We republish an article from Global Research and an excerpt from the World Health Organisation on this politically, commercially, and thus medically, fraught topic. The World Health Organisation's ongoing research project page on Electromagnetic fields (EMF) is at https://www.who.int/peh-emf/project/EMF_Project/en/. Not mentioned in the Global Research article below is the World Health Organisation's report that "studies suggest that children exposed to EMF magnetic fields have an associated increased risk of leukaemia." The Global Research article below the WHO introduction is useful because it gives a number of strategies for minimising exposure to EMF, particularly where children are concerned. Furthermore, it gives access to opinion from different countries. We should remember that X-Rays were not banned for pregnant women until the mid-1980s, a long time after it was well-known that they were the major cause of childhood cancers. (See Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness.) A much more intensive and pervasive level of electromagnetic fields involved in 5G and "smart cities" is being introduced to Australia and many countries as we write this. Smart cities carry their own dangers of total surveillance and automation that seem calculated to remove almost all possibility of democratic engagement, although that is not the subject of the reports cited below. (See Prof Justin O'Connor in "Smart Cities vs Creative Cities Symposium".)

World Health Organisation: "What is the International EMF Project? - Introduction

Background
Potential health effects of exposure to static and time varying electric and magnetic fields need scientific clarification. Electromagnetic fields of all frequencies represent one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences, about which there is anxiety and speculation are spreading. EMF exposure now occurs to varying degrees to all populations of the world, and the levels will continue to increase with advancing technology. Thus, even a small health consequence from EMF exposure could have a major public health impact.

Concerns have been expressed that exposure to extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields at power frequencies (50/60 Hz) could lead to an increased incidence of cancer in children and other adverse health effects. The evidence comes primarily from residential epidemiological studies. These studies suggest that children exposed to ELF magnetic fields have an associated increased risk of leukaemia.

Radio frequency (RF) fields are used to great benefits in many facets of everyday life, such as radio and TV transmission, telecommunications (eg mobile telephones), diagnosis and treatments of disease and in industry for heating and sealing materials. With the rapid introduction of mobile telecommunications devices, especially among the general public, there has been a focus on the problems associated with near field RF exposure to the head from the small radiating antenna of mobile phones. In addition, concerns persist that exposure to pulsed and amplitude modulated RF fields may cause specific health effects.

As societies develop, greater use of certain technologies leads to increasing exposure to static electric and magnetic fields. This is especially the case in industry, transport, power transmission, research and medicine. Possible health effects from static fields have never been properly assessed. Given the rapid expansion of medical devices and imminent introduction, potentially on a large scale, of magnetic levitation transport systems that use strong static magnetic fields, any health impacts need to be properly assessed.

As part of its charter to protect public health and in response to public concern over health effects of EMF exposure, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the International EMF Project in 1996 to assess the scientific evidence of possible health effects of EMF in the frequency range from 0 to 300 GHz. The EMF Project encourages focused research to fill important gaps in knowledge and to facilitate the development of internationally acceptable standards limiting EMF exposure."

Top 10 Facts About Cell Phones and Wi-Fi

Article first published in Global Research by Environmental Health Trust on July 18, 2019 at https://www.globalresearch.ca/top-10-facts-about-cell-phones-and-wi-fi/5683939.

1. All Cell Phones And Wireless Devices Emit Radiation.

Every wireless device is actually a two-way microwave radio that sends and receives a type of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation called radio frequency radiation RF – EMF. This machine-made radiation is millions of times higher than the natural electromagnetic fields (EMFs) our grandparents were exposed to. Numerous peer reviewed published research studies shows that these made-made pulsed electromagnetic frequencies cause adverse biological effects and are very different than the natural electromagnetic fields that have existed in the environment for years. Research on humans has found an association between cell phone use and serious effects such as brain cancer, headaches, damage to the brain and immune system. Yale studies found that cellular radiation exposure during pregnancy led to increased hyperactivity and memory problems in offspring.

2. Our Brains And Bodies Are Penetrated By This Radiation.

When we hold a cell phone against our head to talk, the radiation from the phone moves into our brain. Likewise, when we use a wireless laptop, the radiation penetrates into our abdominal region, chest area and brain.According to the International Agency for the Research on Cancer:

“the average radio frequency radiation energy deposition for children exposed to mobile phone RF is two times higher in the brain and 10 times higher in the bone marrow of the skull, compared with mobile phone use by adults”.

(Read it on page 44 of the IARC Monograph on Radiofrequency Fields)

Multiple research studies report cell phone radiation penetrates more deeply into children’s brains (Fernandez-Rodriguez 2015 , Fernández 2015, Mohammed 2017) in comparison to adults.

Research also has found that radiation from tablets penetrates more deeply into children’s brains (Ferreira 2015.) A 2018 study that considered the radiation dose into the brain of teenagers found that teens who used cell phones up to their head had decreased memory performance on researchers tests.

3. Cell Phones And Wireless Devices Emit Radiation Constantly, Even When You Are Not Talking Or Using The Phone.

A powered on cell phone is always “checking in” and maintaining a connection to the nearest cell tower by sends intense bursts of radiation several times per second. Likewise, a wireless-enabled laptop, tablet or other device is always “checking in” with the nearby router or a network base. These “check ins” are radiation emissions—happening several times per second, and whether or not a connection is successfully established.Medical doctors have written many letters to schools calling for administrators to reduce exposures to this radiation in schools. Harvard doctors have published research linking electromagnetic fields to autism.

4. Every Wireless Device Has Fine Print Instructions Buried In Its User Manual That Specify A Distance Between The Device And User That Should Not Be Surpassed.

For example, most cell phone manuals state the phone should be held at specified distance (often around 5/8th of an inch) from the body. If you look in the user manual for your DECT cordless home phone, wireless laptop or printer, it will state that the device should be at least 20 cm (approximately 8 inches) away from the body to prevent “exceeding FCC radiation exposure limits”. These instructions are in the user manuals because cell phones and wireless devices are tested for user radiation exposures at those specific distances.

In other words, if you are using a laptop on your lap, you are exposing yourself to untested radiation emissions that could exceed the radiation levels our government regulations presently allow. When you use a device closer than the manufacturer’s distance instructions, you risk exposing yourself to radiation levels that our federal government understands can cause sterility, brain damage and tissue damage. Learn more about the fine print warnings on various devices here.

Read more: Brain Wave Warping Effect of Mobile Phones, Study Reveals

5. These Fine Print Instructions DO NOT Protect You From All Health Effects.

The instructions buried in your manual are not safe enough. Even if you follow these instructions, you risk your health. Note: radiation exposure at the specified distances is much higher than zero. Accumulating research now shows a myriad of health effects occur at levels far far below (literally tens of thousands times lower than) government regulation limits. Wireless devices were not adequately tested before they came on the market.
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6. Research Shows Low Levels Of This Radiation Impact The Brain And Reproductive System.

Wireless radiation has been shown to change brain function even at levels hundreds of thousands of times below federal guidelines. In 2011, Dr. Volkow’s NIH research showed that the brain increased glucose metabolism when exposed to cell phone radiation. Dr. Suleyman Kaplan has published multiple research studies showing damaged brain development in the offspring of prenatally exposed test subjects. Significant research shows that wireless exposures decrease and damage sperm and that prenatal exposure can alter testis and ovarian development. These are just a few examples from a large body of accumulated science which shows effects from cell phone and wireless radiation.
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7. Radiation Emitted By Cell Phones And Wireless Is Officially Linked To Cancer.

In 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer first classified cell phone and wireless radiation as a “class 2 B Possible Human Carcinogen” based on these research studies that showed long-term users of cell phones had higher rates of brain cancer on the side of the head where they held the phone.The United States National Toxicology Program completed a $30M study that found “clear evidence” of cancer in male rats exposed to long term low level radio-frequency radiation. Due to these findings, several scientists have published that the weight of current peer reviewed evidence supports the conclusion that radiofrequency radiation should be regarded as a human carcinogen.

8. As The Evidence Linking Wireless Radiation To Cancer Has Significantly Increased Since 2011, Now Scientists State That Cell Phone Wireless Radiation Is A Human Carcinogen.

In 2016, a major US government study found cell phone radiation caused increased cancers (brain and heart nerve) in rats exposed at low levels for two years. The results were stunning because the cancers the rats developed are the same type humans are developing after long term cell phone use.

Furthermore, since 2011, new research studies have been published linking wireless radiation to cancer. CERENAT (a case control national study in France) again showed a statistically significant association between glioma (brain cancer) and long-erm cell phone use. Another study out of Jacobs University (which replicated previous study results) showed that RF acted as a tumor promoter. The study details in its conclusion how, “Numbers of tumors of the lungs and livers in exposed animals were significantly higher than in sham-exposed controls. In addition, lymphomas were also found to be significantly elevated by exposure.”

In light of this published science, several World Health Organization experts are stating that the evidence has now substantially increased. Dr. Anthony B. Miller has testified on the increased evidence, and he and colleagues have written several published papers detailing their opinion and in 2018 he was lead author on a published literature review concluding that cell phone wireless radiation is a human carcinogen. Scientists from Israel researching cancr in radar operators also concluded that the evidence indicates radiofrequency can cause cancer (Peleg 2018.) Dr. Hardell and colleagues have long published papers concluding that that wireless “should be regarded as human carcinogen requiring urgent revision of current exposure guidelines.”

9. Solutions Exist: Hundreds Of Scientists Worldwide Recommend Taking Action To Reduce Exposures To Wireless Devices Because Of The Serious Health Effects From These Devices.

In 2015, a large group of scientists and medical doctors signed onto a formal Appeal to the United Nations and the World Health Organization, calling on them to take immediate action on this issue. This Appeal is now signed by over 250 experts and is published in the International Journal of Oncology.In 2014, a group of U.S. physicians, including the Chief of Obstetrics at Yale Medicine, presented scientific studies at the launch of the BabySafe Project, issuing specific recommendations to pregnant women on how to decrease wireless exposures in order to decrease risks to babies’ brain development. We do not have to give up our technology but we can make smarter choices about the way we use it. Every person can easily decrease exposure to this radiation by making simple changes every day.

10. Government Regulations Are Outdated And Antiquated.

In the United States, the last review for radio frequency limits was in 1996, and the reality is that these are limits are based on research from the 1980s. Many countries are using guidelines developed by the IEEE or ICNIRP—guidelines that have remained unchanged for decades. Those guidelines do not consider the more current science showing harm. Thankfully other countries – over twenty countries- are enacting protections to reduce public exposure to this radiation and have radiation limits far lower than the FCC and ICNIRP. Some have banned Wi-Fi in classsrooms, other have banned cell phones made for young children and others have cell tower limits 100x lower than ICNIRP.Regulations are antiquated because they have not kept pace with the manner in which consumers use devices—usage has changed considerably since 1996. For example, the regulations only consider one radiating device at a time and do not account for a residence, classroom, or workplace, healthcare, retail, recreational and other venues filled with multiple devices. The regulations do not consider that people carry their cell phones tightly in a front pocket of jeans or in a bra. They do not consider that laptops would be placed on laps by schoolchildren in the classroom. Regulations did not consider research that looked at long-term exposures to vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant women or to medically compromised individuals. Guidelines were set by only considering the impact to a full-grown man. Many scientists and major medical organizations have written about the inadequacy of these outdated guidelines.

Final Bonus Fact: No Safe Level Of This Radiation Has Been Identified.

Scientific studies have not been done to develop a “safe level” of exposure. The latest science clearly shows that biological effects could occur at non-thermal (non-heating) levels. Science also shows that children and the developing pregnancy are far more vulnerable to these damaging effects. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not do the research necessary to define a safe level that the public can be exposed to without harmful effects.

In a 2015 study (replicating prior scientific findings linking RF to cancer promotion), the researchers state, “Since many of the tumor-promoting effects in our study were seen at low to moderate exposure levels (0.04 and 0.4 W/kg SAR), thus well below exposure limits for the users of mobile phones, further studies are warranted to investigate the underlying mechanisms.” and “We hypothesize that these tumor-promoting effects may be caused by metabolic changes due to exposure. Our findings may help to understand the repeatedly reported increased incidences of brain tumors in heavy users of mobile phones.”

No medical organization has determined a “safe level” of this radiation for long-term exposure to children. In fact, medical organizations worldwide – including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest group of children’s doctors in the United States and the Athens Medical Association and Vienna Medical Association – are calling for eliminating and reducing radiofrequency cell phone wireless radiation exposures.

Update, 31 March 2015: 15:10min video of President al-Assad's interview (5/3/15, length: 15:10min) embedded here.

Other articles in support of Syria, 1 Apr 2015: Breakin News | President Assad: Russian initiative for Syria is positive(31/3/15), Syrian Free Press | Syrian Women's Commandos Actively Operating in Damascus Countryside: we are all with you, Syrian lionesses(31/3/15), SyrianFreePress | U.S. Senator Richard Black: "Syria fought terrorism successfully and will be victorious" (30/3/15), RT | 70 women, including 9 schoolgirls, left Germany to join ISIS – report (30/3/15), Global Research | Canada's Strikes against Syria. Violating International Law: The Canadian Recipe Against ISIS (28/3/15), PressTV | Iraqi FM in Syria to demand further mutual security cooperation against ISIL (25/3/15), SANA | Belgian politician: President al-Assad is an ally because he fights terrorism(31/3/15), SANA | President al-Assad: European states are making grave mistake allying with terrorism supporters(25/3/15), Land Destroyer | Rebranding AlQaeda's Jabhat Al Nusra as "Moderates" (23/3/15), Global Research | Syria's President Bashar al-Assad: "The West has no Desire to Combat Terrorism". West Channels "Money and Armaments" to ISIS, (6 Mar) - republished with video on candobetter.

MSM articles (mostly anti-Syria propaganda), 1 Apr 2015: Toronto Star | Tories won't say how much mission in Iraq, Syria will cost (1/4/15), NBC| Samantha Power: U.S. Seeking Culprit for 'Monstrous Weapon' in Syria (31/3/15) ('Monstrous' alleged weapon is chlorine gas - see more recent full 60 Minutes interview here), BBC | Syria donors pledge nearly $4bn at UN crisis meeting (31/3/15) - to lure hungry Syrians into terrorist-controlled regions, 'Analysis': Is Canada's ISIS mission ready for Syria's moral maze? (30/3/15), Wall Street Journal | Syrian Opposition Says It Has Taken Over Northwest Provincial Capital of Idlib (30/3/15), SMH | Arm of al-Qaeda seizes major city in northern Syria (30/3/15), BBC | Syria crisis: Idlib 'captured by Islamist groups' (30/3/15), Middle East Monitor | Syria: The Downward Spiral of Desolation (30/3/15), FP | The Pentagon Ups the Ante in Syria Fight (30/3/15), Global News | Canada poised to begin airstrikes in Syria (30/3/15), Globe and Mail | Three scenarios Canada may face in Syria against Islamic State , Fox News | ISIS kills more than 40 in attack on Syrian village (31/3/15), Aljazeera | Syrian rebels capture Idlib city in joint offensive (29/3/15).

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: "I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it." President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Portuguese State Television, RTP, which displayed a good range of bias in its questions. The full text of the interview forms the article inside.Article first published on Global Research, March 06, 2015. Portuguese State Television, RTP and SANA Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme: US NATO War Agenda In-depth Report: Syria: NATO's next war? See http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-president-bashar-al-assad-the-west-has-no-desire-to-combat-terrorism-west-channels-money-and-armaments-to-isis/5434929

Question 1: In a few days, it will be 4 years since the protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. From then on it has been a massacre. More than 220 thousand people have died, and there are 4 million displaced people. The arrival of Daesh (Islamic State) has made the situation more grim. For this reasons, it’s important to speak to a key figure in all this process. Today, he gives his first interview ever to a Portuguese media outlet. The Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad. How do you describe your country today, Mr. President?

President Assad: Let me start by commenting on the number that you mentioned in your introduction, about the number of victims in Syria, which is 200,000, that’s been mentioned in the Western media recently, 220,000. That number is exaggerated. Always the West has exaggerated the numbers in Syria. Actually, it is not about whether they are hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. Victims are victims, killing is killing, and terrorism is terrorism. Actually, it’s not about being a mere number represented on a graph, on a chart, like a spreadsheet. It’s about families that lost members, lost dear ones, lost relatives. It’s a human disaster we have in Syria.

This crisis has affected every part of Syria, every Syrian citizen regardless of his affiliation or allegiance. It affected his livelihood, food, medicaments, medical care, basic requirements like education. Hundreds of hospitals were destroyed, thousands of schools were destroyed, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of students don’t go to school. All that will create the fertile habitat and good incubator for terrorism and extremism to grow. But despite all this hardship, the Syrians are determined to continue fighting terrorism, defending their country, and defying hegemony.

Question 2: Syria is not much of a country nowadays. The Syrian Army does not control all the borders, you have international coalition flying in your skies. On the grounds there are different entities. Is Syria as we have known it lost or finished?

President Assad: You cannot talk about a finished Syria when the people are unified behind their government and their army and fighting terrorism and still have institutions working. We still have subsidies, we still pay salaries, we pay the salaries even in some areas under the control of the terrorists themselves. We still have the-

Question 3: You send money to…?

President Assad: Exactly, we send salaries. Because they are employees, and have their own salaries. We send vaccines to those areas for the children.

Question 4: So you cooperate with the Islamic State?

President Assad: No, no. We don’t. We send them, and we deal with the civilians who are the mediators with the terrorists, or the militants.

But at the end, all these basic requirements reach those areas. So, we don’t have “Syria is finished” and we don’t have a failed state, actually. But if you want to talk about something different you mentioned in your question, which is the breaching of our airspace illegally by the alliance airplanes and by terrorists supported or working as proxy to regional countries-

Question 5: And borders.

President Assad: This is a failure of the international system, this international system that’s been represented by the United Nations and the Security Council, and that is supposed to solve the problems and protect the sovereignty of different countries and prevent war.

Actually, it has failed in doing so. So, what we have now is a failed United Nations; failed to protect international citizens including in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and in other countries.

Question 6: But you also failed. The Syrian Army also fails, because a lot of Christians have been abducted recently in the north.

The role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen

President Assad: Actually, the role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen, regardless of his affiliation, religion, sect, ethnicities, and so on. If you have mentioned this, I would say yes, we would like to and we wish that the Syrian Army would be able to help every Syrian since the beginning of the crisis. But the main obstacle why the Syrian army couldn’t do so, and as part of this couldn’t help the Christians a few days ago that have been kidnapped by ISIS, is the unlimited support that’s been offered to those terrorists by the Western and regional countries.

Question 7: What we have seen until now is several attempts to have a peace conference that all have failed. What we have until now, it’s talks about talks. What can break this deadlock, Mr. President?

President Assad: Do you mean in Geneva?

Question 8: Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative was a fiasco.

President Assad: The solution is political, but if you want to sit with someone or a party that doesn’t influence the situation on the ground, it’s going to be talk for the sake of talk, that’s correct. We didn’t choose the other party in Geneva. It was chosen by the West, by Turkey, by Saudi Arabia, by Qatar. It wasn’t a Syrian opposition that we made dialogue with. You’re right; if you want to make dialogue, you have to make it with Syrian opposition, Syrian partner, Syrian people who represents Syrians in Syria, not who represent other countries.

So, what happened in Geneva wasn’t the model that we have to follow.

Question 9: But, what you are saying, is that an acceptable opposition for you, or…?

President Assad: Of course, any opposition that works for the Syrian, to defend its country, represents Syrians or part of the Syrian population…

Question 10: Within the framework of the Syrian state?

President Assad: No, no. Any opposition who works for the Syrian people. It’s not related to the state, it’s not related to the government.

Question 11: So, you’re excluding the Syrian National Coalition?

President Assad: I don’t exclude anyone as long as he’s Syrian. I’m talking about criteria. Anyone, or any party, who meet with these criteria, we can consider him as opposition. If the coalition is formed in the West or any other country, it’s not considered Syrian.

It doesn’t represent the Syrian people. The Syrian people won’t accept him.

Question 12: But are you able to discuss with them or not?

President Assad: Actually, what we have followed since the beginning of the crisis, we didn’t leave any stone unturned. We tried every possible solution in order not to allow anyone to say “if they didn’t do this, that would have happened.” So, we discussed even with the coalition, although we know in advance that it doesn’t represent Syrians, it represents the countries that formed it. And second, it doesn’t have any influence on the ground in Syria, even with the militants, even with the terrorists, even with anyone who is involved in the problem within Syria.

Question 13: So you’re saying that the “Free Syrian Army” doesn’t have influence on the ground? That only al-Nusra and Islamic State have influence on the ground?

President Assad: Even Obama said that, he said that the moderate opposition is a fantasy. Most of the world now knows, what they called moderate opposition, they called it “Free Syrian Army,” they have so many other names, all of them are fantasy. Actually, who is controlling the terrorism arena in Syria are either ISIS or al-Nusra, mainly, and some other smaller factions.

Question 14: So, in the end, the solution for Syria is a military solution, and not a negotiated peace?

President Assad: No, actually, what we have been doing recently, as long as we don’t have a party to make negotiations with who can influence the militants on the ground, we went to make reconciliation with the militants in some areas, and that worked, and this is a very realistic political solution. Actually, that is how you exclude the military solution, by discussing with them making a safe area.

Question 15: About the discussions, you have Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative, in all of that there are not, how shall I say, things in common. Is there anything, any issue that you know it is possible, why not start with them? Is there anything in common between you and them?

President Assad: If you want to talk about what happened in Moscow, it’s different from what happened in Geneva, because they invited some of the opposition, because we can’t talk about one opposition; we have many different oppositions. You don’t put them in one basket. You have some of them represent Syrians, some of them they don’t represent anyone, and so on. So, we have common things with some of the opposition that were invited to Moscow, so this is just the beginning of the dialogue. The dialogue may take a long time. But at the end, if you want to not talk about dialogue, talk about the end results on the ground, the question is, who of those parties that we call opposition, who of them represent Syrian people and can influence the militants on the ground in order to save Syrian blood? That is the question. We don’t have an answer yet, because they have to prove, we don’t have to prove. We know we have our army, the army will obey the government, if the government gives an order, it will follow the order. But what about the others? Who is going to control the terrorists? That is the question.

Question 16: You pointed out that some countries, like France, don’t want a peace conference to succeed. Why is that?

President Assad: Actually, you have two points, or two reasons, let’s say. First one is not related only to the French; it’s related to every official who is complicit and involved in the propaganda and the aggression against Syria during the last four years. It’s about the end of this war will unmask those officials in front of their public opinion, in a country where there is public opinion. I don’t mean Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where there is no public opinion anyway. But generally, they will be unmasked about the question “what is the revolution that you mentioned, that you talked about? How could a revolution collapse or fail if you have the support of the West, the support of regional countries, all this money and armaments and so on, and you supposed that he’s a dictator who is killing his good people, so the people are against him, regional countries are against him, and the West is against him, and he succeeded.It’s one of two options you’re either lying to us, or you’re talking about a superman. Because you don’t a superman, he’s a regular president, it means he could withstand for four years only because he has the public support. It doesn’t mean full public support, one hundred percent, or absolute public support, but definitely have support from a part, a large amount of the Syrian people.” So, this is a lie that the public opinion in the West and in other countries will ask the officials about. What about the Arab spring that turned out to be – instead of budding flowers – blood and killing and destruction? Is that the spring that you talked about? This is one reason.

The other reason is more specific towards France. Not limited, but more specific, let’s say. It’s about the financial relation between France and the Gulf states. Maybe because they have financial difficulties, I don’t know why. But this financial relations, and I don’t have any proof whether this is about the vested interest of some officials in France or if it’s about public interest, I don’t have any proof, but at the end, these financial interests push those officials in France to exchange their values of liberty and fraternity and democracy, all the things that they used to preach, the exchange those values for petrodollars. So now those French officials and some others in the West, they don’t practice what they preach anymore.

Question 17: But the tide seems to change a little bit. You had French MPs here. It was an organized visit, or it came as a surprise to you?

President Assad: No, no. It wasn’t a surprise, because it wasn’t the first delegation to come to Syria.

Question 18: French delegation?

President Assad: French and from other countries. Different kinds of delegations, activists, mediators, some officials came to deal with us under the table, not-

Question 19: This was organized with your government and…?

President Assad: Yes, it was officially organized, and they had a schedule when they came. It was weeks before, it wasn’t a surprise.

Question 20: With French diplomats as well or not?

President Assad: We had the impression, and it’s a strong impression, that most of the government, the main officials in the government, they know about it in advance, and they didn’t oppose.

Question 21: So, did they send you any message?

President Assad: No, there wasn’t a message, and they came to see the reality on the ground, and I think that’s the reflection – not just this delegation; the delegations that came to Syria recently from different countries, especially from the West, is a reflection of not believing, not taking in with the narrative, the insidious narrative about Syria in the West by their officials. They want to know the truth, I mean it’s a kind of suspicion about the whole propaganda in the West.

Question 22: So, in a sense, the tide is changing because probably there are some people thinking that even though it’s a bad solution, it’s better to deal with Bashar al-Assad than to deal with the worse solution which is going to be the Islamic State.

President Assad: I don’t think the general public thinks about the second part, it’s about the first part, about what’s happening and how everything we said in Syria at the beginning of the crisis they say later. They said it’s peaceful, we said it’s not peaceful, they’ve killing – these demonstrators, that they called them peaceful demonstrators – have killed policemen. Then it became militants. They said yes, it’s militants. We said it’s militants, it’s terrorism. They said no, it’s not terrorism. Then when they say it’s terrorism, we say it’s Al Qaeda, they say no, it’s not Al Qaeda. So, whatever we said, they say later. That created a lot of suspicion in the West. They want to come to understand this part. Why are you saying whatever Syria was saying in the beginning? Of course, in the West, the propagandists, whether officials or media, the added something only to the real story; that ISIS and al-Nusra was created of Assad, or it’s because of his policy, and so on.

Question 23: But you freed a lot of jihadists from the prisons that went to ISIS, to the Islamic State.

President Assad: No, that’s before the crisis. They were sentenced for a few years, and when the sentence ended, they left prison. We didn’t.

We never did. So no, we have institutions, we have a judicial system in Syria.

Question 24: Anyway, Europe is facing more and more threats of terrorism linked to jihadist movements, some of them with connections here in Syria, I mean Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. And the question here: is Syria able to help the European countries in fighting these threats of terrorism?

President Assad: This is like a building; you cannot build a building without having the foundation, so what is the foundation that you need in this this case? First, you need officials in Europe to have the will to fight terrorism. This is something that we don’t have to this moment. Second thing, to have prudent policies. We cannot have arrogant, stubborn officials that only adopted egotistical policies.

Third, which is very important, fighting terrorism should be a value, should become a value. It cannot be a sort of opportunism, like because now you are suffering in Europe from terrorism, you’re scared, you want to fight terrorism in this region. What about a few years ago? You didn’t suffer.

Question 25: But can you help the…?

President Assad: If they don’t help themselves first, we cannot. If they help themselves, we are ready to help. If you build this foundation, if you have this foundation, you can go to the building.

This is where you can talk about how to integrate the community in your country, how to have exchange of information with intelligence, you have many ways. Of course we can, but you need to have the foundation in order to succeed.

Question 26: Mr. President, let me quote, “the Syrian people aspire more freedom, justice, human rights. They aspire to more plurality and democracy.” Your Foreign Minister said this in the Geneva conference.

However, the state of Syria is perceived differently in the West. Till now, it’s perceived as brutal, ruthless, dictatorial, and it’s not just a question of image, so how is it possible to convince the people that…?

President Assad: This is illogical and unrealistic, because how can somebody who kills his people and oppresses his people be supported by the same people? How? Tell me about this contradiction. Look at it from the outside. Is it palatable, can you understand? It doesn’t.

Question 27: But, Mr. President, the reality is that if you allow me to go backwards, and try to-

President Assad: Before the crisis.

Question 28: Let me just try to… you started four years ago with peaceful demonstrators that were repressed, then you are blamed, your government is blamed, for a lot of allegations of human rights violations in your own ranks, repression. You have the Cesar reported, defected from the army, with photos of massacres, of torture of the opposition. You have allegations that you have used chemical weapons.

You have allegations of using the barrel bombs till now, and so, the human rights reports watcher about Syria, they are not very good for you, your government, and the Syrian Army.

President Assad: You are talking about massive propaganda for four years. We cannot answer every one in one interview, but I will say the demonstrations never were peaceful, because in the first week, we lost many of our policemen. How? How could a peaceful demonstration kill a policeman? It wasn’t peaceful, so, this is the beginning of the lies, it’s the beginning of the propaganda.

Question 29: All lies, all the time? Four years of lies, Mr. President?

President Assad: Exactly, that’s what happened. Because, how do you have ISIS? Suddenly? You don’t have ISIS suddenly, you don’t have armaments suddenly, you don’t have al-Nusra Front suddenly. It’s a long process, you can’t have it just in few weeks. Suddenly, everybody is talking about ISIS. Go back to our statements from the very beginning, and you can see that the evolution of the events was going in that regard from the very beginning, and we said that. They didn’t want to listen; they wanted to listen to their statements.That’s what I say. It’s impossible to only tell lies in the West. How can you tell the truth if you don’t have an embassy in this country? How can you tell the truth if you listen to Qatar and Al-Jazeera that were paying the money to those terrorists?

Question 30: So you blame Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia for being the backbone of the jihadists? You have the proof?

President Assad: Very simple; what is the ideology of ISIS? What is the ideology? It’s the Wahhabi ideology. Do we have it in Syria? Do we have it in Morocco? In the western Arab world? Actually, it existed in Saudi Arabia.

Question 31: It’s the same as in Saudi Arabia.

President Assad: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This is the Wahhabi ideology.

Second, Erdogan is Muslim Brotherhood. He’s a very staunch advocate of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology which was the first organization in the history of Islam, in the beginning of the last century, who promoted violence in implementing political agenda. So, you have those, and that’s enough. Going back to the Western media, in the Western media, and the American media in particular, they say 80% of the terrorists are coming from Turkey. You have another realistic one, what you called in your media Kobani which is called Ayn al-Arab. It took four months to be liberated, in spite of the attack of the alliance. Why? Actually, a similar city, the same size, and the same terrain, it took the Syrian Army two to three weeks. Why? Because it was supported logistically through Turkey on the border. They send them everything, armaments, all kinds of support. The recent event when Turkey-

Question 32: Did you support the Kurds? Did the Syrian Army support the Kurds?

President Assad: Of course.

Question 33: Because they are also fighting the Syrian Army.

President Assad: Before the issue of Kobani. Before that, we did.

Before Kobani, we supported the Kurds, because it didn’t start there.

It started before, and before the alliance started supporting the Kurds, we did. We sent them armaments. Of course, they’re going to say no, because the Americans said “say no, and we will help you.” If they say yes, the Americans will be angry, just to be cautious, to take precautions about any statement they may say now that we didn’t, we have all the documents about the armaments that’s been sent to them, beside the air raids and so on and the bombardments and everything else.

Question 34: New Syrian troops are being trained in the framework of the “Free Syrian Army” supported by the Americans to fight against the Islamic State. Do you think you will have to fight them as well?

President Assad: You know, and I know, and everybody knows that those 5,000 were announced by the Americans, and this this is my proof that the Western officials don’t have the will to fight terrorism. That is the proof. I told you, the base, the foundation, is to have the will.

It means they don’t have the will. If Obama said the moderate opposition is fantasy, so who do you send the money and armaments to?

Reality. You don’t send to the fantasy, you send it to the reality, and the reality are the extremists. And those 5,000 are going to be another support to those terrorists, because the same grassroots of the organization that’s been supported by the West, by money and armaments, they joined ISIS with their armaments and with themselves.

Question 35: Two questions to finish this interview. This is your first interview with a journalist from a Portuguese-speaking country.

Do you expect anything from these countries?

President Assad: I don’t expect; I hope. I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it. Second, we hope from Portugal as part of the EU to look at the Czech Republic. A small country, ten millions, but it was very wise in dealing with the crisis in Syria. They have their embassy, they can tell what’s going on on the ground, because isolationism is not a policy. When you isolate yourself, when you try to isolate a country by removing your ambassadors or closing your embassies, you isolate yourself from the reality. You shouldn’t isolate yourself, as Europe, from reality. We hope can play that role in the EU to shift this trend that started with the American administration of Bush; when they have a problem with somebody or some area, instead of being more involved, they cut their relation with it. This is not policy.

Question 36: Just one last question, Mr. President. You’re a key player for any possible peace deal. Don’t you feel sometimes doubts, anguish, with this tremendous responsibility? Don’t you feel what history might say about you?

President Assad: Of course, this is the most important thing that any politician or leader must think about, and it’s about, first of all, about having good will and good intention to help your country.

Whether you do mistakes or you do right, you do wrong; this is not the issue. People will judge you by your will, by how much you were related to your country, related to your country, how much you are a patriot, not a puppet or a marionette that’s being moved from the outside. This is the most important thing; how much you do, what’s the best you can do to protect your country and protect your people.

Question 37: Thank you, Mr. President, for this interview, and thank you for being with RTP.

President Assad: Thank you.

Republished from Global Research, RIA Novosti. See also: Serbian Volunteers Destroy Ukrainian Artillery in Donetsk Region (12/8/14, RIA Novosti), Donetsk Militia Defend Ilovaisk, Ukrainian Armed Forces Sustain Losses (15/8/14, RIA Novosti), Moscow Slams Kiev's Use of Aircraft, Heavy Weaponry Against Civilians as Unacceptable (15/8/14, RIA Novosti).

DONETSK – Ukrainian servicemen largely switch sides to join the independence supporters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, DPR’s Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko said Saturday.

“One of the commanders of the 25th Airborne Brigade took his infantry combat vehicle and switched to our side. As of today, he has assumed command of the troop. And such cases are numerous,” Zakharchenko said, adding he expected more brigades to yield themselves prisoners.

The prime minister and former battalion commander explained the mass switches to the militia side saying the Ukrainian forces did not understand “why they are here, what they are fighting for and what they are dying for.”

“Whereas we fight for our land, our children, our homes. We are on our land, we have something to fight for. The moral spirit of any subdivision that fights for its home is a step above that of a subdivision fighting for money without the understanding of what it is fighting for,” he said.

In June, Ukrainian troopers from Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk fought against each other at the Luhansk airport.

Since the start of Kiev’s special operation in eastern Ukraine in mid-April, a total of 1,367 people have been killed and another 4,087 wounded, including 2,589 civilians and 29 children, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 117,000 people have been forcibly displaced.

See also: Steven Seagal plays at concert for pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine, 10 August in the Guardian. This article is republished from Global Research article of 11 August. The New York Times article linked to below is here. - Ed

The New York Times reported almost in passing on Sunday that the Ukrainian government's offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

That might seem like a big story – a U.S.-backed military operation, which has inflicted thousands of mostly civilian casualties, is being spearheaded by neo-Nazis. But the consistent pattern of the mainstream U.S. news media has been – since the start of the Ukraine crisis – to white-out the role of Ukraine's brown-shirts.

Only occasionally is the word "neo-Nazi" mentioned and usually in the context of dismissing this inconvenient truth as "Russian propaganda." Yet the reality has been that neo-Nazis played a key role in the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February as well as in the subsequent coup regime holding power in Kiev and now in the eastern offensive.

On Sunday, a Times article by Andrew E. Kramer mentioned the emerging neo-Nazi paramilitary role in the final three paragraphs:

"The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat.

"Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.

"In pressing their advance, the fighters took their orders from a local army commander, rather than from Kiev. In the video of the attack, no restraint was evident. Gesturing toward a suspected pro-Russian position, one soldier screamed, 'The bastards are right there!' Then he opened fire."

In other words, the neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of anti-Yanukovych protests last February have now been organized as shock troops dispatched to kill ethnic Russians in the east – and they are operating so openly that they hoist a Swastika-like neo-Nazi flag over one conquered village with a population of about 10,000.

Burying this information at the end of a long article is also typical of how the Times and other U.S. mainstream news outlets have dealt with the neo-Nazi problem in the past. When the reality gets mentioned, it usually requires a reader knowing much about Ukraine's history and reading between the lines of a U.S. news account.

For instance, last April 6, the New York Times published a human-interest profile of a Ukrainian nationalist named Yuri Marchuk who was wounded in the uprising against Yanukovych in February. If you read deep into the story, you learn that Marchuk was a leader of the right-wing Svoboda from Lviv, which – if you did your own research – you would discover is a neo-Nazi stronghold where Ukrainian nationalists hold torch-light parades in honor of World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Without providing that context, the Times does mention that Lviv militants plundered a government arsenal and dispatched 600 militants a day to Kiev's Maidan square to do battle with the police. Marchuk also described how these well-organized militants, consisting of paramilitary brigades of 100 fighters each, launched the fateful attack against the police on Feb. 20, the battle where Marchuk was wounded and where the death toll suddenly spiked into scores of protesters and about a dozen police.

Marchuk later said he visited his comrades at the occupied City Hall. What the Times doesn't mention is that City Hall was festooned with Nazi banners and even a Confederate battle flag as a tribute to white supremacy.

The Times touched on the inconvenient neo-Nazi truth again on April 12 in an article about the mysterious death of neo-Nazi leader Oleksandr Muzychko, who was killed during a shootout with police on March 24. The article quoted a local Right Sektor leader, Roman Koval, explaining the crucial role of his organization in carrying out the anti-Yanukovych coup.

"Ukraine's February revolution, said Mr. Koval, would never have happened without Right Sector and other militant groups," the Times wrote.

Burning Insects

The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.

"Burn, Colorado, burn" went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading "Galician SS," a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.

The death by fire of dozens of people in Odessa recalled a World War II incident in 1944 when elements of a Galician SS police regiment took part in the massacre of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka, which had been a refuge for Jews and was protected by Russian and Polish partisans. Attacked by a mixed force of Ukrainian police and German soldiers on Feb. 28, 1944, hundreds of townspeople were massacred, including many locked in barns that were set ablaze.

The legacy of World War II – especially the bitter fight between Ukrainian nationalists from the west and ethnic Russians from the east seven decades ago – is never far from the surface in Ukrainian politics. One of the heroes celebrated during the Maidan protests in Kiev was Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose name was honored in many banners including one on a podium where Sen. John McCain voiced support for the uprising to oust Yanukovych, whose political base was among ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

During World War II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement that sought to transform Ukraine into a racially pure state. OUN-B took part in the expulsion and extermination of thousands of Jews and Poles.

Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by anger over political corruption and by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and surged to the front during the seizure of government buildings and the climatic clashes with police.

In the days after the Feb. 22 coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively controlled the government, European and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable regime, although at least four ministries (YouTube video embedded below - Ed), including national security, were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their crucial role in ousting Yanukovych.

As extraordinary as it was for a modern European state to hand ministries over to neo-Nazis, virtually the entire U.S. news media cooperated in playing down the neo-Nazi role. Stories in the U.S. media delicately step around this neo-Nazi reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of coup regime's national security chief Andriy Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan's "self-defense forces."

Last April, as the Kiev regime launched its "anti-terrorist operation" against the ethnic Russians in the east, Parubiy announced that his right-wing paramilitary forces, incorporated as National Guard units, would lead the way. On April 15, Parubiy went on Twitter to declare, "Reserve unit of National Guard formed #Maidan Self-defense volunteers was sent to the front line this morning." (Parubiy resigned from his post this past week for unexplained reasons.)

Now, however, as the Ukrainian military tightens its noose around the remaining rebel strongholds, battering them with artillery fire and aerial bombardments, thousands of neo-Nazi militia members are again pressing to the front as fiercely motivated fighters determined to kill as many ethnic Russians as they can. It is a remarkable story but one that the mainstream U.S. news media would prefer not to notice.

BBC Newsnight video "Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine"

The video below is undated, but was propbably made in late February 2014 shortly after the coup of 22 February.

Video interview inside.Western support will allow more IMF and European lending to prop the Ukrainian currency so the Ukrainian oligarchs can move their money safely to British and US banks, explains economist and author, Professor Michael Hudson. '[...] Finance today is war by non-military means. The aim of getting a country in debt is to obtain its economic surplus, ending up with its property. The main property to obtain is that which can produce exports and generate foreign exchange. For Ukraine, this means mainly the Eastern manufacturing and mining companies, which presently are held in the hands of the oligarchs. For foreign investors, the problem is how to transfer these assets and their revenue into foreign hands – in an economy whose international payments are in chronic deficit as a result of the failed post-1991 restructuring. That is where the IMF comes in.'

'[...]Governments are told to balance their budgets by selling off public assets – mainly natural monopolies whose buyers can raise excess prices to extract economic rent. The effect is to turn the economy into a renting “tollbooth economy.” Hitherto free public roads are turned into toll roads, and other transportation, water and sewer systems also are privatized. This raises the cost of living, and hence the cost of labor – while overall wage levels are squeezed by the financial austerity that shrinks markets and raises unemployment."

"What is at issue is whether economies throughout the world will let financial leverage dismantle the power of elected governments, and hence of democracy. Governments are sovereign. No government actually needs to pay foreign debts or submit to policies that negate the three definitions of a state: to create its own money, to levy taxes, and to declare war."
(Article by Michael Hudson, first published on Global Research, July 7, 2014.) Original videoed interview by RT's Daniel Bushell (Truthseeker program) was on June 29, 2014.

Western support for oligarchs via IMF

Western support will allow more IMF and European lending to prop the Ukrainian currency so the Ukrainian oligarchs can move their money safely to British and US banks, economist and author Michael Hudson told RT’s Truthseeker.

RT:Could you summarize for us the tried and tested steps that will lead from IMF loans, to Ukraine’s best assets ending up in private Western hands – the IMF’s ‘knee-breaker’ role as you memorably described it as?

Michael Hudson: The basic principle to bear in mind is that finance today is war by non-military means. The aim of getting a country in debt is to obtain its economic surplus, ending up with its property. The main property to obtain is that which can produce exports and generate foreign exchange. For Ukraine, this means mainly the Eastern manufacturing and mining companies, which presently are held in the hands of the oligarchs. For foreign investors, the problem is how to transfer these assets and their revenue into foreign hands – in an economy whose international payments are in chronic deficit as a result of the failed post-1991 restructuring. That is where the IMF comes in.

The IMF was not set up to finance domestic government budget deficits. Its loans are earmarked to pay foreign creditors, mainly to maintain a country’s exchange rate. The effect usually is to subsidize flight capital out of the country – at a high exchange rate rather than depositors and creditors getting fewer dollars or euro. In Ukraine’s case, foreign creditors would include Gazprom, which already has been paid something. The IMF transfers a credit to its “Ukraine account,” which then pays foreign creditors. The money never really gets to Ukraine or to other IMF borrowers. It is paid to the accounts of foreigners, including foreign government creditors, as in IMF loans to Greece. Such loans come with“conditionalities” that impose austerity. This in turn drives the economy even further into debt – forcing the government to tighten the budget even more, run even smaller budget deficits and sell off public assets.

RT: Can Ukraine expect the so-called ‘IMF effect’ of 1 in 5 of the impoverished population emigrating to work abroad, and what consequence could this have on a country to lose its brightest minds?

MH: Ukraine already draws in foreign emigrants’ remittances equal to about 4% of its GDP. (About $10 billion a year.) Most of this money comes from Russia, the rest from Western Europe. The effect of IMF austerity plans is to drive more Ukrainians to emigrate in search of work. They will send some of their earnings back to their families, strengthening the Ukrainian currency vis-à-vis the ruble and euro.

RT: How are the IMF’s tools in reality “weapons of mass destruction” as you quoted it?

MH: Lower budget deficits cause even deeper austerity and unemployment. The result is a downward economic spiral. Lower incomes mean lower tax revenues. So governments are told to balance their budgets by selling off public assets – mainly natural monopolies whose buyers can raise excess prices to extract economic rent. The effect is to turn the economy into a renting “tollbooth economy.” Hitherto free public roads are turned into toll roads, and other transportation, water and sewer systems also are privatized. This raises the cost of living, and hence the cost of labor – while overall wage levels are squeezed by the financial austerity that shrinks markets and raises unemployment.

RT: The IMF’s perhaps also a weapon of mass destruction in a more literal sense. The organization has publicly threatened and blackmailed Ukraine that it will ‘re-design’ its aid package, unless Kiev goes to war on fellow Ukrainians in the East of the country and stops them protesting. Does that not make it now literally a criminal accomplice or instigator of war and murder?

MH: The IMF’s “conditionality” is that it “pacify” the East. Pacification may occur violently in today’s Orwellian rhetoric. The only way in which actual political and economic peace can be achieved is by a loose federalization of Ukraine, to make each region independent of the kleptocrats in Kiev, who are appointed mainly from the West.

As for accusations of criminality, this always depends on who is the prosecutor, and what is the court! No country has yet prosecuted the IMF. All that voters can do is reject governments submitting to IMF conditionalities. Many voters who are able will “vote with their feet” and simply leave the sinking economy. So the IMF’s defense is that Ukraine and other clients are voluntarily committing suicide rather than being murdered. Austerity is ultimately a policy – nobody is holding gun to their head, except when political leaders are assassinated as in Chile in 1974 under Pinochet with the US Government behind it. In this sense, Ukraine today is a replay of Chile four decades ago.

Participants in the nationwide Ukrainian rally against bank outrage and for the rights of borrowers under the slogan “No to currency slavery!” by the building of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada. (RIA Novosti)

RT: Everyone knows austerity’s effects on Greece and elsewhere; polls show most Ukrainians don’t want it; even the IMF itself now admits austerity doesn’t work. Why will Ukraine’s leaders allow it to happen, are they guaranteed a cushy job in the West when they’ve voted out or something?

MH: Ukraine’s leaders are mainly kleptocrats. Their aim is not to help the country, but to help consolidate their own power. George Soros has written that their best way to do this is to find Western partners. This will provide US and European backing for the kleptocrats tightening their hold on the economy. Western support will provide more IMF and European lending to support the currency so that the Ukrainian oligarchs can move their money safely to the West, to British banks and US banks.

RT: Do you think that the EU isn’t stupid enough to make Ukraine a full member, so under the one-sided association agreement, member states will just strip the country of its best assets, and use its workers as near slave labor, with Ukraine’s 91 US cents an hour minimum wage?

MH: The EU hardly can really make Ukraine a member. One reason is that a key policy underlying French and German creation of the original Common Market in 1957 was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Ukraine has rich Western land, and that part of the country is largely still rural. Foreign investors would like to buy it out and “re-feudalize” it, creating large business farms. But the EU is unlikely to provide the subsidies that financed mechanization and capital investment in Western European agriculture.

The EU does not need to formally integrate with Ukraine to benefit from its inexpensive labor. Wrecking the economy Greek-style or Irish-style or Latvian-style is sufficient to send its workers to the West. And the most mobile traditionally are the best educated youth in their 20s, able to speak foreign languages and with skills in demand in the West.

RT: You noted Ukraine ‘must have asked the US first’ before blowing up that gas pipeline. Do you think NATO will support anything even terrorism to make Russian gas seem less reliable, especially while US fracking giants currently are waging a big PR campaign in Europe.

MH: The US has pressed Europe to make its own economy much more high-cost and to rely on US gas exports mainly in order to deprive Russia of foreign exchange. The NATO rationale is essentially that which Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk tweeted on Monday, June 16: Ukraine “won’t continue subsidizing Gazprom [to the tune of] $5 billion annually, so that Russia can arm itself against us [with this money].”

The US position today is what it was in 1991: Without manufacturing, Russia cannot be a serious military power to defend itself. And without purchasing foreign technology and without large state subsidy – as US and European governments provide their own economies – Russia cannot create a manufacturing economy. So NATO is trying to prevent Russia from earning enough money to modernize its economy, on the principle that any industrial power is potentially military, and any military power my potentially be used to achieve political independence from the US sphere.

RT: Anything else you would like to add?

MH: What is at issue is whether economies throughout the world will let financial leverage dismantle the power of elected governments, and hence of democracy. Governments are sovereign. No government actually needs to pay foreign debts or submit to policies that negate the three definitions of a state: to create its own money, to levy taxes, and to declare war.

At issue is who shall rule the world: the emerging 1% as a financial oligarchy, or elected governments. The two sets of aims are antithetical: rising living standards and national independence, or a renting economy, austerity and international dependency.

According to exit polls, Pyotr Poroshenko is in the lead with more than 55 percent, with Fatherland Party rival Yulia Tymoshenko gathering approximately 12 percent of the vote. According to the Central Election Commission, the overall turnout [6pm local time] was exceedingly low. Officially the number of polling stations is 32,244. Even in areas controlled by the Kiev regime, the voter turn-out was low. - See more at: Ukraine presidential elections low turn out

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 25, 2014

According to official Ukraine governmental sources, there are 33.594 million registered votes on “mainland Ukraine” (i.e. excluding Crimea which is now under the jurisdiction of The Russian Federation).  According to official sources, 474,000 Ukrainians living overseas can cast their vote at 114 polling stations in 75 countries.

While turnout in the two federalist oblasts of Eastern Ukraine (Donesk and Luhansk) was less than 10 percent, in most of the other regions, it did not exceed 45 percent of registered voters [6pm local time], with only one oblast in Western Ukraine in excess of 45%.  (See Graph below, Financial  Times based on official CEC data).

At 8pm local time the CEC announced, according to the Kiev Post, an overall turnout of 55.33 percent. This figure, however is misleading because  it is based on an incomplete number of electoral precincts and it also excludes the Eastern Ukraine oblasts.

While the data –which is subject to political manipulation– is preliminary, the overall turnout is less than 50 percent. We will update as information become available.

The unofficial election watchdog OPORA quoted by the Kiev Post published the following figures:

International Observers

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to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/681cc326-e3f5-11e3-a73a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz32kkQAVdKAsked while voting if his first trip as president would be to the EU or Russia, Mr Poroshenko responded “To Donbass”, the name given to Ukraine’s heavy industrial south-eastern region.

Vadim Karasiov, a political analyst, said: “The card played by Russia will be in pointing out that the presidential election did not, de facto, take place in Donbass, [so] the newly-elected president does not represent this region.”

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email [email protected]

to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/681cc326-e3f5-11e3-a73a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz32kkQAVdKAsked while voting if his first trip as president would be to the EU or Russia, Mr Poroshenko responded “To Donbass”, the name given to Ukraine’s heavy industrial south-eastern region.

Vadim Karasiov, a political analyst, said: “The card played by Russia will be in pointing out that the presidential election did not, de facto, take place in Donbass, [so] the newly-elected president does not represent this region.”

According to official sources, there were 3600 international observers.

Deutsche Welle  placed the number of observers at 1200.

The US observer team is led by Madeleine Albright, who –in contradiction with her role as observer mission chief– openly expressed her preference for Tymoshenko.

(Tymoshenko hugs Madeleine Albright as they meet in Kyiv. picture right). 

US senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland) were also part of the US observer mission.

It should be understood that the Right Sector which now controls the SUB (Ukraine’s Security Service) is exerting pressure on the offices of the Central Election Commission (CEC). According to recent reports, the electronic files of the CEC were hacked  by CyberBirkut three days before the elections, which suggests that a manual recount will be required.

Ukraine’s Security Service claims that it has removed a virus at the Central Election Commission’s server, designed to delete the results of the presidential vote. According to the interior minister the cyber-attack may force a ‘manual vote count.’  The virus has been eliminated, software is replaced. So, we now have the confidence that the Central Election Commission’s server is safe,” Valentin Nalivaychenko, SBU head, is cited by UNN news agency. He is cited as saying that the virus was meant to destroy the results of presidential election on May 25. However the CEC programmers may not be able to fix the system in time for the elections, coup-installed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced on his website. (RT, May 24, 2014, emphasis added)

Ironically, Poroshenko has been declared the winner by the Western media prior to the actual vote count. Moreover, Obama has officially congratulated him prior to an official confirmation by the Ukraine CEC.

While Poroshenko has declared victory, based on exit polls, under prevailing conditions, there is a possibility that the official vote count could be rigged (e.g.  in favor of Tymoshenko), with a view to ensuring a runoff.

If this were to occur, it could potentially contribute to exacerbating the Ukraine crisis. Tymoshenko is supported by the Fatherland Party and the two Neo-Nazi parties. Right Sector and Svoboda. While Tymoshenko has little chances of winning in a runoff, she is the preferred candidate of the US establishment including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

While Poroshenko is broadly supportive of  the “Washington Consensus” including IMF sponsored neoliberal reforms, Washington is anxious to bring Tymoshenko back into playing a more central political role, particularly with regard to Ukraine membership in NATO.

Articles by:
Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.

Former Reagan budget director David Stockton just agreed:

So did a top Russian con artist and mathematician.

Even the New York Times' business page asked, "Was [the] whole economy a Ponzi scheme?"

In fact – as we've noted for 4 years (and here and here) – the banking system is entirely insolvent. And so are most countries. The whole notion of one country bailing out another country is a farce at this point. The whole system is insolvent.

As we noted last year:

Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz pointed out the Ponzi scheme nature of the whole bailout discussion:

Europe's plan to lend money to Spain to heal some of its banks may not work because the government and the country's lenders will in effect be propping each other up, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

"The system … is the Spanish government bails out Spanish banks, and Spanish banks bail out the Spanish government," Stiglitz said in an interview.

***

"It's voodoo economics," Stiglitz said in an interview on Friday, before the weekend deal to help Spain and its banks was sealed. "It is not going to work and it's not working."

[The same is true of every other nation.]

Credit Suisse's William Porter writes:

"Portugal cannot rescue Greece, Spain cannot rescue Portugal, Italy cannot rescue Spain (as is surely about to become all too abundantly clear), France cannot rescue Italy, but Germany can rescue France." Or, the credit of the EFSF/ESM, if called upon to provide funds in large size, either calls upon the credit of Germany, or fails; i.e, it seems to us that it probably cannot fund to the extent needed to save the credit of one (and probably imminently two) countries that had hitherto been considered "too big so save" without joint and several guarantees.***

As Nouriel Roubini wrote in February:

[For] problems of that magnitude, there simply are not enough resources—governmental or super-sovereign—to go around.

As Roubini wrote in February:

"We have decided to socialize the private losses of the banking system.

***

Roubini believes that further attempts at intervention have only increased the magnitude of the problems with sovereign debt. He says, "Now you have a bunch of super sovereigns— the IMF, the EU, the eurozone—bailing out these sovereigns."

Essentially, the super-sovereigns underwrite sovereign debt—increasing the scale and concentrating the problems.

Roubini characterizes super-sovereign intervention as merely kicking the can down the road.

He says wryly: "There's not going to be anyone coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the Eurozone." [Others have made the same point.]

But, despite the paper shuffling of debt at the national level—and at the level of supranational entities—reality ultimately intervenes: "So at some point you need restructuring. At some point you need the creditors of the banks to take a hit —otherwise you put all this debt on the balance sheet of government. And then you break the back of government—and then government is insolvent."

Peak Demographics?

Indeed, population may be the biggest ponzi scheme of all. Specifically – as we've pointed out for years – rapidly-aging populations in the developed world will exert a big drag on the economy.

The Global Mail notes:

Half the world, including almost all the developed world, now is reproducing at below replacement level. A generation from now, according to United Nations Population Division projections, less than a quarter of the world's women – most of them in Africa and south Asia – will be reproducing at above replacement rate. And those UN forecasts are probably on the high side, for reasons we'll come to later.

And as the birth rate has plunged in developed nations, and the native-born population has begun to shrink and rapidly age, governments and business have sought to make up the numbers by importing people to prop up their economies. It's all they know how to do, for our economic system is, at its base, a giant Ponzi scheme, dependent on ever more people producing and consuming ever more stuff.

But what happens if that all stops? What happens when you get an ageing, shrinking population that consumes less?

"The answer to that question is that we don't know because it's never happened before," says Peter McDonald, professor of demography and director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University.

***

"We're certainly operating a Ponzi scheme in Australia," says Dr Bob Birrell, an economist and migration expert from Monash University.

"Our growth is predicated on extra numbers… [and] more of our activity is going into city building and people servicing, which do not directly produce many goods that can be traded in overseas markets.

***

Half the world is facing the problem of low fertility, and Australia, with its massive program of importing people, is providing an extreme example of one approach to the conundrum.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: lower fertility rates mean older, less innovative and productive workforces. More importantly to the Ponzi economic order, older, stable or declining populations consume less. So growth requires either importing people, or exporting stuff, or a combination of the two. Orthodox economics simply can't cope otherwise.

Europe as a whole has been reproducing at well below replacement rate for close to 40 years. The last period for which UN data showed Europe's total fertility rate above the replacement rate was 1970-75.

Europe's contemporary demographics give new meaning to the descriptor `the old world'. The continent's average person is over 40 now. By 2050, if things continue on trend, the average European will be 45.7. If one takes the UN's "low variant" projection, he/she will be over 50 years of age.

And the low variant now looks closer to the mark. Fertility rates had actually rebounded a little over recent years, the result of a bit of "catch-up" after a shift over several previous decades in which women delayed child-bearing. But the European recession has set fertility rates plunging again.

Jamie Ferguson/The Global Mail

Jamie Ferguson/The Global Mail

The recession's effects will likely linger for decades, in lower rates of earnings and savings, and also in reduced fertility.

***

Last year, Forbes magazine, that most reliable voice of the economic orthodoxy, laid the blame for Europe's economic decline squarely on its citizens' failure to reproduce in adequate numbers, in an article headlined What's Really Behind Europe's Decline? It's The Birth Rates, Stupid.

The Forbes piece was unequivocal: the biggest threat to the European Union was its low fertility rate.

***

The piece ended with a dire warning that unless Club Med managed to induce people to have more babies, catastrophic economic consequences would flow for all of Europe and maybe the world.

***

As Thomas Sobotka, one of the authors of a 2011 study on population trends by the Vienna Institute of Demography, told the Guardian newspaper, massive cuts in social spending would only exacerbate the problem.

"This may prolong the fertility impact of the recent recession well beyond its end. It could lead to a double-dip fertility decline," he said.

But when it comes to fertility declines, Asia takes the cake.

Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and most importantly China currently all have fertility rates lower than those of Europe.

***

China's and Korea's are about to start falling, if they haven't already.

"I'm pretty pessimistic about the east-Asian situation," says McDonald. "I think those countries find it very difficult move in the right direction of supporting work and family, in particular, reducing work hours.

"We are now talking about some 30 per cent of Japanese women not getting married."

"I saw a couple of people from the Japanese government give a paper recently, essentially accepting this as an inevitability – a low birth rate forever," he says.

It's the same all over Asia.

***

Hong Kong has a birth rate of 1.09, which is on track to see its population almost halve in a generation. Taiwan is at 1.10; China, 1.55; Thailand, 1.66; Vietnam, 1.89. Even Indonesia's fertility is just above replacement rate, at 2.23, and is falling fast. Malaysia and the Philippines are still growing pretty quickly, as are the south-Asian countries, which may give them a competitive edge for a few decades – and a growing export industry of people. But it is not projected to last more than a few decades.

Let's return to America. The United States also is reproducing at below replacement rate, and its birthrate has declined sharply in recent years.

***

The US birth rate not only fell to its lowest level ever in 2011, but the greatest decline was among immigrant women.

***

In the longer term, the world will have to adjust its economic system to cope with the novel concept of less. Fewer people, less consumption, lowered need for resources, energy, housing, roads, you name it.

Indeed, smart curmudgeons like Jeremy Granthan and Chris Martensen think that we have not only "peak" demographics, but also peak resources.
There's HOPE

The above is admittedly depressing. But the reality is that there's hope.

We can have a very bright future, indeed … if we switch from the status quo to something smarter. For example, see this and this.

For example, we can cut out the middlemen in the banking and political realms … and prosper.

Energy

And as we've previously noted about energy:

The current paradigm is that energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't question the methods or results of their energy production.

Our life will become much better when we begin to understand that energy is all around us – as an ocean of electromagnetic forces and as a byproduct of other processes in the form of heat, pressure, etc. – and all we need do is learn how to harvest it.

Original source of article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-entire-economy-is-a-ponzi-scheme-the-global-financial-system-is-insolvent/5331143

The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as Member States representing 90% of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012. A December 2011 youtube video titled “The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!”, originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length. It states:
[Article 30]: “Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them . . . and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents.” First published by Global Research April 19, 2012.

by Ellen Brown

The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as Member States representing 90% of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012. A December 2011 youtube video titled “The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!”, originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length. It states:
[Article 30]: “Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them . . . and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents.” First published by Global Research April 19, 2012.

The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers. 

In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress.  But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair.  Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.

By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone’s permission.  And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press.  The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers  on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.

The bankers’ coup has triumphed in Europe seemingly without a fight.  The ESM is cheered by Eurozone governments, their creditors, and “the market” alike, because it means investors will keep buying sovereign debt.  All is sacrificed to the demands of the creditors, because where else can the money be had to float the crippling debts of the Eurozone governments?

There is another alternative to debt slavery to the banks.  But first, a closer look at the nefarious underbelly of the ESM and Goldman’s silent takeover of the ECB . . . .

The Dark Side of the ESM

The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as Member States representing 90% of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012.  A December 2011 youtube video titled “The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!”, originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length.  It states:

The EU is planning a new treaty called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM:  a treaty of debt. . . . The authorized capital stock shall be 700 billion euros.  Question: why 700 billion?  [Probable answer: it simply mimicked the $700 billion the U.S. Congress bought into in 2008.] . . . .

[Article 9]: “. . . ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them . . . within seven days of receipt of such demand.”  . . . If the ESM needs money, we have seven days to pay. . . . But what does “irrevocably and unconditionally” mean?  What if we have a new parliament, one that does not want to transfer money to the ESM?  . . . .

[Article 10]: “The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorized capital and amend Article 8 . . . accordingly.”  Question:  . . . 700 billion is just the beginning?  The ESM can stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any time it wants to?  And we would then be required under Article 9 to irrevocably and unconditionally pay up?

[Article 27, lines 2-3]: “The ESM, its property, funding, and assets . . . shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process . . . .”  Question:  So the ESM program can sue us, but we can’t challenge it in court?

[Article 27, line 4]: “The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall . . . be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action.”  Question: . . . [T]his means that neither our governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM organization?  That’s a pretty powerful treaty!

[Article 30]:  “Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them . . . and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents.”   Question:  So anyone involved in the ESM is off the hook?  They can’t be held accountable for anything? . . . The treaty establishes a new intergovernmental organization to which we are required to transfer unlimited assets within seven days if it so requests, an organization that can sue us but is immune from all forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity.  There are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply?  Governments cannot take action against it?  Europe’s national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization?  Is that the future of Europe?  Is that the new EU – a Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?

The Goldman Squid Captures the ECB

Last November, without fanfare and barely noticed in the press, former Goldman exec Mario Draghi replaced Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the ECB.  Draghi wasted no time doing for the banks what the ECB has refused to do for its member governments—lavish money on them at very cheap rates.  French blogger Simon Thorpe reports:

On the 21st of December, the ECB “lent” 489 billion euros to European Banks at the extremely generous rate of just 1% over 3 years.  I say “lent”, but in reality, they just ran the printing presses. The ECB doesn’t have the money to lend. It’s Quantitative Easing again.

The money was gobbled up virtually instantaneously by a total of 523 banks. It’s complete madness. The ECB hopes that the banks will do something useful with it – like lending the money to the Greeks, who are currently paying 18% to the bond markets to get money. But there are absolutely no strings attached. If the banks decide to pay bonuses with the money, that’s fine. Or they might just shift all the money to tax havens.

At 18% interest, debt doubles in just four years.  It is this onerous interest burden, not the debt itself, that is crippling Greece and other debtor nations.  Thorpe proposes the obvious solution:

Why not lend the money to the Greek government directly? Or to the Portuguese government, currently having to borrow money at 11.9%? Or the Hungarian government, currently paying 8.53%. Or the Irish government, currently paying 8.51%? Or the Italian government, who are having to pay 7.06%?

The stock objection to that alternative is that Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty prevents the ECB from lending to governments.  But Thorpe reasons:

My understanding is that Article 123 is there to prevent elected governments from abusing Central Banks by ordering them to print money to finance excessive spending. That, we are told, is why the ECB has to be independent from governments. OK. But what we have now is a million times worse. The ECB is now completely in the hands of the banking sector. “We want half a billion of really cheap money!!” they say.  OK, no problem. Mario is here to fix that. And no need to consult anyone. By the time the ECB makes the announcement, the money has already disappeared.

At least if the ECB was working under the supervision of elected governments, we would have some influence when we elect those governments. But the bunch that now has their grubby hands on the instruments of power are now totally out of control.

Goldman Sachs and the financial technocrats have taken over the European ship.  Democracy has gone out the window, all in the name of keeping the central bank independent from the “abuses” of government.  Yet the government is the people—or it should be.  A democratically elected government represents the people.  Europeans are being hoodwinked into relinquishing their cherished democracy to a rogue band of financial pirates, and the rest of the world is not far behind.

Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty.  Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments.  Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free.  This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada.

Today the issuance of money and credit has become the private right of vampire rentiers, who are using it to squeeze the lifeblood out of economies.  This right needs to be returned to sovereign governments.  Credit should be a public utility, dispensed and managed for the benefit of the people.

To add your signature to a letter to parliamentarians blocking ratification of the ESM, click here. 

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.  In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com. 

70 per cent of Syrians voted in referendum to end one party rule and to have elections but have been hit by EU sanctions anyway. Aljazeera reported that no-one would vote, but it seems that a lot did. Basically the world is dividing into an Eastern and Western bloc over this, with Russia and China supporting Syria's right to settle its own affairs and the US and other Anglophone western nations and the EU are looking for a pretext to intervene and threatening crippling sanctions. Further down we might expect EU imposition of a no-fly zone to give them an excuse to invade, as has already happened in Libya. Is the end-objective to isolate Iran for its oil reserves? What's up? Here are some views. (Incidentally, a shock inside for Australians - we are 2nd highest ranking weapons importers. What are we doing with them? Are we on-selling? And who's making money out of this?)

Western leaders ignore majority of Syrians

Republished from "West Regards Majority of Syrians as "Non-People"by grtv"

"Syria has successfully held a referendum on a constitution, but been hit with new sanctions by the EU anyway.

Neil Clark, a journalist and contributor to The Guardian, believes Western leaders are being highly hypocritical when they criticize the Syrian regime for being undemocratic, and yet fail to respect the views of the majority of Syrians.

“Fifty-seven per cent of Syrians have voted and an overwhelming majority of them have said yes to it,” he told RT “It’s a great day for democracy in Syria. And yet what’s the reaction been by the Western leaders? Well, Hillary Clinton denounced it as a cynical ploy. Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, said that it was a sham, but in fact what is a sham is the West’s approach because the reaction to this referendum shows us that they’re not really keen on democracy in Syria.”

Clark said the West tends to cast a blind eye on huge pro-Assad demonstrations and the fact that 55 per cent of Syrians want President Assad to stay.

“The reality is that the majority of Syrians support Assad, but for the West these are non-people, their views don’t count”.

He noted the symbolism of the announcement of new sanctions against Syria by the EU.

“On the very day that Syria, after five decades of one-party rule, votes for democracy, what does the EU do? It announces tough new sanctions on Syria. It’s highly symbolic.”

Clark expressed his opinion that the EU was hardly a democratic body itself.

“I think that it’s quite ironic on this very day we also have the French President Nicolas Sarkozy explaining why we, the European people, are not going to be allowed to vote ourselves on the EU fiscal treaty. He says it’s too hard for us to understand. So the EU, which is claiming to be in favor of democracy, is actually working against it.”

He concluded by saying that the majority of Syrians do not want their country to disintegrate like Iraq or Libya and see President Assad and the Ba’ath party as the preferred solution to hold the country together."

The Manila Times on Friday 17 February gave details of the referendum before it was voted on and treated the matter with less optimism:

A day after rejecting United Nations (UN) allegations of crimes against humanity, the Syrian leader set the referendum for February 26, in a move aimed at placating growing global outrage over the bloodshed.

The proposed charter drops Article 8, which declared the ruling Baath Party as the “leader of the state and society,” allowing for a multi-party system, state television said.

The president must be a Muslim man and may serve a maximum of two seven-year terms, although it is unclear if this would apply to Assad, who is already on his second term.

In April, Assad scrapped emergency rule—in force since 1963—when the Baathists took power in a coup d’etat. But he has repeatedly promised reforms that have failed to materialize since the uprising erupted in March.

The embattled 46-year-old president, who succeeded his late father Hafez in 2000, said that the Constitution would usher in a “new era” for Syria, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Meanwhile, the Anarchist Weekly gives this opinion:

"Syria Bleeding"

"The butcher Assad, the so called President of Syria, has made his name by butchering his own people, not by invading Israel. Assad and the reactionary Israel government are two peas in the same pod. Violence is their stock in trade. Murder and destruction is their legacy. Human beings are mere objects to be prodded, gutted, slaughtered for the glory of the state.

These modern day Aztec Priests don’t even use the fig leaf of religious belief to justify their atrocities. Syria is a classical example of what happens when rulers who are faced with peaceful protest use their monopoly on the use of force to derail that protest. The world looks on while the autocrats in China and Russia block United Nations intervention in Syria and the United States uses the Arab League to try to unseat an autocrat they don’t control to insert one they do control.

The people of Syria in 2012, like the people of Spain in 1936, need the help of ordinary people to halt these atrocities. More so than ever before they need to see the very soldiers who are involved in the slaughter turn their guns against their officers. These Syrian soldiers, as many before them have done, need to use the arms they have brought to the struggle to protect Syrians who have used their bare hands to dismantle a regime that has a track record of brutality that is only matched by the Israeli states’ treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank."

Candobetter Peak Oil Politics author view:

Our resident Peak Oil Politics writer, Sheila Newman, said:

"Since the establishment of the Anglo-Persian oil company in Iran, and the dismantlement of the Ottoman empire during the First World War, Western industrial interests have used governments and warfare to colonise and destabilise the tribes and nation-formation and government of countries in the Middle East (and South America, Asia and Africa) that could possibly have an association with oil. These machinations include the control of countries bordering the oil producers, like Syria (although it does have some oil, important to its economy), Somalia and the Sudan. In 1970, the United States - which had built its modern industrial, military and political strength on its own oil production - became a net oil importer. With the oil shocks of the early 1970s, Arab and other third world oil-producing colonies[1] organised through OPEC (0rganisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries - started by Gadaffi) to become independent and better represent their own interests on the global oil market instead of those of foreign national oil companies and public and private corporations. Australia, under Prime Minister Whitlam almost took this route, when Whitlam's Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, nearly made Australia energy-self-sufficient. The Khemlani loan was mostly for that purpose with the ancillary purpose of supporting full employment of Australians during the 1970s oil shock period.

The Eastern bloc took a different route from the capitalist-industrialist bloc, seeking to bring a communist outlook to the oil-producing countries of the world, which would then align them to its philosophy and to its membership countries. Historically communism is a reaction to capitalism.

The Western and Eastern blocs each supplied arms to oil producing countries and those countries became global 'hot-spots'.

Western counter-shocks sought to weaken this alliance by reducing oil-demand, with the intended effect of drastically reducing the incomes of the OPEC members. These actions brought about new negotiated prices in a newly formed global petroleum market. OPEC has continued to hold its own on this market, with the stated purpose of keeping prices relatively smooth and looking after the interests of its members. This approach has probably maintained fairly benign oil-pricing, but the stakes are rising, both for oil exporters and oil importers, who are mutually dependent - one for income and the other for fuel.

The reason that the stakes are rising is because world population and industrial activity is continually breaking its own records and is now completely hooked on the economic growth model, which relies utterly on petroleum supply to survive in current proportions. Obviously both sides of the global oil market - the exporters and the importers - would like to increase the certainty of their positions. For the oil-exporters the way forward must seem to be to diversify their national economies and produce and consume locally whilst conserving their fuel for their own welfare. This may not mean that they would withhold all their petroleum, but it would throw a spanner in world economic growth and cause poverty in previously wealthy countries that have used up much or all of their local fossil fuel supplies. For the oil-importers the way forward must seem to be to get control (as in colonial times) of Middle Eastern oil and use it to prop up their own economies and manufacturing. Quite a few of the oil-producing members of OPEC want to conserve world oil supplies and this flies in the face of many of the oil importing economies' desire to continuously increase population, production of goods, and consumption. These opposite interests can have only two outcomes - warlike competition as the world separates into blocs or world cooperation. World cooperation would require the world to abandon both growth economics, world economic development and the current division of world population into poor commodity-producing economies and wealthy consuming countries. It would also, in my view, require empowering people at a local level in all countries who would then delegate power upwards, instead of the top-down corporate politics that have evolved since the 18th century.

There are other notable sub-interests affected. One of these is weapons production - in which the US and most governments invest heavily. Astonishingly, little Australia is second in world ranking for importing arms! (Candobetter must look into this.)

Another is industries profiting from increasing world immigration as an economic stimulator of development and redevelopment in established industrial economies which would otherwise slow down as their populations stabilised and demand for housing, roads etc diminished. This drive to import people to stimulate growth economies only applies strongly in the Anglophone powers - Western Continental Europe does not have the same reliance on immigration as an economic stimulant. (Australia, Canada, the US, and Britain are well-known for unsustainable population growth in the service of speculative industries known as the Growth Lobby.)

Modern Oil politics and Resource Wars

Greg Muttitt, in his brilliant book, Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, Bodley Head, UK, 2011, p.xxv, writes:
"One of the lessons of this book is that we must revise our notion of a resource war. We have tended to think of the conquistador loading up his ship with stolen New World gold, but a single shipload of any commodity is worth relatively little to a world power, or even to a corporation. A far more valuable prize can be carried in a briefcase or on a laptop computer: contracts, laws and policies that ensure the flow of resources over decades.

It would be wrong to simply equate US and UK energy security with the interests of their corporations. But they do overlap. After all, if those corporations were to gain contracts entitling them to extract more oil, that would help provide the secure, increased supplies their governments seek.

Enforceable rights to extract resources confer not just wealth but power. Less visible than tanks in the streets, the more abstract forms of power asserted through documents and institutions last far longer. The outcome of the oil struggles recounted in these pages will in large part determine the nature of the West's relationship with Iraq and the wider Middle East for decades to come. This book is a warning of the fate that may befall other parts of the world as the competition for resources becomes more intense, if we do not learn form this experience."

What do you think? Please send us your comments.

See also: comment Are we being lied to any less than in 1991, 2003, 2011, ... ? of 5 March - Ed.

[1] "OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of 12 oil-producing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965,[2] and hosts regular meetings among the oil ministers of its Member Countries. Indonesia withdrew in 2008 after it became a net importer of oil, but stated it would likely return if it became a net exporter again." (Wikipedia)

by Ellen Brown

Originally published on Global Research

Contents: Lincoln's Monetary Breakthrough, Building on a Successful Tradition, The Perennial Inflation Question, A Wake-up Call, Notes

Dear President Obama:

The world was transfixed on that remarkable day in January when, to poetry, song, and dance, you gazed upon Abraham Lincoln's likeness at the Lincoln Memorial and searched for wisdom to navigate these difficult times. Indeed, you have so many things in common with that venerable President that one might imagine you were his reincarnation in different dress. You are both thin and wiry, brilliant speakers, appearing on the national stage at pivotal times. Fertile imaginations could envision you coming back triumphantly as one of those slaves you freed, to prove once and for all the proposition that all men are created equal and can achieve great things if given a fighting chance. But as Wordsworth said, our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; and if that is true, you may have forgotten a more subtle form of slavery from which Lincoln freed his countrymen, even if you were there at the time. You may have forgotten it because it has been omitted from the history books, leaving Americans ill-equipped to interpret the lessons of our own past. This letter is therefore meant to remind you.

We are now met on another battlefield of that same economic war that visited Lincoln and the Founding Fathers before him. President Obama, the fate of our economy and the nation itself may depend on how well you understand Lincoln's monetary breakthrough, the most far-reaching "economic stimulus plan" ever implemented by a U.S. President. You can solve our economic crisis quickly and permanently, by implementing the same economic solution that allowed Lincoln to win the Civil War and thus save the Union from foreign economic masters.

Lincoln's Monetary Breakthrough

The bankers had Lincoln's government over a barrel, just as Wall Street has Congress in its vice-like grip today. The North needed money to fund a war, and the bankers were willing to lend it only under circumstances that amounted to extortion, involving staggering interest rates of 24 to 36 percent. Lincoln saw that this would bankrupt the North and asked a trusted colleague to research the matter and find a solution. In what may be the best piece of advice ever given to a sitting President, Colonel Dick Taylor of Illinois reported back that the Union had the power under the Constitution to solve its financing problem by printing its money as a sovereign government. Taylor said:

"Just get Congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal tender treasury notes . . . and pay your soldiers with them and go ahead and win your war with them also. If you make them full legal tender . . . they will have the full sanction of the government and be just as good as any money; as Congress is given that express right by the Constitution."

The Greenbacks actually were just as good as the bankers' banknotes. Both were created on a printing press, but the banknotes had the veneer of legitimacy because they were "backed" by gold. The catch was that this backing was based on "fractional reserves," meaning the bankers held only a small fraction of the gold necessary to support all the loans represented by their banknotes. The "fractional reserve" ruse is still used today to create the impression that bankers are lending something other than mere debt created with accounting entries on their books.₁

Lincoln took Col. Taylor's advice and funded the war by printing paper notes backed by the credit of the government. These legal-tender U.S. Notes or "Greenbacks" represented receipts for labor and goods delivered to the United States. They were paid to soldiers and suppliers and were tradeable for goods and services of a value equivalent to their service to the community. The Greenbacks aided the Union not only in winning the war but in funding a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Lincoln's government created the greatest industrial giant the world had yet seen. The steel industry was launched, a continental railroad system was created, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted, free higher education was established, government support was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was organized, and labor productivity was increased by 50 to 75 percent. The Greenback was not the only currency used to fund these achievements; but they could not have been accomplished without it, and they could not have been accomplished on money borrowed at the usurious rates the bankers were attempting to extort from the North.

Lincoln succeeded in restoring the government's power to issue the national currency, but his revolutionary monetary policy was opposed by powerful forces. The threat to established interests was captured in an editorial of unknown authorship, said to have been published in The London Times in 1865:

If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic during the late war in that country, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. According to historian W. Cleon Skousen:

"Right after the Civil War there was considerable talk about reviving Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become an established institution."

The institution that became established instead was the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned central bank given the power in 1913 to print Federal Reserve Notes (or dollar bills) and lend them to the government. The government was submerged in a debt that has grown exponentially since, until it is now an unrepayable $11 trillion. For nearly a century, Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial has gazed out pensively across the reflecting pool toward the Federal Reserve building, as if pondering what the bankers had wrought since his death and how to remedy it.

Building on a Successful Tradition

Lincoln did not invent government-issued paper money. Rather, he restored a brilliant innovation of the American colonists. According to Benjamin Franklin, it was the colonists' home-grown paper "scrip" that was responsible for the remarkable abundance in the colonies at a time when England was suffering from the ravages of the Industrial Revolution. Like with Lincoln's Greenbacks, this prosperity posed a threat to the control of the British Crown and the emerging network of private British banks, prompting the King to ban the colonists' paper money and require the payment of taxes in gold. According to Franklin and several other historians of the period, it was these onerous demands by the Crown, and the corresponding collapse of the colonists' paper money supply, that actually sparked the Revolutionary War.₂

The colonists won the war but ultimately lost the money power to a private banking cartel, one that issued another form of paper money called "banknotes." Today the bankers' debt-based money has come to dominate most of the economies of the world; but there are a number of historical examples of the successful funding of economic development in other countries simply with government-issued credit. In Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s, the Depression conditions suffered elsewhere were avoided by drawing on a national credit card issued by publicly-owned central banks. The governments of the island states of Guernsey and Jersey created thriving economies that carried no federal debt, just by issuing their own debt-free public currencies. China has also funded impressive internal development through a system of state-owned banks.

Here in the United States, the state of North Dakota has a wholly state-owned bank that creates credit on its books just as private banks do. This credit is used to serve the needs of the community, and the interest on loans is returned to the government. Not coincidentally, North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus at a time when 46 of 50 states are insolvent, ...

Here in the United States, the state of North Dakota has a wholly state-owned bank that creates credit on its books just as private banks do. This credit is used to serve the needs of the community, and the interest on loans is returned to the government. Not coincidentally, North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus at a time when 46 of 50 states are insolvent, an impressive achievement for a state of isolated farmers battling challenging weather.₃ The North Dakota prototype could be copied not only in every U.S. state but at the federal level.

The Perennial Inflation Question

The objection invariably raised to government-issued currency or credit is that it would create dangerous hyperinflation. However, in none of these models has that proven to be true. Price inflation results either when the supply of money goes up but the supply of goods doesn't, or when speculators devalue currencies by massive short selling, as in those cases of Latin American hyperinflation when printing-press money was used to pay off foreign debt. When new money is used to produce new goods and services, price inflation does not result because supply and demand rise together. Prices did increase during the American Civil War, but this was attributed to the scarcity of goods common in wartime rather than to the Greenback itself. War produces weapons rather than consumer goods.

Today, with trillions of dollars being committed for bailouts and stimulus plans, another objection to Lincoln's solution is likely to be, "The U.S. government is already printing its own money -- and lots of it." This, however, is a misconception. What the government prints are bonds -- its I.O.U.s or debt. If the government did print dollars, instead of borrowing them from a privately-owned central bank that prints them, Uncle Sam would not have an eleven trillion dollar millstone hanging around his neck. As Thomas Edison astutely observed:

"If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way.
It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people."

A Wake-up Call

Henry Ford observed at about the same time:

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Today we the people are starting to understand our banking and monetary system, and we are shocked, dismayed, and furious at what we are discovering. The wizard behind the curtain turns out to be a small group of men pulling levers and dials, creating an illusory money scheme that, behind all the talk and bravado, is mere smoke and mirrors. These levers are controlled by a privately-owned, unaccountable central bank called the Federal Reserve, which has recently dispensed billions if not trillions in funds to its banker cronies, without revealing where these monies are going even under Congressional inquiry or in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As Chris Powell pointed out recently in conjunction with an FOIA request brought by Bloomberg News, which the Fed declined to comply with:

"Any government that can disburse $2 trillion secretly, without any accountability, is not a democratic government. It is government of, by, and, for the bankers."₄

There was a time when private central bankers were the heavyweights in control, able to run their ultra-secret agenda with impunity; but that era is coming to an end. The bankers are scrambling, trying to patch up their crumbling creations with schemes, bailouts and sleight of hand. That effort, however, must ultimately prove futile. As investment adviser Rolfe Winkler said in a recent article:

"The great Ponzi scheme that is the Western World's economy has grown so big there's simply no 'fixing' it. Flushing more debt through the system would be like giving Madoff a few billion to tide him over. Or like adding another floor to the Tower of Babel. To what end? The collapse is already here. The question is: How much do we want it to hurt? Using the public's purse to finance 'confidence' in a system that is already kaput may delay the Day of Reckoning, sure, but at the cost of multiplying our losses. Perhaps fantastically."₅

The bankers are on the run, feverishly trying to use the collapse of the current system to steer us toward an "Amero"-style North American currency, or a one-world private banking system and privately-issued global currency that they and only they control. We the people will not accept those solutions, however, no matter how bad things get. We demand real solutions that empower us, not further enslave us.

Abraham Lincoln had such a solution. President Obama, you can finally bring his monetary solution to fruition. Manifest the vision of Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin, and we the people will make sure you are placed in the pantheon of our greatest leaders and are revered for all time. America's greatest days can still be ahead of us; but for this to happen, we need to expose and root out the deceptive banking scheme that would enslave us to a future of debt and increasing homelessness in this great country our forefathers founded. The time has come for democracy to rise superior to a private banking cartel and take back the power to create money once again. Such a transformation would represent the most epochal and empowering shift that humanity has ever seen. As you recently said:

"This country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best. Throughout our history we have met every great challenge with bold action and big ideas."

Your words are a timely reminder of our long legacy of action and bold solutions in the face of adversity. Can we do this? Yes we can.

For more information, see the writings of a variety of money reformers including David Korten, Richard Cook, Stephen Zarlenga, Michael Hudson and this author; articles collected at www.webofdebt.com/articles and www.GlobalResearch.ca; the documentary videos "The Money Masters" and "Money as Debt;" and proposed legislation by Congressman Dennis Kucinich to nationalize the Fed, and by Congressman Ron Paul to audit it (HR 1027).

Notes:

Contents: Lincoln's Monetary Breakthrough, Building on a Successful Tradition, The Perennial Inflation Question, A Wake-up Call, Notes

1. ↑ See Ellen Brown, "Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking," www.webofdebt.com/articles (December 29, 2008).

2. ↑ Congressman Charles Binderup in a 1941 speech, "How America Created Its Own Money in 1750: How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous." Binderup quotes historian John Twells on this point.

3. ↑ E. Brown, "Turning the Tables on Wall Street: North Dakota Shows Cash-starved States How They Can Create Their Own Credit," www.webofdebt.com/articles (March 11, 2009).

4. ↑ Chris Powell, "Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion," GATA (December 12, 2008).

5. ↑ Rolfe Winkler, "More Debt Won't Rescue the Great American Ponzi," Option Armageddon (March 9, 2009).

Special thanks to CC for his invaluable help with this article.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust." Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature's Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

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Some Recent Global Research articles

Obama's Budget Will Impoverish America of 12 Mar 09 by Bonnie Faulkner.

The administration's 2010 budget will entail the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history, leading to social havoc and the potential impoverishment of millions of people. Defense spending and bank bailouts will consume all government revenue resulting in fiscal collapse that will lead to the privatization of the state. ...

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Footnotes

1. ↑ Global Research seems not to take a strong stance against immigration and population growth, which is an all too common omission by left-wing anti-globalisation activists. Whilst this is a serious omission, Global Research, nevertheless remains a valuable resource in the struggle against the globalising oligarchs. If we don't win that fight, we can't hope to achieve population stability nor to prevent a global ecological holocaust. A good article which suggests how to bridge the gap between Malthusians who largely see population control and border control as the only important issues and leftists who, in practice ignore the question of population, is "Overpopulation is a Cultural Challenge" by Chuck Burr, published on Culture Quake 30 Mar 09 and republished in a shortened version on Culture Change on 04 April 2009.