Death toll rises to 25, as India-Pakistan border clashes heighten war danger

Alex Lantier

At least 25 people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed during the past five days of heavy, cross-border artillery and machine gun fire between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region.

Yesterday, Indian police reported that Pakistani shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir had killed seven people, including three women and two children, in the Ramgarh sector of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

This followed the deaths Monday of one soldier and one civilian in India and of six Pakistani civilians in the Nakyal and Jandrot sectors of Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir. Cross-border exchanges also claimed the lives of two members of the Indian security forces and six Pakistan civilians last Friday and Saturday.

The border clashes, which flared up after India blamed Pakistan for a September 18 attack on the Indian army base at Uri, threaten to trigger all-out war between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states.

“It appears as if a full-blown war is going on between India and Pakistan. Please have mercy and stop it,” villager Mohammed Saeed told Reuters by telephone, in an interview interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Hundreds of schools have been closed in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and anger and fear over the war is mounting in the population on both sides of the border.

Both Indian and Pakistani military commanders have pledged to intensify the fighting, however. Late Monday, the Pakistani army’s Inter-Services Public Relations agency issued a statement declaring that its forces were “effectively targeting Indian posts for heavy casualties,” in retaliation for “Indian targeting of civil population by unprovoked firing on LoC.”

Indian Defense Ministry officials told Asian News International, “They have targeted our forward areas and we have also responded appropriately. They are using 120 mm, i.e. heavy, mortars and we are also responding in equal measure... We are hitting them hard.”

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) Deputy Inspector General Dharmendra Pareek praised what he called a “calibrated retaliation” yesterday by BSF forces, who “targeted Pakistan Rangers’ posts across IB [the international border] in the same sector and caused heavy damage to 14 Pakistani posts.”

Six weeks after the Uri attack, it is clear that the attack on the Indian military camp only served to intensify a conflict whose causes are far more deeply rooted.

Officials on both sides of the LoC are whipping up nationalism and war fever, both to suppress rising social anger and divide workers along national and communal lines, and as part of an international escalation of military tensions driven above all by the US’s anti-China “pivot to Asia.”

India in particular has been shaken by social protests, including protests and strikes by tens of millions of workers against the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) austerity measures and pro-business market reforms.

The Uri camp attack was seized upon by New Delhi to legitimize and deflect attention from the Indian security forces’ bloody repression of mass protests in Kashmir. The protests, which have rattled India’s Hindu supremacist BJP government and the Indian establishment as a whole, erupted in July following the Indian security forces’ summary execution of Burhani Wali, an Islamist fighter calling for Kashmiri independence.

The crackdown on the anti-Indian protests in the Kashmir Valley has claimed the lives of more than 80 people and brutal police attacks on protesters are continuing.

Yesterday three girls aged 13, 16, and 18 were admitted to a hospital in Srinagar with wounds to the face, ears and eyes, after security forces shot them with pellet guns in the southern district of Pulwama, allegedly in response to stone throwing by protesters. Their families stated that they had not joined the protests. All three face weeks of painful operations in a desperate attempt to restore their sight, their hearing, and their ability to speak.

In this context, and with the support of Washington, the Indian government responded to the attack on the Uri base with unprecedented measures. This included threatening to abrogate the Indus Water Treaty and boasting that its Special Forces’ troops had mounted raids inside Pakistan and inflicted heavy casualties.

For more than four decades, New Delhi had not admitted to carrying out any military actions inside Pakistan, fearing that such statements could trigger a chain of strikes and counterstrikes that could escalate into all-out war. Now, nearly two decades after India and Pakistan both acquired nuclear weapons, India is proclaiming that the days of “strategic restraint” are over and that, if need be, it will wage war to enforce its demand that Pakistan cease supporting “terrorism”—deliberately stoking a conflict that could ultimately provoke a nuclear exchange claiming hundreds of millions of lives.

Over the last year, US officials signed military agreements with India that have turned it into a front-line state in Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China. If a major war were to develop between India and Pakistan, China’s principal ally in the Indian subcontinent and Indian Ocean region, it must be assumed that it would draw both the United States and China into a global conflict.

This danger has become so palpable that, amid escalating popular opposition to war in the border areas, officials presiding over the repression in Kashmir felt compelled to beg New Delhi not to escalate the conflict too far. Yesterday, Jammu and Kashmir (JK) Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti called for India and Pakistan to resume negotiations.

“We in JK yearn for peace as we have been suffering immensely because of the hostility and violence in the region and know very well its dangers and perilous consequences,” she said, adding, “We see world-over how wars have resulted in complete destruction of once most prosperous countries and annihilation of cultures.”

Powerful factions of the Indian ruling elite, of all political colorations, have supported the military escalation, however. In September, at the initiative of the Stalinist-led state government, the assembly in the southern Indian state of Kerala provocatively endorsed the Indian army’s “surgical strike” attacks inside Pakistan. Its resolution, moved by Chief Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, declared: “The House congratulates the Army for taking steps to protect the country and people and fully supports its action.”

The BJP government and Indian elite have intensified their campaign of threats, bullying, and provocations against Pakistan based on two interlinked calculations: that their ever-closer strategic partnership with the US gives them new leverage over Islamabad and that Washington shares their anger and concern that Pakistan and China have responded to the emergence of an Indo-US alliance by enhancing their own strategic ties.

They have not been disappointed. In a reckless move, the Obama administration and the US political and media establishment have given New Delhi ever-clearer signals that they are ready to go much further than in similar crises in the past in supporting India in pursuing aggression against Pakistan.

This has included ignoring Islamabad’s concerns about India’s involvement in its northwestern neighbor Afghanistan and announcing a trilateral US, Afghan, Indian dialogue. It has also seen Washington give cautious, tacit support to an Indian plan to break Pakistan’s blockade of Indian-Afghan trade and strategically compete with China for resources and influence in Central Asia though the building of a trade corridor, even though the plan’s pivot is a port, Chabahar, that is located in Iran—a country the US views as a major regional rival and key obstacle to its regime-change war in Syria.

In September, prominent US newspapers indicated their support for India taking military action against Pakistan in reprisal for the Uri attack, with the Los Angeles Times titling one such piece “India has one of the world’s biggest armies, why doesn’t it use it?”

Last month, the Obama administration directly stated that its sympathies lie with New Delhi against Islamabad. While emphasizing “caution,” it lined up behind the BJP government’s illegal and highly provocative attacks inside Pakistan, declaring, “We empathize with the Indian position that it needs to respond militarily to the cross-border threat of terrorism.”

New York Times promotes war hysteria over Estonia

Bill Van Auken

Ever since the 2014 US-orchestrated and fascist-spearheaded coup in Ukraine, the New York Times has distinguished itself as the principal anti-Russian propaganda organ of the US government, demonizing Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin for everything from the death toll inflicted in Washington’s war for regime change in Syria to the political rise of Donald Trump.

In its November 1 edition, the Times continued this anti-Russian campaign with a news feature entitled “Wary of Russia’s Ambitions, Estonia Prepares a Nation of Insurgents.” The article touts the exploits of a paramilitary formation in the tiny former Soviet Baltic republic, which is now a member of NATO, located barely 85 miles from St. Petersburg.

Under the direction of the newspaper’s editorial page editor, James Bennet, who was installed earlier this year, the Times has pursued a virulently anti-Russian line that reflects the consensus within the Pentagon and the CIA that Moscow now stands as the foremost obstacle to Washington’s drive to assert US global hegemony. Bennet, whose father was a former chief of USAID, an agency that frequently operates as a front for the CIA, and whose brother is the senior US senator from Colorado, is uniquely prepared for the role of war propagandist.

Supplementing the editorial direction of the anti-Russian propaganda campaign are various on-the-ground specialists who churn out so-called “news” articles that reproduce all the worst features of “yellow journalism.”

Among them is Andrew E. Kramer, the Times Moscow correspondent. Kramer is responsible for a series of journalistic fabrications, distortions and lies in the service of the campaign to prepare the American public for a military confrontation with Russia. In April of 2014, in the wake of the coup in Kiev, he co-authored a front-page piece purporting to present photographic evidence, provided by the US State Department, that Russian troops were in eastern Ukraine and were leading the pro-Russian separatist rebellion against the right-wing regime in Kiev. It was quickly established that the photos were doctored and the Times was forced to retract the piece.

More recently, he penned a piece entitled “More Enemies of the Kremlin End Up Dead: A Pattern That Suggests State Involvement,” which essentially accused Putin of responsibility for a series of political assassinations without providing a shred of evidence to support the allegations.

In his latest article profiling the paramilitaries of the Estonian Defense League, Kramer’s journalistic pursuits dovetail entirely with the operations of US imperialism. It follows on the heels of last week’s announcement in Brussels of NATO’s finalized plans for the deployment of combat brigades in all three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These 4,000 troops deployed on Russia’s doorstep are to be backed by a 40,000-strong rapid reaction force as well as a ring of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe designed to facilitate a US nuclear first strike.

Estonia serves as a strategic trip wire for a nuclear Third World War. In September 2014, President Barack Obama made this clear, flying to the Estonian capital of Tallinn to declare that “the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London.” He declared Washington’s “eternal” commitment to go to war under the terms of NATO’s Article 5 in defense of this tiny state of 1.3 million people on Russia’s doorstep, promising “American boots on the ground.”

In a rhetorical flight of fancy, Obama extolled Estonian nationalism, declaring, “You never gave up when the Red Army came in from the east or when the Nazis came in from the west.”

In the midst of his breathless recounting of the exploits of the Estonian Defense League as it tramped through the woods outside Tallinn and learned how to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Kramer echoes the same historical narrative promoted by Obama, writing that in Estonia “partisans are still glorified for fighting the Nazis and the Soviets in World War II.”

The claim that the so-called partisans equally resisted the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, and that the predecessors of the current Estonian Defense League are “glorified for fighting the Nazis,” is a grotesque historical fabrication. The historical predecessor of today’s Estonian Defense League, the Omakaitse (“home guard”), was formed in 1918 by former Tsarist officers in opposition to the Russian Revolution.

In 1941, the league was resurrected in conjunction with the German Nazi regime’s Operation Barbarossa to carry out operations against the retreating Soviet Red Army.

The partisans in Estonia are “glorified” each year on August 28, which marks the anniversary of the day in 1942 when the Nazi Waffen SS began recruiting members of the Estonian Defense League into its ranks. SS veterans have held rallies on that day, supported by fascist and extreme nationalist elements. They have received official greetings from leading state officials.

Approximately 80,000 Estonians joined with Nazis in the Second World War. Another 30,000 joined the ranks of the Red Army, fighting the Nazis as the Estonian Rifle Corps. These later veterans are neither “glorified” nor celebrated.

Elements drawn from the Estonian Defense League into the SS served as guards and even commandants in the network of 22 concentration and labor camps in Estonia. These proved so efficient that at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, convened by the Nazi leadership to oversee implementation of the so-called “final solution to the Jewish question,” Nazi officials boasted that Estonia was already Judenfrei (free of Jews).

With the assistance of the Estonian fascists, the Nazis had exterminated virtually every one of the 4,500 Jews who failed to escape Estonia before the German occupation. Some 20,000 more Jews were transported from elsewhere in Europe to Estonia. Able-bodied men were worked to death in shale oil mines, while women, children and the elderly were murdered upon arrival.

Another 15,000 Red Army prisoners of war died in Estonia, many executed and others perishing from brutality and neglect.

What is involved in the whitewashing of this horrific legacy on the part of both Obama and the New York Times, who speak a common language crafted to promote the US military buildup against Russia, is the rewriting of the history of the last world war in order to prepare the grounds for the next.

After the Surgical Strikes

Syed Ata Hasnain

It has been a month since the surgical strikes were launched by the Indian Army’s Special Forces and denied by the Pakistani side. The entire strategic advantage which lay in our military claim appeared to have been negated by the political brouhaha that followed, between claims and counter claims of political parties in India. But this essay is not about that. It is about the situation that is unfolding in different domains post the strikes. To look through the complexities of the dynamic situation in J&K we need to examine three areas: first, the internal dynamics within Pakistan; second, the situation at the Line of Control (LoC), International Border (IB) and the counter-infiltration grid; and third, the activities in the Valley's hinterland, where the agitation continues in different forms.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif - weakened politically by the Panama Papers scandal and under the complete control of Pakistan Army Generals - is being exploited to project a civilian look to the anti-India campaign; a campaign orchestrated and owned entirely by the Pakistan Army and the deep state. On the other hand, Pakistan's Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif’s future is yet uncertain. 

His ability to take his own decisions on the succession or continuation in office has been under some doubt due to claims and counter claims of other senior Pakistan Army officers in line for the job. Gen Sharif is therefore busy ensuring that the LoC remains alive. A live LoC may not have a change of guard at the ‘Chief’s palace’. Besides, even if Gen Sharif wishes to act like a statesman, he would like to go not with a whimper but with a roar. Possibly, some arrangement could ensure another high profile job once out of uniform.  So in either possibility, the LoC will remain a bone of contention, and the location where messaging is done via actions. It is yet premature to say whether the ceasefire of 26 November 2003 will hold. It has successfully held even in turbulent times and even this time, the breaches are only in pockets.

The LoC is a strange place and along its alignment, a series of events can take place. In the priority of things at this time of the year, infiltration is uppermost in the mind of the deep state. 2016 may have been a good year for infiltration in terms of numbers but these are not sufficient to convert the burning streets of Kashmir into anything more. The attrition rate has also been very high and the spurt of ‘fidayeen’ was a bravado that was misplaced because it eroded the already low strength in the Valley. 

Secondly the terrorist handlers and strategists are under a mistaken impression that breaches of ceasefire and demonstrated aggression by Border Action Teams (BATs) in one or two areas will force the creation of gaps in the counter-infiltration grid. The Indian Army, fully conscious of this, has ensured suitable reinforcements through the campaigning season that will go into the winter grid too. The incident of a BAT raid and mutilation of the mortal remains of a brave jawan in Machil will have the necessary retribution and in double the measure. This is an issue to be left to local commanders who know best how to handle it and the people should have the confidence that in this mega media period, there need be no grandiose announcements. Sometimes, the silence of the action is enough to send home the message.

The exchange of firing along the IB and portions of the LoC is unnecessary and irksome to the populations on both sides. Clearly our forces have been returning fire in response but the casualties among uniformed people that are occurring appear to suggest that there is need for better embattlements and defences. We have yet to witness artillery duels that will take a higher toll and losses to snipers do not reflect good tactical drills.

In terms of the hinterland, true to form, the nature of violence is undergoing a change. The stamina is obviously questionable. However, what is reported by this author's many local friends is the degree of coercion not by the security forces but by young vigilantes, completely out of control of their parents. Each family is required to send a certain number of young men for stone pelting. Employed people are expected to come to the mosque and swear allegiance to the movement before proceeding to workplaces. There is extortion galore and vigilantism of an obscene kind that has taken over the society. With the police yet recovering from the trauma of the targeted ostracisation, it will be some time before any semblance of normalcy returns.

The Indian Army’s pro-activeness and support to the police in the built up areas and the outreach in the rural zone is ensuring security. Areas where the Indian Army has consciously not entered for many years - such as Old Town Baramulla - have been addressed appropriately with search operations and arrests to send home the message that no place would be safe for terrorists or rabble-rousers.

J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's government has definitely undergone a very challenging period. It could have completed wilted under the kind of pressure it bore. The chief minister may not have retained too many friends in Kashmir but has definitely proved that she can be a strong nut to crack. She has given it back to the separatists in equal measure and definitely displayed nationalist credentials to the detriment of her critics. As the state government moves to its winter capital, it is the time when two things should be in focus: first, it must make up to the Jammu populace the time lost over the last three months, by addressing their core concerns; Jammu’s silence must never be taken for granted. Secondly, it must concentrate on balancing itself by ensuring that the severe winter ahead is made as comfortable for the Kashmiris as possible. The deftness of the administrative skills must be felt on ground so that the alienation is at least partially allayed. That at least will make a better beginning next year.

Facebook Emerging Scholar Programme for PhD Students in Emerging Regions 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 

• Application Opens: November 1, 2016
• Application Deadline: February 28, 2017

Eligible Candidates: The Facebook Emerging Scholar Award is provided for first and second year PhD students who are underrepresented minorities in the technology industry.

To be taken at (country): US

About the Award:  The Facebook Emerging Scholar Award is provided for first and second year PhD students who are underrepresented minorities in the technology industry.

For the purpose of theFacebook Emerging Scholar award, underrepresented minority group is considered to include persons who identify as: Black or African American, person having origins in any Black racial groups of Africa; Hispanic or Latino, person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South American, Central American, Caribbean, or other Spanish culture origin, regardless of race; Native American or Alaskan Native, person having origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, or South America and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, person having origins in the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands.

Type: PhD

Eligibility:  

• You must be currently enrolled in your first or second year of a PhD program to apply.
• All applicants will need to use their Facebook account to apply.

Selection Criteria: Applications will be evaluated based on the strength of the student’s proposed research and their recommendation letters.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• Payment of tuition and fees for two academic years
• $37,000 annual stipend
• Up to $5,000 towards conference travel funds

How to Apply: 

• Research Statement: 1-2 page research summary
• Resume or CV with email, phone and mailing address, along with applicable coursework noted
• Two letters of recommendation (Please provide reference email addresses): Advisor and one Professional reference (can be from academia or industry)

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Facebook

Globalization Expressway to Universal Slavery

Gilbert Mercier

If humans were largely moral and ethical beings, then globalization could be a workable proposition. Unfortunately, the dark behavioral narcissism expressed by compulsive greed and an infinite appetite for power seems to have become the guiding precept of our collective nightmare. If only the desire to dominate others and have a lot more than them were not the prime motivations for the global elite on top of the human food chain, we could all have our respective modest slice of happiness on this planet. The Utopia of globalization through institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) was supposed to eradicate the universal pestilence of war, extreme poverty, hunger and slavery using the might of the above supranational institutions to prevent the rise of so-called rogue nations usually ruled by dictators.

World order of chaos with misery for profit

The opportunity of this push for a supranational form of government has to be understood in the psychological context of a world traumatized by World War II. Many public servants, who had fought against the Nazis and their Japanese and Italian allies, had genuinely the best intentions at heart when institutions like the UN were set up. If some of the original ideas were good and moral to some extend, a rot almost immediately contaminated and perverted most of the created institutions and quickly — using the pretext of the Cold War — allowed the birth of a monstrosity such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The globalists have controlled and ultimately Wall Street has financed, supranational government instances such as the UN, IMF, World Bank and a myriad of non-governmental organization (NGO) little helpers. Not only have these done nothing to curtail the man-made disasters of war, climate change, slavery and poverty, but they have exacerbated them, all for the sake of profit.

In this Orwellian time of moral decay, human misery is good for business. In a globalization controlled by Wall Street’s puppeteer sociopaths, who believe they are the masters of the universe, ordinary people everywhere have become canon fodder and slave labor. They are not even collateral damage but human lubricant, as viewed by the elite. One can see that if they are not stopped immediately, trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its Trans-Atlantic counterpart could seal the deal of the establishment of an atrocious world government, controlled by a few thousands, in complete disregard of not only national interest, but also cultural diversity.

Look what happened to Detroit, Michigan, and countless other manufacturing towns in the United States that are all collateral damage of  Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The massive trade agreements in the works, to be put in place by the globalists if they remain in power, are intended to annihilate any form of economic or political independence from the signatory countries and to scatter their populations to the wind, as in the case in the globalist-controlled demolition of the Middle East in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Displaced and disenfranchised populations are beaten into submission and used as docile worker bees.

Drastic action or hell on earth

If we let the globalists complete their worldwide coup already in progress, then all sovereignty would be lost, and most of the world’s population would become slave-wage laborers at the mercy of the global corporate empire. Countries with a diversified agriculture would be turned into one-crop wastelands to ensure that most of the food supply has to be imported. Pseudo local governments would merely officiate as the slave drivers for the global elite. This must be stopped at all cost and undone by all means necessary. If we allow this final coup by the geriatric psychopaths at the top of the current world order, thousands of years of our rich human experience would be wiped out. Like poorly made cheap electronic products, the cultural garbage of the lowest common denominator empire would flood the world. This  cultural homogenization would affect primarily the information available to people. Since dissent is impossible without correct information and critical thought, the globalists want their propaganda to become the only source of  information. With the UN, the World Bank and the IMF, the political and economic framework financed by a worldwide network of banksters is already in place. Influential nations, on paper, like France and the United Kingdom, which are still officially full fledged members of the UN Security Council, have de facto abdicated their sovereignty to become vassals and secondary enforcers of the globalist plan. We are at the edge of an existential threat of greater magnitude than ever before in human history.

The semantics of deception

Machiavelli is known for his cynical view of political power; however, the advice the author of The Prince gave to the powerful of his time seems innocent by comparison to the depravity of today’s puppet masters. Words and ideas are gutted of their meaning to signify, most of the time, the exact opposite. For example, globalist eminence grise George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is an opaque giant NGO, with more than 100 offshoots worldwide by its own admission, but its tentacles are in reality more far reaching. The recent publications of Wikileaks in the voluminous Podesta email files have been a revelation of the extent of deception victimizing United States citizens. John Podesta may be viewed as a Soros right-hand man in the US in charge of delivering the returns for the globalist’s investments in the US elections. The connection between the two men is not only obvious but also official considering that Soros financed Podesta’s so-called Center for American Progress, the fake left equivalent of the neocon think tanks. The term progress is a lure that signifies power, just like Soros’ open society is, in reality, an exclusive club as tight as oysters reserved only for Soros’ chosen associates to savor. What is apparent from the email treasure trove is that Podesta’s job is really to supervise Hillary Clinton on behalf of Soros. In this context, the expression, leader of the free world, to describe the US president becomes a lie. The current world order of the globalists is anything but free, and one applicant for the job, Hillary Clinton, is not a queen on the chessboard, but a pawn.

Axis of resistance: Russia, China and Iran and lessons from Haiti’s revolution

One could ask: isn’t this psychopathic globalist coup of financiers well on its way? Isn’t it a done deal, and how can we resist and salvage anything? The examples of Russia, China and Iran prove that, as national entities, we still can. Germany, Japan and South Korea could reclaim their independence and kick out their US occupation. France and the UK could stop being submissive nations and get out of NATO. That would be a start. The path of war rhetoric expressed by the globalist mouthpieces of the West against Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China has to do with the national resistance of these three countries. The citizenry of Europe and North America should understand, that if such unprecedented conflicts occur, all countries will be on the front line, and there is more than enough fire power on each side to ensure massive destruction and no winning side. Russia, China and Iran are the last national obstacles to the globalist coup, and perhaps we are heading back to a bipolar two-block world order similar to the Cold War era. Other options, including the dismantlement, or at least the curtailment, of supranational organizations such as the UN, World Bank and IMF would surely be the side effects of what appears to be in many countries a revival of nationalism. The final plan of the globalists would  be atrocious for all of us. Waving the white flag is not an option. At this critical time of our history, and before our collective enslavement, we should  all emulate the brave Haitian slaves who beat not one, but three empires 212 years ago. Haitians were only the last ones to prove that it can be done; it must be redone.

American Dream, Revisited

Pepe Escobar

Will Trump pull a Brexit times ten? What would it take, beyond WikiLeaks, to bring the Clinton (cash) machine down? Will Hillary win and then declare WWIII against her Russia/Iran/Syria “axis of evil”? Will the Middle East totally explode? Will the pivot to Asia totally implode? Will China be ruling the world by 2025?

Amidst so many frenetic fragments of geopolitical reality precariously shored against our ruins, the temptation is irresistible to hark back to the late, great, deconstructionist master Jean Baudrillard. During the post-mod 1980s it was hip to be Baudrillardian to the core; his America, originally published in France in 1986, should still be read today as the definitive metaphysical/geological/cultural Instagram of Exceptionalistan.

By the late 1990s, at the end of the millennium, two years before 9/11 – that seminal “before and after” event – Baudrillard was already stressing how we live in a black market maze. Now, it’s a black market paroxysm.

Global multitudes are subjected to a black market of work – as in the deregulation of the official market; a black market of unemployment; a black market of financial speculation; a black market of misery and poverty; a black market of sex (as in prostitution); a black market of information (as in espionage and shadow wars); a black market of weapons; and even a black market of thinking.

Way beyond the late 20th century, in the 2010s what the West praises as “liberal democracy” – actually a neoliberal diktat – has virtually absorbed every ideological divergence, while leaving behind a heap of differences floating in some sort of trompe l’oeil effect. What’s left is a widespread, noxious condition; the pre-emptive prohibition of any critical thought, which has no way to express itself other than becoming clandestine (or finding the right internet niche).

Baudrillard already knew that the concept of “alter” – killed by conviviality – does not exist in the official market. So an “alter” black market also sprung up, co-opted by traffickers; that’s, for instance, the realm of racism, nativism and other forms of exclusion. Baudrillard already identified how a “contraband alter”, expressed by sects and every form of nationalism (nowadays, think about the spectrum between jihadism and extreme-right wing political parties) was bound to become more virulent in a society that is desperately intolerant, obsessed with regimentation, and totally homogenized.

There could be so much exhilaration inbuilt in life lived in a bewildering chimera cocktail of cultures, signs, differences and “values”; but then came the coupling of thinking with its exact IT replica – artificial intelligence, playing with the line of demarcation between human and non-human in the domain of thought.

The result, previewed by Baudrillard, was the secretion of a parapolitical society – with a sort of mafia controlling this secret form of generalized corruption (think the financial Masters of the Universe). Power is unable to fight this mafia – and that would be, on top of it, hypocritical, because the mafia itself emanates from power.

The end result is that what really matters today, anywhere, mostly tends to happen outside all official circuits; like in a social black market.

Is there any information “truth”?

Baudrillard showed how political economy is a massive machine, producing value, producing signs of wealth, but not wealth itself. The whole media/information system – still ruled by America – is a massive machine producing events as signs; exchangeable value in the universal market of ideology, the star system and catastrophism.

This abstraction of information works as in the economy – disgorging a coded material, deciphered in advance, and negotiable in terms of models, as much as the economy disgorges products negotiable in terms of price and value.

Since all merchandise, thanks to this abstraction of value, is exchangeable, then every event (or non-event) is also exchangeable, all replacing one another in the cultural market of information.

And that takes us to where we live now; Trans-History, and Trans-Politics – where events have really not happened, as they get lost in the vacuum of information (as much as the economy gets lost in the vacuum of speculation).

Thus this quintessential Baudrillard insight; if we consider History as a movie – and that’s what it is now – then the “truth” of information is no more than post-production synch, dubbing and subtitles.

Still, as we all keep an intense desire for devouring events, there is immense disappointment as well, because the content of information is desperately inferior to the means of broadcasting them. Call it a pathetic, universal contagion; people don’t know what to do about their sadness or enthusiasm – in parallel to our societies becoming theaters of the absurd where nothing has consequences.

No acts, deeds, crimes (the 2008 financial crisis), political events (the WikiLeaks emails showing virtually no distinction between the “nonprofit” Clinton cash machine, what’s private and what’s public, the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth, and the affairs of the state)
seem to have real consequences.

Immunity, impunity, corruption, speculation – we veer towards a state of zero responsibility (think Goldman Sachs). So, automatically, we yearn for an event of maximum consequence, a “fatal” event to repair that scandalous non-equivalence. Like a symbolic re-equilibrium of the scales of destiny.

So we dream of an amazing event – Trump winning the election? Hillary declaring WWIII? – that would free us from the tyranny of meaning and the constraint of always searching for the equivalence between effects and causes.

Shadowing the world

Just like Baudrillard, I got to see “deep” America in the 1980s and 1990s by driving across America.

So sooner or later one develops a metaphysical relationship with that ubiquitous warning, “Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear.”

But what if they may also be further than they appear?

The contemporary instant event/celebrity culture deluge of images upon us; does it get us closer to a so-called “real” world that is in fact very far away from us? Or does it in fact keep the world at a distance – creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence of objects and the virtual danger they represent?

In parallel, we keep slouching towards a single future language – the language of algorithms, as designed across the Wall Street/Silicon Valley axis – that would represent a real anthropological catastrophe, just like the globalist/New World Order dream of One Thought and One Culture.

Languages are multiple and singular – by definition. If there were a single language, words would become univocal, regulating themselves in an autopilot of meaning. There would be no interplay – as in artificial languages there’s no interplay. Language would be just the meek appendix of a unified reality – the negative destiny of a languidly unified human species.

That’s where the American “dream” seems to be heading. It’s time to take the next exit ramp.

The US Threatens Irish Neutrality

Conn Hallinan

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”

–Proclamation of Easter Week 1916

Controlling their own destiny has always been a bit of a preoccupation for the Irish, in large part because for 735 years someone else was in charge. From the Norman invasion in 1169 to the establishment of the Free State in 1922, Ireland’s political and economic life was not its own to determine. Its young men were shipped off to fight England’s colonial battles half a world away, at Isandlwana, Dum Dum, Omdurman and Kut. Almost 50,000 died in World War I, choking on gas at Ypres, clinging desperately to a beachhead at Gallipoli, or marching into German machine guns at the Somme.

When the Irish finally cast off their colonial yoke, they pledged never again to be cannon fodder in other nation’s wars, a pledge that has now been undermined by the U.S. Once again, a powerful nation—with the acquiescence of the Dublin government—has put the Irish in harm’s way.

The flashpoint for this is Shannon Airport, located in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on Washington and New York, some 2.5 million U.S. troops have passed through the airport on their way to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The Shannon hub has become so important to the U.S. that it hosts a permanent U.S. staff officer to direct traffic. It is, in the words of the peace organization Shannonwatch, “a US forward operating base.”

The airport has also been tied to dozens of CIA “rendition” flights, where prisoners seized in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were shipped to various “black sites” in Europe, Asia, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Irish peace activists and members of the Irish parliament, or Oireachtas Elreann, charge that an agreement between the Irish government and Washington to allow the transiting of troops and aircraft through Shannon not only violates Irish neutrality it violates international law.

“The logistical support for the U.S. military and CIA at Shannon is a contravention of Ireland’s neutrality,” says John Lannon of the peace group Shannonwatch, and has “contributed to death, torture, starvation, forced displacement and a range of other human rights abuses.”

Ireland is not a member of NATO, and it is considered officially neutral. But “neutral” in Ireland can be a slippery term. The government claims that Ireland is “militarily neutral”—it doesn’t belong to any military alliances—but not “politically neutral.”

But the term militarily neutral “does not exist in international law,” says Karen Devine, an expert on neutrality at the City of Dublin’s School of Law & Government. “The decision to aid belligerents in war is…incompatible with Article 2 of the Fifth Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land.” Devine argues that “the Irish government’s decision to permit the transit of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers through Shannon Airport on their way to the Iraq War in 2003 violated international law on neutrality and set it apart from European neutrals who refused such permission.”

Article 2 of the Convention states, “Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions or war supplies across the territory of a neutral power.”

Ireland has not ratified the Hague Convention but according to British international law expert Iain Scobbie, the country is still bound by international law because Article 29 of the Irish Constitution states, “Ireland accepts the generally recognized principle of international law as its rule of conduct in relations with other states.”

The UN Security Council did not endorse the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, making both conflicts technically illegal. Then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said that the invasions “were not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter’s point of view,” the invasions were “illegal.”

Shannonwatch’s Lannon says the agreement also violates the 1952 Air Navigation Foreign Military Aircraft Order that requires that “aircraft must be unarmed, carry no arms, ammunition and explosives, and must not engage in intelligence gathering and that the flights in question must not form part of a military exercises or operations.”

The Dublin government claims all US aircraft adhere to the 1952 order, although it refuses to inspect aircraft or allow any independent inspection. According to retired Irish Army Captain Tom Clonan, the Irish Times security analyst, the soldiers are armed but leave their weapons on board the transports—generally Hercules C-130s—while they stretch their legs after the long cross Atlantic flight. Airport employees have also seen soldiers with their weapons.

The Irish government also says that it has been assured that no rendition flights have flown through Shannon, but Shannonwatch activists have tracked flights in and out of the airport. As for “assurances,” Washington “assured” the British government that no rendition flights used British airports, but in 2008 then Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament that such flights did use the United Kingdom controlled island of Diego Garcia.

Investigative journalist’s Mark Danner’s book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War chronicles the grotesque nature of some of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques inflicted on those prisoners. The rendition program violated the 1987 UN Convention Against Torture, which Ireland is a party to.

Roslyn Fuller, Dublin-based scholar and author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning And Lost Its Way, says terror suspects were taken to sites where “in an appalling re-run of the Spanish Inquisition tactics, [they were] routinely tortured and mistreated in an attempt to obtain confessions and other information.”

Fuller points out that Article 11 of the Hague Convention requires that troops belonging to a “belligerent” army must be interned. “In other words, any country that would like to call itself neutral is obligated to prevent warring parties from moving troops though its territory and to gently scoop up anyone attempting to contravene this principle.”

Besides violating international law, Ireland is harvesting “the bitter fruits of the Iraq and Afghan wars” and NATO’s military intervention in Libya, charges MP Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit Party and chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement. “The grotesque images of children and families washed up on Europe’s shores, desperate refugees, risking and losing their lives,” he says, “are the direct result of disastrous wars waged by the US, the UK and other major western powers over the last 12 years.”

The Irish government, says Barrett, has “colluded with war crimes and actions for which we are now witnessing the most terrible consequences.”

The government has waived all traffic control costs on military flights, costing Dublin about $45 million from 2003 to 2015. Ireland is currently running one of the highest per capita debts in Europe and has applied austerity measures that have reduced pensions and severely cut social services, health programs and education. Other neutral European countries, like Finland, Austria and Switzerland charge the US military fees for using their airspace.

Shannon might also make Ireland collateral damage in the war on terror, according to the Irish Times’ Clonan. Irish citizens are now seen as a “hostile party,” and British Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary has named Shannon a “legitimate target,” according to Irish journalist Danielle Ryan.

The Dublin government has generally avoided open discussion of the issue, and when it comes up, ministers tend to get evasive. In response to the charge that Shannon hosted rendition flights, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said, “If anyone has evidence of any of these flights please give me a call and I will have it investigated.” But even though Amnesty International produced flights logs for 50 rendition landings at Shannon, the government did nothing. Investigations by the Council on Europe and European Parliament also confirmed rendition flights through Shannon.

Peace activists charge that attempts to raise the issue in the Irish parliament have met with a combination of stonewalling and half-truths. Apparently kissing the Blarney Stone is not just for tourists.

The government’s position finds little support among the electorate. Depending on how the questions are asked, polls indicate that between 55 and 58 percent of the Irish oppose allowing US transports to land at Shannon, and between 57 to 76 percent want to add a neutrality clause to the constitution.

The “forward base” status of Shannon puts the west of Ireland in the crosshairs in the event of a war with Russia. While that might seem far-fetched, in 2015 NATO held 14 military maneuvers directed at Russia, and relations between NATO, the US and Moscow are at their lowest point since the height of the Cold War.

Of course Ireland is not alone in putting itself in harm’s way. The US has more than 800 bases worldwide, bases that might well be targeted in a nuclear war with China or Russia. Local populations have little say over the construction of these bases, but they would be the first casualties in a conflict.

For centuries Ireland was colonialism’s laboratory. The policies used to enchain its people—religious division and ethnic hatred— were tested out and then shipped off to India, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Guyana, and Irish soldiers populate colonial graveyards on all four continents, now, once again, Ireland has been drawn into a conflict that is has no stake in.

Not that the Irish have taken this lying down. Scores of activists have invaded Shannon to block military flights and, on occasion, to attack aircraft with axes and hammers. “Pit stop of death” was one slogan peace demonstrators painted on a hanger at the airport.

That resistance harkens back to the 1916 Easter Rebellion’s proclamation that ends with the words that ring as true today as they did a century ago: “In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valor and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.”

How Putin Derailed the West

Mike Whitney

“Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

— Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era”, 1971

“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria….not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”

— Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Third Presidential Debate

Why is Hillary Clinton so eager to intensify US involvement in Syria when US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have all gone so terribly wrong?

The answer to this question is simple. It’s because Clinton doesn’t think that these interventions went wrong. And neither do any of the other members of the US foreign policy establishment. (aka–The Borg). In fact, in their eyes these wars have been a rousing success. Sure, a few have been critical of the public relations backlash from the nonexistent WMD in Iraq, (or the logistical errors, like disbanding the Iraqi Army) but–for the most part– the foreign policy establishment is satisfied with its efforts to destabilize the region and remove leaders that refuse to follow Washington’s diktats.

This is hard for ordinary people to understand. They can’t grasp why elite powerbrokers would want to transform functioning, stable countries into uninhabitable wastelands overrun by armed extremists, sectarian death squads and foreign-born terrorists. Nor can they understand what has been gained by Washington’s 15 year-long rampage across the Middle East and Central Asia that has turned a vast swathe of strategic territory into a terrorist breeding grounds? What is the purpose of all this?

First, we have to acknowledge that the decimation and de facto balkanization of these countries is part of a plan. If it wasn’t part of a plan, than the decision-makers would change the policy. But they haven’t changed the policy. The policy is the same. The fact that the US is using foreign-born jihadists to pursue regime change in Syria as opposed to US troops in Iraq, is not a fundamental change in the policy. The ultimate goal is still the decimation of the state and the elimination of the existing government. This same rule applies to Libya and Afghanistan both of which have been plunged into chaos by Washington’s actions.

But why? What is gained by destroying these countries and generating so much suffering and death?

Here’s what I think:  I think Washington is involved in a grand project to remake the world in a way that better meets the needs of its elite constituents, the international banks and multinational corporations. Brzezinski not only refers to this in the opening quote, he also explains what is taking place: The nation-state is being jettisoned as the foundation upon which the global order rests. Instead, Washington is  erasing borders, liquidating states, and removing strong, secular leaders that can mount resistance to its machinations in order to impose an entirely new model on the region, a new world order. The people who run these elite institutions want to create an interconnected-global free trade zone overseen by the proconsuls of Big Capital, in other words, a global Eurozone that precludes the required state institutions (like a centralized treasury, mutual debt, federal transfers) that would allow the borderless entity to function properly.

Deep state powerbrokers who set policy behind the smokescreen of our bought-and-paid-for congress think that one world government is an achievable goal provided they control the world’s energy supplies, the world’s reserve currency and become the dominant player in this century’s most populous and prosperous region, Asia. This is essentially what Hillary’s “pivot” to Asia is all about.

The basic problem with Washington’s NWO plan is that a growing number of powerful countries are still attached to the old world order and are now prepared to defend it. This is what’s really going on in Syria, the improbable alliance of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have stopped the US military juggernaut dead in its tracks. The unstoppable force has hit the immovable object and the immovable object has prevailed…so far.

Naturally, the foreign policy establishment is upset about these new developments, and for good reason. The US has run the world for quite a while now, so the rolling back of US policy in Syria is as much a surprise as it is a threat. The Russian Airforce deployed to Syria a full year ago in September, but only recently has Washington shown that it’s prepared to respond by increasing its support of its jihadists agents on the ground and by mounting an attack on ISIS in the eastern part of the country, Raqqa. But the real escalation is expected to take place when Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017. That’s when the US will directly engage Russia militarily, assuming that their tit-for-tat encounters will be contained within Syria’s borders.  It’s a risky plan, but it’s the next logical step in this bloody fiasco. Neither party wants a nuclear war, but Washington believes that doing nothing is tantamount to backing down, therefore, Hillary and her neocon advisors can be counted on to up the ante. “No-fly zone”, anyone?

The assumption is that eventually, and with enough pressure, Putin will throw in the towel. But this is another miscalculation. Putin is not in Syria because he wants to be nor is he there because he values his friendship with Syrian President Bashar al Assad. That’s not it at all. Putin is in Syria because he has no choice. Russia’s national security is at stake. If Washington’s strategy of deploying terrorists to topple Assad succeeds, then the same ploy will be attempted in Iran and Russia. Putin knows this, just like he knows that the scourge of foreign-backed terrorism can decimate entire regions like Chechnya. He knows that it’s better for him to kill these extremists in Aleppo than it will be in Moscow. So he can’t back down, that’s not an option.

But, by the same token, he can compromise, in other words, his goals and the goals of Assad do not perfectly coincide. For example, he could very well make territorial concessions to the US for the sake of peace that Assad might not support.

But why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he continue to fight until every inch of Syria’s sovereign territory is recovered?

Because it’s not in Russia’s national interest to do so, that’s why. Putin has never tried to conceal the fact that he’s in Syria to protect Russia’s national security. That’s his main objective.  But he’s not an idealist, he’s a pragmatist who’ll do whatever he has to to end the war ASAP. That means compromise.

This doesn’t matter to the Washington warlords….yet. But it will eventually. Eventually there will be an accommodation of some sort. No one is going to get everything they want, that much is certain. For example, it’s impossible to imagine that Putin would launch a war on Turkey to recover the territory that Turkish troops now occupy in N Syria. In fact, Putin may have already conceded as much to Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan in their recent meetings. But that doesn’t mean that Putin doesn’t have his red lines. He does.  Aleppo is a red line. Turkish troops will not be allowed to enter Aleppo.

The western corridor, the industrial and population centers are all red lines. On these, there will be no compromise. Putin will help Assad remain in power and keep the country largely intact. But will Turkey control sections in the north, and will the US control sections in the east?

Probably. This will have to be worked out in negotiations, but its unlikely that the country’s borders will be the same as they were before the war broke out. Putin will undoubtedly settle for a halfloaf provided the fighting ends and security is restored. In any event, he’s not going to hang around until the last dog is hung.

Unfortunately, we’re a long way from any settlement in Syria, mainly because Washington is nowhere near accepting the fact that its project to rule the world has been derailed. That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? The bigshots who run the country are still in denial. It hasn’t sunk in yet that the war is lost and that their nutty jihadist-militia plan has failed.

It’s going to take a long time before Washington gets the message that the world is no longer its oyster. The sooner they figure it out, the better it’ll be for everyone.

The Danger Of War From A Declining Hegemon

Chandra Muzaffar

Is a war in the making — a third world war?

If there is much talk about such a possibility, it is mainly because of the tensions between the United States and Russia. Tensions between the two most powerful nuclear states in the world have never been this high since the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

There are at least two flash points, one more dangerous than the other. In Eastern Ukraine, Russian backed rebels will not surrender to the US supported regime in Kiev because they see US control over Ukraine as part of a much larger agenda to expand NATO power to the very borders of Russia. This has been happening for some years now.

But it is the Washington-Moscow confrontation in Alepo, Syria which portends to a huge conflagration. The US is protective of major militant groups such as Al-Nusra which has besieged Eastern Allepo  and is seeking to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. Washington has also set its sight on ‘regime change’ in Damascus ever since the latter’s determined resistance to Israeli occupation of the strategic Golan Heights in Syria from 1967 onwards. The drive for regime change intensified with the US-Israeli quest for a “new Middle East” following the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. It became more pronounced in 2009 when Bashar al-Assad rejected a proposal to allow a gas pipe-line from Qatar to Europe to pass through his country, a pipe-line which would have reduced Europe’s dependence upon Russia for gas. Russia of course has been a long-standing ally of Syria. Together with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, it is helping the Syrian government to break the siege of Eastern Allepo and to defeat militants in other parts of Syria.

It is obvious that in both instances, in Ukraine and Syria, the US has not been able to achieve what it wants. The US has also been stymied in Southeast Asia where its attempt to re-assert its power through its 2010 ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy has suffered a serious setback as a result of the decision of the new president  of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to pursue an independent foreign policy that no longer adheres blindly to US interests. At the same time, China continues to expand and enhance its economic strength in Asia and the world through its One Belt One Road (OBOR) projects and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and via its leadership of BRICS. China’s regional and global economic role is leading to its pronounced presence in security and military matters. As a result of all this, the US’s imperial power has clearly diminished. It is a hegemon in decline.

It is because it is not prepared to accept its decline that some US generals are threatening to demonstrate US’s military might.If a hegemon is a danger to humankind when it is at its pinnacle, it becomes an even greater threat to peace when its power is diminishing. Like a wounded tiger, it becomes even more furious and ferocious. A new US president may be inclined to give vent to this frustration through an arrogant display of military power.

How can we check such wanton arrogance?  There will be elements in the elite stratum of US society itself who would be opposed to the US going to war. We saw a bit of this in 2013 when those who were itching to launch military strikes against Syria based upon dubious “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons were thwarted by others with a saner view of the consequences of war. It is also important to observe that none of the US’s major allies in Europe wants a war. Burdened by severe challenges related to the economy and migration, the governments know that their citizens will reject any move towards war either on the borders of Russia or in Syria and West Asia.

This also suggests that a self-absorbed European citizenry may not have the enthusiasm to mobilise against an imminent war. Let us not forget that it was in European cities from London to Berlin that the biggest demonstrations against the war in Iraq took place in 2003. Anti-war protests will have to be initiated elsewhere this time.

Governments in Moscow and Beijing, in Tehran and Jakarta, in Pretoria and La Paz, should come out openly against war. They should encourage other governments in the Global South and the Global North to denounce any move towards a war that will engulf the whole of humanity. Citizens all over the world should condemn war through a variety of strategies ranging from signature campaigns and letters to the media to public rallies and street demonstrations.

In this campaign against an imminent war, the media, both conventional and alternative, will have a huge role to play. It is unfortunate that well-known media outlets in the West have supported war in the past. It is time that they atone for their sins!