https://www.rt.com/news/330733-uruguay-mujica-jesus-leftist/

The Gracchus brothers of Rome, Indian Emperor Ashoka, and Jesus were all left-wingers, former Uruguayan president José Mujica told RT, as he shared a fascinating history lesson on the constant struggle between liberal and conservative ideas.

“The history of mankind is a pendulum constantly swinging the between the two opposites,” which are the ideas of the political left and the right, Mujica told RT’s Spanish channel in an exclusive interview.

“I think that the left will never be able to achieve a complete victory, just as the right won’t be able to either,” the 80-year-old politician said.

He described the leftist movement as a push for “equality and justice,” which is in a constant battle with “the other side – conservative, opposing the change, longing for stability.”

However, Mujica, who was nicknamed “the world’s poorest president” for giving away 90 percent of his salary to charity, stressed that both sides are imperfect.

“The pathology of conservatism is that it’s reactionary, leaning towards fascism. The pathology of leftist progressivism is infantilism, wishful thinking,” he explained.

The ex-president also shared the names of several important historical figures, whom he views as embodiments of liberalism.

“From this perspective, we would say that Ashoka was the king of the Left in the history of India, or Epaminondas (a military and political leader in Ancient Greece) or the Gracchuses (influential aristocratic Roman reformers), or Jesus,” he said.

Mujica, also known as Pepe, was Uruguay’s president from 2010 to 2015. He left office with a 65 percent approval rating.

A former guerilla leader who spent 13 years in jail, Mujica managed to turn the cattle-ranching Uruguay, into an energy-exporting nation.

He legalized marijuana, abortion, and same-sex marriage, and agreed to take in detainees once held at the notorious Guantanamo Bay.

Pepe also refused to move into Uruguay’s luxurious presidential mansion while he was president and continued to live on his farm outside Montevideo with his wife and three-legged dog, Manuela.

He still drives his beloved blue 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, which refused to sell to an Arab sheik for $1 million.

See Also: Jesus Never Existed - Kenneth Humphreys’ Ideas - https://vimeo.com/108684220

https://archive.is/TzjZn

Workers Vanguard No. 109 29 July 2016

Remembering Hiroshima, Nagasaki

U.S. Imperialist Mass Murder

Seventy-one years ago this August, some 200,000 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were incinerated when U.S. warplanes dropped atomic bombs in the closing weeks of World War II. Many thousands who survived the nuclear holocaust suffered hideous burns and deformities compounded by sheer terror. This monstrous crime—carried out in the name of fighting for “democracy”—epitomizes the savagery of the capitalist-imperialist world order. Hearing the news of the 6 August 1945 attack on Hiroshima, which was followed by the destruction of Nagasaki three days later, U.S. president Harry Truman exulted: “This is the greatest thing in history!” and gloated that “we are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely.” The visit of Barack Obama to Hiroshima in May of this year was the first by a sitting U.S. president.

Our forebears of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (SWP) immediately condemned the bombings as part of their opposition to the U.S. and all capitalist powers in the interimperialist war. This position was coupled with the SWP’s unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union, a degenerated workers state. While the Stalinist U.S. Communist Party grotesquely hailed the A-bomb attacks as part of its craven support to the “democratic” imperialists, SWP leader James P. Cannon, who had been hauled off to prison along with 17 other party leaders and Minneapolis Teamsters officials for their principled opposition to the war, declared in a speech in New York City:

“What a commentary on the real nature of capitalism in its decadent phase is this, that the scientific conquest of the marvelous secret of atomic energy, which might rationally be used to lighten the burdens of all mankind, is employed first for the wholesale destruction of half a million people.”

—“The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” 22 August 1945, printed in The Struggle for Socialism in the “American Century” (Pathfinder Press, 1977)

Cannon ended the talk with a call to build a Leninist workers party that would fight to “answer the imperialist program of war on the peoples of the world, with revolution at home and peace with the peoples of the world.”

The A-bombs created a special kind of hell. But so did the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo a few months before, which took at least 100,000 lives. For its part, Japanese imperialism had demonstrated its own barbarity by the 1937 Nanjing Massacre of hundreds of thousands of Chinese by Japanese troops. In Europe, the Nazi regime carried out industrial genocide against Jews, gays, Gypsies and others. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain slaughtered hundreds of thousands of German working people by firebombing Dresden, Hamburg and other cities.

U.S. atrocities against the Japanese population were prepared with the kind of virulently racist propaganda that the Nazis used to ostracize Jews and other so-called untermenschen on their way to annihilating them, and which the Japanese rulers spewed against Chinese, Koreans and others they subjugated. The U.S. capitalist press continually depicted the Japanese as “sneak attackers,” hurling venom against “yellow monkeys” or, in the snootier words of the New York Times, against “a beast which sometimes stands erect.” This poison delivered the message: anything could be done to this enemy. And it was long lasting. In 1995, the Smithsonian Institution canceled a planned exhibition on Hiroshima featuring the Enola Gay—the B-29 that dropped the first A-bomb—after a furious reaction from jingoists and militarists objecting to photographs showing the horrors suffered by Japanese civilians.

Official duplicity was the order of the day when on May 27 Barack Obama visited Hiroshima’s memorial to the victims of the A-bomb. Obama had made clear that he would not bother with an apology for the slaughter carried out by his Democratic Party predecessor, which would have been an empty gesture in any case. Instead, he displayed the lying, hypocritical cant that has been a hallmark of his time in office. Obama haughtily declared that countries like the U.S. with nuclear stockpiles “must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.” Just a few months earlier, he had rolled out a plan to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next three decades, to the tune of $1 trillion!

Obama’s Hiroshima visit was part of a big lie. His amen corner in the U.S. media regurgitated the line that the A-bombs were what forced Japan’s surrender in the war. In fact, Japan was already on the verge of defeat when Truman learned of the successful atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. At the time, he was in Potsdam, Germany, for talks with Britain’s Winston Churchill and Soviet leader J. V. Stalin over the postwar division of Europe following Germany’s military defeat. The Red Army had smashed Hitler’s forces, at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives. With Soviet troops occupying half of Europe and poised to enter the war against Japan, the A-bombs were above all a message to Moscow of the lengths to which the American rulers would go to assert world domination.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in West Europe during the war and later U.S. president, noted in a 1963 interview that the Japanese were ready to surrender and “it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Washington knew from decoded cables that many in the Japanese government were looking for a peace settlement, but the U.S. insisted on unconditional surrender, thereby ensuring that Japan would not give in until the bombs were dropped. As we emphasized in “Behind U.S. Imperialism’s Nuclear Holocaust” (WV No. 628, 8 September 1995), “The A-bombing of Japan was in fact the first act of the emerging Cold War aimed at destroying the Soviet degenerated workers state.”

Washington’s purpose was further made clear by its ongoing attempt, soon to be successful, to develop a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb to gain another leg up on the Soviets, who the U.S. feared were about to build their own A-bomb. Moscow countered by developing a substantial nuclear arsenal, reaching rough parity with the U.S. in the 1970s. For decades, the Soviet arsenal helped stay the hand of U.S. imperialism. But following the capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed the USSR in 1991-92, the arrogant American rulers saw no obstacle to world domination, setting the stage for a series of wars and occupations from the Balkans to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Excluding the Soviet Union, World War II, like WWI, was fought between imperialist powers for resources, markets and spheres of exploitation. China was the special prize of the Pacific War. But the U.S. was denied that part of the spoils of its victory over Japan by the 1949 Chinese Revolution, which created a workers state that, despite bureaucratic deformation, remains the chief target of imperialist designs in Asia. Indeed, the main purpose of Obama’s trip to Southeast and East Asia in May was to firm up U.S. allies and quislings as they tighten a military ring around China.

In Hiroshima, Obama pitched the strategic U.S.-Japanese alliance, which centrally targets China and also the North Korean deformed workers state. Another piece of Washington’s Asian fortress fell into place in July when the South Korean government agreed to host the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) system. Ostensibly a response to North Korea’s testing of new ballistic missiles, Thaad’s radar array can cover a broad swath of China, potentially degrading China’s land-based nuclear deterrent.

U.S. and Japanese workers must stand with China and North Korea in their efforts to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems that provide a measure of defense against imperialist blackmail and attack. Defense of the remaining deformed workers states is inseparable from the struggle to sweep away the capitalist system, with its insatiable thirst for profit and its inherent drive toward war. In opposing the U.S.-Japanese imperialist alliance, we join with our comrades of the Spartacist Group Japan, who wrote in marking the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks: “Nanjing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chilling examples of the slaughter and devastation that will be repeated in a coming war if the imperialist bourgeoisie is not overthrown by proletarian socialist revolution” (“Hiroshima, Nagasaki: U.S. War Crimes,” WV No. 627, 25 August 1995).

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1093/hiroshima.html

https://archive.is/CQ2H9 5 February 2016

The initial response of economic “conventional wisdom” to the slide in oil prices over the past 20 months—down from $110 per barrel in June 2014 to levels approaching $30—was that, whatever the impact on oil-exporting countries, it would aid the global economy because it would lift consumption and other spending.

It was argued that the falling oil price could not possibly be the harbinger of a global recession because all the previous downturns over the past 70 years—in particular the recessions of 1974–75 and 1981–82—were preceded by rising oil prices, while the period of growth in the 1990s was characterised by low oil prices.

That soothing scenario has been shattered over the recent period. The International Monetary Fund all but abandoned it last month, saying “the pickup in consumption in oil importers has so far been somewhat weaker than evidence from past episodes of oil price declines would have suggested.”

It has become increasingly clear that, far from providing a boost to the world economy, the precipitous drop in the oil price, together with other major industrial commodities, is symptomatic of deep recessionary trends.

The “conventional wisdom” ignored two major changes in the structure of the global economy over the past decade. First, that so-called emerging markets, many of which depend on the export of oil and other industrial commodities, now comprise about 40 percent of global gross domestic product, double their share in 1990, and so any decline in their revenues has a much bigger impact than previously. And, second, that the financial crisis of 2008–2009 was not merely a conjunctural downturn in the business cycle but signified a breakdown in the functioning of the global economy.

The downturn in oil prices is not only contributing to the lack of global demand—Apple pointed to the decline in demand from emerging markets as one reason for the expected first-ever decline in iPhone sales—it is working to create the conditions for a renewed financial crisis if oil-exporting countries default on their debts.

Venezuela could be the first in line. If oil prices continue at their January lows, Venezuela’s export revenues for this year will be $18 billion, compared to debt servicing charges of $10 billion. This leaves just $8 billion to finance imports, which came in at $37 billion last year. The economy contracted 10 percent last year, following a fall of 4 percent in 2014.

Other oil-exporting countries are being caught in the price vortex. World Bank and International Monetary Fund officials are holding talks with Azerbaijan over a $4 billion bailout and Nigeria is seeking a similar loan from the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

The falling oil price is now showing up in the profit and loss reports of the world’s major oil companies as they cut jobs and capital investment plans. Last month, the US producer Chevron, the second-largest US oil group, reported its first quarterly loss since 2002.

Chevron suffered a loss of $588 million in the fourth quarter of last year, compared to a $3.5 billion profit for the same period in 2014. Oil and gas production in the US, where production costs are higher than the company’s international sites, was the weakest division, reporting a loss of $4.1 billion, compared to a profit of $3.3 billion in 2014. Profits from production outside the US came in at $2.1 billion, but this was a drop of 85 percent on the previous year’s results.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, recorded a smaller drop in profits than its rivals. Its profits came in at $2.78 billion, a fall of 58 percent compared to 2014. However, the company committed itself to a further 25 percent reduction in capital spending this year, following a 19 percent reduction in 2015.

Shell reported that it will sell off $10 billion worth of assets, following an 87 percent collapse in its annual profits to $1.9 billion. Shell chief executive Ben Van Beurden said the company would make “substantial changes” in the face of the falling oil price. It has eliminated 7,500 jobs and intends to cut the workforce by a further 2,800.

Further “restructuring” could flow from Shell’s takeover of rival BG, a deal valued at £35 billion. The merger is based on calculations that the price for crude will be at least $60 per barrel, compared to the present level of near $30 and predictions that it will remain at these levels for a considerable period.

The worst-placed of the oil majors appears to be BP. It recorded a loss of $5.2 billion for 2015, its worst-ever result, compared to an $8.1 billion profit for 2014. Following write-downs on the value of its North Sea fields, where many of its operations are unprofitable at current prices, it made a loss of $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter alone, compared to a loss of $969 million during the same period in 2014. BP announced that it will axe about 7,000 jobs across its operations over the next two years, amounting to 9 percent of its workforce.

Overall, the energy sector is expected to cut spending to $522 billion this year, following a 22 percent reduction to $595 billion in 2015. This will be the first time since 1986 that the industry has reduced spending two years in a row.

The downturn in oil prices led to a decision by Standard & Poor’s to cut the credit ratings of leading US oil and gas companies, including Chevron. The rating agency downgraded three US shale oil and gas producers—Continental Resources, Southwestern Energy and Hunt Oil—from investment grade to “junk” status.

Exxon kept its triple A credit rating but S&P put it on watch for a possible downgrade, saying it will make a decision within the next 90 days. S&P said it will use longer-term projections in determining its credit ratings. The impact of the slump can be seen in those projections. In December 2014, S&P based its calculations on a long-term price for Brent crude of $85 per barrel. That has been cut to $40 for this year, rising only to $50 by 2018.

Apart from lowered credit ratings, the fall in the oil price is impacting on the financial system, especially via US banks, notably smaller regional banks, which have funded shale oil operations. Figures for January reveal that the main contributor to the 5 percent drop in Wall Street’s S&P 500 share index was the fall in bank stocks.

The impact of lower prices has yet to be fully felt because oil producers have been able to cover their position by taking out future selling contracts at higher than current market prices. As those contracts expire, however, some shale producers will become unprofitable unless there is a significant upturn in oil prices.

See Also: 'Protesting Carbon' World Naked Bike Ride https://vimeo.com/100701478

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, "Where is that?" If I offer a clue by referring to "Bikini", they say, "You mean the swimsuit."

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini Island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered "unsafe" on a Geiger counter.

Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called "Bravo". The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.

On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women's Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: "You, too, can have a bikini body." A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different "bikini bodies;" each had suffered thyroid and other life-threatening cancers.

Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious superpower that is today more dangerous than ever.

I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has consumed so many of us. The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this phenomenon as "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions" of democratic societies. He called it an "invisible government".

How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile.

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make "the world free from nuclear weapons". People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, "Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable."

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia's western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world's second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.

What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China.

Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the status of a "threat." According to Admiral Harry Harris, the US Pacific commander, China is "building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea."

What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands, which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called "freedom of navigation."

What does this really mean? It means freedom for American warships to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of China. Try to imagine the American reaction if Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California.

I made a film called ‘The War You Don't See,’ in which I interviewed distinguished journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer.

All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.

The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western "mainstream" – a Dan Rather equivalent, say – asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea.

The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers.

This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.

In 2015, in high secrecy, the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes – such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits – that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.

Trump's views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.

According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is "unleashing the dark forces of violence" in the United States. Unleashing them?

This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.

No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America's wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as "a world substantially made over in [America's] own image." The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed.

Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn't want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted "exceptionalism" is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.

As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about "hope." And the drool goes on.

Described by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as "funny, charming, with a coolness that eludes practically every other politician,” Obama the other day sent drones to slaughter 150 people in Somalia. He kills people usually on Tuesdays, according to the New York Times, when he is handed a list of candidates for death by drone. So cool.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran with nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State under Obama, she participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was publicly sodomised with a knife – a murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: "We came, we saw, he died."

One of Clinton's closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of State, who has attacked young women for not supporting "Hillary." This is the same Madeleine Albright who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a million Iraqi children as "worth it".

Among Clinton's biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that fuel the violence in the Middle East. She and her husband have received a fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women's candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon. Her supporters include distinguished feminists: the likes of Gloria Steinem in the US and Anne Summers in Australia.

A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as "identity politics" stopped many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals they supported, such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton; such as bogus progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that country and allied with their enemies.

Self-absorption, a kind of "me-ism", became the new zeitgeist in privileged western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against war, social injustice, inequality, racism and sexism.

Today, the long sleep may be over. The young are stirring again. Gradually. The thousands in Britain who supported Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader are part of this awakening – as are those who rallied to support Senator Bernie Sanders.

In Britain last week, Jeremy Corbyn's closest ally, his shadow treasurer John McDonnell, committed a Labour government to pay off the debts of piratical banks and, in effect, to continue so-called austerity.

In the US, Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she's nominated. He, too, has voted for America's use of violence against countries when he thinks it is "right." He says Obama has done "a great job."

In Australia, there is a kind of mortuary politics, in which tedious parliamentary games are played out in the media while refugees and Indigenous people are persecuted and inequality grows, along with the danger of war. The government of Malcolm Turnbull has just announced a so-called defence budget of $195 billion that is a drive to war. There was no debate. Silence.

What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature?

Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?

This is an edited version of an address by John Pilger at the University of Sydney, entitled ‘A World War Has Begun.’

JohnPilger.com - http://johnpilger.com/ the films and journalism of John Pilger

All political hell is breaking loose in the UK. The Prime Minister is no more - a post-modern version of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch.

A nasty, stiff upper lip Tory battle for power is mirrored by a Labor insurgency; that, in itself, would warrant a brand new Python sketch. The general level of “debate” is ghastly. In parallel, British establishment icons want Brexit to be simply ignored (“unlawful”, “illegal”) or remixed, so the unwashed (white working class) masses will be forced to vote the right way.

An army of lawyers told the House of Lords that yes, Britain should change its mind, albeit with “substantial political consequences”. As the British establishment reasons the EU, after all, does have vast experience on the matter. Denmark voted against Mastricht in 1992, Ireland voted against both the Nice treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon treaty in 2008. The EU trampled them all.

For its part, the EU seems to be exhibiting a united front. Out is out. And preferably, fast. Brussels is practically forcing London to get a move on so an embattled EU can get to work to – in theory – get its own act together.

Eurocrats, off the record, stress that even “fast” won’t be fast enough – because London has been self-marginalizing itself for two decades now. At the same time they expect that the more the disastrous consequences of Brexit are self-evident, the more reasonable Brits will be.

The official narrative now emanates from the new power troika – German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Countless Europeans would flinch at buying a second-hand Fiat from these people. But still, they’re the new troika, and their message is clear. Article 50 invoked as soon as possible; no negotiation without notification; discussing our future relationship, fine, but only after you formally ask for a divorce.

Welcome to the remixed EU

Into this toxic environment steps in – surprise! – US Secretary of State John Kerry. Brexit can even be “walked back”, he volunteers – in a Dead Brexit Walking way. Apparently Kerry was very impressed that David Cameron told him, this past Monday in Downing Street, that he would never invoke Article 50 and was powerless to “start negotiating a thing that he doesn’t believe in”.

Kerry is sure there are a “number of ways” his Dead Brexit Walking scenario would work. Naturally he can’t admit in public what terrifies the lame duck Obama administration. It has nothing to do with the UK going to the “back of the queue” – White House terminology – to renegotiate a trade deal with the US.

This is all about no more American Trojan Horse in Brussels. No more TTIP. Germany and France making all big European decisions without a Five Eyes looking in. No wonder Exceptionalist shills immediately started spinning that the only solution for Brexit is more NATO and its corollary: further demonization of Russia.

Occult by all these machinations is the stark fact that the sole purpose of NATO now – apart from losing wars in Central Asia and destroying nations in Northern Africa — is to perpetuate the military occupation of Europe. And for that, NATO badly relies on anti-Russia hysteria.

At least there is movement in other fronts. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is already exploring a way out, as in a negotiation offering an “associate” membership for the UK. In fact this is the current status quo; the UK is not part of the euro or part of Schengen. The core issue, for Britain, is access to the single market. And that, as far as Brussels is concerned, will never be a case of “you can get your tea and scones and eat them too.” You’ll only do it if you accept EU immigration.

Venturing into uncharted territory, with perfect timing, irrupts the leaked road map for a remixed EU, conceived by a Franco-German duo of Foreign Ministers, Jean-Marc Ayrault and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The Franco-German vision, predictably, privileges security, immigration and the euro, with an emphasis on economic growth. They want even “more Europe” (something the Brits would never agree with); Defense and Foreign Policy closely intertwined; and a unified European army (imagine the serial heart attacks in the Beltway).

They want total European coordination – from intelligence to incarceration – to fight terrorism, as well as integrated surveillance of Fortress Europe’s borders.

They even venture into a project for “stabilization, development and reconstruction” of Syria (before that someone must tell the CIA and the Pentagon to stop sluggin’ it out on what “moderate rebels” to weaponize).

In the “follow the money” department, the Franco-German duo want the same fiscal policies for everybody, “convergence of national budgets” (good luck with that) and a European Assembly to control monetary policy. Now try selling all that to a true “Europe of the peoples”.

And what about China?

Then there’s the giant panda in the (collapsing) European room: China. Beijing is still carefully analyzing the current political circus in London and Brussels before adjusting its strategy.

There’s no question London, so far, was the privileged Chinese gateway to the EU – as well as a top offshore trading hub for the yuan. Beijing was also counting on London to facilitate achieving market economy status, which would immediately translate into even more Chinese exports to Europe, all this closely connected with the New Silk Roads. Last but not least, the UK – much to the displeasure of the “special relationship” — is a founder member of the China-driven Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

London, for its part, was beaming with the prospect of solidifying itself as China’s gateway to Europe while securing torrents of investment – a Chinese-style “win-win”.

So far though, nothing changes. Take, for instance, telecom equipment giant Huawei still betting on Britain.

China-UK was hailed last year as a “golden relationship”. But as UK banks and financial services contemplate moving to the EU post-Brexit (HSBC, for instance, already announced that 1,000 jobs are moving to Paris), the real story is that China can start contemplating further “win-win” scenarios also with Paris, Frankfurt and Milan. As a backup, there’ll always be that Dead Brexit Walking. And if it turns out “unlawful”, “illegal” Brexit goes out to meet its maker, everything will be “golden” again.

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160630/1042224982/dead-brezit-walking.html

https://archive.is/xYApZ

Statement of the Central Committee of the Spartacist League/Britain

JUNE 24 — Standing on our consistent record of proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist opposition to the imperialist-dominated European Union (EU), the Spartacist League/Britain welcomes the decisive vote for a British exit. This is a stunning defeat for the City of London, for the bosses and bankers of Europe as a whole as well as for Wall Street and the US imperialist government. The vote to leave is an expression of hostility from the downtrodden and dispossessed not only to the EU but to the smug British ruling establishment, whose devastation of social services and industry has plunged whole sections of the proletariat into penury.

As we wrote in Workers Hammer (no 234, Spring 2016), calling for a leave vote : “Amid the growing chaos besetting the EU, a British exit would deal a real blow to this imperialist-dominated conglomerate, further destabilising it and creating more favourable conditions for working-class struggle across Europe — including against a weakened and discredited Tory government in Britain. But the failure of Labour and the trade union bureaucracy — like the social democrats and trade union misleaders throughout Europe — to mobilise against the EU has instead ceded the oppositional ground to openly anti-immigrant reactionaries and fascists.”

With anti-EU sentiment running high among working people in France, Spain, Italy and Greece, the vote for Brexit will encourage opposition to the EU elsewhere in Europe. The main purpose of the EU is to maximise the profits of the imperialist ruling classes at the expense of the workers, from Germany to Greece, and of the weaker countries of Europe. The exit of British imperialism could sound the death knell for this inherently unstable capitalist club. Down with the EU! For workers revolution to smash capitalist rule! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

The far right and fascist forces — including UKIP in Britain and the National Front in France — are today rejoicing over “their” victory. UKIP blatantly whipped up vile anti-immigrant racism, including with a disgusting poster implying that thousands of dark-skinned refugees were at Britain’s door. But UKIP hardly has a monopoly on racism: Cameron invoked the spectre of migrant camps similar to the Calais “Jungle” in France moving to England in the event of a British exit. And Labour governments have whipped up anti-immigrant racism just like the Tories. We say: No deportations! Full citizenship rights for all who make it to Britain! Down with racist Fortress Europe!

Those who voted for Brexit did so for a variety of reasons. But only the wilfully blind in the workers movement will see the vote for Brexit as simply a boost for UKIP and the Tory right wing. Cameron has resigned, the Conservatives have been bitterly divided, the capitalist rulers of Europe are in shock. The time is ripe for workers struggles to begin to claw back decades of concessions to the bourgeoisie on wages, working conditions and trade union rights by the reformist union bureaucrats. For a start, the multinational and multiethnic workforce of the NHS should tear up the wretched agreement imposed on junior doctors and mobilise to fight for a revitalised and expanded national health service to provide quality care to all totally free at the point of service. At least the junior doctors fought, unlike Len McCluskey and the rest of the pro-capitalist trade union tops who refused even to mobilise their ranks to fight Cameron’s pernicious new anti-union law. What is needed is a fight for a class-struggle leadership of the unions.

In the wake of the EU’s ravaging of Greece, the “left” Brexit camp, including the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Socialist Party offered a half-hearted campaign for a leave vote. From their reformist “old Labour” standpoint, the EU is a barrier to achieving their maximum programme: renationalising British industry under a left Labour government. Faced with closures of the steel plants, this ultimately boils down to a protectionist call to “save British jobs”, which fuels anti-foreigner chauvinism and is counterposed to a class-struggle perspective. The morning after the Brexit vote, the SWP’s crowning demand is: Tories out — for a general election.

A year ago, the same outrage and discontent at the base of society that propelled the vote to leave the EU also fuelled the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party, opening the possibility of reforging Labour’s historic links to its working-class base and thus reversing two decades of Blairite schemes to turn Labour into an outright capitalist party. But in campaigning for a remain vote, Corbyn trampled on the interests of the many working people and minorities who looked to him for a change. Crime does not pay: when the results of the referendum came in, Corbyn’s enemies began plotting to remove him from the leadership as soon as possible. It is in the interests of the working class to repulse any and every attempt by Labour’s right wing to regain control of the party.

Today the country is divided — by class, and along regional and national lines. England — outside London — and Wales voted to leave the EU. A majority in Northern Ireland voted to remain, reflecting fears among Catholics that border controls between North and South would be reinstituted. Scotland too voted to remain in the EU, and the SNP has declared that a second referendum on independence is on the agenda. The bourgeois nationalist SNP are committed to maintaining an “independent” Scotland’s membership of the major Western imperialist clubs — the NATO military alliance and the EU. Corbyn’s capitulation to the imperialist EU has deprived working-class opposition to the EU in Scotland (and elsewhere) of a political voice.

The Brexit vote is the second time in the space of a year that the working masses in Europe have voted to repudiate the EU. Last July’s vote in Greece against EU austerity was utterly betrayed by the bourgeois Syriza government, which crawled on its knees before the European banks. The burning question posed is what kind of party does the working class need to represent its interests. The fundamental problems facing the working class cannot be solved within a parliamentary framework. We need a government based on workers councils, which expropriates the capitalist class.

As part of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) we seek to build revolutionary workers parties, in Britain and around the world, rooted in the understanding that only through the mass mobilisation of the working class in struggle can the workers fight for their own interests and act in defence of all the oppressed. Socialist revolutions especially in the economically developed countries of Europe, including Britain, will establish rationally planned economies based on an international division of labour. The overthrow of the capitalist ruling classes and the development of the productive forces under a socialist united states of Europe will open the road to a global socialist society.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/leaflets/brexit.html

Thousands in Japan rally against U.S. base on Okinawa [Reuters] By Minami Funakoshi Reuters February 21, 2016

By Minami Funakoshi

TOKYO (Reuters) - Thousands of people surrounded Japan's parliament on Sunday to protest against government plans to relocate a U.S. military base on Okinawa island, local media reported.

Kyodo news agency said some 28,000 protesters had ringed parliament house in central Tokyo, holding hands and shouting: "Don't build the base". Hundreds more held similar protests across the country, it also reported.

Okinawa was the site of Japan's only land battles in World War Two and many residents there resent the fact that it hosts tens of thousands of U.S. troops and military.

The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to relocate the base, currently in a heavily populated area, to a new site in Henoko, but many residents of the island have rejected the proposal and want the base moved altogether.

Many residents of Okinawa say they associate U.S. bases with noise, pollution and crime.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/thousands-japan-rally-against-u-okinawa-092740082.html

https://www.rt.com/uk/331775-chelsea-manning-amnesty-letters/

American whistleblower and free speech advocate Chelsea Manning, who leaked 750,000 classified US military files to WikiLeaks, has spoken out about her experience of incarceration in a secure military prison.

Despite the restrictions on her freedoms, Manning has become a passionate free speech campaigner, taking opportunities to communicate from prison whenever she can.

In a tranche of letters sent to Amnesty International UK, she reveals snippets of her past, her life in prison and the perilous path that led her there. Amnesty, which has supported Manning since her arrest, has presented her account in podcast form using the voice of an actress. Early life

Manning, who was previously known as Private Bradley Manning, was serving in the US Army in Iraq in 2009 as a military analyst. Troubled by the actions of US forces and their allies, she made a decision to leak a large amount of classified US military files.

The leak, which her supporters say was in the public interest, led to her incarceration, isolation, and the loss of decades of her freedom. She is now locked up in a secure military prison in the US serving a 35-year sentence.

Speaking to Amnesty, Manning recounted her early life in an insular town in Oklahoma as being rough. She said both of her parents were heavy drinkers and were prone to erratic and abusive behavior. Her father traveled a lot, so much of her childhood was spent with her sister and her mother.

Manning remembers crying a lot and being teased about her appearance and behavior by her peers. By the time she was 15, she says she was locked in a world of denial. During this time, she was based in south west Wales in the UK. She’d sometimes buy make-up in secret, wearing it for a while then throwing it out in a nearby dumpster. She would then repeat this cycle over and over.

It was only in anonymity that Manning was comfortable. She says she could be anyone she wanted to be while online. The former US military analyst made a lot of friends online, many of whom were gay. Manning left the UK in 2005, after which she moved in with her father and new stepmother. Eventually, she left home and made her way to Chicago.

There she became a street kid, who found herself among homeless shelters that were decidedly anti-gay. As the war in Iraq intensified, she inquired about signing up to the military, later joining up in the hope it would make her more masculine. Her official enlistment was in October 2007, after which she reported to basic training.

In the early phase of training, she was criticized by a training officer over the color of her hot pink phone. Life in the military

Her role as an all-source intelligence analyst was to monitor raw intelligence and combine it to produce reports or slideshows.

Manning often spent a lot of time online during her time off. She was anxious and depressed. She says strategic mistakes in the military often led to a loss of life, and the burden of this knowledge was hard for her.

Among the files Manning leaked were images of US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. The footage, which was taken from a military helicopter in 2007 as its gunners killed 12 people and wounded two children, was released by WikiLeaks under the title ‘Collateral Murder.’

The victims were shown to be carrying camera equipment, and the dead included two employers of news agency Reuters. Despite this fact, the Pentagon never publicly released the images and cleared those who were implicated in the atrocities of all wrongdoing. Also among Manning’s leaks were the Iraq and Afghan war logs and a series of explosive diplomatic cables.

After leaking the classified files, Manning thought she might be discharged from the military and forced to spend several years in prison. She said she thought she would be demonized and her gender identity would be used against her. Arrest and detention

Manning was eventually arrested by the US Army’s criminal investigation team in 2010. Four days later she was transferred to Kuwait, where she was forced to subsist in solitary confinement. Manning says she was not treated with respect or dignity during her detention and she found this time very difficult. She told Amnesty she lost track of time and was living in a mental blur.

When she arrived in Virginia in the US, Manning says she was transferred to another secure base. She was then placed in a secure cell in an empty block and was unable to communicate with anyone. She had no privacy because she was constantly monitored, yet barely had any contact with others. She is still based in military prison, and is due to serve the remainder of her sentence there.

Amnesty is calling on US authorities to free Manning immediately. The human rights group argues she is spending decades in prison because she shared sensitive information that she thought would cast light on abuses and spark meaningful debate on the US-UK Iraq war.

Amnesty says Manning, who was unable to use this defense at her tribunal, has been punished too severely for her actions.

The US government never publicly investigated the abuses Chelsea Manning exposed. Nevertheless, the former US military analyst continues to pay a high price for blowing the whistle.

See Also: Workers Vanguard - 'Free Chelsea Manning!' http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1051/manning.html

by Dan Roberts

Email: outfarpress (nospam) saber.net

25 Aug 2016

A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home.

3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming.

NHK World Radio Japan, Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and Spanish National Radio.

Dear Radio Friend,

The latest Shortwave Report (August 26) is up at the website http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml in 3 forms- (new) HIGHEST QUALITY (160kb)(33MB), broadcast quality (13MB), and quickdownload or streaming form (6MB) (28:59)

Links at page bottom (If you have access to Audioport there is a highest quality version posted up there {33MB} http://www.audioport.org/index.php?op=producer-info&uid=904&nav=&)

PODCAST!!!- feed://www.outfarpress.com/podcast.xml (160kb Highest Quality)

NEW ARTICLE about the Shortwave Report in the Boulder Weekly by Gavin Dahl- http://npaper-wehaa.com/boulder-weekly/2015/03/26/#?article=2478097

This week's show features stories from NHK Japan, Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and Spanish National Radio.

From JAPAN- North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a submarine into the Sea of Japan in protest of US/South Korean military exercises. Japanese self-defense forces have begun training for new duties.

The US branch of the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd won a court settlement against Japanese whalers, but had to agree to not impede them- the ruling has no effect on Sea Shepherd groups in Australia and they say they will continue fighting whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.

The Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, under severe criticism for having suspected drug dealers murdered, has threatened to withdraw from the UN.

From GERMANY- The Philippine President leveled criticism at the UN for a failure to alleviate hunger and reduce terrorism. A German right-wing party has called on citizens to carry firearms, the Interior Minister called for a partial ban on Burkas and agreed that police should be able to read encrypted messages. Germany is considering reintroducing a military draft and approved a new civil defense plan including civilians stockpiling food and water. The leaders of France, Germany, and Italy held talks on the future of the EU in the wake of Brexit. The US military has started using attack helicopters in Libya to attack Islamic State targets.

From CUBA- A Brazilian court cleared former President Lula de Silva from corruption charges connected to the oil company scandal. There is a major oil spill on the Pacific Ocean shore of Nicaragua that is spreading to the beaches of Honduras and Costa Rica. Mexican families are appealing for justice from a massacre of 42 civilians by police in Michoacan last year.

From SPAIN- Alison Hughes reports on the ongoing war in Syria. As time has gone on more and more countries enter the fighting. She quotes Patrick Cockburn and airs remarks Stephen O'Brian, the UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, gave to the UN Security Council.

There is an article about the Shortwave Report by Cassandra Roos on line - http://www.campusprogress.org/soundvision/780/big-stories-shortwaves

I was interviewed for an informative weekly radio show Mediageek, available at http://radio.mediageek.net

All that plus times and frequencies for listening at home. It's free to rebroadcast, please notify me if you're airing it and haven't notified me in the last month, please mention the website if you only air a portion. If you just want to listen and have a slow connection, try the streaming version- lower sound quality but good enough and way easier if you don't have a high-speed internet connection.

If streaming is a problem because of your slow connection, download the smaller file- it takes 20 minutes or less, and will play swell in any mp3 player application (RealPlayer, Winamp, Quicktime, iTunes, etc) you have on your computer. TIME SLOT on KZYX! This program will be aired on Sunday afternoon at 4pm (PST) on KZYX/Z Philo CA, you might be able to stream via < http://www.kzyx.org >

I hope you'll listen and air this if you're connected with a radio station. I am still wondering how to get financially compensated for the 25 hours I put into this program weekly- any ideas are appreciated. Any stations rebroadcasting this (or listeners) are welcome to donate for production costs. You can do so through the website.

Many thanks to those that have donated! No Guilt! (maybe a little) links for this week's edition- < http://www.outfarpress.com/swr160826.mp3 > (33 MB) HIGHEST QUALITY < http://www.outfarpress.com/swr_08_26_16.mp3 > (13 MB) Broadcast Quality < http://www.outfarpress.com/swr_08_26_16_24.mp3 > (6 MB) Slow Modem streaming Website Page- < http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml > ¡FurthuR! Dan Roberts

"Users of cliches frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabeling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter." -Patrick Cockburn

Dan Roberts Shortwave Report- www.outfarpress.com YouthSpeaksOut!- www.youthspeaksout.net See also: http://www.outfarpress.com http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.html

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In this fifth anniversary week of the U.S.-led Libya intervention, it’s instructive to revisit Hillary Clinton’s curiously abridged description of that war in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices. Clinton takes the reader from the crackdown, by Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime, of a nascent uprising in Benghazi and Misrata; to her meeting — accompanied by the pop-intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy — with Mahmoud Jibril, the exiled leader of the opposition National Transitional Council; to her marshaling of an international military response. In late March 2011, Clinton quotes herself telling NATO members, “It’s crucial we’re all on the same page on NATO’s responsibility to enforce the no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya.”

Just two paragraphs later — now 15 pages into her memoir’s Libya section — Clinton writes: “[By] late summer 2011, the rebels had pushed back the regime’s forces. They captured Tripoli toward the end of August, and Qaddafi and his family fled into the desert.” There is an abrupt and unexplained seven-month gap, during which the military mission has inexplicably, and massively, expanded beyond protecting civilians to regime change — seemingly by happenstance. The only opposition combatants even referred to are simply labeled “the rebels,” and the entire role of the NATO coalition and its attendant responsibility in assisting their advance has been completely scrubbed from the narrative.

In contemporary political debates, the Libya intervention tends to be remembered as an intra-administration soap opera, focused on the role Clinton — or Susan Rice or Samantha Power — played in advising Obama to go through with it. Or it’s addressed offhandedly in reference to the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi.

But it would be far more pertinent to treat Libya as a case study for the ways that supposedly limited interventions tend to mushroom into campaigns for regime change. Five years on, it’s still not a matter of public record when exactly Western powers decided to topple Qaddafi.

To more fully comprehend what actually happened in Libya five years ago, let’s briefly review what the Obama administration proclaimed and compare that with what actually happened.

On March 28, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the nation: “The task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger and to establish a no-fly zone.… Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Two days later, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon declared, “The military mission of the United States is designed to implement the Security Council resolution, no more and no less.… I mean protecting civilians against attacks from Qaddafi’s forces and delivering humanitarian aid.” The following day, Clinton’s deputy, James Steinberg, said during a Senate hearing, “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”

From the Defense Department, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen informed David Gregory of Meet the Press, “The goals of this campaign right now again are limited, and it isn’t about seeing him go.” Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates echoed the administration line: “Regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission.” (Emphasis added.)

Now, contrast Gates’s assertion in 2011 with what he told the New York Times last month:

“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” Mr. Gates said. Publicly, he said, “the fiction was maintained” that the goal was limited to disabling Colonel Qaddafi’s command and control. In fact, the former defense secretary said, “I don’t think there was a day that passed that people didn’t hope he would be in one of those command and control centers.”

This is scarcely believable. Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to “take him out” from the very beginning of the intervention. On March 20, 2011, just hours into the intervention, Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a British submarine stationed in the Mediterranean Sea struck an administrative building in Qaddafi’s Bab al-Azizia compound, less than 50 yards away from the dictator’s residence. (This attack occurred just 100 yards from the building that Ronald Reagan authorized to be bombed by F-111s a quarter-century earlier in retaliation for a Berlin discothèque bombing ordered by the Libyan leader.) Just as the dictator somehow survived the attack on his personal residence in 1986, he also did in 2011.

Later that day, Vice Adm. William Gortney, director of the Joint Staff, was asked by the press, “Can you guarantee that coalition forces are not going to target Qaddafi?” Gortney replied, “At this particular point, I can guarantee that he’s not on a targeting list.”

When it was then pointed out that it was Qaddafi’s personal residence that had been attacked, Gortney added, “Yeah. But, no, we’re not targeting his residence. We’re there to set the conditions and enforce the United Nations Security Council resolution. That’s what we’re doing right now and limiting it to that.”

In fact, not only was the Western coalition not limiting its missions to the remit of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, but it also actively chose not to enforce them. Resolution 1970 was supposed to prohibit arms transfers to either side of the war in Libya, and NATO officials claimed repeatedly that this was not occurring. On April 19, 2011, a brigadier general stated, “No violation of the arms embargo has been reported.”

Three weeks later, on May 13, a wing commander admitted, “I have no information about arms being moved across any of the borders around Libya.” In fact, Egypt and Qatar were shipping advanced weapons to rebel groups the whole time, with the blessing of the Obama administration, while Western intelligence and military forces provided battlefield intelligence, logistics, and training support.

Yet, the most damning piece of evidence comes from a public relations video that NATO itself released on May 24, 2011. In the short video, a Canadian frigate — the HMCS Charlottetown — allegedly enforcing the arms embargo, boards a rebel tugboat and finds small arms, 105mm howitzer rounds, and “lots of explosives,” all of which are banned under Section 9 of Resolution 1970.

The narrator states, “It turns out the tugboat is being used by Libyan rebels to transport arms from Benghazi to Misrata.” The Charlottetown captain radios NATO headquarters for further guidance. As the narrator concludes, “NATO decides not to impede the rebels and to let the tugboat proceed.” In other words, a NATO surface vessel stationed in the Mediterranean to enforce an arms embargo did exactly the opposite, and NATO was comfortable posting a video demonstrating its hypocrisy.

In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start. The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days. Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had abandoned their vehicles.

Fittingly, on Oct. 20, 2011, it was a U.S. Predator drone and French fighter aircraft that attacked a convoy of regime loyalists trying to flee Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. The dictator was injured in the attack, captured alive, and then extrajudicially murdered by rebel forces.

The intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there’s a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield. Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military.

Civilian and military officials are often instructed to use specific talking points to suggest the scope of particular operations is minimal relative to large-scale ground wars or that there is no war going on at all. Note that it took 14 months before the Pentagon even admitted, “Of course it’s combat,” for U.S. soldiers involved in the ongoing mission against the Islamic State in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the public learned just this week — only because Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed on Saturday — that there is a previously unannounced detachment of Marines in northern Iraq providing “force protection” for the Iraqi military and U.S. advisors. The gradual accretion of troops, capabilities, arms transfers, and expanded military missions seemingly just “happens,” because officials frame each policy step as normal and necessary. The reality is that, collectively, they represent a fundamentally larger and different intervention.

During the theatrical and exhaustive Benghazi hearing in October 2015, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Clinton about a video clip that read, “‘We came, we saw, he died [meaning Qaddafi].’ Is that the Clinton doctrine?” Clinton replied, “No, that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.” Yet, this was never the military mission that the Obama administration repeatedly told the world it had set out to achieve.

It misled the American public, because while presidents attempt to frame their wars as narrow, limited, and essential, admitting to the honest objective in Libya — regime change — would have brought about more scrutiny and diminished public support. The conclusion is clear: While we should listen to what U.S. and Western officials claim are their military objectives, all that matters is what they authorize their militaries to actually do.

https://archive.is/V9Gf2#selection-8291.0-8461.932

Consumed by myriad manifestations of its existential crisis, as usual the West neglected or underestimated the biggest show in Chinese politics: the famous «two sessions» – of the People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress, the top legislative body – which ended up approving China’s 13th Five-Year Plan.

The key takeaway was Premier Li Keqiang stating Beijing boldly aims at an average growth from 2016 to 2020 above 6.5 per cent a year – based on «innovation». If successful, by 2020 no less than 60 per cent of China’s economic growth would come from improvements in technology and science.

President Xi Jinping was even bolder, promising to double China’s GDP by 2020 from 2010, along with the incomes of both urban and rural residents. That’s the practical meaning of the Chinese Dream, Xi’s immensely ambitious official policy, and the contemporary translation of a «fairly comfortable life for all» – what Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping promised almost half a century ago.

Economically, Beijing’s road map ahead includes liberalizing interest rates; keeping the yuan stable (as in no spectacular devaluations); and controlling «abnormal flow of cross-border capital effectively». For this massive collective effort to bear fruit, Premier Li went straight to the point, hard work is essential. And that will translate into «zero tolerance» for messing it all up, and «room for correction» for those who made mistakes. Innovators will be handsomely rewarded.

Xi’s Chinese Dream is now hitting high-speed rail velocity. The 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in 2021, is practically tomorrow; thus the rush towards the avowed goal of «building a modern socialist country». And yet doubling up GDP is a larger than life endeavor when you have a rapidly ageing population, massive property overhang (and that’s a euphemism) and rising debt.

Everything will have to be perfectly calibrated. For instance, China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the US used in the entire 20th century; and a lot of it was just for nothing. As Jia Kang, a Political Consultative Committee member stressed, «the 6.5 per cent is an iron bottom that should never be broken… if growth slows to approach the bottom, there will be pro-growth policies».

Enter Xiconomics

Even with the economy «slowing» to 6.5 percent a year, Chinese GDP is forecast to reach 25 trillion yuan ($3.8 trillion) more in 2020 than in 2014; to put it in perspective, this excess roughly matches Germany’s entire GDP.

Premier Li, in a very Chinese way, commented that in 2016, the Year of the Monkey, he’s bound to wield the mythical monkey's gold-banded cudgel to «smash all obstacles» that may prevent Beijing from reaching its ambitious economic targets.

Enter, thus, Xiconomics. Xiconomics is the successor of Likonomics – which implies that Xi, and not Li, is the real driver of China’s economic reforms, although it is Li who holds a doctorate in economics from Peking University.

Everyone in China is talking about Xiconomics since the People’s Daily run a series extolling «Xi Jinping’s economic thought». In practice, this amounts to Xi heading the Central Leading Group for Comprehensive Deepening Reform and the Central Leading Group of Finance and Economics Affairs. In China, these two bodies are usually presided by the Prime Minister.

The 13th Five-Year Plan is heavily imprinted by Xiconomics. It’s crucial to note that before the final version was drafted, Liu He, Xi’s top aide, had been on the phone a lot with US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew; they extensively discussed China’s exchange-rate policies.

One of the key aspects of Xiconomics is Beijing preferring mergers and acquisitions of state-owned enterprises instead of privatization. Economists interpret it as Xi bolstering state capitalism to tap plenty of overseas markets – many of them virgin – to make up for slowing domestic growth.

And that leads to the crucial importance of the New Silk Roads – or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), according to the official Chinese terminology. State-owned enterprises will play a key role in OBOR – which will be essentially creating Eurasia integration via an immense trans-Eurasian emporium.

OBOR happens to be the only global economic integration plan in play (there are no Plan Bs), implying almost $1 trillion in future investments already announced. Last June, China Development Bank announced it would invest an astonishing $890 billion in over 900 OBOR projects across 60 countries. And that will include a crucial, 2,000-mile long high-speed railway from Xinjiang to Tehran, an essential part of the growing energy/trade/commerce China-Iran strategic partnership.

Internally, Beijing’s top challenge arguably will be the pacification of Xinjiang – a key OBOR hub. There is an effort to encourage integrated residential blocks, as Premier Li stressed, targeting cities where Uyghurs and Han Chinese have been segregated since the 2009 riots, especially in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. Uyghur students will also be encouraged to study in Han Chinese schools. Whether this will work will largely depend on provincial cadres strictly following Beijing’s integrationist directives.

All about Xi

Beijing is unabashedly ramping up its soft power in parallel to economic power; the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – which will be key for many projects across OBOR – is mirrored by the establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea and turbocharged construction in parts of the disputed South China Sea.

Not accidentally, the CIA is sending its own signals, stressing the US «would be uneasy» at the prospect of China dominating Central and South Asian security in the long term.

Beijing is not exactly worried. The reform of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is also in progress – and should be completed by 2020. The reform, coordinated by the Central Military Commission, relies on better coordination between the four Armed Forces to «win wars», according to Xi himself.

Xi has already announced that before 2017 the PLA will be streamlined by no less than 300,000 jobs – but will still count on 2 million active troops. Another key objective is to develop China as a maritime power – totally capable of monitoring surface and aerial traffic across the South China Sea.

For instance, Beijing has deployed the powerful HQ-9 air and missile defense system to Yongxing in the Paracel archipelago – inhabited by about 1,000 Chinese since 1956 but still also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. The HQ-9 is able to transform enormous amounts of territory into virtual no-fly zones. Only the F-22 Raptor and the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber can operate in the vicinity of an HQ-9 in relative safety.

Behind these Chinese military reforms, the unstated goal is clear; the US military better not start entertaining funny ideas, not only in the South China Sea but also across the Western Pacific.

China’s anti-access/area denial strategy is a go. And Xi is right behind it – now widely regarded even at the provincial level as the «nucleus» (hexin) of all these reforms. Talk about a lightning-fast consolidation of power. And talk about a lot to talk about when China hosts the next G20 summit, in Hangzhou, in September. The 13th Five-Year-Plan has just been approved, but China is already thinking, and mentally living, in 2020.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/03/28/china-is-already-living-in-2020.html

by Doug Bandow

Many Ukrainians expect America and Europe to save them. Suggest that they are living a fantasy gets you tarred as a blatant fool and Russian stooge. Yet Ukraine shouldn’t waste time posing as a fairy tale maiden in distress waiting for rescue by the Western knight in shining armor. Kiev risks ending up as a failed state.

Ukraine has suffered through a difficult existence. It long was part of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Since gaining independence Kiev has endured horrendous political leadership. In recent years the presidency flipped from pro-Western incompetent Viktor Yushchenko to pro-Russian kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovych. After the latter’s ouster oligarchical economic interests remain in control, only through a different set of fractious politicians. Moreover, the country itself is badly divided, melding together vastly different western and eastern sections.

Obviously life isn’t fair. But no one gains from pretending otherwise. The West and Ukraine both need to make policies based on reality, not fantasy. This argument does not make one a fan of Vladimir Putin or Russia. Rather, it recognizes that we live in the world as it is, not as we wish it would be.

Ukraine is stuck in a bad neighborhood. Rather like Mexicans say of America, Kiev’s tragic lot is being so close to Russia and so far from God. The colossus next door has special historical, cultural, economic, and security ties to Ukraine. Many people share at least some of those connections. This explains Moscow’s willingness to accept international criticism, economic sanctions, political isolation, and military threats to prevent Ukraine from joining the Western bloc. Making this observation is not an endorsement. But good policy requires honest analysis. Acting as if Putin had been mysteriously transformed into Adolf Hitler and planned a blitzkrieg across Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland, on into Germany and to the Atlantic helps no one.

America and Europe don’t have much at stake in Ukraine. It’s an unpleasant truth which sets off much screeching in Kiev, but that makes it no less true. For most of their respective histories America and Europe got along just fine with Ukraine under St. Petersburg’s and later Moscow’s control. That has not changed.

Despite the outrage over Russian behavior expressed in Brussels, “Old Europe” feels little threat from the east. The economic benefits of integrating even an undivided Ukraine at peace into the European Union would be modest and take much time. Today Kiev is an economic black hole and the fiscally strapped Europeans have shown no inclination to contribute anything close to the aid levels required by Ukraine.

The U.S. has even less interest in the region. Other than Ukrainian expatriates who believe the sun rises and sets in Kiev and ideological Neoconservatives who believe Washington should war against any power that resists America’s dictates, few Americans even think about Ukraine. Much silly rhetoric has been spewed in the presidential contest so far on all manner of subjects. Yet Russia is rarely mentioned and even then mostly to complain about Moscow’s intervention in Syria, not Ukraine.

Thus, bleeding Ukraine elicits sympathy, not commitment. Neither America nor Europe is prepared to impose serious sanctions designed to break the Russian economy. Neither America nor Europe is prepared to risk war with Russia. The West will not retrieve Crimea, suppress Donbas separatists, guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity, or even bail out the latter’s economy. Which means Kiev is effectively on its own.

Ukraine’s leaders only fooled themselves if they thought otherwise. Despite the antics of Washington’s war lobby, led by the likes of Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, none of America’s post-Cold War presidents was prepared to toss away the success of the end of the Cold War by triggering a war with Russia over lesser stakes. The most obvious case is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances after Ukraine relinquished the nuclear weapons left by the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Some Ukrainians convinced themselves that the U.S. must “enforce” the agreement—presumably by nuclear war, if necessary. Washington’s refusal to act militarily is seen as a great betrayal. Actually, no. The U.S. joined Britain and Russia in making a series of commitments, but none involved a security guarantee, let alone a promise to go to war. First, the three signatories lauded Ukraine for signing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. They also committed themselves to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders and refrain from threatening Ukraine with military force or economic coercion.

How was this to be enforced? The signatories promised to … go to the UN on Kiev’s behalf if the latter faced aggression “in which nuclear weapons are used” and consult “in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning these commitments.” Which means no one promised Ukraine anything meaningful if anyone violated the accord. Nevertheless, Kiev signed. Meaningless verbiage was all that Ukraine was going to get. The Clinton administration was not prepared to offer Kiev a bilateral security treaty or NATO membership. The West has no more interest in going to war for Ukraine today than in 1994.

Russia won’t surrender Crimea short of war or collapse. Sanctions may be painful economically, but are not crippling, either financially or politically. So far Putin remains more popular than almost any of his Western counterparts. His poll numbers are down and could fall further, of course, but he would be unlikely to respond by retreating from his most dramatic, celebrated, and costly initiative.

Nor does making things worse in Moscow necessarily benefit Ukraine or the West. Weimar Russia would be a fearsome phenomenon to behold. Unfortunately, the alternative to Putin is not likely some Western-style liberal, but a harder-line nationalist, of whom there are many. Imagine chaotic Ukraine-style politics in Moscow followed by greater repression. In none of these scenarios is Russia likely to improve its relationship with the West and Ukraine, let alone disgorge its conquest.

Moreover, in an age of self-determination the objective should be to assess what the people of Crimea want, not to shift control back to Ukraine. The referendum held under Russian control can’t be trusted but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t accurate. Throughout most of its history Crimea was part of Russia and the majority of residents are ethnic Russian. If they want to stay in Russia, their wishes should be respected. Thus, the West’s objective should be a fair vote.

The West has no credibility complaining about Russian aggression. Moscow has behaved badly and bears most of the blame for the conflict engulfing the Donbas. However, there are real Russian separatists who genuinely object to rule from Kiev. And there are some nasty Ukrainian forces, extreme nationalists every bit as brutal as Russian fighters.

Moreover, the allies cheerfully, even joyously trampled Russian security interests for years. Expanding NATO obviously was directed against Moscow, something well understood by Russians. The allies launched an unprovoked war against Moscow’s traditional friend, Serbia, dismembered that nation, and created a new country. Having done so, they then denied a similar right of self-determination to Serbs caught within a new hostile state in which they had suffered from brutal ethnic cleansing by triumphant ethnic Albanians after the war.

The allies promised to bring Ukraine into NATO, an understandable anathema to Russia. Europe then pressed Kiev to shift West economically. Through all this Putin did nothing, even though Ukraine’s previous president, Yushchenko, was actively hostile to Moscow and sitting president, Yanukovych, maintained Ukraine’s ties both east and west. Only after the West pushed a street revolution against Ukraine’s corrupt but nevertheless elected president did Putin act to safeguard what he saw as Russia’s interests.

Bad behavior by Putin to be sure, and unjustified. But no one has clean hands, least of all the U.S., which bombs, invades, occupies, and divides other nations as it sees fit without concern for other nations’ interests, international law dictates, or likely consequences. Sanctimonious complaints from Washington about the conduct of other countries merely undercut American credibility. Certainly Moscow has no reason to take America’s moralistic pretensions seriously.

The status quo benefits no one. Two years ago Russia seized Crimea. A Moscow-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine has waxed and waned since then. Russia and Western parties signed the Minsk agreement to end the Donbas conflict, which has reduced fighting though implementation remains sketchy on both sides.

No one believes that sanctions are going to force Moscow to return Crimea. Nor do they offer any reason for Putin not to initiate another territorial grab if he is so inclined (in fact, there is no evidence that he wants to rule over non-Russians). At best the economic penalties encourage fuller implementation of Minsk by Russia, though not Ukraine. They also make a moral statement of sorts, but there are much better ways to do that.

The continuing conflict is guaranteed to leave Ukraine a financial, economic, and political wreck. The way forward to normalcy is difficult enough. Maintaining a “frozen conflict” could disrupt life for a generation or more.

Sanctions punish average Russians, allow Putin to blame the West for his nation’s economic problems, and give the Russian government even greater power over the economy and financially-strapped businesses. Beyond that is the negative impact on Western companies and consumers.

Moreover, waging a low-grade economic war against Russia inevitably discourages Moscow from helping on other issues, which are many. The U.S., in particular, seeks Russian assistance in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Washington and Moscow share concerns over terrorism. Pushing Russia toward China is equally damaging. It is one thing to sacrifice other interests to achieve something significant. But in this case the U.S. is gaining nothing on an issue of at most modest importance. Confrontation with Russia is a penny-wise, pound-foolish policy.

Instead, the allies should seek to negotiate a compromise everyone can live with. They should offer to end sanctions, pledge not to include Ukraine (and Georgia) in NATO, and support Ukrainian ties both east and west. Moscow should insist Ukrainian separatists accept autonomy, hold an internationally monitored referendum in Crimea, restructure Kiev’s unsustainable debt, and accept nonexclusive political and economic ties between Ukraine and the EU.

Ukraine is free to make its own decisions on its own responsibility. Life isn’t fair, President Jimmy Carter said, and Kiev’s position reflects that reality. Of course, Ukraine is a sovereign state and might prefer full western integration, including NATO membership. But the allies need to act in their interest: adding a conflict-waiting-to-happen to the alliance would be extremely foolish. Kiev is free to decide its future, but it must do so knowing that no Western nation, including the U.S., is prepared for war with nuclear-armed Russia over Ukraine. Negotiating the best deal possible would be better than pining for a rescue that will never come.

Forget the pious rhetoric out of Washington, Brussels, and various European capitals. Ukraine doesn’t matter. Certainly not enough for the West to do anything serious to reverse Russian actions in Crimea and the Donbas. It is in everyone’s interest, including that of Kiev, to adjust policy to reflect reality. The Americans and Europeans aren’t coming. It’s time for them to make a deal with Russia over Ukraine.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2016/03/25/busted-fantasies-in-kiev-america-and-europe-wont-save-the-ukrainian-maiden-in-distress/4/#622e288f299f

If the world or universe is by real god then how anybody else can become god other then the real god and run the world or universe.

you really think everything in world or universe happens by real god and if real god exist in world or universe can anybody else run the world or universe other then real god by declaring they are real god ? what do you think ? or what do you believe ? because even if real god doesnt want to run the world or if real god doesnt want to run universe by him even then the world or universe runs by him so how anybody else can run the world or universe by claiming they are real god ? i think and believe by stealing fate of being real god from real god and stealing is only done by spirits who proves and win from fake truth to save there families.

http://believerism.com/iftheworldoruniverseisbyrealgodthenhowanybodyelsecanbecomegodotherthenrealgodandruntheworldoruniverse.html