Stephen Lendman

Washington operates extrajudicially. Threatening world peace. The world's global outlaw. Russia its moral leader. Vilified for doing the right thing. For defying America's hegemonic ambitions. Forthrightly. Courageously. Honorably. Responsibly. Supporting nation-state sovereign independence inviolability. Holding firm against America's rage to dominate. Especially over Russia. Never, according to Vladimir Putin. Not now. Earlier. Or ever. For sure not with him in charge.

On Tuesday, he spoke at the all-Russia People's Front. Responding to film director Yuri Kara. Asking if America wants to humiliate Russia.

"(N)ot so," said Putin. "The United States is not trying to humiliate us. It wants to subdue us, to settle its own problems at our expense." "To make us succumb to its influence. No one has ever managed to achieve this aim in relations with Russia or ever will," he stressed.

At the same time, Washington dominates other states. Bullying and pressuring them to go along. At the expense of their own self-interest.

"Try(ing) to defend (what benefits America). (F)or obscure reasons and with very hazy prospects." "I sometimes feel utter confusion,"Putin said. Protection of the so-called pan-European, Western influence to the detriment of one’s own national interests as a rule is fraught with several problems."

Universally defined common interests don't exist, Putin believes. Geopolitical ones vary from country to country.

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Pepe Escobar

(L-R) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Chinese President Xi Jinping
and South African President Jacob Zuma join their hands at a group photo
session during the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza July 15, 2014.

Here’s the G20 in Australia in a one-liner: a tiny bunch of Anglo-Saxon political buffoons attempts to drown out the Global South.

Countries representing over 85 percent of the world economy get together to (in theory) discuss some really heavy economic/financial issues, and virtually the only thing pitiful Western corporate media blabbers about is Russian President Vladimir Putin cutting an ‘isolated figure’.

Well, Washington and its string of puppets did try to turn the G20 into a farce. Fortunately the adults in the room had some business to do.

The five BRICS member-nations – despite their current problems, the G5 that really matters in the world - did meet before the summit, including the ‘isolated figure’. Economically, this G5 more than matches the old, decrepit G7.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff forcefully encouraged the G5 to turbo-charge their mutual cooperation – as well as South-South cooperation. That includes, of course, the BRICS Development Bank. The BRICS, stressing their ‘serious concern’, once again called Washington’s bluff – perpetually refusing to endorse much-delayed structural reform at the IMF.

The IMF quota and governance reform package was in fact approved by the IMF’s Board of Governors way back in 2010. One of its key resolutions was to increase the voting power of emerging markets, the BRICS at the forefront. For Republicans in Washington, this is worse than communism.

Chinese President Xi Jinping added that BRICS cooperation should not only boost the global economy, but also ensure global peace. Make trade, not tomahawks. The over 120 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – beggars in the G20 banquet - were paying very close attention.

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Donna Laframboise

On November 2, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sent humanity a ransom note. In the words of the UK-based cartoonist known as Josh, its message was: "Give us trillions or you will fry!! There will be storms floods droughts winds and pestilence. We really mean it this time."

The IPCC's most recent document is a 100-page summary of a multi-thousand-page opus released in three instalments over the past 14 months. While the public is told this report - the fifth of its kind - is a scientific assessment of the state of the world's climate, the truth is more complicated.

Despite the fact that climate research was in its infancy back in 1992, world leaders decided global warming was a problem worth worrying about, and that humanity was responsible. They signed a treaty called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It calls for the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere" in order to prevent dangerous human "interference with the climate system." It also mandates ongoing, annual UN climate conferences.

In any negotiation, it's useful to begin with what lawyers call an "agreed statement of facts." Rajendra Pachauri, the economist who heads the IPCC, hopes this newly-minted report will be helpful to "negotiators as they work towards a new global climate agreement." He calls the treaty the IPCC's "main customer." This is the real purpose of the IPCC: to produce documents that can be cited during the poker game known as international climate negotiations.

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Eric Zuesse

They think its a plot by Washington directed at Russia intended to cause rifts between Russia and Ukraine and Russia and Europe. Introduction by Russia Insider: This article, with its extensive quotations from an interview by the well-known Russian economist Sergei Glazyev, is a rare example of a fair-minded western explanation of the Russian view of the Ukrainian crisis. Glazyev's views on this are very widespread among the Russian elite, and it is fair to say, are a very accurate reflection of what Russian elites believe. The article grasps that for the Russians the key fact of the Ukrainian crisis is not Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU or Crimea’s unification with Russia or the uprising in the Donbas. It is the violent and unconstitutional overthrow with western support of the democratically elected government of Ukraine led by Viktor Yanukovych. For the Russians what has followed since: Crimea’s secession and its reunion with Russia and the civil war in the east, are the natural outcome of that event. The extracts in the article from Glazyev’s interview shows how many Russians see the Ukrainian crisis as ultimately directed at themselves – as an attempt by the US to draw them into war and to obstruct the development of their economy and society by creating divisions between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and Europe. This article originally appeared in Washington's Blog.

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John Pilger

The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would "actively welcome" the Swedish prosecutor in London and "we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that". The tone was impatient.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 - even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange's life and freedom from the United States - should he leave the embassy - is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a "multi subject investigation" against Assange was "active and ongoing".

Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.

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Lawrence Davidson

U.S. pundits mock countries, like Iran or China, where candidates are screened before they go on the ballot, but America has a similar approach, with candidates needing approval from plutocrats and special interests. But that’s just one problem of U.S. Democracy.

Given the dangerous results of the recent election in the United States – one that saw the Republicans, a right-wing party increasingly populated with neocon warmongers, reactionaries and plutocrats take control of both houses of Congress – it might be time to take a look at a sober look at U.S. democracy.

We can begin be taking note of the generic observation made by Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The implication here is that democracy is really not the God-blessed system so many of Americans take it to be.

For instance, the public in a democracy is just as vulnerable to manipulation by various elites and interest groups as are those in non-democratic environments. The difference is that a democracy has a built-in procedure that allows citizens to have second thoughts about past manipulation. Thus they can kick out the bastards they were originally persuaded to kick in – even if it is often only to replace them with a new set of bastards. This repeated procedure results in a time limit on the damage elected leaders can do. It is, of course, possible that democratically elected politicians can come close to ruining a nation (their own as well as others) even given their limited tenure.

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Paul Craig Roberts

As most Americans, if not the financial media, are aware, Quantitative Easing (a euphemism for printing money) has failed to bring back the US economy.

So why has Japan adopted the policy? Since the heavy duty money printing began in 2013, the Japanese yen has fallen 35% against the US dollar, a big cost for a country dependent on energy imports. Moreover, the Japanese economy has shown no growth in response to the QE stimulus to justify the rising price of imports.

Despite the economy’s lack of response to the stimulus, last month the Bank of Japan announced a 60% increase in quantitative easing–from 50 to 80 trillion yen annually. Albert Edwards, a strategist at Societe Generale, predicts that the Japanese printing press will drive the yen down from 115 yen to the dollar to 145.

This is a prediction, but why risk the reality? What does Japan have to gain from currency depreciation? What is the thinking behind the policy? An easy explanation is that Japan is being ordered to destroy its currency in order to protect the over-printed US dollar. As a vassal state, Japan suffers under US political and financial hegemony and is powerless to resist Washington’s pressure.

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Finian Cunningham

Has Russia reached the limit of its diplomatic tolerance of the US and its NATO allies? The announcement this week that Moscow is to begin deploying long-range bombers in the Gulf of Mexico - America's own backyard - suggests so.

US warns Russia over bomber flights near American borders

The move may seem like a reckless ratcheting up of tensions between the old Cold War rivals. The Tupolev Russian strategic bombers in question are nuclear-capable, and as expected the decision to patrol the Caribbean seas sparked a stern response from Washington, warning Moscow of risks.

But the first point to note is that Russia is not doing anything illegal. It has a legal right to fly its warplanes in any international airspace it chooses, as do all nations, to perform training maneuvers.

Even Washington officials have begrudgingly acknowledged Russia's legal right to do so. The Christian Science Monitor quoted Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren as saying, "Russia has a right to fly in international airspace".

However, we can be sure that the hawks in Washington will be fuming at what they see as Vladimir Putin's "audacity" to order warplanes within striking distance of the US. For the de facto American War Party of Republicans and Democrats, the latest Russian move confirms their accusations that President Putin is trying to flex "Soviet-era muscles". Or, as American NATO commander General Philip Breedlove put it, Russia "is messaging us that they are a great power".

That's typical arrogant mis-reading by Washington of the situation. This is not Putin trying to be provocative or flaunting expansionist ambitions. It is simply Russia giving a taste of American medicine back and in language that the arrogant warmongers in Washington will understand.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US-led NATO military alliance has embarked on a relentless campaign of encircling Russia. In complete defiance of binding agreements, such as the 1997 Founding Act between NATO and Russia, the American military alliance has encroached on Russian borders with warplanes, warships, missiles and troops. It is Washington that is on an expansionist threatening drive, not Russia.

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Nomi Prins

Nomi Prins in the article below addresses the destruction of the market-based Western financial system and its replacement with a casino underwritten by taxpayers.

The recent spike in global political-financial volatility that was temporarily soothed by European Central Bank (ECB) covered bond buying reveals another crack in the six-year-old throw-money-at-the-banks strategies of politicians and central bankers. The premise of using banks as credit portals to transport public funds from the government to citizens is as inefficient as it is not happening. The power elite may exude belabored moans about slow growth and rising inequality in speeches and press releases, but they continue to find ways to provide liquidity, sustenance and comfort to financial institutions, not to populations.

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Mark Glenn

What was that thing you said, Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League? You know, that really dramatic thing you said in the speech you made in Palm Beach, where you blamed the internet for the recent rise in ‘anti-Semitism’ around the world, and how you couldn’t remember ever being so ‘seriously concerned about the safety and security’ of your grandson because of it?

Well, what do you know, Abe…miracles do exist. There is actually something upon which you and I can agree. You see, I too have never been so afraid for the future of my progeny, and the source of my worry also stems from the recent rise in anti-Semitism. —No, Abe, I am not Jewish, thank God, for if I were then chances are better than not that I would find myself in the clutches of evil, conspiring men (such as you) who are always drumming up new ways of enriching and empowering themselves by getting their own people into trouble.

You see, the reason that I am alarmed at the recent rise in ‘anti-Semitism’ is because I am a real, living, flesh-and-blood-Semite Abe, unlike you and those for whom you presume to speak. As such, my children are also Semitic and–if I am so blessed–my grandchildren will be as well.

Do not let my non-Semitic-sounding name fool you. There is more ‘Semitism’ in one of my eyelashes than what you and your people could possibly dream of possessing in your wildest, most uninhibited fantasies. My relatives came from the Middle East, unlike yours which came from the ghettos of either Europe or Russia. My relatives are the ancient Filasteens and Phoenicians whereas yours (and those of 95% of the world’s Jewish people) came from the ancient kingdom of Khazaria in southern Russia. My skin is dark and my eyes are dark and almond-shaped, unlike your features which are fair and white in appearance. I grew up hearing dialects of the Aramaic language that was spoken by Jesus and his apostles and I ate the food that has been part of that region for thousands of years.

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Kevin Barrett

The continuing controversy over which Navy Seal supposedly killed Osama Bin Laden, and the allegedly ISIL-linked killings of two Canadian soldiers, are the latest media stunts designed to prop up the illusion of a “global war on terror” (GWOT) against radical Islam.

The GWOT master narrative features two master villains. Indeed, it is a legend with two legendary anti-heroes: The villain of Act One, Osama Bin Laden; and the villain of the present Act Two, “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In folklore and mythology studies, the word “legend” means “fantastic story that may or may not be true.” In espionage, the same word means: “A spy’s claimed background or biography, usually supported by documents and memorized details.” (Source: SpyMuseum.org)

Among the most fantastic stories of our time are the legends of two larger-than-life terrorists: Osama Bin Laden of al-Qaeda, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIL. Both of these amazing individuals have accomplished near-miraculous feats: Bin Laden caused three skyscrapers to disappear at free-fall acceleration into the path of most resistance, while also making America’s air defenses disappear for two hours so he could bomb the Pentagon, the best-defended building on the planet; while Baghdadi and a ragtag bunch of amateur extremists have somehow seized control of a large swathe of oil-rich and geo-strategically important territory against the opposition of the entire world. Both accomplishments seem, to say the least, highly improbable.

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Neil Clark

The continuing attacks on Vladimir Putin and Russia by members of the western political, military and journalistic elite tell us one thing – the Russian President is doing a good job both for the people of his country and in the international arena.

For it is a rule which invariably holds true – if the Western elites praise the leader of a foreign country it means he is doing something which is good for those elites and bad for his country. If he’s demonized, as Putin is, it’s the other way round.

The latest attack has come from Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US Army general said that Russia was “pushing on the limits of international order.” Dempsey talked of the need to “deter Russian aggression against our NATO allies” – and said that Russia had “kind of lit a fire of nationalism.” “Once you light that fire, it's not controllable,” the General said. “I am worried about Europe.”

It’s worth reflecting on Dempsey’s words as they provide a classic example of what psychologists call ‘projection’. The US General was accusing Russia of what his own country has been guilty of.

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John W. Whitehead

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others. — Simone Weil, French philosopher and political activist

It’s no coincidence that during the same week in which the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Yates v. United States, a case in which a Florida fisherman is being threatened with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water, Florida police arrested a 90-year-old man twice for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public.

Both cases fall under the umbrella of overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker. As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

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Glenn Greenwald & Murtaza Hussain

Just three years after NATO’s military intervention in Libya ended and was widely heralded by its proponents as a resounding success, that country is in complete collapse. So widespread is violence and anarchy there that “hardly any Libyan can live a normal life,” Brown University’s Stephen Kinzer wrote in The Boston Globe last week. Last month, the Libyan Parliament, with no functioning army to protect it from well-armed militias, was forced to flee Tripoli and take refuge in a Greek car ferry. The New York Times reported in September that “the government of Libya said . . . that it had lost control of its ministries to a coalition of militias that had taken over the capital, Tripoli, in another milestone in the disintegration of the state.”

Sectarian strife and economic woes destroyed efforts by the U.S. and U.K. to train Libyan soldiers, causing those two nations last week to all but abandon further programs: “not a single soldier had been trained by the U.S. because the Libyan government failed to provide promised cash.” AP reports this morning that an entire city, Darna, has now pledged its allegiance to ISIS, “becoming the first city outside of Iraq and Syria to join the ‘caliphate’ announced by the extremist group.” A report issued by Amnesty International two weeks ago documented that “lawless militias and armed groups on all sides of the conflict in western Libya are carrying out rampant human rights abuses, including war crimes.” In sum, it is almost impossible to overstate the horrors daily faced by Libyans and the misery that has engulfed the country.

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Stephen Lendman

Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. Israel finds new ways to surprise. Couched in Big Lies. A daily litany burying hard truths. Many too outrageous too ignore. Wrongdoing writ large. Terrorism is what they do, not us.

On November 11, the Silwan, East Jerusalem-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center (WHIC) reported an IDF arrest warrant for two-year-old Hamza. Saying he's wanted for questioning. Confirming it when showing up to detain him. Raiding the family home. An Israeli intelligence officer demanding to see the boy. Told he lived next door. Leaving without comment. According to WHIC, "Israeli forces seized three computers from the Zidani family's home after arresting their 16-year-old son Mohammed."

Earlier, soldiers kidnapped four Silwan Palestinians. After ransacking their home. On Monday, Israeli security forces attacked Deir Abu Mashaal female Palestinian students. Dozens suffered temporary asphyxiation. Needing medical treatment for injuries sustained. West Bank communities and East Jerusalem remain on the boil.

Israeli live fire wounded two Nablus teenagers. Military forces invaded. Clashes with local youths followed. Ali Najeh Hanani and Moayyad Khatatba required hospitalization. Many residents suffered from tear gas inhalation.

On Monday, Israeli police kidnapped five dozen Palestinians. Including 10 children. In Kafr an Tur'an. During overnight clashes. For protesting Israeli ruthlessness. Unjustly accused of "causing violence." Peaceful protests called rioting. Numerous other clashes occurred in other West Bank cities, towns and villages.

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