What is astounding though is that despite the Venezuelan manoeuvre being so blatantly obvious, the Western so-called news media have the audacity to give the orchestrated development a veneer of credibility. The abject servility of supposed Western journalism is pathetic.

Anyone with an open mind knows that in Venezuela it is a classic demonstration of motive and means for regime change. The motive is Venezuela’s vast natural oil wealth, believed to be the biggest known reserves of hydrocarbons on the planet. Augmented to that factor is the country has been governed for the past 20 years by socialist administrations committed to developing the wellbeing of the nation, instead of pandering to Western capital. Present economic woes are due to years of American sanctions, or financial warfare. 

As for means, the events in Venezuela are following the US playbook for regime change used in countless other countries, most notably Ukraine. 

The opposition figure, 35-year-old Juan Guaido, and his far-right Popular Will party have been trained by the American CIA for this very moment, according to investigative journalist Max Blumenthal. From recent obscurity, Guaido has been catapulted onto the international stage by dubious American political and media support, exalted as a “democratic champion”, even though his Neo-fascist fringe group has been involved in hundreds of killings, including against Venezuela security forces.

This week, Guaido, who has declared himself “interim president”, claimed that his wife and family were “intimidated” by Venezuelan security forces. It was an unconfirmed claim, but widely aired by Western media outlets as if it were fact. Then, right on cue, the Trump White House “responded” by saying there would be “serious consequences” for the Venezuelan government of elected President Nicolas Maduro. Further on cue, Guaido then hinted he would accept US military intervention for “protection”. 

This is a close replay of what happened in Ukraine in 2014. The elected president of that country, Viktor Yanukovych, was demonized and delegitimized by a relentless Western media campaign, while violent Neo-Nazi groups, bankrolled and trained by the CIA, were lionized as a “pro-democracy” movement.

We only have to look at the ensuing chaos, corruption and conflict in today’s Ukraine under the rule of a Neo-fascist regime in Kiev to readily see what US-backed “democracy” translates into. 

What Washington is doing in Venezuela is flagrantly illegal. President Maduro was duly elected last May. He appears to have the support of the majority of the population. Yet a minority opposition faction which is predominantly affiliated to the traditional ruling class has been transformed by Washington and its dutiful media into a just cause for democracy. 

The regime change underway in Venezuela is perhaps the most brazen yet. Washington intends to confiscate financial assets belonging to the state oil company and hand over billions of dollars to opposition groups led by Guaido. This grand theft of a nation’s entire wealth and the subversion of government is being played out in front of the whole world. 

However, it is incredible how European governments and media have gone along with this American-led lynch mob to violate Venezuela. You would think after the regime-change disasters that Washington has perpetrated in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, among many other places, that there would be some pause in Western media. Not a bit of it. As soon as the regime-change plot kicked-in in Venezuela, the Western media and European governments followed suit like lapdogs to the American agenda. This is brainwashing, Pavlovian style. 

Russia and those other countries mentioned above are commendably upholding international law and sovereign rights of nations to be not molested by external aggression. 

Moscow has no doubt learned harsh lessons from US and European duplicity. Russia was caught out by the dirty trick of regime change in Libya. That’s no doubt why it has taken a much firmer, critical stance over Syria and Ukraine. 

Russia is right to draw another critical line regarding Venezuela. If the US and its pathetic European minions get away with their crimes in this strategically important country, then the damage to international law will be immense. It will be open season for regime change everywhere. 

Anyone with a sense of justice and concern for world peace knows that the imperialist bully in Washington has to be stopped. Venezuela is a moment of truth.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

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George Galloway and Adam Garrie discuss the historical background to the country and its Bolivarian Revolution.

Watch: Local sources report about US marines arriving by boat to Colombia

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Another way to look at the INF treaty’s demise is that the Obama regime committed one trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money (in addition to the annual one trillion dollar budget of the military/security complex) to build more nuclear weapons, none of which are needed as the US alone has enough to blow up the world several times. Breaking the INF treaty is a sure-fire way to initiate a new arms race which would provide justification for the trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money that Washington is handing over to the military/security complex for more nuclear weapons.

Yet another way to look at the demise of the treaty is that Washington wants out of the treaty so that it can deploy intermediate range missiles against China. Washington has actually drawn up plans for war against Russia and China and has conducted simulations of what the outcome would be. America wins, of course.

The dangerous idea that a nuclear war can be won has been pushed for some years by the neoconservatives who are committed to US hegemony over the world. This idea definitely serves the material interest of the military/security complex and is very popular among the power brokers in Washington.

Washington’s excuse for breaking the INF treaty is that Russia is cheating and has violated the treaty. But Russia has no interest in violating a treaty that protects Russia. Russia’s intermediate range missiles cannot reach the US, and the only reason Russia would target Europe would be to retaliate for Europe hosting US missiles on Russia’s borders.

The beneficiaries of a renewed nuclear arms race are the stockholders of the military/security complex. Washington is feeding their profits by placing humanity at greater risk of nuclear Armageddon. Weapons are piling up, the use of which would destroy all life on the planet. This makes the weapons the very opposite of security. Trump whose goal was to normalize relations with Russia is now under the thumb of the military/security complex and has announced US intentions to withdraw from the last remaining arms control agreement—the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

The situation is serious. Very little is reported in US media of the resurrection of the nuclear arms race, and what is reported is blamed on Russia and China. Americans hear that it is China, not the US, that is militarizing the South China Sea and Russia that intends to restore the Soviet empire and that these intentions are threats to American national security. The evidence consists of assertion. The Russians have offered proof that they have not violated the INF treaty, but Washington doesn’t care because Washington is not leaving the treaty because of Russian violations.

Washington is leaving the treaty because Washington wants military hegemony over Russia and China and a good excuse to hand over another trillion dollars to the military/security complex. In the end capitalism does more than exploit labor. It ends life on earth

Traditionally, an aggressor paves the way to war with constant propaganda against the country to be attacked. The propaganda creates public support and justifies the attack. The constant stream of provocative accusations out of Washington against Russia and China (and Iran) in order to justify treaty breaking and higher armaments spending sounds to Russia and China like they are being set up for attack. It is reckless and irresponsible to convince nuclear powers that they are going to be attacked. There is no more certain way of producing war. Russia and China are hearing what Saddam Hussein heard, what Gaddafi heard, what Assad heard, what Iran hears. Unlike these victims of Washington, Russia and China have substantial offensive capability. When a country is convinced it is targeted for attack, does the country just sit there and await the attack?

Washington might be setting up America for a first strike with the extraordinary stream of accusations and provocations issuing from people too stupid to be in possession of nuclear weapons. In the nuclear era, it is reckless for a government to replace diplomacy with threats and coercion. Washington’s recklessness is the most dangerous threat that the world faces.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire.

The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.

The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together – the great nightmare of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They also are driving Germany and other European countries into the Eurasian orbit, the “Heartland” nightmare of Halford Mackinder a century ago.

The root cause is clear: After the crescendo of pretenses and deceptions over Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with our absolution of the lawless regime of Saudi Arabia, foreign political leaders are coming to recognize what world-wide public opinion polls reported even before the Iraq/Iran-Contra boys turned their attention to the world’s largest oil reserves in Venezuela: The United States is now the greatest threat to peace on the planet.

Calling the U.S. coup being sponsored in Venezuela a defense of democracy reveals the Doublethink underlying U.S. foreign policy. It defines “democracy” to mean supporting U.S. foreign policy, pursuing neoliberal privatization of public infrastructure, dismantling government regulation and following the direction of U.S.-dominated global institutions, from the IMF and World Bank to NATO. For decades, the resulting foreign wars, domestic austerity programs and military interventions have brought more violence, not democracy.

In the Devil’s Dictionary that U.S. diplomats are taught to use as their “Elements of Style” guidelines for Doublethink, a “democratic” country is one that follows U.S. leadership and opens its economy to U.S. investment, and IMF- and World Bank-sponsored privatization. The Ukraine is deemed democratic, along with Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries that act as U.S. financial and military protectorates and are willing to treat America’s enemies are theirs too.

A point had to come where this policy collided with the self-interest of other nations, finally breaking through the public relations rhetoric of empire. Other countries are proceeding to de-dollarize and replace what U.S. diplomacy calls “internationalism” (meaning U.S. nationalism imposed on the rest of the world) with their own national self-interest.

This trajectory could be seen 50 years ago (I described it in Super Imperialism [1972] and Global Fracture [1978].) It had to happen. But nobody thought that the end would come in quite the way that is happening. History has turned into comedy, or at least irony as its dialectical path unfolds.

For the past half-century, U.S. strategists, the State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) worried that opposition to U.S. financial imperialism would come from left-wing parties. It therefore spent enormous resources manipulating parties that called themselves socialist (Tony Blair’s British Labour Party, France’s Socialist Party, Germany’s Social Democrats, etc.) to adopt neoliberal policies that were the diametric opposite to what social democracy meant a century ago. But U.S. political planners and Great Wurlitzer organists neglected the right wing, imagining that it would instinctively support U.S. thuggishness.

The reality is that right-wing parties want to get elected, and a populist nationalism is today’s road to election victory in Europe and other countries just as it was for Donald Trump in 2016.

Trump’s agenda may really be to break up the American Empire, using the old Uncle Sucker isolationist rhetoric of half a century ago. He certainly is going for the Empire’s most vital organs. But it he a witting anti-American agent? He might as well be – but it would be a false mental leap to use “quo bono” to assume that he is a witting agent.

After all, if no U.S. contractor, supplier, labor union or bank will deal with him, would Vladimir Putin, China or Iran be any more naïve? Perhaps the problem had to erupt as a result of the inner dynamics of U.S.-sponsored globalism becoming impossible to impose when the result is financial austerity, waves of population flight from U.S.-sponsored wars, and most of all, U.S. refusal to adhere to the rules and international laws that it itself sponsored seventy years ago in the wake of World War II.

Dismantling international law and its courts

Any international system of control requires the rule of law. It may be a morally lawless exercise of ruthless power imposing predatory exploitation, but it is still The Law. And it needs courts to apply it (backed by police power to enforce it and punish violators).

Here’s the first legal contradiction in U.S. global diplomacy: The United States always has resisted letting any other country have any voice in U.S. domestic policies, law-making or diplomacy. That is what makes America “the exceptional nation.” But for seventy years its diplomats have pretended that its superior judgment promoted a peaceful world (as the Roman Empire claimed to be), which let other countries share in prosperity and rising living standards.

At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats insisted on veto power. At the World Bank and IMF they also made sure that their equity share was large enough to give them veto power over any loan or other policy. Without such power, the United States would not join any international organization. Yet at the same time, it depicted its nationalism as protecting globalization and internationalism. It was all a euphemism for what really was unilateral U.S. decision-making.

Inevitably, U.S. nationalism had to break up the mirage of One World internationalism, and with it any thought of an international court. Without veto power over the judges, the U.S. never accepted the authority of any court, in particular the United Nations’ International Court in The Hague. Recently that court undertook an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, from its torture policies to bombing of civilian targets such as hospitals, weddings and infrastructure. “That investigation ultimately found ‘a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity.’”1

Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton erupted in fury, warning in September that: “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” adding that the UN International Court must not be so bold as to investigate “Israel or other U.S. allies.”

That prompted a senior judge, Christoph Flügge from Germany, to resign in protest. Indeed, Bolton told the court to keep out of any affairs involving the United States, promising to ban the Court’s “judges and prosecutors from entering the United States.” As Bolton spelled out the U.S. threat: “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

What this meant, the German judge spelled out was that: “If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the U.S. or investigate an American citizen, [Bolton] said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted.”

The original inspiration of the Court – to use the Nuremburg laws that were applied against German Nazis to bring similar prosecution against any country or officials found guilty of committing war crimes – had already fallen into disuse with the failure to indict the authors of the Chilean coup, Iran-Contra or the U.S. invasion of Iraq for war crimes.

Dismantling Dollar Hegemony from the IMF to SWIFT

Of all areas of global power politics today, international finance and foreign investment have become the key flashpoint. International monetary reserves were supposed to be the most sacrosanct, and international debt enforcement closely associated.

Central banks have long held their gold and other monetary reserves in the United States and London. Back in 1945 this seemed reasonable, because the New York Federal Reserve Bank (in whose basement foreign central bank gold was kept) was militarily safe, and because the London Gold Pool was the vehicle by which the U.S. Treasury kept the dollar “as good as gold” at $35 an ounce. Foreign reserves over and above gold were kept in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, to be bought and sold on the New York and London foreign-exchange markets to stabilize exchange rates. Most foreign loans to governments were denominated in U.S. dollars, so Wall Street banks were normally name as paying agents.

That was the case with Iran under the Shah, whom the United States had installed after sponsoring the 1953 coup against Mohammed Mosaddegh when he sought to nationalize Anglo-Iranian Oil (now British Petroleum) or at least tax it. After the Shah was overthrown, the Khomeini regime asked its paying agent, the Chase Manhattan bank, to use its deposits to pay its bondholders. At the direction of the U.S. Government Chase refused to do so. U.S. courts then declared Iran to be in default, and froze all its assets in the United States and anywhere else they were able.

This showed that international finance was an arm of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But that was a generation ago, and only recently did foreign countries begin to feel queasy about leaving their gold holdings in the United States, where they might be grabbed at will to punish any country that might act in ways that U.S. diplomacy found offensive. So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. U.S. officials pretended to feel shocked at the insult that it might do to a civilized Christian country what it had done to Iran, and Germany agreed to slow down the transfer.

But then came Venezuela. Desperate to spend its gold reserves to provide imports for its economy devastated by U.S. sanctions – a crisis that U.S. diplomats blame on “socialism,” not on U.S. political attempts to “make the economy scream” (as Nixon officials said of Chile under Salvador Allende) – Venezuela directed the Bank of England to transfer some of its $11 billion in gold held in its vaults and those of other central banks in December 2018. This was just like a bank depositor would expect a bank to pay a check that the depositor had written.

England refused to honor the official request, following the direction of Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. As Bloomberg reported: “The U.S. officials are trying to steer Venezuela’s overseas assets to [Chicago Boy Juan] Guaido to help bolster his chances of effectively taking control of the government. The $1.2 billion of gold is a big chunk of the $8 billion in foreign reserves held by the Venezuelan central bank.”2

Turkey seemed to be a likely destination, prompting Bolton and Pompeo to warn it to desist from helping Venezuela, threatening sanctions against it or any other country helping Venezuela cope with its economic crisis. As for the Bank of England and other European countries, the Bloomberg report concluded: “Central bank officials in Caracas have been ordered to no longer try contacting the Bank of England. These central bankers have been told that Bank of England staffers will not respond to them.”

This led to rumors that Venezuela was selling 20 tons of gold via a Russian Boeing 777 – some $840 million. The money probably would have ended up paying Russian and Chinese bondholders as well as buying food to relieve the local famine.3 Russia denied this report, but Reuters has confirmed is that Venezuela has sold 3 tons of a planned 29 tones of gold to the United Arab Emirates, with another 15 tones are to be shipped on Friday, February 1.4 The U.S. Senate’s Batista-Cuban hardliner Rubio accused this of being “theft,” as if feeding the people to alleviate the U.S.-sponsored crisis was a crime against U.S. diplomatic leverage.

If there is any country that U.S. diplomats hate more than a recalcitrant Latin American country, it is Iran. President Trump’s breaking of the 2015 nuclear agreements negotiated by European and Obama Administration diplomats has escalated to the point of threatening Germany and other European countries with punitive sanctions if they do not also break the agreements they have signed. Coming on top of U.S. opposition to German and other European importing of Russian gas, the U.S. threat finally prompted Europe to find a way to defend itself.

Imperial threats are no longer military. No country (including Russia or China) can mount a military invasion of another major country. Since the Vietnam Era, the only kind of war a democratically elected country can wage is atomic, or at least heavy bombing such as the United States has inflicted on Iraq, Libya and Syria. But now, cyber warfare has become a way of pulling out the connections of any economy. And the major cyber connections are financial money-transfer ones, headed by SWIFT, the acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which is centered in Belgium.

Russia and China have already moved to create a shadow bank-transfer system in case the United States unplugs them from SWIFT. But now, European countries have come to realize that threats by Bolton and Pompeo may lead to heavy fines and asset grabs if they seek to continue trading with Iran as called for in the treaties they have negotiated.

On January 31 the dam broke with the announcement that Europe had created its own bypass payments system for use with Iran and other countries targeted by U.S. diplomats. Germany, France and even the U.S. poodle Britain joined to create INSTEX — Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges. The promise is that this will be used only for “humanitarian” aid to save Iran from a U.S.-sponsored Venezuela-type devastation. But in view of increasingly passionate U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline to carry Russian gas, this alternative bank clearing system will be ready and able to become operative if the United States tries to direct a sanctions attack on Europe.

I have just returned from Germany and seen a remarkable split between that nation’s industrialists and their political leadership. For years, major companies have seen Russia as a natural market, a complementary economy needing to modernize its manufacturing and able to supply Europe with natural gas and other raw materials. America’s New Cold War stance is trying to block this commercial complementarity. Warning Europe against “dependence” on low-price Russian gas, it has offered to sell high-priced LNG from the United States (via port facilities that do not yet exist in anywhere near the volume required). President Trump also is insisting that NATO members spend a full 2 percent of their GDP on arms – preferably bought from the United States, not from German or French merchants of death.

U.S. overplaying its position is leading to the Mackinder-Kissinger-Brzezinski Eurasian nightmare that I mentioned above. In addition to driving Russia and China together, U.S. diplomacy is adding Europe to the heartland, independent of U.S. ability to bully into the state of dependency toward which American diplomacy has aimed to achieve since 1945.

The World Bank, for instance, traditionally has been headed by a U.S. Secretary of Defense. Its steady policy since its inception is to provide loans for countries to devote their land to export crops instead of giving priority to feeding themselves. That is why its loans are only in foreign currency, not in the domestic currency needed to provide price supports and agricultural extension services such as have made U.S. agriculture so productive. By following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves open to food blackmail – sanctions against providing them with grain and other food, in case they step out of line with U.S. diplomatic demands.

It is worthwhile to note that our global imposition of the mythical “efficiencies” of forcing Latin American countries to become plantations for export crops like coffee and bananas rather than growing their own wheat and corn has failed catastrophically to deliver better lives, especially for those living in Central America. The “spread” between the export crops and cheaper food imports from the U.S. that was supposed to materialize for countries following our playbook failed miserably – witness the caravans and refugees across Mexico. Of course, our backing of the most brutal military dictators and crime lords has not helped either.

Likewise, the IMF has been forced to admit that its basic guidelines were fictitious from the beginning. A central core has been to enforce payment of official inter-government debt by withholding IMF credit from countries under default. This rule was instituted at a time when most official inter-government debt was owed to the United States. But a few years ago Ukraine defaulted on $3 billion owed to Russia. The IMF said, in effect, that Ukraine and other countries did not have to pay Russia or any other country deemed to be acting too independently of the United States. The IMF has been extending credit to the bottomless it of Ukrainian corruption to encourage its anti-Russian policy rather than standing up for the principle that inter-government debts must be paid.

It is as if the IMF now operates out of a small room in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington. Europe has taken notice that its own international monetary trade and financial linkages are in danger of attracting U.S. anger. This became clear last autumn at the funeral for George H. W. Bush, when the EU’s diplomat found himself downgraded to the end of the list to be called to his seat. He was told that the U.S. no longer considers the EU an entity in good standing. In December, “Mike Pompeo gave a speech on Europe in Brussels — his first, and eagerly awaited — in which he extolled the virtues of nationalism, criticised multilateralism and the EU, and said that “international bodies” which constrain national sovereignty “must be reformed or eliminated.”5

Most of the above events have made the news in just one day, January 31, 2019. The conjunction of U.S. moves on so many fronts, against Venezuela, Iran and Europe (not to mention China and the trade threats and moves against Huawei also erupting today) looks like this will be a year of global fracture.

It is not all President Trump’s doing, of course. We see the Democratic Party showing the same colors. Instead of applauding democracy when foreign countries do not elect a leader approved by U.S. diplomats (whether it is Allende or Maduro), they’ve let the mask fall and shown themselves to be the leading New Cold War imperialists. It’s now out in the open. They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, “Bastards, but they’re our bastards.”

Where is the left in all this? That is the question with which I opened this article. How remarkable it is that it is only right-wing parties, Alternative for Deutschland (AFD), or Marine le Pen’s French nationalists and those of other countries that are opposing NATO militarization and seeking to revive trade and economic links with the rest of Eurasia.

The end of our monetary imperialism, about which I first wrote in 1972 in Super Imperialism, stuns even an informed observer like me. It took a colossal level of arrogance, short-sightedness and lawlessness to hasten its decline — something that only crazed Neocons like John Bolton, Elliott Abrams and Mike Pompeo could deliver for Donald Trump.

Notes

^[2] Patricia Laya, Ethan Bronner and Tim Ross, “Maduro Stymied in Bid to Pull $1.2 Billion of Gold From U.K.,” Bloomberg, January 25, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-25/u-k-said-to-deny-maduro-s-bid-to-pull-1-2-billion-of-gold. Anticipating just such a double-cross, President Chavez acted already in 2011 to repatriate 160 tons of gold to Caracas from the United States and Europe.

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==See Also===

Venezuela Gold: Bank of England ‘no longer neutral player’ – Richard Wolff

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The Trump administration has capriciously sabotaged the global institutions, including NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF, which provide cover and lend legitimacy to American imperialism and global economic hegemony. The American empire, as McCoy points out, was always a hybrid of past empires. It developed, he writes, “a distinctive form of global governance that incorporated aspects of antecedent empires, ancient and modern. This unique U.S. imperium was Athenian in its ability to forge coalitions among allies; Roman in its reliance on legions that occupied military bases across most of the known world; and British in its aspiration to merge culture, commerce, and alliances into a comprehensive system that covered the globe.”

When George W. Bush unilaterally invaded Iraq, defying with his doctrine of preemptive war international law and dismissing protests from traditional allies, he began the rupture. But Trump has deepened the fissures. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, although Iran had abided by the agreement, and demand that European nations also withdraw or endure U.S. sanctions saw European nations defect and establish an alternative monetary exchange system that excludes the United States. Iran no longer accepts the dollar for oil on international markets and has replaced it with the euro, not a small factor in Washington’s deep animus to Teheran. Turkey is also abandoning the dollar. The U.S. demand that Germany and other European states halt the importation of Russian gas likewise saw the Europeans ignore Washington. China and Russia, traditionally antagonistic, are now working in tandem to free themselves from the dollar. Moscow has transferred $100 billion of its reserves into Chinese yuan, Japanese yen and euros. And, as ominously, foreign governments since 2014 are no longer storing their gold reserves in the United States or, as with Germany, removing them from the Federal Reserve. Germany has repatriated its 300 tons of gold ingots. The Netherlands repatriated its 100 tons.

The U.S. intervention in Venezuela, the potential trade war with China, the withdrawal from international climate accords, leaving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the paralysis in Washington and disruptive government shutdown and increased hostilities with Iran bode ill for America. American foreign and financial policy is hostage to the bizarre whims of stunted ideologues such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams. This ensures more global chaos as well as increased efforts by nations around the globe to free themselves from the economic stranglehold the United States effectively set in place following World War II. It is only a question of when not if the dollar will be sidelined. That it was Trump, along with his fellow ideologues of the extreme right, who destroyed the international structures put in place by global capitalists, rather than socialists these capitalists invested tremendous resources to crush, is grimly ironic.

The historian Ronald Robinson argued that British imperial rule died “when colonial rulers had run out of indigenous collaborators.” The result, he noted, was that the “inversion of collaboration into noncooperation largely determined the timing of the decolonization.” This process of alienating traditional U.S. allies and collaborators will have the same effect. As McCoy points out, “all modern empires have relied on dependable surrogates to translate their global power into local control—and for most of them, the moment when those elites began to stir, talk back, and assert their own agendas was also the moment when you knew that imperial collapse was in the cards.”

The dollar, because of astronomical government debt now at $21 trillion, a debt that will be augmented by Trump’s tax cuts costing the U.S. Treasury $1.5 trillion over the next decade, is becoming less and less trustworthy. The debt-to-GDP ratio is now more than 100 percent, a flashing red light for economists. Our massive trade deficit depends on selling treasury bonds abroad. Once those bonds decline in value and are no longer considered a stable investment, the dollar will suffer a huge devaluation. There are signs this process is underway.  Central-bank reserves hold fewer dollars than they did in 2004. There are fewer SWIFT payments–the exchange for interbank fund transfers–in dollars than in 2015. Half of international trade is invoiced in dollars, although the U.S. share of international trade is only 10 percent.

“Ultimately, we will have reserve currencies other than the U.S. dollar,” the Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney announced last month.

Sixty-one percent of foreign currency reserves are in dollars. As these dollar currency reserves are replaced by other currencies, the retreat from the dollar will accelerate. The recklessness of America’s financial policies will only exacerbate the crisis. “If unlimited borrowing, financed by printing money, were a path to prosperity,” Irwin M. Stelzer of the Hudson Institute said recently, “then Venezuela and Zimbabwe would be top of the growth tables.”

McCoy explains what a world financial order untethered from the dollar would look like:

For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness. After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2030 the U.S. dollar eventually loses its special status as the world’s dominant reserve currency.

Suddenly, there are punitive price increases for American imports ranging from clothing to computers. And the costs for all overseas activity surges as well, making travel for both tourists and troops prohibitive. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military     budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, its forces begin to pull back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. Such a desperate move, however, comes too late.

Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying its bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.

The collapse of the dollar will mean, McCoy writes, “soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages throughout the 2020s, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over symbolic, insubstantial issues.” The deep disillusionment and widespread rage will give an opening to Trump, or a Trump-like demagogue, to lash out, perhaps by inciting violence, against scapegoats at home and abroad.  But by then the U.S. empire will be so diminished its threats will be, at least to those outside its borders, largely meaningless.

It is impossible to predict when this flight from the dollar will take place. By the second half of the 19^th century, the U.S. economy had overtaken Britain, but it was not until the middle of the 20^th century that the dollar replaced the pound sterling to become the dominant currency in international trade. The pound sterling’s share of currency reserves among international central banks fell from around 60 percent in the early 1950s to less than 5 percent by the 1970s. Its value declined from more than 4 dollars per pound at the end of WWII to near-parity with the dollar.  The British economy went into a tailspin. And that economic jolt marked for the British, as it will for us, the end of an empire.

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. https://www.truthdig.com/author/chris_hedges/

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Venezuela's Maduro talks to RT about avoiding war

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February 05, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -     At a time when the eyes of the world are closely watching his country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has given an exclusive interview to RT Spanish, speaking about the threats of war and of foul play in politics.

Several EU nations have been the latest to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country's "interim leader," and US President Donald Trump is keeping the military option on the table against the "illegitimate" Maduro, while aiming to choke Venezuela's oil trade with sanctions.

Amidst the turmoil, Maduro firmly believes he has the backing of the people – and says he doesn't care how history will remember him, as long as it's not as a traitor.

Guaidó's recognition a 'political and moral mistake'

The nations that have recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's 'acting president' have made a "diplomatic, political and moral" mistake, Maduro believes.

In the 21st century, international relations cannot be built on ultimatums.

He pointed to the European governments and those of the US-backed Lima Group (which includes Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Canada, among others) as being subservient to Washington's policies in seeking to force a "coup, a comedy, a circus" upon Venezuela.

No lack of elections in Venezuela

When asked if he would be ready to declare early presidential elections to appease those questioning his legitimacy, Maduro staunchly refused.

"There's no deficit of elections in Venezuela, we held elections 25 times in the last 20 years," he said. "We had six elections in the past year-and-a-half."

The only elections pending, Maduro said, are parliamentary ones in 2020, in accordance with the constitutional schedule.

Preparing for war: US losses must be unaffordable

While US President Donald Trump has not ruled out military intervention in Venezuela, Maduro appears to believe it's not going to happen – but says his armies are still getting ready.

"There will be no war or military intervention," Maduro said. "But that doesn't mean we must not prepare to defend our sacred land." To that end, Venezuela is preparing two million fighters, as well as missile systems, artillery, air force and fleet.

We need to ensure that a military intervention would cost the US entirely too much in terms of military spending and human lives.

However, as the more present threat he sees Trump's "illegal" and "amoral" threats – which Maduro says he is countering by using all the media available to spread "truth" and "peaceful diplomacy," and call on world leaders to stop "Donald Trump's insane actions against Venezuela."

Washington's 'casus belli'

Venezuela is not a threat to the US, and the real reasons to threaten an invasion are far more cynical, Maduro believes.

"What 'casus belli' does Donald Trump have against Venezuela? Have we got weapons of mass destruction? Are we a threat to the US? You know what the real 'casus belli' is here? Venezuelan oil. Venezuela's riches – gold, gas, diamonds, iron, water."

The Venezuelan president is also convinced the Bolivarian revolution itself is a target, in a crusade against socialism in which Washington wants to destroy the "fruits of the revolution, which has become an example of independence, of social justice."

Ready for dialogue, but Guaidó is just a pawn

Asked whether for the sake of resolving Venezuela's internal strife he would be ready to negotiate with Guaidó, and whether that would mean acknowledging his legitimacy, Maduro said he is ready to talk – but not with Guaidó.

"I believe that Juan Guaidó is a random pawn, used by the opposition for an opportunistic scenario that will never play out," he said. Maduro says he has called for dialogue "more than 300 times," but he wants to talk to the real leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, who are "more significant" than Guaidó.

Humanitarian aid is a form of intervention

Maduro, who has so far refused to allow humanitarian aid Juan Guaidó is expected to receive from Colombia and Brazil, believes it to be a "political show."

Imperialism helps no-one in the world. No-one. Tell me where in the world have they sent humanitarian aid? All they send is bombs. Bombs that have destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria.

Maduro claims that his country, which is in a catastrophic economic crisis exacerbated by American sanctions, is fully capable of providing for its people, by producing and importing anything it needs. As an example, he named the so-called CLAP program, which is currently providing six million Venezuelan families with food.

Those who leave are no better off

Numerous Venezuelans have left the country to escape economic hardship, but Maduro says the numbers are exaggerated. While official data is lacking, the UN has estimated that over five million will have fled by the end of 2019.

If that were true, Venezuela, a country with only about 31 million inhabitants, would have "ghost cities," Maduro said, while praising his country's ability to accommodate immigrants: over five million Colombians, over 300,000 each of Ecuadoreans, Peruvians, Spaniards and Portuguese, as well as over a million Arabs, currently live in Venezuela, according to the president.

The country also runs a "homecoming" program, which has so far seen over 12,000 Venezuelans return home.

A lot of Venezuelans left hoping to find a better life, but they only found xenophobia, persecution, exploitation.

Harsher US sanctions won't stop Venezuela from selling oil

While slamming a new wave of US sanctions, which aim to shut Venezuelan oil sales out of American financial systems, Maduro said they still won't be enough to starve the country into submission.

"We do not depend on this source of revenue," Maduro said. "The whole world should know this, since freezing these assets was portrayed as a major achievement."

The sanctions will still complicate things, though: now, buyers will have to pay in cash at the Venezuelan oil port before tankers set out. Still, Maduro believes this won't impair his country's ability to tap into new oil markets, including China and India. The increased transport expenses will be offset by a boost in oil production: Maduro plans to increase it from the current 1.5mn barrels-per-day to 2.5mn barrels-per-day by mid-year, in order to ensure Venezuela's economic independence and set it on the road to recovery.

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This is subjectivity and Russophobia on steroids. Here, the logic goes from unproven assertion to imaginary assertion. This is "magical thinking", or put another way, delusional paranoia. And from the supposed top US intelligence official too. How is a country meant to formulate effective policies when it is guided by such deluded people?

Another example of this "magical thinking" was seen in a recent article published by the New York Times, supposedly America's finest newspaper. The headline ran: ‘Russia's Playbook for Social Media Disinformation Has Gone Global'.

It refers to social media platforms Twitter and Facebook which reportedly detected "a spike in domestic disinformation, or Americans targeting fellow Americans with false or misleading information".

Right, so now because social media companies are lately discovering all sorts of trash information on their sites and wacky discussions, that is being cited as "evidence" that "Russia's playbook has gone global".

The truth about "Russian propaganda" is lot more mundane. The fact is that Russian news media like RT and Sputnik have been arguably giving far more accurate perspectives and coverage of recent international events than Western media counterparts.

And it is this service of public information that has gained the Russian news media a fairly respectable following among international audiences, including large numbers of people in the US and across Europe.

It is not so much a malign case of "information or propaganda warfare", and much more a prosaic case of Russian news media providing people with more reliable, accurate reportage, which then tends to explain events.

Russian media have, by contrast, given a more accurate and explicable rendering of the conflict as being due to a criminal regime-change operation orchestrated by the US government and its NATO partners. The facts of Western covert backing for proxy terror groups have emerged, in large part because of Russian media reporting and analysis.

The Russian media coverage thus accords with the objective conditions in the Syrian conflict. Ordinary citizens around the world have recognized that Russian media coverage on Syria is far more reliable than the self-serving fantasies propagated by Western media dutifully in hock to their governments' covert and illegal regime-change agenda.

Or look at the latest debacle over Venezuela. Western media are at it again, churning out the line from Washington and European lackeys that elected President Nicolas Maduro is somehow "illegitimate" and must be replaced by a minor opposition who is anointed by foreign powers.

Again, the official position of Russia and the perspective given by Russia news media is healthily skeptical of Western claims on Venezuela. Russian media have not indulged the false claims of "bad regime/good opposition". They have afforded important space and air time to critical analysis which more reliably explains the unrest in Venezuela as the outcome of criminal regime change instigated by Washington.

People around the world appreciate this kind of intelligent, realistic perspective. This is simply good and independent journalism.

But what the magical thinking of Western governments, so-called intelligence agencies and media is doing is portraying decent Russian news media as some kind of "ultra devious Russian propaganda". Why?

We could go on. Is Ukraine being attacked by Russia, or was it taken over by a CIA-backed Neo-Nazi coup? The Western media give the former view, while Russian media at least give the latter perspective. Again, people can decide when they are properly informed.

Western states and their media claim that Russia is "winning an information war" because Russian propaganda is so "magically" sophisticated and subversive. The truth is Western governments and media are losing "their information war" because they have been exposed over and over again telling bare-faced lies.

The truth about "Russian propaganda" is simply that Russian politicians are much more principled and decent than Western counterparts. And Russian news media are at least trying to genuinely provide a realistic account of major international events to reflect objective facts. Not so Western media which are foghorns for lies and disinformation.

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Justice and Homeland Security report finds NO foreign interference in 2018 elections: According to a new joint report released by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on Tuesday.

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It’s the oil, stupid. But there’s way more than meets the (oily) eye.

Caracas has committed the ultimate cardinal sin in the eyes of Exceptionalistan; oil trading bypassing the US dollar or US-controlled exchanges.

Remember Iraq. Remember Libya. Yet Iran is also doing it. Turkey is doing it. Russia is – partially – on the way. And China will eventually trade all its energy in petroyuan.

With Venezuela adopting the petro crypto-currency and the sovereign bolivar, already last year the Trump administration had sanctioned Caracas off the international financial system.

No wonder Caracas is supported by China, Russia and Iran. They are the real hardcore troika – not psycho-killer John Bolton’s cartoonish “troika of tyranny” – fighting against the Trump administration’s energy dominance strategy, which consists essentially in aiming at the total lock down of oil trading in petrodollars, forever.

Venezuela is a key cog in the machine. Psycho killer Bolton admitted it on the record; “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” It’s not a matter of just letting ExxonMobil take over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves – the largest on the planet. The key is to monopolize their exploitation in US dollars, benefitting a few Big Oil billionaires.

Once again, the curse of natural resources is in play. Venezuela must not be allowed to profit from its wealth on its own terms; thus, Exceptionalistan has ruled that the Venezuelan state must be shattered.

In the end, this is all about economic war. Cue to the US Treasury Department imposing new sanctions on PDVSA that amount to a de facto oil embargo against Venezuela.

Economic war redux

By now it’s firmly established what happened in Caracas was not a color revolution but an old-school US-promoted regime change coup using local comprador elites, installing as “interim president” an unknown quantity, Juan Guaido, with his Obama choirboy looks masking extreme right-wing credentials.

Everyone remembers “Assad must go”. The first stage in the Syrian color revolution was the instigation of civil war, followed by a war by proxy via multinational jihadi mercenaries. As Thierry Meyssan has noted, the role of the Arab League then is performed by the OAS now. And the role of Friends of Syria – now lying in the dustbin of history – is now performed by the Lima group, the club of Washington’s vassals. Instead of al-Nusra “moderate rebels”, we may have Colombian – or assorted Emirati-trained – “moderate rebel” mercenaries.

Contrary to Western corporate media fake news, the latest elections in Venezuela were absolutely legitimate. There was no way to tamper with the made in Taiwan electronic voting machines. The ruling Socialist Party got 70 percent of the votes; the opposition, with many parties boycotting it, got 30 percent. A serious delegation of the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) was adamant; the election reflected “peacefully and without problems, the will of Venezuelan citizens”.

The American embargo may be vicious. In parallel, Maduro’s government may have been supremely incompetent in not diversifying the economy and investing in food self-sufficiency. Major food importers, speculating like there’s no tomorrow, are making a killing. Still, reliable sources in Caracas tell that the barrios – the popular neighborhoods – remain largely peaceful.

In a country where a full tank of gas still costs less than a can of Coke, there’s no question the chronic shortages of food and medicines in local clinics have forced at least two million people to leave Venezuela. But the key enforcing factor is the US embargo.

The UN rapporteur to Venezuela, expert on international law, and former secretary of the UN Human Rights Council, Alfred de Zayas, goes straight to the point; much more than engaging in the proverbial demonization of Maduro, Washington is waging “economic war” against a whole nation.

It’s enlightening to see how the “Venezuelan people” see the charade. In a poll conducted by Hinterlaces even before the Trump administration coup/regime change wet dream, 86% of Venezuelans said they were against any sort of US intervention, military or not,

And 81% of Venezuelans said they were against US sanctions. So much for “benign” foreign interference on behalf of “democracy” and “human rights”.

The Russia-China factor

Analyses by informed observers such as Eva Golinger and most of all, the Mision Verdad collective are extremely helpful. What’s certain, in true Empire of Chaos mode, is that the American playbook, beyond the embargo and sabotage, is to foment civil war.

Dodgy “armed groups” have been active in the Caracas barrios, acting in the dead of night and amplifying “social unrest” on social media. Still, Guaido holds absolutely no power inside the country. His only chance of success is if he manages to install a parallel government – cashing in on the oil revenue and having Washington arrest government members on trumped-up charges.

Irrespective of neocon wet dreams, adults at the Pentagon should know that an invasion of Venezuela may indeed metastasize into a tropical Vietnam quagmire. The Brazilian strongman in waiting, vice-president and retired general Hamilton Mourao, already said there will be no military intervention.

Psycho killer Bolton’s by now infamous notepad stunt about “5,000 troops to Colombia”, is a joke; these would have no chance against the arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the Maduro government; Cubans have demonstrated historically they are not in the business of handing over power.

It all comes back to what China and Russia may do. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor. Maduro was received by Xi Jinping last year in Beijing, getting an extra $5 billion in loans and signing at least 20 bilateral agreements.

President Putin offered his full support to Maduro over the phone, diplomatically stressing that “destructive interference from abroad blatantly violates basic norms of international law.”

By January 2016, oil was as low as $35 a barrel; a disaster to Venezuela’s coffers. Maduro then decided to transfer 49.9% of the state ownership in PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, to Russian Rosneft for a mere $1.5 billion loan. This had to send a wave of red lights across the Beltway; those “evil” Russians were now part owners of Venezuela’s prime asset.

Late last year, still in need of more funds, Maduro opened gold mining in Venezuela to Russian mining companies. And there’s more; nickel, diamonds, iron ore, aluminum, bauxite, all coveted by Russia, China – and the US. As for $1.3 billion of Venezuela’s own gold, forget about repatriating it from the Bank of England.

And then, last December, came the straw that broke the Deep State’s back; the friendship flight of two Russian nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers. How dare they? In our own backyard?

The Trump administration’s energy masterplan may be indeed to annex Venezuela to a parallel “North American-South American Petroleum Exporting Countries” (NASAPEC) cartel, capable of rivaling the OPEC+ love story between Russia and the House of Saud.

But even if that came to fruition, and adding a possible, joint US-Qatar LNG alliance, there’s no guarantee that would be enough to assure petrodollar – and petrogas – preeminence in the long run.

Eurasia energy integration will mostly bypass the petrodollar; this is at the very heart of both the BRICS and SCO strategy. From Nord Stream 2 to Turk Stream, Russia is locking down a long-term energy partnership with Europe. And petroyuan dominance is just a matter of time. Moscow knows it. Tehran knows it. Ankara knows it. Riyadh knows it.

So what about plan B, neocons? Ready for your tropical Vietnam?

Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.

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A humanitarian crisis demands a humanitarian response.

February 08, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -     Nothing better illustrates Washington’s opposition to democracy and self-determination than the blatantly public coup Washington has organized against the properly elected president of Venezuela.

Washington has been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government for years. Washington wants the state owned oil company to be privatized so that it can fall into the hands of US oil companies. That would ensure Washington’s control over Venezuela. Transferring the wealth out of the country would prevent any economic development from inside the country. Every aspect of the economy would end up in the hands of US corporations. The exploitation would be ruthless and brutal.

Venezuelans understand this, which is why Washington, despite wrecking the Venezuelan economy and offering enormous bribes to the Venezuelan military, has not yet been able to turn the people and the troops against Maduro.

Moon of Alabama’s explanation of Washington’s attack on Venezuela gives you a truer picture that differs completely from the lies voiced by the American and European politicians and presstitute media, a collection of whores who are devoid of all integrity and all morality and lie for their living.

I am not as confident as Moon of Alabama that Venezuela’s effort dating back to Chavez to be a sovereign country independent of Washington’s control can survive. Washington is determined to teach all of Latin America that it is pointless to dream of self-determination. Washington simply will not permit it.

Maduro, despite being the duly elected president with the mass of the people and military behind him, apparently lacks the power to arrest the American puppet who, despite the absence of any law or election as a basis, has declared himself to be president, thus creating a Washington-backed “government” as an alternative to the elected one. The inability of Maduro to defend democracy from within is a sign of the weakness of his office. How can Maduro possibly be a dictator when he is helpless in the face of open sedition?

If Russia and China quickly established a military presence in Venezuela to protect their loans and oil investments, Venezuela could be saved, and other countries that would like to be independent would take heart that, although there is no support for self-determination anywhere in the Western World, the former authoritarian countries will support it. Other assertions of independence would arise, and the Empire would collapse.

Venezuela is an opportunity for Russia and China to assume the leadership of the world, but I doubt the Russian and Chinese governments have the vision to seize the opportunity and, thereby, fundamentally change the world.

Putin is wasting his breath when he correctly criticizes Washington for its violations of international law. In Washington’s view, law is what serves American interest.

Here is Moon of Alabama’s analysis: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51062.htm

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

February 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  On March 1, 2018 the world learned of Russia’s new weapons systems, said to be based on new physical principles. Addressing the Federal Assembly, Putin explained how they came to be: in 2002 the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. At the time, the Russians declared that they will be forced to respond, and were basically told “Do whatever you want.”

The environmental crisis is fundamentally a racist crisis; it is also classist crisis, a sexist crisis, and a crisis of capitalism. Environmental activism is meaningless if it does not grapple with issues of injustice and expose the links between environmental devastation, colonial history, and the exploitative relationships of the North and the South. But does this mean that campaigns focused on our connections to the natural world and the suffering of non-human animals are irrelevant?

Not at all: activists must reclaim these connections as a core political issue, instead of leaving the task of re-learning our place in nature to the National Trust or David Attenborough. We need to ask why saving the whales and fighting racism have come to be seen as separate ways of approaching the environmental crisis, and how we can join them back together.

Judging from my own conversations with other activists, there seems to be gaps between environmental groups that focus on reconsidering our relationships with the natural world – which have a tendency to be less justice-based and overtly “political” – and those that focus on exposing the structures that have brought us to our current crisis. Would it not be more effective to consider these approaches as two sides of the same, destructive mindset?

Many of us in the global North see ourselves as outside of nature, a separation that is written into our language. The whole concept of an “environmental movement” is indicative of the fact that it is hard for us to conceive of the crises we face as broad, deep and multi-faceted. Separation is built into the borders we create between the “city” and the “countryside,” and into the way we’re conditioned to see the food on our plates and the objects we own as divorced from the ecosystems that sustain us. The idea that “humans” and “nature” are separate is a child of a colonial mindset that has been forcibly ingrained into every aspect of our lives by economic and political systems built on extraction at any cost.

In order to colonize people, the colonizers had to see land that indigenous people had cultivated for generations in harmony with nature as something with no worth. This ‘new’ land was not ‘pristine;’ indigenous communities had always promoted its biological diversity and beauty. Writer and researcher M. Kat Anderson describes how indigenous people in pre-colonial California used a variety of techniques to nurture the world around them to “allow for sustainable harvest of plants over centuries and possibly thousands of years.”

When indigenous communities were massacred or enslaved to make room for a new, extractive form of agriculture, many of these techniques were eradicated. Their suppression, and the widespread refusal to acknowledge the violent origins of modern societies, goes hand-in-hand with the loss of our perception of the earth as an entity with which we can have a mutually beneficial relationship. Even the most optimistic among us seem to be able to imagine a world in which human beings become “neutral” actors in relation to nature. Not only does this dramatically restrict our horizons; it also leaves a gaping hole in the idea of climate justice.

Many communities still maintain such mutually beneficial relationships and carry within them a deep knowledge and understanding of the natural world. This is perhaps the most valuable form of knowledge that exists. It is also the most undervalued. If we are to create a world based on justice, activists in the global North need to do more than stand in solidarity with indigenous communities; we need to learn from them. Those of us who are living in societies where it is becoming increasingly difficult to see ourselves as connected to nature need to start a process of re-learning how to restore ways of living that have been stolen, suppressed or made to seem outdated, when in fact they are indispensible.

No matter what we do to mitigate the worse effects of climate change, we already have decades of built-up global warming that have yet to play out in the atmosphere. Adapting to a changed planet will be inescapable, and adapting in a way that upholds justice will be a huge challenge. Even if countries like the UK take responsibility for the disproportionate damage they have caused and transform their economic systems to match up with planetary limits, justice requires that we also challenge the way we think about the world around us, in order to avoid reproducing existing hierarchies of knowledge and destructive relationships with nature. We must learn how to live justly and creatively in co-operation with a vastly-altered planet.

Interacting with the natural environment has also been proven to have positive effects on wellbeing, to the point where doctors are starting to point patients towards green gyms and community gardens to benefit their physical and mental health. Studies by Natural England and Mind support this contention, while research from Kings College London confirms that learning in nature is beneficial for children’s confidence, resilience and academic progress – though current education systems don’t give children enough opportunity to reap these benefits. Connecting to nature can improve self-awareness and allow us to discover how we fit into the world constructively. But access to nature is far from equal; this is a much-neglected issue of climate justice.

The amount of access each person has to the natural world is deeply entwined with issues of class and race. In the centuries following the first enclosures of agricultural land, access to the natural environment has been gradually privatized. It’s no accident that poorer areas are more polluted, or that parks used by predominantly working class people are turned into luxury flats, or that children from working class backgrounds have less access to nature. According to Natural England:

“more than one in nine children had not set foot in a park, forest or other natural environment over the previous year. Children from low income and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) families were particularly affected. Just 56% of under-16s from BAME households visited the natural environment at least once a week, compared to 74% from white households.”

Access to nature is constantly being restricted in new ways. As well as being deeply unjust, this is deeply unhelpful to the fight against environmental destruction; how can a child be expected to envision a world in which people work with nature if they have never had the chance to get to know their own natural environment?

Many community gardening and permaculture projects in the UK are taking steps to tackle these injustices. The community garden is one of the most diverse and politically powerful spaces possible. There may not be any placards, but the act of occupying space and growing food together with people you would never normally meet is a political act, creating spaces and relationships that capitalism does not control.

That being said, permaculture could be far more powerful if it engaged more actively with social and environmental justice. The practices of permaculture are heavily influenced by indigenous practices and techniques that small-scale farmers in the global South have been using for generations. It is important that this heritage is recognised by permaculturists and transition movements, lest they become green oases for the privileged.

To suggest that we can move closer to environmental justice by reconsidering how we relate to nature doesn’t mean that anybody who calls themselves an environmentalist must be vegan and grow their own food. But it is to suggest that we ask ourselves whether our attitudes towards the natural world can sometimes echo the exploitative and fractured mindsets we are actually trying to fight. When we think about a post-capitalist future we must think about one in which we reclaim the knowledge and understanding of nature that has been violently eroded over the past 300 years. Movements for climate and other forms of justice will be far more powerful together than apart.

This shift in mentality will be huge, and it’s a big ask in a time of crisis on multiple fronts. But it is precisely the nature of this crisis that necessitates deep shifts in our thinking that go beyond the conventional remit of left-wing politics. No doubt this challenge will take a different shape for every person who undertakes it. We cannot all become ecologists overnight, but we can at least be aware of our own attitudes towards the natural world and how we might want to challenge them. In doing so, we might find that the empathy and curiosity that are generated through our interactions with nature make us both better people and better activists.

Nicki Carter is an environmental and social justice activist based in London. She works in the women’s sector and is also involved in the urban food-growing and permaculture movements.

Originally published by Open Democracy

US President Trump’s announcement of US withdrawal from its illegal and war criminal occupation of Syrian territory has evoked passionate denunciation from Republicans, Democrats and the US military and intelligence Deep State. However there is no such outcry over the Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide inflicted on this formerly peaceful and religiously tolerant land by jihadi psychopaths variously backed by US Alliance countries (the US, UK, France, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Apartheid Israel) and by direct military action by the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition, Apartheid Israel and US lackeys Canada and Australia  bent on destruction of the secular Syrian Government for US hegemony and control of fossil fuel resources.

1. US Alliance-imposed Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide ignored by mendacious, US lackey Mainstream media.

The first casualty of war is truth and this aphorism certainly applies to the ongoing Syrian Civil War that amounts to a US Alliance-imposed Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide, noting that “holocausts” involve the deaths of huge numbers of people and “genocide” is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention thus: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [1].  The US Alliance-backed  Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide has been associated with 11 million refugees (5 million being internally displaced persons), 0.5 million violent Syrian deaths and a comparable number of Syrian avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation [2]. The Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide is part of a wider Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide that has been associated with 32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 28 million, in 20 countries subject to US Alliance invasion since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people (mainly Americans) [3, 4].

There are 2 versions of the Syrian War, Story A involving massive lying by omission and purveyed by mendacious, US lackey Western Mainstream media, editor, journalist, politician, commentariat and academic presstitutes,  and Story B,  the horrible reality of the full story that necessarily  includes a millennium of Western imperialism against the Middle East and the Muslim world leading up to US Alliance support for jihadis and others to overthrow the secular Assad regime ruling Syria. The remorseless intent of the US Alliance was regime change in Syria with the goals of furthering genocidal Israeli strategic interests, and furthering fundamental US goals of securing  fossil fuel resources and US hegemony. Jihadi non-state terrorism has been of major assistance to US imperialism and vice versa, and the US-spawned and US Alliance-supported ISIS barbarism in Iraq and Syria was used as an excuse for illegal and war criminal US Alliance intervention in Syria in support of jihadi overthrow of the Assad Government. The genocidal US Alliance intention was critically frustrated by Russian support for the Syrian Government. One notes that prior to the US Alliance-imposed Syrian War, Syria was a remarkable haven for religious tolerance in the Middle East [5] as well as being a haven for millions of refugees from genocidal US Alliance violence in Palestine and Iraq.

The Western Mainstream presstitute Story A ignores much of the weighty background to the Syrian War and posits that the Syrian Civil war began as part of the so-called Arab Spring with demonstrations in 2011 that were violently suppressed leading to a widespread uprising against the Assad regime that was backed by the assertedly  “peace-loving” US Alliance in the name (as always) of asserted “freedom”, “democracy” ,“human rights” and the US “responsibility to protect” Syrians (R2P) from the  Syrian Government, including its alleged  use of chemical weapons. The extraordinary depth of US lackey Mainstream media censorship of US Alliance atrocities can be simply demonstrated by a Google Search for “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”, a website that documents this immense atrocity [2] – thus a Google Search today for “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide” totally fails to reveal this important website among a mere 53 results whereas a Bing Search for “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide” yields this important website as number 1 on page 1 of 2 million results (ergo, “Bing it!”  rather than “Google it!”).

2. The big picture Story B – the Awful Truth about the Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide.

Story B that can be gleaned from an intelligent reading of generally accepted historical events reveals the Awful Truth of Western imperialism in Syria, Palestine and  the Middle East that predates the current Syrian conflict by a thousand years with the Western European crusades culminating in the European capture of Jerusalem with massacre of Jews and Crusader rule (1098-1187CE) that was terminated with  reconquest by Saladin. A short period of further temporary Christian rule occurred as part of a deal to end the Sixth Crusade  (1229- 1244) [6-8]. Apart from subsequent centuries of European battles with the Ottoman Empire for naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea,   the Middle East had freedom from Western imperialism until the Anglo-French competition for conquest of Egypt during the Napoleonic wars that culminated in British naval victory over the French, resultant British hegemony and final British conquest of Egypt in 1882 [8]. The discovery of oil in the Middle East occurred in the first decade of the 20th century with an initial  major find in Iran in 1908. Oil was initially  of major strategic importance for the British navy (crucial for retention of the global British Empire and most notably of India) and thence for the navies of other major competing imperial powers (France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia). Oil was crucial for vehicular transport, tanks and aeroplanes that were decisive in WW1.  The Allied dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in WW1 resulted in the Anglo-French decision to divide up the newly-conquered Middle East via the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, with France securing Lebanon and Syria and Britain securing Palestine and Iraq as well as  continued rule of Egypt and hegemony over the Gulf States [8].

Crucially,  WW1 and war in Palestine resulted in a Palestinian Famine in which 100,000 perished, and the victory over the Turks at Beersheba  on  31 October 1917 by the charge of the Australian Light Horse of the Australian and  New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was immediately followed on 2 November 1917  by the nefarious and racist UK Balfour Declaration that gave Palestine to Zionists as a Jewish Homeland as an inducement for Zionists to help keep Russia in WW1 and to support decisive US entry into WW1 on the side of Britain and France [9]. The WW1 Palestinian Famine and December 1919 Surafend Massacre of about 100 male Palestinian villagers by rampaging Anzac soldiers marked the  commencement of the ongoing Palestine Genocide (2.3 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or imposed deprivation, 2.2 million, since British invasion of the region in WW1) [10-19].   Anglo-French domination of the Middle East continued after WW2 with the now dominant American Empire  securing  oil resources and US hegemony in the region through ruthless, wide ranging  subversion and US-backed coups or through numerous direct military  interventions to secure cooperative  regimes [8, 19]. Variously with the help  of the British, the French and  the genocidally racist Zionist colonizers of Palestine, the Americans overthrew the democratically elected Iranian Government (1953), crippled post-Nasser Egypt, successfully opposed Arab union involving Egypt, Syria and Iraq, supported jihadi overthrow of secular democracy in Afghanistan (1978) (with this precipitating decades of conflict that is still continuing in now US -occupied Afghanistan), backed the Iraqi invasion precipitating the bloody Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988, 1.5 million Iranians killed by US-supplied weaponry  including war gases) and supported Islamofascist dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf [8, 19]. A critical American transition to fervent US backing of a serial war criminal Apartheid Israel occurred in 1967 after Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons and genocidal conquest of all of Palestine and the Golan Heights part of Syria [21-24].

The imposition of deadly and genocidal Sanctions against Iraq in 1990 saw the beginning of a genocidal US Alliance War on Muslims that now variously devastates Muslims from the African Sahel to South East Asia. 1.7 million Iraqis died avoidably from deprivation under UN-imposed Sanctions (1990-2003) with a further 0.2 million dying violently in the US-engineered 1990-1991 Gulf War. However much worse was to come in the 21st century.  For several centuries the serial invader Americans have always used an “excuse” for war criminal violence (e.g. “remember  the Alamo” for violent excision of the present South Western  US states from Mexico, and “remember the Maine” for the Spanish American War and the US acquisition of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Latin American hegemony [8]. The asserted justification for the 21st century US War on Muslims (aka the US War on Terror) was the 9 September  2001 atrocity that killed about 3,000 people (mostly Americans) – however  numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts assert that the US Government was responsible for the 9-11 atrocity with some asserting Saudi, Zionist and Apartheid Israeli involvement [4].

US Alliance attempts to get a UN-granted Free Fly Zone in Syria (as successfully employed in Libya to remove the secular Gaddafi regime) were this time blocked at the UN Security Council by Russian veto. The US Alliance thence resorted to alternative support for the rebels – from the Free Syria  Army to various jihadi groups – that was variously massively provided by the US, UK, France, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Apartheid Israel. Direct US Alliance military intervention was formally constrained by International Law but inevitably happened on a huge scale and was justified on the basis of (a) the need to  destroy barbaric ISIS (that was spawned by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and which  seized huge territory in Iraq  from Fallujah to Mosul and in Syria centred on Raqqa) , and (b) the need to punish and ideally destroy the Assad Syrian Government for human rights abuses and the alleged use of chemical weapons. US Alliance efforts were ultimately stymied by Syrian Government invitation of help from Lebanese Hezbollah forces, Iranian forces  and, critically, Russian forces. ISIS was eventually largely destroyed by Syrian, Russian and US Alliance air power, Syrian-invited allied Hezbollah and Iranian forces, Iraqi forces, US-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and Iraq, and by Russian-backed Syrian Government forces [25-27]. However in the process the cities of  Fallujah,  Raqqa and Mosul were also destroyed, with the “liberation” of Mosul (formerly a city of 2 million) being associated with 40,000 deaths [28] .The awkward and constraining realities for the US Alliance were that the US Alliance forces and the Russian-backed Syrian  Government forces were on the same side in opposing  ISIS but on opposite  sides in that the US Alliance backed jihadis seeking destruction of the Russian-backed Syrian Government [25-27].

The current situation is that the Russian-backed Syrian Government has re-taken most of Syria from ISIS and from  US Alliance-backed jihadi and other rebels who are now largely confined to the Idlib enclave in north western Syria [25].  US-backed Kurdish forces have defeated  ISIS and other jihadis  in north-eastern Syria and have established a socialist, pro-woman, multi-ethnic and secular Democratic  Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava) that faces continuing  violent incursions from genocidally anti-Kurd Turkey [26, 27]. Remnant ISIS forces  are  protected from the Syrians and Russians by a flight restriction zone around an illegal US base in Eastern Syria containing about 2,000 American forces that President Donald Trump wants to withdraw against the fervent opposition from Republican warmongers and the US military and intelligence “Deep State”.  US-backed Apartheid Israel continues to war criminally bomb Syria with impunity.

3. Expert alternative opinions countering US Alliance allegations of Syrian Government use of chemical weapons.

The US Alliance and its Western Mainstream propaganda machine successfully used the utterly false claim of Iraqi possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as the justification for the illegal, devastating and war criminal invasion of Iraq by the US, UK and US lackey Australia. When no WMD were found after the US occupation of Iraq, the US Alliance did not apologize and withdraw but simply kept on killing Iraqis. Today the best the Iraqis have received is a concession from both Presidents Obama and Trump that the invasion of Iraqi was a “mistake” for America. This “mistake” killed 2.7 million Iraqis through violence (1.5 million) or through war-imposed deprivation (1.2 million) [2, 29]. The US Alliance repeatedly used the similar allegation of  possession and use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Government to justify bombing of Syria in support of jihadi and other rebels. However the Syrian Government had surrendered all chemical  weapons to the UN and had nothing to gain from use of such weapons in the face of the might of the US Alliance and US Alliance preparedness to use the “chemical weapons” excuse for devastating intervention. Nevertheless mendacious, US lackey Western Mainstream media toed the US Alliance propaganda line and thus enabled 8 years of genocidal US Alliance  violence in Syria. Dissenting “alternative” views  of some leading Western journalists and some other Middle East experts are set out below (alphabetically so for reader convenience).

Dr Bashar al-Jaafari (Syrian Ambassador to the UN) responding to the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition bombing of Syria in 2018 after unsubstantiated  chemical weapons allegations (2018): “I would clarify here that the history of these three states [U.S., Britain and France] is built on using lies and fabricated stories to wage aggressive wars in order to occupy states, seize their resources, and change governments in them by force” [30].

Richard Black (decorated Vietnam War veteran,  retired Pentagon lawyer and Virginia state senator) alleging US Alliance chemical weapons false flag plans in various interviews (2018): “Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence [MI6] was working towards a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible” [Beirut-based Al Mayadeen] … “From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack. And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack” [The Washington Post]” [31].  

Ghali Hassan (Australia-based researcher and analyst) on France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition bombing of Syria in 2018 after unsubstantiated  chemical weapons allegations (2018): “On 14 April 2018, the U.S., France and Britain committed another barbaric act of aggression against the majority-Muslim nation of Syria. Donald Trump, Emmanuelle Macron and Theresa May claim that their combined aggression was in response to the alleged “chemical attack” in the Damascus suburb of Douma (in the Ghouta district) by the Syrian Government. The aggression was an act of state terrorism in flagrant violation of UN Charter, the principles of international law and civilised norms. The attacks targeted a University building, the Higher Institute for Applied Science and Technology (HIAST)” [32].

Seymour Hersh (Pullitzer Prize-winning US investigative reporter) on US chemical attack false flag through unsubstantiated allegations and leading to Trump bombing Syria (2017): “On April 6 [2017], United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon… there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had used sarin, merely a “summary based on declassified information about the attacks,” as the briefer referred to it. The crisis slid into the background by the end of April, as Russia, Syria and the United States remained focused on annihilating ISIS and the militias of al-Qaida. Some of those who had worked through the crisis, however, were left with lingering concerns. “The Salafists and jihadists got everything they wanted out of their hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy,” the senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community told me, referring to the flare up of tensions between Syria, Russia and America. “The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake” [33].

John Pilger (outstanding, UK-based,  expatriate Australian journalist, writer and documentary-maker) on Anglo-American-French missile strikes against alleged Syrian chemical facilities (2018): “[Offensive] built on a series of… lies, fabrications… I don’t think anything she [UK PM Theresa May] says is to be believed…  “[Mainstream media] pseudo-journalism [part of] campaign against Russia… I’ve never known a time when mainstream journalism has been so integrated into a propaganda barrage. To simply write down and swallow what governments tell you is the antithesis of what ‘real journalism’ is. What we’re seeing is the most intense campaign of propaganda, at least since the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003” [34].

4. US Alliance-driven regime change in Syria and elsewhere with the help of jihadis as allies and “excuses”.

The  primary goal of the US Alliance in Syria was regime change as earlier successfully achieved in Libya on the dishonestly asserted basis of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P)  proposition notably advanced by former Australian Labor Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. The France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition attack killed 0.1 million Libyans, created 1 million refugees and devastated what had formerly been the most prosperous country in Africa. The US has an appalling record of subverting and invading other countries. The US has a 3-stage policy  of bending other countries to its  will that successively involves (a)  subversion of the governments of other countries, (b) backing coups and assassinations if subversion was deemed  unsuccessful, and (c) actual invasion and regime change if all else failed to deliver a satisfactory outcome. The US Deep State subverts every country on earth, including the US itself  [8, 20, 35-37]. The US has actually invaded 72 countries (52 since WW2) as compared to the British 193, Australia 85, France 82, Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12,  China 2 and North Korea arguably zero [8, 20, 38-43]. The US has about 800 military bases in 70 countries, including Syria  [44, 45].

The US repeatedly interferes  in the internal affairs of “White” and prosperous  US lackey Australia, and the “king making” US Murdoch media empire has about 70% of Australian daily newspaper readership in Murdochracy Australia. The most serious US intervention in Australia was the 11 November 1975 CIA-backed Coup that removed the reformist Whitlam Labor Government from office [46, 47]. This was a “bloodless coup” but established the craven sine qua non of Australian politics of “all the way with the USA”. In contrast, US intervention in Syria has involved a  Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide  associated with 11 million refugees (5 million being internally displaced persons), 0.5 million violent Syrian deaths and a comparable number of Syrian avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation [2]. One notes that 1950-2005  avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries occupied by the US since WW2 total 82 million [8].

Mendacious, US- and Zionist-subverted  Mainstream media have endlessly served the cause of Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist  (NAZI) violence by promoting terror hysteria and thence the US Alliance War on Terror that in horrible reality is a genocidal US War on Muslims. Thus only about 60 Americans have been killed by jihadi terrorists in America since 9-11 [48-50] but since then about 7,000 US soldiers  have died in US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [51],  128,000 US veterans have committed suicide [52-54], and 30 million Americans have died preventably from “lifestyle” causes ranging from obesity and smoking to gun violence and illicit drug use [55-57] (1.5 million Australians, 2.6 million Britishers and 1.8 million Canadians have died preventably from such causes since 9-11 [58-60]).  The long-term accrual cost of the Iraq War and Afghan War has been about $6 trillion, and this huge waste of resources is inescapably linked to 30 million preventable  American deaths since 9-11 – successive US Governments have embraced the fiscal perversion of committing $6 trillion to the  killing of over 30 million Muslims abroad rather than to trying to keep 30 million Americans alive at home.

The US has had an appalling history of false flag terrorist atrocities   around the world  [36, 61-65] of which Syrian possession and use of chemical warfare agents is the most recent. 21st century US Alliance Mainstream media terror hysteria masks the horrible reality that the US has backed jihadi non-state terrorists in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Syria. Further,  it is patently clear that jihadi non-state terrorism –  whether US Alliance-backed or not – has been of massive assistance to US imperialism by providing the “excuse” for disproportionately  violent invasion and devastation of Muslim countries. The US has an appalling record of backing jihadi terrorists in the  replacing or attempted replacing of secular governments in the Muslim world with sectarian regimes (e.g. in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen) [3].

Set out below are some expert opinions about the US Alliance backing of jihadi terrorists in Syria in the attempted removal of the secular Assad Syrian government.

Dr Bashar al-Jaafari (Syrian Ambassador to the UN) responding to the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition bombing of Syria in 2018 after unsubstantiated  chemical weapons allegations (2018): “I would clarify here that the history of these three states [U.S., Britain and France] is built on using lies and fabricated stories to wage aggressive wars in order to occupy states, seize their resources, and change governments in them by force” [66].

Dr Tim Anderson (progressive, anti-war Australian academic presently fighting suspension by Sydney University and author of “The Dirty War on Syria”) (2018): “Proxy armies of Islamists, armed by US regional allies (mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey), infiltrate a political reform movement and snipe at police and civilians. They blame this on the government and spark an insurrection, seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government and its secular-pluralist state. This follows the openly declared ambition of the US to create a ‘New Middle East’, subordinating every country of the region, by reform, unilateral disarmament or direct overthrow. Syria was next in line, after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In Syria, the proxy armies would come from the combined forces of the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi fanatics. Despite occasional power struggles between these groups and their sponsors, they share much the same Salafist ideology, opposing secular or nationalist regimes and seeking the establishment of a religious state… In a hoped-for ‘end game’ the big powers sought overthrow of the Syrian state or, failing that, the creation of a dysfunctional state or dismembering into sectarian statelets, thus breaking the axis of independent regional states. That axis comprises Hezbollah in south Lebanon and the Palestinian resistance, alongside Syria and Iran, the only states in the region without US military bases. More recently Iraq – still traumatised from western invasion, massacres and occupation – has begun to align itself with this axis. Russia too has begun to play an important counter-weight role. Recent history and conduct demonstrate that neither Russia nor Iran harbour any imperial ambitions remotely approaching those of Washington and its allies, several of which (Britain, France and Turkey) were former colonial warlords in the region. From the point of view of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, defeat of the dirty war on Syria means that the region can begin closing ranks against the big powers. Syria’s successful resistance would mean the beginning of the end for Washington’s ‘New Middle East’” [67].

Professor Michel Chossudovsky on the US Alliance attack on Syria as part of US global war on Humanity (2015): “The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states. Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. The July-August 2014 attack on Gaza by Israeli forces was undertaken in close consultation with the United States and NATO. The actions in Ukraine and their timing coincided with the onslaught of the attack on Gaza. In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currencies markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies” [68].

General Wesley Clark (retired general of the US army) on US Middle East war plans to remove governments in 7 countries including Syria (2007): “[War plans of] a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century…  Six weeks later [2 months after 9-11], I saw the same [Pentagon] officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?” He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran” [69].

Glenn Greenwald (US lawyer, journalist, and author, best known for his role in publication of the Edward Snowden revelations) on US war and regime change plans for the Middle East including Syria (2011): “The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this and this), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ’em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by [General Wesley] Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!)” [70].

Ghali Hassan (Australia-based researcher and analyst) on US Alliance violence for regime change in 6 Muslim countries (2018): The U.S. and its vassal-state allies have no interests in Syria. Their primary interest is to destroy and occupy Syria for Israel. The destruction of Syria is part of a planned U.S. aggression to destroy seven Muslim-majority nations, starting with Iraq, moving to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. The perpetrators of this criminal plan are the pro-Israel U.S. neo-Nazis, better known as the “Neocon cabal”. Their aim is to destabilise the region to safeguard Israel’s fascist interests. It is important to remember that, Trump, Macron and May were put in their positions by big corporations and wealthy pro-Israel Zionists, “the Deep State”, which controls most Western regimes” [71].

Efraim Inbar (director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Apartheid Israel) (2016): “The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction… Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys… Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change… The American administration does not appear capable of recognizing the fact that IS can be a useful tool in undermining Tehran’s ambitious plan for domination of the Middle East” [72].

Diana Johnstone (progressive and anti-war US writer, journalist, editor and activist based in Europe and author of  “Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions” and “Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton”) (2016): “The plain truth is that Syria is the victim of a long-planned Joint Criminal Enterprise to destroy the last independent secular Arab nationalist state in the Middle East, following the destruction of Iraq in 2003. While attributed to government repression of “peaceful protests” in 2011, the armed uprising had been planned for years and was supported by outside powers: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States and France, among others. The French motives remain mysterious, unless linked to those of Israel, which sees the destruction of Syria as a means to weaken its archrival in the region, Iran. Saudi Arabia has similar intentions to weaken Iran, but with religious motives. Turkey, the former imperial power in the region, has territorial and political ambitions of its own. Carving up Syria can satisfy all of them. This blatant and perfectly open conspiracy to destroy Syria is a major international crime, and the above-mentioned States are co-conspirators… There is no chance that this criminal enterprise will ever arouse the attention of the prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, which like most major international organizations is totally under U.S. control” [73].

Stephen Lendman (progressive, anti-war, anti-racist Jewish American journalist) on US Alliance war on Syria (2018): “Launched by the Obama regime in March 2011, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton in cahoots with NATO partners, Israel and the Saudis, war in its eighth year has no prospect for near-term resolution. From the onset, it was and remains about toppling overwhelmingly popular Bashar al-Assad, replacing him with pro-Western puppet rule. That’s what all US wars of aggression are all about, making the world safe for America’s military, industrial, security, media complex, Wall Street and other corporate interests. US war in Syria has nothing to do with combating the scourge of ISIS Washington created and supports, along with al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and other regional terrorist groups. In Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, they’re used as proxy foot soldiers, letting them do America’s killing and dying in pursuit of its imperial objectives, supporting them with US-led terror-bombing, massacring countless tens of thousands of defenseless civilians. That’s the stark reality of all US wars, what Western media never report, pretending US aggression is about humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect, polar opposite Washington’s objectives” [74].  Stephen Lendman (2016): “Israel directly aids ISIS, providing weapons, munitions and medical treatment for its wounded fighters, along with intermittently bombing Syrian targets. It’s complicit with Obama’s regional wars, including by profiting from stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil” [75].

Eric Margolis (anti-racist, Jewish-origin conservative US writer) on the US war on Syria (2016): “What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be? It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process… the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon, and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarized CIA broke into the open in Syria. Fed up with the astounding incompetence of the White House, the US military launched and supported its own rebel groups in Syria, while CIA did the same. Fighting soon after erupted in Syria and Iraq between the US-backed groups. US Special Forces joined the fighting in Syria, Iraq and most lately, Libya… The US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey armed and financed ISIS as a weapon to unleash on Syria, which was an ally of Iran that refused to take orders from the Western powers. The west bears a heavy responsibility for the deaths of 450,000 Syrians, at least half the nation of 23 million becoming refugees, and destruction of this once lovely country. At some point, ISIS shook off its western tutors and literally ran amok. But the US has not yet made a concerted attempt to crush ISIS because of its continuing usefulness in Syria and in the US, where ISIS has become the favorite whipping boy of politicians” [76]. Eric Margolis (2018): “Trump ordered the 2,000 US troops based in Syria to get out and come home. Neocons and the US war party are having apoplexy even though there are some 50,000 US troops spread across the rest of the Mideast. The US troops parked in the Syrian Desert were doing next to nothing. Their avowed role was to fight the remnants of the ISIS movement and block any advances by Iranian forces. As a unified fighting force, ISIS barely exists, if it ever did. Cobbled together, armed and financed by the US, the Saudis and Gulf Emirates to overthrow Syria’s regime, ISIS ran out of control and became a menace to everyone. In fact, what the US was really doing was putting down a marker for a possible US future occupation of war-torn Syria that risked constant clashes with Russian forces there. We will breathe a big sigh of relief if the US deployment actually goes ahead: it will remove a major risk of war with nuclear-armed Russia, whose forces are in Syria at the invitation of the recognized government in Damascus” [77].

Dr Chandra Muzaffar (Malaysian political scientist, Islamic reformist and activist president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)) on “The Globalization of War: America’s “long war” against Humanity” by Professor  Michel Chossudovsky (2015): “The Globalization of War” is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world”   [78].

David Paul (president, Fiscal Strategies Group) (2015): “Turkey is actively supporting Jabhat al Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliated Sunni rebel group widely viewed as the most powerful faction in the Syrian conflict, and which is tacitly allied with ISIS in opposition to Assad. Turkey has been and continues to be the conduit for jihadi fighters and funding coming from other countries to join ISIS as well as other groups. Similarly, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are actively backing Sunni jihadist groups fighting Assad. For Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, Assad and Iran are their sworn enemies. ISIS is of less concern to them. Our relationships with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies exemplify our challenge in the region. While in the US media the battle against ISIS is presented as the sine qua non of the conflicts in that region, our allies there have each chosen their own paths, and are each now either actively or tacitly aligned with ISIS. And so it has always been with Pakistan, our other ally in the region, whose ISI created and nurtured the Afghan Taliban against whom we fought the longest war in our history” [79].

Dr Ron Paul ((US author, physician, obstetrician-gynecologist,  former Republican Representative for Texas, candidate for Republican presidential nomination, founder of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and author of numerous books) on de facto US support for jihadis in Syria (2018): “Does the Trump Administration actually support al-Qaeda and ISIS? Of course not. But the “experts” who run Trump’s foreign policy have determined that a de facto alliance with these two extremist groups is for the time being necessary to facilitate the more long-term goals in the Middle East. And what are those goals? Regime change for Iran. Let’s have a look at the areas where the US is turning a blind eye to al-Qaeda and ISIS. First, Idlib. As I mentioned last week, President Trump’s own Special Envoy to fight ISIS said just last year that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” So why do so many US officials – including President Trump himself – keep warning the Syrian government not to re-take its own territory from al-Qaeda control?… Second, one of the last groups of ISIS fighters in Syria are around the Al-Tanf US military base which has operated illegally in northeastern Syria for the past two years… It is considered a strategic point from which to attack Iran. The US means to stay there even if it means turning a blind eye to ISIS in the neighbourhood”[80]. Dr Ron Paul (2018): “There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. There was no Islamic State in Syria before President Obama’s covert support for regime change after the 2011 unrest. The massive pipeline of U.S. weapons to “moderate” rebels in Syria ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda affiliated groups and ISIS. Does anyone think that harebrained scheme makes anyone safer? The facts are clear: ISIS is on the ropes. It controls no significant town or population center. It is holed up in the desert and is being eliminated by the Syrian government and its allies. Without foreign support, ISIS will never regain significant positions in Syria. So why are we staying? The U.S. Central Command commander, Gen. Joseph Votel, said we must stay in Syria to “stabilize” parts of the country occupied by U.S. forces and “consolidate … our gains.” But what gives us the right to “stabilize” and “consolidate” foreign territory we have no legal right to occupy?” [81].

Professor James Petras (author, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization”) (2017): ” Frustrated at its inability to control national policy of various independent nation-states, Washington used direct and indirect military force to destroy the central governments in the targeted nations and create patchworks of tribal-ethno-mini-states amenable to imperial rule. Tens of millions of people have been uprooted and millions have died because of this imperial policy… blinded by the media propaganda reports of their ‘successes’, Washington and the NATO powers launched a bloody surrogate war against the secular nationalist government of Syria, seeking to divide, conquer and obliterate an independent, pro-Palestine, pro-Iran, ally of Russia. NATO’s invading armies and mercenary groups, however, are sub-divided into strange factions with shifting allegiances and patrons. At one level, there are the EU/US-supported ‘moderate’ head-chopping rebels. Then there are the Turkey and Saudi Arabia-supported ‘serious’ head-chopping al Qaeda Salafists. Finally there is the ‘champion’ head-chopping ISIS conglomeration based in Iraq and Syria, as well as a variety of Kurdish armed groups serving as Israeli mercenaries. The US-EU efforts to conquer and control Syria, via surrogates, mercenaries and

[jihadi] terrorists, was defeated largely because of Syria’s alliance with Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah” [82].

Alon Pinkas ( former Apartheid Israeli consul general in New York) on jihadis versus the Syrian Government  (2013):  “This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie. Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here” [83].

Dr Jill Stein (physician and 2016 presidential candidate for the American Greens) (2016): “The situation in Syria is complicated and disastrous, with an all-out civil war in Syria entangled with a proxy war among many powers seeking influence in the region. US pursuit of regime change in Libya and Iraq created chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias end up in the hands of ISIS. In Syria it’s extremely difficult to sort out this complicated web of resistance fighters, religious extremists and warlords with backing from regional and world powers. The one thing that is clear is that historic and current US military intervention in the Middle East is throwing fuel on the fire” [84].

Mark Taliano (progressive Canadian journalist and author of “Voices from Syria”) on US Alliance state terrorism in Syria (2017):  “The invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were all based on lies; likewise for Ukraine. All of the post-9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda levelled at Syria and contaminating humanity at this moment is likely unprecedented. I had studied and written about Syria for years, so I was not entirely surprised by what I saw. What I felt was a different story. Syria is an ancient land with a proud and forward-looking people. To this ancient and holy land we sent mercenaries, hatred, bloodshed and destruction. We sent strange notions of national exceptionalism and wave upon wave of lies… The ‘Global War on Terrorism’ also known as the ‘war on Terror’ is a fraud. It is literally a global war for terror. Empire creates and uses extremist terrorist proxies, including ISIS (also called by its Arabic acronym, Daesh), to advance its geopolitical goals … The cancer is NATO and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. We are the countries funding the terrorists, and we are the cancer that wants to illegally impose regime change in Syria … As a first step, we would do well to boycott toxic mainstream media messaging, which favours lies, injustice and war…Mainstream media often uses public-relations-engineered sources for its stories- the ‘White Helmets’ and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) are good examples. Historical memory teaches us that the dirty war against Syria is consistent with previous illegal wars of aggression and western-sourced evidence demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that we are, yet again, the terrorists” [85].

Andre Vltchek (USSR-born American philosopher, novelist, filmmaker, investigative journalist and author of numerous books) on US Alliance-backed jihadis in Syria (2016): “Day and night, for years, an overwhelming force has been battering this quiet nation, one of the cradles of human civilization. Hundreds of thousands have died, and millions have been forced to flee abroad or have been internally displaced. In many cities and villages, not one house is left intact. But Syria is, against all odds, still standing. During the last 3 years I worked in almost all of Syria’s perimeters, exposing the birth of ISIS in the NATO-run camps built in Turkey and Jordan. I worked in the occupied Golan Heights, and in Iraq. I also worked in Lebanon, a country now forced to host over 2 million (mostly Syrian) refugees.The only reason why the West began its horrible destabilization campaign, was because it “could not tolerate” Syria’s disobedience and the socialist nature of its state. In short, the way the Syrian establishment was putting the welfare of its people above the interests of multi-national corporations” [86].

Ludwig Watzal (progressive German researcher and writer) on Mark Taliano’s book “Voices from Syria” and the US Alliance attack on Syria (2017) : “Slowly but surely, the truth about the planned attack on Syria by Western powers under the leadership of the US Empire and its allies comes to the fore. For too long, the mainstream media held the monopoly on reporting about this havoc inflicted by the West together with its terrorist partners such as ISIS, al-Nusra front, and so-called moderate rebels in Syria. Especially the Obama administration pampered the last one. As the public knows by now, there hasn’t been such a thing as „moderate rebels.“ That the public in the West could have been so misinformed, was the fault of CNN, BBC, NYT and other media outlets. They prostituted themselves to the power elite in Washington D. C. Independent reporting was not their task. They were part of the international war party, which wanted to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to establish another Islamic dictatorship according to the Saudi Arabian model… His book provides a convincing testimony to the bravery and resilience of the Syrian people, who have been fighting against an alliance of Western aggressors and Islamic terrorists for over six years. The fact that one of the oldest cultural nations of the world is bombed back to the Middle Ages by the West and its Arab allies is not only a colossal war crime but also a crime against humanity. The book corrects a large part of Western propaganda claims on Syria” [87].

5. Proposed gas pipelines and the Syrian War.

US goals in Syria and the Middle East in general have been about oil and geopolitical hegemony as well as supporting the colonial Crusader fortress of Apartheid Israel, which in turn is a key part of these US goals [19]. The ongoing, horrendous US Alliance War on Humanity has fundamentally been about an unquenchable Anglo-American desire for hegemony and control of oil. Thus from the Right, Alan Greenspan (leading Republican economist,  chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, and servant of  four US presidents) (2007): “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq  war is largely about oil” [88]. On the Left, Professor Noam Chomsky (eminent linguistics expert  and anti-racist Jewish American human rights activist at 101-Nobel-Laureate Massachusetts Institute  of Technology (MIT) (2009): “There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world” [89]. In relation to fossil fuel resources and  Syria, Apartheid Israel wants the lion’s share of Eastern Mediterranean gas resources. From the US Alliance perspective, Syria is vital for a proposed US- and Saudi-preferred Qatar to Turkey pipeline and for a Russia- and Iran-preferred Iran to Syria gas pipeline as conduits for gas supplies to Europe (although presently not needed due to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports from Qatar). Below are some expert opinions on this aspect of the US Alliance war on Syria.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed (executive director of the London-based Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of “A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It” and other books) (2013): “The 2011 uprisings, it would seem – triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes – came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within”… It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this – the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria – that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life. What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?” [90].

Bruno P. Gebarski (progressive writer) (2017): “Looking at all the illegal wars the United States of America, the rogue Empire of Chaos, has in progress, the most complex one is probably the Syrian war. So what could drive the U.S. to undertake such a crusade in this already battered part of the world? … A “minute detail” that bothers the U.S. neocons is the fact that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has refused to support the Qatari pipeline in favor of the Iranian one sponsored and supported by Russia: one of the main reasons why the US and Europe are involved in a conflict of geopolitical and geo-strategic importance: the Syrian conflict is about who will control the export of Middle Eastern gas: the United States of America or Russia? … It’s about the geopolitics of who is going to control the supply of LNG towards Europe and the world: Qatar and its US allies defending the Petrodollar or Iran and its Russian allies defending the Petroyuan? (Image 4.) Pipeline One:  Petroyuan Russian side: Persian Gulf South Pars from Iran via Iraq, Syria, Lebanon; a project backed up by Russia (Gazprom), Iran and China.Pipeline Two: Petrodollar U.S. side: Persian Gulf North Dome from Qatar, via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria; a project supported by the United States of America and its allies: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Who will win this financial war? (Image 5.) The United States and its European Allies with the Petrodollar or China and Russia with the Petroyuan? This is the real dichotomy of the Syrian conflict” [91].

Robert Kennedy Jr (son of Robert Kennedy) on gas pipelines and Syrian war (2016): “America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians—sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS…  While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics… In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mid-East. The so called “Bruce Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials… Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria… ” [92].

Dr Jill Stein (2016): “This explains so much: there are 2 proposed pipelines through Syria – 1 supported by US, 1 supported by Russia” [93].

Final comments.

The Syrian War  – the Syrian Holocaust, Syrian Genocide, Syrian Civil War –  has been about the remorseless desire of the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)- dominated American Empire for hegemony and resource control. The consequences are utterly appalling –  cities, towns and villages devastated, 11 million refugees out of a population of 24 million, 0.5 million Syrians dead and a comparable number of Syrian avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation.

This atrocity has been enabled by the remorseless mendacity including lying by omission .of the US- and Zionist-subverted Western Mainstream media. Eminent US writer and author Gore Vidal has commented on American lying thus: “The people have no voice since they have no information … No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent” [94],  and has made the following damning assertion about American lying:  “Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying” [95]. This deadly culture of lying and censorship is entrenched in the countries of the US Alliance.  Thus Dr Tim Anderson (Australian political economist and author recently suspended from the censorious University of Sydney) on Western Mainstream media censorship over Syria  (2016): “In my country (Australia) we have seen five years of a near monolithic war narrative on Syria, and associated wartime censorship of dissenting views. Although I have probably written more than any other Australian academic on the conflict in Syria I have been effectively black-listed from the Australian corporate and state media, because what I say does not fit the official line” [96]. I too have been effectively rendered ”invisible” in look-the-other-way, US lackey Australia for quantitating the carnage of the Palestinian Genocide [10] and the US-imposed Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide of which the Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide is  a part [2].

Also comprehensively  hidden by mendacious Mainstream media,  the Zionist-backed US War on Muslims has had  a deadly impact on ordinary Americans, 30 million of whom have died preventably from “lifestyle’ and “political”  choices since the US Government’s 9-11 atrocity that killed 3,000 people (mostly Americans).  Successive US Governments have embraced the fiscal perversion of committing $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad rather than trying to keep 30 million Americans alive at home. Saturation Mainstream terror hysteria also  hides the realities that only about 60 Americans have been killed by jihadi psychopaths in America since 9-11, and  that a fundamentalist America has trashed or attempted to trash secular governance, modernity, democracy, women’s rights and children’s rights in the Muslim world [96].

What can decent people do? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people must (a) tell everyone they can, (b) eschew mendacious Mainstream media, (c) demand  expert, non-government war crimes tribunals to document the immense war crimes of the US Alliance, and (d) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions  (BDS) against all people, politicians,  countries and corporations associated with the war criminal US Alliance and its ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide  of which the ongoing Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide is but a part.

Lately, I have been asked this question on several occasions. “Can our humanity really survive?” “Am I an optimist or a pessimist?”

My replies vary, as I don’t think there can ever be one single answer to this most urgent, the most important query.

Sometimes my answer gets influenced by location: where I am at that moment, or where I have been recently? In a Taliban-controlled village in Afghanistan, on a rooftop of a whorehouse in Okinawa while filming deadly US air force bases, or perhaps in an elegant café after visiting an opera performance with my mom, in Stuttgart or in Paris.

Whether I have been injured on a battlefield or in a slum, or have been applauded (most of the time, hypocritically) at some event where I was invited to speak? Have I been doing something ‘forbidden’, insane and dangerous, or merely processing my visual or written materials in Japan or in Bangkok?

Depending on the circumstances, I can sound negative or cautiously optimistic.

But the truth, the honest truth is: I am scared.

Not scared for my own life, or my health or even my well-being. My work and my struggle: nobody forced me into it; all that I do is my own choice. I want to do it and therefore I do it. And while I do it, as it is often not safe, I have to understand that my life may end, prematurely, or that something else, very unpleasant, could happen. I have to understand, and I do understand. Shit happens! Unfortunately, it happens often. But that’s not what makes me scared.

What truly frightens me is something else, something much more essential: this beautiful ‘project’, this incredible,gigantic experiment called humanity, could very soon end in ruins and up in smoke.

What scares me even more is that, perhaps, it is already ending although I sincerely hope that it is not.

I have no religion, and I have absolutely no idea whether there is some sort of afterlife or not. Afterlife, God: what I am absolutely certain of is that no one on this planet really knows any answers to these so-called big questions, and those who claim that they do, know even much less than me.

This world and this damn humanity of ours is all that I know, and it is all that I have and care about. And I love it, because I have no other choice but loving it, despite all of its brutality and foolishness, recklessness and short-sightedness. But this planet, which used to be so brilliantly beautiful and pleasing, to all of our human senses, is now frightened, humiliated and plundered. It is getting raped, savagely, in front of our own eyes. And we are just watching, ruminating like cattle, shitting, and amusing ourselves in increasingly brainless ways.

That’s what we are actually supposed to do, according to those bastards who are ‘in charge’.

Our humanity had been derailed from its natural aims, goals and dreams. Goals like egalitarianism, social justice, beauty and harmony, used to be on everyone’s lips, no matter where they were living; just so recently, just one century ago.

The brightest minds, bravely and determinedly, worked on finishing with all forms of inequality, exploitation, racism and colonialism. Crimes against humanity committed by Western imperialism, racism, slavery and capitalism were being exposed, defined, condemned and confronted.

Unfortunately, it was one century ago that we were just about reaching the peak of enlightenment, and as humanity we were much closer to harmony and peaceful co-existence, than we are now.

Our grand-grandparents had no doubts whatsoever, that reason and logic would soon be able to triumph, everywhere on earth, and that those who had been ruling so unjustly all over this world, would either “see the light” and voluntarily step down, or would be once and for all defeated.

Great revolutions erupted on all continents. Human lives were declared to be well above profit. Capitalism seemed to be finished. Imperialism and capitalism were discredited, spat at and stepped on with millions of feet. It was clearly just a matter of years, before all people of all races would unite, before there would be no more dictatorship of greedy and degenerate business people, of crooked religious demagogues, of perverse monarchs and their serfs.

In those days, humanity was full of optimism, of ground-breaking ideas, inventions, intellectual, as well as emotional courage and artistic creativity.

A new era was beginning. The epoch of serfdom and capitalism was ending.

But then, the dark revanchist forces of oppression, of greed, regrouped. They had money and therefore could pay to buy the best psychologists, propagandists, mass-murderers, scholars, and artists.

*

A hundred years later, look where we are! Look at us now.

There is nothing to celebrate, and plenty to puke about.

Gangsters and moral degenerates,who ruled during all previous centuries, are still in full control of the planet. As before, oppressed people form majority: they inhabit Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Sub-Continent and Southeast Asia.

Actually, things have gone much further than before: the majority of people on our planet lost their ability to think logically. They have been brainwashed by the propagandist mass media, by mass produced movies and pop music, by bizarre ‘trends’ in fashion and by aggressive consumerism.

Education and media outlets have lost all their independence and become subservient to the interests of the regime.

Western ‘democracy’ (not much of a project to begin with), has kicked the bucket quietly and discretely, and its advocates again began taking direct dictates from big business, multi-billionaires and their multi-national corporations. The system has evolved from turbo-capitalism into turbo-kleptocracy.

I work all over the world, on all continents, and what terrifies me is how ‘complete’, or call it ‘bulletproof’ the system has become.

With advanced computerization, with the ability of the regime to monitor and analyze basically all corners of our planet, there seems to be no place on earth that can escape the advances and attacks of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism.

Just imagine: some country decides to resist and to work for the well-being of its own people, and immediately the Western propaganda, its NGO’s, academia, media outlets, and potentially its mercenaries and military, get to work, systematically smearing the rebellious government, and potentially ruining entire countries. This is how Argentina collapsed, and then Brazil. This is how Syria was first destabilized and later almost destroyed.

It appears that nothing can withstand the global dictatorship.

And the global dictatorship has no mercy; it lost all rationale.

Greed, the maximization of profits, knows no boundaries. Sacrificing human lives is now commonly perpetrated. Thousands of human lives, or a few millions, it does not seem to matter. In the Democratic Republic of Congo or in West Papua, who cares, as long as coltan, uranium, gold and oil are flowing.

I witnessed entire nations ‘sinking’, becoming uninhabitable, due to global-warming: Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands. I see tremendous islands like Borneo (known as Kalimantan in Indonesia) being thoroughly and irreversibly ruined. And nobody gives a damn. Corrupted(by the West and their own servile governments) scientists in places such as Indonesia,are still arguing that global warning and deforestation, as well as the palm oil plantations, are actually not threatening the world and its survival.

Some fifty years ago, there would have been powerful books written on these subjects. Wonderful art films were made,songs written and sang by brave bards,and the masses in both the oppressed world, but also in the West itself, bought revolutionary novels by the millions of copies. Multitudes of people stood in line, to watch films that were depicting their life, their struggle and their suffering.

Now? The destroyed masses are conditioned to forget about their nightmares and instead watch brainless horror films, some Star Wars ‘epic’, ‘romantic comedies’ depicting sweet suffering or the rich and famous. After saving for months, poor families in the devastated world are dragging their children to Disney Worlds; to those factories of plastic, emotionless dreams, to those Burger Kings of fairy tales!

Mobile phones have replaced paper books, newspapers and magazines. For centuries, paper books were symbols of knowledge. No computer or telephone screen can ever replace the printed word. A scholar, a man or a woman of letters has always been surrounded by books, by notes, by documents.

All this is not happening by chance.Electronic offering is much easier to control, divert and choke, than materials that are printed on paper. Thede-intellectualization of the world is clearly being done by design, step by step, in an organized fashion. Forget about ‘renaissance men and women’ in the 21^st Century: even educated Western anti-capitalist thinkers are now ‘specialized’. They ‘don’t read fiction’. They are collecting ‘facts’, producing non-fiction essays and books, as well as documentary films and videos, but fully neglecting the point that all successful revolutions were always based on emotions, creativity and art; inspiring the masses, making people laugh and cry, dream and hope.

The world has become full of ‘data’, of digits. ‘Facts’ are widely available, but they do not inspire or move anybody. They do not call people to action; to the barricades. Everything is standardized. Western propaganda has managed to regulate human desire, dictating how the ‘perfect’ female or male body should look and behave. Or what the ‘correct’ perception of ‘democracy’should be,or what is trendy and what should be considered boring and outdated.

The life of both the victims and victimizers appears to be ‘de-politicized’. But it is not! The acceptance of Western propaganda and collaboration with the regime is actually an extremely political act!

*

I am scared because it appears that a great majority of the people have accepted what the twisted regime has ordered them to accept.

They have accepted surveillance, trends, de-humanized ‘desires’, ‘political correctness’, global imperialist fascism, pop, grotesque capitalism and grey uniformity.

Like parrots, they repeat anti-Communist slogans, as well as propaganda barks against all the countries and governments that are still resisting this monstrous Western dictatorship brought to its most bizarre extreme.

I am scared, and at the same time, I am increasingly furious. If this is the future for humanity, do we, as human beings, really have right to exist; to survive as a species? Are we so submissive, so uninventive that we always end up begging for crumbs, praying to some invented superior forces, and prostrating ourselves in front of evil greedy monarchs and morally-corrupt individuals and systems?

Fortunately, not everyone is blind, and not everyone is on his or her knees. Not all of us have lost the ability to resist, to dream, and to fight for a world that appeared to be so possible just one century ago.

Those who are still alive and standing on their feet, know perfectly well: Revolution is possible and morally justifiable. Capitalism and imperialism are totally inhuman. A Socialist or Communist system is the only way forward: not in some ‘conservative’, dogmatic form, but in an ‘internationalist’,enlightened and tolerant way.(As clarified in my latest bookRevolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism. ).

It is the beginning of the year; 2019. Let us try to recap some basics:

Destroying entire parts of the world, and ransacking their natural resources for cold, selfish profit, is wrong.

Brainwashing countries, overthrowing their progressive governments, and derailing their natural development, is damn wrong, too.

Turning populations of the entire planet into idiots and zombies, making them consume violent and brainless movies, listen to crap music and eat junk food, dreaming about making love to shop window figurines and their human equivalent, is evil.

Using the media, education and entertainment for indoctrination purposes is barbaric.

And so is turning the entire planet into some primitive consumer market.

To fight such a system is glorious. And it is by definition ‘trendy’ and fun.

To use the terminology of the empire: collaboration and uniformity can never be ‘cool’. Listening and watching the same garbage cannot be ‘fashionable’. Banging into the same mobile phone screens can hardly be defined as ‘advanced’, and broad-minded.

Licking the boots of some old fart who owns banks or destructive corporations, is far from a modern, elegant and refined way of living.

Watching how our beloved planet is going up in flames, due to neo-imperialism and turbo-capitalism, while not doing anything to stop it, is nothing else other than stupid.

*

I began 2019 by writing the first chapter of my 1000-page novel “One Year of Life”. This novel began in 2019 and it will finish at the end of the same year. At the very end of it. Enough of non-fiction only!

As a novelist and playwright, I believe in human emotions. I have also witnessed enough uprisings and revolutions to finally realize that naked facts and data will never bring people to the barricades.

Time to un-dust the old banners, to bring back poetry, art, literature, films, theatre, and music. They are our best allies.

The West tries to silence emotions, ‘burn’ books and hit us all with ugly, meaningless noise and images, because it knows perfectly well that beauty is creative and inspiring.Beauty and creativity are also ‘dangerous’, in fact fatal to the regime’s dark and depressing designs.

I may be scared, but I am also cautiously hopeful. We can still win. Actually, it is our obligation to win. This Planet has to survive. If we win, it will. If we lose, it will go to hell.

It will be an extremely tough struggle that lies ahead of us. And no one will fight just in the name of facts and data, people are known to fight only in the name of a beautiful future.For us to win, all great muses are expected to march by the side of brave and determined revolutionaries!

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

The issue before us is death. Not only our individual death, which is more imminent for some of us this morning than others, but our collective death. We have begun the sixth great mass extinction, driven by our 150-year binge on fossil fuel. The litany of grim statistics is not unfamiliar to many of you. We are pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at 10 times the rate of the mass extinction known as the Great Dying, which occurred 252 million years ago. The glaciers in Alaska alone are losing an estimated 75 billion tons of ice every year. The oceans, which absorb over 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are warming and acidifying, melting the polar ice caps and resulting in rising sea levels and oxygen-starved ocean dead zones. We await a 50-gigaton burp, or “pulse,” of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost on the east Siberian arctic shelf which will release about two-thirds of the total carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Era. Some 150 to 200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal are going extinct every 24 hours, one thousand times the “natural” or “background” rate.

This pace of extinction is greater than anything the world has experienced since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Ultimately, feedback mechanisms will accelerate the devastation and there will be nothing we can do to halt obliteration. Past mass extinctions on earth were characterized by abrupt warming of 6 to 7 degrees Celsius. We are barreling toward those numbers. The mathematical models for this global temperature rise predict an initial 70 percent die-off of the human species, culminating with total death.

The corporate forces that have commodified the natural world for profit have also commodified human beings. We are as expendable to global corporations as the Barrier Reef or the great sequoias. These corporations and ruling elites, which have orchestrated the largest transference of wealth upward in human history, with globe’s richest 1 percent owning half the world’s wealth, kneel, and force us to kneel, before the dictates of the global marketplace. They have seized control of our governments, extinguishing democracy, corrupting law and building alliances with neofascists and authoritarians as the ruling ideology of neoliberalism is exposed as a con. They have constructed pervasive and sophisticated systems of internal security, wholesale surveillance and militarized police, along with criminalizing poverty, to crush dissent.

These corporate capitalists are the modern versions of the Canaanite priests who served the biblical idol Moloch, which demanded child sacrifice. And, as in this ancient Canaanite religion it is our children who are being sacrificed to these “mute idols,” as 1 Corinthians puts it. Their future is being taken from them. These corporate forces are, in biblical terms, forces of death. They will, unchecked, create more human misery and death than the evils of Nazism and Stalinism combined.

Religious belief, to be relevant, must be grounded in this concrete and bitter human reality. It must name radical evil, not as an amorphous theological concept, but as Christ did when he named the evils of the rich, the Pharisees and the Roman Empire. It must eschew self-preservation, for only he who loses his life can save it, in the mortal struggle against the forces of death. It must speak in a negative, critical voice, like the Hebrew prophets, condemning the dominant corporate culture. The point of faith is not to give us hope. It is to name and defy the forces of death. Faith is not centered around the question “How is it with me?” This is part of the narcissism of the dominant culture. Faith does not reside in infantile fantasies about inevitable human progress or personal schemes for unachievable happiness. Faith defies magical thinking. It defies our cultural and historical amnesia. It is the counterweight to the conditioned helplessness peddled by mass culture, the flight from reality that ensures our capitulation and our immolation on the altar of Moloch. Faith, finally, is about the belief, as Daniel Berrigan once told me, that the good draws to it the good, even if all the empirical evidence around us says otherwise. We demand justice not because we will win, but because we must.

Corporate culture, like all cultures of death, makes war on love, truth, justice and beauty and numbs us to the questions about the search for meaning and the struggle to face our mortality. It spreads the dark viruses of hedonism, sexual sadism, greed, the cult of the self, the lust for power, hypermasculinity and the glorification of violence. It seeks to crush the transcendent. It lacks the capacity for empathy, awe and reverence. It is the enemy of the sacred. Nothing in life has an intrinsic value beyond a monetary value in this culture of death. All living entities are herded toward Moloch’s altar. The only ethical and religious response is to smash the idols and drive the high priests from Moloch’s temple.

“The nothingness into which the West is sliding is not the natural end, the dying, the sinking of a flourishing community of peoples,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in “Ethics.” “Instead, it is again a specifically Western nothingness: a nothingness that is rebellious, violent, anti-God, and antihuman. Breaking away from all that is established, it is the utmost manifestation of all the forces opposed to God. It is nothingness as God; no one knows its goal or its measure. Its rule is absolute. It is a creative nothingness that blows its anti-God breath into all that exists, creates the illusion of waking it to new life, and at the same time sucks out its true essence until it too disintegrates into an empty husk and is discarded. Life, history, family, people, language, faith—the list could go on forever because nothingness spares nothing—all fall victim to nothingness.”

Religion, as H. Richard Niebuhr wrote, is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people. And religion as seen in the Christian right, which articulates and promotes white supremacy and Christian fascism, now rapidly filling Donald Trump’s ideological void, is anti-religious. The idol of a personal god, one that caters to and promotes the interests of those who profess homage to it, is the idolatry of Moloch. It is self-worship. It is heretical. And one of the most egregious failures of the liberal church has been its refusal to denounce these Christian heretics. The tacit toleration of these Christian heretics gave them religious legitimacy. You do not need to, as I did, spend three years at Harvard Divinity School to understand that Jesus did not come to make us rich, did not bless the white race above other races—Jesus, after all, was a person of color; it was the Romans who were white—or sanctify the American Empire’s dropping of iron fragmentation bombs for 18 years up and down the Middle East. This is the theology of the Antichrist, as we heard in the reading this morning from the Book of John. It speaks only to itself.

Those we battle as the society and the ecosystem disintegrate will increasingly appropriate the language of religion. They will seek to sanctify evil. These Christian fascists, like all idol worshippers, endow themselves with absolute power and authority. They claim to speak and act for God. They externalize evil. Evil, for them, is not the constant struggle to combat the dark forces within our own hearts but is embodied in the demonized other—Muslims, immigrants, blacks, feminists, artists, intellectuals or homosexuals—and once the other is eradicated, evil itself will somehow miraculously be eradicated; except of course it won’t, and these Manicheans will, in frustration, oppress and kill new groups of demonized human beings with an even greater fury. These beliefs, common to all fundamentalists, who can come in secular form as we see with the New Atheists, are the ideological cover for an emerging dystopia.

We will endure only by inverting the world’s values. To resist radical evil saves us, as Søren Kierkegaard wrote, from slipping into that “loathsome void,” that “torment of despair.” Hope comes by way of defeat. When we pit ourselves against the culture of death—and this means performing acts of civil disobedience and noncompliance, it means becoming an outlaw in the eyes of the corporate state—then suffering, and even death, does not have the last word.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” describes prisoners in his camp organizing a work stoppage and hunger strike. He writes:

What the bosses would do no one could predict. We thought that perhaps they would start firing on the huts again from the towers. The last thing we expected was any concession. We had never in our lives wrested anything from them, and our strike had the bitter tang of hopelessness.

But there was a sort of satisfaction in this feeling of hopelessness. We had taken a futile, a desperate step, it could only end badly—and that was good. Our bellies were empty, our hearts were in our boots—but some higher need was being satisfied. During those long hungry days, evenings, nights, three thousand men brooded over their three thousand sentences, their families, their lack of families, all that had befallen and would yet befall them, and although the hearts in thousands of breasts could not beat together—and there were those who felt only regret, only despair—yet most of them kept time: Things are as they should be! We’ll keep it up to spite you! Things are bad! So much the better!

This struggle to nurture and protect life, the sacred, has always been Pyrrhic. But it is our call, the cross we are commanded to carry. It is what makes us human. It is what sustains the dim, absurd compassion and human kindness, love itself, which evil, with its machines and bureaucratic power, its armies, its lies, its industrial violence, its wealth and its vast megaphones, has never been able to crush and never will. It may not be a battle we can win. But by fighting it we sustain our selves, we are enveloped and absolved by the sacred, by God. We make faith possible. The poet Linda Greggwrites [in “Chosen by the Lion: Poems”]:

In the museum print room today we looked
at their Blake engravings. All were
about a place that was not Paradise.
Everybody suffering. Men on their backs,
their faces upside-down and exposed,
legs raised and merging with the lines
that meant a mountain.
Women, unusually large, stood composed,
discerning, concerned over the general
condition of life. The curator said,
“He cut directly into the metal,”
“Then inked it,” I said. “Yes,” she said.
There was a spiral of mist
Filled with the shapes of lovers.
I looked close to see if any were happy.
At least two were. And in the sky,
A couple sitting, embracing.
(Something weeps in me all the time
All the time.) I said, at random,
“Wouldn’t it be nice if one of these
prints showed an angel crossing the border
Between heaven and this other realm.
Just the border.”
(Jesus, you who are above all others,
I hurt constantly inside.
Bleared with loneliness.
Exhausted by keeping what I love safe.)

Abstract

As the Earth continues to heat, paleoclimate evidence suggests transient reversals will result in accentuating the temperature polarities, leading to increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Pleistocene paleoclimate records indicate interglacial temperature peaks have been are consistentlysucceeded by transient stadial freeze events,such as the Younger Dryas and the 8.5 kyr-old Laurentideice melt, attributed to cold ice melt water flow from the polar ice sheets into the North Atlantic Ocean. The paleoclimate evidence raisesquestions regarding the mostly linear to curved future climate model trajectoriesproposed for the 21^st century and beyond, not marked by tipping points. However, early stages of a stadial event are manifest by a weakening of the North Atlantic overturning circulation andthe build-up of a large pool of cold water south and east of Greenland and along the fringes of Western Antarctica. Comparisons with climates of the early HoloceneWarm Period and the Eemian interglacial when global temperatures were about +1^oC higher than late Holocene levels. The probability of a future stadial event bears major implications for modern and future climate change trends, including transient cooling of continental regions fringing the Atlantic Ocean, an increase in temperature polaritiesbetween polar and tropical zones across the globe, and thereby an increase in storminess, which need to be taken into account in planningglobal warming adaptation efforts.

Introduction

Reports of the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC[1]), based on thousands of peer reviewed science papers and reports, offer a confident documentation of past and present processes in the atmosphere[2], including future model projections (Figure 1).When it comes to estimates of future ice meltand sea level change rates, however, these models contain a number of significant departures from observations based on the paleoclimate evidence, from current observations and from likely future projections. This includes departures in terms of climate change feedbacks from land and water, ice melt rates, temperature trajectories, sea level rise rates, methane release rates, the role of fires,andobserved onset of transient stadial (freeze) events[3]. Early stages of stadial event/s are manifest by the build-up of a large pool of cold water in the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and along the fringes of the Antarctic continent (Figure 2).

Figure 1.Time series of global annual mean surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1986–2005 from CMIP5 (Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project) concentration-driven experiments. Projections are shown for each RCP for the multi model mean (solid lines) and the 5–95% range (±1.64 standard deviation) across the distribution of individual models (shading).[4]

Hansen et al. (2016) (Figure 2)used paleoclimate data and modern observations to estimate the effects of ice melt water from Greenland and Antarctica, showing cold low-density meltwater tend to cap increasingly warm subsurface ocean water, affecting an increase ice shelf melting,accelerating ice sheet mass loss (Figure 3) and slowing of deep water formation (Figure 4). Ice mass loss would raise sea level by several meters in an exponential rather than linear response, with doubling time of ice loss of 10, 20 or 40 years yielding multi-meter sea level rise in about 50, 100 or 200 years.

Linear to curved temperature trends portrayed by the IPCC to the year 2300 (Figure 1) are rare in the Pleistocene paleo-climate record, which abrupt include warming and cooling variations during both glacial (Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles; Ganopolski and Rahmstorf 2001[5];Camille and Born, 2019[6]) and interglacial (Cortese et al. 2007[7]) periods. Hansen et al.’s (2016) model includes sharp drops in temperature, reflecting stadial freezing events in the Atlantic Ocean and the sub-Antarctic Ocean and their surrounds, reaching -2^oC over several decades (Figure 5).

Figure 2. 2055-2100 surface-air temperature to +1.19^oC above 1880-1920 (AIB model modified forcing, ice melt to  1 meter) (Hansen et al. 2016)[8]

Figure 3.Greenland and Antarctic ice mass change. GRACE data are extension of Velicogna et al. (2014)[9] gravity data. MBM (mass budgetmethod) data are from Rignot et al. (2011)[10]. Red curves are gravity data for Greenland and Antarctica only; small Arctic ice caps and ice shelfmelt add to freshwater input.[11]

Figure 4. AMOC (Sverdrup[12]) at 28◦ N in simulations (i.e., including freshwater injection of 720 Gt year−1 in 2011 around Antarctica, increasing with a 10-year doubling time, and half that amount around Greenland). (b) SST (^◦C) in the North Atlantic region (44–60◦ N, 10–50◦ W).

Temperature and sea level rise relations during the Eemian interglacial[13] about 115-130 kyr ago, when temperatures were about +1^oC or higher than during the late stage of the Holocene, and sea levels were +6 to +9 m higher than at present, offer an analogy for present developments. During the Eemian overall cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean and parts of the West Antarctic ffringe ocean due to ice melt led to increased temperature polarities and to storminess[14], underpinning the danger of global temperature rise to +1.5^oC. Accelerating ice melt and nonlinear sea level rise would reach several meters over a timescale of 50–150 years (Hansen et al. 2016)

Figure 5.Global surface-air temperature to the year 2300 in the North Atlantic and Southern Oceans, including stadial freeze events as a function of Greenland and Antarctic ice melt doubling time,

Portents of collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC)

The development of large cold water pools south and east of Greenland (Rahmstorf et al. 2015[15]) and at the fringe of West Antarctica (Figures 1 and 5) signify early stages in the development of a stadial, consistent with the decline in the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC) (Figure 4). These projections differ markedly from linearmodel trends(Figure 1). IPCC models mainly assume long term ice melt[16], stating “For the 21st century, we expect that surface mass balance changes will dominate the volume response of both ice sheets (Greenland andAntarctica). A key question is whether ice-dynamical mechanisms could operate which would enhance ice discharge sufficiently to have an appreciable additional effect on sea level rise”[17]The IPCC conclusion is difficult to reconcile with studies by Rignot et al. (2011) reporting that in 2006 the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 Gt/yr, equivalent to 1.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr sea level rise.”[18]. For the Antarctic ice sheet the IEMB team (2017) statesthe sheet lost 2,720 ± 1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, which corresponds to an increase in mean sea level of 7.6 ± 3.9 millimeter[19]

A non-linear climate warming trend, including stadial freeze events, bears significant implications for planning future adaptation efforts, including preparations for transient deep freeze events in parts of Western Europe and eastern North America, for periods lasting several decades (Figure 5) and coastal defenses against enhanced storminess arising from increased temperature contrasts between the cooled regions and warm tropical latitudes.

Imminent climate risks

Climate model projections for the 21^st to 23^rdcenturies need to take paleoclimate evidence more fully into account, including the transient stadial effects of ice melt water flow into the oceansand amplifying feedbacks of global warming from land and oceans. Radiative forcing[20], increasing with concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases and rising by about 0.04 Watt/m²/yearover the last 50 years[21],totaled by more than 2 Watt/m², equivalent to ~3.0°C (~1.5°C per W/m²)[22]. The rise of mean global temperatures to date by 0.9°C since 1880[23]therefore represents lag effect, pointing to potential temperature rise by approximately two degrees Celsius. A further rise in global temperatures would be enhanced by amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans, including exposure of water surfaces following sea ice melting, reduction of CO₂ concentration in water, release of methane and fires. Climate change trajectories would be highly irregular as a result of stadial events affected by flow of ice melt water into the oceans. Whereas similar temperature fluctuations and stadial events occurred during past interglacial periods (Cortese et al. 2007[24]; Figure 6), when temperature fluctuations were close to ~1^oC, further rises in temperature in future would enhance the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, entering uncharted territory unlike any recorded during the Pleistocene, rendering large parts of the continents uninhabitable.

Figure 6. A. Evolution of sea surface temperatures in 5 glacial-interglacial transitions recorded inODP 1089 at the sub-Antarctic Atlantic Ocean. Lower grey lines – δ¹⁸O measured on Cibicidoides plankton;Black lines – sea surface temperature. Marine isotope stage numbers are indicated on top ofdiagrams. Note the stadial temperature drop events following interglacial peak temperatures, analogous to the Younger Dryaspreceding the onset of the Holocene (Cortese et al. 2007[25]).B. Mean temperatures for the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

Andrew Glikson is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist

Life and death for whole communities hang in the balance of achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that include eliminating poverty, conserving forests, and addressing climate change, passed by the United Nations unanimously in 2015. Take for example, the Indigenous Amazigh people who live in the mountains around Marrakech. They are representative of people who need to be served first by sustainable development.

The High Atlas Amazigh people experience hard lives in small villages. Most work as day laborers and agriculturalists with barely enough income to support their families and heat their homes. Education is a major concern, but is hard to attain for a number of reasons. Sometimes families cannot afford the subsequent costs of backpacks and books, even when the school is open and free. The challenge is especially difficult for girls, because, as one person explained, “How can fathers let their girls study if it is dark when they must travel?” The effect of incomplete education is profound, and when we asked one 62-year-old man what he thought the greatest threats to the future were for his community, he did not have confidence in his own experiences, noting, “What can I say? I am not read [educated].”

Through a partnership of the University of Central Florida (Orlando), The Hollings Center for International Dialogue (Washington D.C. and Istanbul), and the High Atlas Foundation (Marrakech), we recently conducted field work in the High Atlas Mountains, speaking with the people there who poured their hearts out to us.

The most consistent message we heard from the people of the High Atlas was that the future hinges on water. One group told us that when things are good, it is because the rain is abundant and on time; things are very hard otherwise. They are worried that climate change will affect if the rains come, or that the rain will not “come in its time.” They have good reason to worry because climate change is expected to decrease precipitation significantly, reducing streams, lakes, and groundwater.

Drought is a constant worry. The World Bank estimates that 37 percent of the population works in agriculture, meanwhile production of cereal crops varies wildly due to annual variation of precipitation– and 2018 was thankfully a bountiful year. Climate change will make the people of the High Atlas Mountains much more vulnerable while they are already living on the edge of survival. In one area, this change in precipitation timing and amount was already noticeable, resulting in a significant loss of fruit trees. In that same area, we were told that there is fear that there will be no water in twenty years, and that for these people who are deeply connected to the land, there will be “no alternatives.”

The High Atlas people are in an extremely vulnerable position. One group noted that they are so desperate for basic resources that they burn plastic trash to heat their water. Worse, they believe they have been left behind by society and that “the people of the mountains do not matter.” They feel that Moroccan society is deeply unfair—there is no help for the sick, little support for education, little defense against the cold, and that, for some, corruption is the greatest threat to a sustainable future.

Consequently, civil society has an important role in achieving the SDGs. The High Atlas Foundation has been working to help people in this region to organize themselves into collectives that decide both what the collective wants, and pathways to achieve those goals. Women have organized into co-ops that they own and they collect dividends from their products together. People in one coop lobbied the 2015 Conference of Parties climate meeting in Marrakech. Men’s associations have developed tree nurseries that not only produce income, but which protect whole watersheds – and therefore some water for the future. They are also participating in carbon sequestration markets. In this regard, the Marrakech Regional Department of Water and Forest provides them carob trees and the authorization to plant these trees on the mountains surrounding their villages.

However, perhaps the most important element of these collectives is that they give each person in them a voice. Leaders of these collectives have formal rights to approach the regional governments about their needs, and this voice would not be heard at all without the formal collective organization. These organizations cannot replace government services, but they do add capacity to the community.

Not only do these collectives lend people some influence over their current and their children’s lives, they love each other and they are not struggling alone. We witnessed profound solidarity. Repeatedly, the collectives told us “We love each other, we are one family,” “We are like one,” “We help each other,” and the conviction that “I will be with you.”The world is decidedly on an unsustainable path, so If we are going to meet SDGs, all the people like the people of the High Atlas Mountains must matter and their voice deserves to be heard.

Peter J Jacques is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, USA.

This article is part of a series on degrowth.info discussing strategy in the degrowth movement. The introduction to the series and an ongoing list of contributions can be found here.

In a previous piece in this blog series, Joe Herbert and colleagues pointed out the “how to move towards a degrowth society” gap in degrowth discourse. As I have also come across this “how to get there” question in my own modest attempts to link direct democracy to degrowth (e.g. Zografos, 2015), I would like to contribute some thoughts and so try to expand the conversations started by those colleagues. In my case, I have been asking myself and my students whether direct democracy is the best political vehicle for advancing towards a radical socio-ecological transformation such as degrowth. Admittedly, I am probably less interested in “strategies” and more on the empirical question of how past radical socio-ecological transformations actually happened. But, I believe that answers to that question are closely linked to the project of charting out strategies of political action for degrowth transformations.

To my mind there are three challenges related to answering the “how” question: firstly, a theoretical challenge; secondly, one related to history and historical experience; and finally, a practical challenge. I’d like to focus on those challenges here.

Choosing where to learn from

The theoretical challenge relates to the question of how to choose what knowledge is relevant for degrowth from a considerable array of literature that directly or indirectly looks at radical transformations. The issue is a complex one, because different disciplines study different types or social domains of transformation. For example, social anthropology can tell us something about cultural transformations; some branches of institutionalism shed light on organisational transformation or the transformation of the economy; political economy scholars and some economic historians also look at transformations in the economy, albeit emphasising relations of production and using different lenses (e.g. Marxism) than those used by institutionalists; some branches of psychology and critical marketing studies can tell us about transformations in consumer behaviour; and the list could go on.

More interdisciplinary fields seem to hold greater promise, given that degrowth requires transformations in several spheres of human experience (e.g. material practices; social imaginary; etc.) and interaction (e.g. collective organisation; relating to nature; etc.). Environmental history for example, with its more integrated approach to the study of environmental change that looks both at how human affairs may force changes upon the environment and how nature itself acts as an agent in shaping human affairs (e.g. McNeill 2010, White 2011) can help us understand how multiple factors interact to produce significant and closely related political and ecological changes. Some attempts to draw from interdisciplinary fields are out there. In a recent paper with James Vandeventer and Claudio Cattaneo (2019), we borrow concepts and tools from the interdisciplinary field of transition studies to explore transformations towards degrowth at the intellectual level. Other colleagues have categorised key and crosscutting academic debates and approaches about social-ecological transformation that influence major policy reports, including degrowth as one such debate (Brand and Wissen 2017).

Still, I think that the challenge of choosing what is the relevant literature to look at from a broad range of disciplines and fields not only remains, but also points to another challenge which is how to choose what sort of transformations studied by those literatures can provide insights that could be relevant for strategising the type of radical socio-ecological transformation that degrowth requires. In other words, which past, already experienced transformations somehow exhibit “similarities” to the wholesale changes required by degrowth to the extent that we are able to meaningfully “draw lessons” from them?

Given the scale of transformation implied by degrowth, two possible contenders could be the Neolithic Revolution which marked a shift from hunter-gatherer societies and their socio-ecological relations towards sedentary social organisation and agriculture-based socio-ecological relations; and, the emergence of capitalism, which produced radical socio-ecological transformations at a global level, notably both at its core and peripheries. Studying those transformations could help us learn more about the sort of interactions between material, institutional, socio-cultural, and political economy spheres that produce radical change in socio-ecological relations, as well as the nature, interaction, potential and limitations of strategies pursued by influential agents of those changes. Again, more interdisciplinary analyses such as those offered by world-ecology (for capitalism) (Moore, 2003) and James C. Scott’s (2017) recent book on the Neolithic Revolution seem more useful. But if we were to stick with those examples, the challenge would be to see how we could learn from phenomena that have transformed socio-ecological relations in directions contrary to those pursued by degrowth – in terms of their increasing of social metabolism – and societies materially different than most of today’s societies.

Perhaps the next step here should be to develop specific criteria for choosing which literatures and past transformations could be relevant for helping us to reflect on degrowth transformational strategies.

What triggers transformation?

This relates to the second challenge, which is of a historical nature. As suggested by the Neolithic Revolution and emergence of capitalism examples, a common way to search for guidance on political strategies of transformation is by looking at past experience. When trying to explain political outcomes, such as for example the success of a revolution, or the change of political regime, historians tend to distinguish between conditional and contingent factors. Conditional factors involve long-term changes and developments, such as changes in social structure, political practice and thinking, or material conditions and relations (Anderson 2007). For example, according to historian Linda Colley (2018), when we look at what has proved genuinely significant in the past, we realise that game-changing transformations have happened slowly. But Colley also reminds us that if we look at what has triggered transformation – i.e. contingent factors – in the past, we see that disease, climate alterations, leaps in technology, economic crises, and major shifts in belief and ideology, together with war – perhaps the more paradoxical and recurring trigger of all according to Colley – have all sparked off dramatic change. I think that it is far from obvious what such insights imply for the “how” question in degrowth, and specifically for the sort of political strategies required to move towards degrowth transformations.

Moreover, and when it comes to contingency, historians also remind us that accidents as well as a set of factors one could term as “freewill gone wrong” – namely, unintended consequences, miscalculations, misjudgements and incompetence – have proved crucial triggers of transformation and unprecedented political change. This point serves as a reminder that too much emphasis on intentionality, rational action and planned transformation might be off the point. Instead, degrowthers may be better off considering strategies of transformation that either leave space for exploiting such contingencies, or are even built upon the assumption of different political contingencies. They should perhaps also seek to stimulate broader transformational action via emotion, socialisation, and embodied practice, as feminist scholars remind us (Nelson, 2013). One challenge here is to avoid descending into opportunistic political action and populism in our effort to convince about the value of our project, as recent incorporations of emotions in politics have done.

Taking stock

Finally, I would like to conclude with what I see as a practical challenge related to the “how” question: how are we to take stock of all that information? Surely, and as pointed out by Herbert and colleagues, some sort of systematisation of such knowledge and of its relevance for degrowth is desirable. But how are we to make use of all that knowledge without entering into the temptation to try to produce blueprints for degrowth transformations? One way to deal with that challenge is to use that knowledge to generate potential pathways for degrowth transformations, which could then be presented in instances where activists, scholars, artists, practitioners, and others interested in degrowth could collectively reflect and deliberate about the relevance of such pathways for charting strategy. An obvious place to do so would be special sessions in degrowth international conferences, whose regularity provides an opportunity for continually updating knowledge around the issue of strategy.

But above all, when seeking to take stock of past knowledge it is important to keep a critical mind on attempts to learn from “the past”. In her telling of the story of the 1871 Paris Commune, Kristin Ross (2015) asserts that the past does not give lessons; instead, Ross believes that there are moments when a particular past event enters intensely into what she calls “the figurability of the present”. Assuming that the present can be brought to some form or shape, i.e. that it is “figurable”, Ross contends that learning about the Commune can help inspire us to consider the capacity (e.g. possibilities, alternatives) of the present to be shaped in certain, desirable ways. I think that this can be a truly creative and powerful way of learning from past and present transformations for degrowth.

References

Anderson, A., 1995. The civil wars 1640-9. Hodder & Stoughton.

Brand, U. and Wissen, M., 2016. Social‐Ecological Transformation. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, pp.1-9.

Colley, L. 2018. Can History Help? London Review of Books Vol. 40 No. 6, pp.12-16.

McNeill, J.R., 2010. Mosquito empires: ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. Cambridge University Press.

Scott, J.C., 2017. Against the grain: a deep history of the earliest states. Yale University Press.

Ross, K., 2015. Communal luxury: The political imaginary of the Paris Commune. Verso Books.

Vandeventer, J.S., Cattaneo, C. and Zografos, C., 2019. A Degrowth Transition: Pathways for the Degrowth Niche to Replace the Capitalist-Growth Regime. Ecological Economics, 156, pp.272-286.

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Zografos, C. 2015. Démocratie directe [Direct Democracy]. In: D’Alisa, G. Demaria, F., Kallis, G. Décroissance. Vocabulaire pour une nouvelle ère [Degrowth. Vocabulary for a new era]. Neuvy-en-Champagne: Éditions le passager clandestine, pp.187-194.

Christos Zografos: I am an environmental social scientist. I currently co-ordinate the ‘European Network of Political Ecology’ (ENTITLE) project, which is funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7) Marie Curie Actions. I am also a Visiting Lecturer for masters programmes at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and Masaryk University (Czech Republic), and have delivered lectures for several other universities in Europe and Latin America.

Originally published by Degrowth.de

INTRODUCTION

The case that will be documented here is that Venezuela’s people are suffering from a tragic national situation which actually cannot be reversed by anything that’s within the power of Venezuela’s Government to do or to block. In order to understand this very unfortunate reality (if one wants to understand it), one must first understand the relevant parts of the broader situation in the world that affects Venezuela. What’s dooming the country isn’t merely a local situation, but instead is global and environmental. It also is economic, pertaining to the role that Venezuela is playing in the global economy. But the economic factor is definitely not  of the kind that it’s commonly assumed and alleged to be. It is instead very different.

Here, this very different reality will be both described and documented (instead of just founded upon assumptions — many of which are false — such as the standard, basically local, economic ‘explanation’ of Venezuela’s troubles is, which focuses on Venezuela’s socialism, or the economy’s being not sufficiently capitalist).

What it all comes down to, stated in its briefest terms, is that no nation can do anything but lose money by selling the world’s dirtiest oil, tar-sands oil, which costs $100+ to clean and produce, into a global oil market that’s paying less than $100 (currently around $65) per barrel. Venezuela was able to sell it profitably when oil-prices were high, but is getting crushed now, because its oil is no longer profitable to produce and sell. But 95% of Venezuela’s export-earnings come from oil. Unless and until oil-prices are again above $100 (which probably won’t happen again, except perhaps for very brief periods), Venezuela is doomed. Venezuela’s only chance to diversify its economy away from “the natural resources curse” (from which it especially suffers) was long ago, decades before the current Government came into power. That chance was missed. This ship is now sinking, and no one can save it. (And the U.S. Government and its allies have no actual interest in saving it, but only in exploiting it, parasitically.)

So, here the real history and context for what is happening in and to Venezuela will be presented, and the reader will be able easily to verify any detail of it (by means of the links) — on one’s own, (not accepting anything on mere ‘authority’, which, in such a politically charged matter as this, is almost invariably propaganda). The reader can verify any allegation here simply by clicking onto the given link, at any point in the presentation that might seem to be questionable.

These links are directly to the items of evidence, in the specific case of: why Venezuela’s people are suffering.

Here is that case — the realistic case, without any propaganda, but with only  credible news reports and source-documents as constituting its basis — regarding this question.

THE CASE

The two lands that produce the world’s highest-cost-to-produce oil are Canada and Venezuela. Both extract their oil overwhelmingly from tar-sands, which is the dirtiest of all oil and thus (by far) the costliest to refine. (Thus, it’s called “extra-heavy crude”, and that is the least desirable type. It’s also the type that, in a global-warming world, should remain in the ground, never be burned at all, as will also be explained here.)

An accurate summary statement in Wikipedia is that, “With present technology, the extraction and refining of heavy oils and oil sands generates as much as three times the total CO2 emissions compared to conventional oil,[20] primarily driven by the extra energy consumption of the extraction process.” That reference at “[20]” also states: “As the price of oil rises and as conventional hydrocarbon resources become scarcer, increased exploration and production activity is occurring in heavy oil, tar sands, and bitumen deposits. While these contribute significantly to the global energy …, they also contribute a greater share to … the detriment of the global environment.” (That’s referring to “a greater share” of “detriment” than normal crude does.) As another source phrased this matter in more explicit terms: “85 gallons of water, two tons of soil, 700-1200 cubic feet of natural gas, and 170 pounds of greenhouse gases make one barrel of crude oil” from tar-sands. That oil is simply not usable as-is to go into refining, like, for example, the standard Brent crude is. Furthermore, to produce that barrel of tar-sands-derived oil requires also the production of tons of sheer waste, none of which is left behind from producing normal oil. The cost of dealing with that waste is not factored into the cost of the barrels of oil. For examples, the future “impact upon water supplies,” and that “this water is polluted by toxic substances,” are not counted in. Therefore, the full cost of such oil has never been calculated. And yet, even so, everyone recognizes that tar-sands-derived oils are the costliest to produce.

On 25 January 2013, HSBC Global Research issued a landmark report, “Oil & Carbon Revisited: Value at risk from ‘unburnable’ reserves”. It defined the key concept of  “Unburnable reserves: The IEA’s World Energy Outlook (2012 edition) estimated that in order to have a 50% chance of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2ºC, only a third of current fossil fuel reserves can be burned before 2050. The balance could be regarded as ‘unburnable’.”

The oil in Canada and in Venezuela is the world’s least  burnable, the most “heavy,” and therefore it’s not only the costliest to produce, but it’s also the worst environmentally. There is consequently increasing pressure upon large investment funds such as Harvard’s 39-billion-dollar endowment fund, to disinvest in fossil fuels. Because of interlocked boards of directors or trustees, and the needs that such ‘charities’ have to appeal to wealthy donors, these public pressures are often (as in Harvard’s case) ignored, but the movement toward divestment is gradually gaining strength in the less corrupt investment funds.

On 13 December 2018, the environmental organization 350.org headlined “Landmark fossil fuel divestment reached! 1000+ institutions are withdrawing investments from coal, oil and gas companies”, and announced:

The 1000th institution to divest was the Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC), which manages France’s public sector pensions, savings, and investments worth €173 billion (USD$196 billion). It recently announced that from 2019 it will no longer invest in companies that make more than 10% of their business from coal – this implies that the top 200 companies in the coal-industry are now effectively blacklisted. …

On the momentum for divestment since 2013 – Nicolas Haeringer, an organiser who supports divestment groups globally, at 350.org said:

“This is a moral movement as well as a financial one. Just five years ago we had 181 divestment commitments and USD$50 billion shifted away from polluting industries and today we’re over 1000 and approaching USD$8 trillion dollars.”

This has already helped to drive many coal companies out of business. Though coal-mine owners and employees might lose from that, the entire world gains vastly more from it. Such a transition is called “progress.” Transition in the opposite direction — toward more bad than good — is called “regress,” or, simply, “harm.” Some people call it “conservatism,” but whatever it is, certainly isn’t  progress. Not in any way. But that’s what the U.S. Government and the Canadian Government want: extreme conservatism — not conservation. And they view Venezuela’s tar-sands oil as being a prize that they could profit from if Venezuela’s Government could be ‘persuaded’ to reduce their environmental regulations on extracting it. However, in 2012, Venezuela strengthened, instead of weakened, its environmental laws. That strengthened the motivation for the U.S. and Canada to take over Venezuela. Hugo Chavez died in 2013, and Nicolás Maduro replaced him. Then, in 2016, Maduro instituted a new policy, to weaken environmental enforcement in Venezuela. Perhaps he was hoping that this would reduce the U.S.-and-allied efforts to overthrow him. Venezuela’s economy was already on the ropes. The U.S. continued its efforts to overthrow Maduro. Now desperate, he started selling off 12% of the land to international mining companies. Environmental enforcement at PDVSA also plunged, and on 24 November 2018, Bloomberg News bannered “Venezuela Is Leaking Oil Everywhere”. Apparently, the weaker Maduro gets, the worse he becomes. He had entered a doomed office as the president, and seems willing to do anything not to drown in it. Apparently, the weaker he gets, the more that U.S.-allied billionaires want to take over the country, entirely on their own terms. It’ll be like what had already happened in Greece, when the Syriza Party there capitulated to the international financial firms in 2015, and the Government stripped pensions, education, social services, etc., and privatized the infrastructure. But the path toward that end is quite different in Venezuela.

With the world’s increasing move toward renewables, the disinvestment in oil companies will increasingly be targeted toward selling the stock in the ones that have invested the most in oil fields in Canada and Venezuela. However, the situation is radically different for Venezuela than it is for Canada. Here is why:

The biggest market for Canadian oil is just next door, the United States. Most of the oil that’s imported into the U.S. comes from Canada. And, because most of the oil companies that are producing oil in Canada are U.S. owned or allied (such as in UK), the U.S. Government isn’t sanctioning Canada and trying to bring its Government down by reducing Canada’s oil-sales via sanctions, such as is the case with regard to Venezuela’s oil-sales. The U.S. Government doesn’t need to do that in order for America’s corporations to become enabled to sell the oil that comes from Canada: they’re already selling that oil, and Canada’s Government (as well as America’s Government) is already helping America’s companies to do this. America’s and Canada’s aristocracies are allied — not only with Venezuela’s aristocracy (which wants to replace Venezuela’s existing Government), but also with each others’ aristocracy.

Furthermore, unlike Venezuela, Canada isn’t nearly 100% dependent upon its oil-sales in order to support its economy, such as Venezuela tragically is. Venezuela receives around 95% of its export-income from its oil. That’s ridiculous and, for geostrategic and geoeconomic reasons, should never have been tolerated by Venezuela’s Government, but it nonetheless has been tolerated by them — and, for many decades, not only by Venezuela’s present Government. Indeed, Oil&Gas Journal headlined on 8 February 2010, “All about Orinoco” and reported that there had been “early efforts to produce heavy crude from the [Orinoco] belt” and these efforts “led PDVSA predecessors to output by the early 1980s of 93,000 b/d.” Furthermore, “Petroleos de Venezuela SA estimated 1.18 trillion bbl of oil in place in the Orinoco in 1987 and revised that in 2006 to a median of 1.3 trillion bbl, a maximum of 1.4 trillion bbl, and a minimum of 900 billion bbl.”

At that time, Richard Turcotte, of Peak Oil Matters, warned about this report, by headlining “A Look at Venezuela”, and pointing out that:

Unlike the light sweet crude oil produced by the U.S. and the light oil which has made Saudi Arabia such a force, the Orinoco oil is “heavy oil” found in oil sands — similar in characteristics to the tar sands bitumen found in Alberta, Canada. (See my prior post here.) The Venezuela oil is thus much harder to extract and refine, making it more costly. Significant investments of time and money are required to provide adequate refinery capabilities. Needless to say, extracting this heavy oil is a much more energy-and time-intensive effort than is the process for extracting the more familiar light crude. It is not anyone’s answer in the next few years.

Lead researcher and USGS geologist Chris Schenk admitted that their report is not asserting that the “technically recoverable” oil is in fact “economically recoverable.” That’s a significant distinction, and one that needs to be emphasized. All the presumed underground reserves in the world won’t mean much if it makes no sense to invest the time, effort, and money to try and extract them.

The USGS nonetheless estimates that a stunning 40 – 45% of that resource will be ultimately recoverable. One prominent geologist (and a former board member of Petroleos de Venezuela SA — Venezuela’s state oil company) is already on record as doubting anywhere near that amount can be recovered, and stated that much of what might actually be recoverable would in fact be too expensive to produce. 

Perhaps Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez and his predecessors were thinking that if the U.S. Government says that this oil is an asset, then it is reasonable to consider it to be an asset; but if the U.S. Government was instead merely aiming to get Venezuelans to think that it’s an asset so as to keep that country accepting its existing oil-monoeconomy (its over-dependence upon oil), then ultimately as the disappointment hits when the Venezuelan people experience the poverty after having hoped and tried to develop that ‘asset’, the U.S. Government will become welcomed in, to take over Venezuela’s failing Government. Anyway, that would be a conceivable reason why the U.S. Government would be promoting the ‘economic potential’ of the Orinoco belt. The aristocracy’s agents (in this case the petroleum industry) tend to be very clear-eyed about what’s of benefit to their paymasters. For whatever reason, the actual fact — that this oil was no asset — has remained hidden from the Venezuelan public. It still isn’t publicly acknowledged by Venezuela’s Government. Nor is it publicly recognized by America’s.

So, this tragic error (of presuming that tar-sands oil should be developed) goes back even to well before the time of Hugo Chavez. Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that the actual source of the ‘error’ is the petroleum industry itself, which, like the tobacco companies before it, constantly propagandized for increased production and sales, regardless of what the science says. A good example of that propaganda is the Editorial in Oil&Gas Journal on 24 January 2019, headlining “Costs, energy needs discredit ‘keep it in the ground’ agenda”. It says: “Preemptive opposition to oil and gas projects by ‘keep it in the ground’ activists promises needless hardship in two broad areas.” This is a denial of the entire concept of “unburnable reserves.” They want, instead, to burn it all — and even to keep prospecting to find yet more  oil and gas (at this time of already greatly excessive inventories of cleaner reserves that should be burned before any of Canada’s or Venezuela’s filth is). They could lay off their entire teams of oil-explorers, who are wasting their time to find yet more dirty energy sources that won’t ever need to be used by anybody. Either these people are stupid and insane, or else they are psychopaths who care only about keeping their existing jobs and don’t care at all about the world that future generations will be experiencing. If their children knew, then what would they think of what their parents had done to the world that they will be living in?

Consequently (perhaps after — for whatever reason — listening too much to self-interested advisors), Venezuela’s Government has allowed itself to become trapped by its addiction to selling its extraordinarily filthy oil. There was no Governmental demand, no sufficient priority placed upon Venezuelan firms, for them to diversify the economy away from petroleum. Neither the present Government, nor any previous Government of Venezuela, did.

Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro didn’t create this problem; but, now, and especially on Maduro’s watch, the oil-market transformations that result from the global-warming phenomenon are accelerating; and, unlike Canada, which is part of the U.S. empire, Venezuela isn’t receiving U.S. Government protection of its investors, and so there is no helping hand from the U.S. Government (i.e., from America’s aristocracy) to assist Venezuela’s oil sales (such as the U.S. does provide regarding Canada). There is, instead, to the contrary — as Venezuela’s Government has become weaker and weaker, and has less and less public support while global oil prices have plummeted — the grabbing hand, of both the U.S. and Canadian Governments, to take over Venezuela’s Government, whose biggest sin, actually, was to have left itself open to such a take-over, by its having failed to diversify its economy away from the country’s doomed, and dooming, extraordinarily costly-to-refine, and undesirable to refine, oil. It’s now just a coffin in the ground, but it’s nonetheless still the source of virtually all of Venezuela’s export sales. No government could sustain supporting such a zombie. It’s a deadweight that’s dragging Venezuela down and economically suffocating all Venezuelans. And the documentation that this situation exists is incontrovertible:

The current WTO report on Venezuela

indicates that 96.9% of the country’s exports are of “Fuels and mining products,” and that over 98% of this 96.9% consists of oils. Also shown is that the biggest five importers from Venezuela account for only 1.9% of Venezuela’s exports, and therefore all other countries account for 98.1%. So, when Venezuela loses its U.S. market, that would mean loss of only 0.6% of its total export market.

However, America’s sanctions will additionally cause some U.S. vassal nations such as in Europe to stop importing from Venezuela. So, Maduro is very vulnerable, indeed. Diversifying the markets (to that 98.1%) isn’t what was needed by Venezuelans; diversifying the economy was; and neither he nor his predecessors did any of that.

On February 2018, Petroleum Science headlined “Analysis of Venezuela’s oil-oriented economy: from the perspective of entropy” and reported that, “the current breakeven price has achieved to over $100/bbl in Venezuela.” Right now, oil is selling at around $65 per barrel. So, how can Venezuela make money selling its $100+ oil into the global $65 oil market? It’s just not possible, at least not sustainably. The Petroleum Science article therefore said that “it is unwise for Venezuela to count on selling raw oil to support the country’s economy,” because any per-barrel price that’s lower than Venezuela’s $100+ per barrel production cost will produce a loss on the sale of that barrel of oil, and because there will be very few if any future days when the per-barrel oil-price will again be above $100. The more that the world cuts back on petroleum and increases non-carbon energy-sources, the lower that the price of oil will become. And the more that investment funds steer clear of high-carbon firms, the lower the corporate stock of those companies will sink in value. Both investors and consumers are therefore going to be turning away from them.

When global oil prices were high, Venezuela could sell even its costly-to-refine oil profitably, but those times are now long gone and probably will never return, as the world increasingly switches away from fossil fuels. Especially tar-sands oils, such as from Canada and from Venezuela, should stay in the ground, and not only because today’s oil prices are too low to sustain selling them, but also because those extra-heavy oils are the worst to burn, from the standpoint of causing global warming.

As an example of this economic reality, a major U.S. corporate investor in Venezuelan oil is Chevron Corporation, and Zacks Investment Research headlined on 5 October 2011, “Chevron Sees Carabobo Oil in 2012”. It stated:

According to a company executive, U.S. energy behemoth Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX – News) may see the start-up of an oil field in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt next year. The super-major is confident that it can commence production from Orinoco’s Carabobo Project 3 – which has estimated reserves of 66 billion barrels – in the third quarter of 2012. …

Chevron holds a 34% interest in Carabobo Project 3, while Venezuela’s national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (or PDVSA) controls 60%. The remaining stake is owned by Venezuelan and Japanese firms.

Following the first production of 50,000 barrels per day, … [Chevron] is looking to boost volumes by an additional 50,000-100,000 barrels per day every two years. Carabobo 3, one of several Orinoco projects, is estimated to reach a maximum output of approximately 400,000-480,000 barrels of crude oil per day by 2016.

There is no public indication, at least not online, that even the “first production of 50,000 barrels per day” has been yet achieved, though it had been expected to occur within a year. Chevron’s 2017 Annual Report (covering the year 2016) is the latest online, and it doesn’t so much as even mention “Carabobo.” And this was after  the 5 October 2011 prediction that “Carabobo 3, one of several Orinoco projects, is estimated to reach a maximum output of approximately 400,000-480,000 barrels of crude oil per day by 2016.” Clearly, that’s a poorly performing investment. Chevron’s current web-page on “Venezuela” says “Chevron has a 34 percent interest in Petroindependencia, S.A., which includes the Carabobo 3 Project,” but it provides no number of barrels of oil being produced there (if any) — not even now, in 2019. Bad investments die in silence and in obscurity, but good investments get trumpeted everywhere — and this one is being trumpeted nowhere.

Any oil sales from those fields will not only be delayed until when oil prices are again high enough to sell those dirty oils at a profit (which is increasingly unlikely ever to happen again). The investment values of those companies will likewise be especially hard hit as the problem of unburnable reserves becomes increasingly widely recognized and understood by the public. The public won’t remain ignorant and deceived about these matters forever. This is like a Ponzi scheme.

Russia’s Government seems determined never to accept this U.S. coup imposing America’s “regime-change” upon the sovereign nation of Venezuela, and has made the decision to send military assets, and to invest both in Venezuela’s Government and in the oil company. On January 29th, Russia’s Interfax News Agency headlined in Russian, “The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation hopes to get external debt payments from Venezuela”. The neoconservative Jamestown Foundation remarked about that on January 31st by saying that “These debts may eventually be written off by a new opposition Venezuelan government led by the self-proclaimed interim president, Juan Guaido, if it manages to push Maduro out (see EDM, January 28, 2019). Yet, even if Maduro somehow succeeds in clinging to power with Russian help, he will hardly have the resources to service the loans.” That, unfortunately, happens to be true. The only sensible reason why Russia would be committing itself to protecting Venezuela’s sovereignty would be in order to say to Washington that America’s long string of foreign regime-changes (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras, Ukraine, etc.) has now ended — to establish the principle (as Russia has recently done in Syria) that no longer will Washington’s invasions and coups be tolerated, no more conquests (additions to its empire) will be allowed. Somebody has to draw the line, finally, and the other nuclear superpower could be the one to do it. Other than that, however, Russia, like other investors, can only experience losses from investments in Venezuela. Venezuela is now an asset only in “The Great Game”. Russia’s protecting in Venezuela the principle of national sovereignty — no coups, no conquests, at all — is as moral as America’s repeatedly rejecting that principle is immoral; but, as an investment, Venezuela simply is a loss. If “The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation hopes to get external debt payments from Venezuela,” then Russia’s Ministry of Finance should be expecting to be disappointed in that “hope.” But that hope wouldn’t, in any case, be a sound reason for what Russia is doing there. The only “asset” to be won in Venezuela is protection of the most basic principle of international law: the independence and sovereignty of each nation. Hitler and his fascist allies, and Stalin and his communist allies, violated that principle; but now fascist America and its allies routinely violate it. Venezuela’s allies (unlike Neville Chamberlain) are supporting the foundation-stone of international law: national sovereignty and independence. For the U.S. and its allies to reject the results of Venezuela’s (or of Syria’s or of Iran’s) elections is no basis for invalidating those results, and the U.S. Government’s stooge Juan Guaido is simply a Venezuelan traitor, and should be treated as such, by an appropriate trial for treason. Certainly, there is no Constitutional basis for Guaido’s power-grab, despite the lies to the contrary by the putchists such as in America and its allied regimes.

All oil-exploration should therefore now stop, and existing tar-sands oil fields should simply be abandoned altogether. Only the easiest-to-refine (the “lighter”) oils should be sold and burnt right now. There is going to be a rush for the exits in the stocks of those “extra-heavy oil” companies, and the only question is when it will happen. Regarding that rush, the situation is very different in Venezuela than it is in Canada, because the U.S. Government will delay as long as possible the collapse of Canada’s oil-sales, but the U.S. (and Canada) want to expedite the collapse of Venezuela’s — at least until and unless the current Venezuelan coup succeeds. (And Canada’s Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, did the key preparatory work for U.S. President Trump to pull the plug on Venezuela’s Government; so, both of those governments have actually led in overthrowing and replacing Venezuela’s non-U.S.-allied Government.)

Venezuela became addicted to selling its filthy oil, but now can only lose money with every barrel it sells of its oil. Each day of the company’s operations is simply eating the company’s seed-corn — and there is nothing like Canada has, to soften the blow. That’s not only unsustainable, it has already become a crisis, and Washington is exploiting it.

PDVSA’s latest online financial report is for 2016

and it shows that “Profit before income tax” was $16,317,000 in 2014, then $1,469,000 in 2015, and then $955,000 — less than a million dollars — in 2016. During the three-year period, “Current assets” declined from $55.2 billion to $54.6 billion, and “Current liabilities” declined from $55.7 billion to $50.0 billion. “Financial debt” declined from $40.0 billion to $33.9 billion. “Total assets” declined from $217.4 billion to $189.7 billion; and “Total liabilities” declined from $127.7 billion to $102.6 billion. Probably the company is already operating in the red now, but with every year of deteriorating infrastructure, just wearing out, with more and more and longer deferred maintenance, and with a bad long-term prospect for profitability, could the Government even sell the company? If Trump succeeds and PDVSA and every other state-owned asset in Venezuela becomes privatized, Venezuela’s citizens will be left with nothing, and the only beneficiaries will be the international bankers, even as international investors will need to take haircuts on their existing Venezuelan loans. The oil that PDVSA sells shouldn’t even be bought; it should simply remain in the ground.

According to the latest public information, PDVSA showed less than a million dollars of profit in 2016 — and the trend was downward. Anyone in Venezuela who thinks that the country can be sustained in the future, as it was in the past, from the sale of Venezuela’s exceptionally costly-to-produce oil, isn’t taking into account the broader picture, and the impact that the global-warming phenomenon will inevitably have upon the fossil-fuels industries.

There may be ways to jiggle the books to make PDVSA fool some investors into buying the company, but only the international bankers would be profiting from a sale of that firm.

Foreign Policy magazine, which represents America’s aristocracy, headlined on 5 June 2018, “It’s Time for a Coup in Venezuela”, but even if that turns out to be the final solution to the Venezuelan problem for America’s aristocrats, it won’t solve anything for the Venezuelan public — basically like Hitler’s “final solution” did nothing to benefit Germany’s Jews. Germany’s aristocracy did nothing for Jews then, and America’s aristocracy will do nothing for Venezuelans now. They’re all on their own. The leaders of the U.S.-allied nations don’t want to save them, and instead follow in the fascist and Nazi tradition. The leaders in Venezuela’s current Government, who want to save them, simply can’t save them. It’s far too late for them to start now, to do what needed to start back in “the early 1980s of 93,000 b/d” from Venezuela’s Orinoco belt — which would have been for them to stop what ought never even to have been started there: extraction of that oil.

CONCLUSION

The poverty and violence that now rack Venezuela result from a broader situation in which selling what shouldn’t even be bought has run its miserable course until the final act, which is a Government that has reached the stage where it can produce income only for international bankers and for the aristocrats who control them. Any oil company now that would want to buy those assets would merely be adding to its assets — chiefly the dirty oil in the ground — ‘assets’ (oil reserves) that can never even be used (unless the propaganda becomes even more effective in the future than it has always been until now, which might be impossible to achieve). Oil companies already have lots more of that dangerous filth than anyone except people in finance will ever be able to benefit from buying or selling.

For Venezuelans, this is a great tragedy. The U.S. and its allies are (and have been) doing everything they can to exploit the tragedy.

It’s like a hungry lion chasing a fleeing exhausted deer, who now is finally trapped.

That’s the ugly reality.

—————

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.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela delivered this Feb. 7 message to the people of the U.S. through social media.

If I know anything, it is about the people, because just like you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I was forged in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality. I am no tycoon; I am a worker of mind and heart.  Today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which Comandante Hugo Chávez forged starting in 1998, inspired by the legacy of Simón Bolivar.

We are living today in a historical crossroad. There are days that will define the future of our countries, giving us a choice between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they sowed in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela — they say, as they said then — in the name of democracy and freedom. But this is false. Their history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false argument, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region.

Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that in an unprecedented way so that today Venezuela is one of the countries that has held the largest number of elections in the last 20 years. You may not like our ideology or how our society looks, but we exist and we are millions.

I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that some sectors in the White House intend, that is, to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disrupt the worthy initiatives to open a dialogue promoted by Uruguay and Mexico, with the support of CARICOM, for a peaceful solution and dialogue on behalf of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk because to refuse to dialogue is to choose the path of force. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Those who do not want to dialogue, are they afraid of the truth?

The political intolerance toward the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches have prompted an international coalition headed by the U.S. government to commit the serious insanity of waging a military attack on Venezuela under the pretext of a nonexistent humanitarian crisis.

The people of Venezuela have painfully suffered social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught.

And yet, thanks to a new system of social protection, of direct attention to the most vulnerable sectors of our society, we proudly continue to be a country in the Americas with high human development index and low inequality.

The U.S. people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes, for the sake of peace and friendly relations between nations.

We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and to safeguard their sovereignty.

Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all our soul. Today Venezuela is united in a single cry: We demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela.

We appeal to the good soul of U.S. society, a victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace. Let us be all one people against warmongering and war.

Long live the peoples of America!

Nicolás Maduro

Insects are facing extinction all over the world, at a rate that bodes disastrous ecological collapse, reports the first global scientific review published in the journal Biological Conservation. (FranciscoSánchez-Bayo, Kris A.G.Wyckhuys, Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers, Biological Conservation, Vol. 232, Apr. 2019)

More than 40% insect species are threatened with extinction and a third are endangered, according to the analysis. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, reptiles and birds. The total mass of insects is falling by 2.5% per year, that suggests with the best data available they could face total extinction within a century.

The planet is hurtling into the start of a sixth mass extinction with species losses reported in larger animals. Insects, difficult to study as they are, however are the most varied and abundant and outweigh humans by 17 times. They are a key component of all ecosystems as food for other animals, pollinators and nutrient recyclers.

While there have been reports on insect species loss in Germany and Puerto Rico, there had been no review on a global scale. The study, the first of its kind, strongly indicates that this is now a global crisis. The report asserts, “The trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting life forms on our planet… Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,”. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least”, the report warns.

The analysis says intensive agriculture is the main driver of declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. It also adds agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change as driving factors of the extinction.

“If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind,” said Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, at the University of Sydney, Australia, who wrote the review with Kris Wyckhuys at the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo said: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.” (“Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature”, The Guardian, 10 Feb 2019)

Sánchez in the same interview said, many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish eat insects and with this food source vanished they will starve to death.

Butterflies and moths have been the worst hit in this massacre. In England, the total abundance of butterfly species declined by 58% on farmed land between 2000 and 2009. (Andre S. Gilburn et. al., “Are neonicotinoid insecticides driving declines of widespread butterflies?”, 24 Nov. 2015). There have also been decline in bumble bees, honey bees and beetles. With the species loss the vacuum may be occupied by other adaptable species, but they are not enough to outweigh the lost numbers.

The report asserts that there must be changes to the ways of food production with less use of pesticides and chemicals. These detritus practices are more common in industrial agriculture that invariably produces food only for profit.

Loss of insect species will almost certainly invoke disastrous irrevocable repercussions on the global ecology, leading to more species extinction in larger animals, impeding pollination and thus leading flora and fauna species loss that will incur even more species loss. It will set off a chain reaction that will keep on aggravating and that too within a few decades.

Unless the current ways of production, that deliberately debilitates ecological integrity, is changed within a decade or so, there will be no going back from this impending disaster. The more the system depends on poisons to make food the more will it destroy all that binds nature together, insects being a key integral factor among those. This crisis is a distress call from the planet; and our survival may well depend on how fast we respond.

Omar Rashid Chowdhury is a practicing civil engineer. Hemajored in Environmental Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Signed by Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Subhankar Banerjee, Finis Dunaway & Norma Kassi

Fossil fuel development in the Coastal Plain would devastate an Arctic nursery of global significance. It would violate human rights, jeopardize food security, and threaten the health and safety of Indigenous communities. It would contribute to the escalating crises of climate change and biological annihilation.

Signatories’ Note: We are inviting teachers and scholars—elementary and secondary school teachers, college and university faculty, graduate students, independent scholars and writers, investigative journalists, librarians, editors, museum professionals, and other educators and researchers—from the United States, Canada, and around the world to join us in the campaign to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and uphold Indigenous Rights. This letter with all signatories will be submitted to the Bureau of Land Management on March 13, 2019, the deadline for public comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program. [To endorse this letter, send an email to thelastoil@unm.edu, with your name, affiliation, and state/province/country.]

As teachers and scholars from across the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world, we are united in our opposition to oil and gas exploration and drilling in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. We strongly condemn the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program and the rushed process by which the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prepared the document. Downplaying the dangers of expanding fossil fuel development in the Arctic, and disregarding scientific data and concerns raised by Indigenous peoples, the BLM is also shutting the public out of the process, undermining a core purpose of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Fossil fuel development in the Coastal Plain would devastate an Arctic nursery of global significance. It would violate human rights, jeopardize food security, and threaten the health and safety of Indigenous communities. It would contribute to the escalating crises of climate change and biological annihilation. The Arctic Refuge is an irreplaceable ecological treasure. Its fate should not be decided on an expedited timeline that prioritizes outcome over process to benefit the oil industry and its allies.

Ever since drilling proponents snuck an Arctic Refuge leasing provision into the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Trump administration has been moving aggressively to rush through the required Environmental Impact Statement. During the scoping phase of the EIS, the BLM held only one public hearing outside of Alaska—in Washington, DC, on a Friday night in mid-June 2018. Still, a large number of people showed up to voice their concerns about the ecological, cultural, and climate impacts of drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

Dismissing the concerns raised by the public and Indigenous peoples and “relying on outdated and incomplete science,” the BLM hastily assembled a draft EIS and releasedit on December 20, 2018, the day before the longest government shutdown in US history began.

The Neets’ąįį Gwich’in tribal governments of Arctic Village and Venetie, who worked in a government-to-government capacity in the EIS process, denounced the BLM draft. In a press release, the tribes claimed: “The draft goes so far as to boldly declare that oil and gas development in the caribou calving grounds will have no impact at all on the Tribe’s subsistence hunting practices.” Equally important is that the government did not adequately consult the tribes prior to the release of the document. “Today’s release was done with no prior notification to our Tribal Councils, who have met with the BLM for months on a government-to-government basis,” said Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government Executive Director Tonya Garnett. “The total lack of regard to our tribal governments on an issue of such importance really demonstrates how BLM leadership views their trust responsibility to our Tribes.”

The draft EIS set the deadline for public comments to end on February 11, 2019. On December 21, 2018, the Arctic Village and Venetie tribal governments were joined by a coalition of environmental and Indigenous human rights organizations in submitting requests to extend the public comment period—to April 29, 2019—to ensure robust participation by the interested public. On January 14, 2019, in the midst of the government shutdown, the coalition submitted additional requests, reiterating the need for the extension of the public comment period and asking that additional public hearings be held across the nation so that members of the public outside of Alaska are given an opportunity to have their voices heard. Finally, the coalition requested that notice of the hearings be provided at least two weeks prior to the first hearing date to give the public sufficient time to prepare remarks.

When the BLM announced its plans on January 30, 2019, the agency failed to respond to the requests from the coalition and instead offered a much shorter extension until March 13. The BLM also announced only one public hearing outside of Alaska—again, as during the scoping phase, in Washington, DC. But this second round of hearings was structured on an even more compressed timescale to invite even less public input. The BLM stipulated that all public hearings be finished within a much shorter window of time—starting on February 4 and ending on February 13—and that the first hearing would happen just two business days after the announcement, not the two-week notice requested by the coalition. These decisions underscore the Trump administration’s rampant and repeated efforts to stifle public participation in the process.

Front-page article on the Arctic Refuge Public Hearing in Fairbanks, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, February 5, 2019.

Indeed, the first BLM hearing, held in Fairbanks on February 4, did not even include a public forum: it was merely an “open house” information session for agency officials to provide an overview of the draft EIS. Gwich’in and Iñupiat elders and leaders spoke out against this injustice, and demanded the right to be heard. “We are beyond frustrated that our elders are not allowed to speak today,” one leader explained. Tribal members and grassroots groups—including Defend the Sacred Alaska, Native Movement Alaska, and the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition—joined together to turn the anti-democratic charade into what one participant called a “People’s Hearing.”

The voices of the people need to be heard, because the BLM’s rushed process has resulted in a flawed environmental review.

The draft EIS fails to address the ecological impacts of drilling. Fossil fuel development would degrade the habitat of the Porcupine Caribou Herd as well as that of migratory birds, polar bears, and other creatures. More than 200,000 caribou embark every year on the longest land migration of any animal on earth, journeying from their wintering grounds in Canada and Alaska to the Coastal Plain, where they calve and nurse their young. According to caribou biologists, the entirety of the calving and nursing grounds that stretch from the Arctic Refuge to the adjacent Ivvavik National Park in the Yukon Territory of Canada should be protected if the herd is to survive and thrive. With caribou herds across Canada and the circumpolar world in severe decline, the Department of the Interior should respect scientific and traditional ecological knowledge to sustain this transnational herd. Likewise, the draft EIS minimizes development impacts on the nesting and feeding habitats of millions of birds that migrate to the refuge from all fifty US states and all over the world. Nor does it adequately consider the impacts on polar bears, now listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, as their traditional sea ice habitat continues to disappear due to rapid Arctic warming. As we are in the midst of what scientists call biological annihilation, these impacts on wildlife need to be considered fully, not ignored or minimized to expedite drilling.

The draft EIS fails to address Indigenous rights and environmental justice. For the Gwich’in communities on both sides of the US-Canada border, the prospect of drilling represents an existential threat to their culture. The Gwich’in have relied upon the Porcupine Caribou Herd for their nutritional, cultural, and spiritual sustenance for millennia. To them, the Coastal Plain is Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit (the Sacred Place Where Life Begins). Their food security, human rights, and cultural future are all stake in this decision. For many Iñupiat people who call the area home, fossil fuel development would lead to increased social stress and air pollution with potentially severe health impacts on community members. The dangerous levels of toxic pollutants emitted by drilling could cause respiratory illnesses and other health problems, as has been documented in Nuiqsut following the development of the Alpine oil field. Indigenous voices must be heard, not marginalized and brushed aside in the rush to develop.

The draft EIS fails to address climate change. Fossil fuel extraction would contribute to further warming of the already rapidly-warming Arctic—an action that would affect the whole earth, as the Arctic is a critical integrator of our planet’s climate systems. As climate scientists keep telling us, we are living through a pivotal moment in history, a time in which the US and other nations around the world need to transition to a sustainable energy future. Deciding not to drill in the Arctic Refuge would be a crucial step in this direction.

Instead of racing to turn a wildlife sanctuary into an oil field, the BLM needs to assess the full impacts of drilling on the ecological, cultural, wilderness, and subsistence values of the Arctic Refuge. The fossil fuel industry has already developed large portions of northern Alaska. The Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge—a contiguous stretch of unparalleled public land that constitutes about 5% of Alaska’s Arctic coast—should be protected permanently not auctioned off at breakneck speed.

Since the Trump administration is attempting to complete this significant environmental review in a rushed and undemocratic manner, environmental and Indigenous activists have decided to take ownership of the process and create their own democratic structures. The coalition has organized a series of Public Community Hearings in March. Independent of the BLM’s hasty and flawed process, these hearings will amplify voices of the public and highlight the administration’s suppression of public participation. The public hearings represent a democratic push from below, an effort to enlist—rather than exclude—all people in this critical environmental debate. The coalition has scheduled public hearings in three cities: Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March 5; Denver, Colorado, on March 8; and Seattle, Washington (date will be announced soon on the letter web-page).

As teachers and scholars, we know that younger generations are worried about the escalating dangers to our planet’s biological, climate, and life-support systems. The short-term drive to drill in the Arctic undercuts their hopes for a sustainable future. The natural and cultural values of the Arctic Refuge far exceed any oil that may lie beneath the Coastal Plain. Rather than rushing to lease and drill, the US government should keep this cherished place and vibrant ecosystem protected for generations to come.

Only immediate climate action can save the future. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

Here is a recent statement by Jakob von Uexküll, founder of the World Future Council:

“Today we are heading for unprecedented dangers and conflicts, up to and including the end of a habitable planet in the foreseeable future, depriving all future generations of their right to life and the lives of preceding generations of meaning and purpose.

“This apocalyptic reality is the elephant in the room. Current policies threaten temperature increases triggering permafrost melting and the release of ocean methane hydrates which would make our earth unliveable, according to research presented by the British Government Met office at the Paris Climate Conference.

“The myth that climate change is conspiracy to reduce freedom is spread by a powerful and greedy elite which has largely captured governments to preserve their privileges in an increasingly unequal world.”

Similarly, 15-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, described our present situation in the following words:

“When I was about 8 years old, I first heard about something called ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’. Apparently, that was something humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources. I remember thinking that it was very strange that humans, who are an animal species among others, could be capable of changing the Earth’s climate. Because, if we were, and if it was really hap-pening, we wouldn’t be talking about anything else. As soon as you turn on the TV, everything would be about that. Headlines, radio, newspapers: You would never read or hear about anything else. As if there was a world war going on, but no one ever talked about it. If burning fossil fuels was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we just continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal?”

Why do we not respond to the crisis?

Today we are faced with multiple interrelated crises, for example the threat of catastrophic climate change or equally catastrophic thermonuclear war, and the threat of widespread famine. These threats to human existence and to the biosphere demand a prompt and rational response; but because of institutional and cultural inertia, we are failing to take the steps that are necessary to avoid disaster.

Only immediate action can save the future

Immediate action to halt the extraction of fossil fuels and greatly reduce the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is needed to save the long-term future of human civilization and the biosphere.

At the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland, (COP24), Sir David Attenborough said “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest   in thousands of years. Climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. The world’s people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now.”

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said climate change was already “a matter of life and death” for many countries. He added that the world is “nowhere near where it needs to be” on the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Swedish student Greta Thunberg, is a 15-year-old who has launched a climate protest movement in her country. She said, in a short but very clear speech after that of UN leader Antonio Guterres: “Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‘solve the climate crisis’. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions.”

She added: “Why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly mean nothing to our society?”

Thunberg continued: “Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed.”

She concluded by saying that “since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.”

Institutional inertia

Our collective failure to respond adequately to the current crisis is very largely due to institutional inertia. Our financial system is deeply embedded and resistant to change. Our entire industrial infrastructure is based on fossil fuels; but if the future is to be saved, the use of fossil fuels must stop. International relations are still based based on the concept of absolutely sovereign nation states, even though this concept has become a dangerous anachronism in an era of instantaneous global communication and economic interdependence. Within nations, systems of law and education change very slowly, although present dangers demand rapid revolutions in outlook and lifestyle.

The failure of the recent climate conferences to produce strong final documents can be attributed to the fact that the nations attending the conferences felt themselves to be in competition with each other, when in fact they ought to have cooperated in response to a common danger. The heavy hand of the fossil fuel industry also made itself felt at the conferences.

Until the development of coal-driven steam engines in the 19th century humans lived more or less in harmony with their environment. Then, fossil fuels, representing many millions of years of stored sunlight, were extracted and burned in two centuries, driving a frenzy of growth of population and industry that has lasted until the present. But today, the party is over. Coal, oil and gas are nearly exhausted, and what remains of them must be left in the ground to avoid existential threats to humans and the biosphere. Huge coal and oil corporations base the value of their stocks on ownership of the remaining resources that are still buried, and they can be counted on to use every trick, fair or unfair, to turn those resources into money.

In general corporations represent a strong force resisting change. By law, the directors of corporations are obliged to put the profits of stockholders above every other consideration. No room whatever is left for an ecological or social conscience. Increasingly, corporations have taken control of our mass media and our political system. They intervene in such a way as to make themselves richer, and thus to increase their control of the system.

Polite conversation and cultural inertia

Each day, the conventions of polite conversation contribute to our sense that everything is as it always was. Politeness requires that we do not talk about issues that might be contrary to another person’s beliefs. Thus polite conversation is dominated by trivia, entertainment, sports, the weather, gossip, food, and so on, Worries about the the distant future , the danger of nuclear war, the danger of uncontrollable climate change, or the danger of widespread famine seldom appear in conversations at the dinner table, over coffee or at the pub. In conversations between polite people, we obtain the false impression that all is well with the world. But in fact, all is not well. We have to act promptly and adequately to save the future.

The situation is exactly the same in the mass media. The programs and articles are dominated by trivia and entertainment. Serious discussions of the sudden crisis which civilization now faces are almost entirely absent, because the focus is on popularity, ratings and the sale of advertising. As Niel Postman remarked, we are entertaining ourselves to death.

Further growth implies future collapse

We have to face the fact that endless economic growth on a finite planet is a logical impossibility, and that we have reached or passed the the sustainable limits to growth.

In today’s world, we are pressing against the absolute limits of the earth’s carrying capacity, and further growth carries with it the danger of future collapse. In the long run, neither the growth of industry nor that of population is sustainable; and we have now reached or exceeded the sustainable limits.

The size of the human economy is, of course, the product of two factors: the total number of humans, and the consumption per capita. Let us first consider the problem of reducing the per-capita consumption in the industrialized countries. The whole structure of western society seems designed to push its citizens in the opposite direction, towards ever-increasing levels of consumption. The mass media hold before us continually the ideal of a personal utopia, filled with material goods.

Every young man in a modern industrial society feels that he is a failure unless he fights his way to the “top”; and in recent years, women too have been drawn into the competition. Of course, not everyone can reach the top; there would not be room for everyone; but society urges us all to try, and we feel a sense of failure if we do not reach the goal. Thus, modern life has become a competition of all against all for power and possessions.

When possessions are used for the purpose of social competition, demand has no natural upper limit; it is then limited only by the size of the human ego, which, as we know, is boundless. This would be all to the good if unlimited industrial growth were desirable; but today, when further industrial growth implies future collapse, western society urgently needs to find new values to replace our worship of power, our restless chase after excitement, and our admiration of excessive consumption.

If you turn on your television set, the vast majority of the programs that you will be offered give no hint at all of the true state of the world or of the dangers which we will face in the future. Part of the reason for this willful blindness is that no one wants to damage consumer confidence. No one wants to bring on a recession. No one wants to shoot Santa Claus.

But sooner or later a severe recession will come, despite our unwillingness to recognize this fact. Perhaps we should prepare for it by reordering the world’s economy and infrastructure to achieve long-term sustainability, i.e.steady-state economics, population stabilization, and renewable energy

Our responsibility to future generations and the biosphere

All of the technology needed for the replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy is already in  place. Although renewable sources supplied only 9 percent of the world’s total energy requirements in 2015 , they supplied 23 percent of ekectrical generation energy in 2016, and they are growing rapidly. Because of the remarkable properties of exponential growth, this will mean that renewables will soon become a major supplier of the world’s energy requirements, despite bitter opposition from the fossil fuel industry.

Both wind and solar energy can now compete economically with fossil fuels, and this situation will become even more pronounced if more countries put a tax on carbon emissions, as Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom and Ireland already have done.

Much research and thought have also been devoted to the concept of a steady-state economy. The only thing that is lacking is political will. It is up to the people of the world to make their collective will felt.

History has given to our generation an enormous responsibility towards future generations. We must achieve a new kind of economy, a steady-state economy. We must stabilize global population. We must replace fossil fuels by renewable energy. We must abolish nuclear weapons. We must end the institution of war. We must reclaim democracy in our own countries when it has been lost. We must replace nationalism by a just system of international law. We must prevent degradation of the earth’s environment. We must act with dedication and fearlessness to save the future of the earth for human civilization and for the plants and animals with which we share the gift of life.

Hope

Here is what Greta Thunberg says about hope:

“And yes, we do need hope. Of course, we do. But the one thing  we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then and only then, hope will come today.”

A new book

I have written a 396-page book about the steps that are urgently needed in order to save the future for our children and grandchildren. The book makes use of articles and book chapters that I have previously written on our current crisis, but much new material has been added. I urge readers to download and circulate the pdf file of the book from the following link:

http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/future.pdf

Other freely-downloadable books and articles on global problems can be found at the following address: http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. During his tenure The Pugwash Movement won a nobel peace prize.  Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988-1997).

To the People of Venezuela

Recently I wrote an article explaining how you could defeat, using nonviolent strategy, the US coup attempt that is taking place in your country. See ‘A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat the US Coup Attempt in Venezuela’.

I would like to complement that article by now briefly explaining how you can also defeat a military invasion by the United States and any collaborating invaders by using a strategy of nonviolent defense as well.

In making this suggestion, I acknowledge the extraordinary difficulties inflicted on Venezuela by the US sanctions imposed over many years as part of its ‘undeclared war against Venezuela’ (partly designed to destroy its progressive social banking model), explained straightforwardly by Ellen Brown in her article ‘The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us From Transforming Our Economy’ as well as alternative proposals to resolve the crisis, ranging from that by several governments to facilitate dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition – see, for example, ‘Russia Proposes Venezuelan “Peaceful Measures” Initiative to UN’ – to Stephen Lendman’s suggestion that a peacekeeping force be deployed to Venezuela by such countries as Russia, China and non-aligned nations. See ‘Save Venezuelan Sovereignty: Oil Economy Destabilized. Peace-keeping Role by Russia, China, Non-alligned Nations?’

I understand that your first reaction to the idea of a strategy of nonviolent defense might be one of scepticism or even outright disbelief. However, if you are willing to consider what I write below, I will briefly explain why a strategy of nonviolent defense is theoretically and empirically sound, has often been successful in a wide range of contexts in the past, and why I believe it is important and how it can be done.

Of course, I am well aware that this history of successful nonviolent defense is little known because it has been, and still is, suppressed. And yet the history of nonviolent resistance in many diverse contexts clearly demonstrates that a strategy of nonviolent defense has the best chance of defending your country while minimizing the death and destruction in doing so (which does not mean that it would be without cost).

Moreover, if you want to read many carefully documented historical accounts of nonviolent struggles that were successful against military opponents, including those that were ruthlessly violent, you can do so in The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. The book also carefully explains why these successes occurred without incurring heavy casualties on the defense, particularly in comparison to military campaigns and guerrilla struggles.

In my view then, the idea of implementing a strategy of nonviolent defense is important to consider for two essential reasons.

First, you are dealing with an opponent that is insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with a more detailed explanation in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ – incredibly ignorant – see this interview of US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo ‘Venezuelan military will realize Maduro’s time is up: Mike Pompeo’ which is critiqued in these articles ‘Pompeo: America “obligated” to fight “Hezbollah” in Venezuela to save “duly elected” Guaido’ and ‘Pompeo Attempts to Link Iran, Hezbollah to Crisis in Venezuela’ – and grotesquely violent  – see ‘The History – and Hypocrisy – of US Meddling in Venezuela’ and Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II – that, history teaches us, is highly likely to destroy your country to gain the geostrategic advantage and natural resources that control of your country offers, as the people of Iraq and Libya, for example, can testify.

And second: no matter how committed and courageous are the (loyal) members of your military forces and civilian militia (the National Bolivarian Militia of Venezuela), and the military forces of any allies who will stand with you in the defense of Venezuela, even a ‘successful’ outcome, such as that which Syria may be on the verge of ‘celebrating’, will only come at enormous cost in terms of human lives, infrastructure (including national heritage), ecological impact and time, all of which can be far more gainfully employed to continue building Venezuela, including overcoming outstanding problems, as you decide.

The Background

As I know that you are well aware, given the declared interest of the US elite in stealing your natural resources, including oil – see, for example, ‘“Good for business”: Trump adviser Bolton admits US interest in Venezuela’s “oil capabilities”’ and ‘Regime Change for Profit: Chevron, Halliburton Cheer On US Venezuela Coup’ – the US elite has long interfered with – see, for example, ‘US Influence in Venezuela Is Part of a Two Centuries-old Imperial Plan’ – and threatened military invasion of Venezuela to seize control of these resources in clear violation of international law. For recent examples only, see ‘Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says’ and ‘Time for talks “long passed”: US weaponizes aid amid push for regime change in Venezuela’.

Consequently, the US administration has finally used the pretext of an unfair election result in 2018 to call for the overthrow of your government despite the widely accepted result, verified by independent sources, and even the testimony of a former US president that your electoral system is without peer. See ‘Former US President Carter: Venezuelan Electoral System “Best in the World”’.

Moreover, the US puppet Juan Guaidó, anointed by the US to replace your elected President, has effectively indicated his support for US intervention, which clearly reveals where his loyalties lie, his willingness to now provide a pretext for a US invasion, and his complete disregard for the well-being of those Venezuelans who will inevitably be killed, injured and/or dispossessed during an invasion to support the ‘neocon regime-changers’ in Washington. See ‘Venezuela’s self-proclaimed “president” Guaido isn’t ruling out “authorizing” US intervention’ and ‘The Cynicism of Empire: Sen. Rubio Tells Venezuelans to Overthrow Their Government… or Starve!’

This threat of military intervention, as the historical record clearly demonstrates, has every prospect of being carried out. See ‘Before Venezuela: The long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America’ and ‘Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List’.

Despite this threat, as you are aware, President Nicolás Maduro has persisted in offering to discuss the issues arising from this conflict while also calling on the international community to ‘“Stop Trump’s insane actions!” Venezuela’s Maduro talks to RT about avoiding war’ and even writing an appeal to the people of the United States which, of course, was ignored by the corporate media so that it does not even reach a wide audience. See ‘An Open Letter to the People of the United States from President Nicolas Maduro’.

While I applaud your President for his persistent calls for dialogue to resolve this issue – for a recent example, see ‘Maduro Asks International Community to End US’s Threats of War’ – there are simply three realities that make it highly unlikely that his call will be heeded, whether by the US administration that has already rejected such a call – see ‘Time for talks “long passed”: US weaponizes aid amid push for regime change in Venezuela’ – or by the international community, a substantial section of which has already declared their support for the US puppet Juan Guaidó, who has been carefully groomed for a decade for the role he is now playing. See ‘The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader’.

These three realities are those I mentioned above: You are dealing with an insane, incredibly ignorant and grotesquely violent opponent: an elite that seeks geopolitical control and endless resources for profit no matter what the cost to fellow human beings and the biosphere, as the record demonstrates.

Moreover, in seeking to secure its objectives, the US elite will endeavour to control the narrative in relation to Venezuela. Hence, as you have noticed, the corporate media is lying prodigiously about Venezuela as it ‘beats the drums of war’. See, for example, ‘Dissecting the jingoistic media coverage of the Venezuela crisis’, ‘Venezuela Blitz – Part 1: Tyrants Don’t Have Free Elections’, ‘Venezuela Blitz – Part 2: Press Freedom, Sanctions And Oil’ and ‘The BBC and Venezuela: bias and lies’.

For you and those of us outside Venezuela who have some knowledge of your country’s history, we are well aware of the enormous gains made by the Bolivarian movement, despite the enormously damaged country that the movement inherited. See, for example, ‘Venezuela: From Oil Proxy to the Bolivarian Movement and Sabotage’.

This progress, of course, does not mean that all problems have been resolved, most of which have been exacerbated by the sanctions imposed in recent years by the United States government. See, for example, the report by Alfred de Zayas on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Council – ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador’ – which identified the crisis the US ‘economic warfare’ was precipitating. See ‘Former UN Rapporteur: US Sanctions Against Venezuela Causing Economic and Humanitarian Crisis’.

Defending Against a US Military Invasion of Venezuela

So, while your effort to defeat the coup attempt continues, even if the United States military invades Venezuela before or after this issue is resolved, you have the powerful option of resisting any invasion effectively by employing a strategy of nonviolent defense.

I have explained the essential points of this strategy on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. The pages of this website provide clear guidance on how to easily plan and then implement the twelve components of this strategy.

If you like, you can see a diagrammatic representation of this strategy by looking at the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel.

And on the Strategic Aims page you can see the basic list of 30 strategic goals necessary to defeat a military invasion. These strategic goals can easily be adopted, modified and/or added to if necessary, in accordance with your precise circumstances as you decide.

If you want to read a straightforward account of how to plan and conduct a nonviolent tactic so that it has strategic impact, you can do so here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

This will require awareness of the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And, to ensure that the military violence directed against you is made as difficult as possible to perpetrate and, in many cases, does not eventuate, you are welcome to consider the 20 points designed to ensure that you are ‘Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’ whenever you take nonviolent action to defend yourselves when repression is a risk. This information is useful for both neutralizing violent provocateurs but also to ensure that invading military forces are compelled to deal with complex emotional and moral issues that do not arise against a violent opponent who is threatening them, and which will lead some, and perhaps very many, to desist as the historical record clearly documents. Again, for many examples, see The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

Conclusion

The US government and its sycophantic allies might not invade Venezuela. It may transpire that the diplomatic and other efforts of your government to defeat the coup and avert a US-led military invasion of Venezuela will be successful. There is also a fracturing of the opposition forces within Venezuela, in several ways, which works against the success of ongoing efforts to remove your government. See ‘Venezuela Regime Change “Made in the USA”’.

However, the extensive historical evidence of US interventions in violation of international law, the geostrategic and natural resource advantages that will accrue to the US elite from an invasion that removes your elected government, the anointment of a puppet president of Venezuela, the recent posturing and declarations by key members of the US administration and many US-allied governments, and the manufacture of public acquiescence by the corporate media all point heavily in the direction of invasion. And, as you are well aware, it is wise to treat this possibility seriously.

The elite conducting these preparatory moves is insane and, if it attacks Venezuela, there is a serious risk it will destroy your country as it has destroyed Iraq and Libya, especially if it meets significant military resistance. Their insanity precludes them caring about you, the people of Venezuela (even as they present any intervention as ‘humanitarian’). See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. They care about nothing more than geostrategic advantage, eliminating progressive elements of your society’s development, and seizing your natural resources from which they can profit enormously.

Nevertheless, a strategy of nonviolent defense would enable you to defend yourselves and enable every last member of your population, irrespective of age and ability, to be strategically involved, as well as any solidarity activists overseas. It would also minimize the loss of life and destruction inflicted on your country.

Importantly, even if you suffer setbacks, unless and until you accept outright defeat, your strategy of nonviolent defense, ongoingly refined to maintain effective strategic coordination and to retain the initiative, will ultimately prevail.

As always,  however, whether or not you decide to consider/adopt my suggestion, you have my solidarity.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

US sanctions on Venezuela are illegal and are crimes against humanity under international law. If only this genocide could become a topic of conversation throughout the world, especially in the plundered and militarily attacked or targeted nations of the so called Third World, Americans would not be able to get away with it.

The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years has told The Independent the US sanctions on the country are illegal and could amount to “crimes against humanity” under international law.

Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who finished his term at the UN in March, has criticized the US for engaging in “economic warfare” against Venezuela which he said is hurting the economy and killing Venezuelans.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an American lawyer, writer, historian, expert in the field of human rights and international law and retired high-ranking United Nations official. Since 2012, he has been the UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. Education: Harvard Law School.

Mr. De Zayas’s findings are based on his late-2017 mission to the country and interviews with 12 Venezuelan government minsters, opposition politicians, 35 NGOs working in the country, academics, church officials, activists, chambers of commerce and regional UN agencies.

The US imposed new sanctions against Venezuela on 9 March 2015, when President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13692 declaring the country a threat to national security.

The sanctions have since intensified under Donald Trump, who has also threatened military invasion and discussed a coup.

“Sanctions kill,” De Zayas told The Independent, adding that they fall most heavily on the poorest people in society, demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages,

On his fact-finding mission to the country in late 2017, he found internal overdependence on oil, poor governance and corruption had hit the Venezuelan economy hard, but said “economic warfare” practiced by the US, EU and Canada are significant factors in the economic crisis.

Crimes Against Humanity

In the report, Mr de Zayas recommended, among other actions, that the International Criminal Court investigate economic sanctions against Venezuela as possible crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

The US sanctions are illegal under international law because they were not endorsed by the UN Security Council, Mr de Zayas, an expert on international law and a former senior lawyer with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said.

“Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns.

The US Treasury has not responded to a request for comment on Mr de Zayas’s allegations of the effects of the sanctions programme.

United Nations  3 August 2018

Human Rights Council

Thirty-ninth session

–

28 September 2018 Agenda item 3

Note by the Secretariat

The Secretariat has the honour to transmit to the Human Rights Council the report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador,  pursuant to Council resolution 36/4

The above is quoted from:

Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens

‘Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns’ By Michael Selby-Green, the Independent, UK, 26 January 2019 19:00

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html

If only this genocide could become a topic of conversation throughout the world, especially in the plundered and militarily attacked or targeted nations of the so called Third World.

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, and an over-active participant in imperialist intervention in Venezuela, and Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela, and one of the leading proxies in the imperialist venture are facing serious problem. The problems of the two leaders are of two types. But the two are related to interference, and both of the cases are producing similar effect – the problem of credibility.

Media reports said:

Trudeau is being investigated for illegally attempting to shield SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal engineering firm, from criminal fraud and corruption charges. The case involves millions of dollars in bribes to members of government in Libya, a victim of imperialist intervention.

However, Trudeau has “welcomed” the probe. The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has launched the probe a few days ago. By that time, Trudeau has extended his interventionist role in Venezuela.

Two MPs from the New Democrat party made requests for the probe. Before the requests came, the Globe and Mail (G&M) carried a report on the issue last week.

According to the G&M report, the Canadian leader was at the heart of the case, which the Conservative opposition has termed an “unprecedented” effort to illegally influence a criminal proceeding. No law allows anyone to influence any criminal proceeding.

Trudeau, one of the leaders of the imperialist democratic world, allegedly pressured former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to curtail the criminal prosecution of a multi-million-dollar corruption and fraud case against SNC-Lavalin, redirecting the matter out of the courts, and into a “remediation agreement,” which would have spared the company the negative financial and reputational consequences of a criminal trial – the most devastating of which would include a 10-year ban from accepting government contracts, a stipulation which would economically cripple the firm.

When Wilson-Raybould refused to ask federal prosecutors to make the non-prosecution deal with SNC-Lavalin in December, according to the G&M, Trudeau essentially fired her, leaving her to wash up at Veterans Affairs, a significant demotion.

Trudeau denies the allegations. The Canadian leader claims: “Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me or anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.”

Conservative Leader Albert Scheer said: “Obviously Justin Trudeau’s trying to hide something.”

SNC-Lavalin was charged with paying out $48 million in bribes to Libyan officials in the decade leading up to the NATO-led overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in 2011, payments intended to influence government decision-making, though the company was also charged with defrauding Libyan companies of about $130 million.

Intervention and corruption go hand-in-hand.

Problem of a proxy, Guaido

Roger D. Harris with the Campaign to End US/Canada Sanctions against Venezuela writes in “Juan Guaido: The Man Who Would Be President of Venezuela Doesn’t Have a Constitutional Leg to Stand On”:

Donald Trump, the U.S. President, imagines Guaido is the rightful president of Venezuela. But Guaido, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, was exposed by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal as “a product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers.”

Roger Harris refers to Argentinean sociologist Marco Teruggi, who described Guaido as “a character that has been created for this circumstance” of regime change.

These findings, writes Roger Harris, deconstruct Guaido’s constitutional credentials to be interim president of Venezuela.

Educated at George Washington University in Washington, DC, Guaido was unknown in Venezuela before thrusting in the active duty of a proxy warrior. A poll, conducted about a week ago, before Guaido appointed himself president of the country, 81% of Venezuelans had never even heard of the leader.

Roger Harris, also a board member for the 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, informs:

US Vice President Pence phoned Guaido on the evening of January 22 and asked him how’d he like to be made president of Venezuela. The next day, Guaido announced that he considered himself president of Venezuela.

Only a few weeks before to that “historical” self-appointment, Guaido was selected as president of the country’s National Assembly. It was his party’s – Popular Will – turn for the presidency of the assembly.

He was elected to the assembly from a coastal area with 26% of the vote.

Guaido, even within his own party, was not in the top leadership.

Roger Harris, also an election observer in Venezuela for both of Maduro’s elections, most recently on a delegation with Venezuela Analysis and the Intrepid News Fun, writes:

“Popular Will, is a far-right marginal group whose most enthusiastic boosters are John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will had adopted a strategy of regime change by extra-parliamentary means rather than engage with the democratic electoral process and had not participated in recent Venezuelan elections.”

Although anointed by Trump and company, writes Roger Harris, Popular Will is not representative of the “Venezuelan opposition,” a fractious bunch whose hatred of Maduro is only matched by their abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate Henri Falcon, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a neoliberal austerity platform, had been vehemently opposed by Popular Will. The party demanded that Falcon join their US-backed boycott of the election.

In the article, which was published in many alternative news and views outlets, Roger Harris informs:

Ultimas Noticias, a Venezuelan news outlet, reported that prominent opposition politician Henrique Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013, “affirmed during an interview that the majority of opposition parties did not agree with the self-swearing in of Guaido as interim president.”

Claudio Fermin, president of the party Solutions for Venezuela, wrote: “we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in coming to an understanding, we believe Venezuelans need to part ways with the extremist sectors that only offer hatred, revenge, lynching.”

Key opposition governor of the State of Táchira, Laidy Gómez, has rejected Guaido’s support of intervention by the US, warning that it “would generate death of Venezuelans.”

The Guaido/Trump cabal does not reflect the democratic consensus in Venezuela, where polls consistently show super majorities oppose outside intervention. Popular opinion in Venezuela supports negotiations between the government and the opposition. The Maduro administration has embraced the negotiations as a peaceful solution to the crisis.

But the US government rejects a negotiated solution, in the words of Vice President Pence: “This is no time for dialogue; this is time for action.”

This intransigent position is faithfully echoed by Guaido. So while most Venezuelans want peace, the self-appointed president, backed by the full force of US military power, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that it was possible to “end the Maduro regime with a minimum of bloodshed.”

Roger Harris adds:

The Guaido/Trump cabal’s fig leaf for legitimacy is based on the bogus argument that Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National Assembly the power to declare a national president’s “abandonment” of the office. In which case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.

In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.

The function of adjudicating the validity of an election, as in any country, is to be dealt with through court challenges, not by turning to Donald Trump for his approval. And certainly not by anointing an individual from a party that could have run in the 2018 election but decided to boycott.

The National Electoral Council (CNE), Venezuela’s separate electoral branch, has certified Maduro’s reelection, as have independent international observers. A transparent and redundant auditing process of the vote had been conducted at each polling station and all party representatives – including opposition ones – signed off on the validity of the process when the polls closed. Further, no appeal was filed by any of the boycotting parties, although Falcón – who ran – subsequently asserted irregularities in the process before the high court.

Maduro was sworn into office under Article 231 of the Venezuelan constitution before the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), which is the separate high court branch of the Venezuelan government. The TSJ had previously found the National Assembly to be in judicial contempt under Article 336:7, because the assembly had sworn in three deputies temporarily suspended because of voting irregularities.

The far-right opposition has boycotted the high court as well as the electoral process. They contest the legitimacy of the TSJ because some members of the TSJ were appointed by a lame duck National Assembly favorable to Maduro, after a new National Assembly with a majority in opposition had been elected in December 2015 but not yet seated.

Even if President Maduro were somehow deemed to have experienced what is termed a falta absoluta (i.e., some sort of void in the presidency due to death, insanity, absence, etc.), the National Assembly president is only authorized to take over if the falta absoluta occurs before the lawful president “takes possession.” However, Maduro was already “in possession” before the January 10, 2019 presidential inauguration and even before the May 10, 2018 presidential election. Maduro had won the presidency in the 2013 election and ran and won reelection last May.

If the falta absoluta is deemed to have occurred during the first four years of the presidential term, the vice president takes over. Then the constitution decrees that a snap election for the presidency must be held within 30 days. This is what happened when President Hugo Chávez died while in office in 2013. Then Vice President Nicolas Maduro succeeded to the presidency, called for new elections, and was elected by the people of Venezuela.

If it is deemed that the falta absoluta occurred during the last two years of the six-year presidential term, the vice president serves until the end of the term, according to the Venezuelan constitution. And if the time of the alleged falta absoluta is unclear – when Maduro presided over “illegitimate” elections in 2018, as is claimed by the far-right opposition – it is up to the TSJ to decide, not the head of the National Assembly or even such an august authority as US Senator Marco Rubio. Or the craven US press (too numerous to cite), which without bothering to read the plain language of the Bolivarian Constitution, repeatedly refers to Guaido as the “constitutionally authorized” or “legitimate” president.

Roger Harris concludes the article with the following paragraph:

As Alfred de Zayas, United Nations independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, tweeted: “Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution is inapplicable and cannot be twisted into legitimizing Guaido’s self-proclamation as interim President. A coup is a coup.”

• Russia warns the US not to intervene in Venezuela
• The aim of the US coup in Venezuela is to dominate the country’s oil resources
• Arreaza slams indifference of UN members to US coup
• 80% of Venezuelans oppose intervention
• Maduro continues call for peace, dialogue, respect
• Canada Labour Congress with 3M members denounces Trudeau’s support for intervention

The imperialist intervention is Venezuela is increasingly facing resistance. Now, it is from Russia.

Media reports said:

The Russian government has described the “humanitarian aid” offered by the U.S. as an attempt at military intervention in Venezuela.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a telephone call on Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. During the conversation over telephone, Lavrov warned Pompeo against any interference including military into Venezuela’s internal affairs. This information was given by the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement following the phone call.

The Russian Foreign Minister urged his U.S. counterpart to cease threats by Washington on the use of force to promote a change of government in the South American country.

Earlier, Lavrov, in a press conference in Moscow, accused the U.S. of pretending to disguise a military intervention in Venezuela with the arrival of supposed humanitarian aid.

Russia and the Contact Group

The Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Riabkov, said on Tuesday that Russia is interested in being part of the International Contact Group that seeks to find a political solution to the situation.

“We raised the issue before the organizers of a conference in Montevideo from the very start,” he said. “We are interested in Russia’s joining it at least as an observer,” the senior diplomat added.

The official assured that Russia received a report on how the contact process is going, but insisted on the interest by the Kremlin to participate in the process.

Iran opposes US coup in Venezuela

Iran’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Es’hagh Al Habib, said that the aim of the U.S. coup in Venezuela is to dominate the country’s oil resources.

He made the remarks Tuesday while addressing the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states’ meeting on Venezuela, in the Trusteeship Council.

Iranian envoy highlighted that hostile, illegal and provocative policies of the U.S. should be stopped.

He went on to say current development in Venezuela is a domestic issue that does not threaten regional or international peace and security.

Al Habib emphasized that no foreign action can be taken without the explicit consent of the government and no one can instruct Venezuelans what to do or not do, which system to choose or what policies to adopt.

“Most importantly, no country or organization has the right to determine which of the national institutions of another country is democratic or legal. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, only the ‘will of the people’ will be the basis of legitimacy of the state.”

“It is an inherent right that shouldn’t be subject to a condition such as the recognition of a foreign country or organization and should be strongly respected by every UN member state,” he said, adding, “Hence, all the hostile policies of the United States and its illegal and provocative actions must be stopped.”

Arreaza slams indifference of UN members to US coup

The Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said that the government of Nicolas Maduro is willing to sit with the opposition for dialogue, regardless of place, day or time.

During a press conference at the UN Tuesday, Arreaza condemned the attempted coup against Venezuela and accused members of the international body of the indifference before such a scenario

“In Venezuela there is no humanitarian crisis; there is a blockaded and besieged economy […] Enough of so much lies; we came here to defend the truth of Venezuela,” said the diplomat after his meeting with the 120 members of the Movement of Not Aligned Nations (NAM). He accused the U.S. of leading a coup d’état directly and openly “for the first time in the history of Latin America.” He mentioned that once, the U.S. government had operated as sponsor but not as author in coup against other countries. .

“Anything can happen, but there is no reaction” by the U.N. said Arreaza, reading article 4 of the Charter of the international organization and recalling the principles of the organization’s deeds.

Arreaza also said that the government of Nicolas Maduro is willing to sit with the opposition for dialogue, regardless of place, day or time, reiterating that they constantly extend this invitation. “Let’s sit down with the mechanism of Montevideo, with the Caracas mechanism, whatever they want,” he said.

The Bolivarian politician called the opposition “Venezuelan brothers,” assuring that he hopes they will soon become independent from the U.S. and accused foreign forces in Colombia and the U.S., of having boycotted the dialogue between 2016 and 2017 between both parties, with the aim of harming the South American country.

He addressed the peoples of the world to thank them and ask them to continue supporting the government of Venezuela.

80% of Venezuelans oppose intervention

The Vice President for Planning of Venezuela, Ricardo Menendez indicated that the encirclement and financial sabotage by the U.S. has generated losses of 60 billion dollars.

In an interview for teleSUR, Menendez said that about 80 percent of Venezuelans reject any interventionist action against the South American nation

Menendez indicated that the figure is derived from the recent study conducted by the Venezuelan Planning Institute over a period of two years.

The official said that the results of the analysis contrasts with the story the opposition has tried to write over the so-called crisis in the country.

The results of the study show 92 percent of people responded negatively to a military invasion of Venezuela and 86.5 percent rejected the financial sanctions imposed unilaterally by the U.S.

Menendez said that the results of the study are a sample of how anti-imperialist thinking is intrinsic to the Venezuelan people.

For the past week, millions of Venezuelan citizens have also been lining up to sign on to an open letter that will be issued to U.S. citizens that ask for peace and non-intervention.

During the interview, he said that since 2015, the Venezuelan opposition has maintained the idea that Venezuela is in a humanitarian crisis and that such an argument has been used to validate a military invasion.

He warned that Venezuela is the victim of a psychological war and assured that the siege and economic sabotage against the Bolivarian country has caused it to lose more than US$60 billion in the last three years.

Part of the psychological war is based on misinformation and fake news about humanitarian aid and access roads into the country, which include assertions of instability along the border of Colombia, and the closing of access roads that have been restricted for years.

Maduro continues call for peace, dialogue, respect

Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, urged citizens to “unite the national spirit, the national determination around peace.”

Maduro continues his call for peace, dialogue, and the defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty during Tuesday’s 205 Annual Youth Day celebrations.

“I want peace for Venezuela, we all want peace for Venezuela, for the war drums to drift away, for the threats of military invasion to recede and for Venezuela to say with a single chorus, with one voice: We want peace! Happiness,” Maduro told the roaring crowds.

Celebrating the nation’s 205 anniversary of the Battle of La Victoria, the president urged citizens to “unite the national spirit, the national determination around peace.”

Marches traveled from the Plaza Morelos to the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas in a frenzy of flags, posters, and chants, denouncing the attempted coup d’état promoted by the United States on Jan. 23.

“When the story is written in 200 years this generation will be remembered as a brilliant generation that defended the Homeland. I’m sure,” the president said.

Canada Labour Congress denounces Trudeau’s support for intervention

As Canada joins efforts by the Venezuelan right-wing opposition, the United States, and right-wing governments in Latin America to oust democratically elected President Maduro, Canada’s Labour Congress, representing over three million Canadian workers, in a statement has called on the Trudeau government to promote dialogue instead of intervention and a military coup.

“Venezuelans need to resolve their differences through constructive dialogue and democratic processes without resorting to violence,” said CLC President Hassan Yussuff.

“The CLC is alarmed at the escalation of international interference in the democratic process of a sovereign nation, including the possibility of military intervention,” the press release by the massive worker organization warned. “The CLC vehemently rejects a militarized solution to this crisis; the people of Latin America have not forgotten the brutal history of military rule in the region.”

The statement went on to urge the Canadian government not to promote or support regime change policy that is being sought by the government of the United States and its allies adding, “Canada’s role on the world stage is better suited to promote stability through constructive dialogue with the international community.”