LED ZEP: PLAGIARISTS OR INNOVATORS? | ARRAM SINNREICH PSYCHOLOGISTS SAY ‘NO’ TO TORTURE | REBECCA GORDON PUTIN-NAZI PARANOIA | CJ HOPKINS ColdTypeISSUE 168 WRITING WORTH READING ● PHOTOS WORTH SEEING MID-SEPT 2018 . Fabricated money, financial gangsters and the next recession have you read all 167 issues of ColdType?
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Mid-September 2018 l Issue 168
ISSUES 4 Psychologists say ‘No’ to torture – Rebecca Gordon 10 Led zep: Innovators or plagiarists? – Aram Sinnreich 13 Conjuring up the next recession – Chris Hedges 16 Canada’s role in the other 9/11 – Yves Engler 18 Empire journalism – David Cromwell 22 Putin-Nazi Paranoia – CJ Hopkins 26 On the brink with Russia – again – Ray McGovern 28 Shifting alliances – Conn Hallinan 31 Wall Street? Just another Ponzi Scheme – Lee Camp 3 34 Lobby attacks on Corbyn will backfire – Jonathan Cook 40 Plastic Soup – George Monbiot 42 40 years in the media frontline – Granville Williams 44 Why is amazon robbing taxpayers?– Jim Hightower INSIGHTS 45 The weaponisation of the US dollar – Pepe Escobar 47 Catholic support for war: more child abuse – Brian Terrell 49 Will South Africa go the same route as Zimbabwe? – Trevor Grundy 50 netanyahu’s veiled threat of nuclear attack – Alison Weir
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ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Rebecca Gordon Psychologists say ‘No’ to torture When we’re smart, committed, and organised, the good guys can win
ometimes the good guys do win. Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. That’s what happened on August 8th For a year-and-a-half, I also served on a spe- in San Francisco when the Council of cial ethics commission established by the APA Representatives of the American Psy- after ugly revelations came out about how that chological Association (APA) decided to organisation’s officials had, in the Bush years, Sextend a policy keeping its members out of the manoeuvred to allow its members to collude with US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. the US government in settings where torture was The APA’s decision is important – and not just used. In fact, an independent review it commis- symbolically. Today we have a president who sioned in 2015 concluded that “some of the asso- 4 has promised to bring back torture and “load ciation’s top officials, including its ethics director, up” Guantánamo “with some bad dudes”. When sought to curry favour with Pentagon officials by healing professionals refuse to work there, they seeking to keep the association’s ethics policies in are standing up for human rights and against line with the Defense Department’s interrogation torture. policies”. Indeed, those leaders colluded “with It wasn’t always so. In the early days of important DoD officials to have [the] APA issue Guantánamo, military psychologists contrib- loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not uted to detainee interrogations there. It was for constrain [the] DoD in any greater fashion than Guantánamo that US Defense Secretary Donald existing DoD interrogation guidelines”. Rumsfeld approved multiple torture methods, in- In the wake of that independent review, the cluding excruciating stress positions, prolonged APA’s Council of Representatives voted that same isolation, sensory deprivation, and enforced nudi- year to keep psychologists out of national security ty. Military psychologists advised on which tech- interrogation settings. It’s modestly encouraging niques would take advantage of the weaknesses that this August two-thirds of its governing body of individual detainees. And it was two psycholo- voted against a resolution that would have re- gists, one an APA member, who designed the CIA’s turned psychologists to sites like Gitmo. whole “enhanced interrogation program”. What makes the new vote less than complete- Here’s a disclaimer of sorts: ever since I wit- ly satisfying, however, is this: The 2015 vote es- nessed the effects of US torture policy firsthand tablishing that policy was 157-to-1. This year, a in Central America in the 1980s, I’ve had a deep third of the council was ready to send psycholo- personal interest in American torture practic- gists back to Guantánamo. Like much of the rest es. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I wrote of Donald Trump’s United States, the APA seems two books focused on the subject, the latest be- to be in the process of backsliding on torture. ing American Nuremberg: The US Officials Who The details of the parliamentary wrangling at
ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Rebecca Gordon Illustration: Lightwise / 123RF Stock Photo Stock / 123RF Lightwise Illustration:
5
the August meeting are undoubtedly of little in- personnel”. terest to outsiders. The actual motion under con- Proponents of the new motion argued sideration was important, however, because it that keeping psychologists out of places like would have rescinded part of the organisation’s Guantánamo deprives detainees of much needed historic 2015 decision, prohibiting its members psychological treatment. If the association really from providing psychological treatment, as it cared about detainees, they claimed, it would not put it, “at the Guantánamo Bay detention facil- deny them the treatment they need. ity, ‘black sites’, vessels in international waters, Opponents argued that allowing psychologists or sites where detainees are interrogated under to work at Guantánamo gives ethical cover to an foreign jurisdiction unless they are working di- illegal detention site where detainees are still be- rectly for the persons being detained or for an ing tortured with painful forced feedings, solitary independent third party working to protect hu- confinement, and the hopelessness induced by in- man rights or providing treatment to military definite detention without charges. It’s worth not-
ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Rebecca Gordon
ing that the military still refuses to allow the UN’s viously an impossible standard to meet, since no special rapporteur on torture to speak privately one knows for sure what will happen in the fu- with detainees at Gitmo. In addition, at such a de- ture. In that way, they essentially redefined any tention and interrogation site, any psychologist form of cruelty, including waterboarding, in any who was a member of, or employed by, the US mil- of the CIA’s black sites then scattered around the itary would face an inevitable conflict of interest world or at Guantánamo, as anything but tor- between the desires of his or her employers and ture. the needs of detainee clients. As it happened, even as defined by the Bush The 2015 resolution also prevented APA mem- administration, much of what was done in those bers from participating in national security inter- years would have qualified as torture. Certainly, rogations, declaring that they “shall not conduct, isolating people, depriving them of sleep, bom- supervise, be in the presence of, or otherwise barding them with heat, cold, light, and endless assist any national security interrogations for loud noise, beating them, and providing them any military or intelligence entities, including with no hope of eventual release were not exact- private contractors working on their behalf, nor ly acts conducive to long-term mental health. In advise on conditions of confinement insofar as fact, in 2016 the New York Times interviewed sev- these might facilitate such an interrogation”. eral freed Guantánamo detainees, who reported Military psychologists within the APA were that the effects of their abuse had indeed lasted not happy in 2015 about being shut out of nation- “months or even years”. al security interrogations and they’d still like to see psychologists back in the interrogation business. This time around, they strategically The role of American psychologists in design- chose to focus their rhetoric on treatment rather ing torture programs goes back at least to the than interrogation. However, the long-term goals 1950s, as historian Alfred McCoy documented 6 are clear. Indeed, in response to a request from so graphically in his book A Question of Torture: those military psychologists, the APA’s Commit- CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War tee on Legal Issues recommended to the board of on Terror. At that time, research psychologists directors “broadening” the resolution “to allow at elite universities in the US and Canada experi- psychologists to be involved in the practice and mented on unwitting subjects – including mental policy of humane interrogation”. The board de- patients – in an effort to develop techniques to clined – this time, anyway. produce a condition of compliancy in future pris- Here’s the problem with “humane interroga- oners, a condition that the CIA called “DDD” (for tion”: no one ever admits to using inhumane debility, dependency, and dread). methods. Unfortunately, there’s a recent and sor- Much of this research culminated in that did history of US officials claiming that torture Agency’s now-infamous 1963 KUBARK manu- is actually humane – albeit “enhanced” – inter- al on interrogation, which the United States used rogation. In the George W. Bush administration, to train the police and military forces of client John Woo and Jay Bybee, who worked in the states. That manual would be resurrected in 1983 Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and used in the CIA’s training of the US-backed were among those who wrote memos justifying Contras in Nicaragua’s civil war. Many of the “en- torture. As Bybee explained in an August 2002 hanced interrogation techniques” that became memo to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, so familiar to us in the George W. Bush years – “real” physical torture must involve pain simi- sensory bombardment, sleep deprivation, expo- lar to that experienced during “serious physi- sure to extremes of heat and cold, sexual humili- cal injury, such as organ failure, impairment of ation – were first laid out in that manual. But the bodily function, or even death”. And the effects CIA evidently misplaced it somewhere in their of psychological interrogation must last “months voluminous files because, after 9/11, instead of or even years” to constitute mental torture – ob- hauling it out yet again, they paid $80 million to
ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Rebecca Gordon two psychologists to reinvent the torture wheel. expel him), they got nowhere. Eventually, Mitch- Those two, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, ell quietly resigned from the association. repackaged DDD as “learned helplessness” (bor- rowing a concept developed by another psycholo- gist, Martin Seligman). Meanwhile, military psychologists were Seligman’s role in developing the CIA torture also working on interrogation matters for the programme has been in dispute ever since. At Department of Defense. At Guantánamo, they most, he seems to have willingly discussed his participated in behavioural science control theories with CIA personnel. In December 2001, teams (BSCTs, pronounced “biscuits”). Despite he met at his home with both James Mitchell and the homey-sounding name, those BSCTs were Kirk Hubbard, who was then the chief of research anything but benign. Staffed by psychologists and analysis in the CIA’s Operational Division, and psychiatrists, the teams, according to a among others. In 2002, at the invitation of CIA 2005 New England Journal of Medicine op-ed by personnel, he lectured on learned helplessness knowledgeable insiders, “prepared psychologi- at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape cal profiles for use by interrogators; they also sat school where US military are trained to resist in on some interrogations, observed others from torture. Seligman claims he had no idea how his behind one-way mirrors, and offered feedback to work was being used until “years later”, when he interrogators”. read a New Yorker article by Jane Mayer about Guantánamo’s BSCTs, the Journal piece con- CI A torture practices in the post-9/11 era. “If I had tinues, favoured an approach to behavioural con- known about the methods employed”, says Selig- trol taught at the John F. Kennedy Special War- man, “I would not have discussed learned help- fare Center, which “builds on the premise that lessness with” Agency officials. acute, uncontrollable stress erodes established Mitchell and Jessen, however, had no such behaviour (eg, resistance to questioning), creat- compunctions. They cheerfully designed an in- ing opportunities to reshape behaviour”. This 7 terrogation program for the CIA that included was to be achieved by introducing “stressors such “enhanced techniques” as slamming de- tailored to the psychological and cultural vul- tainees against walls and locking them in tiny nerabilities of individual detainees (eg, phobias, boxes. As no one is likely to forget, they also re- personality features, and religious beliefs)”. trieved waterboarding from history. This prac- But where did the BSCTs get their information tice had bluntly been called “the water torture” about the vulnerabilities of those individual de- in medieval Europe, and American soldiers tainees? The International Committee of the Red were using it in the Philippines, where it was Cross discovered that it came from their medical referred to ironically as “the water cure”, as the records at the detention centre, which, accord- 20th-century began. To waterboard is essentially ing to general medical ethics and the Geneva to drown a prisoner to the point of unconscious- Conventions, are supposed to be confidential. ness, a “technique” the CIA used 83 times on one Those APA members who continue to ar- man (who didn’t even turn out to be an al-Qaeda gue for bringing military psychologists back to leader). The whole programme was implement- Guantánamo insist that it’s possible to keep a ed at CIA black sites in Afghanistan, Thailand, firewall between their work as clinicians and the Poland, and Romania, among other places. role of interrogator. But how realistic is this, es- For part of this time, Mitchell was a member pecially within an organisation like the military, of the APA and so presumably subject to its code where obedience and hierarchical loyalty are key of ethics, which, theoretically at least, prohibited values? As the New England Journal of Medi- involvement in interrogations involving torture. cine concludes, “[The] proximity of health profes- When concerned APA members tried to bring sionals to interrogation settings, even when they an ethics claim against him to the group (whose act as caregivers, carries risk. It may invite in- only real sanction would have been to publicly terrogators to be more aggressive, because they
ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Rebecca Gordon
imagine that these professionals will set needed keeping Guantánamo open. limits. The logic of caregiver involvement as a In addition, the Senate would probably not safeguard also risks pulling health profession- have approved Gina Haspel, who oversaw a CIA als in ever more deeply. Once caregivers share black site in Thailand (where acts of torture did information with interrogators, why should they take place), to run the Agency. She might have refrain from giving advice about how to best use been prosecuted, not promoted to CIA director. the data? Won’t such advice better protect detain- And perhaps the president wouldn’t have nomi- ees, while furthering the intelligence-gathering nated a Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, mission? And if so, why not oversee isolation and who worked as staff secretary in the George W. sleep deprivation or monitor beatings to make Bush White House and was involved in detainee sure nothing terrible happens?” policy. The Washington Post reports that he at- When it comes to torture, why should the tended more than one meeting on the treatment internal politics of one professional association of detainees, suggested that they weren’t enti- with relatively little power matter? The answer tled to legal counsel and strategised about how is: because what happens there offers a vivid il- to keep the Supreme Court from granting them lustration of how organisations (or even entire habeas corpus rights. Now, President Trump, nations) can be deformed once torture gains an citing “executive privilege”, is even withhold- institutional home. And as in the APA, in the ing 100,000 pages of records from Kavanaugh’s United States, too, the fight over torture has not service in the Bush White House – and who ended. On the first day of his presidency, Barack knows what they might contain on the subject. Obama issued two executive orders. One de-au- thorized the use of those “enhanced interroga- tion techniques”, and closed the CIA’s black sites. What happened at the APA convention recent- The other was meant to shut Guantánamo as well ly also matters because it illustrates the power of 8 (but the fervent opposition of most congressional organised ethical action. Association members Republicans ultimately prevented this). who were determined to keep psychologists out Obama also argued that nothing would be of the torture business formed the APA Watch: “gained by spending our time and energy laying Alliance for an Ethical APA. They consulted blame for the past”. He couldn’t have been more thoughtfully with each other and allies (includ- mistaken. Had America’s elected officials spent ing Veterans for Peace), developed and distribut- their time and energy that way, those in George ed materials aimed at persuading APA members W. Bush’s administration who authorised wide- in general, and made personal phone calls to spread acts of torture and those who committed most of the 170 members of the association’s gov- them might have been held legally responsi- erning Council of Representatives. They com- ble – which is exactly what the UN Convention bined the wisdom and values of their profession Against Torture (of which the US is a signa- – including the all-important Hippocratic injunc- tory) requires. As a nation, minimally we would tion not to harm one’s patients – with energetic, have got a much fuller accounting of the many organised action. cruel and illegal acts committed in our names by It’s an encouraging example for the rest of top officials, intelligence agencies, and the mili- us, as we enter this crucial election cycle. When tary after September 11, 2001. we’re smart, committed, and organised, the good And had all of that happened, we might not be guys can win. CT backsliding on torture the way we are. It’s just possible that this country might not have elected Rebecca Gordon teaches at the University of a man who campaigned on the promise that he San Francisco. She is the author of American would bring back “waterboarding and a hell of a Nuremberg: The US Officials Who Should Stand lot worse than waterboarding”, and who, on en- Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. This essay first tering the Oval Office, signed an executive order appeared at www.tomdispatch.com
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Download them at: http://coldtype.net/SchechterBooks.html ColdType | September 2018 | www.coldtype.net www.coldtype.net | April 2015 | ColdType 43 Aram Sinnreich Led Zep: Plagiarists or innovators?’ How can a band so slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright plagiaristic – be simultaneously considered so innovative and influential? ifty years ago – in September 1968 – the sical firmament, on its own terms, outside of the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin first rules and without compromise. performed together, kicking off a Scandi- When Led Zeppelin debuted its eponymous navian tour billed as the New Yardbirds. first album in 1969, there’s no question that it The new, better name would come later sounded new and exciting. My father, a baby Fthat fall, while drummer John Bonham’s death boomer and dedicated Beatles fan, remembers in 1980 effectively ended their decade-defining his chagrin that year when his middle school reign. But to this day, the band retains the same math students threw over the Fab Four for Zep- iconic status it held back in the 1970s: It ranks pelin, seemingly overnight. Even the stodgy New 10 as one of the best-selling music acts of all time York Times, which decried the band’s “plastic and continues to shape the sounds of new and sexual superficiality”, felt compelled, in the same emerging groups young enough to be the band article, to acknowledge its “enormously success- members’ grandchildren. ful … electronically intense blending” of musical Yet, even after all this time – when every note, styles. riff and growl of Zeppelin’s nine-album cata- Yet, from the very beginning, the band was logue has been pored over by fans, cover artists also dogged with accusations of musical pilfer- and musicologists – a dark paradox still lurks ing, plagiarism and copyright infringement – at the heart of its mystique. How can a band so often justifiably. The band’s first album, “Led slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright Zeppelin”, contained several songs that drew plagiaristic – be simultaneously considered so from earlier compositions, arrangements and re- innovative and influential? cordings, sometimes with attribution and often How, in other words, did it get to have its cus- without. It included two Willie Dixon songs, and tard pie and eat it, too? the band credited both to the influential Chicago As a scholar who researches the subtle com- blues composer. But it didn’t credit Anne Bredon plexities of musical style and originality as well when it covered her song “Babe I’m Gonna Leave as the legal mechanisms that police and enforce You”. them, such as copyright law, I find this a particu- The hit “Dazed and Confused”, also from that larly devilish conundrum. The fact that I’m also first album, was originally attributed to Zep- a bassist in a band that fuses multiple styles of pelin guitarist Jimmy Page. However in 2010, music makes it personal. songwriter Jake Holmes filed a lawsuit claiming For anyone who quests after the holy grail that he’d written and recorded it in 1967. After of creative success, Led Zeppelin has achieved the lawsuit was settled out of court, the song is something mythical in stature: a place in the mu- now credited in the liner notes of re-releases as ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Aram Sinnreich 11 STAIRWAY TO CRITICISM: Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page on stage. Photo: Jim Summaria, via Wikimedia Commons “inspired by” Holmes. tlements. But there’s no question the band en- The band’s second album, “Led Zeppelin II”, gaged in what musicologists typically call “bor- picked up where the first left off. Following a rowing”. Any blues fan, for instance, would have series of lawsuits, the band agreed to list Dixon recognized the lyrics of Dixon’s “You Need Love” as a previously uncredited author on two of the – as recorded by Muddy Waters – on a first listen tracks, including its first hit single, “Whole Lotta of “Whole Lotta Love”. Love”. An additional lawsuit established that Should the band be condemned for taking oth- blues legend Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett er people’s songs and fusing them into its own was a previously uncredited author on another style? track called “The Lemon Song”. Or should this actually be a point of celebra- Musical copyright infringement is notoriously tion? challenging to establish in court, hence the set- The answer is a matter of perspective. In Zep- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Aram Sinnreich pelin’s defense, the band is hardly alone in the grail? What makes Led Zeppelin so special? practice. The 1960s folk music revival move- I could speculate about its cultural status as ment, which was central to the careers of Baez, an avatar of trans-Atlantic, post-hippie self-in- Holmes, Bredon, Dixon and Burnett, was rooted dulgence and “me generation” rebellion. I could in an ethic that typically treated musical mate- wax poetic about its musical fusion of pre-Ba- rial as a “commons” – a wellspring of shared cul- roque and non-Western harmonies with blues ture from which all may draw, and to which all rhythms and Celtic timbres. I could even accuse may contribute. it, as many have over the years, of cutting a deal Most performers in the era routinely covered with the devil. “authorless” traditional and blues songs, and the Instead, I’ll simply relate a personal anecdote movement’s shining star, Bob Dylan, used lyri- from almost 20 years ago. I actually met front- cal and musical pastiche as a badge of pride and man Robert Plant. I was waiting in line at a lower display of erudition – “Look how many old songs Manhattan bodega around 2 a.m. and suddenly I can cram into this new song!” – rather than as a realized Plant was waiting in front of me. A clas- guilty, secret crutch to hold up his own composi- sic Chuck Berry song was playing on the over- tions. head speakers. Plant turned to look at me and W hy shouldn’t Zeppelin be able to do the sa me? mused, “I wonder what he’s up to now?” We chat- On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the racial ted about Berry for a few moments, then paid dynamics inherent in Led Zeppelin’s borrowing. and went our separate ways. Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf were African- Brief and banal though it was, I think this Americans, members of a subjugated minority little interlude – more than the reams of music who were – especially back then – excluded from scholarship and journalism I’ve read and written reaping their fair share of the enormous profits – might hold the key to solving the paradox. they generated for music labels, publishers and Maybe Led Zeppelin is worthy because, like 12 other artists. Sir Galahad, the knight who finally gets the holy Like their English countrymen Eric Clapton grail, its members’ hearts were pure. and The Rolling Stones, Zeppelin’s attitude to- During our brief exchange, it was clear Plant ward black culture seems eerily reminiscent of didn’t want to be adulated – he didn’t need his Lord Elgin’s approach to the marble statues of ego stroked by a fawning fan. Furthermore, he the Parthenon and Queen Victoria’s policy on and his bandmates were never even in it for the the Koh-i-Noor diamond: Take what you can and money. In fact, for decades, Zeppelin refused to don’t ask permission; if you get caught, apologize license its songs for television commercials. In without ceding ownership. Plant’s own words, “I only wanted to have some Led Zeppelin was also accused of lifting from fun”. white artists such as Bredon and the band Spirit, Maybe the band retained its fame because it the aggrieved party in a recent lawsuit over the lived, loved and embodied rock and roll so abso- rights to Zeppelin’s signature song “Stairway to lutely and totally – to the degree that Plant would Heaven”. Even in these cases, the power dynam- start a conversation with a total stranger in the ics were iffy. middle of the night just to chat about one of his Bredon and Spirit are lesser-known compos- heroes. ers with lower profiles and shallower pockets. This love, this purity of focus, comes out in its Neither has benefited from the glow of Zeppelin’s music, and for this, we can forgive Led Zeppelin’s glory, which has only grown over the decades many trespasses. CT despite the accusations and lawsuits levelled against them. Aram Sinnreich is Associate Professor of So how did the band pull it off, when so many Communication Studies, at American University of its contemporaries have been forgotten or School of Communication. This article first diminished? How did it find and keep the holy appeared at www.theconversation.com ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Chris hedges Photo-illustration: Artem Oleshko/ 123RF Stock Photo Stock 123RF Oleshko/ Artem Photo-illustration: Conjuring up 13 the next recession Fabricated money, financial gangsters and the upcoming stock market crash uring the financial crisis of 2008, the compensation for elites. The fabricated money world’s central banks, including the was not invested in the real economy. Products US Federal Reserve, injected trillions were not manufactured and sold. Workers were of dollars of fabricated money into the not reinstated into the middle class with sustain- global financial system. This fabricated able incomes, benefits and pensions. Infrastruc- Dmoney has created a worldwide debt of $325-tril- ture projects were not undertaken. The fabricat- lion, more than three times global GDP. The fab- ed money reinflated massive financial bubbles ricated money was hoarded by banks and corpo- built on debt and papered over a fatally diseased rations, loaned by banks at predatory interest financial system destined for collapse. rates, used to service interest on unpayable debt What will trigger the next crash? The $13.2-tril- or spent buying back stock, providing millions in lion in unsustainable US household debt? The ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Chris hedges $1.5-trillion in unsustainable student debt? The lions of dollars out of an electronic ether”. billions Wall Street has invested in a fracking The Federal Reserve handed over an estimated industry that has spent $280-billion more than $29-trillion of this fabricated money to American it generated from its operations? Who knows. banks, according to researchers at the University What is certain is that a global financial crash, of M issou r i . T went y-n i ne -t r i l l ion dol la rs! We cou ld one that will dwarf the meltdown of 2008, is in- have provided free college tuition to every student evitable. And this time, with interest rates near or universal health care, repaired our crumbling zero, the elites have no escape plan. The financial infrastructure, transitioned to clean energy, for- structure will disintegrate. The global economy given student debt, raised wages, bailed out under- will go into a death spiral. The rage of a betrayed water homeowners, formed public banks to invest and impoverished population will, I fear, further at low interest rates in our communities, provided empower right-wing demagogues who promise a guaranteed minimum income for everyone and vengeance on the global elites, moral renewal, a organised a massive jobs program for the unem- nativist revival heralding a return to a mythical ployed and underemployed. Sixteen million chil- golden age when immigrants, women and people dren would not go to bed hungry. The mentally ill of colour knew their place, and a Christianized and the homeless – an estimated 553,742 Ameri- fascism. cans are homeless every night – would not be left on the streets or locked away in our prisons. The economy would revive. Instead, $29-trillion in fab- The 2008 financial crisis, as the economist Nomi ricated money was handed to financial gangsters Prins points out, “converted central banks into a who are about to make most of it evaporate and new class of power brokers”. They looted national plunge us into a depression that will rival that of treasuries and amassed trillions in wealth to be- the global crash of 1929. come politically and economically omnipotent. In 14 her book Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, she writes that central bankers and Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers write on the world’s largest financial institutions fraudu- the website Popular Resistance, “One-sixth of lently manipulate global markets and use fabri- this could provide a $12,000 annual basic income, cated, or as she writes, “fake money”, to inflate which would cost $3.8-trillion annually, doubling asset bubbles for short-term profit as they drive Social Security payments to $22,000 annually, us toward “a dangerous financial precipice”. which would cost $662-billion, a $10,000 bonus for all US public school teachers, which would cost The rage of a betrayed $11-billion, free college for all high school gradu- population will further empower ates, which would cost $318-billion, and universal right-wing demagogues preschool, which would cost $38-billion. National improved Medicare for all would actually save the “Before the crisis, they were just asleep at nation trillions of dollars over a decade”. the wheel, in particular, the Federal Reserve of An emergency clause in the Federal Reserve the United States, which is supposed to be the Act of 1913 allows the Fed to provide liquidity main regulator of the major banks in the United to a distressed banking system. But the Federal States”, Prins said when we met in New York. “It Reserve did not stop with the creation of a few did a horrible job of doing that, which is why we hundred billion dollars. It flooded the financial had the financial crisis. It became a deregulator markets with absurd levels of fabricated money. instead of a regulator. In the wake of the financial This had the effect of making the economy ap- crisis, the solution to fixing the crisis and saving pear as if it had revived. And for the oligarchs, the economy from a great depression or reces- who had access to this fabricated money while sion, whatever the terminology that was used at we did not, it did. any given time, was to fabricate trillions and tril- The Fed cut interest rates to near zero. Some ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Chris hedges central banks in Europe instituted negative in- There will come a day, for example, as with all fi- terest rates, meaning they would pay borrow- nancial bubbles, when the wildly optimistic pro- ers to take loans. The Fed, in a clever bit of ac- jected profits of industries such as fracking will counting, even permitted distressed banks to no longer be an effective excuse to keep pumping use these no-interest loans to buy US Treasury money into failing businesses burdened by debt bonds. The banks gave the bonds back to the Fed they cannot repay. and received a quarter of a percent of interest “The 60 biggest exploration and production from the Fed. In short, the banks were loaned firms are not generating enough cash from their money at virtually no interest by the Fed and operations to cover their operating and capital then were paid interest by the Fed on the money expenses”, Bethany McLean writes of the frack- they borrowed. The Fed also bought up worth- ing industry in an article titled “The Next Finan- less mortgage assets and other toxic assets from cial Crisis Lurks Underground” that appeared the banks. Since Fed authorities could fabricate in the New York Times. “In aggregate, from mid- as much money as they wanted, it did not matter 2012 to mid-2017, they had negative free cash flow how they spent it. of $9-billion per quarter”. “It’s like going to someone’s old garage sale and saying, ‘I want that bicycle with no wheels. Fed authorities could fabricate as I’ll pay you 100-grand for it. Why? Because it’s much money as they wanted, so it not my money,’ ” Prins said. did not matter how they spent it “These people have rigged the system”, she said of the bankers. “There is money fabricated The global financial system is a ticking time at the top. It is used to pump up financial assets, bomb. The question is not if it will explode but including stock. It has to come from somewhere. when it will explode. And once it does, the in- Because money is cheap there’s more borrowing ability of the global speculators to use fabricated at the corporate level. There’s more money bor- money with zero interest to paper over the debacle 15 rowed at the government level”. will trigger massive unemployment, high prices “Where do you go to repay it?” she asked. “You for imports and basic services, and a devaluation go into the nation. You go into the economy. You in which the dollar will become nearly worthless extract money from the foundational economy, as it is abandoned as the world’s reserve cur- from social programmes. You impose austerity”. rency. This manufactured financial tsunami will transform the United States, already a failed de- mocracy, into an authoritarian police state. Life Given the staggering amount of fabricated will become very cheap, especially for the vul- money that has to be repaid, the banks need to nerable – undocumented workers, Muslims, poor build greater and greater pools of debt. This is people of colour, girls and women, anti-capitalist why when you are late in paying your credit card and anti-imperialist critics branded as agents the interest rate jumps to 28 percent. This is why of foreign powers – who will be demonised and if you declare bankruptcy you are still respon- persecuted for the collapse. The elites, in a des- sible for paying off your student loan, even as 1 perate bid to cling to their unchecked power and million people a year default on student loans, obscene wealth, will disembowel what is left of with 40 percent of all borrowers expected to de- the United States. CT fault on student loans by 2023. This is why wages are stagnant or have declined while costs, from Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning health care and pharmaceutical products to bank journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, fees and basic utilities, are skyrocketing. The en- a professor in the college degree programme forced debt peonage grows to feed the beast until, offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers as with the subprime mortgage crisis, the preda- University, and an ordained. This article tory system fails because of massive defaults. first appeared at www.newsdig.com ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Yves Engler Canada’s role in the Other 9/11 Few Canadians remember their country’s role in the US-backed coup that murdered Salvadore Allende and put Pinochet in power orty-five years ago, on September 11 was clear. After he won office in 1970 Allende 1973, the democratically elected presi- invited Pierre Trudeau to visit Santiago. Ottawa dent of Chile, Salvador Allende, was over- refused “for fear of alienating rightist elements thrown by General Augusto Pinochet. In in Chile and elsewhere”. the aftermath, 3,000 leftists were mur- Days after Pinochet ousted Allende, Andrew Fdered, tens of thousands tortured and hundreds Ross, Canada’s ambassador to Chile, cabled Ex- of thousands driven from the country. ternal Affairs: “Reprisals and searches have Since it doesn’t serve to justify further domi- created panic atmosphere affecting particularly nation by the powerful few in the Canadian me- expatriates including the riffraff of the Latin 16 dia commemorated the “original 9/11”, few will American Left to whom Allende gave asylum recognise Canada’s role in the US backed coup. … the country has been on a prolonged politi- The Pierre Trudeau government was hostile cal binge under the elected Allende government to Allende’s elected government. In 1964 Edu- and the junta has assumed the probably thank- ardo Frei defeated the openly Marxist Allende less task of sobering Chile up”. Thousands were in presidential elections. Worried about growing incarcerated, tortured and killed in “sobering support for socialism, Ottawa gave $8.6-million Chile up”. to Frei’s Chile, its first aid to a South American Within three weeks of the coup, Canada rec- country. When Allende won the next election, ognised Pinochet’s military junta. Ross stated: Canadian assistance disappeared. Export De- “I can see no useful purpose to withholding velopment Canada (EDC) also refused to finance recognition unduly. Indeed, such action might Canadian exports to Chile, which contributed to even tend to delay Chile’s eventual return to the a reduction in trade between the two countries. democratic process”. Pinochet stepped down 17 This suspension of EDC credits led Chile’s Minis- years later. ter of Finance to criticise Canada’s “banker’s at- Diplomatic support for Pinochet led to econom- titude”. But suspending bilateral assistance and ic assistance. Just after the coup Canada voted export insurance was not enough: In 1972 Ottawa for a $22-million ($100-million in today’s money) joined Washington in voting to cut off all money Inter American Development Bank loan “rushed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to through the bank with embarrassing haste”. Ot- the Chilean government. (When Allende was tawa immediately endorsed sending $95-million first elected, western banks, including Canada’s, from the International Monetary Fund to Chile withdrew from Chile.) and supported renegotiating the country’s debt From economic asphyxiation to diplomatic iso- held by the Paris Club. After refusing to pro- lation. Ottawa’s policy towards Allende’s Chile vide credits to the elected government, on Octo- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Yves Engler ber 2nd, 1973, EDC announced it was granting lation of human rights”. $5-million in credit to Chile’s central bank to Canadian leftists were outraged at Ottawa’s purchase six Twin Otter aircraft from De Havil- support for the coup and its unwillingness to land, which could carry troops to and from short accept refugees hunted by the military regime. makeshift strips. Many denounced the federal government’s poli- By 1978, Canadian support for the coup d’etat cy and some (my mother among them) occupied was significant. It included: various Chilean and Canadian government offic- l Support for $810 million in multilateral es in protest. The federal government was sur- loans with Canada’s share amounting to about prised at the scope of the opposition, which cur- $40 million. tailed some support for the junta. A 1974 cabinet l Five EDC facilities worth between $15- and document lamented that “the attention… focused $30-million. on the Chilean Government’s use of repression l Two Canadian debt re-schedulings for Chile, against its opponents has led to an unfavourable equivalent to additional loans of approximately reaction among the Canadian public–a reaction $5-million. which will not permit any significant increase in l Twenty loans by Canadian chartered banks Canadian aid to this country”. worth more than $100 million, including a 1977 The Pierre Trudeau government sought to pla- loan by Toronto Dominion to DINA (Pinochet’s cate protesters by allowing 7,000 refugees from secret police) to purchase equipment. Pinochet’s regime asylum in Canada. But, they l Direct investments by Canadian companies continued to support the dictatorship directly re- valued at nearly $1-billion. sponsible for the refugee problem. A 1976 Latin America Working Group Letter We should commemorate Canada’s role in the noted that “Canadian economic relations, in the “original 9/11”. CT form of bank loans, investments and government supported financial assistance have helped con- Yves Engler is a Montreal-based activist and 17 solidate the Chilean dictatorship and, by grant- author. His latest book is Left, Right: Marching ing it a mantle of respectability and financial to the Beat of Imperial Canada. His web site is endorsation, have encouraged its continued vio- www.yvesengler.com Left, Right Left, Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada Right Yves Engler Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada After exposing this country’s real role in the world in Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy and Canada in Africa – 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, Yves Engler shines a light on supposedly progressive groups and individuals who support war, interference in other country’s affairs and exploitation in his new book Left, Right – Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada Paperback $21.99 / Cloth $81.99 For more information and to order directly from the BY YVES ENGLER publisher, Black Rose Books, please CLICK HERE http://blackrosebooks.net/products/view/Left%2C+Right%3A+Marching+to+the+Beat+of+Imperial+Canada/83745 ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net David Cromwell Empire journalism Brutal imperialism will continue for as long as empire-friendly journalism and tame public opposition exist he US political commentator Michael On August 19, BBC South America corre- Parenti once observed that: “Bias in fa- spondent Katy Watson reported for BBC News at vor of the orthodox is frequently mistak- Ten: “President Nicolas Maduro is doing little to en for ‘objectivity’. Departures from this stop his country’s economic freefall. Last week, ideological orthodoxy are themselves he announced plans to devalue the country’s Tdismissed as ideological”. currency; an attempt to rein in inflation that the Once you understand the truth of that remark, International Monetary Fund says could hit one seeing the daily biases and distortions of the cor- million per cent by the end of the year”. porate media becomes obvious. Thus, there is But there was next to no context. BBC viewers 18 plenty of space on the BBC News website, and were led to believe that the blame for the crisis in plenty of time on the BBC’s airwaves, to discuss Venezuela lay squarely at Maduro’s door. the Venezuela migrant crisis, hyper-inflation and By contrast, consider the analysis of Gabriel food shortages. Rob Young, a BBC News busi- Hetland, an expert academic on Latin America. ness correspondent, wrote: “Venezuela, now in He stated that the Venezuelan government’s ac- its fourth year of recession, has joined a sad list tions – and inactions – have made the crisis “far of other countries whose economies imploded as worse”. But crucially: “the government has not hyperinflation tore through them”. acted in a vacuum, but in a hostile domestic and Young quoted a senior official of the Interna- international environment. The opposition has tional Monetary Fund: “The situation in Ven- openly and repeatedly pushed for regime change ezuela is similar to that in Germany in 1923 or by any means necessary”. Zimbabwe in the late 2000s”. A BBC News clip headlined, “Begging for food Viewers were led to believe the in Venezuela”, emphasised: “Food has become so blame for the crisis in Venezuela scarce in Venezuela after the economy collapsed lay squarely at Maduro’s door that people are getting desperate”. Likewise, there has been ample heart-wrench- On August 4, there was even an attempt to as- ing coverage of Venezuelans fleeing to other sassinate President Maduro, with responsibility countries. But you will struggle to find any sub- claimed by a clandestine opposition group made stantive analysis of the severe US sanctions up of members of the Venezuelan military. and long-standing threats to bring about a US- Hetland continued: “The US government has friendly government in Caracas, including an not only cheered, and funded, these anti-demo- attempted coup in 2002 to remove Hugo Chávez, cratic actions. By absurdly declaring that Ven- Venezuela’s then president. ezuela is an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net David Cromwell to US national security off-air as a result of US sanctions and pressuring investors against left-leaning TeleSUR, the and bankers to steer clear Venezuela-based television net- of the Maduro administra- work. tion, the White House has A report by media analyst prevented Venezuela from Gregory Shupak for US-based obtaining much-needed media watchdog FAIR, notes foreign financing and in- the repeated usage of the word vestment”. “regime” to describe Venezuela The Morning Star’s Tim by the US corporate media. As Young pointed out that: Shupak observes, a ‘regime’ “Sanctions now form a key is, by definition, a government part of what is a strategic that opposes the US empire. plan by the US to ruin the He goes on: “Interestingly, the Venezuelan economy”. US itself meets many of the These US sanctions have Venezela’s criteria for being a ‘regime’: even impacted Venezuela’s President It can be seen as an oligar- health programme, with the Nicolas chy rather than a democracy, Maduro country’s vaccination schemes imprisons people at a higher disrupted, dialysis supplies rate than any other country, blocked and cancer drugs re- has grotesque levels of in- fused. Young added: “It is clear equality and bombs another country every 12 that the US sanctions – illegal under internation- minutes. Yet there’s no widespread tendency for al law – are part of an overall strategy to bring the corporate media to describe the US state as about what the US calls ‘regime change’. a ‘regime”.’ 19 “Its aim is to undermine and topple the elected In short, if you rely on the corporate media, not government of President Nicolas Maduro and se- least the BBC, for what’s going on in Venezuela, cure control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and you will get the US-friendly version of events, other natural resources and wealth”. downplaying or simply ignoring the crippling ef- In a news report in the Independent last year, fects of US sanctions and threats. Andrew Buncombe quoted remarks by Mike On Venezuela, as with so many other issues, Pompeo, then head of the CIA, suggesting that: BBC News regularly violates its own stated Edi- “the agency is working to change the elected torial Values: “Accuracy is not simply a matter government of Venezuela and is collaborating of getting facts right; when necessary, we will with two countries [Mexico and Colombia] in the weigh relevant facts and information to get at region to do so”. the truth”. As Buncombe observed: “The US has a long The notion that BBC News journalists perform and bloody history of meddling in Latin Ameri- a balancing act, sifting through ‘facts and infor- ca’s affairs”. mation’ to present ‘the truth’ to the public is sim- That is an accurate and truthful headline you ply pure fiction, as the ample evidence presented are very unlikely to see on BBC News. in our forthcoming book, Propaganda Blitz, (see To realise how incomplete and distorted is review on Page ?? of this issue), makes clear. BBC News coverage, you only have to listen to the superb independent journalist Abby Martin, who has risked her life to report what the corpo- Consider coverage of the recent death of US rate media is not telling you about Venezuela. It politician John McCain. McCain was the Repub- is little wonder that, as she discusses, her impor- lican nominee in the 2008 US presidential elec- tant news programme, Empire Files, is currently tion which he lost to Barack Obama. In 1967, dur- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net David Cromwell ing the Vietnam War, he was shot down while on McCain was the single most accessible political a bombing mission over Hanoi and was seriously figure in Washington. He always had time for an injured. Captured by the North Vietnamese, he interview, and a joke – including teasing me for was tortured during his incarceration, before my choice of ties”. being released in 1973. In later years, the media Other Twitter users put things in stark per- would call him a ‘war hero’ and depict him as a spective: “My thoughts are entirely with his vic- political ‘maverick’ in not always supporting Re- tims and their families”. publican Party policy on certain issues. And: “How hard did you grill him about the Theresa May declared: “John McCain was a decisions he made that killed innocent civilians great statesman, who embodied the idea of serv- in hundreds of thousands?”. ice over self. It was an honour It would be hard to find an to call him a friend of the exchange on Twitter that better UK”. exemplifies the divide between Con Coughlin, the Tel- sycophantic journalists fawn- egraph’s defence editor and ing before power, and mem- chief foreign affairs column- bers of the public refusing to ist, echoed the mantra that whitewash a politician’s ugly McCain was a “war hero”. record. In similar vein, “neutral” Patrick Martin, writing for and “impartial” Nick Bry- the World Socialist Website, ant, the BBC’s New York cor- makes a vital point: “The respondent, intoned loftily on overriding feature of Mc- BBC News at Ten on August 27: Cain’s career [...] was his re- “Washington without John Mc- flexive hawkishness on for- 20 Cain is a lesser place. He was a eign policy. He supported human landmark; an American war after war, intervention hero whose broken body personi- after intervention, always fied the Land of the Brave”. promoting the use of force Senior reporters from Chan- John as the primary feature of nel 4 News and ITV News added McCain: American foreign policy, their own eulogies to warmonger War hero? and always advocating McCain, dubbed “McNasty” by the maximum allocation people who had observed his “inex- of resources to fuel the Pentagon”. plicable angry outbursts”. C4 News political cor- Peace activist Medea Benjamin told Amy respondent Michael Crick said via Twitter: “I’ll Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview: “We always be grateful to John McCain. When I was had constantly been lobbying John McCain to #C4News Washington Correspondent in the late not support all these wars. Amy, I think it’s so ’80s, he was one of the few senators happy to do horrible to be calling somebody a war hero be- interviews with us, and always very friendly & cause he participated in the bombing of Vietnam. accommodating”. I just spent the last weekend with Veterans for Peace, people who are atoning for their sins in McCain always promoted the use Vietnam by trying to stop new wars. John Mc- of force as the primary feature Cain hasn’t done that. With his life, what he did of American foreign policy was support wars from not only Iraq, but also Libya”. Robert Moore, ITV News Washington Corre- Benjamin founded Code Pink: Women for spondent responded: “Agreed. And that contin- Peace, a grassroots peace and justice movement ued almost until the end – for the foreign press, that McCain once disparaged as “low-life scum”. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net David Cromwell She continued: “He called John Kerry delu- ping bombs on massive numbers of human be- sional for trying to make a nuclear deal with ings, in a totally illegal and immoral war”. Iran, and threw his lot in with the MEK, the ex- As Branko Marcetic noted in an accurate as- tremist group in Iran. He also was a good friend sessment of McCain’s political legacy: “John Mc- of Mohammad bin Salman and the Saudis. There Cain’s greatest achievement was convincing the was a gala for the Saudis in May when the crown world through charming banter and occasional prince was visiting, and they had a special award opposition to his party’s agenda that he was any- for John McCain. He supported the Saudi bomb- thing other than a reactionary, bloodthirsty war ing in Yemen that has been so catastrophic. And hawk”. I think we have to think that those who have par- In a recent article, Joe Emersberger, an in- ticipated in war are really heroes if they spend sightful writer on foreign affairs, notes that cor- the rest of their lives trying to stop war, not like porate media coverage of both Venezuela and John McCain, who spent the rest of his life sup- John McCain illustrates two main features: porting war”. 1. The uniformity of empire-friendly reporting across the corporate media. You’d think that he was dropping 2. The complicity of major human rights flowers or marshmallows groups in this empire-friendly ‘journalism’. or something As an example: “Amnesty International has refused to oppose US economic sanctions on Norman Solomon, executive director of the Venezuela, and has also refused to denounce fla- Institute for Public Accuracy, made clear his em- grant efforts by US officials to incite a military pathy for McCain for having suffered through coup”. Emersberger also points to a statement on brain cancer. But he castigated the corporate John McCain’s death from Human Rights Watch: media phenomenon of ‘obit omit – obituaries that “Senator McCain was for decades a compassion- are flagrantly in conflict with the real historical ate voice for US foreign and national security 21 record”. policy”. He told Goodman: “We really have to fault the For anyone able to think critically and speak mass media of the United States, not just for the openly, such statements are risible. Brutal im- last few days, but the last decades, pretending perialism will continue for as long as empire- that somehow, by implication, almost that John friendly journalism and tame public opposition McCain was doing the people of North Vietnam a exist. CT favour as he flew over them and dropped bombs. You would think, in the hagiography that we’ve David Cromwell is co-editor of Medialens, the been getting about his role in a squadron flying UK media watchdog and the author, with co- over North Vietnam, that he was dropping, you editor David Edwards, of Propaganda Blitz: How know, flowers or marshmallows or something. the Corporate Media Distort Reality. The web He was shot down during his 23rd mission drop- site for Medialens is www.medialens.org get your free subscription TO COLDTYPE Send an email to [email protected] and write subscribe in the subject line ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net CJ Hopkins Putin-Nazi paranoia We should let the capitalist ruling classes finish destroying Donald Trump, and think about what the left has to offer as an alternative to the global-corporate, post-fascist, neo-feudal future hey’re out there. Trump-loving, Assad- despises Alex Jones more than I, even though, apologist, Putin-Nazi sleeper agents, pos- oddly, I’ve never watched him. Thank God for ing as regular normal Americans. They that, as who knows how my mind could have could be anyone. They could be your been permanently warped by whatever Nazi neighbours, the guys in the copy room, content he’s been forcing less fortunate Ameri- Tyour Uber drivers, even some of your Twitter cans to consume!) followers. They’re sitting there, right now, glued And then, God help us, there’s Jeremy Corbyn to their televisions, waiting for Jewish Nazi law and his genocidal communist Nazi Death Cult! clerks to perform a series of secret hand signs, If he isn’t one of them, no one is. If you haven’t 22 blinks, hiccups, sneezes, coughs, and almost been following the British media, the story is, ba- undetectable, low-frequency flatulence that will sically, that Jeremy Corbyn is a terrorist-loving, signal the launch of the “Attack on America.” It antisemitic, conspiracy theorising, racist traitor could come at any moment now. to everything the British ruling classes stand Zina Bash is definitely one of them. Don’t let for, and has transformed the UK Labour Party her Mexican-Jewish ancestry, or the fact that into a homicidal mob of Jew-hating brownshirts. her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, Gangs of slavering Corbyn-Nazis are roving the fool you into thinking otherwise. She made that lanes of Kensington and Knightsbridge accusing “OK” sign at the Kavanaugh hearings, which, all Jews of lacking irony and saying mean things right, apparently wasn’t the cue for the millions about the State of Israel. British Jews have been of American Putin-Nazis to rip off their rubbery advised to flee the country or to shelter in place masks of normality and storm into the streets in until the tabloids, the Guardian, the ruling class- their polo shirts singing Tomorrow Belongs to es, and Tony Blair can hound this Hitlerian devil Me ... but it was some kind of secret Nazi code. out of office, which, the way things are going, Certainly, Alex Jones is one of them. Why else should be any day now. would patriotic global corporations like Apple, Meanwhile, the British soldier on under the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube suddenly ban imminent threat of Putin-Nazi Novichok per- him from all their platforms after allowing him fume assassin hit squads, which Putin could send to spew his bile there for years? It’s probably at any moment directly from Moscow to Gatwick only a matter of time until Google’s “algorithms” airport to incompetently attempt to murder their unperson him entirely (at which point I’ll receive targets by spraying the deadliest nerve agent in instructions to delete any reference to him in this existence onto the doorknobs of their suburban essay, or risk being further deranked myself. I homes and then stroll around getting filmed by will, of course, comply immediately, as no one every CCTV camera in Britain. As far as I know, ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net CJ Hopkins Illustration: Duncan C, C, Duncan Illustration: ing Hitler, harassing assorted “non-German- looking” human beings, and various other forms of “protest.” Such unprecedented eruptions of Nazism occur on a regular basis in Saxony, albeit on a smaller scale, so it was rather awkward for the corporate media to link the events in Chem- Flickr.com nitz to Trump, but nevertheless they managed to sneak a few references to his “emboldenment” in. The best they could do to tie in to Putin was to publish a lot of photos of skinheads hanging around that humongous statue of Marx in the centre of Chemnitz’s central square, because, you know, Putin, Trump, Marx, Stalin, Assad, Saddam, Gaddafi ... whoever, they’re all just dif- ferent brands of Hitler! Seriously, though, all comedy aside, I have to hand it to David Brock, or Jennifer Palmieri, or whoever it was that came up with the Putin-Nazi narrative. OK, granted, the Putin part hasn’t quite worked, except on die-hard Obama disci- ples, Hillary-worshippers, and other bull-goose loonies, but the Nazi stuff is going gangbusters ... and not just with the liberal public (because that 23 has always been an easy sell), but also with the more leftist left. It has taken a while, but we’ve arrived at the stage where even “hardcore anti- capitalist leftists” are dedicating most of their time and energy to calling Donald Trump a fas- the British tabloids haven’t yet published sur- cist, and likening him to Hitler, and so on, over veillance photos of Corbyn welcoming the Skri- and over, and over again, in increasingly exasper- pal assassins at Gatwick with a wreath, or a bot- ated tones. Why, in Marx’s name, these leftists tle of Stoli (and wearing his Russian-stooge hat, want to know, won’t other leftists join the chorus of course), but I won’t be terribly shocked when of voices screaming, “TRUMP IS A FASCIST!” in they do. all caps on a daily basis? How could these other The Putin-Nazis are not just on the march in leftists not see that this is not the time to attack the United States and Great Britain. They’re com- the corporate media, the “intelligence commu- ing out of the woodwork in Europe! As I’m sure nity,” global corporations, or anyone other than you’re aware, here in Germany, in a city called DONALD TRUMP, who is LITERALLY ADOLF Chemnitz in the Free State of Saxony, which has FUCKING HITLER? never had any kind of Nazi problems (except for Anthony DiMaggio’s recent essay in Counter- the fact that the entire region has been infest- Punch is a prime example of the effect the Putin- ed with neo-Nazis for decades and is generally Nazi paranoia is having on leftists. According known here as Neo-Nazi Central), thousands of to DiMaggio, Donald Trump, by tweeting mean just regular foreigner-hating “Volk” joined a few things about Attorney General Sessions and hundred neo-Nazis in marching around with bombastically threatening the New York Times, German flags, barking xenophobic slogans, heil- is no longer just a normal fascist. He is now offi- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net CJ Hopkins cially a “full-on fascist,” or a “real world fascist,” “leftists who focus on the propagandistic nature or a super duper fascist! DiMaggio doesn’t have of the corporate media, while shilling for the any qualms about the deep state, or rather, the far right and failing to condemn right-wing fas- steady state, sabotaging an elected president (or cism, provide comfort to the reactionary right’s at least pretending to be doing do so in print), efforts to suppress journalistic freedom.” Well, because, well, you know, “the stakes are far Jesus, I wouldn’t want to do anything like that. I higher” than mere democracy, what with Hitler hope DiMaggio will follow up with a breakdown in the White House. William Kristol would agree of exactly how many times I need to call Donald wholeheartedly. Trump a fascist before I am allowed to criticise the propagandistic nature of the corporate me- How often do I need to call Trump dia, or the global capitalist ruling classes, or any a fascist before I am allowed to type of “full-on fascism” that doesn’t neatly fit criticise the corporate media? into his simplistic category ... like the type that seeks to impose a regime of anus-puckering ide- But calling Trump a fascist again is just an ological conformity on those it determines are overture for DiMaggio’s main theme, which is members of its camp, and that gets off punishing that it’s time to unite the left against the grow- deviations from its norms. ing Putin-Nazi threat. See, the problem is not just the Putin-Nazis. It is also the fellow Putin- Nazi travellers, and the Assadists, and the Red- Look, the truth is, I don’t like Donald Trump. Brown infiltrators! Yes, you know who we are, do I haven’t liked him for about 30 years. I have no you not? Glenn Greenwald is our leader, natural- problem whatsoever with leftists like DiMaggio ly, but Caitlin Johnstone is second-in-command. calling him names until they’re blue in the face if We refer to her in our secret meetings as “Caity, that makes them happy. What I do find problem- 24 Queen of the Putin-Nazis”. DiMaggio links to a atic is the growing atmosphere of neo-McCarthy- helpful list of other traitorous Strasserist spies ite paranoia which has been gradually spreading compiled by the crackpot Louis Proyect, folks into leftist quarters, and the witch-hunting, and like Norman Finkelstein, Mike Whitney, Diana the Putin-Nazi-baiting, and the compiling and Johnstone, Patrick Cockburn, Tom Engelhardt, distributing of pseudo-blacklists, and the cheer- and Michael Hudson, whose essays have been ing on of global corporations as they ideologically published in the Unz Review, which also pub- sterilise the Internet. We get enough of that from lishes a lot of “alt-right,” racist, and antisemitic the corporate media. So how about we lighten up essays. (Full disclosure: Proyect contacted me, on the paranoia, let the global capitalist ruling demanding to know how I can allow my work to classes finish destroying Donald Trump, and appear on a Nazi website like Unz, but I ignored maybe think about what the left has to offer as him, as I assumed he was just trolling me, again, an alternative to the global-corporate, post-fas- but it appears he was fishing for incriminating cist, neo-feudal future. While it might not feel comments for his groundbreaking piece of inves- like it at the moment, it’s coming ... we’ll be there tigative journalism. In any event, I seem to have before you know it. CT escaped inclusion on his Red-Brown blacklist. For the record, I’m with Norman Finkelstein. I CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American don’t stop anyone from reposting my essays, no playwright, novelist and satirist based in matter what I think of their other contributors. Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury I wouldn’t even stop the New York Times from Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing publishing my stuff, though, of course, they nev- (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23, is published er would, and they publish actual mass murder- by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. ing war criminals.) He can reached at www.cjhopkins.com or Anyway, according to Anthony DiMaggio, www.consentfactory.org ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net More great journalism for you to enjoy THE p e y sVISITINGs C o l d T THE INVISIBLE SLTHE PENTAUGON GMEARS UP TORTUREFOR A 100-YEAR CAMPAIGN MUSEUM Barbarism now and then GOVERNMENT s WARS JOHN PILGER KAREN GREENBERGNICK TURSE Introduced by Tom Engelhardt ColdType ColdType ColdTy p e ONE OF THE GREAT MUSICAL MYSTERIES OF ALL TIME How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper 25 JohnLONDON S. INFORMATION Type Type DOMINANCE Cold H a t c hCALLING ColdType The Philosophy of COMMENTARY AND OPINION FROM TheGuardian MODERNTotal CLASSICS Propaganda Control AXIOMS DAVID MILLER of EVIL ColdType GEORGE MONBIOT ColdType Check out all these and dozens more outstanding reads in the ColdType archives at www.coldtype.net/find.html ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Ray McGovern On the brink with Russia – again It’s deja-vu all over again in Syria, with the US on the verge of a confrontation with Russia as Donald Trump faces his biggest decision yet as president he New York Times, on September 11, members of the international community must 2013, accommodated Russian President take advantage of the Syrian government’s will- Vladimir Putin’s desire “to speak di- ingness to place its chemical arsenal under in- rectly to the American people and their ternational control for subsequent destruction. political leaders” about “recent events Judging by the statements of President Obama, Tsurrounding Syria.” Putin’s op-ed in the Times ap - the United States sees this as an alternative to peared under the title: “A Plea for Caution From military action. [Syria’s chemical weapons were Russia.” In it, he warned that a military “strike in fact destroyed under UN supervision the fol- by the United States against Syria will result in lowing year.] 26 more innocent victims and escalation, potential- “I welcome the president’s interest in continu- ly spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s bor- ing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must ders … and unleash a new wave of terrorism. … work together to keep this hope alive … and steer It could throw the entire system of international the discussion back toward negotiations. If we law and order out of balance.” can avoid force against Syria, this will improve Three weeks earlier, on August 21, there had the atmosphere in international affairs and been a chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of strengthen mutual trust … and open the door to Ghouta and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was cooperation on other critical issues.” immediately blamed. There soon emerged, how- In a lengthy interview with journalist Jeffrey ever, evidence that the incident was a provocation Goldberg published in the Atlantic much later, in to bring direct US military involvement against March 2016, Obama showed considerable pride Assad, lest Syrian government forces retain their in having refused to act according to what he momentum and defeat the jihadist rebels. called the “Washington playbook”. I n a memora ndu m for P resident Ba rack Oba ma He added a telling vignette that escaped me- five days before Putin’s article on September 6, dia attention, when he confided to Goldberg that, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity during the crucial last week of August 2013, Na- (VIPS) had warned President Barack Obama of tional Intelligence Director James Clapper paid the likelihood that the incident in Ghouta was a the president an unannounced visit to caution false-flag attack. him that the allegation that Assad was respon- Despite his concern of a US Attack, Putin’s sible for the chemical attack in Ghouta was “not main message in his Op-Ed was positive, talk- a slam dunk”. ing of a growing mutual trust: “A new opportu- Clapper’s reference was to the very words nity to avoid military action has emerged in the used by former CIA Director George Tenet when past few days. The United States, Russia and all he characterised, falsely, the nature of the evi- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Ray McGovern dence on WMD in Iraq while briefing President cal weapons will result in a much stronger re- George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sponse”. in December 2002. Additional evidence that As was the case in September 2013, Syrian Ghouta was a false flag came in December 2016 government forces, with Russian support, have parliamentary testimony in Turkey. the rebels on the defensive, this time in Idlib In early September 2013, around the time of province, where most of the remaining jihadists Putin’s Op-Ed, Obama resisted the pressure of have been driven. On September 10 began what virtually all his advisers to launch cruise missiles could be the final showdown of the five-year war. on Syria and accepted the Russian-brokered deal Bolton’s warning of a chemical attack by Assad for Syria to give up its chemical weapons. Obama makes little sense, as Damascus is clearly win- had to endure outrage from those lusting for the ning and the last thing Assad would do is invite US to get involved militarily. From neoconserva- US retaliation. tives, in particular, there was hell to pay. US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has, Atop the CNN building in Washington, DC, with remarkable prescience, already blamed on the evening of September 9, two days before Damascus for whatever chemical attack might Putin’s piece, I had the fortuitous opportunity take place. The warnings of direct US military to watch the bitterness and disdain with which involvement, greater than Trump’s two previ- Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman heaped abuse ous pin-prick attacks, is an invitation for the on Obama for being too cowardly to attack. cornered jihadists to launch another false-flag In his appeal for cooperation with the US, Pu- attack to exactly bring that about. tin had written these words: “My working and Sadly, not only has the growing trust recorded personal relationship with President Obama is by Putin five years ago evaporated, but the likeli- marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I care- hood of a US-Russian military clash in the region fully studied his address to the nation on Tues- is as perilously high as ever. day. And I would rather disagree with a case he Seven days before Putin’s piece appeared, 27 made on American exceptionalism, stating that Donald Trump tweeted: “Many Syrian ‘rebels’ the United States’ policy is ‘what makes Ameri- are radical Jihadis. Not our friends & supporting ca different. It’s what makes us exceptional’. It is them doesn’t serve our national interest. Stay extremely dangerous to encourage people to see out of Syria!”. themselves as exceptional, whatever the motiva- In September 2015, Trump accused his Re- tion. There are big countries and small countries, publican primary opponents of wanting to “start rich and poor, those with long democratic tradi- World War III over Syria. Give me a break. You tions and those still finding their way to democ- know, Russia wants to get ISIS, right? We want racy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, to get ISIS. Russia is in Syria – maybe we should but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must let them do it? Let them do it”. not forget that God created us equal”. At the beginning of this month Trump warned In recent days, President Trump’s national Russian and Syria not to attack Idlib. Now he security adviser, John Bolton, has left no doubt faces his biggest test as president: can resist his that he is the mascot of American exceptional- neocon advisers and not attack Syria, as Obama ism. Its corollary is Washington’s “right” to send chose not to, or risk the wider war he accused his its forces, uninvited, into countries like Syria. Republican opponents of fomenting? CT “We’ve tried to convey the message in recent days that if there’s a third use of chemical weap- Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a ons, the response will be much stronger”, Bolton publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of said on Monday, September 11. “I can say we’ve the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was been in consultations with the British and the an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then French who have joined us in the second strike a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years, and a and they also agree that another use of chemi- presidential briefer from 1981 to 1985. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Conn Hallinan Shifting alliances Countries in Asia and the Middle East are charting a course of their own away from the often-malign influence of the United States “ oxing the compass” is an old nautical Washington’s sanctions on Russia and Iran. term for locating the points on a mag- Less than three years ago, Turkish warplanes netic compass in order to set a course. downed a Russian bomber, Ankara was denounc- With the erratic winds blowing out of ing Iran, and Turkey was arming and support- Washington these days, countries all ing Islamic extremists trying to overthrow the Bover Asia and the Middle East are boxing the government of Bashar al Assad. compass and re-evaluating traditional foes and After years of tension in the South China old alliances. Sea between China and a host of Southeast India and Pakistan have fought three wars Asian nations, including Vietnam, the Philip- 28 in the past half-century, and both have nuclear pines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, on Aug. 2 weapons on a hair trigger. But the two countries Beijing announced a “breakthrough” in talks are now part of a security and trade organisa- between China and the Association of Southeast tion, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Asian Nations (ASEAN). After years of bluster (SCO), along with China, Russia and most of the – including ship-to-ship face-offs – China and countries of Central Asia. Following the recent ASEAN held joint computer naval games Aug. elections in Pakistan, Islamabad’s Foreign Min- 2-3. China has also proposed cooperative oil and ister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, has called for an gas exploration with SEATO members. “uninterrupted continued dialogue” with New Delhi to resolve conflicts and establish “peace The Americans turned a blind eye and stability” in Afghanistan. to India’s violation of the Nuclear Pakistan’s new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, Non-Proliferation Treaty is a critic of the US war in Afghanistan and par- ticularly opposed to the use of US drones to kill Starting with the administration of George W. insurgents in Pakistan. Bush, the US has tried to lure India into an alli- Russia reached out to the Taliban, which ac- ance with Japan and Australia – the Quadrilat- cepted an invitation for peace talks in Moscow eral Security Dialogue or “quad” – to challenge on Sept. 4 to end the 17-year old war. Three dec- China in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. ades ago the Taliban were shooting down Rus- The Americans turned a blind eye to India’s vio- sian helicopters with American-made Stinger lation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty missiles. and dropped the ban on selling arms to New Turkey and Russia have agreed to increase Delhi. The Pentagon even re-named its Pacific trade and to seek a political solution to end the Command, “Indo-Pacific Command” to reflect war in Syria. Turkey also pledged to ignore India’s concerns in the Indian Ocean. The US is ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Conn Hallinan Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India greets China’s President China Xi Jinping. Photo: Wikimedia Commons 29 currently training Indian fighter pilots, and this and discussed cooperation on bringing an end to summer held joint naval manoeuvres with Japan the war in Afghanistan. India, Pakistan and Rus- and the US – Malabar 18 – in the strategic Ma- sia fear that extremism in Afghanistan will spill lacca Straits . over their borders, and the three have joined in But following an April Wuhan Summit meet- an effort to shore up the Taliban as a bulwark ing between Chinese President Xi Jinping and against the growth of the Islamic State. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi’s enthusiasm for the Quad appears to have cooled. New Delhi vetoed Australia joining the There is also a push to build the long-delayed Malabar war games. Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline that will At June’s Shangri-La Dialogue held in Sin- eventually terminate in energy-starved India. gapore, Modi said “India does not see the Indo- India signed the SCO’s “Qingdao Declaration”, Pacific region as a strategy or as a club of limited which warned that “economic globalisation is members”, and pointedly avoided any criticism of confronted with the expansion of unilateral pro- China’s behaviour in the South China Sea. Given tectionist policies”, a statement aimed directly at that Indian and Chinese troops have engaged in the Trump administration. shoving matches and fistfights with one another The Modi government also made it clear that in the Doklam border region, Modi’s silence on New Delhi will not join US sanctions against Iran the Chinese military was surprising. and will continue to buy gas and oil from Tehe- China and India have recently established a ran. India’s Defence Minister, Nirmala Sithara- military “hot line”, and Beijing has cut tariffs on man also said that India would ignore US threats Indian products. to sanction any country doing business with During the SCO meetings, Modi and Xi met Russia’s arms industry. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Conn Hallinan Even such a staunch ally as Australia is hav- One Road” infrastructure initiative to link Asia, ing second thoughts on who it wants to align itself South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and with in the Western Pacific. Australia currently Europe into a vast trading network. hosts US Marines and the huge US intelligence A number of these diplomatic initiatives and gathering operation at Pine Gap. But China is re-alignments could easily fail. Canberra’s largest trading partner, and Chinese Pakistan and India could fall out over Kash- students and tourists are an important source of mir, and resolving the Afghanistan situation is income for Australia. the diplomatic equivalent of untying the Gordian Canberra is currently consumed with argu- Knot. The Taliban accepted the Russian invita- ments over China’s influence on Australia’s poli- tion, but the Americans dismissed it. So, too, has tics, and there is a division in the foreign policy the government in Kabal, but that could change, establishment over how closely aligned the Aus- particularly if the Indians push the Afghan gov- tralians should be with Washington, given the ernment to join the talks. Just the fact that the uncertain policies of the Trump administration. Taliban agreed to negotiate with Kabal, howev- Some – like defence strategist Hugh White – ar- er, is a breakthrough, and since almost everyone gue that “Not only is America failing to remain in the region wants this long and terrible war to the dominant power, it is failing to retain any end, the initiative is hardly a dead letter. substantial strategic role at all”. White’s analysis is an overstatement. The US is the most powerful military force in the There are other reefs and shoals out there. region, and the Pacific basin is still Washing- Turkey and Russia still don’t trust each other, ton’s number one trade partner. In the balance and while Iran currently finds itself on the same of forces, Canberra doesn’t count for much. But side as Moscow and Ankara, there is no love lost the debate is an interesting one and a reflection among any of them. But Iran needs a way to block 30 that the Obama administration’s “Asia pivot” to Trump’s sanctions from strangling its economy, ring China with US allies has not exactly been a and that means shelving its historical suspicions slam-dunk. of Turkey and Russia. Both countries say they Of course, one can make too much of these will not abide by the US sanctions, and the Rus- re-alignments. There are still tensions between sians are even considering setting up credit sys- China and India over their borders and compe- tem to bypass using dollars in banking. tition for the Indian Ocean. Many Indians see The Europeans are already knuckling under the latter as Mare Nostrum [Our Sea], and New to the US sanctions, but the US and the European Delhi is acquiring submarines and surface crafts Union are not the only games in town. Organisa- to control it. However, since some 80 percent of tions like the SCO, ASEAN, the BRICS countries China’s energy supplies transit the Indian Ocean, (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), China is busy building up ports in Pakistan, Sri and Latin America’s Mercosur are creating inde- Lanka and Djibouti to guard those routes. pendent poles of power and influence, and while India has recently tested a long-range ICBM the US has enormous military power, it no longer – the Agni V – that has the capacity to strike can dictate what other countries decide on things China. The Indians claim the missile has a range like war and trade. of 3,000 miles, but the Chinese say it can strike From what direction on the Compass Rose targets 5,000 miles away, thus threatening most the winds out of Washington will blow is hardly of China’s population centres. Since Pakistan is clear, but increasingly a number of countries are already within range of India’s medium range charting a course of their own. CT missiles, the Agni V could only have been devel- oped to target China. Conn Hallinan can be read at India is also one of the few countries in the re- dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and gion not to endorse China’s immense “One Belt, middleempireseries.wordpress.com ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Lee Camp Wall Street? Just another Ponzi scheme The stock market is a system where you buy into something and the only way you make money is by convincing someone else to buy it. If no one does, then you lose everything aybe it makes me unsophisticat- probably imagine a company like PepsiCo, and ed, but I don’t think about the stock you are an investor in that company. You own a market that much. I know that tiny piece of it, and because of that, you get a tiny many say it’s the central nervous proportion of the profits, which are called “divi- system of our economy. I know its dends”. Well, that’s not what a stock is. That’s Mestimated worth is around $30-trillion. And I what stocks used to be, but that was back when know that when it tanks, the lives of millions of top hats were worn by non-magicians, and if a Americans are wrecked, ruined and upended. lady showed her knees in public, she was consid- I know that when that happens, the powerful ered a floozy who should die alone. millionaires (and billionaires) who caused said In modern times, you almost never receive 31 destruction generally grab their money and the profits of the business. Dividends are rarely their well-coiffed dogs and run for it. (Some- paid out, and they don’t usually amount to much. times our government has to step in to make Plus, the company is not obligated to pay you any- sure the elites get all of their money and don’t thing for your stock – ever. have to share in the devastation they’ve dis- pensed to the lower classes.) But in my day-to-day life, I don’t think much Don’t take it from me, take it from someone about the stock market. So maybe I shouldn’t much smarter than me. Here’s an example about care that the entire thing is a gigantic fraud. But Google from Tan Liu’s book The Ponzi Factor. I do. I do care. And you should too. A share of Google can trade around $900, but In a few minutes’ time you Google explicitly states in writing that the par will see that our stock mar- value of their stock is only 0.001-dollars. Google ket is a Ponzi scheme. (And also says that they do not pay their investors any unfortunately, it doesn’t mat- dividends, and their class C shareholders have ter whether you’re happy or no voting rights. So, if you own a share of GOOG, sad or ambivalent about you won’t receive any money from Google, you that fact. It will be true won’t be allowed to vote on corporate issues, and nonetheless.) Google isn’t obligated to pay you anything more When you than 0.001-dollars for that share you bought for picture buy- $900. ing stock in So this begs the question, “What the hell do a company, you own?” The gut-wrenching answer is noth- what do you picture? You ing. You own nothing. You own a slip of toilet pa- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Lee Camp per that you might be able to convince someone one still believing the fraud is real. else to pay you for. This means that the only way to get your Next, if you’re feeling cheeky, you might ask, money back or to profit is to find another person “Then where do the profits come from? If I buy willing to buy it. Now, don’t get me wrong. Your Google at $20 and sell it for $220, where did that argument may be, “This is America – there’s al- $200 come from?” The answer is it came from ways another chump! We are based on a long, other investors who were willing to buy the time-honoured tradition of never running out of stock. As Tan Liu puts it, “This is actually a chumps! We’re infested with ’em”. negative-sum situation because the underly- That’s a fair point, but I don’t think you see ing company isn’t involved in the transaction. anyone proudly touting that as the definition of The investors are just cannibalising each other the stock market. I would actually respect the for profits, and there are fees attached to every whole system if right on the front of the stock ex- transaction”. change it said, “Put your money into the stock Ah, cannibalising each other for profits – now market! The only way you’ll make more money this is starting to sound like an American enter- is if you find a dolt to buy whatever stocks you prise! It says it right there on our flag, “America: just bought. But there are an infinite number of Cannibalising each other for profits since 1776!” dolts! This gravy train is powered by morons. So The money you make from most stocks, if you you have nothing to worry about.” make money, is coming from other investors If it said that on the door of the stock exchange, pumping new money in. And if there aren’t new I would invest. investors willing to buy your stock, then you’re just screwed, standing there with your thumb You buy into something and the up your ass (which is an odd expression if it’s only way you make money is by supposed to mean the person is doing nothing; convincing someone else to buy it 32 in fact, it sounds like they’re involved in a very significant event). But the fact that our stock market is a house So, to rehash, this is a system where you buy of cards built on idiocy, stacked on spider webs, into something and the only way you make mon- hanging tenuously from the Hindenburg, is actu- ey is by convincing someone else to buy it. If no ally kind of a big deal. Think about this: one does, then you lose everything. Why does As of Sept. 2017, the NASDAQ and the NY that sound familiar? Oh, I know. It’s the diction- Stock Exchange had a combined value of over ary definition of a Ponzi scheme. $30-trillion. … [This] means investors believe they are entitled to $30-trillion in real money. But there is only $1.6-trillion of cash circulating Again, don’t take my word for it. The Securi- in the US economy, and $3.8-trillion in existence ties and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines a in the entire US economic system. Ponzi scheme as “[a]n investment fraud that in- Only $3.8-trillion in hard cash, which means volves the payment of purported returns to ex- the stock market is built mostly on nothing isting investors from funds contributed by new (much like Jared Kushner). And if a fraction of investors.” investors wanted their cash at the same time, it The stock market is a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi would collapse. scheme is the stock market. Let me just say, I don’t have any problem with Some may argue that a Ponzi scheme usually gambling. If you want to gamble at a casino, then involves lying to the investor. But Wall Street gamble your little heart out. Stay up all night un- has that in spades as well. Most investors don’t til you’re on your last $2 trying to give a handie understand that they own literally nothing. They to a slot machine in hopes it might pay ya after- don’t know that they are simply gambling. And wards. Go for it. But the casinos are honest with they don’t know that their profit relies on every- you. They tell you it’s gambling. The front of a ca- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Lee Camp sino doesn’t say “Invest your pension in roulette. pension and loses, there’s no SWAT team, no ar- Do you have a child with a degenerative disease? rests. Because it’s a legalised Ponzi scheme. Then put all your savings on red-32 so that he’ll be taken care of after you’re gone.” Casino’s don’t say that. The myth of the stock By the way, these ideas are not allowed on market does. our corporate media or financial websites. The And some people may think that if it were almighty stock market does not permit even the truly gambling, that would mean it’s not pre- slightest doubt to creep in. Tan Liu has tried to dictable. Yet finance professionals claim they put his ideas on popular finance blogs and web know how to analyse and predict the market. So forums, and they are often either deleted or he’s you put your money in their (greasy) hands, and been banned altogether. He’s been banned from they help you grow your fortune. Well, multiple Quora and from editing Wikipedia. They act tests have been done to see whether the profes- like he went on a Scientology website and wrote, sionals know how to predict the market. Liu “You know Tom Cruise is not an alien messiah. referenced one contest that was also covered He’s just a short weirdo!” by Forbes: “[The contest] was between amateur It’s tough to overstate the impact this con students, finance professionals, and a cat named game has on our world and our lives. For exam- Orlando, who did all his investing by tossing his ple, when the news came out that North Korea favourite toy mouse onto an electronic grid. Or- had brokered peace with South Korea, the stocks lando, the cat, won the competition”. of the major weapons contractors crashed. Bil- I repeat: A cat was able to better predict the lions of dollars were “lost”. That exerts major stock market. And yet, trillions of dollars in pen- pressure on powerful people to ensure peace sions and life savings are dumped into stocks by does not happen. This is just one example of how people hoping that whomever they trusted that strong the gravity of this Ponzi scheme is. money to is smarter than a cat. There are some steps we could take to make 33 Yet they aren’t. They aren’t smarter than the the stock market less exploitative. We could fucking cat. stop speaking about stocks as if they’re money. You know, stop saying you have $1,000 of Apple Jeff Bezos is now worth shares and instead say you’ve got “1,000 padoo- 150-billion padoodles of dles of Apple shares.” If you sell them, only then Amazon stock while his workers do you have $1,000. Step two is to realise that the market econo- are on food stamps my in general is designed to exploit billions of What other profession is that true for? Any- us while a tiny number get ridiculously rich. It thing from math teacher to maintenance man doesn’t care about the health or sustainability of to tennis player, if you were worse than a cat, our society as it facilitates the extraction of all they would get rid of the whole profession. (And the wealth and resources by sociopaths. Just ask at some point, someone would say, “Besides, the Jeff Bezos – he’s now worth 150-billion padoodles kitten tennis players draw a far bigger audience of Amazon stock while his workers are on food anyway”.) stamps. CT But it’s true for financial advisers – because the stock market is a Ponzi scheme. It’s a racket, Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, a hustle, a con, a fast one, a hose job, a crooked writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the calzone! (I think I made up that last one.) weekly comedy news TV show Redacted Tonight And yet, in many cities gambling is illegal. With Lee Camp on RT America. This column They’ll send in armed police to break up poker is based on a previous segment written and games. You have to get a permit for a raffle. But performed by Lee Camp for his television show when a sociopath in Chicago bets your entire Redacted Tonight. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook Lobby attacks on Corbyn will backfire Not only is the role of pro-Israel partisans in the UK now visible, but their ugly assumptions are under closer scrutiny than ever before ack in the 1950s, the US intelligence oust him from the leadership because of his very community coined a term: “blowback”. public championing over many decades of the It referred to the unintended conse- Palestinian cause. quences of a covert operation that ended Al-Jazeera has produced two separate under- up damaging one’s own cause. There cover documentary series on Israel lobbyists’ ef- Bare mounting indications that the intensifying forts in the UK and US to interfere in each coun- campaign by the Israel lobby in the UK against try’s politics – probably in violation of local laws. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the parliamentary Only the UK series has been aired so far. opposition, is starting to have precisely such self- It showed an Israeli embassy official, Shai Ma- 34 harming repercussions. sot, both plotting to “take down” a Conservative In the three years since he was elected to lead government minister seen as too sympathetic the Labour party, Corbyn has faced non-stop to the Palestinian cause and helping to create accusations that his party has an endemic “an- an anti-Corbyn front organisation in the La- tisemitism problem”, despite all evidence to the bour party. Masot worked closely with two key contrary. Of late, Corbyn himself has become the pro-Israel groups in Labour, the Jewish Labour chief target of such allegations. Movement and Labour Friends of Israel. The lat- Last month the Daily Mail led a media maul- ter includes some 80 Labour MPs. ing of Corbyn over disparaging comments he Under apparent pressure from the Israel lobby made in 2013 about a small group of pro-Israel in the US, the series on the US lobby was sup- zealots who had come to disrupt a Palestin- pressed. ian solidarity meeting. His reference to them as At the end of August, Alain Gresh, the former “Zionists”, it was claimed, served as code for editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, published “Jews” and was therefore antisemitic. significant quotes from that censored documen- Mounting evidence in both the UK and the tary after viewing it secretly in Dubai. The US US, where there has been a similar escalation lobby’s aims and practices, as reported by Gresh, of attacks on pro-Palestinian activists, often closely echo what has happened in the UK to related to the international boycott movement Corbyn, as he has faced relentless allegations of (BDS), suggests that the Israeli government is antisemitism. taking a significant, if covert, role in coordinat- The US documentary reportedly shows that ing and directing such efforts to sully the reputa- Israel’s strategic affairs ministry has taken a tion of prominent critics. leading role in directing the US lobby’s efforts. Corbyn’s supporters have argued instead that According to Gresh, senior members of the lobby he is being subjected to a campaign of smears to are caught on camera admitting that they have ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook Illustration: Jacob Anikulapo, Flickr.com built up a network of spies to gather information becomes a dangerous thing for Israel”. 35 on prominent critics of Israel. These reported quotes confirm much of what In Gresh’s transcripted excerpts, Jacob Baime, was already suspected. More than a decade ago executive director of the Israel on Campus Coa- scholars John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt lition, a group of organisations fighting BDS, wrote a book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign states: “When I got here a few years ago, the Policy, examining the composition and role of budget was $3,000. Today it’s like a million and a the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US. But until half [dollars], or more. … It’s a massive budget”. the broadcasting of the Al-Jazeera documentary “It’s psychological warfare”, he adds, noting last year no comparable effort had been made to how the smears damage the targeted groups: shine a light on the situation in the UK. In fact, “They either shut down, or they spend time inves- there was almost no discussion or even acknowl- tigating [the accusations against them] instead edgment of the role of an Israel lobby in British of attacking Israel. It’s extremely effective”. public and political life. That is changing rapidly. Through its constant attacks on Corbyn, British activists are looking David Hazony, a senior member of another less like disparate individuals sympathetic to Is- lobby group, The Israel Project, explains that a rael and more recognisably like a US-style lobby pressing aim is to curb political speech critical of – highly organised, on-message and all too ready Israel: “What’s a bigger problem is the Democrat- to throw their weight around. ic Party, the Bernie Sanders people, bringing all The lobby was always there, of course. And, the anti-Israel people into the Democratic Party. as in the US, it embraces a much wider body of Then being pro-Israel becomes less a biparti- support than right-wing Jewish leadership or- san issue, and then every time the White House ganisations like the Board of Deputies and the changes, the policies towards Israel change. That Jewish Leadership Council, or hardline lobby- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook ists such as the Community Security Trust and partner. No British leader looked likely to step BICOM. far from the Washington consensus. That should not surprise us. The earliest Zi- onists were not Jews but fundamentalist Chris- tians. In the US, the largest group of Zionists by The Israel lobby in the UK now faces a double far are Christian evangelicals who believe that whammy. First, since Donald Trump entered the the return of Jews to the Promised Land is the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin key to unlocking the second coming of the Mes- Netanyahu has dropped any pretence that Israel siah and an apocalyptic end-times. Though em- is willing to concede a Palestinian state, what- braced by Israel, many of these Christian funda- ever the Palestinians do. Instead, Israel has iso- mentalists hold antisemitic views. lated the Palestinian leadership diplomatically while seeking to terrorise the Palestinian popu- Israel’s partisans in the UK lation into absolute submission. were caught off-guard by the That was all too clear over the summer when unexpected rise of Corbyn those Israeli snipers picked off demonstrators each week in Gaza. As a result, the Israel lobby In Britain, there is an unacknowledged legacy stands more exposed than ever. It can no longer of antisemitic Christian support for Zionism. buy time for Israeli expansionism by credibly Lord Balfour, a devout Christian who regu- claiming, as it once did, that Israel seeks peace. larly voiced bigotry towards Jews, was also the Second, Israel’s partisans in the UK were man who committed the British government in caught off-guard by the unexpected rise of Cor- 1917 to create a home for Jews in Palestine. That byn to a place that puts him in sight of being the set in motion today’s conflict between Israel and next prime minister. The use of social media by the native Palestinian population. his supporters, meanwhile, has provided a coun- 36 In addition, many British gentiles, like other ter-weight to the vilification campaign being am- Europeans, live with understandable guilt about plified by the British media. the Holocaust. The media have been only too willing to as- One of the largest and most effective groups in sist in the smearing of the Labour leader because Corbyn’s parliamentary party is Labour Friends they have their own separate interests in seeing of Israel (LFI), most of whose members are not Corbyn gone. He is a threat to the corporate busi- Jewish. LFI takes some of the party’s most sen- ness interests they represent. ior politicians on all-expenses-paid trips to Israel But not only has the messenger – the Israel to wine and dine them as they are subjected to lobby – now come under proper scrutiny for the Israeli propaganda. first time, so has its message. The success of the Dozens of Labour MPs have remained loyal lobby had depended not only on it remaining to LFI even as the organisation has repeatedly largely out of view. It also expected to shore up a refused to criticise Israel over undeniable war largely pro-Israel environment without drawing crimes. attention to what was being advocated, beyond When Israeli snipers executed dozens of unquestioned sound bites. In doing so, it was able unarmed demonstrators in Gaza in May, the to entirely ignore those who had paid the price LFI took to Twitter to blame Hamas for the for Israel’s diplomatic impunity – the Palestin- deaths, not Israel. After facing a massive back- ians. lash online, the LFI simply deleted the tweet. The campaign against Corbyn has not only Historically the Israel lobby could remain forced the lobby to come out into the open, but relatively low-profile in the UK because it faced the backlash to its campaign has forced the lobby few challenges. Its role was chiefly to enforce a to articulate for the first time what exactly it be- political orthodoxy about Israel in line with Brit- lieves and what is at stake. ain’s role as Washington’s foreign policy junior The latest furore over Corbyn concerns ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook a YouTube video of him speaking at a pro-Pal- Palestinian ambassador. estinian meeting in 2013, two years before he However, the terms “antisemitism” and became Labour leader. He has been widely de- “Zionism” are likely to prove more treacherous nounced in the media for making disparaging re- to weaponise against Corbyn than the lobby marks about a small group of hardline pro-Israel thinks. As the antisemitism controversy is con- partisans well-known for disrupting such meet- stantly reignited, a much clearer picture of the ings. lobby’s implied logic is emerging, as illustrated He referred to them as “Zionists” and sug- by the hyperbolic, verging on delusional, lan- gested that the reaction of this particular hard- guage of Rabbi Sacks. line group to a speech by the Palestinian ambas- The argument goes something like this: sador had betrayed their lack of appreciation of Israel is the only safe haven for Jews in times “English irony”. of trouble – and the only thing that stands be- Israel’s lobby, echoed by many liberal journal- tween them and a future Holocaust. The move- ists, has suggested that Corbyn was using “Zion- ment that created Israel was the Zionist move- ist” as code word for “Jew”, and that he had im- ment. Today most Jews are Zionists and believe plied that all Jews – not the handful of pro-Israel Israel is at the core of their identity. Therefore, zealots in attendance – lacked traits of English- if you are too critical of Israel or Zionism, you ness. This, they say, was yet further evidence of must wish bad things for the Jewish people. That his anti-semitism. makes you an anti-Semite. It probably doesn’t require a logician to under- stand that there are several highly problematic Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s former chief rab- premises propping up this argument. Let’s con- bi, told the New Statesman late in August that centrate on two. The first is that it depends on a Corbyn’s comment was “the most offensive state- worldview in which the non-Jew is assumed to ment made by a senior British politician since be antisemite until proven otherwise. For that 37 Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech”. In reason Jews need to be eternally vigilant and that notorious speech, the right-wing politician distrustful of those outside their “tribe”. sought to incite race hatred of immigrants. Calling Corbyn an “anti-Semite”, Sacks added: Israel’s core ideology, political “It undermines the existence of an entire group Zionism, is premised on the idea of British citizens by depicting them as essen- of tribal and sectarian exclusivity tially alien”. In a now familiar pattern to lobby claims, If that sounds improbable, it shouldn’t. That is Sacks relied on the false premise that all Jews exactly the lesson of the Holocaust taught to chil- are Zionists. He conflated a religious or ethnic dren in Israel from kindergarten onwards. category with a political ideology. The Labour Israel derives no universal message from the leader has held his ground on this occasion, Holocaust. Its schools do not teach that we must pointing out that he was using the term “in the avoid stigmatising others, and discourage sec- accurate political sense and not as a euphemism tarian and tribal indentifications that fuel preju- for Jewish people”. dice and bigotry. How could it? After all, Israel’s Others have noted that his accusers – many core ideology, political Zionism, is premised on of them senior journalists – are the ones lack- the idea of tribal and sectarian exclusivity – the ing a sense of irony. Corbyn was not “otheris- “ingathering of exiles” to create a Jewish state. ing” Jews, he was highlighting a paradox not In Israel, the Holocaust supplies a different confirming a prejudice: that a small group of lesson. It teaches that Jews are under permanent Britons were so immersed in their partisan threat from non-Jews, and that their only defence cause, Israel, that it had blinded them to the is to seek collective protection in a highly milita- “English irony” employed by a foreigner, the rised state, armed with nuclear weapons. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook This idea was encapsulated in the famous say- than Corbyn stigmatising Jews – except in some ing by the late Israeli general Moshe Dayan: “Is- feverish imaginations – it is the pro-Israel lobby rael must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to stigmatising non-Jews, by claiming that they are bother”. all tainted by Jew hatred, whether they know Israel’s ugly, self-serving tribal reading of his- it or not. The more the lobby kicks up a hyste- tory has been slowly spreading to Jews in Europe ria about Corbyn’s supposed antisemitism, the and the US. Fifteen years ago, a US scholar, Dan- clearer it becomes that the lobby regards much iel J Goldhagen, published an influential essay in of the non-Jewish public as suspect, too. the Jewish weekly Forward titled “The Globali- The other obvious lacuna in the lobby’s logic sation of anti-Semitism”. In it, he argued that is that it only works if we completely remove the antisemitism was a virus that could lie dormant Palestinians from the story of Zionism and Isra- for periods but would always find new ways to el. The idea of a harm-free Zionism might have reinfect its hosts. “Globalized anti-Semitism has been credible had it been possible to establish become part of the substructure of prejudice in a Jewish state on an empty piece of land, as the the world”, he wrote. “It is relentlessly interna- early Zionists claimed Palestine to be. In reality tional in its focus on Israel at the center of the there was a large native population which had to most conflict-ridden region today”. be displaced first. This theory is also known as the “new an- tisemitism”, a form of Jew hatred much harder It needed to deny Palestinians to identify than the right-wing antisemitism of inside Israel the same rights old. Through mutation, the new antisemitism as Israeli Jews had concealed its hatred of Jews by appearing to focus on Israel and dressing itself up in left-wing Israel’s creation as a Jewish state in 1948 was garb. possible only if the Zionist movement undertook 38 Perhaps not surprisingly, given his latest com- two steps that violate modern conceptions of hu- ments about Corbyn, that is also an approxima- man rights and liberal democratic practice. First, tion of the argument made by Rabbi Sacks in a Israel had to carry out large-scale ethnic cleans- 2016 essay in which he writes: “Antisemitism is a ing, forcing more than 80 percent of the native virus that survives by mutating”. Palestinian population outside the new borders In a sign of how this kind of paranoia is be- of the Jewish state it created on the Palestinians’ coming slowly normalised in Europe too, the homeland. Guardian published a commentary by a British Then, it needed to deny the small surviving journalist last month explaining her decision, community of Palestinians inside Israel the same Israel-style, to teach her three-year-old daughter rights as Israeli Jews, to ghettoise them and stop about the Holocaust and antisemitism. That, she them from bringing their expelled relatives back hoped, would prepare her child for eventualities to their homes. such as Corbyn becoming prime minister. These weren’t poor choices made by flawed Is- raeli politicians. They were absolutely essential to the success of a Zionist project to create and But the increasing adoption of Israel’s tribal- maintain a Jewish state. The ethnic cleansing ist doctrine among sections of the British Jewish of 1948 and the structural racism of the Jewish community – and the related weaponisation of state were unmentionable topics in “legitimate” anti-Semitism – is likely to shed further light on public debates about Israel until very recently. what kind of a state hardline Zionists uphold as That has been changing, in part because it at the core of their identity. has become much harder to conceal what kind Paradoxically, the new antisemitism turns of state Israel is. Its self-harming behaviour in- the tables by legitimising – in fact, necessitat- cludes its recent decision to make explicit the ing – Jewish racism towards gentiles. Rather state’s institutionalised racism with the passage ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net jonathan cook in July of the Nation-State Basic Law. That law antisemitism, a liberal Jewish commentator Pe- gives constitutional weight to the denial of equal ter Beinart noted that the rabbi had mentioned rights to a fifth of Israel’s population, those who the “Palestinians” by name only once. are Palestinian. He berated Sacks for equating anti-Zionism and antisemitism: “By denying that [Palestin- Sacks, it seems, cannot identify ians] might have any reason besides bigotry to apartheid when it is staring dislike Zionism, it denies their historical experi- him the face ence and turns them into mere vessels for Jew- hatred. Thus, it does to Palestinians what an- The backlash against Corbyn and other Pal- tisemitism does to Jews. It dehumanises them”. estinian solidarity activists is evidence of the lobby’s fears that they can no longer hold the line against a growing realisation by western publics In a world that was not topsy-turvy, it would be that there was a cost to Zionism’s success. Sacks and the Israel lobby that were being pub- That price was paid by Palestinians, and there licly upbraided for their racism. Instead Corbyn has yet been no historical reckoning over their is being vilified by a wide spectrum of suppos- suffering. By veiling the historical record, Israel edly informed opinion in the UK – Jewish and and the Zionist movement have avoided the kind non-Jewish alike – for standing in solidarity with of truth and reconciliation process that led to the Palestinians. ending of apartheid in South Africa. The lobby It is, remember, the Palestinian people who prefers that Israel’s version of apartheid contin- have been the victims of more than a century ues. of collusion between European colonialism and If there is one individual who personifies the Zionism, and today are still being oppressed by loss of a moral compass in the weaponisation of an anachronistic ethnic state, Israel, determined anti-Semitism against Corbyn and Israel’s crit- to privilege its Jewishness at all costs. 39 ics, it is Rabbi Sacks. The lobby and its supporters are not just seek- Asked by the New Statesman what he thinks ing to silence Corbyn. They also intend to silence of the new Nation-State Basic Law, the normally the Palestinians and the growing ranks of people erudite Sacks suddenly becomes lost for words. who choose to stand in solidarity with the Pal- He asks a friend, or in his case his brother, for the estinians. But while the lobby may be winning answer: “I’m not an expert on this. My brother is, on its own limited terms in harming Corbyn in I’m not. He’s a lawyer in Jerusalem. He tells me mainstream discourse, deeper processes are ex- that there’s absolutely nothing apartheid about posing and weakening the lobby. It is overplay- this, it’s just correcting a lacuna… As far as I un- ing its hand. derstand, it’s a technical process that has none of A strong lobby is one that is largely invisible, the implications that have been levelled at it”. one that – like the financial and arms industries Sacks, it seems, cannot identify apartheid – has no need to flex its muscles. In making so when it is staring him the face, as long as it is dis- much noise to damage Corbyn, the Israel lobby guised as “Jewish”. Similarly, he is blind to the is also for the first time being forced to bring out history of Zionism and the mass dispossession of into the open the racist premises that always un- Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba. derpinned its arguments. He tells the New Statesman: “Jews did not wish Over time, that exposure is going to harm, not to come back to their land [Palestine] to make benefit, the apologists for Israel. CT any other people [Palestinians] suffer, and that goes very deep in the Jewish heart”. Not so deep, Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist it seems, that Sacks can even identify who had to and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special suffer to make possible that Jewish “return”. |Prize for Journalism. His web site is In a critique of Sacks’ lengthy 2016 essay on www.jonathan-cook.net ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net George Monbiot Plastic soup Disposable coffee cups made from new materials are not just a non-solution: they are a perpetuation of the real problem – consumerism o you believe in miracles? If so, please asked me, “So what should we use instead?” form an orderly queue. Plenty of peo- The right question is, “How should we live?” ple imagine we can carry on as we are, But systemic thinking is an endangered spe- as long as we substitute one material cies. for another. Last month, a request to Part of the problem is the source of the plastic DStarbucks and Costa to replace their plastic cof- campaigns: David Attenborough’s Blue Planet fee cups with cups made from corn starch was II TV series. The first six episodes had strong, retweeted 60,000 times, before it was deleted. coherent narratives but the seventh, which Those who supported this call failed to ask sought to explain the threats facing the wonder- 40 themselves where the corn starch would come ful creatures the series revealed, darted from from, how much land would be needed to grow one issue to another. We were told we could “do it, or how much food production it would dis- something” about the destruction of ocean life. place. They overlooked the damage this cultiva- We were not told what. There was no explana- tion would inflict: growing corn (maize) is noto- tion of why the problems are happening and rious for causing soil erosion, and often requires what forces are responsible, or how they can be heavy doses of pesticides and fertilisers. engaged. The problem is not just plastic: it is mass dis- Amid the general incoherence, one contribu- posability. Or, to put it another way, the problem tor stated: “It comes down, I think, to us each is pursuing, on the one planet known to taking responsibility for the per- harbour life, a four-planet life- sonal choices in our everyday style. Regardless of what we lives. That’s all any of us can be consume, the sheer volume of expected to do”. This perfectly consumption is overwhelm- represents the mistaken belief ing the Earth’s living sys- that a better form of consumerism tems. will save the planet. The problems Don’t get me wrong. Our we face are structural: a political greed for plastic is a major environ- system captured by commercial mental blight, and the campaigns to interests, and an economic sys- limit its use are well motivated and tem that seeks endless growth. sometimes effective. But we cannot ad- dress our environmental crisis by swap- ping one overused resource for another. Of course we should try to When I challenged that call, some people minimise our own impacts, but we ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net George Monbiot cannot confront these forces merely by “taking fishery – scooping up vast numbers of turtles and responsibility” for what we consume. Unfortu- other threatened species. Prawn farming is just nately, these are issues that the BBC in general as bad, eliminating tracts of mangrove forests, and David Attenborough in particular avoid. I crucial nurseries for thousands of species. admire Attenborough in many ways, but I am We are kept remarkably ignorant of such no fan of his environmentalism. For many years, issues. As consumers, we are confused, bam- it was almost undetectable. When he did at last boozled and almost powerless – and corporate speak out, he avoided challenging power – either power has gone to great lengths to persuade us speaking in vague terms or focusing on problems to see ourselves this way. The BBC’s approach for which powerful interests are not responsible. to environmental issues is highly partisan, sid- This tendency may explain Blue Planet’s skirt- ing with a system that has sought to transfer ing of the obvious issues. responsibility for structural forces to individual The most obvious is the fishing industry, shoppers. Yet it is only as citizens taking po- which turns the astonishing life forms the rest litical action that we can promote meaningful of the series depicted into seafood. Throughout change. the oceans, this industry, driven by our appe- The answer to the question “How should we tites and protected by governments, is causing live?” is: “Simply”. But living simply is highly cascading ecological collapse. Yet the only fish- complicated. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New ery the programme featured was among the one World, the government massacred the Simple percent that are in recovery. It was charming to Lifers. This is generally unnecessary: today they see how Norwegian herring boats seek to avoid can safely be marginalised, insulted and dis- killing orcas, but we were given no idea of how missed. The ideology of consumption is so preva- unusual it is. lent that it has become invisible: it is the plastic Even marine plastic is in large part a fishing soup in which we swim. issue. It turns out that 46 percent of the Great One-planet living means not only seeking to 41 Pacific garbage patch – which has come to sym- reduce our own consumption, but also mobilis- bolise our throwaway society – is composed of ing against the system that promotes the great discarded nets, and much of the rest consists tide of junk. This means fighting corporate pow- of other kinds of fishing gear. Abandoned fish- er, changing political outcomes and challenging ing materials tend to be far more dangerous to the growth-based, world-consuming system we marine life than other forms of waste. As for the call capitalism. bags and bottles contributing to the disaster, the As last month’s Hothouse Earth paper, which great majority arise in poorer nations without warned of the danger of flipping the planet into good disposal systems. But because this point a new, irreversible climatic state, concluded: “In- was not made, we look to the wrong places for cremental linear changes … are not enough to solutions. stabilise the Earth system. Widespread, rapid and fundamental transformations will likely be required to reduce the risk of crossing the From this misdirection arise a thousand per- threshold”. versities. One prominent environmentalist post- Disposable coffee cups made from new mate- ed a picture of the king prawns she had bought, rials are not just a non-solution: they are a per- celebrating the fact that she had persuaded the petuation of the problem. Defending the planet supermarket to put them in her own container means changing the world. CT rather than a plastic bag, and linking this to the protection of the seas. But buying prawns causes George Monbiot’s latest book, How Did We Get many times more damage to marine life than Into This Mess?, is published by Verso. This any plastic in which they are wrapped. Prawn article was first published in the Guardian. fishing has the highest rates of bycatch of any Monbiot’s web site is www.monbiot.com ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Granville Williams 40 years in the media frontline Britain’s Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom fought a long battle against government and media owners. Now it is about to die he UK-based me- programmes like Real Lives and the a Spycatcher. of Ballad of Cover Below: press. Free of issue Final Left: dia reform group, banning of the programme on Zircon the Campaign for (a surveillance system kept under Press and Broadcast- complete wraps) in the BBC’s Se- ing Freedom was cret Society Series, we were there Tlaunched in September 1979 at in defiance. We showed the banned the Trades Union Congress in TV programmes to packed audi- Blackpool and got an immedi- ences. We got hold of copies of Peter ate and positive response. How- Wright’s Spycatcher, the memoirs 42 ever, by the end of October 2018, of a UK spook, published in Aus- the organisation which sprang tralia, which Thatcher tried to ban to life in the early months of in Britain, and had public read- Margaret Thatcher’s first gov- ings. And, in a first for the CPBF, ernment will cease to exist. produced a record, Ballad of a Spycatcher with The CPBF (originally launched as the Cam- Leon Rosselon and Billy Bragg and the Oyster paign for Press Freedom – Broadcasting was not Band. inserted in the title until 1982) was a unique or- ganisation in that it represented everyone who worked in and cared for the media: trade union- Then, of course, there was the Broadcasting ists, people in academic life, and private indi- Ban, introduced by the Tory Home Secretary viduals, all of whom cared about a media that Douglas Hurd, in October, 1988, and operated informed people accurately about the world in until 1994, which we challenged vigorously. We which we live. produced a book Interference On The Airwaves, The Thatcher years were, perhaps, the prime with contributions from Liz years of influence for the CPBF, which faced a Curtis and Mike Jempson, doc- hostile prime minister, whose instincts were to umenting all the programmes curb and control and deregulate the media at the on Northern Ireland that had same time as she led an assault on trades un- been censored, banned or de- ions, layed. It was one of a stream From its vigorous work on the Right of Reply of pamphlets and books pro- during the 1984-85 miners’ strike to the Wapping duced: Rejoice! on the me- dispute that finally broke the back of the print- dia and the Falklands War, ers’ unions; from the assaults on the BBC over Media Hits the Pits, on me- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Granville Williams dia coverage CRITIQUING THE UK MEDIA: Three of the pamphlets of the 1984-85 produced by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting miners’ strike; Freedom during the Thatcher years. Switching Channels on broadcasting after the 1997 election, we were deregulation; frozen out of any role in shaping and Labour New Labour’s media policies. Daily?, making But we were a determined, a case for media tenacious organisation. We pro- ownership that duced media manifestoes for represented the general elections which kept working class. alive a body of ideas and poli- For me, one of cies which stood in marked con- the memorable trast to those pursued by New meetings from that Labour. One policy we did sup- time was the one we port though – the pledge for organised in the Bluecoats, Liver- a Freedom of In- pool, after the Hillsborough disaster formation Act, and on 15 April 1989. (I’ve written about we worked closely this in a previous piece for Coldtype.) with the Campaign It is to the credit of the CPBF that Free Press for Freedom of In- publicised and challenged the lies and distor- formation to win tions heaped on the Liverpool fans until finally that one. the families whose relatives died there were One of the core 43 vindicated. campaigning issues over the last two dec- ades has been media Before Tony Blair’s love affair with Mur- ownership. doch and the emergence of New Labour, a We alerted people large number of local Labour Party branch- to the fact that local es were also affiliated to the CPBF. I went newspapers were local to speak to the Redcar Constituency Labour in name only as groups Party in the North East. Mo Mowlem was the l i k e J o h n - son Press, Newsquest local MP then, and I still vividly remember her and Trinity Mirror gobbled up local newspaper dynamic presence at the meeting. When she was groups. When the going was good they raked in briefly given the job of Shadow National Herit- fabulous profits, but in the last decade we have age Secretary in 1993 she was initially accessible witnessed the closure of local newspapers and and receptive to CPBF’s media policies. But, by jobs slashed. The result is a serious democratic July, 1994 Labour Party media policy was firmly deficit summed up by a National Union of Jour- on the trajectory which would lead Tony Blair nalist leaflet: Who will ask the questions when the following summer to address Murdoch’s top we are gone? brass in Australia and then return to address The push by New Labour to deregulate the Labour’s 21st Century Communications Con- media was exemplified by their Communica- ference. One of the speakers at this conference tions Bill which gave the green light for the end was Sir David English, former Daily Mail editor, of what had been a diverse range of regional ITV then chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated companies to merge into a single ITV company Newspapers. The writing was on the wall and, in England and Wales. But resistance to the Bill ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Granville Williams was fierce. An important victory by a commit- Involvement with the CPBF has been a central tee of MPs and Lords, led by Lord Puttnam, was and liberating part of my life since 1979. I have the insertion of a clause in the 2003 Communica- met some great people, taken part in inspiring tions Act on the need for a public interest test for conferences and events in Europe and the USA, changes in media ownership. edited Free Press and written books. I was proud It was this clause that allowed us to mobilise to edit the final issue of Free Press, but I’m very twice against the Murdoch empire. In 2010 Mur- clear that whilst the CPBF has gone media re- doch, with full support from the Tories, launched form remains a vital campaigning issue. CT a bid for full control of BSkyB. The bid went down when the phone-hacking crisis engulfed Murdo- Granville Williams edited Free Press from ch in July 2011. We predicted he would be back September 1992 to December 2005. His books and again we had to mobilise, working with an include Britain’s Media: How They Are Related impressive coalition of media groups, to oppose (2nd edition 1996) and Shafted: The Media, the the second bid launched in Spring 2017. Miners’ Strike and the Aftermath (2009) l Why the CPBF had to close is explained in the final issue at Free Press: www.cpbf.org.uk Amazon’s worth $1-trillion, so why is it robbing taxpayers? It’s like Bonnie and Clyde, but instead of robbing banks, Amazon has 44 enticed city and state officials to rob their own citizens ow much are you paying Amazon? I negotiations over to business groups like the don’t mean how much you’re shelling Chamber of Commerce, letting this handful of out for stuff you bought. I mean much unelected, self-interested, private elites secretly you and your neighbours are simply make binding promises that would affect all resi- giving to this uber-rich on-line retailer. dents without consulting them. HIf you live in Indianapolis, Austin, Chicago, In the few places that did release information, Atlanta, or 16 other lucky cities, congratulations! it’s amounted to an unfunny joke. Montgomery You’re a finalist in the “Throw-Your-Money- County, Maryland, for example, made public a 10- At-Amazon” Sweepstakes! It’s like Bonnie and page document listing “incentives” it was offering, Clyde, but instead of robbing banks, Amazon has but every word on every page was blacked out! enticed city and state officials to rob their own This whole flim-flam is abominable and ought citizens – then hand over the loot in the form of to be criminal. Amazon will rake in a quarter- tax breaks, land, and other bribes to Jeff Bezos, trillion dollars in sales this year, and Bezos is sit- CEO of Amazon. The locality that offers the most ting on $166 billion in personal wealth. Shame on booty “wins” the prize of having this thieving him for demanding public handouts, and shame corporate behemoth become its new neighbour. on local officials for robbing the public till to fur- At least until Bezos gets a better offer. ther bloat his ego and fortune. CT So, again I ask: How much are your officials of- fering? Shhhh, that’s a secret. Nearly all of the 20 Jim Hightower, is a radio commentator, writer, contestant cities won’t tell city council members and public speaker. He’s also editor of the (much less taxpayers) how many billions they’re newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. Distributed throwing at Bezos. Many cities even turned their by www.otherwords.org ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net ColdType l pepe Escobar l Brian terrell l Trevor Grundy Insights l Alison weir tative easing (QE) policy. The weaponisation As investment banker and risk manager Jim Rickards noted, QE for all practical pur- of the US dollar poses represented the Fed de- Crashing currency chaos spreads across claring a currency war against the whole planet – printing US the global south, writes Pepe Escobar dollars at will on a trillion-dollar scale. That meant mounting US he Iranian rial: crash. debt was devalued, so foreign The Turkish lira: crash. creditors were paid back with The Argentine peso: cheaper US dollars. T crash. The Brazilian real: Now, the Fed has dramatical- crash. There are multiple, com- ly reversed course and is all-out plex, parallel vectors at play in invested in quantitative tighten- this wilderness of crashing cur- ing (QT). rencies. Turkey’s case is heavily No more liquid dollars flood- influenced by the bubble of easy ing emerging markets such as 45 credit created by European Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Indo- banks. Argentina’s problem is nesia or India. US interest rates mostly to do with the neoliberal are up. The Fed stopped buying austerity of President Mauricio new bonds. The US Treasury is Macri’s government admitting issuing new bond debt. Thus QT, it won’t be able to fulfil payment the moment, are firmly within combined with a global, targeted targets agreed with the IMF less Washington’s orbit. trade war against major emerg- than three months ago. Iran’s Now, compare it with curren- ing markets, spells out the new has to do with harsh United cies that are gaining against normal: the weaponisation States sanctions imposed after the US dollar: the Ukrainian of the US dollar. the Trump administration’s hryvnia, the Georgian lari and It’s no wonder that Russia, unilateral pullout from the Iran the Colombian peso. Not exactly China, Turkey, Iran – nearly nuclear deal. G20 heavyweights – and all of every major regional player This is a serious currency them also inside Washington’s invested in Eurasia integration crisis affecting key emerging influence. – is buying gold with the aim of markets. Three of these – Bra- progressively getting out of US zil, Argentina and Turkey – are dollar hegemony. As JP Morgan G20 members, and Iran, ab- Independent analysts from himself coined it over a century sent external pressure, would Russia and Turkey to Brazil and ago, “Gold is money. All else is have everything to qualify as a Iran largely agree that the over- credit”. member. Two – Iran and Tur- whelming factor in the current Every currency war though key – are under US sanctions currency crisis is a reversing of is not about gold; it’s about the while the other two, at least for the US Federal Reserve quanti- US dollar. Yet the US dollar now ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights is like an inscrutable visitor designated by the IMF. They leadership is really aware of the from outer space, dependent on could back their new digital nature of the incoming tempest. massive leverage; a galaxy of coins with gold. The latest Oxford Economics dodgy derivatives; the QE print- Mired-in-crisis Venezuela is report seems pretty realistic: ing scheme; and gold not being at least showing the way. The “We expect the sanctions to tip awarded its true importance. “sovereign bolivar” has just the economy back into reces- That is about to change. started circulating – pegged to sion, with GDP now seen con- Russia and China are heavily a new cryptocurrency, the petro, tracting by 3.7 percent in 2019, invested in buying gold. Rus- worth 3,600 sovereign bolivars. the worst economic performance sia has dumped US Treasuries The new cryptocurrency is al- in six years. For 2020, we see en masse. And what the BRICS ready posing a fascinating ques- growth of 0.5 percent, driven had been discussing since the tion: “Is the petro a forward sale by a modest recovery in private mid-2000s is now in motion; the of oil or an external debt backed consumption and net exports”. drive to build alternative pay- by oil?” After all, BRICS mem- The authors of the report, ment systems to the US dollar- bers are buying a large chunk Mohamed Bardastani and Maya subordinated SWIFT. of the 100-million petros – con- Senussi, say “the other signa- Germany appears to be com- fident that they are backed by a tories to the original deal [the ing around to the idea. If that surefire reserve, the Ayacucho JCPOA, especially the EU-3] does happen, it could possibly block of the Orinoco Oil Belt. have yet to spell out a clear lead the way towards Europe Venezuelan economist Tony strategy that would allow them redefining itself geopolitically in Boza nailed it when he stressed to circumvent US sanctions and terms of its military and strate- the peg between the petro and continue importing Iranian oil”. gic independence. international oil prices: “We The report also admits the ob- 46 When and if that happens, are not going to be subject to vious: there will be no internal arguably at some point in the the value of our currency being push in Iran for regime change next decade, US foreign policy determined by a website, the oil (that’s a thing only happening in configured as an avalanche of market will determine it.” warped US neocon minds) while sanctions may be effectively “both reformers and conserva- neutralised. tives are united in defying the It will be a long, protracted And that brings us to the key sanctions”. affair – but some elements are question of the US economic war But defying how? Tehran already visible, as in China us- on Iran. Persian Gulf traders are has not come up with a win-win ing US trading markets to help virtually unanimous: the global roadmap capable of being sold to the emergence of a wider plat- oil market is tightening, fast, anyone – from JCPOA members form transference. After all key and it will run short in the next to energy importers such as emerging markets cannot wig- two months. Japan, South Korea and Tur- gle out of the US dollar system Iran oil exports will likely key. That would represent true without full yuan convertibility. drop to just over two-million Eurasia integration. Just hav- And then there are nations barrels a day in August. Com- ing Ayatollah Khamenei saying contemplating the creation of pare it to a peak of 3.1-million Iran is ready to pull out of the their own cryptocurrencies. Dig- barrels a day in April. JCPOA is not good enough. ital finance is the way to go. It looks like a lot of players What about a Persian crypto- Some nations, for instance, are folding even before Trump’s currency? CT could use a cryptocurrency oil sanctions kick in. denominated in SDRs (special It also looks like the mood in Pepe Escobar is correspondent- drawing rights) – which is, in Tehran is “we will survive”, but at-large at Asia Times. His latest practice, the world money as it’s not exactly clear the Iranian book is 2030. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights children traumatised and killed by the US military and its prox- ies globally number far more than those 44. Only one of these events sparked a crisis and soul- searching both in and out of the Catholic Church, but they both should have. Some Catholic activists for peace and justice have long lived in a state of crisis with our church and have recognised the scandal of “men of God” who bless and cover for the abuse and murder of innocents through war, economic injustice and institutional racism. “Over and over again in his- tory the Church has become so corrupt it just cries out to heaven for vengeance”, Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic A young survivor of August 9 Saudi-led attack on his school bus, with frag- Worker movement said in a 1970 ment of US made missile. Photo: Ahmad Algohbarya. interview. “The crisis is some- 47 thing terrific”, she said then, before the problem of sexual Catholic support for abuse of the young was well known. This crisis, she said, was “a result of the corruption in the war: more child abuse institutional Church, through For too long, the Church has abetted the abuse, money and through their accept- exploitation and murder of children, writes Brian Terrell ance of the lousy, rotten system”. A radical even before she became a Catholic in 1927 (“I n August 14, a report broadest inquiries into church have said, sometimes flippantly, from a grand jury inves- sex abuse in US history. that the mass of bourgeois smug tigation in Pennsylvania Five days earlier, on Au- Christians who denied Christ O identified 300 Catholic gust 9, in northern Yemen, a in His poor made me turn to priests across the state who had Saudi-led coalition airstrike the Communists, and it was sexually abused more than 1,000 hit a school bus with a missile the Communists and working children. made by Lockheed Martin and with them that made me turn “Priests were raping little supplied to the Saudis by the to God…”) Dorothy never had boys and girls, and the men US government and 44 children the “honeymoon” of blind love of God who were responsible were killed. Just as the horror enjoyed by many new converts for them not only did nothing; of abuse of children by priests and was always conscious of the they hid it all. For decades”, the goes beyond the scope of the Church’s flaws and failings. “I grand jury wrote in one of the report from Pennsylvania, the was just as much against capi- ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights talism and imperialism as ever, profiteers and generals, that she wars, if it wants to be consistent and here I was going over to the found the hardest to love and to and faithful to Christ”. opposition, because of course forgive as Jesus bade her. Many Catholics are now the Church was lined up with In a 1967 column entitled “In struggling with the question, property, with the wealthy, with Peace Is My Bitterness Most Bit- “How can I remain in this the state, with capitalism, with ter” Dorothy wrote about Car- abusive Church?” In her medi- all the forces of reaction”, she dinal Spellman and his support tation on Cardinal Spellman, wrote in her autobiography, The for the war in Vietnam: “But Dorothy Day asked “as to the Long Loneliness. “This I had what words are those he spoke Church, where else shall we go, been taught to think and this I – going against even the Pope, except to the Bride of Christ, one still think to a great extent”. calling for victory, total victory? flesh with Christ? Though she Even as a new convert, Words are as strong and power- is a harlot at times, she is our Dorothy deplored “the scan- ful as bombs, as napalm” … “I Mother”. Dorothy often quoted dal of businesslike priests, of can sit in the presence of the theologian Romano Guardini, collective wealth, the lack of a Blessed Sacrament and wrestle who said “the Church is the sense of responsibility for the for that peace in the bitterness Cross on which Christ is always poor, the worker, the Negro, the of my soul, a bitterness which crucified. One cannot separate Mexican, the Filipino, and even many Catholics throughout the Christ from his bloody, painful the oppression of these, and the world feel, and I can find many Church. One must live in a state consenting to the oppression things in Scripture to console of permanent dissatisfaction of them by our industrialist- me, to change my heart from with the Church”. capitalist order – these made me hatred to love of enemy”. Long time peacemaker and feel often that priests were more resister, Father Daniel Berrigan 48 like Cain than Abel. ‘Am I my once said “I don’t know a more brother’s keeper?’ they seemed In 2002, after growing aware- irreligious attitude, one more to say in respect to the social ness of clerical abuse of children utterly bankrupt of any human order… There was plenty of and 22 years after Dorothy Day’s content, than one which permits charity but too little justice. ‘The death, the priest/activist Father children to be destroyed”. In a worst enemies would be those of John Dear decried the scandal of situation like the present, satis- our own household’, Christ had the Church’s support of the war faction with the Church and its warned us”. in Afghanistan: “Last November, institutions is unnatural, sinful, While the use of the word nearly all the US Catholic bish- even, and to view the suffering “scandal” to describe the Catho- ops voted to bless and support of children without scandal is in- lic Church is new and painful for the bombing and mass murder human. For too long, the Church many contemporary Catholics, of the people of Afghanistan. We has abetted the abuse, exploita- it was constituent to Dorothy know that some 4,000 civilians tion and murder of children. I Day’s vocabulary: “I loved the were killed during the first two pray that the rising outrage in Church for Christ made visible, months of that US war. Hun- the Church over the exploitation not for itself, because it was dreds of children were killed of children, and the resolve to so often a scandal to me”, she by the United States, and the protect them, will encompass said. More than once she ap- Catholic bishops condoned their also the children who are vic- plied Jesus’s caution that our murder”. John Dear stated what tims of war. CT enemies are “of our own house- should be obvious: “Talk about hold” to priests and bishops. child abuse! The Church cannot Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator She confessed that it was these condemn child abuse by paedo- for Voices for Creative “enemies”, not the Viet Cong, philes and yet bless the govern- Nonviolence. He can be reached not even the industrial war ment’s murder of children in its at: [email protected] ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights country is nine percent white and 76 percent black, with the Will South Africa go rest comprising small ethnic groups of Asians and people of same route as Zimbabe? mixed race. Whites fear South Africa will be a hungry continent’s next Most white farmers agree there’s a need to change the farming basket-case, writes Trevor Grundy ratio when it comes to land ownership, but they say those hat men do not learn who will take over the farms much from the lessons of must be trained before they do history is the most im- so. They also say the fat cats in T portant lesson of history, the ANC fear being overthrown wrote Aldous Huxley, the author by militants in Julius Malema’s of Brave New World. small but increasingly volatile So, listen up, Cyril Ramapho- Economic Freedom Front (EFF) sa, current leader of what the which wants total nationalisa- world once hailed as Brave New tion without compensation right South Africa, where most white now, not at some distant point in farmers fear that he’s sending the future. his country down the same road that destroyed his once food self- sufficient neighbour, Zimbabwe. SA President Cyril Ramaphosa. At the Lancaster House On July 31, Ramaphosa con- Photo: Wikimedia Conference in London at the end 49 firmed that the African National of 1979, Robert Mugabe wanted Congress (ANC) plans to pass History is partly to blame. the same terms, and walked out an amendment to the SA Con- The 1913 Native Lands Act because he couldn’t tolerate Brit- stitution allowing the seizure of declared that almost 90 percent ish insistence that land could land without compensation. of all South Africa’s best ar- only be transferred in the new Ramaphosa says he means to able land should remain in the country on a willing seller/ will- clarify Section 25 of the exist- hands of whites forever. (This ing buyer basis up until 1990 – a ing constitution – hailed in 1996 act was also the template for the ten year grace period. He was as one of the most freedom- Southern Rhodesia Land Appor- reeled back in by Mozambique’s giving constitutions in the tionment Act of 1930, which was Samora Machel. world. Ramaphosa claims the approved without debate by the The result was that, between new amendment is designed to British government of the time.) 1980 and the middle of the 1990s, “outline more clearly” the condi- For almost a quarter of a white farmers in Zimbabwe saw tions under which the state can century after coming to power, themselves as untouchable. It expropriate land without paying the ruling ANC sat on its hands was only when war veterans compensation. In other words, and did next to nothing about turned against the ruling Zanu the ANC is changing the “just changing land ownership. In (PF) for neglecting their pen- and equitable” compensation 2018, whites still own about 72 sions and enriching themselves clause to mean “no compensa- percent of the best land, while and their cronies, that Mugabe tion” if that’s necessary. The four percent is owned by black acted. big question is: Why has so little South Africans, and the rest is Whites were threatened and been done during 24 years of unusable or devoted to wildlife. landless peasants and veteran ANC power since independence? The overall population of the freedom fighters occupied farms ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights which had been in the hands of Stravropol region, where they arsenal”. white settlers since the arrival told a correspondent from the Israel is the only nuclear of Cecil Rhodes’ Pioneer Column state-owned TV channel Ros- power in the Middle East. in 1890. Twelve white farmers siya 1 that they now live in fear The country is reported to were killed in scenes of incred- of their lives. In Russia there are have between 100 and 400 nu- ible violence. Mugabe then 43-million hectares of unused clear weapons. While Israel has became the de facto leader of farmland, the climate is temper- never officially admitted this the campaign to rid the country ate, and the Putin government fact, Israeli leaders periodically of white landowners by cleverly has started to give free land to threaten their use. In 1973, when diverting African anger against citizens to cultivate farming. Israel was losing what it calls him towards white landowners. White farmers leaving their the Yom Kippur War, Defence Chaos followed, although Mu- homeland to set up elsewhere is Minister Moshe Dayan came gabe survived another 17 years, not new. At the turn of the cen- close to using nuclear weapons, ruining farming and bankrupt- tury, many white farming fami- until US Secretary of State ing his country in the process. lies from Zimbabwe moved to Henry Kissinger engineered a Zimbabwe’s economy is ac- Zambia, Mozambique, Australia, massive airlift of US weaponry knowledged as a wreck. The fear New Zealand, Nigeria and other to Israel, the largest airlift in US among many – blacks as well parts of Africa, and continue to history. as whites – is that South Africa do well in their new homes. will go the same way. Already, Perhaps Cyril Ramaphosa some white farmers say ‘enough should take another look at that During his speech, at Israel’s is enough and plan to leave quote by Aldous Huxley. CT notorious Dimona nuclear facil- South Africa for more hospitable ity, Netanyahu said: “I am not 50 places. Trevor Grundy worked as a spouting slogans. I am describ- Recently, a delegation of 30 journalist in Central, Eastern ing a persistent, clear and white South African farming and Southern Africa from 1966- determined policy. This is our families tuned up in Russia’s 1996. policy. It is backed by appropri- ate deployment, equipment, preparedness and – in the hour of need – appropriate orders”. Netanyahu added, “In the Netanyahu’s ‘veiled Middle East, and in many parts of the world, there is a simple threat’ of nuclear attack truth: There is no place for the weak. The weak crumble, are PM used visit to an Israeli atomic reactor to warn that Israel slaughtered and are erased from has the means to destroy enemies, writes Alison Weir history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive”. The way peaking at Israel’s us – we hurt them”. to peace, he said, was for Israel main nuclear weap- Reuters reported that to be strong. ons facility on August Netanyahu “used a visit to a While Netanyahu said Israel 29, Prime Minister secretive Israeli atomic reac- has “many enemies”, the speech Benjamin Netanyahu tor on Wednesday to warn the particularly focused on Iran. Sannounced: “Our enemies know country’s enemies that it has Netanyahu said that Israel is very well what Israel is capable the means to destroy them, in “working against Iran establish- of doing. They are familiar with what appeared to be a veiled ing a permanent military pres- our policy. Whoever tries to hurt reference to its assumed nuclear ence in Syria”. ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net Insights “We will not able in 1986 relent in pursuit when the London of this goal”, said Times published Netanyahu, ” information from just as we did not Israeli whistle- relent in bringing blower Mor- about the cancel- dechai Vanunu, lation of the bad who was kid- nuclear agreement napped by Israel with Iran, a goal and imprisoned which was seen as for 18 years, 12 of impossible when I them in solitary put it on the inter- detention. national agenda The following for the first time year, a Penta- several years ago”. gon report also On May 8th, documented the President Trump pulled out indirectly or directly”. Israeli nuclear weapons pro- of the Iran agreement, a move US governmental agencies gramme. promoted by Israel partisans had long suspected Israel of Despite that fact, US aid to in and out of his administra- having a nuclear programme, Israel has continued. Accord- tion. Unlike Israel, Iran has no despite Israel’s lying about it to ing to the think tank Research: nuclear weapons. And, despite the US. In 1961, an infuriated Middle East Policy, Israel has oft-repeated claims by Netan- US Senator exploded at a secret so far received approximately 51 yahu, US politicians, and many session of the Senate Foreign $234-billion in illegal aid, while in the American media, US Relations Committee: “I think a package to give Israel an- intelligence agencies and others the Israelis have just lied to us other $38-billion over the next have concluded that Iran is not like horse thieves on this thing. ten years is currently before working to acquire them. Iran, They have completely distorted, Congress, the largest such aid unlike Israel, is a signatory to misrepresented and falsified package in US history. So far, the non-proliferation agreement. the facts in the past. I think it US media have failed to tell The 1976 Symington and is very serious, for things that Americans about the legisla- Glenn Amendments to the For- we have done for them to have tion. eign Assistance Act prohibit US them perform in this manner Aid to Israel is also illegal un- aid from being given to coun- in connection with this very der the Leahy Laws, which pro- tries that have not signed the definite production reactor facil- hibit US aid to countries guilty nuclear non-proliferation agree- ity [meaning it was specifically of human rights violations. CT ment. Senator Stuart Syming- designed to produce plutonium] ton, who had earlier been Secre- which they have been secretly Alison Weir is executive director tary of the Air Force, explained: building, and which they have of If Americans Knew, president “In effect, this amendment says consistently, and with a com- of the Council for the National to other nations, if you wish to pletely straight face, denied to Interest, and author of Against take the dangerous and costly us they were building”. Our Better Judgment: The steps necessary to achieve a Hidden History of How the US nuclear weapons option, you Was Used to Create Israel. This cannot expect the United States Public evidence of Israeli article was first published at to help underwrite that effort weapons finally became avail- www. ifamericaknew.org ColdType | Mid-September 2018 | www.coldtype.net WriTing WorTh reading l phoToS WorTh Seeing ColdType www.coldtype.net For a FREE subscription, email [email protected] (write Subscribe in Subject Line) ICH SINNRE | ARRAM | CAITLIN JOHNSTONE | REBECCA GORDON LEHMAN | PETER PLAGIARISTS OR INNOVATORS HOPKINS LED ZEP: | CJ ISSUE 168 MANIPULATED BY THE ELITE | TONY SUTTON LOGISTS SAY ‘NO’ZI P ARANOIATO TORTURE ISSUE 166 PSYCHO PUTIN-NA ROY ORBISON’S GHOST GOES ON TOUR REVOLUTION IN THE RED STATES ype MID-SEPT 2018 ype MID-AUGUST 2018 T T WORTH SEEING PHOTOS WORTH SEEING ● ● PHOTOS ORTH READING ColdW WORTH READING WRITING Cold WRITING Fabricated money, financial gangsters ISRAEL’S WAR ON N and the next JEREMY, Asa Winstanley CORBY David Cromwell show how and Jonathan Cook recession antisemitism is not the real reason for the attacks on the leader of Britain’s Labour Party