in English

NATO’s War On Russia: The Winds Howl Before The Storm

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

by Christopher Black

3 October 2016

Source : http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/03/natos-war-on-russia-the-winds-howl-before-the-storm/

unknown

A few weeks ago I wrote, “I have been a defence lawyer most of my working life and am not used to gathering evidence for a prosecution, but circumstances impelled me to open a file for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or perhaps some future citizen’s tribunal, in which is contained the evidence that the NATO leaders are guilty of the gravest crime against mankind, the crime of aggression. I would like to share with you some brief notes of interest from that file, for your consideration.

Article 8bis of the Rome Statute, the governing statue of the International Criminal Court states:

For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter on the United Nations.

Since then I have written little partly due to other events in life that interfered with the ability to sit back, take in, and think about what was happening in the world, but principally because to choose to write about one particular crime committed by the west, meaning the United States of America, when faced with their multitude of crimes, celebrated in the western media under the bloody banners of patriotism, nationalism, chauvinism, and fascism, led to a type of paralysis; state of shock, is perhaps, a better phrase.

Others must feel the same. Maybe most of us feel that way from time to time. What’s the point? Why say or write anything? They’re going to destroy us all anyway. It doesn’t matter what we say and besides, it’s all been said before. It was said in World War One. It was said in the Second. Now we’re entering, or probably already in the middle of the third-all those words of peace, and outrage and the result? The wars happened despite them.

John Lennon made our fundamental demand, “Give Peace A Chance,” and the CIA shot him in the back for it-one of the great crimes against the people-the murder one of our heroes-for when they shot him in the back they shot all of us in the back.

But this feeling fades, the numbness retreats, the blood begins to flow again, the Peter Finch cry from Paddy Chayefsky’s Network “I’m not going to take it anymore!’ comes screaming back and you stand up and say, “Damn right! I’m not going to take this anymore!”

So I have reopened the file I am preparing for the prosecutor of a future peoples’ tribunal or, a miracle, a really independent prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, to lay war crimes charges against the United States and its NATO and other allies, their leaders and military officers, for the crime of aggression and all the other crimes they commit on a daily basis against many different countries.

The new charges concern their involvement in the political coup carried out in Brazil against the socialist government there, elected by the people, essentially robbing the Brazilian people of their democracy and independence as a nation, their continued and dangerous provocations in Asia against China and North Korea, which they are directly threatening with nuclear annihilation by flying B1 and B2 bombers over the peninsula, ongoing provocations of NATO forces in the Baltic and the Balkans, all threatening Russia, and committing crimes against the peoples of the Donbas republics and now Crimea, that is, Russia itself. But the most dangerous of all is their invasion of Syria to protect and assist their ISIL or Daesh proxy forces. The presence of US, British, French, Canadian, Israeli and other forces in Syria is of course illegal and constitutes the crime of aggression. There are no excuses or justifications for the crime of aggression. Their aggression also constitutes a complete repudiation of the UN Charter, which requires all disputes to be settled peacefully, and forbids the use of force for any reason outside the parameters of the UN mandate.

The invasion of Syria by their direct forces and ISIS proxy forces under various names, and now it appears Turkish forces, has killed hundreds of thousands of people. While Syria, Russia, Iran and others try to find a peaceful conclusion to the war, the Americans and their gang, perpetually dishonest, talk cease-fire from one side of their face, as, from the other, they give orders to attack

The recent bombing of the Syrian positions near Deir es-Zor on September 17th everyone knows was a deliberate attack. The more so since we now have Britain and Denmark stating their planes were involved, as well as American. For all four nations’ pilots to make the same mistake when such a joint operation would have to be finely tuned is beyond far-fetched. The Syrians now claim they have radio intercepts of Daesh and the Americans coordinating the attack. This was a particularly cruel war crime since the Syrian soldiers who were killed were under the impression they were safe from any such attack, didn’t see it coming, a sneak attack, an ambush, by the world’s greatest cowards.

Then to cover that crime under moral indignation they accuse Russia and Syria of attacking an aid convoy that those two countries spent a lot of time and work organizing, then carried on their attack by insulting Russia in the Security Council using the type of vile language that shows their complete contempt for the Russian people.

Many think it’s because Samantha Power is a crazy bitch, which she is of course. Is that personality required for the job? No, but it helps because these gratuitous insults are not just a matter of personality and the personal psychopathy of the individual. This ugly behaviour serves a propaganda purpose and needs to be delivered with hatred and venom for maximum effect. Samantha Power is a natural. Her personality marches perfectly the needs of the regime she represents. Her displays are acted out deliberately and with the one purpose of showing the world that Russia is not worthy of credit or respect, that the Russian people and government are beneath contempt and therefore they are not really human beings. They are things that can be destroyed without feeling anything, for they are nothing. That is the message and anyone who fails to understand this fails to understand what the ultimate objective is-Russia’s complete subjection or war.

The quick response by the Syrian forces to the breaking of the ceasefire by the Americans and, if some reports are credible in Sputnik and Fars, that the 3 Russian, ship-launched missiles fired at Aleppo, hit a central command post manned by American, Israeli and other allied forces, killing 30 of them, then the world is already at war. The report of 11 Canadian soldiers being killed in the Donbas after attacking republican positions there on July 23, while not confirmed, has not been denied by the Canadian authorities in response to my query about the report.

The Americans seem hell bent on war and the up-coming elections in the US hold no hope for the future, only more despair. The Russians and the rest of the world are faced with Godzilla, the monster that threatened Japan in several science fiction films made in the 50’s. Those films were cleverly disguised political attacks on the United States and its destruction and occupation of Japan. America was the monster that was born in the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. It was the monster threatening to destroy everything in its path. Nothing could seem to stop Godzilla, except of course nuclear weapons. And this is where we are; the Russian government trying everything it can think of to avoid that catastrophe while the Americans keep pushing them and all of us, into a corner there is only one escape from.

So, I mark the file, add the new charges, build the criminal dossier; because one day there will be a reckoning with these people. One day, justice will prevail in this world. For as I wrote in a poem,

Once there was Enlightenment,

And Reason’s voice sang sweet,

Of Rights of Man, and truths we now lament,

Murdered with impunity, cut down on every street,

So now we must renew our song,

Our struggle take another form,

For the days run dark, the nights are long,

The winds howl before the storm.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”


http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/03/natos-war-on-russia-the-winds-howl-before-the-storm/

 

NATO’s Warsaw Communiqué: Planning the Crime of Aggression

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

by Christopher Black

Source : New Eastern Outlook

18.07.2016

http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/18/nato-s-warsaw-communique-planning-the-crime-of-aggression/

I have been a defence lawyer most of my working life and am not used to gathering evidence for a prosecution, but circumstances impelled me to open a file for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or perhaps some future citizen’s tribunal, in which is contained the evidence that the NATO leaders are guilty of the gravest crime against mankind, the crime of aggression. I would like to share with you some brief notes of interest from that file, for your consideration.

Article 8bis of the Rome Statute, the governing statue of the International Criminal Court states:

For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter on the United Nations.

The NATO communiqué issued from Warsaw on July 9th is direct evidence of such planning and preparation and therefore of a conspiracy by the NATO leaders to commit acts of aggression against Russia, and would be the subject of an indictment of the International Criminal Court against the leaders of the NATO military alliance, if the prosecutor of the ICC was in fact independent, which she is not, and of course, if the articles relating to crimes of aggression were in effect which will not take place until January 1, 2017, if at all, under the articles of the Rome Statute.

Nevertheless, the technical issue of jurisdiction that prevents the issuance of an indictment against the NATO leaders at this time does not legitimate the planning and preparation of acts of aggression as are contained in the NATO communiqué nor reduce the moral weight of the crime of aggression set out in the Statute and the Nuremberg Principles, for the crime of aggression is the supreme crime of war.

On their own words, set out in black and white, in their communiqué of July 9th, the NATO leaders, each and every one, and the entire general staffs of the armed forces of each and every NATO country, are guilty of the crime of aggression. The fact that there is no effective body to which they can be brought for trial is irrelevant to the fact of the crime being committed. They are the enemies of mankind and charged or not, tried or not, they are international outlaws who must be identified as such and called to account by their own peoples.

The evidence of their crimes of course predates this communiqué and consists in years of actions by the NATO powers, since the Soviet Union dissolved itself and the Warsaw Pact, under the agreement with NATO, the 1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act, that NATO would not expand into any of the countries formally members of the Warsaw Pact or the USSR, nor place nuclear weapons there. NATO has broken that agreement continuously since and has, as an organisation, or through groups of its member states, committed acts of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Russia (during the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and through support of Chechen terrorist groups inside Russia itself), Ukraine and Syria with each act of aggression supported by massive propaganda campaigns to attempt to justify these crimes as legitimate. The western mass media are all complicit in these crimes by distributing this propaganda to the people they are meant to inform.

The same powers have committed and are committing further acts of aggression against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Iran and China and continuously increasing their planning and preparation for aggression against those nations. These plans are also set out in the NATO communiqué but the gravest threat to mankind is the immediate existential threat against Russia, to which the principal part of the communiqué is directed.

The NATO communiqué is in fact a declaration of war against Russia. There is no other way to interpret it.

Many months ago I stated that we can regard the NATO build-up of forces in Eastern Europe, the NATO coup that overthrew the Yanukovich government in Ukraine, the attempt to grab the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, the immediate attacks on Ukrainian civilians in the eastern provinces that refused to accept the NATO coup, the constant propaganda against Russia as “aggressor” and the economic warfare conducted against Russia under the guise of “sanctions,” to be tantamount to a second Operation Barbarossa, the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. I was hesitant to so describe it but the facts were there and now others have recognised that the analogy is the correct one. And just as the leaders of the Third Reich were finally held responsible for their crimes at Nuremberg, so should be the leaders of the new Reich that the Americans and their vassal states are planning to impose on the rest of us.

At Paragraph 5 of the communiqué and following, they commit the first part of their crime by setting out supposed “aggressive actions” of Russia, in which, in every instance, they are the real aggressors.

At paragraph 15 they state, after some drivel about “partnership between NATO and Russia,” that,

“We regret that despite repeated calls by Allies and the international community since 2014 for Russia to change course, the conditions for that relationship do not currently exist.  The nature of the Alliance’s relations with Russia and aspirations for partnership will be contingent on a clear, constructive change in Russia’s actions that demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities.  Until then, we cannot return to “business as usual.”

What they mean by Russia “changing course” is, of course, doing what they order, and “compliance with international law” means nothing less than complying with NATO diktats. The world saw what happened to Yugoslavia, when President Milosevic had the guts to tell them to go to hell when Madelaine Albright issued her long list of demands, to him, including the occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO forces and the dismantling of socialism, followed by the choice, comply or be bombed. The Yugoslav government had the right and the courage and so defied them, and so NATO leaders activated the leg-breakers, the enforcers, and the murderers who serve in their armed forces and began the vast destruction of a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.

We saw it again with Afghanistan, invaded on a legal pretext of harbouring an alleged criminal, Bin Laden, who has never been charged with a crime and who was working under US Army command in Kosovo in 1998-9, fighting against the Yugoslav government.

We saw it with Iraq, ordered to surrender weapons it never had, and then attacked with “shock and awe” a display of military power meant not just for Iraq, but for the whole world; this I what we will do to you if you don’t play ball.

We saw it with President Aristide in Haiti in 2004 when American and Canadian soldiers arrested him at gunpoint and exiled him in chains to Africa, while the world looked away. We saw it in 2010 when President Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by the French and thrown into the morass of the International Criminal Court. We saw it in 2011 when NATO destroyed socialist Libya and we see it now as they try the same against Syria and Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China and most importantly, Russia.

Paragraph 15 is nothing less than a diktat, “obey us or we cannot return to business as usual,” meaning, ultimately, war.

There then follows a long series of paragraphs of lies and distortions about events with everything blamed on Russia. They know these are lies and distortions of course but the point is that these communiqués are generated in Washington as propaganda devices to be quoted over and over again in the western media and referred to by their diplomats and politicians in every speech.

At paragraph 35 and following they refer to their plans for their new Operation Barbarossa, the build-up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe. They call it the Readiness Action Plan. In other words, all those paragraphs set out their plans for preparing the logistical and strategic capacity to attack Russia. That they intend to do so is now clear with the placement of anti-missile systems in Poland and Romania and soon on Russia’s southeast flank in Korea, that are intended to ensure the success of a nuclear first strike on Russia by NATO nuclear forces. The anti-missile systems are meant to intercept any retaliatory missiles launched by survivors in Russia. But, as President Putin pointed out, they can also be used directly in an offensive capacity.

They then emphasize that nuclear weapons are an important part of their strategy and in paragraph 53 state,

“NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture also relies, in part, on United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and on capabilities and infrastructure provided by Allies concerned.” The fear is that with recent exercises in Poland and in the Arctic in which the use of air strikes to launch nuclear weapons such as nuclear tipped cruise missiles against Russia played a prominent part, the United States and its NATO allies are planning for and preparing for a nuclear attack on Russia. This is the only conclusion possible since it is clear that Russia has no intention of attacking any country in Eastern Europe nor anywhere else and so the excuse given that the presence of nuclear weapons in Europe is a deterrent against Russian “aggression” is established as a lie and therefore their presence can have only one purpose-to be used in attack.

The evidence is before us, the dossier complete. It sits on a desk, gathering dust, of no use to anyone, except the court of public opinion, and what is that worth these days? But perhaps some one out there will take it, develop it and give it to a tribunal, perhaps one of the people, for the people, set up by the people, to try those who plan to destroy the people, that can act quickly, before the final crime of aggression is committed against Russia; against us all.

 

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”


http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/18/nato-s-warsaw-communique-planning-the-crime-of-aggression/

Why WWIII Is On The Horizon

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English, OTAN

By Paul Craig Roberts

December 28, 2015

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/12/28/why-wwiii-is-on-the-horizon-paul-craig-roberts/print/

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave birth to a dangerous American ideology called neoconservativism. The Soviet Union had served as a constraint on US unilateral action. With the removal of this constraint on Washington, neoconservatives declared their agenda of US world hegemony. America was now the “sole superpower,” the “unipower,” that could act without restraint anywhere in the world.

The Washington Post neoconservative journalist Charles Krauthammer summed up the “new reality” as follows:

“We have overwheming global power. We are history’s designated custodians of the international system. When the Soviet Union fell, something new was born, something utterly new–a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe. This is a stagering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. Even Rome was no model for what America is today.”

The staggering unipolar power that history has given to Washington has to be protected at all costs. In 1992 top Pentagon official Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which became the basis for Washington’s foreign policy.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine states that the “first objective” of American foreign and military policy is “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat [to US unilateral action] on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” (A “hostile power” is a country sufficiently strong to have a foreign policy independent from Washington’s.)

The unilateral assertion of American power begin in ernest during the Clinton regime with the interventions in Yugoslavia, Serbia, Kosovo, and the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq. In 1997 the neoconservatives penned their “Project for a New American Century.” In 1998, three years prior to 9/11, the neoconservatives sent a letter to President Clinton calling for regime change in Iraq and “the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” Neoconservatives set out their program for removing seven governments in five years. http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

The events of September 11, 2001, are regarded by informed people as “the new Pearl harbor” that the neoconservatives said was necessary in order to begin their wars of conquest in the Middle East. Paul O’Neil, President George W. Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, has stated pubicly that the agenda of President Bush’s first meeting with his cabinet was the invasion of Iraq. This invasion was planned prior to 9/11. Since 9/11 Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries and now confronts Russia both in Syria and Ukraine.

Russia cannot allow a jihadist Caliphate to be established in an area comprising Syria/Iraq, because it would be a base for exporting destabilization into Muslim parts of the Russian Federation. Henry Kissinger himself has stated this fact, and it is clear enough to any person with a brain. However, the power-crazed fanatical neoconservatives, who have controlled the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, are so absorbed in their own hubris and arrogance that they are prepared to push Russia to the point of having their Turkish puppet shoot down a Russian airplane and to overthrow the democratically-elected government in Ukraine that was on good terms with Russia, substituting in its place an American puppet government.

With this background, we can understand that the dangerous situation facing the world is the product of the neoconservative’s arrogant policy of US world hegemony. The failures of judgment and the dangers in the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts are themselves the consequences of the neoconservative ideology.

To perpetuate American hegemony, the neoconservatives threw away the guarantees that Washington gave Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch to the East. The neoconservatives pulled the US out of the ABM Treaty, which specified that neither the US nor Russia would develop and deploy anti-ballistic missiles. The neoconservatives re-wrote US war doctrine and elevated nuclear weapons from their role as a retaliatory force to a pre-emptive first strike force. The neoconservatives began putting ABM bases on Russia’s borders, claiming that the bases were for the purpose of protecting Europe from non-existent Iranian nuclear ICBMs.

Russia and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, have been demonized by neoconservatives and their puppets in the US government and media. For example, Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, declared Putin to be “the new Hitler.” A former CIA official called for Putin’s assassination. Presidential candidates in both parties are competing in terms of who can be the most aggressive toward Russia and the most insulting toward Russia’s president.

The effect has been to destroy the trust between nuclear powers. The Russian government has learned that Washington does not respect Washington’s own laws, much less international law, and that Washington cannot be trusted to keep any agreement. This lack of trust, together with the aggression toward Russia spewing from Washington and the presstitute media and echoing in the idiotic European capitals, has established the ground for nuclear war. As NATO (essentially the US) has no prospect of defeating Russia in conventional war, much less defeating an alliance of Russia and China, war will be nuclear.

To avoid war, Putin is non-provocative and low-key in his responses to Western provocations. Putin’s responsible behavior, however, is misinterpreted by neoconervatives as a sign of weakness and fear. The neoconservatives tell President Obama to keep the pressure on Russia, and Russia will give in. However, Putin has made it clear that Russia will not give in. Putin has sent this message on many occasions. For example, on September 28, 2015, at the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, Putin said that Russia can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world. Two days later Putin took command of the war against ISIS in Syria.

The European governments, especially Germany and the UK, are complicit in the move toward nuclear war. These two American vassal states enable Washington’s reckless aggression toward Russia by repeating Washington’s propaganda and supporting Washington’s sanctions and interventions against other countries. As long as Europe remains nothing but an extension of Washington, the prospect of Armegeddon will continue to rise.

At this point in time, nuclear war can only be avoided in two ways. One way is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. The other way is for an independent leader in Germany, the UK, or France to rise to office and withdraw from NATO. That would begin a stampede to leave NATO, which is Washington’s prime tool for causing conflict with Russia and, thereby, is the most dangerous force on earth to every European country and to the entire world. If NATO continues to exist, NATO together with the neoconservative ideology of American hegemony will make nuclear war inevitable.

Hellish End Soon: Record High Likelihood Both Nuclear and Burnout

Ivo Rens Généralités, in English

by Eric Zuesse 23.08.2016

Source : Strategic Cultures Foundation

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/08/23/hellish-end-soon-record-high-likelihood-both-nuclear-burnout.html

 

Both of the feasible hellish outcomes – nuclear war, and escalating burnout of the biosphere (from climate-heat plus associated ocean-acidification) – are now at record-high likelihoods. Either alone can end civilization as we know it, but unfortunately both of them are at historic peaks and heading toward a surprisingly-soon hellish end of civilization, either way.

Whereas global-warming-burnout has now become all but inevitable, as global record-high temperatures are increasingly routine; there’s yet another horrific outcome that’s become far more likely than was previously the case, and it’s is due to the sudden switch in 2014, of Ukraine’s pro-Russian-orientation, to instead a Ukraine seeking to join the anti-Russian US and NATO alliance.

A globe-destroying nuclear war, has, since that change in February 2014, worried Russians in much the same way that the US was worried by the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: their nuclear missiles being so near the border and close to the capitol as to make possible a blitz first-strike that could destroy the attacked country’s retaliatory missiles too fast to launch them. (US President Kennedy thus threatened a pre-emptive strike, and then reached a deal with Khrushchev, which enabled civilization to get this far.) So, we’re increasingly on a nuclear hair-trigger, even while we also face also a surprisingly speeding-up global temperature-trend to burnout.

Since 2014, furthermore, NATO forces have additionally been moved to Russia’s very borders, and Russia has responded (both to the Ukraine-switch, and to the NATO forces on Russia’s borders) by escalating its war-preparedness (much as the US would do if, for example, Russia were to have taken over Mexico, and then planted military forces there, which is as near to us as Ukraine is to them – that would be the mirror-image if the positions here were reversed).

On August 16th, EcoWatch headlined «NASA: July Was Earth’s Hottest Month in Recorded History» and also reported that, «July is now the tenth consecutive record warm month, and 2016 is still on track to be the hottest year on record». Global temperatures after the 1970s, when models first started to be proposed for projecting global warming, have so exceeded the fat central part of the Bell Curve, so that we’re now way out on the very thin super-hot end of that curve, which means the process has probably already sped out of control so that it can’t be reversed. The carbon-gas theory of global warming was first proposed by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, but a hundred years later when Al Gore ran for US President in 2000 proposing to act upon the scientific findings that confirmed Arrhenius’s theory, he was rejected; Bush the denier became appointed the ‘winner’. Even after the famous article «Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature» was published on 15 May 2013, many people still continued to deny that any scientific consensus exists on this vitally important matter, though the article had analyzed «11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’,» and it reported that 97.2% of the ones which expressed an opinion on it, agreed with the view that Arrhenius’s theory is correct and that humans are, indeed, burning up the planet. However, even just three years ago, the view was that this ‘global warming’ would occur much more slowly than it now seems to be occurring. Furthermore, US President Barack Obama’s three proposed mega ‘trade’ deals – TPP, TTIP, and TISA – include features in them which would effectively block any increase in regulations against global warming (and would nullify the recent Paris agreement on climate change), and so even US politicians who claim to care about the subject are actually ignoring global warming, in their substantive policies. And Hillary Clinton is a huge recipient of financial backing from fossil-fuels industries. So, all that’s really being done on the matter is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And now, the ship is clearly sinking – and, still, many people know nothing but propaganda that says it’s not happening.

The alternative way for hell to come, if global-burning doesn’t come first, is the nuclear-war route. That’s not quite so certain to happen, but, on 31 May 2016, was published «A Russian Warning», which said that, «If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead». The authors of that article were optimistic that «M.A.D.» – the theory that there will be no nuclear war because it would inevitably produce «Mutually Assured Destruction» which nobody wants – still remains not only a physical reality but also a psychological one. If that were so, then M.A.D. would continue to work in the future, such as it has worked in the past, to sustain a nuclear balance and the avoidance of global nuclear war. However, at the same time that that was published, I headlined «The End of M.A.D. – The Beginning of Madness», which presented a bleaker view: «that Russia might be placed into a situation in which a blitz nuclear attack against the West would (and maybe even will) be Russia’s rational response to Western operations to surround Russia with hostile forces on its borders». In that article, I described the history of how «M.A.D.» came to end, on the US side of US-Russian relations – though not on the Russian side, which is vociferous against and protests this apparent American change (the US government’s demand that it run the world – that everyone must trust its goodwill, sanity, and justice, and comply with that government’s demands).

Global burn-up might come lots faster than previously thought. Or else, nuclear war might come, though I might be the only serious writer who thinks it could happen. But I might not be the only person who thinks it could happen: Vladimir Putin, in some of his statements to Western journalists (who have oddly kept it quiet), has said that it can happen, and that Russia will not simply wait to be attacked first. The US is now playing a game of nuclear «chicken», and proceeding on the assumption that Russia won’t suddenly unleash its nuclear force if the US and NATO violate the nuclear balance.

In the US, the people who want to push Russia to the very brink (and who think that Russia would then simply capitulate to the global US empire and allow America’s aristocracy to take over Russia as simply another American client-state), are commonly called «neoconservatives», and they are strongly united behind Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. But so too are the global-burning industries united behind her. In fact, even the Koch brothers want Hillary Clinton to become President. And she’s way ahead in the polls. (One of her advisors and key endorsers, incidentally, a former head of the CIA who is angling for a position in her Administration, is so extreme a neocon that he says the CIA should be covertly assassinating heads-of-state that ‘we’ don’t like.) So, the headline here, «Quick Hellish End: Record High Likelihood Now», would appear to be perhaps even likelier to be true than if her opponent (who obviously is disfavored by these people) were to win. That other Party’s candidate has no record at all in public office, and so no rational way exists of comparing him to Clinton, except that both the Big Weapons crowd, and the Big Carbon crowd, know Clinton and her record intimately, and prefer that to the alternative. Perhaps this fact is all a reasonable person needs to know about her. And it seems likely, at this point, that Putin will be dealing with a US President Hillary Clinton, which means he’d be dealing with an ultra-hardline neoconservative, who will make Barack Obama (even with his takeover of Ukraine) seem to have been a friend of Russia, by comparison.

In either case, regardless whether the end comes from nuclear winter, or from global warming, things are likely to be far worse for people (and other animals) who are yet to be born, than for the ones living now, because many in the present generation are living good lives, and probably there won’t be any more of that, starting fairly soon. The lives after a nuclear war and during nuclear winter, or else simply in a boiling world if we don’t die from anything nuclear, won’t be nearly so nice, as the ones of people (and other animals) living today.

Apparently, humans are intelligent enough to give us the power to destroy the world, but stupid and psychopathic enough to do it, one way or the other.

 

U.S. Invades Syria, And Warns Russia

Ivo Rens Asie occidentale, in English

by Eric Zuesse, Tue, Aug 23, 2016

http://russia-insider.com/taxonomy/term/1617/all/feed

 

On Monday, August 22nd, the United States government — which demands the overthrow of the internationally-recognized-as-legal government of Syria — officially announced that America’s military forces in Syria will continue to occupy Syrian land, no matter what the Syrian government says, and will shoot down any Syrian planes that fly over U.S. forces there and that attack them.

 

As reported on Monday by Al-Masdar News:

The Pentagon has announced that the USA is ready to down Syrian and Russian planes that they claim threaten American advisers who by international law are illegally operating in northern Syria.

On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis claimed that US jets attempted to intercept Syrian planes to protect the American advisers operating illegally with Kurdish forces in Syria after Syrian government jets bombed areas of Hasakah when Kurdish police began an aggression against the National Defense Force.

On Monday, another Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, said, “We would continue to advise the Syrian regime to steer clear of those areas.”

“We are going to defend our people on the ground, and do what we need to defend them,” Cook told reporters.

This means that the U.S. government will not allow the Syrian government to expel or otherwise eliminate U.S. forces in Syria. The Syrian government never invited U.S. forces into Syria, but the U.S. now officially dares the Syrian government to assert its sovereignty over the areas where America’s troops are located.

Al-Masdar continued:

When pushed further about Russia, Cook made it clear that the US would make the same aggression against Russian jets who are operating legally with the Syrian government’s approval and coordination.

“If they threaten US forces, we always have the right to defend our forces,” Cook said.

This means that the U.S. not only is at war against the legitimate government of Syria, but that the U.S. government will also be at war against Russia if Russian forces (which the Syrian government did invite into Syria) defends Syrian forces from attacks in Syria by U.S. forces — forces that are illegally there.

These U.S. forces number only 300, of whom 250 were sent to Syria on April 24th to serve as advisors to other illegal military forces in Syria.

The vast majority of the illegal military forces in Syria are jihadists who had been hired by the Saudi government and the Qatari government, and supplied with U.S. weapons, to overthrow the Syrian government. Most of the other illegal forces in Syria are Kurdish forces, supported by the U.S. government to break Syria apart so as to create a separate Kurdish state in the majority-Kurdish far north-eastern tip of Syria.

The primary U.S. goal in Syria is to overthrow the Syrian government, which is led by the Baath Party, Syria’s secular Party. Many Arabs insist upon Sharia, or Islamic law, but Syria’s Arabs are an exception; the Baath Party is and has always been supported by the majority of the Syrian people, including by most of Syria’s Arabs. Most Syrians are strongly opposed to Sharia law. Syria is the most secular nation in the Middle East.

For example, when Western-sponsored polls were taken in Syria, after the start in 2011 of the importation of jihadists into Syria, those polls showed that 55% of Syrians want Bashar al-Assad (the current leader of the Baath Party) to remain as Syria’s President, and “82% agree ‘IS [Islamic State] is US and foreign made group’.” Furthermore, only “22% agree ‘IS is a positive influence’,” and that 22% was the lowest level of support shown by Syrians for any of the presented statements, except for, “21% agree ‘Prefer life now than under Assad’” — meaning that Syrians believe that things were better before the U.S.-sponsored jihadists entered Syria to overthrow Assad.

Clearly, when “82% agree ‘IS [Islamic State] is US and foreign made group’,” very few people in Syria support the 300 U.S. forces there. Not only is the U.S. an invader, but it (and especially the forces that the U.S. supports in Syria — most especially the jihadists, who are the vast majority of these forces) made life far worse (and far shorter) for virtually all Syrians.

Furthermore, that same poll found: “70% agree ‘Oppose division of country’.” Consequently, the Kurdish separatists are likewise opposed by the vast majority of Syrians.

The Syrian government, from now on, is in the uncomfortable position of having invaders on its territory, and of being warned that one of them — the U.S. — will be fully at war against Syria if Syria tries to expel them.

Russia too is now under warning from the United States, that, if Russia, an ally of Syria, takes any action to expel or kill any of the U.S. invaders in Syria, then the U.S. will also be at war against Russia.

The U.S. government is now also daring the Russian government. Perhaps the U.S. strategy here is to force Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, either to back down, and abandon its Syrian ally, or else to launch a nuclear strike against the United States. If Putin backs down, that would greatly diminish his support from the Russian people, which is above 80% in all polls, including Western-sponsored ones. Perhaps this is the strategy of U.S. President Barack Obama, to drive Vladimir Putin out of office — something that might occur if the U.S. drives Bashar al-Assad out of office.

As Seymour Hersh reported, on 7 January 2016, “the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then [in the summer of 2013] led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya,” and so Dempsey quit, and Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, was fired over the matter. “The DIA’s reporting, he [Flynn] said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’” 

Flynn is now a foreign-affairs advisor to the Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who is being criticized by the Democratic Presidential candidate, for being soft on Russia and insufficiently devoted to the U.S. goal of overthrowing Assad.

 

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

 

France’s Terror Spiral Ends When France Stops Being a Rogue State

Ivo Rens Europe, in English

by Finian Cunningham

30 July 2016-08-07

Source : Strategic Culture Foundation

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/07/30/france-terror-spiral-ends-when-france-stops-being-rogue-state.html

fabius_bon_boulot4

French shock at the murder of an elderly priest by two knife-wielding Islamist terrorists is understandable. The 85-year-old cleric, Father Jacques Hamel, was forced to his knees before the tiny mass-going congregation in a Normandy parish church, when his throat was slit. The killers then proceeded to film themselves proclaiming a macabre Arabic ritual on the church’s altar.

Expressing the nation’s horror, Father Philippe Maheut, the vicar general for the Rouen district in northern France where the murder took place earlier this week, reportedly said: «We ask ourselves: how have we arrived at this point?»

The shock of the barbaric slaying is all the more compounded coming less than two weeks after a Tunisian-born man smashed a 19-ton lorry into crowds of pedestrians watching a Bastille Day fireworks display in the Riviera resort city of Nice. French authorities say that attack – in which 84 people were killed – was also motivated by Islamist terrorism.

Since January 2015, France has incurred over 10 terror attacks, which have taken the lives of more than 250 people. The country has been in a state of emergency for nine months and will continue to be so until at least the end of this year. Perhaps even beyond that. Yet there seems to be no respite from the violence.

What is even more galling for citizens is that in the latest attack near Rouen, one of the two assailants who were subsequently shot dead by police officers, was known to the French authorities for having terror links. Adel Kermiche (19), a French-Arab, was tagged electronically and under surveillance as part of a sentence from a French court for attempting to go to Syria on two occasions during 2015 to join Islamist militias fighting there.

The disclosure adds to the growing popular discontent with the government of President Francois Hollande. It follows claims made by local French police in Nice that they were not given adequate national security support at the time of the lorry massacre.

Hollande’s Socialist government is being assailed on the political right for being «too soft» on security.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the Republicans, is calling for a «merciless» response in the aftermath of the priest’s slaying this week.

Sarkozy, who is expected to make a second bid for the presidency in elections next year, appears to be trying to sideline the rightwing, anti-immigrant National Front of Marine Le Pen.

Emergency measures being demanded by Sarkozy include detention without trial for anyone suspected of Islamist terror links, greater surveillance powers for police, and the deportation of French citizens to their country of heritage if convicted of terror offenses. That is a slippery slope towards mass internment of entire ethnic-religious populations, akin to a martial law state.

With Hollande’s government under increasing electoral pressure from both the Republicans and the National Front, and given its woeful performance so far on security issues, it seems inevitable that France will intensify its already draconian emergency powers.

French military operations overseas can also be expected to escalate. Both Hollande and his Prime Minister Manuel Valls have declared war on Islamic State (IS or Daesh) and have vowed that «the war will be long».

Only days after the Nice atrocity on 14 July, French warplanes carried out several air strikes near the IS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria. However, Syrian government sources claimed that the strikes resulted in over 100 civilians being killed. Damascus sent a letter to the UN Security Council condemning French violation of humanitarian law, as well as its sovereignty in carrying out the air raids.

What we have then is a death-terror-spiral. Under prevailing circumstances this spiral will drill deeper and deeper into horrific oblivion.

Let’s go back to the question posed by the vicar general of Rouen following the priest’s murder: how did we arrive at this point?

It cannot be understated that much of the so-called jihadist violence that has erupted across Europe, from France to Belgium to Germany, is a form of blowback from illegal wars that European states have waged in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. These wars have been conducted overtly along with the United States, under the auspices of NATO, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Mali. The legality of these «interventions» is highly questionable, if not criminal on the face of it.

It was under the French presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy in March 2011 that NATO bombed Libya into a failed state, overthrowing the government of Muammar Gaddafi, and unleashing Islamist terrorism across the Maghreb, Sahara and Middle East regions.

Under Hollande’s presidency from 2012, France has been a key sponsor of the covert war in Syria over the past five years to topple the elected government of President Bashar al-Assad. Along with the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, France is responsible for one of the great crimes in modern history – the wanton destruction of Syria, with a death toll of 400,000 people and the displacement of millions refugees, all stemming from the covert support of terrorist militia for regime change.

As Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, admonished the Security Council this past week with sarcasm: «Why are attacks in Europe condemned as terrorist acts, but when they are carried out in Syria, Western governments refer to them as the actions of ‘moderate rebels’?»

The slitting of a priest’s throat in a Normandy church by self-proclaimed Islamist terrorists is indeed shocking. But how much more shocking is the beheading of thousands of Christians and Muslims by the same terror groups in Syria?

Syrian Christian patriarchs have for years been warning about the extermination of Christians in towns and villages that have fallen under siege from Islamic State and other al-Qaeda-linked terror groups. Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II told of just one horrific incident among many when 21 Christians were slaughtered inside a church in the town of Al Qaryatain. The reign of terror only came to an end in April this year when the Syrian Arab Army and Russian air force recaptured the town from the jihadists.

The jihadist networks – mercenaries from as many as 100 countries – nearly toppled the Syrian state until Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ordered military intervention last October. Toppling the state was the objective of the French government and its allies. And the proxies were directed, financed and weaponized by the foreign powers. France, the US, Britain and others are guilty of huge war crimes. The political leaders of these countries need to be prosecuted. Because without accountability under the law then there is no law. We have succumbed to the jungle.

Francois Hollande is on record publicly admitting that French weapons were being supplied to Syrian «rebels» as early as 2012, in contravention of a European Union embargo on Syria.

Western media reports have also occasionally and coyly acknowledged that foreign weapons have ended up in the hands of officially proscribed terror networks. The notion of a distinction between moderates and extremists is a cynical charade to absolve Western governments from the legitimate charge that they are aiding and abetting terrorists.

The videoed decapitation of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo last week by US-backed «rebels» from the Nour al-Din al-Zenki brigade is proof of that charade. The US State Department admitted its link to the group, saying that the gruesome slaying of the boy would give it «pause» to continue its support for the brigade.

There seems no way out of France’s death spiral with terrorism. Not just France, but the whole of Europe.

A spate of terror-linked attacks in Germany – three in the last week – is stoking fear and resentment among ordinary Germans towards asylum seekers who have fled violence in Arab and Muslim countries.

The atrocity at the French church near Rouen is seen as a profanity against France’s Christian heritage. There are reports of fears that far-right French nationalist groups will seek revenge through attacks on Arab and Muslim communities. The mentality of fear, suspicion, retribution and xenophobia is in turn being reinforced by increasing emergency state powers and incendiary political rhetoric.

There is, it seems, an abysmal, apocalyptic vista of never-ending violence. Understandably, European citizens seem to be at a loss as to how to break out of the cycle of violence.

The truth is that France’s terror spiral, and that of wider Europe too, will only come to an end when states like France stop conducting themselves like rogue powers, trashing international law and violating other countries’ sovereignty with their support of terrorist proxies for illicit schemes of regime change.

France is in mourning – once again. The country needs to wake up to the reality of its own international lawlessness. And break the cycle of terrorism that its governments have in a big way instigated in the first place, along with their European and American NATO allies.

Speaking after the slaughter of the priest near Rouen, President Hollande looked into the TV cameras and solemnly said: «I owe you the truth. This war will be long. It is our democracy that is being targeted. We must unite».

Hold it right there. This is the kind of lying deceit that Western governments have to be called out on. The first thing that people should unite for is the prosecution of war criminals and the systematic violation of international law that has largely induced the phenomenon of endless terror in our midst.

EU / Trade agreements: UN rights expert warns against bypassing national parliaments

Ivo Rens Europe, in English

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Geneva 24 June 2016

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20174&LangID=E

 

GENEVA (24 June 2016) – United Nations human rights expert Alfred de Zayas today warned that any plan by the European Union to bypass national parliaments to push through controversial trade deals would violate international human rights norms and standards.

“Trade deals prepared and negotiated in secret, excluding key stakeholders such as labour unions, consumer associations, health professionals and environmental experts and now parliaments, have zero democratic legitimacy,” said the UN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

Mr. de Zayas’s call comes as the European Commission is reportedly preparing to treat the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) deal with Canada as an ‘EU only’ matter which, if adopted, will exclude ratification by every national Parliaments in the EU, according to leaked documents and recent media reports that the Independent Expert discussed with various EU stakeholders.

“In view of the increasing vocal opposition by civil society organizations, a thorough open discussion should be carried out by national parliaments and referenda should be organized in all countries concerned,” Mr de Zayas said. “Disfranchising the public from participating in this important debate is undemocratic and manifests a profound disregard to peoples’ voice”.

An earlier consultation conducted by the European Commission in 2014 resulted in 97% of respondents from across Europe expressing opposition to the inclusion of asymmetrical investment protection in Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the USA. “The same would apply to CETA, but no consultation was ever held,” he noted.

In the light of the European Council on 28-29 June 2016, the expert called on States to respect their human rights obligations. “The human rights treaty regime entails binding obligations that States must observe,” the expert said recalling the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, and the American Convention on Human Rights.

“In case of conflict between trade agreements and human rights treaties, it is the latter that prevail,” he stressed. “States must not enter into agreements that delay, circumvent, hinder or make impossible the fulfillment of human rights treaty obligations.”

The Independent Expert noted that it is not for the State to guarantee profits to investors or transnational enterprises, but to legislate and regulate in the public interest. “The State cannot divest itself of this responsibility to act to protect populations under its jurisdiction by adopting precautionary health and environmental measures, by regulating labour standards and by ensuring food security,” he said.

“Trade agreements should only be ratified after human rights, health and environmental impact assessments have been conducted, which has not been the case with regard to CETA and TTIP,” Mr. de Zayas said.

“Ratification of CETA and TTIP would start a ‘race to the bottom’ in human rights terms and would seriously compromise the regulatory space of states. This is contrary to the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and would constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a democratic and equitable international order,” the UN Independent Expert concluded.

 

NOTE TO EDITORS:

The UN Independent Expert devoted his 2015 report to the UN Human Rights Council to the adverse human rights, health and environmental impacts of so-called free trade agreements such as CETA, TPP, TTIP and TISA. Ckeck the report (A/HRC/30/44): http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx

Mr. de Zayas focused his 2015 report to the UN General Assembly on the incompatibility of Investor-state-dispute-settlement arbitrations with fundamental principles of transparency and accountability. Ckeck the report (A/70/285): http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/285

 

In his upcoming report to the UN Human Rights Council, to be presented in September 2016, Mr. de Zayas analyzes and rejects the proposal of an investment court system as a rebranding exercise, which maintains the normative asymmetry of one-way tribunals where investors can sue States but not vice versa, and where victims of human rights violations by the activities of investors and transnational corporations have no standing to sue, no recourse and no remedy.

Mr. Alfred de Zayas (United States of America) was appointed as the first Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order by the Human Rights Council, effective May 2012. He is currently professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/IEInternationalorderIndex.aspx

The Independent Experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

 

 

Putin, Erdogan and the Plot Against the Rest of Us

Ivo Rens Asie occidentale, in English

by Gilad Atzmon

July 21, 2016

Source: http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2016/7/21/putin-erdogan-and-the-plot-against-the-rest-of-us

 

 

Putin and Erdogan have agreed to meet in early August. The tension between Russia and Turkey has gradually dissipated since Putin and Erdogan’s June telephone call. This week Turkish and Russian officials stated that the two administrations have reached a new consensus.  The effect of this understanding is that Erdogan is changing its policies toward Syria, Assad and NATO intervention. Turkey may no longer be part of the Syrian crisis, it may as well become elementary to the peace process.  Evidence of this shift occurred over a week ago when Turkey began to reinstate its relationship with the Syrian regime.

On Wednesday 13 July, just two days before the attempted coup, The Guardian wrote:

“More than five years into Syria’s civil war, Turkey, the country that has most helped the rebellion against the rule of Bashar al-Assad, has hinted it may move to normalise relations with Damascus.” The Guardian headline read “Syrian rebels stunned as Turkey signals normalisation of Damascus relations.”

We also learned in the last few hours that the Russian government accepts now that the Turkish assault on its Su-24 jets over Syria airspace last year was a clear plot to derail the relationships between the two countries.

This is certainly hopeful news for the region. But it was not necessarily the news NATO, America and Israel wanted.

Did the emerging alliance among Russia, Turkey and possibly Syria lead a few Turkish military leaders to execute a coup? Is it coincidental that the headquarters of the failed coup was at Incirlik Air Base, the Turkish airfield from which the United States and NATO regularly launch airstrikes against the Islamic State?  There was also news this week that Incirlik is home to 50 Americans nuclear bombs.

Putin and Erdogan share many characteristics. Both leaders are popular and charismatic. Each of them is considered by his own people to be nationalist and patriotic and each operates within a nation that suffers from a long history of political instability and military coups. Both men seem to be original and astute political animals. But neither leader appears to be among the USA/NATO favorites. Both are despised by Zio-cons, the Jewish lobbies and Israel. Some commentators suggest that last Friday’s events in Turkey may be a warning sign for Putin: he may be the next to endure a coup attempt.

This is a strange time for the press. Not a single news outlet is reliable or trustworthy. We are bombarded by a plethora of global propaganda networks. The more news channels we have the less we know.  Building a coherent and objective picture of reality or global affairs is pretty much impossible. The networks of progressive activists and commentators recycling ready made sound bites don’t help either. I was shocked to find out this week that a bunch of Assad Western supporters, whom I considered by mistake, well meaning and informed,   employed neocon terminology such as ‘Islamists,’ ‘thugs’  and ‘Islamofascist’ to the Turkish people who went to the streets to save their country from a military regime.

As the picture clarifies, it seems that the coup attempt was motivated by the emerging alliance between Turkey and Russia. The possibility that Turkey becomes integral to a peaceful resolution in Syria brings to an end NATO’s interventionist war against the Assad regime. The plotters against Erdogan were desperate to halt such a transition.

An old friend of mine reminded me yesterday of Charles Bukowski’s precious insight:  « the problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence ».

 

30 Seconds To Midnight

Ivo Rens in English, OTAN, USA

by Paul Craig Roberts

July 25, 2016

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/07/25/30-seconds-to-midnight/

 

Former US Secretary of Defense William Perry warns that the world is on the knife edge of nuclear catastrophe. Such catastrophe can result accidentally from electronic failures or glitches in warning systems and from the recklessly aggressive and unnecessary force buildup against Russia. Conn Hallinan discusses these issues. http://fpif.org/may-greater-risk-nuclear-catastrophe-cold-war/

I doubt Hallinan is correct about Washington’s military predominance. This is Washington’s view, and this view makes Washington confident that it holds the aces. It is a mistake for Hallinan to encourage Washington in this view. Nevertheless, Hallinan makes it clear that we could all be vaporized at any minute. This extremely high risk has been created entirely by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes in which zionist neoconservatives have controlled foreign and military policies.

It is tiresome to hear the argument that nuclear war won’t happen because it makes no sense. William Perry points out that the failure of a 49-cent computer chip resulted in NORAD’s computers signaling that the Soviets had launched 220 nuclear missiles at the United States. Just think about all the failures and glitches in our own personal computers, even the best ones.

Human miscalculation is also an enormous risk. Miscalculation is a dominant human trait. Consider that 50 percent of Americans’ choices of marriage partner are miscalculations as established by the divorce rate.

The mere existence of nuclear weapons means the nonexistence of life on earth. It will happen sooner or later. To raise the risk as the crazed American government is doing with irresponsible provocations of the Russians and Chinese is the ultimate criminal act.

There is no greater threat to human rights than to endanger all life, and that is what Washington and its two-bit punk NATO vassals are doing by increasing tensions between nuclear powers.

The neoconservatives in Washington have replaced nuclear disarmament with a new nuclear arms race. All of the hard work and accomplishments of previous US administrations to ease tensions and to reduce the stockpiles of nuclear weapons has been thrown away by the psychopaths who control the government in Washington.

NATO’s Warsaw Communiqué: Planning the Crime of Aggression

Ivo Rens Europe, Généralités, Guerre d'Ukraine, in English, OTAN, USA

by Christopher Black

Source : New Eastern Outlook

18.07.2016

http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/18/nato-s-warsaw-communique-planning-the-crime-of-aggression/

I have been a defence lawyer most of my working life and am not used to gathering evidence for a prosecution, but circumstances impelled me to open a file for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or perhaps some future citizen’s tribunal, in which is contained the evidence that the NATO leaders are guilty of the gravest crime against mankind, the crime of aggression. I would like to share with you some brief notes of interest from that file, for your consideration.

Article 8bis of the Rome Statute, the governing statue of the International Criminal Court states:

For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter on the United Nations.

The NATO communiqué issued from Warsaw on July 9th is direct evidence of such planning and preparation and therefore of a conspiracy by the NATO leaders to commit acts of aggression against Russia, and would be the subject of an indictment of the International Criminal Court against the leaders of the NATO military alliance, if the prosecutor of the ICC was in fact independent, which she is not, and of course, if the articles relating to crimes of aggression were in effect which will not take place until January 1, 2017, if at all, under the articles of the Rome Statute.

Nevertheless, the technical issue of jurisdiction that prevents the issuance of an indictment against the NATO leaders at this time does not legitimate the planning and preparation of acts of aggression as are contained in the NATO communiqué nor reduce the moral weight of the crime of aggression set out in the Statute and the Nuremberg Principles, for the crime of aggression is the supreme crime of war.

On their own words, set out in black and white, in their communiqué of July 9th, the NATO leaders, each and every one, and the entire general staffs of the armed forces of each and every NATO country, are guilty of the crime of aggression. The fact that there is no effective body to which they can be brought for trial is irrelevant to the fact of the crime being committed. They are the enemies of mankind and charged or not, tried or not, they are international outlaws who must be identified as such and called to account by their own peoples.

The evidence of their crimes of course predates this communiqué and consists in years of actions by the NATO powers, since the Soviet Union dissolved itself and the Warsaw Pact, under the agreement with NATO, the 1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act, that NATO would not expand into any of the countries formally members of the Warsaw Pact or the USSR, nor place nuclear weapons there. NATO has broken that agreement continuously since and has, as an organisation, or through groups of its member states, committed acts of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Russia (during the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and through support of Chechen terrorist groups inside Russia itself), Ukraine and Syria with each act of aggression supported by massive propaganda campaigns to attempt to justify these crimes as legitimate. The western mass media are all complicit in these crimes by distributing this propaganda to the people they are meant to inform.

The same powers have committed and are committing further acts of aggression against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Iran and China and continuously increasing their planning and preparation for aggression against those nations. These plans are also set out in the NATO communiqué but the gravest threat to mankind is the immediate existential threat against Russia, to which the principal part of the communiqué is directed.

The NATO communiqué is in fact a declaration of war against Russia. There is no other way to interpret it.

Many months ago I stated that we can regard the NATO build-up of forces in Eastern Europe, the NATO coup that overthrew the Yanukovich government in Ukraine, the attempt to grab the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, the immediate attacks on Ukrainian civilians in the eastern provinces that refused to accept the NATO coup, the constant propaganda against Russia as “aggressor” and the economic warfare conducted against Russia under the guise of “sanctions,” to be tantamount to a second Operation Barbarossa, the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. I was hesitant to so describe it but the facts were there and now others have recognised that the analogy is the correct one. And just as the leaders of the Third Reich were finally held responsible for their crimes at Nuremberg, so should be the leaders of the new Reich that the Americans and their vassal states are planning to impose on the rest of us.

At Paragraph 5 of the communiqué and following, they commit the first part of their crime by setting out supposed “aggressive actions” of Russia, in which, in every instance, they are the real aggressors.

At paragraph 15 they state, after some drivel about “partnership between NATO and Russia,” that,

“We regret that despite repeated calls by Allies and the international community since 2014 for Russia to change course, the conditions for that relationship do not currently exist.  The nature of the Alliance’s relations with Russia and aspirations for partnership will be contingent on a clear, constructive change in Russia’s actions that demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities.  Until then, we cannot return to “business as usual.”

What they mean by Russia “changing course” is, of course, doing what they order, and “compliance with international law” means nothing less than complying with NATO diktats. The world saw what happened to Yugoslavia, when President Milosevic had the guts to tell them to go to hell when Madelaine Albright issued her long list of demands, to him, including the occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO forces and the dismantling of socialism, followed by the choice, comply or be bombed. The Yugoslav government had the right and the courage and so defied them, and so NATO leaders activated the leg-breakers, the enforcers, and the murderers who serve in their armed forces and began the vast destruction of a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement.

We saw it again with Afghanistan, invaded on a legal pretext of harbouring an alleged criminal, Bin Laden, who has never been charged with a crime and who was working under US Army command in Kosovo in 1998-9, fighting against the Yugoslav government.

We saw it with Iraq, ordered to surrender weapons it never had, and then attacked with “shock and awe” a display of military power meant not just for Iraq, but for the whole world; this I what we will do to you if you don’t play ball.

We saw it with President Aristide in Haiti in 2004 when American and Canadian soldiers arrested him at gunpoint and exiled him in chains to Africa, while the world looked away. We saw it in 2010 when President Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by the French and thrown into the morass of the International Criminal Court. We saw it in 2011 when NATO destroyed socialist Libya and we see it now as they try the same against Syria and Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China and most importantly, Russia.

Paragraph 15 is nothing less than a diktat, “obey us or we cannot return to business as usual,” meaning, ultimately, war.

There then follows a long series of paragraphs of lies and distortions about events with everything blamed on Russia. They know these are lies and distortions of course but the point is that these communiqués are generated in Washington as propaganda devices to be quoted over and over again in the western media and referred to by their diplomats and politicians in every speech.

At paragraph 35 and following they refer to their plans for their new Operation Barbarossa, the build-up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe. They call it the Readiness Action Plan. In other words, all those paragraphs set out their plans for preparing the logistical and strategic capacity to attack Russia. That they intend to do so is now clear with the placement of anti-missile systems in Poland and Romania and soon on Russia’s southeast flank in Korea, that are intended to ensure the success of a nuclear first strike on Russia by NATO nuclear forces. The anti-missile systems are meant to intercept any retaliatory missiles launched by survivors in Russia. But, as President Putin pointed out, they can also be used directly in an offensive capacity.

They then emphasize that nuclear weapons are an important part of their strategy and in paragraph 53 state,

“NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture also relies, in part, on United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and on capabilities and infrastructure provided by Allies concerned.” The fear is that with recent exercises in Poland and in the Arctic in which the use of air strikes to launch nuclear weapons such as nuclear tipped cruise missiles against Russia played a prominent part, the United States and its NATO allies are planning for and preparing for a nuclear attack on Russia. This is the only conclusion possible since it is clear that Russia has no intention of attacking any country in Eastern Europe nor anywhere else and so the excuse given that the presence of nuclear weapons in Europe is a deterrent against Russian “aggression” is established as a lie and therefore their presence can have only one purpose-to be used in attack.

The evidence is before us, the dossier complete. It sits on a desk, gathering dust, of no use to anyone, except the court of public opinion, and what is that worth these days? But perhaps some one out there will take it, develop it and give it to a tribunal, perhaps one of the people, for the people, set up by the people, to try those who plan to destroy the people, that can act quickly, before the final crime of aggression is committed against Russia; against us all.

 

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”


http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/18/nato-s-warsaw-communique-planning-the-crime-of-aggression/