achieve whatever muddled objectives it may have at the chaotic moment.

Newfoundland/Labrador: Ready for Your Visit

RNC Tourism Video

by bbmc

Toronto Symphony Hears It After Dropping "Controversial Pianist Lisitsa

Appeal by Valentina Lisitsa

published on her Facebook page

 April 6, 2015 

Dear fans, DEAR FRIENDS!

I have a confession to make and a huge favor to ask all of you. I really REALLY need your help now. But first, my confession.

Over the last year I have been leading a double life. There was me – a “celebrity” pianist hopping from concert to a concert, all over the world; learning new pieces, meeting fans, recording, chirping about my happiness in upbeat interviews.

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa 

But there was another me: not a musician but a regular human being – a daughter, a mother, a wife. And this human being was watching helplessly how the country of my birth, of my childhood, of my first falling in love – this country was sliding ever faster into the abyss. Children die under bombs, old ladies die of starvation, people burned alive…

The worst thing that can happen to any country is fratricidal war, people seeing each other, their neighbors as enemies to be eliminated. This is what has befallen my beautiful Ukraine. My heart was bleeding. You all saw on TV screens all over the world a magnificent revolution, the people of Ukraine raising in fury against their corrupt rulers, for a better life. I was so proud of my people! But the ruling class doesn’t let go easily. They managed to cunningly channel away the anger, to direct it to other, often unimaginable, enemies – and worse, to turn people upon themselves. One year later, we have the same rich people remaining in power, misery and poverty everywhere, dozens of thousands killed, over a million of refugees.

So, I took to Twitter ( how many of you know I have a Twitter account? LOL) under a name “NedoUkraïnka” – a word roughly meaning “Sub-Ukrainian”, a stab at Ukrainian Prime Minister who called Russian-speaking Southern and Eastern Ukrainians “SUBHUMANS”! Yes, I kid you not. In an official written document. I am a subhuman, my husband, my mom...I mastered Ukrainian language perfectly, far better than a so-called “president” of Ukraine. But I don’t speak it to my family, I didn’t sing lullabies to my son in Ukrainian, when I sleep I never see the dreams in Ukrainian, when I will be dying my last words will NOT be in Ukrainian….

Sorry, I got carried away telling you those things… To get back to my story – I took to Twitter in order to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media – the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine. I translated news stories from Ukrainian language websites, I translated eyewitness accounts of atrocities…. I became really good in unmasking fakes published by Western media in order to make one side of the civil war look whiter and softer than Easter bunny, and another – as sub-humans, not worthy of mercy, the “collateral damage.”

To give you just one example: one of my feats was to confront French fashion magazine “Elle” who published a glowing cover story about women in Ukrainian army. After the research, I have shown to the magazine in my Twitter posts that the “cover girl” they have chosen to show was in fact a horrible person, open Neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semite who boasted of murdering civilians for fun! The magazine issued a written public apology.

I was very proud! But with time my activities attracted a lot of vicious haters. I was a particularly important “target” because of being Ukrainian, thus – a traitor. I thought I knew hate – my playing on YouTube certainly “attracted” a fair share of hate mail. But I was mistaken. Death threats, wishes for my family to die, calling me “paid Kremlin wh*re”…the list goes on and on.

My haters didn’t stop there. Trying, in their own words, to teach me a lesson, they have now attempted to silence me as a musician. I am scheduled to play Rachmaninoff Concerto #2 with Toronto Symphony Orchestra this week. Back in December, someone in the orchestra top management, likely after the pressure from a small but aggressive lobby claiming to represent Ukrainian community, has made a decision that I should not be allowed to play. I don’t even know who my accusers are, I am kept in the dark about it. I was accused of “inciting hatred” on Twitter. As the “proof,” ironically enough, they presented to the orchestra my tweets containing, of all things, Charlie Hebdo caricatures depicting lying media!!! We all know what those who can’t tolerate free speech did to Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Now, the orchestra based in one of the freest democratic countries is bending over to the same kind of people, helping them to assassinate me – not as a living person yet, but as a MUSICIAN for sure.

Yes, Toronto Symphony is going TO PAY ME NOT TO PLAY because I exercised the right to free speech. Yes, they will pay my fee but they are going to announce that I will be unable to play and they already found a substitute. And they even threatened me against saying anything about the cause of the cancellation. Seriously.

And I thought things like this only happen in Turkey to Fazil Say!

Now, the plea. Before you decide to help me – If you wish, please take time and read my tweets. You might find some of them offensive – perhaps. The satire and hyperbole are the best literature tools to combat the lies. Bear that in mind when reading.

Here is what I ask you to do for me, and in defense of freedom even if you disagree with me on politics (LOLl!). I ask you to raise your voice and tell Toronto Symphony that music can’t be silenced.

Ask them to let me play. If you want to write something – great! Or just share a photo I made ( sorry, I made it on my phone, nothing fancy). Ask your friends to join in. If they do it once, they will do it again and again, until the musicians, artists are intimidated into voluntary censorship. Our future will be bleak if we allow this to happen.

Please stand with me. Here are the links:

https://www.facebook.com/torontosymphonyorchestra
Twitter @TorontoSymphony

Canada: Outsourcing More Than the Hewing of Wood and Carrying of Water

Outsourcing the Canadian Economy

by Murray Dobbin - CounterPunch

Powell River, British Columbia

A news story this week blandly described the perverse reality that is the current state of the Canadian economy. The headline read “Corporate profit margins at 27-year high and likely to stay there.” Pretty heady stuff if you took it out of context. But the context is everything: pathetic growth projections, record high personal debt, stagnating wages, hundreds of billions in idle corporate cash, a multi-billion dollar infrastructure deficit, a growing real estate bubble and a Bank of Canada chief who has no idea how to fix things. And, of course, a prime minister who thinks fixing things is heretical.

The headline describes the conclusion of a report by CIBC World Markets the gist of which is that not only has the profit margin hit a 30-year-high of 8.2 per cent (the historic average is less than five per cent) but the signs are that it is going to stay there: “profit margins are fully supported by the fundamentals.”

Ah, yes the fundamentals. The study doesn’t purport to make any ethical or moral judgments (or even economic ones for that matter) — it just states the facts. Indeed it doesn’t talk about the context of those facts at all, nor that this hyper-profitability might indeed be bad for the economy in general, for growth, for employees, families and governments. It’s as if the fundamentals were somehow God-given, having fallen from the sky.

But of course “fundamentals” don’t fall from the sky, they are the result of the actions of governments, corporations, individuals and other agents — some random, some planned, some unpredictable — like the crash in oil prices. Economists love to talk about fundamentals, but in this case they are related to a structural change in the profit rate: that is, a permanent shift from the below five per cent level to over six per cent — a 20 per cent increase.

The key fundamentals, says the report:

“globalization, innovation, lower cost of capital, high barriers to entry, and reduced bargaining power of labour…”

The report points out that the crashing Canadian dollar is a big factor but for the economy as a whole, for Canadians’ standard of living and for future investment it is the last item that matters: the “reduced bargaining power of labour.” Wages and salaries have been flat literally since 1980 and personal debt has tracked upwards in parallel as inflation ate into disposable real incomes. This is not sustainable for any functioning capitalist economy that depends on growth to survive.

Here are some of the consequences of a continuing high-profitability/slow growth scenario:

* The rich will continue to get rich and income and wealth inequality will continue to grow. Stock prices will continue to rise, as corporations accumulate more and more idle cash, dividends will increase. According to the IMF Canadian corporations are accumulating “dead money” faster than in any other G7 country.

* As increasing amounts of the wealth created every year accumulates in corporate coffers, personal debt, now at a record high of 163 per cent of annual income, will continue to rise increasing the already bloated profits of the big banks.

* Corporations exist to make profits, not to invest for the sake of investing. What is the motivation to invest if your profits are at record levels and the bargaining power of labour remains low? According to the CIBC report, “No less than one third of Canadian GDP last year was produced by sectors with falling labour unit costs.”

* With corporations relying on falling labour costs there is even less incentive to invest in innovation, training, or new equipment and technology to increase productivity.

Those costs — a reflection of labour’s weakened bargaining power — are not likely to increase anytime soon. The labour participation rate (the number of employable people working or looking for work) is at its lowest since 2000 — providing a reserve of workers that will continue to suppress pay. The economy produced fewer jobs in 2014 than at any time since 2009. At the same time, corporations are on a binge of hiring part-time to avoid paying benefits. Partly as a result, Canada has the second highest percentage of low-wage jobs in the OECD.

Another CIBC study revealed that job quality is at its lowest level in 25 years. The bank’s job quality index has fallen 15 per cent since the early 1990s. The index “examines the distribution of full- and part-time positions, the gap between self-employment and the higher-quality jobs for paid employees, and whether full-time jobs were created in low-, medium- or high-paying sectors.”

Perhaps the key observation made by the report’s author, CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal, was that “The findings reveal a descending path in labour quality, a gravitational pull the study’s author warned will persist unless it’s addressed.”

Addressed by whom? He doesn’t say. But like any other economist, he clearly knows the answer. The structural nature of low quality, low paying and insecure work is not an accident of nature — it is the result of both corporate practices and government policies.

The so-called “labour flexibility” policies of the 1990s are still in place: the slashed accessibility to Employment Insurance, impoverished social assistance programs, and the abandonment of labour standards enforcement. Rather than addressing the issue of low job quality, the federal government has been exacerbating it with the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), allowing hundreds of thousands of young people to work for nothing as so-called “apprentices”, and making commitments in trade agreements to allow companies to bring in skilled workers with none of the “red tape” involved in the TFWP.

Even though the TFWP rules have been abused, at least under that program there is supposed to be an assessment of whether Canadians can do the job before a foreign worker is brought in. Under trade agreements, corporations have been guaranteed the right to outsource high paying jobs to foreign workers without any such assessments. According to the government’s own data, most of the foreign workers in Canada are here without any responsibilities placed on their employers to prove they tried but failed to find Canadians to do the job.

For example, only one of the 14 jobs in the infamous Royal Bank example — where Royal Bank workers had to train their replacements from India — were brought in under the TFWP. The rest are likely to have got their positions through the intra-company transfer visas provided for by trade agreements. While the jobs outsourced through the intra-company transfer program are referred to as “temporary,” clauses in the program allow them to stay for up to seven years. The motivation appears to be pure greed: displacing highly paid Canadian employees with much lower paid foreign nationals.

Outsourcing Expanded

The program was supposed to be limited to executive and managerial positions (applicants are supposed to have university degrees) but has rapidly expanded by exploiting a clause that says workers with “specialized” skills can also be brought in. Concerns have been expressed by insiders that companies are exaggerating employee resumes to expand the scope of their outsourcing.

No wonder Canadian graduates are having so much trouble finding jobs — the Harper government is determined to give them away.

As bad as things are they are about to get much worse. At the urging of the Canadian Services Coalition, a corporate lobby group, the multiple trade and investment agreements the government is intent on signing (or has signed) all contain sections allowing for such transfers. International Trade Minister Ed Fast boasted that the next generation of trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be much more ambitious about enabling the entry of foreign workers.

For sheer callousness it is hard to outdo the Harper government. But the academic cheerleaders for expanded trade agreements aren’t far behind. Shih-Fen Chen, with Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business, opined that while the displaced Royal Bank workers would have a hard time finding other jobs, “Outsourcing is just international trade in the service sector and the rationale to support it is similar to the trade of manufactured goods.”

Well, yes that sounds about right, if the Harper government’s rationale in trade negotiations is to do to Canadian service sector jobs what NAFTA and other trade agreements have done to jobs in the manufacturing sector: outsource them.

At no time in the past 70 years have Canadian workers and their families been confronted with such a ruthlessly indifferent combine of corporations and the state. Neo-liberalism, the so-called freeing of market forces, is thus revealed as having no limits, ethical, moral or political to its greed and its contempt for society. And it has little to do with “market forces.” It’s simple corporatism.

Murray Dobbin, now living in Powell River, BC has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over forty years. He now writes a bi-weekly column for the on-line journals the Tyee and rabble.ca. He can be reached at murraydobbin@shaw.ca

Is Obama Failure Setting US Up for Iranian War?

Credit where credit's due...but only where it's due: How Can Obama Claim the Alternative to a Nuclear Deal with Iran is War?

by Dave Lindorff  - This Can't Be Happening

 

A kudo to President Obama. But just one. If he manages to pull off an agreement with Iran on limiting that country's nuclear fuel enrichment program in the fact of determined resistance from Republicans, Neocons, the Israel Lobby and the warmongers in both the GOP and his own Democratic Party, he will have finally earned at least some small portion of the gold in his Nobel Peace medallion.
America's latest presidential "peace" laureate

We could reasonably ask why he thinks it's cool to negotiate with the "Axis of Evil" nation of Iran over the nuclear issue, but not with Russia over Ukraine. After all, Iran doesn't even have a nuclear weapon, and on the evidence, isn't trying to build one, so these negotiations aren't really even preventing a nuclear war; they're just calming the nerves of some trigger happy paranoids in Israel and Washington. But Russia does have nuclear weapons, and has made it clear that if the US pushes too hard at putting NATO weapons and forces near the Russian border, or if it tries to undo the annexation of Crimea, it will use them. Shouldn't that kind of thing call for cool-headed negotiation, instead of aggressive moves like sending offensive armaments to Kiev?

But then we have some other issues too.

If Obama really wants an agreement with Iran on limiting its nuclear fuel enrichment program, why is he being so hard-assed about ending the grinding sanctions that have been imposed on the country? I mean a deal's a deal. If one side gives you want you want, you have to give something in return. You can't say, okay you stop enriching uranium, dilute the stuff that you already enriched to 20%, back down to 3.5%, and shut down most of your centrifuges so you can't make much anymore. But we're not going to end sanctions until you have done this for a while so we know you mean it.

That's double dealing, and hardly conducive to building a new relationship with a country that has good reason to doubt your own sincerity (after all, the US corporate media in reporting on this story never mention it, but Iranian antipathy towards the US didn't begin with the overthrow of America's puppet, the Shah of Iran. It began in the 1950s with a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence which overthrew Iran's secular elected government -- a catastrophe from which Iran has never recovered.

In fact, as part of the deal Iran probably should have insisted on an apology for that outrage, along with a promise to never again meddle in Iran's internal politics.

Instead we have this rather bullying agreement in which a weakened Iran, faced with both tough US-led economic sanctions and a brutally low world price for oil (also allegedly orchestrated by the US and its puppet state Saudi Arabia), has agreed to severely reduce its nuclear refining capability, receiving little but promises of future lifting of sanctions in return.

The other thing, though, is this rhetoric from our Peace Laureate president threatening that if Iran doesn't agree to the negotiated terms of this pact (and the ruling imams of the Guardian Council still have to give it their okay), it will mean war.

Where does he get off making that kind of threat? Iran, it should be made clear, is not doing anything illegal. It is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and as such, allows inspections of its nuclear processing facilities as well as its nuclear power plant. This is in stark contrast to Israel, a country known to possess hundreds of nuclear weapons, though it won't admit this, and which is not a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Pact. Indeed, Israel allows no inspections of its own nuclear facilities, including the Dimona Reactor where it makes plutonium for more bombs. Iran has no bombs, and isn't making any, yet it is threatened with war if it won't agree not to do something it already is not doing, and if it won't stop doing something it has every legal right to do-- namely to refine nuclear fuel, as many countries, from Japan and Taiwan to Brazil and Germany do all the time with nobody making a fuss about it.

Let's be clear here. Making a threat to attack a country that does not pose an imminent threat -- and since Iran a) has no nuclear bomb and b) is known not to have a bomb-making program (something even the CIA confirms) it is no imminent threat -- is a war crime under the UN Charter, to which the US is a signatory. It is one of the so-called Crimes Against Peace, which since the Nuremberg Tribunal have been called the greatest of all war crimes, since all other war crimes like the murder of civilians or torture derive from.

That is to say that even as Obama finally makes one move in line with the hoped for promise of the Nobel Committee in awarding him a Peace Price before he had done anything at the start of his first term, he is grievously mocking them and the award they gave him by committing the worst kind of war crime.

This should not surprise us. President Obama has become one of the the great war-mongers of our history, presiding over an illegal war against Libya, another against Somalia, a third against Syria and now a fourth against Yemen. He is pressing towards war against Russia by moving US forces up close to the Russian Border in Estonia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe while imposing sanctions on Russia that are expressly aimed at "regime change" targeting President Vladimir Putin. He has more recently absurdly labeled Venezuela a "national security threat" to the US, earning the enmity of almost the entire Latin American region, save only the US puppet state of Panama. He has continued to have US forces occupy Afghanistan, where they maintain a pro-US puppet regime in power. And of course he persists in personally overseeing a drone war campaign against myriad nations -- all of it illegal -- and in terms the numbers of its civilian victim slaughter, an ongoing warcrime of immense proportions.

So for the sake of Iran and humanity, one small cheer for the tentative agreement reached with Iran to limit their nuclear program. Let's all hope that the agreement survives death by a thousand cuts in both Tehran and Washington.

But let's not go overboard in praising the president, who remains an insult to the Nobel Peace Price, a bloody killer of innocent men, women and children, and a blight on America's reputation around the world.

When Unions Fail: Refinery Strikers "Betrayed" by USW

USW continues betrayal of remaining oil refinery strikers

by Tom Hall - WSWS

6 April 2015

The United Steelworkers union’s isolation of striking oil workers continues as the employers at the few refineries that remain on strike seize upon last month’s national sellout agreement to push for even more draconian cuts, secure in the knowledge the USW will not lift a finger to defend these embattled workers.

Some 3,000 workers are still on strike at BP, Marathon and LyondellBasell facilities in Indiana, Texas and Ohio. Last Friday, the union pushed through a sellout local agreement at Marathon’s refinery in Catlettsburg, Kentucky where workers are expected to return next week.

The new contract was passed by a vote of 226-153 according to lead union negotiator David Martin, indicating a large opposition, even after two months in which the USW has sought to starve workers into submission. The deal includes meager raises contained in the USW national agreement that hardly keep up with the rate of inflation:

The new contract also contains “language that will limit routine maintenance contracting,” according Martin, the same vague language that will do nothing to stop the replacement of fulltime workers with lower-paid contractors with no job security or health and pension benefits. The union also agreed to implement an alternate work schedule, with 12-hour workdays.

A spokesman for Marathon hailed the agreement. The union attempted to claim victory, with Martin declaring,

“We got what we wanted on the national side and part of what we wanted on the local issues.” 

Just two weeks ago, however, during a week of negotiating under a federal mediator, Martin publicly declared the union’s willingness to settle merely for an extension of the previous contract, which Marathon rejected.

Workers at the Catlettsburg refinery, one of the first refineries called out on strike on February 1, have endured eight weeks of a strike in which the USW has refused to provide benefits from its $350 million strike fund, instead distributing grocery store gift cards and forcing workers to apply for what help is available, cap in hand, to local union committees and welfare agencies. Unable to survive such conditions many workers at the remaining refineries have crossed picket lines and returned to work, while others see no purpose in continuing the strike under the treacherous leadership of the USW. It is under these circumstances that the USW was able to ram through the local contract in Catlettsburg, despite a significant “no” vote.

While abandoning the interests of oil workers, the USW apparatus is concerned only with protecting its own financial and institutional interests. Workers have reported that one of the demands the USW is seeking at the BP-Husky refinery near Toledo, Ohio involves getting some contractors who currently belong to building trades unions under the jurisdiction of the USW so it can collect their dues money.

A reporting team from the World Socialist Web Site visited the picket line at the BP-Husky refinery late last week. There were only three pickets when the reporters arrived. A younger worker immediately approached reporters, having recently read the World Socialist Web Site’s article on the USW “solidarity” rally in Whiting, Indiana (see: Indiana “solidarity” rally promotes Democrats, covers up USW betrayal of oil workers’ strike).

The worker, who asked to remain anonymous, told reporters he believed that the oil workers’ struggle could have a broader impact. “What happens here will help determine what happens with other workers,” he said. “We are the talk of Jeep,” he continued, referring to the Chrysler Jeep plant in Toledo where auto workers face a September contract deadline.

At the same time, he expressed frustration at the fact that so many of his fellow workers, including some of his friends, were crossing the picket line, and the low level of support, including financial support, from the union. He said workers had to bring their utility bills to the union hall, where a union committee would decide who and what would get paid. Strikers also received a meager $100 in Kroger grocery store gift cards.

He said it wasn’t entirely clear to him why the strike was continuing. The union is going to do whatever it wanted, in his opinion. Speaking about the USW’s attempt to get contractors at the refinery to pay dues, he said, “That doesn’t seem right. They would be paying twice.”

Another worker with eight years seniority complained bitterly about the treatment workers received from the police. “The laws are all on the company’s side. The law isn’t for the workingman. I remember when I was young, people were out there on strike fighting for their rights. Now you get eight people on a picket line and they call the police.”

“The world isn’t what it was,” he continued. “The strike isn’t a weapon any more and it doesn’t seem we can stop them.”

At the two Houston-area plants still on strike, the LyondellBasell refinery in Pasadena and the Marathon refinery in Texas City, the companies have gone on the offensive, seeking nothing less than a total capitulation. LyondellBasell representatives walked out of federally mediated negotiations last month, reportedly so abruptly that union negotiators “thought they were just taking a break.”

Union representatives have responded with handwringing, arguing that their services in maximizing the company’s profits are not being sufficiently appreciated. “We have played a key role in the record setting profits seen this last year,” an update sent to members of USW Local 227 read. “We are running this refinery better today than ever. And what do we get for it? What do we want for this? Nothing. We are not greedy. A roll over from the last contract is all we expect. To try and punish the very group that puts their lives on the line every day to help LyondellBasell reach these milestones is not only unconscionable, but an insult and a slap in the face.”

Marathon has been arguably more provocative at Texas City. In full view of picketers, management tore down crosses erected at the refinery two weeks ago during a candlelight vigil to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the explosion at the refinery that killed 15 people and injured more than 150 more. The USW responded with a tepid request that the crosses be returned so the local could erect a memorial at the union hall.

The bitter experience of the refinery workers of the past two months underscores the complete bankruptcy of the trade unions and the need for workers to break with these corporatist organizations and build new organizations of struggle, independent of the unions and the Democratic Party.

Unfit to Air: An Open Letter to CBC News

An open letter to Peter Mansbridge and the CBC News 

by Jim Miles, The View from Canada - Axis of Logic

Wednesday, Mar 25, 2015

It is a very short commercial but it speaks volumes about Canada’s supposedly leading news channel. In its fifteen seconds, Peter Mansbridge’s voice over says,

“I don’t make the news, I report it and at the end of the day if we’ve affected one person, one policy, that’s not a win, that is the news.”

Coming from the national CBC network, this is a rather pathetic self-serving mini infoclip. I had seen a longer clip that included a nice cliche about “the facts” but unfortunately tonight I cannot find a copy of that clip on line.

Regardless, the response is simple: yes, you do make the news. You make it by editing information, not using information, using descriptive language that either makes for a pejorative or ameliorative perspective. In the end, at the end of the day, yes it is a win for whichever perspective you are trying to promote within your editorial meetings and/or as directed by your corporate bosses. Facts are important, but it is the context they are placed within, the descriptors used, and in some cases it is a simple matter of not using a fact in order to build a bias.

Let me provide some recent examples.

Tar sands

First, a nice straight forward simple one from Wendy Mesley’s interview with Naomi Klein concerning her new book This Changes Everything - Capitalism versus the Climate (Alfred A Knopf, Canada, 2014. Well worth the read.) During the interview, Ms Mesley said (paraphrased) “We are not allowed to use ‘tar sands’, we have to use oil sands.” So how does that fit in with the ‘facts’, one of which is that in Alberta it is bitumen, the prime component of tar, from which - tar sands?

Crude bitumen as found in the tar sands is so heavy and viscous that it will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons. Among many other reasons that is a principal reason why it should not be shipped across British Columbia and over B.C.’s coastal oceans.

Norway (1)

Another example of CBC news spin was January 23's report by Susan Ormiston comparing Alberta and Norway and their respective accumulated oil heritage funds. From her reporting, the implication is that Norway is in such a positive position because of its oil fund.

What is not mentioned is that when the fund was made, the government continued to tax the citizens at their original rates. What this prevented was the Norwegian kroner from becoming a “petro-kroner”. In other words, the state did not become reliant on oil for its budgetary finances. Certainly they utilize it, but for the most part, the oil profits are invested in a heritage fund that will protect Norway from having to worry about IMF/World Bank imposed “austerity” if the economy drops - as it will with the current oil price down turn.

Further to that comparison, Norway’s taxes compared to Alberta’s are about twice as high: corporate 27 to 15 per cent; Personal 39 to 29 per cent; Sales tax 25 to 5 per cent (GST); and Social Security, 20 to 12.5 per cent. On the other hand, education and health care in Norway are free at all levels to all citizens, and in some cases to non-citizens as well, with Norway scoring consistently higher than Canada on international standardized testing.

So where are Alberta and Canada? The majority of the money from the tar sands goes to the corporations. Our petro-dollar, as it has become, is subject to the whims of the oil market (and the US$, but that is outside this presentation). Education in Canada is increasingly becoming more and more expensive, and health care is being privatized more and more, making both less and less accessible to the general population.

I would much rather have Norway’s continuing social democracy to Canada’s increasingly less democratic plutocracy.

Russia/Ukraine (2)

I have mentioned previously how Canada’s news - in particular reference to the CBC - is biased as well as wrong when it comes to the situation in the Ukraine.

First is the larger context of US hegemony and its military efforts to protect its own petro-dollar, as seen with the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria among many others, and the ongoing relationship with autocratic tribal monarchies (45 beheadings in Saudi Arabia so far this year … great ally) in the Gulf region as well as around the world.

The CBC also does not give the background to the Maidan protests, and how they were manipulated by the US with covert operations guided by assistant secretary of state Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland (this reference can be verified on You Tube).

Nor are they using “facts” when they say that Russia is the aggressor in the Eastern regions, when it was the Kiev neoNazis that attacked in order to get rid of the Russian population in the east. Is Russia involved? Certainly, but only after the US started and continues to aggravate the situation in the Ukraine.

One of the bigger Mansbridge lies within this story were the repeated statements about the “rest of the world” and the “international response” while actually simply referencing the reaction of the U.S. and its allied government puppets. In ‘fact’, the majority of the ‘rest of the world’ which includes China, India, the Philippines, most of Africa, most of Latin America, did not buy into the manufactured story about Russian aggression getting ready to attack Ukraine and/or Europe.

That is simply fear factor fodder for the domestic masses within the ‘western’ world, who, if polls are correct, don’t want a war with Russia in any case.

As it stands now, China has Russia’s back; they are trading in renminbi and not dollars, the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has applications from most of the G7 to be an originating member, with even the U.S. expressing interest as its allies ignore its pleas not to join (but not Canada….?). The Chinese International Payment Platform (CIPS) program avoids the US$ and the IMF/World Bank/SWIFT and other institutions of the Washington consensus.

Is any of that in the news? Yes, if you look on the internet, but not so much if you look towards the CBC.


Jim Miles
Vernon, B.C.

(1) Norway’s sovereign fund suffering in current global economy?

(2) Oligarchs at war in Ukraine?

The View from Canada is the domain of writer Jim Miles, a Canadian educator living in British Columbia. He writes regularly about the Middle East and its militarization and economic subjugation. His concerns include the commodification of the world by corporate governance and the American government. He writes book reviews and opinion pieces which are published here, as well as in The Palestine Chronicle and Foreign Policy Journal. His work is widely distributed across the Internet.

Jim also regularly writes to all members of Canada's Parliament. We reproduce those here as The Miles Report


© Copyright 2015 by AxisofLogic.com

A Palestinian View of the Proposed Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran Nuclear Deal and Action

by Mazin Qumsiyeh - Popular Resistance

We have several good news in the span of few days: the win of Netanyahu (which will accelerate the end of the apartheid regime), the Iran nuclear deal, the restructuring and maturing Palestinian leadership inside 1948 areas (including a march from Naqab to Jerusalem to recognize the "Unrecognized villages"), the foolishness of Saudi Arabia and Egypt getting into a quagmire in Yemen (even though Yemeni people suffer but they will win), the relief on not having the wall plan approved in Beit Jala/Cremisan area (see below), and Palestine joining the International Criminal Court (even though I think PA political leaders do not have the spine to actually bring cases before the court since they put themselves at the mercy of their occupiers).

Oppression though continues here with Israel destroying home shooting unarmed civilians, and kidnapping our people (including the honorable Khaleda Jarrar). Of all the new developments, I think the Iran nuclear deal will prove to be game changing.

Lifting the sanctions on Iran and beginning to normalize relations has many ramifications. I want to just address one of the most significant: it proves to the subservient Arab leaders that standing up to Israel and its lackeys in Washington is possible. The Iranian economy was and continues to be better than geographically and populationally similar Egypt (subservient regime to Israel) even when the former was subjected to various sanctions and restrictions for 36 years.

Scientifically Iran was able to publish nearly as much research as the highest four Arab countries combined in the last 20 years. And now as sanctions are slowly lifted Iran will leap a generation ahead economically, socially, and scientifically.

The reason is rather simple: Iran (while being restricted by an "Islamic Republic" ideology) still has competitions for president and parliament and a relatively open society with respect for minorities and that includes people who speak Arabic or Hindi or Durzi or other languages not Farsi (Arabs, etc), and people who are not Sh'ii Muslims (Sunni, Jews, Christians, Yazidis, etc).

I am hopeful the US does not get its arms twisted to further follies by Israel/Zionists and actually carries through on its commitment to slowly lift sanctions. If they do, I am certain Iran will progress in more liberal fashion than any nearby country (Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or Syria or even Turkey). My eyes now are on Turkey and other countries with leaders who actually can read the geopolitical landscape to adjust their positions accordingly.

Perhaps Turkey, and Iran, joined by Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon can help get rid of the Western created and backed fundamentalists and democratize their own governments free from Israel/US interference. There are monumental changes that are happening and the struggle is not easy and may be bloody. The US and Europe can still get out of this with minimal losses and really promote democracy and secularism in the Western Asia and North Africa by abandoning their promotion of sectarianism and violence.

The biggest single step they can achieve this is by applying sanction on Israel until it complies with international law including the right of our Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands. Israel must also end its 50+ racist laws against non-Jews and hundreds of other laws/military orders that discriminate against the 4.6 million Palestinians in the occupied territories (occupied WB including Jerusalem and Gaza).

In historic Canaan/Land of Palestine we can then move to become a secular democracy and a model for the other areas in the region. The injustice to 12 million Palestinians remain the source of much (not all) of the troubles dominating the news today and addressing it will show the world that western power will indeed abandon their hypocrisy and promote democracy and peace.


ACTION BDS: In support of CAPJPO-EuroPalestine campaign to urge FIFA to suspend Israel from FIFA, please send a letter to FIFA president to immediately expel the apartheid state of Israel from FIFA.
Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the ex-government minister Ronnie Kasrils, all of whom experienced the brutality of this regime, state that Israeli apartheid is far worse than South African apartheid ever was. Israel is guilty of far more serious crimes against humanity.

For further information: (French)
http://www.europalestine.com/spip.php?article10449
http://www.thenation.com/blog/178642/after-latest-incident-israels-future-fifa-uncertain#

Did Israel lobby “bullying and threats” push Univ. of Southampton to cancel conference?
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-lobby-bullying-and-threats-push-univ-southampton-cancel-conference organizer's response
http://freespeechsouthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/organisersstatement-following-vice.html sign petition in support here:
https://www.change.org/p/the-university-of-southampton-uphold-free-speech-allow-the-conference-on-israel-and-international-law-to-proceed (case going to court)

Cremisan Monastery wins appeal in Israeli High Court: Route of Israeli Wall must be changed
http://www.imemc.org/article/71112

Support Refugees in Egypt. Demand ending of repression
http://www.refugeesolidarity.org/news/jointstatementegypt

The Power of Israel over the United States There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations actively engaged in promoting Israel’s foreign policy, economic and technological agenda in the US
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2015/03/90536the-power-of-israel-over-the-united-states/ and do come visit us in Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Professor and Director
PMNH

Nothing Right Being Done for Middle East

Nothing is Right in the Middle East

by Andre Vltchek - CounterPunch

There is nothing, absolutely nothing right in the Middle East these days. There seems to be no hope left, and no fervor. All that was pure was dragged through filth. All that was great here was stolen or smashed by the outsiders. Enthusiasm had been ridiculed, then drowned, or burned to ashes, or shattered by tanks and missiles.

Corruption thrives – corruption that inundated this entire region since the early days of Western colonialism, and then was sustained through the present-day imperialist global regime.

The land of the Middle East is tired; it is crying from exhaustion. It is scarred by wars. It is dotted with oil wells and rotting armor vehicles. There are corpses everywhere; buried, turned into dust, but still present in minds of those who are alive. There are millions of corpses, tens of millions of victims, shouting in their own, voiceless way, not willing to leave anyone in peace, pointing fingers, accusing!

This land is where so much began. Europe was nothing, when Byblos and Erbil stood tall, when a fabled civilization was forming in Mesopotamia, when Aleppo, Cairo and Al-Quds could only be rivaled by the great cities of China…

And this is where greatness, progress, decency and kindness were broken and bathed in blood by the crusaders, and later by the colonialist scum.

Europeans like to say that this part of the world is now ‘backward’, because it never experienced renaissance, but before it was broken and humiliated; it went much farther than renaissance, following its own way and direction. A primitive and aggressive medieval Europe took most of the knowledge from here.

All this means nothing now. Almost nothing is left of the glorious past. Grand Arab cities, once exhibiting their fabulous socialist concepts, including public and free hospitals and universities, even several centuries before Karl Marx was born, are now choking in smog, polluted, with almost nothing public remaining. Everything is privatized, and corrupt monarchs, generals and mafias are firmly in charge, from Egypt to the Gulf.

People wanted to have it exactly the opposite way. After the WWII, from North Africa to Iran, they were opting for various socialist concepts. But they were never allowed to have it their own way! Everything secular and progressive was smashed, destroyed by the Western masters of the world. And then came the second wave of semi-socialist states: Libya, Iraq and Syria, and they were bombed and destroyed as well, as nothing socialist, nothing that serves the people is ever allowed to survive in the ‘third world’ by Washington, London and Paris.

Millions died. Western imperialism orchestrated coups, sent brothers against brothers, bombed civilians and invaded directly, when all other means to achieve its hegemonic goals failed.

It created, it ‘educated’ a substantial layer of cynical servers of the Empire, the layer of new elites who are accountable to the governments in Washington, London and Paris, and treat their own people with spite and brutality. This layer is now ruling almost entire region, is fully backed by the West, and therefore there is extremely difficult to remove it.

Recently, at the “American University” in Beirut, one of the local academics told me “this region is doomed because of corruption”. But where did corruption come from, I wondered aloud. One after another, secular and socialist leaders in the Arab world were removed, overthrown. The Empire put the lowest grade of thugs, the most regressive monarchs and dictators, on the thrones.

The truth is, like in Africa, the people of the Middle East lost all hope that they could ever be allowed to elect the governments that would defend them and represent their interests. They sank to bare ‘survival mode’, to extreme individualism, to nepotism and to cynicism. They had to, in order to survive, in order to make their families and clans to stay afloat in the world forced on them by the others.

The result is atrocious: one of the most advanced civilizations on earth was converted into one of the most regressive.

***

And as a result, there is bitterness, humiliation and shame in the entire Middle East. There is an unhealthy, unnatural mood.

The thugs in Beirut, Amman, Erbil, Riyadh and Cairo are driving their shiny SUV’s and latest European sedans. New and newer luxury malls are offering top designer brands for those who make huge profits from the refugee crises triggered by the Empire, or from the crude which is being extracted by mistreated migrant workers. Humiliated Southeast Asian maids, often tortured, raped and abused, are sitting on the marble floors of the shopping centers, waiting for their masters who are engaging in unbridled food and shopping orgies, spending money that they never had to work for.

Collaborators are extremely well rewarded, for serving the Empire directly, for keeping business rolling and oil wells pumping, for staffing the UN agencies and through them providing legitimacy to this grotesque state of things, for brainwashing local youth in West-sponsored schools and universities.

All this is extremely hard to observe and to stomach, unless one is on a certain ‘wave’, immunized and indifferent, lobotomized, resigned to this state of the world.

The Middle East is of course not the exception – it is just a part of what I often describe as the ‘belt’ of client states of the West; a belt that winds from Indonesia through almost the entirety of Southeast Asia, then via the sub-Continent and the Middle East, down to Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

***

Now Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen. It does it in order to give full support to the outgoing pro-Western regime, and in order to damage Shi’a Muslims. Recent Saudi actions, as so many previous actions by that brutal client state of Washington, will open the doors to terrorism, and will kill thousands of innocent people. Shockingly, that is probably part of the plan.

I am now constantly invited to talk shows and radio and television interviews, to speak on the topic. But what more could be said and added?

The horrors of Western, Israeli, Saudi and Turkish aggressions (direct and indirect) are repeating themselves, year after year, in various parts of the Middle East. People are killed, many people, even children. There are some protests, some accusations, some ‘noise’, but at the end, the aggressors get away with everything. It is partially because the mass media in the West is twisting all the facts, again and again, and it does it extremely successfully. And most of the Arab media outlets are taking Western propaganda directly from the source, feeding it to their own people, shamelessly.

It is also because there is no effective international legal system in place that could punish aggressors.

The UN is nowhere to be found, when the acts or real terror are committed. Once in a while it is ‘concerned’, it even ‘condemns’ aggressors. But there are never any sanctions or embargos imposed against Israel or the United States, even Saudi Arabia. It is understood that the West and its allies are ‘above the law’.

This sends powerful signals to the rulers of the Middle East. The Egyptian military, which killed thousands of poor people right after it grabbed the power in a 2014 coup (which is commonly not defined as a coup, there), is now once again ‘eligible for US military aid’.

Fully prostituted Egyptian elites danced on the streets of Cairo when the coup took place, as did the elites in Chile, in 1973. I saw them, when I was making a documentary film for the South American Telesur, a film on how the West derailed the Arab Spring. They were posing for my cameras, cheering and hugging me, thinking that I am one of their handlers from the US or Europe.

Recently, I found an Egyptian UN staffer staring threateningly into my face:

“A coup?” she whispered. “You call it a coup? Egyptian people don’t call it a coup.”

How would I dare to argue with such a respectable representative of the Egyptian nation? I noticed that the pro-Western Egyptian elites love to pose as ‘Egyptian people’, as those species that are far removed from their mansions and chauffer-driven limousines.

***

There are tens of millions of people displaced in this part of the world. They come from Iraq and Syria, and from Palestine. There are new refugees and decades old refugees. Now, most certainly, there will be millions of Yemeni refugees.

In Lebanon alone, 2 million Syrian refugees live all over the place, some renting huts and houses, others, if the can afford it, leasing apartments in Beirut. But the UN and local authorities do not even register hundreds of thousands of them, those in Bekaa Valley and elsewhere. Refugees told me that many of them get turned away. If there is no registration, there are no food rations, no education for children and no medical care.

I saw refugees from several Iraqi cities, in Erbil, in Iraqi administered Kurdistan. They were escaping from the ISIS, which were created by the West.

A nuclear scientist Ishmael Khalil, originally from Tikrit University, told me: “All that I had was destroyed… Americans are the main reason for this insanity – for the total destruction of Iraq. Don’t just just me, ask any child, and you will hear the same thing… We all used to belong to a great and proud nation. Now everything is fragmented, and ruined. We have nothing – all of us have become beggars and refugees in our own land… I escaped five months ago, after ISIS devastated my university. And we all know who is behind them: the allies of the West: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others…”

Then I stood by what was left of a bridge, connecting the two shores of the Khazer River, just a few kilometers from the city of Mosul. ISIS blew up the bridge. A few villages around it were flattened by the US bombing. A Kurdish colonel who was showing me the area was proud to mention that he was trained in the UK and US. It felt like total insanity – all forces united in destroying Iraq, had the same sources: the US, the NATO, and the West!

A few kilometers from the frontline were oil fields, but local people said that oil companies were just stealing their land; nothing was coming back to local communities. As the flames of the oil refineries were burning, local people were digging out roots and herbs, in order to survive.

And there was a camp for Syrian refugees, too, nearby. But refugees were screened. Only those who expressed their hatred for the President al-Assad were allowed to stay.

***

Beirut is symbolic to what is happening in the entire Middle East.

Once glorious, the city now ranks near the bottom of quality of life indexes. With basically no public transportation, it is choking, polluted and jammed. Electric blackouts are common. Miserable neighborhoods are all around. Education and medical care are mostly private and unaffordable to the great majority. Dirty money propels construction of expensive condominiums, posh malls and overpriced restaurants.

Luxury cars are everywhere. Expensive condominiums, yachts, vehicles and designer clothes are the only measure of worth.

It is all thoroughly grotesque, considering that there are 2 million Syrian refugees struggling all over this tiny country. There are old Palestinian refugees in depressing camps. There are the hated and discriminated Bedouins, there are the abused Asian and African maids…

“Work is punishment”, says local credo. Nobody bothers to work too much.

There is plenty of money, but most of it does not come from work. Huge amounts come from drugs, from ‘accommodating refugees’, from business in Africa and elsewhere, from remittances of those who work in the Gulf.

Israel is next door. It is threatening, and periodically it attacks.

Hezbollah is the only large movement in the country that is fighting for social welfare of the people. It is also fighting Israel whenever it invades. And now, it is locked in an epic battle with ISIS. But it is on the terrorist list of the West, because it is Shi’a, and because it is too ‘socialist’ and too critical of the West.

In Beirut, everything goes. The rich are burning their money like paper. They ride their luxury cars and bikes without mufflers, run people over on pedestrian crossings, and never yield. They are mostly educated in the West and trilingual (Arabic, French and English). They commute back and forth to Europe as if it is a next-door village.

The need of the upper classes to show-off is all that matters in Beirut.

The poor – the majority of the Lebanese people – do not exist. One never hears about them. They are irrelevant.

***

Those who rule over the Middle East are corrupt, cynical, and unpatriotic.

And they are scared, because they know that they have betrayed their own people.

The more scared they are, the more brutal are their tactics. I see them in action, in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere.

Most of the left-wing movements and parties in the Middle East were destroyed, bought or derailed. Politics are about clans and religious sects and money. There is hardly any ideology left. There is no knowledge about Venezuela and Ecuador, China and Russia. The poor people love Russia, because “it stands against the West”, but there is very little understanding of the world outside the Middle East and the old colonial master – Europe.

Nothing feels right in the Middle East, these days.

New reports are coming in, alleging Israel of interrogating, torturing young Palestinian children.

Yemen, that ancient land with which I fell in love with from first sight, many years ago, is bleeding and burning.

Two cradles of civilization – Iraq and Syria – are totally torn to pieces, devastated.

Libya is breaking apart, most likely beyond repair, absolutely finished as a country.

Egypt is once again squeezed in an horrendous military grip.

Shi’a people in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are suffering great discrimination and violence.

People are dying; people are displaced, discriminated against. There is no justice, no social justice for the majority, the same scenario like in Indonesia, like in sub-Continent, like in East Africa, like everywhere where the Western imperialism and neoliberalism managed to have their way.

The West worked very hard to turn the Middle East into what it is now. It took centuries to transfigure this culturally deep and great part of the world into the horror show. But it is done!

The rest of the world should watch and learn. This should not be allowed to happen elsewhere. The “Southeast Asia – East Africa Corridor” is what the West wants to convert entire planet into. But it will not succeed, because there is Latin America, China, Russia, Iran, South African, Eritrea and other proud and determined nations standing on its way.

And the Middle East, one day, will stand up, too! The people will demand what is theirs. They will demand justice. Recently, they tried but they were smashed. I have no doubt that they will not give up – they will try again and again, until they win.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.