video

In midst of an interesting and wide-ranging discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said that if elected president she would drop all charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“What would you do about Julian Assange? What would you do about Edward Snowden?” Rogan asked in the latter part of the episode.

“As far as dropping the charges?” Gabbard asked.

“If you’re president of the world right now, what do you do?”

“Yeah, dropping the charges,” Gabbard replied.

Rogan noted that Sweden’s preliminary investigation of rape allegations has just been re-opened, saying the US government can’t stop that, and Gabbard said as president she’d drop the US charges leveled against Assange by the Trump administration.

(Article by Caitlin Johnson, republished with thanks from https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/14/gabbard-says-shed-drop-all-charges-against-assange-and-snowden/.)

“Yeah,” Gabbard said when asked to clarify if she was also saying that she’d give Edward Snowden a presidential pardon, adding, “And I think we’ve got to address why he did things the way that he did them. And you hear the same thing from Chelsea Manning, how there is not an actual channel for whistleblowers like them to bring forward information that exposes egregious abuses of our constitutional rights and liberties. Period. There was not a channel for that to happen in a real way, and that’s why they ended up taking the path that they did, and suffering the consequences.”

This came at the end of a lengthy discussion about WikiLeaks and the dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration is setting for press freedoms by prosecuting Assange, as well as the revelations about NSA surveillance and what can be done to roll back those unchecked surveillance powers.

“What happened with [Assange’s] arrest and all the stuff that just went down I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech,” Gabbard said. “We look at what happened under the previous administration, under Obama. You know, they were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him, because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who’s publishing information or saying things that the government doesn’t want you to say, and sharing information the government doesn’t want you to share. And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers. And you can look to those in traditional media and also those in new media, and also every one of us as Americans. It was a kind of a warning call, saying Look what happened to this guy. It could happen to you. It could happen to any one of us.”

Gabbard discussed Mike Pompeo’s arbitrary designation of WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence service, the fact that James Clapper lied to Congress about NSA surveillance as Director of National Intelligence yet suffered no consequences and remains a respected TV pundit, and the opaque and unaccountable nature of FISA warrants.

Some other noteworthy parts of Gabbard’s JRE appearance for people who don’t have time to watch the whole thing, with hyperlinks to the times in the video:

• Rogan gets Gabbard talking in depth about what Bashar al-Assad was actually like when she met him and what he said to her, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone bother to do before.
• The two discuss Eisenhower’s famous speech warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and actually pause their dialogue to watch a good portion of it. Gabbard points out that in the original draft of the speech, Eisenhower had intended to call it the “congressional-military-industrial complex”.
• Good discussion on internet censorship and the dangers of allowing monopolistic Silicon Valley corporations to control public speech, then later discussing the possibility of breaking up these corporations or treating them as public utilities.
• Rogan asks Gabbard what she thinks happens to US presidents that causes them to fail to enact their campaign promises and capitulate to the will of the warmongering establishment, and what as president she’ll do to avoid the same fate. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question.
• Rogan asks Gabbard how she’ll stand against the billionaires for the American people without getting assassinated. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question as well.

I honestly think the entire American political system would be better off if the phoney debate stage format were completely abandoned and presidential candidates just talked one-on-one with Joe Rogan for two and a half hours instead. Cut through all the vapid posturing and the fake questions about nonsense nobody cares about and get them to go deep with a normal human being who smokes pot and curses and does sports commentary for cage fighting. Rogan asked Gabbard a bunch of questions that real people are interested in, in a format where she was encouraged to relax out of her standard politician’s posture and discuss significant ideas sincerely and spontaneously. It was a good discussion with an interesting political figure and I’m glad it’s already racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

________________________

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“Face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Green Parties are not going to move on this issue on anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.” We have to deal with the magic pudding myth which says the world's poor can achieve western standards of living that people living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living, that we can maintain our current rate of population growth, and we can protect the environment. It is a lie. You've heard Al Gore talking about climate change and inconvenient truth? Well, this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue, but it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. Researchers who've looked at this say there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth's population was no more than two billion. Kelvin also suggests that we ask political candidates if they would support Australia sponsoring a population treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population. (Speech made at SPA Brisbane Seminar 27 April 2019).

Text for speech: The Political Impasse - Where To From Here?

Speech to Sustainable Population Australia National Conference Saturday 27 April 2019.

My first response to the question “Where to from here” is that we need to seize the high moral ground. Now in the political party which I was a member of for over 40 years, there is a saying “In the race of life, always back the horse called self-interest. It doesn’t always win, but it always gives you a bloody good run for your money”.

And because population stability would serve so many Australians, particularly younger ones, better than rapid population growth, it is indeed very tempting for us to pitch our arguments in that direction. But the population debate is not fundamentally a debate about putting a few more dollars in people’s pockets. It is a debate about values. It is a debate about what kind of world we are going to live in, and what kind of world we are going to pass on to our children.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of commentators and social media smart alecs trying to paint anyone who raises the issue of population as racist or selfish. The opposite is the truth, and we should unashamedly claim the high moral ground.

In August it will be ten years since I first advanced in the Federal Parliament two propositions - that the world had a population problem, and that Australia has a population problem.

As that tenth anniversary approaches I have reflected on what has been achieved since then, and the short answer is, not much. There are few signs of a shift towards population stability and sustainability either globally or here in Australia, and the debate about population continues to be dominated by the greed of the political right, and the vanity of the political left.

But to get a clearer perspective on the population issue, I prefer to go back not 10 years to 2009, but 50 years to 1969. In the summer of 69 Bryan Adams was playing his guitar till his fingers bled. And I was a teenager getting interested in the environment and politics. My father and I got involved in the campaign to save the Little Desert and the Lower Glenelg River in Victoria from being cleared for agriculture.

That successful campaign saw the establishment of the Victorian Land Conservation Council. It was a time that seemed to me to mark the establishment of the modern conservation movement, not just in Victoria, but in many other parts of the world.

I had a very rosy view of the future. I thought Australia’s pioneers had made a lot of environmental mistakes, but we were learning from those mistakes, and in future we were going to properly protect our unique and beautiful birds, plants and animals.

I had a pretty rosy view about everything else, too. I thought that not only were we lifting our environmental game, but that EVERYTHING would get better.

Yes we were involved in a stupid war in Vietnam, but I thought that that the Second World War and the Holocaust committed on the Jewish people was so wicked and so evil that we had learned from that. That there was an appetite for peace. That war and conflict would become a thing of the past, and things would continue to get better and better.

So what has actually happened in the last 50 years? The world’s population has more than doubled - 3.6 billion back then, 7.7 billion now. Australia’s population has also more than doubled - from 12 and a quarter million then to 25 million now.

The effect of this on the world’s wildlife has been nothing short of catastrophic. The latest WWF Living Planet Report says that since 1970, 60% of the population of all mammals, birds, reptiles and fish has been lost. 60% in less than 50 years!

This is terrible, it is a disgrace, and it makes an absolute mockery of the idea that we’re decoupling growth from environmental damage- that we can continue to grow, and our wildlife won’t disappear. Let me repeat - in the last 50 years our numbers went up by over 50%, and the world’s wildlife went down by 60%.

Co-incidence? Hardly. As has been noted by The Overpopulation Project, the total weight of vertebrate land animals 10,000 years ago was - Humans 1%, Wild Animals 99%. Today it is the Wild Animals that are the 1%. Humans are 32%, and our livestock are 67%.

So in my view there are two aspects to claiming the high moral ground. The first is to focus on this environmental havoc and destruction. Part of this should include being involved in the climate change debate. For example, the 2018 Victorian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report shows total net greenhouse gas emissions went up by 7% between 1990 and 2016. Transport emissions went up by 39%, due to an increase in the number of passenger vehicles by over 70,000 each and every year.

The report explicitly noted that “population growth is an important driver of emissions trends in a number of sectors and sub sectors”.

So Victoria’s rapid population growth of over 100,000 each year fatally undermines all the good work being done by Government Departments and agencies, Councils, business, community groups, families and individuals to reduce our greenhouse emissions. It is indeed pretty hard to reduce your carbon footprint when you keep adding more feet.

We need to cultivate a knowledge and love of the natural world. We should be demanding that environmental education be taught in schools, and that our children are given contact with nature. People will value and protect what they know and love, and the level of ecological ignorance and illiteracy in the year 2019 is frightening.

Dr Harry Recher says we need to act as if other species mattered as much as our own, and accept that we have a moral responsibility to share resources with other species, rather than sacrificing other species for pointless human aggrandisement. The ultimate goal of human societies is not ever more economic activity or the heaping up of endless wealth, but creating communities that allow their members to live good lives.

Dr Recher calls out the failure of the modern environmental movement to address overpopulation. He says that for the most part Australia’s environmental groups fail to discuss population matters, leaving Australia’s population policy to be made by greedy businessmen and politicians lacking in environmental concern. He says we need more discussion of population matters, not less.

I also agree with Dr Freya Mathews, who says that taking biodiversity preservation as the central goal of conservation sets the bar too low. Preventing species from becoming extinct is too modest.

Conservationists want to preserve abundant, wild nature. When we get to the point where our children will only see a platypus or a bandicoot in a zoo or a cartoon, or we’re down to our last few hundred lions and tigers, being restricted to isolated disconnected refuges, more and more of which are gated, high security compounds, then we’ve pretty much lost the plot.

To its great credit, Zoos Victoria has an Extinction Denied Program that includes captive breeding Orange Bellied Parrots. However some of the Parrots can’t get enough feed in the wild to get the strength to fly across Bass Strait to Tasmania, which is Orange-bellied Parrot custom and practice. So Qantas has been flying them across in planes. It feels like life imitating art, where Air New Zealand commercials star a white duck flying by plane across the Tasman.

Now I give full marks to Zoos Victoria and Qantas for their efforts and commitment, but when the birds need a plane to get across Bass Strait, this is not nature in all its beauty and awe-inspiring diversity, these are pathetic splintered remnants of a world we’ve laid waste to.

Dr Mathews says we have to concede that wild animals are, like sovereign peoples, entitled to their territories and ecological estates. The biosphere was shaped by wildlife as much as it was shaped for us and by us, and belongs to them as much as it belongs to us. We have no right to dispossess wild things of their ranges or degrade their environment to the point where it can no longer sustain them.

So we need to seize the high moral ground by focusing on the state of the environment. The 15000 scientists from 184 countries who issued the World Scientists Warning to Humanity in 2017 said we are jeopardising our future “by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats”. They said “By failing to adequately limit population growth, ....humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere”.

One immediate aspect of this, which I encourage you to contact your election candidates and representatives about during this election campaign and indeed beyond, is vegetation cover or tree canopy cover. We need our trees and plants and grasses. It’s not just an environmental question, it’s a public health one. The good news is that drones and satellite imagery and the like enable vegetation cover to be monitored with a degree of precision we’ve never had before. The bad news is that our vegetation canopy cover is declining. So I urge you to contact your political representatives and candidates and ask them to commit to maintaining, and where possible increasing, the vegetation canopy cover in your electorate, on both public and private land. People simply have to stop bulldozing and chopping trees and shrubs down. It has to stop.

The second aspect of seizing the high moral ground is to put population in a global context. Much of our discussion focuses on Australia, as it should, but it seems to me that (a) unless there is action in other countries, no matter what we do in Australia the world is still going to go to hell in a handbasket, and (b) much of our credibility and moral authority comes from taking the global view.

We need to build alliances with like minded people in other countries, and particularly build alliances across religious and ethnic divides.

An important aspect of focussing on the issue of rapid global population growth is that there is a magic pudding myth which is implicit in much of the political debate, including from politicians and activists from the left, who really ought to know better. It goes like this -
The world’s poor can achieve Western standards of living
People living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living
We can maintain our current rate of population growth
We can protect our environment.

It’s a lie. You’ve heard Al Gore talking about climate change as an inconvenient truth; well this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue. But it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. In 2010 a group of researchers who studied this question in depth estimated that there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth’s population was no more than 2 billion.

In 2013 Theodore Lianos estimated that we could maintain ecological equilibrium, and all have a per capita annual income of $11,000, with a global population of 2.5 billion or less. If the population is larger than 2.5 billion, which of course it is, ecological and social equilibrium requires lower standards of living.

Like the environmental question, there are ways of raising the global population issue in the current Federal Election and beyond. There has been some great work done by Rob Harding promoting the idea of a United Nations Global Population Stabilisation Treaty. This seems to me to have a lot of potential. Indeed it should be much easier to reach agreement around the idea of each country stabilising it’s own population, than to get agreement around emissions reductions targets in the Climate Change talks, where of course serious questions of global equity and historical legacies arise.

I encourage you to contact your candidates and elected representatives, during the election campaign or beyond, and ask them - “Would you support Australia sponsoring a Population Treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population?”

We also need to talk about fertility. If you think talking about migration is tough, try talking about fertility in a culture that views pregnancy and childbirth as an unmitigated blessing. But right around the world it has to happen, and indeed some countries or communities have had success with “Two is Enough” type campaigns.

After taking the high moral ground through a focus on the environment and global population growth, we need to acknowledge that neither the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or the Greens is going to do anything serious about this issue except at the point of an electoral gun. This is a very hard thing for me to say. I have spent a lifetime in the Labor Party - I think I attended over a thousand Branch Meetings! - and in many ways I still love the Labor Party.

But these parties, until further notice, are all about suppressing and killing off this issue by any means or devices they can come up with. We need a non-racist party that takes a firm line on population and migration. That is why I have joined the Sustainable Australia Party. It has no time for racists or racism. It believes in the non-discriminatory migration policy. It is a party of the centre. Unlike populist parties of the right like One Nation, it believes in strong action on climate change and to protect the environment. It believes in strong gun laws. It believes in action to tackle indigenous disadvantage.

But it doesn’t accept the trebling of Australia’s migration program which started about 15 years ago. We want to return the program from the 200,000 per annum it is now to 70,000, which is where it used to be - in the Whitlam years and the Keating years it was actually lower than that.

So in conclusion - the question I was asked to answer was “where to from here?” First, seize the high moral ground with a focus on the environment and global population issues. Second, push elected representatives with challenging but not unreasonable asks like maintenance of our remaining vegetation cover, and support for a global population treaty. And third, face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Greens Parties are not going to move on this issue at anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.

And as for the question this Forum asks - “what future do we want for Australia?” - the future I want is one in which my children, and their generation, have the same job security and opportunity we had, and can afford a post secondary education and a house with a garden and the chance to see owls and platypus in the wild the way we could. Oh, and the Orange-bellied Parrots can fly across Bass Strait without a boarding pass.

An impressive video that misses almost no aspect of what the growth lobby is doing to this country, and backs up its criticism with some interesting new policies, some of them drastic - but the situation is drastic. Matt Bryan for Hughes

"Algorithms seem to me, at this point, the closest thing we have to demons." (Douglas Rushkoff) Douglas Rushkoff is a highly stimulating speaker with a comprehensive but original view of the problem of internet tyranny. He approaches it as a problem of monopolies and corporations in the context of economic growthism, which he argues is unsustainable and ultimately destroys companies because it costs them too much. He recommends long-term business models, which aim to support their participants. He notes that family businesses tend to do better and last longer because they have this model, rather than the growth model. In his lecture he is able to travel across several disciplines, back and forth, and to tie economics to society and soil degradation. He makes concrete and inventive recommendations. This is less about internet censorship than about the destruction of local markets and the sidelining of entire populations. Rushkoff is the author of multiple books, but in this video, he talks about a 2016 publication called, Throwing rocks at the google bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.

The Black Alliance for Peace joined activists from peace organizations based in the United States to embark as a delegation to Venezuela to uncover the truth. They are reporting to you on march 15, 2019, the day they were supposed to fly back to the United States. While American Airlines refuses to fly to Venezuela because of so-called danger, this delegation found the embattled country pleasant and safe.
Learn more about the U.S. intervention in Venezuela: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fblackallianceforpeace.com%2Fnewsletter%2Fbapheadstovenezuela&v=SvN-8VvmLZg&event=video_description&redir_token=2iBNPSrsrcVHCMnrD6-emVCYAkt8MTU1MjgzNDU2MUAxNTUyNzQ4MTYx

This program from Press tv Iran is interesting and useful in bringing us up to date. Iranians know a thing or two about oil production and the oil market. The issues of peak demand and peak production are very hard to estimate and no-one here pretends to have the answers, but a number of factors are canvassed, including US President Trump. As usual, however, in such programs, population growth and economic growth are skirted around. Similarly, increasing efficiency among OECD countries is taken as a given, and increasing consumption among 'developing' countries is also taken as a given. The elephant in the room is, of course, when does peak demand meet peak production.

The global demand for oil is predicted to be rising at least for the few coming decades.

The projection stems from several factors. One of the major reasons is the expectation of a drastic rise in the number of vehicles on the roads.

Economic Divide caught up with Dr. Ali Shams Ardekani to discuss the future demand of oil. He should know a thing or two about the oil industry. He serves as the President of the Iran Business For Future.

He is the current head of the energy commission for the Ministry of Oil, Planning and Development and the Ministry of Industry and Mining in Iran. People across the world are getting more and more mobile. They are expected to use more cars for transportation and also trucks for transiting consumer goods as fast as possible.

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist. While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointment. The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice. Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000

By Leith van Onselen

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist.

While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointing.

The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice.

Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000s:

Nor how immigration is the defacto driver of Australia’s population increase – both directly as migrants step off the plane, as well as indirectly when they have children (then counted as ‘natural increase’). This was made explicit by the Productivity Commission’s 2016 Migrant Intake Australia report, which showed that Australia’s population would barely increase without immigration:

While the segment at least didn’t include spruiker ‘demographers’ like Liz Allen or Peter McDonald, it instead replaced them with another cookie-cutter demographer from ANU. One wonders why Bob Birrell wasn’t contacted, who has been a strong critique of Australia’s ‘Big Australia’ Program:

Finally, the spokesperson for Infrastructure Australia (IA) claimed that “population growth is an opportunity” – conveniently ignoring that IA has issued several recent stark warnings about infrastructure failing to keep pace with population growth, as well as ignoring IA’s own recent projections showing that living standards in both Sydney and Melbourne will be crushed as their populations surge to 7.4 million and 7.3 million by 2046:

Again, while I will reserve judgement until the final two parts are aired, I am not hopeful that The ABC will analyse this issue correctly and actually inform debate.

[email protected]

Here is the Unconventional Economist, Leith van Onselen's talk at the Sustainable Australia Party venue.

Professor Bob Birrell [1] calls for better planning to stop over-development, sustainable population policy reform at a Sustainable Australia Party event. "Net overseas immigration is completely dominating the figures." The politicians tell us, "We just have to get used to it, and the way we're going to deal with it is to throw literally billions at it ... and ... eliminate suburbia." "That's what they say. But rezoning and high density doesn't actually work. The houses are too expensive. The reason is site costs. The more people the more demand for housing. If you increase the opportunity for housing on the same site, the site values go up higher.... It doesn't work." "Nor does the high rise 'solution'. You know there are tens of thousands of these being completed. When we checked the 2016 census, what we found was, that in the two areas of greatest density, CBD and South bank, only 5% of all those appartments were occupied by families with children. Well, what are we going to do about it? We have to deal with high NOM (Net Overseas Migration), it's not inevitable - and this is the key point. The high levels of NOM at present are due to government policy or government non-policy. They are a deliberate consequence of government policy. Not inevitable. For example, overseas students. It is a fact that the biggest source of growth in Net Overseas Migration in Melbourne is overseas students. There are more overseas students coming in on a student's visa each year than are leaving holding a student's visa. Okay, we don't object to students coming here for an education. the problem is that, once they get here and complete their education, they can stay on, more or less forever. Our governments have deliberately encouraged them to do so. By providing, as of right, a two year stay here, with full work rights - even if your degree is in cultural studies - and, when you've done that, you can get another student visa. Or you can become a tourist, or you can get a working holiday visa, or you can apply for a 457 temporary visa. Or you can apply for a permanent entry visa. And, as a consequence, a big chunk of overseas students are just spinning out ... over the years. So, we can change that and that would have a major impact. There are many other areas we could change. I'll just give you one or two to finish, which you may not know about. You've probably heard a lot about 'regional policy' - 'maybe we'll put people in the bush, rather than let them stay in Melbourne or Sydney. Well, currently, there's a program near 30,000 visas strong for state and regional sponsorship. The problem is that these visas do not require people to actually stay in the states or regions that sponsor them. They very quickly move off and they end up in Sydney or Melbourne. Or, consider this, and I'll finish on this note, consider the policy on spouses. [...] what happens in Australia is that you can sponsor a spouse at the age of 18 and you do not have to show that you have a job or an income which will enable you to sustain that spouse. I'm not kidding you. This is the situation. Compare that with Europe. Most countries now, you've got to be at least 22 before you sponsor a spouse, and you've got to prove that you have the funds to support that spouse. I could go on. There is massive potential to bring down the numbers. [...] We have to get the numbers down if we are really coming to grips with Melbourne's crisis of overdevelopment. I'll just leave you with one final thought, and that is that at least public opinion is moving in the right direction. [refers to TAPRIS study] Some 54 % of voters now believe that immigration should be reduced. The polls this year are putting the numbers in the 60%, so the potential is there. May I wish [Sustainable Australia Party] the best in mobilising it."

Notes

[1] Although Bob Birrell's publications in demography are very well known, his qualifications are much greater: Bob Birrell (PhD Princeton – Sociology) was Reader in Sociology and the founding director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University. He was the joint editor of the demographic journal People and Place (with Katharine Betts) from 1993 to 2010. His appointment with Monash University finished in 2014. He has been a consultant and advisor to successive Australian governments on immigration policy, most recently as part of Coalition Government’s Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories, published in 2006. His research covers Australian history (A Nation of Our Own – Longman 2005), Australian education policy, urban affairs and immigration practice and policy. His most recent international publications include, ‘Media Effects and Immigration Policy in Australia,’ in Gary Freeman, et al., Eds, Immigration and Public Opinion in Liberal Democracies, Routledge, 2013 and ‘Migration: the Australian experience,’ in Sasha Bangalay and Delphine Nakache, Eds, Immigration Regulation in Federal States, Springer, 2014.

[Video inside] An internationally acclaimed film of Paga Hill community’s fight for justice from the illegal eviction and demolition of their homes in downtown Port Moresby has been banned from screening today at the PNG Human Rights Festival. It is known as 'The Opposition Film'. See trailer and details of showings here. There is a lot of Australian involvement in this disgraceful powerplay, including NSW court system and Australian developers. However, what is happening in PNG is also happening to Australians, who mostly fail to realise that they are also being treated and exploited like a 'developing country'.

“The ban highlights the lingering limits on free speech in our country and the continued attempts to censor our story of resistance against gross human rights violations” [1], claimed Paga Hill leader Joe Moses, the main character in The Opposition film who had to seek exile in the United Kingdom after fighting for his community’s rights.[2],[3]

“This censorship comes as a deep disappointment for my community who have suffered greatly over the past 6 years.”

The Opposition film tells the David-and-Goliath battles of a community evicted, displaced, abandoned – their homes completely demolished at the hands of two Australian-run companies, Curtain Brothers and Paga Hill Development Company, and the PNG state. What was once home to 3000 people of up to four generations, Paga Hill is now part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit ‘AELM Precinct’ which will take place this November.[4],[5]

Mr. Moses continued, “We appreciate the PNG Human Rights Film Festival for choosing to screen The Opposition film at their Madang and Port Moresby screenings.”

“It is shameful that our government continues to limit free speech and put such pressure on our country’s only annual arts and human rights event. How does this make us look to the world leaders who will be coming here for the APEC meeting in November?”

Under the theme “Tokautnau long senisim tumora" (Speak up today to change tomorrow) the mission of the PNG Human Rights Film Festival includes “We are all born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that the international and local human rights films “promote increased respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights in Papua New Guinea.”

Paga Hill youth leader Allan Mogerema, who also features in the film stated, “The right to freedom of speech and freedom of press is provided for under Section 46 of the PNG Constitution. By banning our story, the PNG government is in breach of our Constitution and our rights as Papua New Guinean citizens.”[6]

As a Human Rights Defender, Mr. Mogerema has been invited to the 2018 Annual Human Rights and People’s Diplomacy Training Program for Human Rights Defenders from the Asia-Pacific Region and Indigenous Australia organised by The Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) and The Judicial System Monitoring Programme (JSMP) to share his story of the illegal land grab, eviction and demolition of his community.

“The film has already been screened in settlements across PNG and at the Human Rights Film Festival’s Madang screenings. No matter how hard they try to censor us, our story continues to live, and our fight for justice continues to thrive", continued Mr. Mogerema.

"No matter how long it takes our community will get justice!”

NOTES

[1]. Dame Carol Kidu is also featured in The Opposition film. Initially an advocate for the Paga Hill community, Dame Carol turns her back on them by setting up a consultancy to be hired by the Paga Hill Development Corporation, on a contract of $178,000 for three months' work. In 2017 she launched a legal action in the Supreme Court of NSW to censor the film. In June 2017, the court ruled against Dame Carol's application.

[2]. "I was scared for my life": Paga Hill activist seeks asylum in the UK, ABC Pacific Beat, 11 August 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/radio-australia/programs/pacificbeat/i-was-scared-for-my-life:-paga-hill-activist-seeks/8796558

[3]. Papua New Guinea land activist vows to battle for his people from Britain, 8 August 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-papua-landrights-police/papua-new-guinea-land-activist-vows-to-battle-for-his-people-from-britain-idUSKBN1AO1GD

[4]. Aid to PNG without justice is no help at all, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2017, https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/aid-to-png-without-justice-is-no-help-at-all-20170609-gwoeq4.html

[5]. Port Moresby settlers evicted to make way for Australian-backed development 'abandoned', Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 2017, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/port-moresby-settlers-evicted-to-make-way-for-australianbacked-development-abandoned-20170609-gwodh2.html

[6]. Constitution of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/44016/70625/F868019216/PNG44016.pdf

Interview begins around 9.40 minutes into the show.Gung-ho interviewer, Bart Chilton, apparently hoping to recommend investing in Australian stocks, found out that Australia's economy is about as diverse as Uganda's and Ethiopia's, that it consists of holes and houses, and that Australian governments have stupidly marketised energy, making costs too high for Australian manufactures. "Energy and telecommunications are both being disastrously mishandled." Banks and mines dominate the Australian stock exchange, which reminds Keen of when they dominated the Japanese stock exchange - just before the 1990 bubble burst, with no important banks situated in Japan anymore. Our stock market is trivial compared to our bond market. Dr Keen also mentions the , which is worth a look.

The United States of Arms from Will Geary on Vimeo.

This little-known documentary contains rare and compelling footage of Greek villages and Greek partisans during World War 2. It also interviews male and female partisans who survived a series of international betrayals. In 1940 Mussolini attacked Greece from its colony of Albania. The attack was repulsed and the Greeks conquered one third of Albania in their counter attacks. At the time, Greece was Britain's only ally against Nazi Germany in Europe. (France Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Luxumbourg had all been conquered.) Four years later, Britain savagely turned on the same heroic Greeks who had resisted the Italians and subsequently fought against their Nazi German-allied occupiers. It was only possible for the British to succeed because the communist ELAS-Partisans trusted the Greek Communist Party (KKE).

After they landed in October 1944, the British pretended to arrest former Greek collaborators and saved them from furious Greek crowds in Athens. The former collaborators were 'imprisoned' in a hotel overlooking the central Athens. During one of the protests by Athenians against the British, the 'arrested' former collaborators opened fire on the Athenian crowds, killing many.

This provoked a ferocious fightback against the British by the ELAS-Partisans. So fierce was their fight that the British were forced to get reinforcements from the Italian front and from Belgium, where they were fighting the German Ardennes offensive. However, the communist Greek KKE, under Stalin's orders, then agreed to completely disarm and return to their homes in the suburbs of Athens and elsewhere. This was under the pretext of recognising the British puppet forces as the legitimate national Greek army.

In the suburbs of Athens many former ELAS fighters became victims of gangs of former collaborators. Many ELAS fighters were imprisoned by the British and their puppets.

In 1946 those ELAS fighters who had fled to the mountains, and many more, who had escaped from Greece, restarted the civil war against the Greek dictatorship. From 1946-1948 the ELAS partisans (who had changed their name to the Democratic Army). With heroism and brilliant leadership, they outfought superior numbers of government forces, with many from the government forces defecting to the Democratic Army. However, the Greek Government started to overcome the Democratic Army, now with the aid of United States military 'advisors' and the CIA, and from the same source, the provision of war planes capable of dropping napalm, a fearsome new weapon of the time. The Democratic Army was further hamstrung by instructions from the KKE leadership to engage in conventional warfare rather than guerilla warfare, thus enabling the government to more effectively use its numerical and logistic superiority against the Democratic Army partisans. The fighting ended in 1949, when the last of the Democratic Army partisans fled across the border into Albania. From Albania, many were granted 'exile' in the Soviet Union.

Oksana Boyko (pictured right) in US vs UN? Ft. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations her Worlds Apart interview of Sunday 24 June, generally discussed how the United Nations should handle conflicts between the United States and Russia its two most powerful members . The discussion included at least two issues which are of concern to this site, candobetter.net : 1. Border control in the United States and Europe, and 2. Syria.

Antonio Guterres attempted to put all the arguments by proponents of open borders and they were all effectively rebutted by Oksana Boyko. At one point in the discussion, after she stated that the United States as well as European countries, have the right to control their borders Oksana was accused of listening to Fox News, that is the station which features Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and other outspoken advocates for the effective control of the United States border with Mexico. The video, embedded below, is easily worth the 28 minutes of your time required to watch it.

Later in the program Oksana Boyko put to Antonio Guterres that the United Nations should oppose the United Sates' schemes to partition Syria and preserve Syria's territorial integrity. [1]

Footnote[s]

[1] The partitioning of Syria is also supported by the group Australians for Kurdistan. The group absurdly maintains that, with up to 20 U.S. military bases in Syria's Kurdistan (acccording to RT on 1 Mar 2018 and other sources) the YPG (an acronym for "People's Protection Units") is building a communist or anarchist society which is also a beacon of women's liberation. The convenor of "Australians for Kurdistan" is John Tully. In Hitler of the Middle East (6/2/18) | Tasmanian Times, ostensibly an attack on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Tully smears the popularly elected President of Syria, as "the Syrian dictator". Nowhere in his writings does Tully show any concern for the fate of Syria, including the 80,000 soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, amongst the 400,000 citizens of Syria, who have been killed in the war against Syria since March 2011 in which which Erdogan has been complicit. That would come far closer to justifying Tully's emotive likening of Erdogan to Hitler than any of his actions against Kurdish secessionists in recent years.

There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its arsenal has never been inspected by any international agency. But this nation is not Iran. It's Israel. (James Corbett)

The Transcript below has been republished from https://www.corbettreport.com/israelinukes/
TRANSCRIPT

DONALD TRUMP: I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In a few moments I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating US nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.

SOURCE: President Trump Gives Remarks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

When President Trump announced that the US was going to de-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and reinstitute sanctions on that country, one of the reasons he cited for that move was the presentation of “new” evidence from Israeli intelligence showing that the Iranians had lied about its nuclear program during the negotiation of that deal.

TRUMP: Last week Israel published intelligence documents long concealed by Iran conclusively showing the Iranians regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: A few weeks ago, in a great intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of the material inside these vaults. And here’s what we got; 55,000 pages. Another 55,000 files on 183 CDs. Everything you’re about to see is an exact copy of the original Iranian material

SOURCE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives statement on Iran Nuclear Deal

Theatrical props and dramatic rhetoric aside, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent presentation on the “Iranian nuclear deal” in fact contained no new information.

That Iran had explored a nuclear weapons program prior to 2003 has been known and admitted for years. That they have an archive of this information is not a violation of the Iranian nuclear deal completed in 2015. In fact, if anything, Netanyahu’s presentation actually proved the exact opposite of what was intended: Namely, that Iran is abiding by the terms of that treaty and is not covertly pursuing any nuclear weapons activity. That’s why they had to go back to 15 year old information and present it as if it was something new and revelatory.

But here’s the real head-scratcher in this new round of propaganda over the Iranian nuclear non-threat: There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its arsenal has never been inspected by any international agency. But this nation is not Iran. It’s Israel.

This is the story of the real Middle East Nuclear Threat. You’re watching The Corbett Report.

Hand-wringing over Iran’s nuclear program is nothing new. It became a mainstay of western political discourse after an Iranian dissident revealed the Iranian government’s plans for a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in August 2002. But the surprising fact for Americans and others around the world who get their information from the corporate mainstream media, is that Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear weapons program has long been known and admitted. Since 2003, when the program was scrapped, not a single piece of evidence has been presented (not even by Netanyahu or the Israeli government) that the Iranian government ever pursued anything other than what it said it was pursuing: a nuclear energy program.

Not that that fact has ever stopped Netanyahu from using any opportunity to use cartoon-level propaganda tactics to convince the world otherwise:

NETANYAHU: In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages.

The first stage: they have to enrich enough of low enriched uranium. The second stage: they have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium. And the third stage and final stage: they have to enrich enough high enriched uranium for the first bomb.

Where’s Iran? Iran’s completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it and they’re 70% of the way there.

Now they are well into the second stage. By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I told you now is not based on secret information. It’s not based on military intelligence. It’s based on public reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Anybody can read them. They’re online.

So if these are the facts, and they are, where should the red line be drawn?

The red line should be drawn right here. Before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb. Before Iran gets to a point where it’s a few months away or a few weeks away from amassing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.

Each day, that point is getting closer. That’s why I speak today with such a sense of urgency. And that’s why everyone should have a sense of urgency.

SOURCE: Israel PM Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu Address to United Nations Sept 27, 2012

Of course, Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons and Netanyahu’s Wile E. Coyote bomb and red line warnings bore no greater semblance to reality than the cartoon propaganda surrounding Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction.” Not only did the IAEA repeatedly confirm that Iran never diverted any nuclear material into any military program, but even the US intelligence community itself conceded that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear bomb. Most remarkable of all was Mossad’s own assessment that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.”

As I detailed earlier this year in “We Need to Talk About the Iran Protests,” fearmongering over Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program was the basis for an extraordinary series of measures against the country in recent decades. These measures included “NITRO ZEUS,” a full-scale military cyberattack against Iran the best-known element of which was Stuxnet, the military-grade cyberweapon co-developed by the United States and Israel that specifically targeted Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.

Iran’s non-existent nuclear program also provided the pretext for sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s economy, including the de-listing of Iranian banks from the Swift Network connecting the world’s financial institutions.

The fearmongers even went so far as to plant evidence of nuclear weapons involvement on Iran to further justify these attacks.

But the great irony is that there really is a nuclear armed nation in the Middle East. It is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It does not allow inspections of its arsenal. It does not even officially acknowledge its stockpile of nuclear weapons. It has even resisted the push for an international treaty recognizing a nuclear-free zone in the middle east. And that country is Israel.

Sometimes ranked as the world’s sixth largest nuclear superpower, Israel actively pursued a nuclear program from the time of its inception as a state in 1948. By the late 1950s, they had begun building a reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona with British and French aid. And by 1967, a classified CIA report estimated that Israel would be capable of producing a nuclear warhead in “six to eight weeks.” Shortly thereafter, it is believed, Israel began producing and stockpiling a nuclear arsenal.

OLENKA FRENKIEL: It was the young Shimon Peres, back in the fifties who negotiated a secret deal with the French to buy a nuclear weapons reactor like theirs. But while Dimona was going up, intelligence reports reached Washington that Israel was building an atom bomb.

Despite claims that Dimona was for peaceful purposes only, Israel’s leader Ben Gurion was summoned to Washington. President Kennedy feared an arms race in the Middle East and demanded inspections. But when inspectors finally entered the plant in May 1961 they were tricked. They were shown a fake control room on the ground floor. They were unaware of the six floors below where the plutonium was made.

PETER HOUNAM, Freelance journalist: Well this was something of great pride and almost a legendary story in Dimona, according to Vanunu. When the Americans came they were completely hoodwinked. All the entrances including the lift shafts were bricked up and plastered over so it was impossible for anyone to find their way down to the lower floors.

FRENKIEL: After Kennedy’s assassination the pressure on Israel was off. His successor Lyndon Johnson turned a blind eye. Then In 1969 Israel’s Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon struck a deal, renewed by every President to this day. Israel’s nuclear programme could continue as long as it was never made public. It’s called “nuclear ambiguity.”

The term “nuclear ambiguity,” in some ways it sounds very grand. But isn’t just a euphemism for deception?

SHIMON PERES, Former Prime Minister of Israel: If somebody wants to kill you, and you use a deception to save your life it is not immoral. If we wouldn’t have enemies we wouldn’t need deceptions. We wouldn’t need deterrent.

FRENKIEL: Was this the justification for concealing the floors of the plutonium reprocessing areas from the Americans, the inspectors, when they came?

PERES: You are having a dialogue with yourself, not with me.

FRENKIEL: But that’s been documented in a number of books.

PERES: Ask the question to yourself, not to me.

FRENKIEL: I mean, is it not true?

PERES: I don’t have to answer your questions, even. I don’t see any reason why.

FRENKIEL: Ambiguity is a luxury unique to Israel. Today the country’s an inspection-free zone, protected from scrutiny by America and her allies.

SOURCE: Israel’s Secret Weapon

Although estimates vary, it is now believed that Israel has somewhere between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads, and that it possesses the capability to deliver these warheads to Iran.

The existence of this stockpile, while known to governments around the world for decades, was only revealed to the public in 1986, when The Sunday Times published photographic proof and a detailed account of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. That story was provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona facility, who spent decades behind bars for his part in revealing this truth to the world.

NARRATOR: On October 5th, 1986, The Sunday Times announced they had evidence to prove that Israel had become the world’s sixth biggest nuclear power, having developed their arsenal beneath the Negev desert at Dimona. Photographs like this were given to the Sunday Times by a former technician at Dimona, Mordechai Vanunu.

[…]

Mordechai Vanunu’s family, Moroccan Jews, settled in the Negev in the early 60s, inspired by the idea of being a part of Israel. Vanunu did national service in the army. Then, while he worked at Dimona he began studying philosophy. He became active in student politics. He opposed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Vanunu came to believe that Israel’s nuclear development program was immoral. He left Damona and, eventually, Israel itself.

Vanunu arrived in Sydney armed with photographs he’d taken inside Dimona. Here, he turned his back on Judaism and became a Christian. He met Oscar Guerrero, a Colombian journalist who urged him to sell his secrets to The Sunday Times. His evidence was processed at a local photo shop. Vanunu talked openly about what he’d done.

It’s said that by the time Vanunu arrived in London on September the 12th, 1986, Australian intelligence had already alerted MI6 and the CIA, and Mossad—Israeli intelligence—had already begun questioning his family in Israel. The Sunday Times disguised their informant and moved him from place to place for protection. But in Leicester Square one day, Vanunu met a blonde who called herself “Cindy,” a beautician from Florida. Meanwhile, Oscar Guerrero, eager to profit from what he knew, turned to The Sunday Mirror. Vanunu’s photograph appeared on page one. Vanunu began to despair. At this point, Cindy was able to lure him to Rome to sp end the weekend with her at her sister’s apartment. Not once did Vanunu suspect that Cindy was a Mossad agent and that this was the beginning of a plot to kidnap him.

In Rome, the tactics of the Mossad agents changed dramatically.

MEIR VANUNU: In the apartment, two Israeli agents attacked him and bit him and strangled him really hard. And then chained him, injected drugs [in]to his body. And later on he woke up in a small cell on a boat. The boat went to Israel for a few days and he arrived to Israel on the 7th of October, 1986.

Vanunu was assumed dead until he turned up weeks later in Tel Aviv. Vanunu himself, on his way to court, gave the first clue of what had happened to him. Scrawled on his hand was the message “Vanunu was hijacked from Rome, Italy. 30.9.86. BA 504.”

SOURCE: Vanunu’s exposure of Israels nuclear program

But a key element of the story is missing from the handful of documentaries that acknowledge Israel’s nuclear stockpile. Namely, that these weapons were not merely developed by Israeli scientists working in isolation, but with the aid of a nuclear smuggling ring that helped develop and advance Israel’s arsenal by stealing important nuclear technologies from their “ally,” the United States. These rings and their activities have been known about and even investigated by the FBI for decades, but largely kept secret from the public.

It has fallen to researchers like Grant F. Smith of IRMEP.org, author of Divert!: NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program, to piece together the story from the documents that have been released. On The Corbett Report in 2012, Smith revealed the name of one of the high-powered Israeli officials who was at the heart of a plot in the 1970s to smuggle 800 nuclear triggers from the United States.

GRANT F. SMITH: In terms of the FBI uncovering a multi-node network, this one happened to be centered in California. MILCO was a company that was incorporated in 1972 by a man named Richard Kelly Smyth. He was discovered sending 800 krytrons, which are dual-use items that could be used to trigger nuclear weapons. When he was discovered doing that, he skipped bail in the mid-1980s and disappeared until he was picked up by Interpol in the early part of 2000.

And so the story is interesting and explosive, because after multiple attempts and denials we had a document release in which the key contact, or one of the key contacts that Smyth was meeting with to set up sales in Israel was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. And so the document—which I’m kind of holding up right here for the people who are on video—actually names Benjamin Netanyahu as being an employee of Heli Trading Company, which was the node in Israel that would receive Ministry of Defense requisitions that they would pass on to MILCO.

And so the interesting thing about this, of course, is the high-profile nature of Benjamin Netanyahu, [and] the fact that the smuggling ring ring leader has been identified as Arnon Milchan, a person any American knows for his movie productions such as Pretty Woman and other favorites, who is running this and who a recent book has named as being a top economic espionage fly a spy for LAKAM, who worked under Benjamin Bloomberg and Rafi Eitan. But the FBI documents that we published on July 4th related to an antiwar.com story which was really short and direct. And its core focus was on the fact that in a period when Netanyahu was building himself up as a leader in the terrorism industry—hosting major conferences, having just returned from his studies in the United States, hosting major conferences in the Jonathan Netanyahu Terrorism Institute, named after his brother who was killed on the Raid on Entebbe.

Here’s a person who was supposed to be working as a furniture company executive, and yet these documents which are very credible because of what they were—which is testimony from Richard Kelly Smith after he was returned his exile overseas and finally forced serve a prison sentence. These were the statements he made to an FBI agent in a district attorney office when they debriefed and wanted to know what the extent of the nuclear technology smuggling network was and—boom!—there’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

SOURCE: Corbett Report Radio 214 – Israel’s Nuclear Smuggling with Grant F. Smith

Benjamin Netanyahu. And now this unindicted nuclear smuggler is lecturing Iran about a 15 year old, long-acknowledged nuclear weapons program that never produced a single nuclear weapon.

Even more worryingly, Israel’s nuclear knowledge has not only helped to arm its own nation, but actually helped to proliferate nuclear weapons to Pakistan through the so-called Khan network. One of the men who helped to transfer the nuclear triggers used in the construction of the Pakistani bomb was Asher Karni, an orthodox Jew living in South Africa who had been a major in the Israeli army prior to emigrating to Cape Town. Upon his arrival there in 1985, he began teaching Torah at the local synagogue and educating Jewish youth, encouraging them to relocate to Israel.

In 2004, U.S. authorities arrested Karni for his role in supplying the nuclear triggers and in 2005 he was sentenced to three years in prison. It has never been officially explained why this Israeli citizen and former Israeli military officer was interested in helping proliferate nuclear technologies to Pakistan.

But perhaps the greatest irony of all is that it is Iran who has been arguing for decades that the Middle East should be a nuclear-free zone. The idea was first floated by the Shah in 1969, and was first formally proposed by Iran in a joint UN General Assembly resolution, but the idea failed to garner any support. The idea was again raised by then-Iranian President Ahmedinejad in 2006 and yet again by then-Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki in 2008, but these calls to banish nuclear weapons from the Middle East have not even been acknowledged by the west, let alone seriously considered.

Now more than ever, the prospect of a nuclear-free Middle East seems the only way to prevent a nuclear conflagration that threatens to draw in the world’s superpowers, and yet the idea is being ignored by Israel and its staunchest ally, the United States.

Why does Israel refuse to declare its nuclear weapons stockpile? Why do they refuse to sign on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?

Why do they refuse IAEA inspections of their nuclear facility?

Why did they kidnap and imprison Mordechai Vanunu for 18 years for providing the proof of this nuclear program?

And perhaps most importantly, why does the United States, the only country who could single-handedly force NPT compliance from Israel, still refuse to even admit the openly-acknowledged status of Israel as a nuclear power?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for these questions to be answered by the teleprompter readers on the nightly news.

Still, as even many in the mainstream are now admitting, Netanyahu’s presentation on Iran’s nuclear non-secrets are a cheap display of political theatrics. The only thing he ended up doing is underlining the point that Iran, unlike Israel, fully cooperated with the IAEA, lived up to its obligations as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and pointedly has not violated the 2015 nuclear deal.

And now that the United States has allowed the Israeli tail to wag the American dog once again by de-certifying that Iranian deal without valid cause, negotiators in North Korea and elsewhere will be watching, reminded yet again that a promise from the American empire isn’t worth the signed agreement it’s written on.

Video inside: Tom Duggan lives in Damascus, Syria. This week he covered the Jaishal Islam (Saudi supported) terrorist group leaving Douma, Syria. He reports, "We were expecting between 3000 and 8000 hostages to be released. We got less than 100. Where did they all go? They had been held for between four and six years. Jaishal Islam submitted the names of these people, their ID numbers, and the Syrian Government, in good faith, accepted the release of the terrorists in exchange for the hostages they claimed to have. This is a huge example of genocide, but the UN has not even acknowledged it." Up to 8000 Syrians slaughtered or starved by Jaishal Islam, which the Syrian Government has been fighting, and, meanwhile the United states posing as an 'exceptional' state, is threatening to attack Syria, which will draw Russia and probably China into war, on the basis of a completely unproven allegation that the Syrian Government used 'chemical weapons' against its own people. Duggan knows there is a high risk of Damascus being attacked by the rogue 'exceptional' US state, but he has decided to remain there.

What does happiness mean to you? We tend to search for it in material things, substances, and career achievements, but often lose sight of what really matters to us in the process. London-based artist and animator Steve Cutts is taking a long hard look at this ‘rat race’ to which we’ve all found ourselves tied, and is examining our modern sources of joy in a satirical new short film that depicts us as the ‘rats’ we’ve become in the eyes of the system. It’s titled after that mysterious high we’re always chasing; “Happiness.” Take 4 minutes out of your busy day and watch the clip for yourself below, and tell us in the comments if you think Cutts hit the nail on the head.

Are Antifa just fascists fighting for turf with other fascists? Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook discusses the movement's perception that it is countering the rise of the far-right and responds to Chris Hedges' critique of the violent tactics used by the activists. Chris Hedges suggests that Antifa's targets and strategies play into the hands of the corporate enemy. He also makes an odd mistake in suggesting that German Communists failed to counter Hitler as strongly as they might have because their leader had been jailed, but there is no history of the German Communist leader of the 1930s having been jailed at the time. (In fact Stalin advised the German Communists not to form a united front with the Social Democrats against the Nazis and they stupidly followed that advice.) Chris Hedges thinks Antifa is dehumanising fascists the way that fascists dehumanise their targets. (i.e. Antifa are actually fascists fighting for turf with other fascists.) Mark Bray thinks it is okay to shut presumed fascists up by making them too afraid to come out of their houses. The problem with this is, essentially, that just because an Antifa thinks someone is a 'fascist' does not mean that they are, especially when Antifa is shouting too hard to hear what someone may really be saying. Bray seems to be justifying the judgement and street-policing of people on the most superficial appraisal. Everyone is entitled to a defense, but not according to Antifa. [At the beginning of this program RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the origins of Antifa and gets them terribly wrong. Just bear with it.] A critical point overlooked by Chris Hedges is that Antifa is funded by George Soros. Wonder why?

Street clashes do not distress the ruling elites.

"Street clashes do not distress the ruling elites. These clashes divide the underclass. They divert activists from threatening the actual structures of power. They give the corporate state the ammunition to impose harsher forms of control and expand the powers of internal security. When Antifa assumes the right to curtail free speech, it becomes a weapon in the hands of its enemies to take that freedom away from everyone, especially the anti capitalists. The focus on street violence diverts activists from the far less glamorous task of building relationships and alternative institutions and community organizing, that alone will make effective resistance possible. We will defeat the corporate state only when we take back and empower our communities. As long as acts of resistance are forms of personal catharsis, the corporate state is secure. Indeed the corporate state welcomes this violence, because violence is a language it can speak with a proficiency and ruthlessness that none of these groups can match." (Chris Hedges in conclusion).

Partial transcript of the interview, using You Tube's transcription service

CHRIS HEDGES: "[...] the danger comes from militarized police forces a system of mass incarceration. I teaching in a prison and my students were not put in those cages by neo Confederates, you know, from a trailer park. They were put in cages by the Democratic and the Republican Party. The wholesale surveillance the corporate kind of coup d'etat that's taken place that is eviscerating civil liberties, driving, essentially already has driven, the working class into poverty, destroying the middle class. These are the forces that already have power and that's a big difference from the 1930s."

[...]

CHRIS HEDGES: "Before the break my argument that the left, actually the anti-capitalist, that actually has moral capital and by engaging in the kind of street violence that characterizes the nativist and the neo-fascist and the - they're squandering their moral capital."

[...]

CHRIS HEDGES: The question is, who's the enemy, and how are we going to take the enemy down ? And the enemy is already in power. The corporate state. The coup is already over and, yes, they may use these figures, but we are in a situation that is in essence revolutionary. We are [incomprehensible]. If we are going to bring down this power structure, it's got to be through mass mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. And you saw, for instance, in Berkeley, where - this is often the case - where most of the majority of the demonstrators were peaceful, nonviolent, there was a small activity of violence by a small group of black bloc Antifa , whatever, you but what was disseminated throughout the corporate media and why were those images useful to the corporate state? Because, number one, it demonizes the protest movement. We saw this with Occupy, which was a non-violent movement, and it frightens people away from the movement, and these are classic counterinsurgency techniques."

[...]

Bray not worried about 'dehumanizing fascists'

CHRIS HEDGES: "My fear with the left is that it adopts that abstract hatred, the abstract hatred that racists use towards people of color or the GBLT community or the Muslim community, is adopted by the left towards the fascists. So they know there's a dehumanization there and and a kind of belief that all rational discussion is impossible therefore. And I think you write in the book quite clearly the idea is to essentially not to reach out to them as other human beings, but to make them too frightened to come out of their houses."

MARK BRAY: "I guess I'm just not terribly concerned about people dehumanizing fascists personally and we can have a difference of opinion about that. I also the other question I would pose to you would be curious to get your responses so if if it is fine to organize popular self-defense under occupation how bad does the threat of violence have to get before that becomes legitimate? Right? And people's do disagree about that, but anti-fascists argue you have to stop it before it gets ...

CHRIS HEDGES: It's the wrong question.

MARK BRAY: Well then tell me what's the right question.

Revolution different now that the public cannot match the state's weapons

CHRIS HEDGES: If you are going to employ violence or, let's say use lethal force, then you have to have to have access to instruments and weapons of lethal force that can counter the state. So that no for instance rebel or guerrilla movement ever succeeds unless they are bordered by a state by which they can gather weaponry, carry out training. I mean this for instance was the role of Tunisia in the Algerian Civil War. And my argument and criticism of AntiFa and the black bloc is that the the language the state speaks and is increasingly speaking, of lethal force: militarizing our police departments, putting tanks on the streets of Ferguson, is one that we can never compete against. We're not going to create staging areas in Canada or Mexico to carry out an insurgency and therefore we have to find tactics that have worked in the past revolutions I believe are fundamentally nonviolent movements.

Crane Brinton and other historians, Davies, have written no revolution succeeds and lest a significant portion of the ruling apparatus - in particular the security apparatus - refuses to defend a discredited regime. That's something I watched with the with the collapse of the Stasi state in East Germany, where they, Honaker the Communist dictator, sent down an elite paratroop division in Leipzig and they wouldn't fire on the crowd. It was over same when they sent the Cossacks into to crush the bread riots in St. Petersburg and the Cossacks refused to. The Czar was over. That is just true in Revolution after revolution after revolution, and that only happens when you reach out - not to all - I'm not naive enough to tell you that - you know they're plenty of sadists and torturers and within the system - but enough people within the system to create paralysis.

MARK BRAY: Well you know anti-fascist are not trying to organize an armed uprising they're trying to stop small and medium-sized fascist groups before they advance and they recognize that the business of doing that is dangerous and that even if a group does it non-violently the consideration of being attacked by them and having to deal with that is very legitimate especially when we can see that the police are often more sympathetic to the right and that as the FBI has documented there has been extensive white power infiltration into local law enforcement so point taken on that the question of insurgencies but that's not really the politics that they're trying to promote here.

CHRIS HEDGES: Here what is I mean one of I think you've you read my article I mean one of the my criticisms was the idea of resistance as catharsis. It's not about how we feel is it?

MARK BRAY: Well I think that most anti-fascist and I interviewed 61 anti-fascist from 17 different countries most of the people that I spoke to don't fit the sort of media stereotype of some sort of crazy bloodthirsty of person but are people who are environmentalists and unionists and activists a variety of backgrounds who would much rather be doing that work than having to confront the far-right but they believe that there is a threat in their communities that they need to respond to and so I think the notion that these are thrill-seekers and that these people love to just sort of engage in violence isn't borne out by any evidence and certainly didn't reflect the interviews that I conducted.

CHRIS HEDGES: So what's the endgame? If you manage to get the fascists or the neo-fascists off the streets, we're still in trouble, right?

MARK BRAY: Right, which is why that many anti-fascists think of militant anti-fascism as essentially a firefighting operation dealing with an immediate emergency of the organized far-right on the streets and so if you push them off the streets, then you simply go back to doing the other kinds of movement building and organizing that you and I to some extent agree on what that could look like and and go back to that so we can see that the rise and fall of militant anti-fascism in the US and elsewhere over the past decades has everything to do with the rise and fall of the far-right so it's it's not generally conceived of as a politics that can solve all problems it's about addressing a specific.

Street violence and corporate power

CHRIS HEDGES: What role does violence have when we are confronting the true engines of oppression which is corporate power?

MARK BRAY: Well you know people will disagree with with what to do and Antifa is not designed to change all of society, right. It deals with this specific part of it, but I think the notion that the the ruling class will voluntarily hand over their wealth to create a social society is not true what we agree with and so I think that you know revolutionary politics does have to have it on the menu at a certain point. People will disagree on what that looks like when that comes but I think, you know, one of the historical lessons is it's often hard to turn on militant resistance when it's too late and so that that I think needs to be borne in mind as well.

CHRIS HEDGES: But it's also you know can be deeply counterproductive. Rosa Luxemburg who was assassinated in Berlin in the uprising did not support the uprising.
MARK BRAY: That's correct, and so uprisings are not always a good idea. In fact they're usually not a good idea but they can be sometimes and so the question is in my mind not to condemn a specific tactic or politics or strategy in the abstract universally but to look at the context.

Getting back to the superior weaponry of the state

CHRIS HEDGES: But I would go back to weaponry because you know in the French Revolution the the crowds, the san-culottes were carrying muskets and so was the Swiss Guard that were protecting the royalty, right? There's a disparity now in weaponry that doesn't make that possible.

MARK BRAY: Right. And so you're right from what you said before that some of it has to do with with the need to turn certain parts of the military against the state to have them put down their weapons to not not open fire on populations and in that sense it is a question of popular politics but what we're talking about here is not. Antifa is not a recipe for changing all of society. It's a politics aimed at self defense around a specific threat.

CHRIS HEDGES: I guess that definition of self defense is one we're gonna have to quibble over. I mean the Southern Poverty Law Center has said when these far-right groups, especially in open carry states, and these people are heavily armed, we could have had a bloodbath worse than we had. You know, just don't go.

MARK BRAY: Well I think that's terrible advice. I think we do need to organize against them. We can disagree on how to do that, but I think that one of the best takeaways from the politics of anti-fascism is to stand in solidarity with each other across different political and tactical and strategic lines, because when we get divided that's when we're weakest.

CHRIS HEDGES: Okay great mark thanks that was Mark Bray, author of Antifa the anti-fascist handbook.

CHRIS HEDGES: Street clashes do not distress the ruling elites. These clashes divide the underclass. They divert activists from threatening the actual structures of power. They give the corporate state the ammunition to impose harsher forms of control and expand the powers of internal security. When Antifa assumes the right to curtail free speech, it becomes a weapon in the hands of its enemies to take that freedom away from everyone, especially the anti capitalists. The focus on street violence diverts activists from the far less glamorous task of building relationships and alternative institutions and community organizing, that alone will make effective resistance possible. We will defeat the corporate state only when we take back and empower our communities. As long as acts of resistance are forms of personal catharsis, the corporate state is secure. Indeed the corporate state welcomes this violence, because violence is a language it can speak with a proficiency and ruthlessness that none of these groups can match. Thank you for watching you can find us on rt-dot-com slash On Contact see you next week

The video inside is composed of utterly breathtaking views of Everest and surrounding mountains and snow in high definition, totally dwarfing climbers. Why have we published it on candobetter.net? Because it highlights man's place in the scheme of things and the beauty of our natural environment. Enjoy.

Australian politicians won't like this. There is a new book out by a couple of economists, called Game of Mates. Most readers of candobetter.net are familiar with how Australia's land-tenure system is stacked in favour of the psychopaths, but Paul Frijters, with Cameron Murray have come out with a number of very important videos as well as their book about how our system is wrecking our society and our wealth distribution. See inside for the videos. Please pass this article on because the publicity and public education associated with this book is absolutely crucial at a time when our land-use planning system is on the point of being privatised and taken beyond citizen or government control in Victoria and elsewhere in the context of developer organisations aiming at 8 new cities between Melbourne and Sydney and the replacement of Australia's entire population several times over in a short space of time.

The following short videos are entertaining but explore the problem and solutions. They are available on youtube but also published on the authors' blog https://gameofmates.com/videos/ Buy the book here: https://gameofmates.com/.

Fears are increasing that something terrible has happened to Julian Assange, the Australian who founded Wikileaks and exposed power elites in the United States - most recently through 'Pizzagate'. We really hope that these fears are groundless, but police presence has been removed from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Assange has been sequestered since 2012. The Anonymous video inside this article gives more detail than any other source, analysing and timelining what has happened recently with Assange. You need to start about 37 seconds in to avoid an overly long intro. Please contact candobetter.net if you have information about Assange. The Australian Government should be inquiring into his welfare - but they have failed totally to defend his rights now for years.

People will be interested to see this interview with the Syrian president's wife, someone we do not often hear about in western media because she looks and sounds too good to suit its propaganda. In March 2011, Vogue magazine called Asma' al-Assad (née al-Akhras) "A Rose in the Desert". The same magazine smeared her years later as the wife of a war criminal. Asma' al-Assad has an English accent and British citizenship because she born and lived in England. Dr Bashar al Assad, now the president of Syria, met her when he was studying eye medicine in London in the 90's, and married her after he became the president. She was at the time contemplating going to Harvard as a post grad in banking finance. She drives alone in dangerous areas of Syria, meeting widows and orphans of the war, and the mothers of soldiers killed in action (known as 'martyrs' in Syria). She describes in detail the problems of injured soldiers and how she tries to assist. Her children attend school in Syria. She says she has received offers to leave Syria with her three children to a safer area (Gulf, Europe...) with her income guaranteed, but she did not think that would help Syria and she recognised these offers as a trick to undermine Syrian morale. Arabic MSM of the Gulf has carried many false rumors about the Assad family fleeing to Iran and Russia, meeting Russian submarines in the Mediterranean, that the Assads are divorcing, that their children hate them etc. Asma' al-Assad notes the biased treatment of displaced and wounded children in Syria in its almost exclusive reporting only of those who are in the areas occupied by the so-called 'rebels', ignoring the many deaths of soldiers in the Syrian Arab Army and that the majority of Syrians live in government held areas that the so-called 'rebels' constantly target.

Update: Above video has been deleted from YouTube - 18 August 2018

The interview of the Syrian First Lady, which 20 months ago, had been embedded above has since been deleted by YouTube. The interview embedded below was published on 18 October 2016, the day before this article was first published. It is possible that this is the same interview

Syria's First Lady Asma al-Assad's interview with Russia's Channel 24

Other videos of Asma al-Assad found on YouTube with the search terms "interview with asma al assad" (quotes omitted), include: Syria: Asma al-Assad gives first interview since start of Syrian conflict (1:57min - 1 year ago), Syria's First Lady on Gaza (5:48 min, 9 years ago), Asma al Assad full interview (23/10/16) - apparently the same interview, Syria's First Lady Asma al-Assad speech at the Paris Diplomatic Academy in 2010 (52:42 min, 14/9/16), Syrian president's wife slams Western media coverage of war - Daily Mail (1:47min, 15/3/18), …

Dr Marcus Papadopoulos was interviewed by BBC News about 'russophobia' in Britain and policy in Syria . Speaking very clearly, Papadopoulos gives a history of British resentment of Russia, dating from the Crimea and thinks that Britain is acting in part out of a feeling of being left-out in the region. Islamist terrorists in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria are the only ones benefiting from this British ignorance and bias. It should be remembered that those Islamic terrorists that the west is backing, pose a huge threat to the people of Britain. The US-led coalition in Syria is not acting legally.

"[Raising immigration and open borders] would make everybody in America poorer. You're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs." (Bernie Sanders)

Ezra Klein: Something that’s in what you said being a democratic socialist, is a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing
...

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That's a right wing proposal which says essentially there is no United States ...

Ezra Klein: But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer, you're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment in the United States of America today? If you're white high school graduate, it’s 33%, Hispanic 36%, African American 51%. Do you think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Ezra Klein: Then what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards is quite well off by say, Malaysian standards, so of the calculation goes so easily to the benefit of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility? I guess I'm asking for – I agree. You have a nation-state structure. You always are going to, the politics don’t allow anything else.

But I guess philosophically, the question is how do you weight it? How do you think about what the foreign aid budget should be? How do you think about poverty abroad?

Bernie Sanders: I do weigh it. Well first of all, again, as a United States senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make certain kids in my state and kids all over this country have the ability to go to college, which is why I am supporting tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe we should create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some % of our kids living in poverty in America. Now how do you do that? What you do is understand there's been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top 1/10 to 1%. The other thing that you understand globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1% will own more than the bottom 99% in a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and so forth and so on. I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent paying jobs, have education, have healthcare, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers which has already gone down very significantly.

On 18 September US-Australian-Canadian-Danish airstrikes killed 80 or more Syrian Arab Army soldiers who were attempting to combat ISIS from a Syrian military base. There seems little doubt that this was a war-crime, but it has already been displaced by media-saturation cover of a single act of terrorism in Manhattan where 29 people were injured. Well, the western media may believe it can hide the truth, but Eastern media and the alternative media cannot let this go. Inside this article there are two video debates on the motives and consequences of the US-Australian-Canadian-Danish airstrikes that killed 80 Syrian Arab Army soldiers two days ago. In the first video, "U.S. Bonus for Terrorists," Press TV conducts an interview with Brian Becker, with the ANSWER Coalition from Washington, and Frederick Peterson, a US congressional defense policy advisor from New York, to discuss these US airstrikes in Syria. This debate was originally published by Iranian Press TV at http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/09/18/485337/US-bonus-terrorists on Sunday, September 18, 2016.

In the second video debate, "Tenuous Truce" [see video below] there was another debate on the same matter conducted with Scott Bennett, a military expert and former US army psychological warfare officer from San Francisco, and Michael Lane, the founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington, to discuss the failed ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in Syria. This was originally published at http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/09/19/485484/US-Russia-Syria-ceasefire.

How does the international community handle a rogue-state U.S.A.?

What can we do when the United States keeps on pulling more and more shocking stunts in the Middle East. It seems to be proving that it is the maddest and the baddest, and that anyone trying to stop it would risk a nuclear war. And Australia and other countries are stupidly being sucked in. Scott Bennett in the second debate, suggests that the world needs to demand a UN inquiry into the US airstrike as a war-crime and that the alternative media and the non-western media - like Rt and Press TV - have to try to raise the profile of that demand to get through the block of fizz that issues from the mainstream western media, which simply puts any challenge to US warmongering to one side:

SCOTT BENNETT: "Secretary Kerry and Obama and the political powers right now, I think, [...] they're off the chain. I think the military is doing its own thing in its own time in order to create fires that the next administration will have to put out. They're seeding their own future job applications. But the facts are - if you're arguing this in court - if you were arguing this to the United Nations Criminal Court - you simply could say, 'The United States engaged in targeting operations and the Russian intelligence forces will provide the appropriate electronic surveillance that will prove that the United States was engaged in chatter and conversations in targeting that resulted in the murder of 80 Syrian military personnel. In order to roll back the Assad military that was attempting to cleanse the country of foreign invaders that were beheading children and raping women and doing all sorts of war-crime atrocities'.

So, what do you do with war-criminals who commit atrocities? You try them. What do you do with those who give them money and back them and finance them and give them plane cover? You also try them.

So, there should be immediate calls for a United Nations war-criminal tribunal put forth by the coalition of Assad, of Iran, of Russia and China, saying, very simply, that the United States is engaged in criminal activity, war-crimes. It's aiding and abetting, financially and with military personnel, the operations of Syrian revolutionaries that are coming in from foreign countries.

These are not indigenous Syrian personnel.

And the only people, really, who should have any place at the table is Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq.

All this was launched from Iraq. Iraq should immediately ground every U.S. and foreign plane and forbid them from engaging in these sorts of activities. And the U.S., essentially, should be kicked out. It should have no place in any future conversation, because it cannot be trusted. The American people are very quickly learning that. The European people are learning that. That's why the Brexit occurred. It's because they saw all of this destabilisation.

Then I would say to the other guest [in this debate] The Russians are not the Soviets. The Russians are the Russian people, the Russian culture, that want peace and tranquility and unity and so do the Syrians.

And, for us to go in with this neo-conservative empire agenda that is backed by the Zionist-Israeli-Wahabi nexus to target Iran and Russia, is a war-crime.

And I would testify before the United Nations; I would testify before the criminal court. I know that Senator Dick Black would and I know that there are a lot of us in the community that are stepping up because this is absolute insanity. And it's going to result in a very serious war and I hope and pray that President Putin and the other members of the coalition are very strategic and intelligent and cool-headed.

Yes, they need to decimate the illegal foreign fighters that are coming in, but they also need to do it in a very public-relations information warfare level. They need to write and blanket the American media and the European media with the truth. Because, right now, the American media has no idea - or the American people have no idea - of what's really going on. That's the way to win the hearts and minds of the American people and end this savagery."

Scott Bennett and Michael Lane explore the possibilities in the video, which is well worth watching.

Inside this article is a seven-minute video summarising what has happened in Syria. For those of you confused about this part of the world and what is happening, this clever video covers a lot in a simple way.

Some things this video does not cover: It does not go into the colonial history of similar interventions which have disorganised local power and built up to the current horrors. It does not talk about how many soldiers have died, nor of how the bulk of Syria's remaining population have fled to the government-controlled areas for safety. It does not talk about Russia's role in the area to support the government forces. Linking the creation of refugees to foreign-backed war in the region, it criticises the United States for not taking many refugees. However, for people outside Syria, the message needs to be that the west should stop creating refugees through war. This is a message that is entirely omitted by refugee activists in Australia, for instance, who seem to be quite uninterested in what is causing these floods of refugees. Australia effectively has almost no anti-war groups left. The video also does not mention the problem of growing water scarcity in Syria with Turkish diversion of the Euphrates, drought since 2006 and aquifer depletion in the context of a growing population. But drought and population growth are also matters seriously affecting other countries, such as California in the United States and most Australian states. The important difference is that California and Australia are not over-run by armed foreign-backed militia - as yet.

American boots on the ground. We hear this all too often throughout the world and now the war ravaged country of Yemen is the latest victim of US military troops. But why Yemen and why now and what are these troops trying to accomplish in a country that is facing a brutal war against it by Saudi Arabia, a war that Washington has given the green light to.

Above 23:30 minute video is from the PressTV YouTube Channel.

See also: Ansarullah Furious at US Military Build-up in Yemen (8/5/16) | FARS News Agency

Australian Politics Professor Tim Anderson recently wrote a book entitled, The Dirty war on Syria. In the embedded video, he describes the alarming ignorance of Australians generally about why the West is so down on Syria. This is a fascinating, humane and intelligent interview with Syrian TV. Among the many subjects covered are how the Australian media treats Anderson, how he became interested in the war in Syria, interpreting the propaganda war against Syria, and the future of Syria.

For people who follow French politics, France's entry into NATO was a frank change of politics. France had previously maintained an independent interest in the Middle East and tended to align away from Israel. France's involvement in recent NATO 'interventions' in Syria seemed uncharacteristically naive. In this stand-out interview, Yvan Blot, a former Gaullist parliamentarian, and closely associated with Sarkosy, when President, says that he did not agree with joining NATO. He says that French conservatives tend to be friends with Russia, in part because of business interests, and that socialist governments tend to have strained relations with Russia, since Mitterand. This interview is one of those where the person interviewed has a lot of experience and an unusually wide and historical perspective. This video transcript was first published on Sophie & Co on RT on 8 Mar, 2016 .

The West planned to create rift between Russia & Ukraine long ago - French ex-MEP

Russia's military pullout out of Syria came as a surprise to most Western nations. That, and a successful though fragile ceasefire inside Syria between Assad and the rebels, have shifted the balance on the global chessboard. Europe is struggling with the refugee flow, desperate enough to negotiate a blackmail-style deal with Turkey. As people are growing tired of the unpopular measures taken by Brussels, the upcoming elections in France, the EU's major player, may change the stakes in diplomacy as well. In this rapidly changing situation will the attitude towards Russia change? Does the West even need to carry out such a policy? And what role is NATO playing in the rift between Russia and the nations of Europe? We ask a prominent French politician, close friend of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy. Yvan Blot is on Sophie&Co today.

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Sophie Shevarnadze:  Yvan Blot, French scholar and politician, close to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, author of “Putin’s Russia”, welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us, sir.

Yvan Blot: Thank you for inviting me.

SS: So, from the latest, Russian troops are being pulled out of Syria, so we have the peace talks that are somewhat in progress right now. Truce is setting on the battlefield - do you think that Russian withdrawal, this move to pull out troops, will actually help the peace process, help de-escalate the situation, or will those who don’t want to find a compromise be emboldened by this move?

YB: It was a surprize in France to hear that Russian troops are leaving Syria, but I think it’s a good thing for the peace process, naturally.

SS: Why?

YB: It shows clearly that big powers want to seize the war and because Russia attacked the Islamist movement in Syria, some people would think that Russia wants to be in the East, and would invade, like America invaded Iraq.

SS: Make it it’s sphere of influence, basically.

YB: So we have a proof it’s not the case.

SS: How do you think the West will react to Russia’s move? Will West’s attitude towards Russia change after the withdrawal of the troops.

YB: I think, probably, Mr. Obama was informed about this decision, President Putin’s decision, so I think, normally, the West would have a good reaction, because if Washington agrees, the rest of the Western countries will agree, because America is the leader of the Western coalition in Syria.

SS: French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, proclaimed that France is actually supporting the end of anti-Russian sanctions, but all of the EU members have to be OK with that. Except France we have Hungary, we have Greece, we have Italy who do not want to extend, to renew the sanctions. What do you think will happen? Will their voices be heard? Is it possible to actually go against the EU will and not renew the sanctions individually?

YB: It’s difficult to say. I know that business circles in France are against the sanctions, they want to get rid of the sanctions, and there’s a big discussion, private discussion, between the government and the business circles. I think, Mr. Hollande is not really in favor of sanctions, but he has to take into account the American position, naturally, and for that reason, it’s difficult to say what he will do, because if for him the American pressure is too strong, he will say: “We continue the sanctions”.

SS: So it’s really more the American pressure than the fact that all EU members have to be OK with not renewing the sanctions?

YB: It’s another reason, I would say. Nothing forbids France to get rid of the sanctions if France wanted to. I think, with somebody with character, as was General De Gaulle, we would stop the sanctions, whatever the consequences. Our President is an intelligent man, but I’m not sure he wants to have these difficult relations with Washington, so I’m not sure France will be very independent in that…

SS: You often talk about America’s influence over Europe, and you have mentioned that these are American sanctions more than European sanctions… I mean, you really believe that America’s influence over Europe is so big that it can actually pressure Europe into imposing sanctions on Russia?

YB: Yes, I have examples. For instance, we have a big bank, BNP Paribas,  who had to pay enormous sums to the American Treasury because they made business with Iran, for instance. I know it was the same for Mistral, for instance. The American government told the French government, in private, naturally, that if we give Mistrals, these warships, to Russia, the sum that bank,  BNP Paribas, must pay will be much higher and, at the same time, they say that American judges are completely independent. I don’t think this is the case. There are contacts between the judges and the American government. I have some experience with this. Western countries always say that their judges are completely independent, but it’s not the case if it is a question which touches national interests. For little private conflicts the judges are independent, but it’s linked with politics, the government says “I hope you will give good sanctions against this bank”, for instance.

SS: So you think if Europe, on a larger scale, was to reset relations with Russia, then America will actually torpedo it or sabotage it?

YB: The strategy of America was clearly explained in the book by Mr.Brzezinski, “The Big Chessboard”. In this book, Mr.Brzezinski says: “The problem of America is the competition with Eurasia.” Eurasia - that is to say Europe, Russia and China and India, perhaps - and he says: “If all these countries are against us, it’s going to be terrible for us, we are not the first power in the world, so we have to divide Eurasia, to colonize Western Europe, to survey China and Russia. For us it makes really a problem, and the best thing would be to have weaker Russia and to organize conflict with Ukraine”. It was written 10 years ago, and now you see the implementation of this strategy. I think it is an American strategy.

SS: But I want to talk about Europe’s position - why do you think it’s stuck in this choice between partnership with Russia and partnership with NATO. It seems like it’s one or the other - why? Why is it stuck in this position?

YB: First, NATO has no reason to survive, because NATO was created, in the beginning, to fight against communism and against Soviet Union. There’s no longer a Soviet Union. It would have been logical to destroy NATO and to create a new order for defence and security issues, new organisation, probably, and probably without the U.S.. It was not the case, naturally, and major part of our political leaders have strong personal links with American government, it’s a fact.

SS: You think there’s no reason for NATO to survive, you’ve also said that America’s influence on Europe is in large done through NATO - now, former French PM Dominique de Villepin.

has proposed, once again, pulling France out of the NATO military command structure. Do you think it’s a good idea, do you think France should pull out? Is it even possible?

YB: I think he’s right. I know him very personally, I think he’s right. It is technically completely possible, because we have a  big industry of armaments, we have nuclear forces, so France can be independent.

SS: So why are you with NATO then? Is it just, like, symbolic, is it a question of French pride and prestige?

YB: It was a discussion between me and President Sarkozy about this, because I didn’t agree with him. It was Sarkozy who…

SS: Returned France to NATO.

YB: And he said: “We are in the same family”, his argument was “the same family, we have the same values”. Perhaps we have the same values, but since, perhaps, 10 years, all French presidents ask Americans to have one commander-in-chief of NATO. There are three staffs in NATO: for North of Europe, for Center of Europe and for South. France wanted to have the general-in-chief of the South, and the American said “No, no, no”. They said “No” to Mitterrand, they said “No” to Chirac, and they said “No” to Sarkozy. But, in spite of this Sarkozy said that it doesn’t matter, “we will integrate into it”, but I’m not sure it was a good idea.

SS: So, if France is part of the same family, as the NATO members, then why did the president Francois Hollande, after the horrible terrorist attacks, actually called on its fellow EU allies to help fight terrorism, help France, and not the NATO members?

YB: Politically, the EU is more important in France than the NATO. We don’t speak very much about NATO. But EU, yes, because it’s the same currency, it’s same economic policy, and so on. For that reason Mr. Hollande wants always to have good relations with the members of the EU, but in the future, I don’t know what we will have because it’s possible - it’s not sure, but it’s possible - that the UK leaves the EU.

SS:  So, you have studied Russian for many years, you’ve wrote a book that’s called “Putin’s Russia”. It decries a lot of myths about Putin, it also argues against looking at Russia as if it was still a Soviet Union. Are there are lot of people in the French establishment who share your view on Russia?

YB: There are part of the establishment.

SS: What’s the ratio?

YB: Partly, it’s a question of generation. Older people in France very often think that Russia is always a Soviet Union, older people. But with younger people, it’s not the case at all. So, younger people in general are much more in favor of cooperation with Russia, even within the government, or within the Parliament, and this situation, I think, it’s improving for the future cooperation between France and Russia.

SS: But, French government mostly consists of young people, so you would think that they don’t really remember the Soviet Union, yet they are for the sanctions and they still decry Putin as a dictator…

YB: Yes, the French government is socialist, you know. It is a socialist tradition in France to have bad relations with Russia, I must say, because after the WWII, the Americans gave a lot of money to socialist party to fight against the Communist Party in France. For that reason, Socialist party had always very good links with America. Especially now, they have very good links with ms. Clinton, for instance. Ms. Clinton said once, I think she didn’t want to say this, but she said it to Juppe, “Mr. President Juppe” - but a journalist told her: “But he’s not President!” - he was PM, but he wasn’t a President - “Oh yes, I am sorry, I made a mistake” - but in fact, she would like to have Mr. Juppe as partner for future.

SS: We’ll talk about the Presidential elections that are coming up. So you have part of French establishment that is very anti-Russian, and you have part of it that’s very pro-Russian.

YB: Especially, business circles.

SS: So which side will prevail?

YB: In the short run, it’s, perhaps, the anti-Russians who are rather mainstream, especially in the media, but I think in the longer run, it would be completely different. You have only to look at the geography - it’s very difficult for Western Europe not to have a special links with Russia, because it’s the same continent, in fact. So, I think it’s artificial - this fight against Russia. In fact, the majority of people who come from France to Russia can see it’s not a dictatorship. I was, in the past, in the Soviet Union, and in my hotel, I could read some Russian papers in English - there was no criticism against Mr. Brezhnev, for instance, or of the Soviet government. But now you can read articles against Mr. Putin - so it’s very clear, there’s more freedom than before.

SS: So you have Presidential election coming up, right around the corner. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Russia, you’re close to him, I believe you’re his friend. If his party wins the vote, do you think there will be a rapprochement between Russia and France?

YB: I’m sure.

SS: Really?

YB: Sarkozy always told me he wanted to have good relations with Mr. Putin. He has, I think personal good relations, and he thinks it’s very necessary, because Sarkozy is linked with business circles very much, much more than the socialists, and he wants to have better relations with Russia because they want to expand trade with Russia in every sectors of the economy. I think with Sarkozy the relations would be better, I’m sure, and even if we would have some tensions with the U.S.. We had tensions already in the past, with Sarkozy, when he went to mingle with Georgian war, for instance, Washington was not very happy about this. But he did it.

SS: Do you think he will run for Presidency again? What do you think? In your personal opinion?

YB: I think so, except, if he has such bad polls, he could perhaps say: “It’s over, it’s not possible”, but except in that extreme situation - we cannot know exactly the future so much early - I think he will be a candidate. He wants to be a candidate.

SS: But do you think the French are ready to choose again between Hollande and Sarkozy?

YB: Frankly, I’m not sure, because part of the French people would prefer to have new personalities, probably.

SS: It’s been 2 years since the Crimean referendum, pro-Russian referendum, and you have said that it’s impossible to reverse the Crimean situation. The EU however, is saying that the control over the peninsula needs to be given back to Ukraine. President Poroshenko is ordering Ukraine’s military to focus on Crimea, you have Kiev that is getting military aid from the U.S. - I mean, it does seem like the West cannot come to terms with that. Do you think that'll ever happen? When?

YB: I think Crimea will be Russian in the future. It’s not possible to change that. In France, we are not in a good place to think against it, because we made exactly the same with Mayotte in Africa, you know it’s some islands which form a Comorrean state and when they got their independence, one island said “We want to be French”, and this island is French. For that reason, France was condemned by the UNGA, we were condemned by the African Assembly of Nations, and it doesn’t change anything. We had no sanctions, because we are friends with the U.S.

SS: But we have sanctions, so if the Crimean situation is irreversible, and the sanctions are linked to the Crimean situation, does that mean that the sanctions against Russia are here to stay forever?

YB: It is a U.S. position now, with President Obama, but you cannot see future. I’m not sure, for instance, Mr. Trump, I think, perhaps, he would lift the sanctions, I’m not sure that he’s in favor of the sanctions. He’s like everybody, in general, in business circles - they don’t like sanctions. They think politicians mingling with economics is not a good thing, it’s better to be separated. With ms. Clinton, perhaps, we would have the same sanctions. So we have to wait for the American elections.

SS: Maybe, even harsher sanctions with ms. Clinton. So, let’s talk about the EU situation. The EU isn’t aligned in its relations with Russia, it has the migrant crisis, there’s the financial problem in the Eurozone, there’s  terrorism problem - a serious problem. So, if countries weren’t obliged to follow one common EU policy, do you think they would be able to deal with these issues better, individually?

YB: I’m not sure. For instance a lot of people say because we are in the EU we could have more opportunity for economic growth, but it’s not in fact the case. Switzerland or Norway are not in the EU, and their economy is much better. I’m not sure the Euro, for instance, is a good thing for French economy. Probably, it’s a good thing for German economy, but we have not the same competitiveness to have the same money - I’m not sure it’s a good idea. A lot of economists, professors of economics - I am the professor of economics -  we think the Euro is not a good idea, probably, a symbolic or a political idea, but from an economic point of view, it’s probably a mistake.

SS: So Britain is planning to have a referendum this summer on the EU exit, and according to the survey that’s been conducted by the university of Edinburgh, majority of France wants to have the same referendum. What do you think? Could the British experience set an example to follow for other members?

YB: Probably. It’s a reason for why a Commission in Brussels is a bit frightened of this situation, because if the UK leaves European Union, other countries could do the same and could be encouraged to make the same move. Perhaps, the Scandinavian countries who are very linked with the UK, perhaps, Czech Republic…

SS: Well, you have France, you have Sweden, Spain, Germany - they all want EU membership referendum. I’m not saying that they want to leave the EU, but they want to have the right to vote for it. Do you think they should be able?

YB: The people want to be consulted on this sort of issue, and one of the big problems with the EU is that it is not democratic at all. It was built not to be democratic. The power in Brussels is not in the hands of the Council of ministers and is not in the Parliament. I was for 10 years in the EU Parliament, I can tell you  that all the power, in fact, is in the Commission. It’s a government of civil servants, who have no responsibility towards different countries, and they do what they want, and for that reason, more and more people are against this sort of technician government, which is not a democratic government. I think it was a mistake at the beginning of the European Union, to create this super-Comission above all. So, it doesn’t mean we have to get rid completely with the EU, but perhaps it is necessary to re-write the treaty to suppress this Commission in Brussels, it was a bad idea. It would be Europe, naturally, if we did that. Why not?

SS: So, you have said that you are worried about the massive flow of refugees into Europe, but do you feel like, maybe, Europe has a moral obligation or responsibility to accommodate these refugees from the Middle East. I mean, are European policies partly to blame for wars that are causing this mass exodus? I mean, intervention in Libya produced a failed state right on border of Europe, you know.

YB:  You are right. I think there are some governments that have a responsibility because of the disorder they created in the MidEast, and it was one of the causes of the movement of refugees towards Europe. But the public opinion is really against it, and so, if you are in democracy, you have to take into account the opinion of the people. I think it’s necessary to have more peace, naturally, in the Middle East - that’s one of the questions, but otherwise, it’s necessary, really, to control our borders which is not the case, because we have created this Schengen area, and the Schengen area is not very well protected against illegal immigrants, and that’s really a problem. You must add to this problem the fact that among the refugees, it’s possible that you have some terrorists. Our Secret Service is persuaded it is the case, I must say.

SS: Yvan Blot, thank you very much for this interesting interview. We were talking to Yvan Blot, French politician, who used to sit in the French and the European Parliament's, past terrorism advisor to the French government, author of “Putin’s Russia”, talking about seemingly dead end of West’s relations with Russia and the future of Europe. That’s it for this edition of SophieCo, I will see you next time.

Inside are three videos warning about the dangers of signing the TransPacific Trade agreements that global organisations want to get many countries, including Australia, to sign. The first is a very quick overview. In the second video, at Democracy Now, "Secretive Deal Isn’t about Trade, but Corporate Control", Julian Assange speaks in some detail on the subject. Sophie Shevardnadze's interview on with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation Magazine follows as a partial transcript with a link to the actual interview. We have previously published Kelvin Thomson's Australian opinion on the dangers here, which is in agreement with the other sources.

Find out more, speak up and spread the word:
http://www.StopFastTrack.com; http://www.ExposeTheTPP.org; http://www.sumofus.org/tpp

Julian Assange on the Trans-Pacific Partnership - Exclusive Interview by Democracy Now

As negotiations continue, WikiLeaks has published leaked chapters of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership — a global trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries. The TPP would cover 40 percent of the global economy, but details have been concealed from the public.

TPP agreement will deal mortal blow to democracy in US - Nation magazine chief

The following is an extract from "TPP agreement will deal mortal blow to democracy in US - Nation magazine chief" from this video of Sophie Shevardnadze interviewing Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation Magazine (United States).

SS: I want to talk about another deal that’s grabbing attention now in the U.S. and that’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership. However, the details of this agreement are unknown, Obama insists the TPP is not secret, but in reality, a deal that is supposed to affect millions of Americans is classified, and even members of Congress can’t just go and flip through the pages without minder hanging about. Why?

KVH: I don’t think it’s consistent with American principles, but I’ll tell you: it seems the trade agreements have been, for the last decades, negotiated this way. But, this time, because of a mobilization of labor groups, citizen groups, workers, people inside the Congress, business isn’t being done as usual. People are saying: “Enough! We don’t want this to be done in secrecy; we’ve learned enough from our history to see what these trade agreements have done to communities around the country and workers.” In fact, Sophie, one of the most controversial parts of the trade agreement is the investor dispute settlement provision – which is truly anti-American, allowing corporations to suit governments and countries if they try to institute health and safety measures. It was leaked by WikiLeaks, which is how people know about it. So we need a new way of doing business, we need a new way of doing trade. I’m not…progressives are not against trade, they are against the way banks and investment firms have dictated the terms of trade. In fact, the big fight over TPP is really about corporate power and who’s going to write the rules about the global game, so to speak. I think this is a wake-up moment, and I place it very clearly in this populous moment I described earlier.

SS: But the people who are most outspoken about being against this deal are trade unions and worker’s rights groups and environmentalists – those are the ones, the people who traditionally are on Obama’s side. Now, if the agreement is going to hurt them…

KVH: This is an interesting, very interesting new alignment, but it’s a very interesting new alignment that President Obama is essentially fighting the core elements of his own party. This is not fully new, because President Bill Clinton with NAFTA 20 years or so ago was also at war with his own party. But this coalition is far stronger, Sophie, far stronger, because… President Obama accuses his own coalition of peddling recycled arguments – no. This coalition has learned from history, workers have learned on their own backs, communities have died, jobs have gone, factories closed – but others are now standing up and saying: “enough! We want true enforcement mechanisms of labor and environmental protection; we want to know what’s in the agreement.” How is this truly American to have agreements, conceived in secret with private corporate courts overseeing and arbitrating agreements? No, enough!

SS: Now, you’re also saying that TPP means loss of jobs and sinking middle class, extreme inequality. But those who are in favor say that it would actually benefit the U.S. companies and create new jobs at home. Why are they wrong?

KVH: I think you need to look at history. Those were the same arguments, Sophie, peddled, 15-20 years ago, and we haven’t seen those benefits. Again, not against trade or globalization, but the way the rules have been written have shown that they don’t benefit workers, they don’t increase wages, and they don’t help environmental problems. So, I think, we need to step back – and there are, by the way, good proposals, the Congressional progressive caucus, the group of about 80 Representatives in the House, have put forward an alternative. I think we need to end this particular round, step back and think anew about what a fair trade deal would mean. Finally, President Obama now seems to be…you know, there are new arguments, the new arguments are now about how we need to really counter China in setting the rules of the global economy. This is very tricky, to use this trade agreement for that purpose.

SS: But just really quickly, in a nutshell, can you really undermine China in the region, economically? I mean, is that really possible?

KVH: No. In fact, China is already between the partnership with Russia, the Investment Bank it has set up, bringing in both the UK, I think, and Germany; what you want to do is engage, you don’t want to have a so-called “pivot”, which essentially is countering or jettisoning the relationships. So no, I don’t think so.

SS: Thank you so much for this wonderful interview, we were talking to Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation Magazine, talking about what needs to change in U.S. foreign policy and if the 2016 president hopefuls will stand a chance of delivering this change. That’s it for this edition of Sophie&Co, I will see you next time.