Saturday, September 17, 2016

Why Trump Will Win

Why Donald Trump will probably beat Hillary Clinton

by Rafe Mair - The Common Sense Canadian


September 15, 2016

Of course Donald Trump could beat Hillary in November.

I think he will, but before going further, let me say that this would be any enormous worldwide tragedy and we must pray that there is a God and He will save us.


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump 
(Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC Licence)

Back to the election.


Trump is in a lot better shape than the pundits give him credit for and he couldn’t have done it without a hell of a lot of help from Hillary.

She has been in the race too long and it’s showing. She’s displaying her temper and a lack of judgment – not to mention her recent health issues – things that everyone has but no-no’s when you’re running for president.

But let’s get to the underlying reason Trump is doing so well.




Whole new ballgame


The media and pollsters have been caught out making outdated assumptions and asking irrelevant questions. They’re looking at this contest through the prism of elections past and are still declaring their choice of issues and missing the main one. It’s easier that way – research and thinking take up booze time.

It’s an entirely new ballgame and I refer back to articles I’ve done here and elsewhere saying that society as we have come to know it is mortally wounded and it’s impossible to predict just what it’s going to look like a decade from now.

The first major clue for me anyway, was on the environmental front. Environmentalism was always a leftwing issue and often the loony left at that.

With the arrival of global warming, it suddenly occurred to the masses that there were troubles in River City and that maybe those grubby long-hairs marching with the placards had something after all. When science, almost to a person, backed up the demonstrators of yore and the evidence grew almost daily, suddenly the middle class caught on and development no longer trumped all other considerations.

The secret, always suspected, was out of the bag and we learned that the Establishment had been lying for a very long time and that the public had naively come to uncritically accept what they were told by their “betters”. Once it became obvious with the climate issue that all these good corporate citizens, our politicians and community leaders had not been telling the truth, it was a very short step to assuming that anything they said was suspect. This manifested itself in movements like Occupy Wall Street by young people and outrage increasing through social media.

The Mainstream Media had no choice but get into the Establishment life-boat. The world over, the rich increased the gap between themselves and the poor and as that gap widened, carrying more and more power with it, the resentment of the poor became stronger and stronger.

Brexit offers clues to Trump’s success


The latest and best example of this was Brexit in Britain, England especially. I wrote an article on the subject that the main issue was being obscured by the media and that the underlying cause of discontent simply wasn’t being recognized.

Now there are lots of reasons that Brexit went as it did and no doubt all made a contribution. In my view, however, there was one principal cause and one sub-cause that really did the EU in.

The same “pissed off mood” existed in Britain as elsewhere and those who were that way and voted “Leave” probably wouldn’t recognize that. “Real Reasons” are hard to determine, especially if you don’t try.

I offer as an hypothesis that the “Leave” vote was that deep down feeling of resentment of being fooled, aggravated by more recent “insults”, as many people felt that they had been cheated and subjected to a “bait and switch” by those set in authority over them.

If you look back at the process you will see that the first referendum in 1975 simply wanted to know if Britain, having finally been accepted by de Gaulle wished to stay in the common market. The operative word throughout was “market”. This was not portrayed as approval of any kind of a political union and had it been, it clearly would have failed. To Britain, an economic deal looked like a pretty good idea and they voted for it by a substantial margin.

It was under the presidency of Jacques Delors, an unelected bureaucrat, from 1986 till 1994. that the Common Market inexorably moved to a political union. Delors was detested by many in Britain.

It is a long history and I don’t wish to oversimplify it but just point out that by the time of the Brexit vote on June 23, 2016, the same massive irritation with the establishment that we saw in North America was also present in Britain and a substantial part of that irritation came from Jacques Delors and a political union they neither voted for but in fact opposed.

For many, the Brexit vote was a chance to rectify what they saw as a “bait and switch” scam by the elite that started off as a marketplace and ended up in a huge, meddlesome bureaucracy in Brussels.


Public ready for a brawl


Enter the US election with the same festering distrust of the establishment. The pundits and the pollsters, stuck in a time warp, are overlooking reality and the “garbage in, garbage out” rule comes into play.

Much of the public, both on the right and on the left, is thoroughly pissed at where their social, economic, and political masters have taken them and they aren’t much interested in debates under the Marquess of Queensbury rules, seen as the Elite’s rules, preferring a brawl if necessary.

This has given Trump a big advantage. As long as he hammers at Clinton, the dissident voters are happy and don’t much care about the truth or fairness of the attack.

In fact, the more outrageous he is, the more popular he becomes. Many wonder how Trump can get away with it and it’s because a large part of the American public is quite willing to let him get away with it if it gets the job done and turfs out what they see as the enemy.

Trump fights by own rules


In the meantime, Hillary Clinton is playing right into Trumps hands. The more she calls his supporters names the more they support him. It stands to reason that when she calls Trump bad names, they support him if only because Clinton represents all of the things they’re mad at and the more bumps on the nose of the privileged, the better.

It is not all Hillary’s fault of course. I doubt there are many politicians of consequence prepared to fight a man like Trump because he doesn’t fight by the old rules and they don’t know how to fight by the new ones.

Paradoxically, Trump could probably buy out the Clintons 100 times or maybe 1000, yet the Clintons are seen as the ones who have taken advantage of the system and enriched themselves at the expense of the least well off. That is a base canard but the reality is that this is how it appears to disaffected voters, and appearances are as good as facts in politics.

I will now assure the victory of Hillary Clinton by making a famous Mair political prediction – which will, as always, be wrong – and say that Donald Trump will succeed President Obama next January…and may God have mercy on all of us if for once I’m right.

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.
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Symptom and Disease: Separating the Candidates

Trump is the Symptom, Clinton is the Disease

by Roger Harris - CounterPunch


September 16, 2016

I asked you who is the lesser evil when even the Washington Post posits Hillary Clinton to the “political right” of Trump on international issues?

And you responded: “So I guess I should vote for Trump?”

Gimme Shelter: Fleeing Trump to the Democrat’s Big Tent


You are right that there are differences between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. No one recognizes that better than the ruling elites who are tripping over each other to join the Clinton bandwagon.

Mainstream Republicans, such as Romney and the Bush bunch, are gravitating in droves to the better Republican who happens to be a nominal Democrat. To the right of them, practically the entirety of the neo-conservative establishment is converting to born-again Hillaryistas.

Charles and David, the ultra-libertarian Koch brothers and Republican Party kingpins, have rejected Trump, cutting him off from a major source of funding. Another billionaire politico and sometimes Republican, Michael Bloomberg gave Clinton his endorsement at the Democratic National Convention.

Refugees fleeing the land of the GOP are finding succor in Clinton’s big tent. Clinton’s New Democrats are actively courting the conservatives being pushed out of the GOP by the embarrassing Mr. Trump.

The ruling elites are practically unanimously opposed to Trump for two reasons: he’s unreliable and he is not a good snake oil salesman for their cause. Those of us to the left of Attila the Hun also oppose Trump, but not for the same reasons. See, for instance, Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate Gloria La Riva’s description of Trump as a “disgusting bigot, the embodiment of the worst excesses of the capitalist system.”

First, the ruling elites find Trump untrustworthy to carry their water. Maybe Trump will come around on “free trade” issues or maybe he won’t. But with Clinton they have a proven faithful servant.

Back in 2008, when Wall Street demanded a bailout with no strings attached, mainstream Republican President Bush devotedly accommodated the banksters as did Democratic presidential candidate Obama. But Republican presidential candidate McCain thought that some conditions should be put on this gift of free money from the American tax payers.

That is when former CEO of Goldman Sachs and architect of the bailout, Hank Paulson – incidentally serving as Bush’s treasure secretary – blackmailed McCain to either genuflect to Wall Street, or Paulson would come out publically for Obama. Wall Street got the bailout and later trillions of dollars more under Obama’s “quantitative easing.” The financial elite migrated en masse to the new Democrats.

That migration continues with Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s anointed retainer. Unlike in the past when the big financial interests hedged their bets by contributing to both Democrats and Republicans, the smart money is going to the donkey party in 2016.

Second, Wall Street understands that not only will Clinton be more compliant, but she will also be better at legitimizing their class rule. Trump with his open chauvinism and nativism would be too obvious and could provoke a greater resistance to the neoliberal project. It’s not that the ruling elites are squeamish about racism and imperialism, but they are adverse about making it so plainly obvious.

Sympathy for the Devil: Voting for Clinton


Absent the few Bernie-or-busters, the net result of the Sanders candidacy has been to deliver a new generation of voters into the Democratic Party. A Pew poll predicts 90 percent of unwavering Sanders supporters plan to vote for Clinton in November. There they join the great majority of African American voters as a captured constituency to be flagrantly ignored by Clinton.

Given the logic of the lesser-of-two-evils voting, these citizens have no recourse but to suck it up as Clinton rushes to the right to woo the remnants of the Republican Party. Gallup polls reports Republicans want leaders who stick to their beliefs, while Democrats more readily accept compromise.

December’s Children: Opposing Neoliberalism by Voting for It


The lesser-of-two-evils defense dictates that we vote for Clinton – despite all her admittedly bad stuff – for fear that a Trump presidency would dismantle public health care, attack the unions, and stack the Supreme Court to the right. This argument fails on two counts: it perpetuates a drift to the right with no prospect of reversal and it creates the conditions for an even more noxious phenomenon than Trump come 2020.

On the first count, you say that you’ll hold your nose and vote for Clinton in November and then in December you’ll lobby against her. But Clinton isn’t stupid. As long as she knows that lesser-of-two-evils adherents will still vote for her, she’ll continue feinting to the left and moving to the right. Unions will still be targeted, because Clinton knows Wall Street will abandon her if she doesn’t deliver low wages and high profits.

Bill Clinton was able to end welfare as we know it, pass the NAFTA “free trade” scam, enable the incarceration of multitudes of poor people of color, conduct “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia to achieve regime change, etc. This was a rightist Republican agenda, which the Republicans could not enact. Yet a slick Democrat could deliver precisely because the lesser-of-two-evils adherents voted Bill Clinton into a second term.

Privatizing Social Security was next on the Bill Clinton’s chopping block. But Monica Lewinsky, my favorite Democrat, thwarted that plan. Now it is Hillary Clinton’s “turn” to continue that legacy.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: A Clinton Presidency


On the second count, there is a curious relationship between the Clinton and Trump candidacies. In short, Trump is the symptom; Clinton is the disease. In other words, the conditions that have allowed for a candidacy such as the likes of Trump were the product of neoliberal policies personified by the likes of Clinton.

Trump has been able to tap into a genuine sense of powerlessness and dispossession among the American people. These sentiments are materially based on rising income inequality. We are working longer hours – surpassing even the Japanese work week – and we are more efficient than ever, but our living conditions are stagnating or depressing.

This time around, we got a repugnant blowhard like Trump. But we don’t have to worry about him getting elected in 2016. The ruling elites will take care that he will be lucky to win Alaska. Trump’s already fatally shaky presidential prospects will be enormously even less impressive as the corporate media continues to whittle him and his big hands down.

But what will the prospects be after four years of Clinton’s police and security state, imperial wars without end, austerity for working people, and free money bonuses for Wall Street? Come 2020, the conditions – as the US heads into a deeper and more damaging recession – for an even more ominous and threatening rightist reaction will be created by Clinton’s neoliberal agenda. The lesser-of-two-evils adherents will again admonish us to re-elect Clinton for fear that an even more dangerous demagogue is running against her.

Wild Horses: Breaking with the Two-Party Duopoly


Every four years the American people are treated to a beauty contest, euphemistically called elections, where only two billionaire-sponsored contestants are allowed to compete, thanks to the exclusively private Commission on Presidential Debates. Little wonder that someone as unpopular as Hillary Clinton will win on the basis of (I’m not making this up) congeniality, because her recognized opponent in this dichotomized universe of two-party politics is Trump. Bottom line, Clinton’s biggest asset is Trump.

So the choice dictated by with the lesser-of-two-evils strategy is either Big Sister or Big Hands, because it’s two-horse race. But now is the time to vote for someone who reflects our politics and begin the protracted process of building an opposition movement outside the two corporate parties.

Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate succinctly sums it up: “[Voting for] the lesser evil paves the way for the greater evil.”
 
Roger D. Harris is on the State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California.
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WADA Exemptions: When Doping Is OK (for Chosen Athletes)

WADA in Another Case of Shooting the Russian Messenger

by Finian Cunningham - RT


September 16, 2016

By now the pattern is not only familiar. It has become absurd. Sensitive, damning information is leaked into the Western public domain, and instead of explaining the contents – the response is: “Blame the Russians”.

This week saw the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) being embarrassed with the release of confidential medical records showing how top US athletes were permitted to take banned drugs because they were given “Therapeutic Use Exemptions” by WADA.

The athletes included multi-gold medal gymnast Simone Biles and tennis legend Serena Williams.

More leaked files by the hacker group involved have now embroiled British cycling champions Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, who were also permitted to take banned chemicals through the official, but secret, designation of “exemptions”.

Thus far, some 29 athletes from eight countries have been implicated in the leaks for taking banned substances, including the US, Britain, Germany and interestingly enough one case from Russia. The latter tends to contradict Western claims that the hackers are “Russian agents”.

Without any evidence, WADA has condemned the publication of confidential medical records as an act of “revenge” by Russian state cyber agents. That charge against Russia has been dutifully amplified by the Western news media.

For example, Britain’s Independent newspaper ran the headline: “Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome among the athletes named in new attack by Russian hackers”. Note how Russian hackers are cited by the Independent as if their alleged guilt is fact. Notice too how the newspaper also shifts the focus subtly away from the two athletes’ drug use (not mentioning it in the headline) to the insinuation of Russian hacking.

Russian authorities have flatly rejected any involvement in this week’s release of WADA’s files.

The group claiming to have carried out the hack goes by the title of “Fancy Bear”. It is doubtful that such an obvious name would be used by Russian state intelligence, as is being alleged in the Western media. Their website design also has the look of the Western anarchist hacker group, Anonymous.

In any case, the focus on who actually carried out the information breach is besides the most important issue, which is the content of the disclosure. And that in turn suggests that the rush to blame “Russian agents” is an attempt to shoot the messenger in order to obscure the message.

What the public should be debating is WADA’s criteria for permitting some athletes from certain countries to avail of “exemptions” for using powerful psychotropic drugs and steroids – and, secondly, the organization’s self-designation to keep such information secret from public purview.

WADA, which has an evident Western bias from its organizational composition and governmental funding sources, was instrumental in accusing Russia of “state-sponsored doping”. Those allegations led to the banning of Russia’s field and track athletes from the Rio Olympics. WADA’s allegations also resulted in banning the entire Russian Paralympic team in subsequent games.

The anti-doping agency’s reports into Russian sports have been roundly criticized elsewhere for lack of due process and verifiable proof and for selective use of dubious sources.

The disclosure now that top American and British athletes were also using banned substances – but allowed to get away with it by WADA – only reinforces the perception that the agency is far from an objective international authority, but rather is a political tool applying double standards specifically to impede Russia.

The media reaction-for-distraction is to shoot alleged Russian messengers over what is an important disclosure about WADA’s conduct and what should be an urgent public debate over how the Rio Olympic games appear to have been hijacked by geopolitical interests to demonize Russia. Even though, there is no substantive evidence presented that Russian “messengers” were indeed behind the WADA leaks.

This same absurd reaction is observed over the earlier leak of data from the Democrat National Committee (DNC). Those published files showed how the DNC had committed to fix the US primaries in order to give Hillary Clinton the presidential nomination over her rival, self-declared socialist candidate Bernie Sanders. DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz even had to resign over the scandal, but the scandal’s full implications of how democratic principles were violated were stifled by high-flown claims that Russia was responsible for the hack. Moscow was and continues to be accused of “interfering in US elections” – despite repeated denials by the Kremlin.

A self-proclaimed US citizen group, DC Leaks, has made the claim of disseminating the Democrat party shenanigans.

Similarly, this week saw another embarrassing email hack, in the case of former US Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell, who served in the George W Bush administration, was scathing of Hillary Clinton, as well as Republican candidate Donald Trump. He labelled Clinton “greedy” and full of incompetent “hubris”, while her husband Bill is having trysts with “bimbos” when she’s away from home. On Trump, Powell dismissed him as an international “disgrace” and “pariah”.

(Powell also had choice deprecatory words for former cabinet colleagues Dick Cheney (“idiot”) and Paul Wolfowitz (“liar”) over the Iraq War debacle.)

These are damning insights from a senior US political figure on the lackluster quality of the two presidential candidates which American voters will decide on in a matter of weeks. Yet, here is the Washington Post headline: “Powell emails were leaked on a site linked to the Russian government”.

Again, who is behind the Powell hack is not clear, as with the WADA and DNC cases. It could be any number of citizen-anarchist groups who feel they are doing a public service by exposing corruption and double standards.

What is telling is the alacrity of Western politicians, organizations and media to finger Russia over alleged hacking scandals.

On Powell, the Washington Post reports: “In what seems [sic] to be a Russian push to embarrass the US body politic, a website posted emails from the retired statesman that call Donald Trump a “disgrace” and Hillary Clinton “greedy”.

The degeneration of the US body politic is the central issue here. However, the ignominy is shunted out of focus with outlandish claims against Russia. This process of denial will only mean an even more withering day of reckoning when the US media run out of scapegoats by which to distract citizens from scrutinizing the internal collapse.

WADA revelations are a classic case of double standards and denial. The 2016 Olympic Games were sabotaged out of duplicity and political scheming against Russia. The emerging files on Western athletes having been given “exemptions” for use of banned substances demonstrates this duplicity.

Whoever is behind the leaked WADA files is doing a duty for truth-telling and genuine public debate about supposed standards and adherence to drug prohibitions in sports.

That is the perspective that should prevail, as in the case of the Democratic party’s stitching up of voters’ choice in the US presidential elections. Or in the case of Colin Powell’s purported debunking of both candidates.

The focus should be on the message, that is, the content – not on the supposed messenger, who is being shot down by those implicated in wrongdoing. Smearing Russia as the messenger only shows how desperate the wrongdoers are.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. 

Multitudes Into Germany's Streets Opposing Trade Deals

Hundreds of Thousands March in Germany Against Sinister Trade Deals

by Jon Queally, staff writer - Common Dreams


Sept. 17, 2016


'CETA and TTIP threaten environmental and consumer protection for millions of people in Europe and North America'


Hundreds of thousands took to city streets across Germany on Saturday as they marched against a pair of corporate-backed trade deals they say will undermine democracy, attack workers and local economies, and accelerate the threats posed by corporate hegemony and global warming.

"These agreements will weaken food safety laws, environmental legislation, banking regulations and undermine the sovereign powers of nations." —Jennifer Morgan, Greenpeace International

Taking aim at both the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), European Union deals with the United States and Canada respectively, opponents say the agreements are not really concerned with expanding trade but rather increasing corporate power.

"CETA and TTIP threaten environmental and consumer protection for millions of people in Europe and North America," said Jennifer Morgan, co-executive director of Greenpeace International.

"These agreements will weaken food safety laws, environmental legislation, banking regulations and undermine the sovereign powers of nations."

In a tweeted video, Morgan added:

From the #ttipdemo in Berlin I call on European leaders to listen to their people and #StopCetaTTIP @GreenpeaceEU pic.twitter.com/i2bZMk2QCi

— Jennifer Morgan (@climatemorgan) September 17, 2016


And others used the #StopCETATTIP hashtag to share photos, thoughts, and updates during the day of action:

Tweets about #stopcetattip lang:en


With large rallies in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Frankfurt, and other cities – the crowds have been estimated at anywhere from 250,000 to 320,000 nationwide.


#StopCetaTTIP: Hamburg: 65.00, Köln: 55.000, Berlin: 70.000, München: 25.000, FFM: 50.000, Stuttgart: 40.000, Leipzig: 15.000 WAHNSINN!

— TTIP & CETA stoppen! (@TTIP_Demo) September 17, 2016


Tolle Bilder aus #Stuttgart – 40.000 protestieren für einen gerechten Welthandel! Vielen DANK Euch! #StopCetaTTIP pic.twitter.com/xt1p7CeyCD

— campact (@campact) September 17, 2016

Though TTIP negotiations, as Common Dreams reported, were said to have "de facto failed" last month, U.S. President Barack Obama has vowed to see the deal approved. And despite widespread opposition German Chancellor Angela Merkel also remains supportive.

Despite the precarious negotiations, the people in the streets on Saturday appear unwilling to take any chances. As those who spoke with the BBC indicated:

"I want us to get rid of TTIP and for European social and environmental standards to be respected, maintained and improved," said Peter Clausing in Berlin.

Many demonstrators think the deal would lead to exploitation of people by businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.

"It will be the enterprises and banks that will have power over people worldwide," said Tobias Kuhn.

"That is a no-go. People need to know that and we will protest until there's no chance of that happening anymore."

In photos:


Around 250,000 people were expected to turn out for protests in seven German cities (AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)


Around 250,000 people were expected to turn out for protests in seven German cities (AFP Photo/Odd Andersen)


Consumer rights activists take part in a march to protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in Berlin, Germany, September 17, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch


A man dressed like the Statue of Liberty attends a demonstration against the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA in Berlin, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016. Thousands of people are rallying in cities across Germany to protest against planned European Union trade deals with the United States and Canada. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)


People demonstrate against the TTIP and CETA trade agreements in Leipzig, Germany, Sept. 17, 2016. Thousands of people are rallying in cities across Germany to protest against planned European Union trade deals with the United States and Canada. (Photo: AP)


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Marching for Humane Immigration in Britain

Refugees Welcome: Thousands March for 'Humanity and Human Rights' in UK

by Jon Queally, staff writer - Common Dreams


September 17, 2016

Amid global crises that have seen people forced from their homelands in unprecedented numbers, citizens call on UK government to open doors to those in need

Pushing back against a tide of xenophobia which has gripped portions of Europe in recent years, thousands marched in central London on Saturday as they demanded the British government do more to help those forced from their homelands amid endless war in the Middle East and economic crises across Africa and beyond.

Under an overall message declaring "Refugees Welcome," many of the estimated 30,000 people marching carried signs reading "We Stand with You"; "No to Islamophobia. No to war."; "Safety is a human right"; and "No Human Being Is Illegal."

Though a resurgent xenophobia and nationalistic fervor has been the response to the influx of refugees in some places, Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, explained the purpose of Saturday's march, in addition to applying political pressure, was largely "to show that actually ordinary people in Britain care deeply about refugees."

Organized by Amnesty, Refugee Action, and other groups, the march comes just two days before a United Nations summit begins in New York to address the humanitarian crisis that has seen large numbers of refugees fleeing to Europe from their war torn homes in the Middle East, with a large portion from Syria, as well as those making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from North Africa.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, an estimated 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year alone. Of those, over 3,200 have died or gone missing, and tens of thousands remain stranded in Greece under terrible conditions.

Allen argues the Conservative-led government's response has fallen well short, but that many British citizens are actively engaged in helping those in need. "While the government’s failure of leadership on the refugee crisis has been utterly shocking," she said, "local communities have taken matters into their own hands and have been doing what they can to support refugees. Some have campaigned for their councils to take in refugees and held fundraising events or run English classes. Others have been driving supplies over to Calais or heading out to volunteer in refugee camps in Greece."

As this video put out ahead of the march by organizers shows, the call for increased solidarity with the refugee community is coming from all quarters:






Saturday's march, as the Independent reports,

comes a year after around 100,000 protesters took to London’s streets calling on the UK to resettle more asylum seekers amid the international outcry over the death of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned trying to reach Greece.

The Solidarity With Refugees group said Saturday’s protest aimed to “show our Government and the world that Britain is ready to welcome more refugees”.

“The UK should be leading the way and working with other states to give refugees safe, legal routes to asylum, ending the trade in people smuggling,” a spokesperson said.

“Since the referendum campaign and vote, divisive rhetoric has been ever more prevalent from a small but vocal minority. In the light of this, the need to come together in a spirit of welcome has become even more acute.”

Freshta Sharif, whose family escaped Afghanistan in 1993, attended the rally and explained: "As a refugee I know how important it is for countries to welcome and offer sanctuary to people fleeing violence and persecution. If it wasn’t for the UK granting asylum to my family after it got too dangerous for us to stay in Afghanistan, I might not be here today. We’re in the middle of a massive refugee crisis and I would like to see UK politicians commit to throwing the same lifeline to far more people who need it."

Despite often being referred to as a "refugee crisis," international aid groups have been eager to reject that construct. As Common Dreams reported earlier this year, groups like Global Justice Now have argued what the world is really witnessing when it comes to the large numbers of displaced individuals and families is "a crisis of global injustice caused by war, poverty, and inequality."

"To demonize those making a rational choice on the part of themselves, their family and their community, obscures the truth," the group explained in briefing paper.

"Migration is bringing those of us in Europe face to face with the reality of the brutal and unjust world our leaders have constructed." 


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Friday, September 16, 2016

Our Ailing Sea: Explaining Ocean Warming

The Sick Ocean

by Robert Hunziker  - CounterPunch


September 8, 2016

A major new scientific report, “Explaining Ocean Warming” was released on September 5th. It is grim. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, the findings are based upon peer-reviewed research compiled by 80 scientists from 12 countries. It is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken on the subject of warming of the ocean.

Significantly, the ocean has absorbed more than 90% of “enhanced heating from climate change since the 1970s.” In other words, the ocean has been “shielding us” from the extensive affects of global warming. And, the consequences for the ocean are “absolutely massive.”

The “seasons in the ocean” are actually changing as a result.

“The scale of ocean warming is truly staggering with the numbers so large that it is difficult for most people to comprehend,” D. Laffoley, et al, ed. Explaining Ocean Warming, IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme, Sept. 2016.
“A useful analysis undertaken by the Grantham Institute in 2015 concluded that if the same amount of heat that has gone into the top 2000m of the ocean between 1955-2010 had gone into the lower 10km of the atmosphere, then the Earth would have seen a warming of 36°C.”

In other words, humanity would be toast.

Here’s one of many dangerous “hooks” mentioned in the report: “Crucially, as evident in the past two years, the heat and CO2 accumulated in the ocean are not permanently locked away, but can be released back into the atmosphere when the ocean surface is anomalously warm, giving a positive rapid feed-back to global warming,” which would entail a decidedly harsh blow to life on the planet.

The 500-page report is all-inclusive with several subsections dealing with individual oceanic issues. Yet, a general overview of the “chain of impacts” is perhaps most relevant to an understanding of the dire consequences of failure to act by halting CO2 fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible.

The “chain of impacts” clearly demonstrates the linear interrelated behavior of ocean warming, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise. Due to a domino effect of one problem cascading into others, key human sectors are now threatened, e.g. fisheries, aquaculture, coastal risks management, general health, and coast tourism.

In point of fact, scientific studies show rapid deterioration throughout the “change of impacts” statement such that an all-out alarm is necessitated. In short, the ole public clarion bells need to start ringing hard and loud because “the impacts on key marine and coastal organisms, ecosystems and ecosystem services are already detectable from high to low latitudes transcending the traditional North/South divide.”

In other words, the entire world oceanic ecosystem is already showing signs of severe stress or oceanic sickness.

Furthermore, the latency affect of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming means the impact of today’s carbon emissions shows up years and years down the line such that, assuming carbon emissions drop to zero tomorrow, global warming continues cruising along for many years to come.

All-important, the ocean is a “climate integrator” that regulates the entire planetary biosphere by absorbing 26% of human-caused CO2 and 93% of additional planetary heat. “Without the ocean, present climate change would thus be far more intense and challenging for human life.”

Meanwhile, the regulating function of the ocean comes with heavy costs, for example, ocean acidification and availability of carbonate ions are disrupted, which are building blocks for marine plants and animals to make skeletons, shells, etc.

This acidification impact is already a factor at the base of the food chain, as tiny pea-sized pteropods, which serve as food stock for everything from krill to salmon to whales, show ultra-thinning of their protective shells necessary for both reproduction and maturation, a problem especially found in the Southern Ocean. This early stage risk to disruption of the food chain is caused by excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbed into the ocean emitted by fossil fuels.

Astonishingly, sea level rise, the most noticeable oceanic impact, has already dramatically increased its rate of increase over the 1901-2010 period as the rate of rise from 1993-2010 accelerated by an astounding 88%. This sea level rise is already felt in cities like Miami where streets are being raised and additional pumping systems installed (Miami Beach is Raising Streets by 2 Feet to Combat Rising Seas, miamibeachrealtor displays a photo of newly raised streets).

Assuming business-as-usual anthropogenic climate change, sources of dietary protein and income for tens of millions of people will likely be severely impacted by mass mortalities. Wherefore, the ole clarion bell needs to ring even louder, waking up citizens to the threat of impending serious food shortages. Fisheries and aquaculture, which are both key for survival for millions, are already at high risk.

Meanwhile, and unfortunately, climate change contemporaneously continues to negatively affect land agriculture, which will likely exacerbate food shortages with the ocean simultaneously stressed. In all, ocean warming is synergistic with other human-induced stresses such as over-exploitation, like drift net fishing, and habitat destruction, e.g., bleached coral, and chemical pollution, for example, Ag runoff.

The report has suggested solutions to ocean stress, as for example: (1) mitigating CO2 emissions by getting off fossil fuels is number no. 1 on the hit list, followed by (2) protecting marine and coastal ecosystems by governmental regulation of “protected areas” and (3) repairing damaged ecosystems with, for example, coral farming, and (4) adapting economic diversification zones and activities.

Importantly, the landmark study emphasizes the fact that “unequivocal scientific evidence shows that impacts on key marine and coastal organisms, ecosystems, and services are already detectable and that high to very high risks of impact are to be expected,” Ibid, page 53.

That statement is as straightforward, pulling no punches, as scientific papers ever get. The evidence is crystal clear that climate change is disrupting the ocean, which is the only ocean we’ve got.

There are no backups.

Here’s hoping Mr. Trump reassesses his “global warming is a hoax” statement. After all, he has a big audience.  

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at roberthunziker@icloud.com
More articles by:Robert Hunziker

Fukushima Tide Turns on Abe

Fukushima Backlash Hits PM Abe

by Robert Hunziker - Dissident Voice


September 12th, 2016

Nuclear power may never recover its cachet as a clean energy source, irrespective of safety concerns, because of the ongoing saga of meltdown 3/11/11 at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Over time, the story only grows more horrific, painful, deceitful. It’s a story that will continue for generations to come.

Here’s why it holds pertinence: As a result of total 100% meltdown, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) cannot locate or remove the radioactive molten core or corium from the reactors. Nobody knows where it is. It is missing. If it is missing from within the reactor structures, has it burrowed into the ground?

There are no ready answers.

[Listen to Robert Hunziker discuss this article here.]


And, the destroyed nuclear plants are way too radioactive for humans to get close enough for inspection. And, robotic cameras get zapped!

Corium is highly radioactive material, begging the question: If it has burrowed through the containment vessel, does it spread underground, contaminating farmland and water resources and if so, how far away? Nobody knows.

According to TEPCO, removing the melted cores from reactors 1,2 and 3 will take upwards of 20 years, or more. Again who knows.

But still, Japan will hold Olympic events in Fukushima in 2020 whilst out-of-control radioactive masses of goo are nowhere to be found. TEPCO expects decades before the cleanup is complete, if ever. Fortunately, for Tokyo 2020 (the Olympic designation) radiation’s impact has a latency effect; i.e., it takes a few years to show up as cancer in the human body.

A week ago on September 7th, Former PM Junichiro Koizumi, one of Japan’s most revered former prime ministers, lambasted the current Abe administration, as well as recovery efforts by TEPCO. At a news conference he said PM Shinzō Abe lied to the Olympic committee in 2013 in order to host the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan.

“That was a lie,” Mr Koizumi told reporters when asked about Mr Abe’s remark that Fukushima was “under control.”1. The former PM also went on to explain TEPCO, after 5 years of struggling, still has not been able to effectively control contaminated water at the plant.

According to The Straits Times’ article: “Speaking to the IOC in September 2013, before the Olympic vote, PM Abe acknowledged concerns but stressed there was no need to worry: “Let me assure you, the situation is under control.”

PM Abe’s irresponsible statement before the world community essentially puts a dagger into the heart of nuclear advocacy and former PM Koizumi deepens the insertion. After all, who can be truthfully trusted? Mr Koizumi was a supporter of nuclear power while in office from 2001-2006, but he has since turned into a vocal opponent.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo, Mr Koizumi said: “The nuclear power industry says safety is their top priority, but profit is in fact what comes first… Japan can grow if the country relies on more renewable energy.”2

Mr Koizumi makes a good point. There have been no blackouts in Japan sans nuclear power. The country functioned well without nuclear.

Further to the point of nuclear versus nonnuclear, Katsunobu Sakurai, mayor of Minamisoma, a city of 70,000 located 25 km north of Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, at a news conference in Tokyo, said:

“As a citizen and as a resident of an area affected by the nuclear power plant disaster, I must express great anger at this act… it is necessary for all of Japan to change its way of thinking, and its way of life too – to move to become a society like Germany, which is no longer reliant on nuclear power.”3

In March of 2015, Minamisoma was declared as a Nonnuclear City, turning to solar and wind power in tandem with energy-saving measures.

Meanwhile, at the insistence of the Abe administration, seven nuclear reactors could restart by the end of FY2016 followed by a total of 19 units over the next 12 months.4

Greenpeace/Japan Discovers Widespread Radioactivity


One of the issues surrounding the Fukushima incident and the upcoming Olympics is whom to trust. Already TEPCO has admitted to misleading the public about reports on the status of the nuclear meltdown, and PM Abe has been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, but even much worse, lying to a major international sports tribunal. His credibility is down the drain.

As such, maybe third party sources can be trusted to tell the truth. In that regard, Greenpeace/Japan, which does not have a vested interest in nuclear power, may be one of the only reliable sources, especially since it has boots on the ground, testing for radiation. Since 2011, Greenpeace has conducted over 25 extensive surveys for radiation throughout Fukushima Prefecture.

In which case, the Japanese people should take heed because PM Abe is pushing hard to reopen nuclear plants and pushing hard to repopulate Fukushima, of course, well ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics since there will be events held in Fukushima Prefecture. After all, how can one expect Olympians to populate Fukushima if Japan’s own citizens do not? But, as of now to a certain extent citizens are pushing back. Maybe they instinctively do not trust their own government’s assurances.

But, more chilling yet, after extensive boots-on-the-ground analyses, Greenpeace issued the following statement in March 2016:

Unfortunately, the crux of the nuclear contamination issue – from Kyshtym to Chernobyl to Fukushima- is this: When a major radiological disaster happens and impacts vast tracts of land, it cannot be ‘cleaned up’ or ‘fixed’.5

That is a blunt way of saying sayonara to habitation on radioactive contaminated land. That’s why Chernobyl is a permanently closed restricted zone for the past 30 years.

As far as “returning home” goes, if Greenpeace/Japan ran the show rather than PM Abe, it appears they would say ‘no’. Greenpeace does not believe it is safe. Greenpeace International issued a press release a little over one month ago with the headline: “Radiation Along Fukushima Rivers up to 200 Times Higher Than Pacific Ocean Seabed”.6

Here’s what they discovered: “The extremely high levels of radioactivity we found along the river systems highlights the enormity and longevity of both the environmental contamination and the public health risks resulting from the Fukushima disaster,” says Ai Kashiwagi, Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan.

“These river samples were taken in areas where the Abe government is stating it is safe for people to live. But the results show there is no return to normal after this nuclear catastrophe,” claims Kashiwagi.


“Riverbank sediment samples taken along the Niida River in Minami Soma, measured as high as 29,800 Bq/kg for radiocaesium (Cs-134 and 137). The Niida samples were taken where there are no restrictions on people living, as were other river samples. At the estuary of the Abukuma River in Miyagi prefecture, which lies more than 90km north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, levels measured in sediment samples were as high as 6,500 Bq/kg”.7

The prescribed safe limit of radioactive cesium for drinking water is 200 Bq/kg. A Becquerel (“Bq”) is a gauge of strength of radioactivity in materials such as Iodine-131 and Cesium-137.8


“The lifting of evacuation orders in March 2017 for areas that remain highly contaminated is a looming human rights crisis and cannot be permitted to stand. The vast expanses of contaminated forests and freshwater systems will remain a perennial source of radioactivity for the foreseeable future, as these ecosystems cannot simply be decontaminated.”9

Still, the Abe administration is to be commended for its herculean effort to try to clean up radioactivity throughout Fukushima Prefecture, but at the end of the day, it may be for naught. A massive cleanup effort is impossible in the hills, in the mountains, in the valleys, in the vast forests, along riverbeds and lakes, across extensive meadows in the wild where radiation levels remain deadly dangerous. Over time, it leaches back into decontaminated areas.

And as significantly, if not more so, what happens to the out-of-control radioactive blobs of corium? Nobody knows where those are, or what to do about it. It’s kinda like the mystery surrounding black holes in outer space, but nobody dares go there.

Fukushima is a story for the ages because radiation doesn’t quit. Still, the Olympics must go on, but where?


Notes:

  1. “Abe Lied to IOC About Nuke Plant, ex-PM Says”, The Straits Times, September 8, 2016. 
  2. Ayako Mie, staff writer, “Despite Dwindling Momentum, Koizumi Pursues Anti-Nuclear Goals”, The Japan Times, September 7, 2016.
  3. Sarai Flores, “Minamisoma Mayor Sees Future for Fukushima ‘Nonnuclear’ City in Energy Independence”, The Japan Times, March 9, 2016.
  4. “Japanese Institute Sees 19 Reactor Restarts by March 2018”, World Nuclear News, July 28, 2016.
  5. Hanis Maketab, Environmental Impacts of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Will Last ‘decades to centuries’ – Greenpeace, Asia Correspondent, March 4, 2016.
  6. Greenpeace Press Release, July 21, 2016.
  7. Greenpeace -1.
  8. “Safe Limits for Consuming Radiation-Contaminated Food”, Bloomberg, March 20, 2011.
  9. Greenpeace – 2.

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

Mexico's Timorous Independence Day

Celebrating Mexico’s Independence Day Under the Shadow of a Giant Wall

by Tamara Pearson - CounterPunch


 September 16, 2016

The horns I can hear reverberating around the streets aren’t from football fans streaming out after a match: its the sound of Mexico’s independence night approaching. But with thousands of disappeared people, high unemployment, and privatized services on the one hand, and racist attacks on Mexico and Mexicans on the other hand, celebrating the country is not so straight forward.

My neighbor said she would be having a quiet dinner of pozole – a traditional soup often eaten on Independence Day – with her family, while others told me they would be protesting.

Tonight, the state governor here in Puebla will remember the independence heroes at 11pm from the main balcony of the Municipal Palace with a grito (shout of independence), and many people will set off their firecrackers and smash painted eggs against their heads, while in the capital, thousands are already marching, calling for President Enrique Pena Nieto to resign. Tomorrow, formal civic-military marches will be held around the country.

With 60 percent of the country working in the informal sector – mostly selling goods in the streets or on transport, the national day is also an opportunity to earn some extra cash, and today the streets are full of people selling fire crackers, sombreros of all sizes, flags, mustaches, braids, giant soft toy chilies in sombreros and holding cans of tequila, hair ribbons, flag colored horns, handicrafts, flavored pulque, wigs, chalupas and burgers, figurines, and the painted eggs.

The butcher is wearing his sombrero with a Mexican-flag ribbon around it, waiters have Mexican flag bow-ties, and there’s papel picado (perforated paper ) adorning shop fronts and the streets.

But Limberth Villanueva didn’t feel that there was much to celebrate. People celebrate Independence Day “out of habit, like Christmas. It’s an excuse to eat and drink. It’s increasingly distant from its origins,” he said. And, rather than independent, Mexico is “dependent, reliant, and obedient, (especially) now with globalized economic neocolonialism”.

“We live under a government that has sold our country,” Jessie Cedillo told me.

On the other hand, with the likes of Donald Trump calling Mexicans “rapists”, perhaps being proud of the country, if not the government, is worth something.

US use and abuse of Mexico


Still, anti-Mexican prejudice is just the tip of the iceberg, and those who aren’t happy have good reasons. For over 20 years the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the US, and Canada, has seen subsidized US corn flooding Mexico’s market, putting farmers out of work. The agreement has been“destroy[ing] Mexico’s own industries and jobs,” according to analyst Perez-Rocha and US companies like Walmart and Krispy Kreme have conquered Mexico’s markets.

Without NAFTA, Mexico could have had “European living standards today,” Economist Mark Weisbrot argued in the Guardian, pointing out that before NAFTA Mexico’s GDP per capita had nearly doubled, while since its signing, it has grown by less than 1 percent per year.

On top of that, the US-concocted war on drugs in Mexico has lead to a huge death toll. With the US spending over $1.3 billion on training Mexican security forces, crimes like killings, torture, and other abuses by those forces have dramatically increased.

And Insight Crime has found Mexico to be the country with the most people living in slave-like conditions, many of those people used by drug cartels to carry out illegal activities. Undocumented migrants in Mexico are also vulnerable to exploitation, and nearly 6,000 migrants have died on the Mexico-US border – that infamous area where Trump wants Mexico to build him a wall.

Resign already


At the same time, most Mexicans feel their own government isn’t looking after them either. Today’s #RenunciaYa (Resign Now) marches in the capital and other cities around the country have the slogan “there are more than enough reasons”.

It will be the fourth year in a row that when President Pena Nieto does the traditional grito, there’ll be more people protesting and booing, than celebrating.

Local newspaper, Sinembargo reported that in 2013, Pena Nieto’s first grito, the federal police entered the main square, the Zocalo, with tanks and removed hundreds of teachers who had been protesting education reforms. Last year, people screamed, “Nos faltan 43” – we’re short 43 people – in reference to the 43 teacher students who were violently disappeared in one night.

This year, as with other years, there are accusations of the government paying people to attend the grito. One contact who can’t be named said he had “friends” working in travel agents who were paid by government representatives to bus people in. Those people were apparently paid 400 pesos and given lunch.

Meanwhile, hundreds of riot police are lined up blocks away from the Zocalo to prevent protesters arriving there and calling on Pena Nieto to resign when he appears on the balcony of the presidential palace tonight.

People have recently criticized Pena Nieto for reportedly plagiarizing his university thesis, for inviting Donald Trump to Mexico, and for his neoliberal policies.

And Trump himself isn’t getting off lightly either. He is another reason they are marching today.

“He was invited (to Mexico) by the federal government, even though he has openly discriminated against us,” Ixchel Cisneros, told me.

A poll in Reforma, a daily newspaper, found that 85 percent of Mexicans believed inviting Trump was a mistake. His racism isn’t welcome here.
Join the debate on Facebook


Tamara Pearson is a long time journalist based in Latin America, and author of The Butterfly Prison. Her writings can be found at her blog.

More articles by:Tamara Pearson

When One Maniacal Corporate Food Conglomerate Is Definitely Not Better Than Two

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn for the Worse

by Colin Todhunter - CounterPunch


Sept. 16, 2016

News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer. The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides. Bayer’s crop chemicals business is the world’s second largest after Syngenta, and Monsanto is the leading commercial seeds business.

Monsanto held a 26 per cent market share of all seeds sold in 2011. Bayer (mainly a pharmaceuticals company) sells 17 per cent of the world’s total agrochemicals and also has a comparatively small seeds sector. If competition authorities pass the deal, the combined company would be the globe’s largest seller of both seeds and agrochemicals.

The deal marks a trend towards consolidation in the industry with Dow and DuPont having agreed to merge and Swiss seed/pesticide giant Syngenta merging with ChemChina, a Chinese government concern.

The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six – Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont. Prior to the mergers, these six firms controlled 60 per cent of commercial seed and more than 75 per cent of agrochemical markets.

Alarm bells are ringing with the European Commission putting its approval of the Dow-DuPont deal temporarily on hold, and the US Senate Judiciary Committee is about to hold hearings on the deal due to concerns about consolidation in the industry, which has resulted in increased seed and pesticide prices.

In response to the Monsanto-Bayer merger, US National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson issued the following statement:

“Consolidation of this magnitude cannot be the standard for agriculture, nor should we allow it to determine the landscape for our future. The merger between Bayer and Monsanto marks the fifth major deal in agriculture in the last year… For the last several days, our family farm and ranch members have been on Capitol Hill asking Members of Congress to conduct hearings to review the staggering amount of pending merger deals in agriculture today. We will continue to express concern that these megadeals are being made to benefit the corporate boardrooms at the expense of family farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural economies. We are pleased that next week the Senate Judiciary Committee will be reviewing the alarming trend of consolidation in agriculture that has led to less competition, stifled innovation, higher prices and job loss in rural America… all mergers, including this recent Bayer/Monsanto deal, [should] be put under the magnifying glass of the committee and the U.S. Department of Justice.”

For all the rhetoric that we often hear about ‘the market’ and large corporations offering choice to farmers and consumers, the evidence is restriction of choice and the squeezing out of competitors. Over the years, for instance, Monsanto has bought up dozens of competitors to become the largest supplier of genetically engineered seeds with seed prices having risen dramatically.

Consolidation and monopoly in any sector should be of concern to everyone. But the fact that the large agribusiness conglomerates specialise in a globalised, industrial-scale, chemical-intensive model of farming that is adversely affecting what we eat should have us very concerned. Do we want this system to be intensified even further just because their business models depend on it?

Farmers are increasingly reliant on patented corporate seeds, whether non-GM hybrid seeds or GM, and the chemical inputs designed to be used with them. Monsanto seed traits are now in 80 per cent of corn and more than 90 per cent of soybeans grown in the US. It comes as little surprise then that people in the US now consume a largely corn-based diet: a less diverse diet than in the past, which is high in calorific value, but low in health-promoting, nutrient dense food. This health-damaging ‘American obesity diet’ and the agricultural practices underpinning is now a global phenomenon.

By its very nature, the capitalist economic model that corporate agriculture is attached to demands expansion, market capture and profit growth. And, it must be accepted that it does bring certain benefits to those farmers who have remained in agriculture (if not for the 330 farmers who leave their land every week, according to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service).

But in the US, ‘success’ in agriculture depends on over $51 billion of taxpayer handouts to over a 10-year period to keep the gravy train on track for a particular system of agriculture designed to maintain corporate agribusiness profit margins. And such ‘success’ fails to factor in all of the external social, health and environmental costs that mean this type of model is ultimately unsustainable. It is easy to spin failure as success when the parameters are narrowly defined.

Moreover, the exporting of the Green Revolution paradigm throughout the globe has been a boon to transnational seed and agrochemical manufacturers, which have benefited from undermining a healthy, sustainable indigenous agriculture and transforming it into a profitable enterprise for global capital.

And not just profitable for global capital – but its company managers too. For example, a few months ago, according to Reuters, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant could receive more than $70 million if Monsanto were to be taken over by Bayer. At the time, Monsanto said it was open to engaging in further negotiations with Bayer after turning down its $62 billion bid. The report shows how Grant’s exposure to shares and options meant he had an incentive to hold out for the highest possible sale price, which would not only be in the interests of shareholders but also increase the value of his holdings. Other senior figures within Monsanto would also walk away with massive financial gains.

These corporate managers belong to a global agribusiness sector whose major companies rank among the Fortune 500 corporations. These companies are high-rollers in a geo-politicised, globalised system of food production whereby huge company profits are directly linked to the worldwide eradication of the small farm – the bedrock of global food production, bad food and poor health, inequitable, rigged trade, environmental devastation, mono-cropping and diminished food and diet diversity, the destruction of rural communities, ecocide, degraded soil, water scarcity and drought, destructive and inappropriate models of development and farmers who live a knife-edge existence and for whom debt has become a fact of life.

A handful of powerful and politically connected corporations are determining what is grown, how it is to be grown, what needs to be done to grow it, who grows it and what ends up on the plate. And despite PR platitudes about the GMO/chemical-intensive model just being part of a wider mix of farming practices designed to feed humanity, from India to Africa indigenous models of agriculture are being squeezed out (through false argument and deception) as corporate imperialism puts pay to notions of food sovereignty.

We should be highly concerned about a food system increasingly dominated by companies that have a history (see this on Monsanto and this on Bayer) of releasing health-damaging, environmentally polluting products onto the market and engaging in bribery, cover-ups, monopolistic practices and what should be considered as crimes against humanity?

Despite the likes of Hugh Grant saying the Monsanto-Bayer merger will be good for farmers and “broader society”, most of all it will be good for shareholders and taxpayer-subsidised, state-assisted company profit. That’s the type of hegemonic rhetoric that’s been used down the ages to disguise the true nature of power and its beneficiaries.

It’s not so much the Monsanto-Bayer deal is a move in the wrong direction (which it is), but increasing consolidation is to be expected given the trend in many key sectors toward monopoly capitalism or just plain cartelism, whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s the system of industrialised, capital-intensive agriculture wedded to powerful players whose interests lie in perpetuating and extending their neoliberal economic model that is the real problem.

“We have justified the demise of family farms, decay of rural communities, pollution of the rural environment, and degradation of soil health as being necessary… The problems we are facing today are the consequence of too many people… pursuing their narrow self-interests without considering the consequence of their actions on the rest of society and the future of humanity.” Professor John Ikerd, ‘Healthy Soils, Healthy People

So what is the solution? We could start here.

 
Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.
More articles by:Colin Todhunter

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Fool Me Once Shame On Me, Fool Me Twice...Won't Get Fooled Again

Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News


September 14, 2016  


A British parliamentary inquiry into the Libyan fiasco has reported what should have been apparent from the start in 2011 – and was to some of us – that the West’s military intervention to “protect” civilians in Benghazi was a cover for what became another disastrous “regime change” operation.



At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003,
President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military
to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad,
known as “shock and awe.”

The report from the U.K.’s Foreign Affairs Committee confirms that the U.S. and other Western governments exaggerated the human rights threat posed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and then quickly morphed the “humanitarian” mission into a military invasion that overthrew and killed Gaddafi, leaving behind political and social chaos.

The report’s significance is that it shows how little was learned from the Iraq War fiasco in which George W. Bush’s administration hyped and falsified intelligence to justify invading Iraq and killing its leader, Saddam Hussein. In both cases, U.K. leaders tagged along and the West’s mainstream news media mostly served as unprofessional propaganda conduits, not as diligent watchdogs for the public.

Today, we are seeing an even more dangerous repetition of this pattern: demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, destabilizing the Russian economy and pressing for “regime change” in Moscow. Amid the latest propaganda orgy against Putin, virtually no one in the mainstream is exercising any restraint or finding any cautionary lessons from the Iraqi and Libyan examples.

Yet, with Russia, the risks are orders of magnitude greater than even the cases of Iraq and Libya – and one might toss in the messy “regime change” projects in Ukraine and Syria. The prospect of political chaos in Moscow – with extremists battling for power and control of the nuclear codes – should finally inject some sense of responsibility in the West’s politicians and media, but doesn’t.

When it comes to Putin and Russia, it’s the same ole hyperbole and falsehood that so disinformed the public regarding the “threats” from Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Just as President George W. Bush deceptively painted Hussein’s supposed WMD as a danger to Americans and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dishonestly portrayed Gaddafi as “genocidal,” U.S. officials and pundits are depicting Putin as some cartoonish villain or some new Hitler.

And, just as The New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets amplified the Iraq and Libyan propaganda to the American people – rather than questioning and challenging it – these supposedly journalistic entities are performing the same function regarding Russia. The chief difference is that now we’re talking about the potential for nuclear annihilation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Existential Madness of Putin-Bashing.“]

According to the new U.K. report on Libya, Britain’s military intervention – alongside the U.S. and France – was based on “erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding” of the reality inside Libya, which included a lack of appreciation about the role of Islamic extremists in spearheading the opposition to Gaddafi.

In other words, Gaddafi was telling the truth when he accused the rebels around Benghazi of being penetrated by Islamic terrorists. The West, including the U.S. news media, took Gaddafi’s vow to wipe out this element and distorted it into a claim that he intended to slaughter the region’s civilians, thus stampeding the United Nations Security Council into approving an operation to protect them.

That mandate was then twisted into an excuse to decimate Libya’s army and clear the way for anti-Gaddafi rebels to seize the capital of Tripoli and eventually hunt down, torture and murder Gaddafi.

Ignored Terror Evidence


Yet, there was evidence before this “regime change” occurred regarding the extremist nature of the anti-Gaddafi rebels as well as those seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As analysts Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman wrote in a pre-Libya-war report for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, “the Syrian and Libyan governments share the United States’ concerns about violent salafist/jihadi ideology and the violence perpetrated by its adherents.”

In the report entitled “Al-Qaeda’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” Felter and Fishman also analyzed Al Qaeda’s documents captured in 2007 showing personnel records of militants who flocked to Iraq for the war. The documents revealed that eastern Libya (the base of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion) was a hotbed for suicide bombers traveling to Iraq to kill American troops.

Felter and Fishman wrote that these so-called Sinjar Records disclosed that while Saudis comprised the largest number of foreign fighters in Iraq, Libyans represented the largest per-capita contingent by far. Those Libyans came overwhelmingly from towns and cities in the east.

“The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s Northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (53) and Benghazi 23.9% (21),” Felter and Fishman wrote, adding:

“Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya, in particular for an uprising by Islamist organizations in the mid?1990s. … One group — the Libyan Fighting Group … — claimed to have Afghan veterans in its ranks,” a reference to mujahedeen who took part in the CIA-backed anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as did Al Qaeda founder, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi.
“The Libyan uprisings [in the 1990s] became extraordinarily violent,” Felter and Fishman wrote. “Qadhafi used helicopter gunships in Benghazi, cut telephone, electricity, and water supplies to Darnah and famously claimed that the militants ‘deserve to die without trial, like dogs,’”

Some important Al Qaeda leaders operating in Pakistan’s tribal regions also were believed to have come from Libya. For instance, “Atiyah,” who was guiding the anti-U.S. war strategy in Iraq, was identified as a Libyan named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.

It was Atiyah who urged a strategy of creating a quagmire for U.S. forces in Iraq, buying time for Al Qaeda’s headquarters to rebuild its strength in Pakistan. “Prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in our interest,” Atiyah said in a letter that upbraided Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for his hasty and reckless actions in Iraq.

The Atiyah letter was discovered by the U.S. military after Zarqawi was killed by an airstrike in June 2006. [To view the “prolonging the war” excerpt in a translation published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, click here. To read the entire letter, click here.]

Hidden Motives


This reality was known by U.S. officials prior to the West’s military intervention in Libya in 2011, yet opportunistic politicians, including Secretary of State Clinton, saw Libya as a stage to play out their desires to create muscular foreign policy legacies or achieve other aims.

Some of Clinton’s now-public emails show that France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be more interested in protecting France’s financial dominance of its former African colonies as well as getting a bigger stake in Libya’s oil wealth than in the well-being of the Libyan people.

An April 2, 2011 email from Clinton’s personal adviser Sidney Blumenthal explained that Gaddafi had plans to use his stockpile of gold “to establish a pan-African currency” and thus “to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc.”

Blumenthal added, “French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.” Another key factor, according to the email, was Sarkozy’s “desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production.”

For Clinton, a prime motive for pushing the Libyan “regime change” was to demonstrate her mastery of what she and her advisers called “smart power,” i.e., the use of U.S. aerial bombing and other coercive means, such as economic and legal sanctions, to impose U.S. dictates on other nations.

Her State Department email exchanges revealed that her aides saw the Libyan war as a chance to pronounce a “Clinton doctrine,” but that plan fell through when President Obama seized the spotlight after Gaddafi’s government fell in August 2011.

But Clinton didn’t miss a second chance to take credit on Oct. 20, 2011, after militants captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Appearing on a TV interview, Clinton celebrated Gaddafi’s demise with the quip, “we came; we saw; he died.”

Clinton’s euphoria was not long-lasting, however, as chaos enveloped Libya. With Gaddafi and his largely secular regime out of the way, Islamic militants expanded their power over the country. Some were terrorists, just as Gaddafi and the West Point analysts had warned.

One Islamic terror group attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel, an incident that Clinton called the worst moment of her four-year tenure as Secretary of State.

As the violence spread, the United States and other Western countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Once prosperous with many social services, Libya descended into the category of failed state with rival militias battling over oil and territory while the Islamic State took advantage of the power vacuum to establish a foothold around Sirte.

Though Clinton prefers to describe Libya as a “work in progress,” rather than another “regime change failure,” U.S. and U.N. efforts to impose a new “unity government” on Libya have met with staunch resistance from many Libyan factions. Since April, the so-called Government of National Accord has maintained only a fragile presence in Tripoli, in Libya’s west, and has been rejected by Libya’s House of Representatives (HOR), which functions from the eastern city of Tobruk.

Over the past few days, military forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Hafter, who is associated with HOR in the east, seized control of several oil facilities despite angry protests from Western nations, including the U.S., U.K., and France. But Western nations have little credibility left inside Libya, which not only faced colonization in the past but has watched as the U.S.-U.K.-French military intervention in 2011 has led to widespread poverty, suffering and death.

Inept Intervention


The U.K. report only underscores how deceptive and inept that intervention was. As described by the U.K. Guardian newspaper, then-Prime Minister “David Cameron’s intervention in Libya was carried out with no proper intelligence analysis, drifted into an unannounced goal of regime change and shirked its moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, according to a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee.

“The failures led to the country becoming a failed state on the verge of all-out civil war, the report adds. The report, the product of a parliamentary equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, closely echoes the criticisms widely made of [then-Prime Minister] Tony Blair’s intervention in Iraq, and may yet come to be as damaging to Cameron’s foreign policy legacy.”

Earlier this year, Cameron stepped down as prime minister following the approval of the “Brexit” referendum calling on the U.K. to leave the European Union, a position that Cameron opposed. This week, Cameron also resigned his seat in Parliament.

Though Blair and Cameron have at least faced personal disgrace over their roles in these two failed “regime change” invasions, there has been less accountability in the United States, where there were no comprehensive examinations of the policy failures that led to the wars in Iraq and Libya (although studies were undertaken regarding Bush’s false claims about Iraq’s WMD and the Obama administration’s failure to adequately protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi).

There has been even less accountability in the mainstream U.S. news media, where, for instance, The Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who repeatedly reported Iraq’s non-existent WMD as flat fact remains in the same job today pushing similar over-the-top propaganda regarding Russia.

A New Cold War


As with the fiascos in Iraq and Libya, U.S. policymakers continue to ignore or sideline American intelligence analysts who possess information that would cast doubt on the escalation of hostilities with Russia.

Even as the Obama administration has charted this new Cold War with Russia over the past two years – a prospect that could cost U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars and carries the risk of thermonuclear war – there has been no National Intelligence Estimate getting a consensus judgment from America’s 16 intelligence agencies about how real the Russian threat is, according to intelligence sources.

One source said a key reason why an NIE had not been done was that U.S. policymakers wanted a more alarmist report than the intelligence analysts were willing to produce. “They call [the alarm about Russia] political, not factual,” the source said. “They weren’t going to do one, period. They can’t lie.”

The source added that the analysts would have to acknowledge how helpful Putin has been in a number of sensitive and strategic areas, such as securing Syria’s agreement to surrender its chemical weapons and convincing Iran to accept tight limits on its nuclear program.

“Israel has nuclear weapons and a crazy leader,” the source said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “If not for Putin, the guy may have used it [a nuclear bomb] in Iran. He [Putin] calmed things down in Syria. They [CIA analysts] aren’t that stupid. To tell the truth, you have to say he [Putin] saved the Middle East a lot of trouble.”

U.S. intelligence analysts also might have had to include their assessments regarding whether Syrian rebels – not Assad’s military – deployed sarin gas outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, and whether an element of the Ukrainian military – not ethnic Russian rebels – shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

Those two propaganda themes blaming Syria and Russia, respectively, were promoted heavily by mainstream Western media and various Internet-based information warriors. The two themes have been central to the Western-backed “regime change” project in Syria and to the new Cold War with Russia. If U.S. intelligence analysts knocked down those themes in an NIE, valuable propaganda assets would be exposed and discredited.

Also, in the wake of the two British government reports undermining the propaganda that was used to justify “regime change” in Iraq and Libya, the blow to Western “credibility” if there were similar admissions about falsehoods regarding Syria and Russia could be devastating.

Instead, the hope of Official Washington is that the American public won’t catch on to the pattern of deception and that the people will continue to ignore the famous warning that President George W. Bush infamously garbled: “fool me once, shame on … shame on you; fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

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