Capitalism Collapsing from Inequality… Blame Russia!

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by Finian Cunningham

New figures published this week on obscene inequality show how the capitalist economic system has become more than ever deeply dysfunctional. Surely, the depraved workings of the system pose the greatest threat to societies and international security. Yet, Western leaders are preoccupied instead with other non-existent threats – like Russia.

Conservative leader Theresa May: proudly representing a system of corrupt elitism to the core.

Take British prime minister Theresa May who this week was speaking at a posh banquet in London. She told the assembled hobnobs, as they were sipping expensive wines, that “Russia is threatening the international order upon which we depend”. Without providing one scrap of evidence, the British leader went to assert that Russia was interfering in Western democracies to “sow discord”.

May’s grandstanding is a classic case study of what behavioral scientists call “displacement activity” – that is, when animals find themselves in a state of danger they often react by displaying unusual behavior or making strange noises.

For indeed May and other Western political leaders are facing danger to their world order, even if they don’t openly admit it as such. That danger is from the exploding levels of social inequality and poverty within Western societies, leading to anger, resentment, discontent and disillusionment among increasing masses of citizens. In the face of the inherent, imminent collapse of their systems of governance, Western leaders like May seek some relief by prattling on about Russia as a threat.

This week European bank Credit Suisse published figures showing that the wealth gap between rich and poor has reached even more grotesque and absurdist levels. According to the bank, the world’s richest 1% now own as much wealth as half the population of the entire planet. The United States and Britain are among the top countries for residing multi-millionaires, while these two nations have also emerged as among the most unequal in the world.

The data calling out how dysfunctional the capitalist system has become keeps on coming. It is impossible to ignore the reality of a system in deep disrepair, yet British and American politicians in particular – apart from notable exceptions like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders – have the audacity to block out this reality and to chase after risible phantoms. (The exercise makes perfect sense in a way.)

Last week, a report from the US-based Institute of Policy Studies found that just three of America’s wealthiest men – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own the same level of wealth as the poorest half of the entire US population. That is, the combined monetary worth of these three individuals – reckoned to be $250 billion – is equivalent to that possessed by 160 million citizens.

Inequality, poverty and the denial of decent existence to the majority of people stands out as the clarion condemnation of capitalism and its organization of society under private profit. The human suffering, hardships, austerity and crippled potential that flow from this condition represent the crisis of our time. Yet instead of an earnest public debate and struggle to overcome this crisis, we are forced by our elites to focus on false, even surreal problems.

What’s more, the study also estimates that if the Trump administration pushes through its proposed tax plans, the gap between rich elite and the vast majority will widen even further. This and other studies have found that over 80% of the tax benefits from Trump’s budget will go to enrich the top 1% in society.

All Western governments, not just May’s or Trump’s, have over the past decades overseen an historic trend of siphoning wealth from the majority of society to a tiny elite few. The tax burden has relentlessly shifted from the wealthy to the ordinary workers, who in addition have had to contend with decreasing wages, as well as deteriorating public serves and social welfare.

To refer to the United States or Britain as “democracies” is a preposterous misnomer. They are for all practical purposes plutocracies; societies run by and for a top strata of obscenely wealthy.

Intelligent economists, like the authors at the IPS cited above, realize that the state of affairs is unsustainable. Morally, and even from an empirical economics point of view, the distortion of wealth within Western societies and internationally is leading to social and political disaster.

On this observation, we must acknowledge the pioneering work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who more than 150 years ago identified the chief failing of capitalism as being the polarization of wealth between a tiny few and the vast majority. The lack of consumption power among the masses owing to chronic poverty induced by capitalism would result in the system’s eventual collapse. Surely, we have reached that point in history now, when a handful of individuals own as much wealth as half the planet.

American politics has become paralyzed by an endless elite squabble over whether Russia meddled in the presidential elections and claims that Russian news media continue to interfere in American democracy. Of course, the US corporate-controlled news media, who are an integral part of the plutocracy, lend credibility to this circus. Ditto European corporate-controlled media.

Last week, a report from the US-based Institute of Policy Studies found that just three of America’s wealthiest men – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own the same level of wealth as the poorest half of the entire US population. That is, the combined monetary worth of these three individuals – reckoned to be $250 billion – is equivalent to that possessed by 160 million citizens.

Then we have President Donald Trump on a world tour berating and bullying other nations to spend more money on buying American goods and to stop cheating supposed American generosity over trade. Trump also is prepared to start a nuclear war with North Korea because the latter is accused of being a threat to global peace – on the basis that the country is building military defenses. The same for Iran. Trump castigates Iran as a threat to Middle East peace and warns of a confrontation.

This is the same quality of ludicrous distraction as Britain’s premier Theresa May this week lambasting Russia for “threatening the world order upon which we all depend”. By “we” she is really referring to the elites, not the mass of suffering workers and their families.

May and Trump are indulging in “perception management” taken to absurdity. Or more crudely, brainwashing.

How can North Korea or Iran be credibly presented as global threats when the American and British are supporting a genocidal blockade and aerial slaughter in Yemen? The complete disconnect in reality is testimony to the pernicious system of thought-control that the vast majority of citizens are enforced to live under.

The biggest disconnect is the obscene inequality of wealth and resources that capitalism has engendered in the 21^st century. That monstrous dysfunction is also causally related to why the US and its Western allies like Britain are pushing belligerence and wars around the planet. It is all part of their elitist denial of reality. The reality that capitalism is the biggest threat to humanity’s future.

Do we let these mentally deficient, deceptive political elites and their media dictate the nonsense? Or will the mass of people do the right thing and sweep them aside?

This is a crosspost with Dandelion Salad, a fraternal site. and the Strategic Culture Foundation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Distinguished Collaborator Finian Cunningham, is also a columnist at the Strategic Culture Foundation and a Writer on Dandelion Salad. He can be reached at cunninghamfinian@gmail.com.

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM—Last week, a report from the US-based Institute of Policy Studies found that just three of America’s wealthiest men – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own the same level of wealth as the poorest half of the entire US population. That is, the combined monetary worth of these three individuals – reckoned to be $250 billion – is equivalent to that possessed by 160 million citizens.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Revisiting Revolutions, a Comparison

The Daily Shakespeare

After a fitful fever (1) of debates and round-tables, often packed with common sense and sometimes with uncommon nonsense, the dust of antique time (2) may gradually settle on the memory of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

In 2117, assuming but not given that schools may still teach history, a question in a standardized test may read, “Which of the following countries is associated with the 1917 Revolution? (mark one) – Bangladesh, Denmark, Russia, Vanuatu, Uganda.”

But this year the controversy was still agitated with great vehemence, and some disputants seemed to be walking upon ashes under which the fire is not yet extinguished – especially those addicted to the radicalization of inequality. Anti-egalitarians, corrupted by ill-gotten wealth, and fearful of even a remote threat to their privileges, employed all the force of ingrained malevolence and sarcastic contempt to berate the event and its memory.

On the other hand, sections of whatever is left of the Left of old, continued to pace through their dialectical labyrinths, and to argue whether the shortcomings of the revolution were Stalin’s fault for having confined Communism to one nation, instead of striving for global Communism, as advocated by Trotsky.

It should be noted that while people make history, their lives (of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Nicholas II, Kerensky, etc.), can only be reliably written from personal knowledge, which grows less every day, and in a short time is lost forever. Unfortunately what is known in the present (I refer to the actual times of the Russian Revolution) can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. With the obvious conclusion that historical truth can be at best acknowledged in the gross, with much latitude left for conflicting interpretations.

In the circumstances, rather than telling my twentyfive readers what they already know or have already heard, I will here examine the mechanism, the similarity, the differences and the circumstances that affected the major revolutions that we know of – however narrow be the limits of a blog.

Two different situations may break up a regime. Skepticism may alter established beliefs and disrupt mental habits. If so, only naked power can maintain social cohesion. Or a new ideology, involving new modes of thought, filters through the minds at large. Eventually, the new ideology becomes strong enough to establish a government in tune with the new convictions, replacing those become obsolete.

If so, the new revolutionary power is different both from traditional and naked power. The adherent of a new ideology are not (usually), power-grabbing adventurers. Their effects and actions are more important and more permanent.

The first revolution of our era, historically defined as Christian, has indeed to do with Christianity, considered as a social organization rather than a religion. From what we know, at its inception, Christianity was apolitical, a characteristic of most small sects. But the Christians gradually increased in numbers, and the Church in power. They became a group and group-power directly or indirectly ends up influencing the State.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy emperor Constantine converted to Christianity is unknown – which is why myth is a tolerable substitute for uncertainty of information – in the instance, the appearance of the Cross in the sky, during Constantine’s victorious battle against Maxentius in 312 AD.

That myth, however, also means that Christianity had become influential. And given the antithetical difference between the doctrines of the Church and of the Roman State, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as a state religion, may be the most important revolution in the history of Western civilization.

“The Protestant Revolution”)

Luther could not succeed in his struggle without the support of secular princes. Which explains why the Lutheran Church remained always loyal to non-Catholic princes.

As an example, the revolutionaries of the “Peasants’ War”, erupted in Germany shortly after the Reformation, appealed to the Gospels for the relief of oppression. But Luther firmly opposed them, and inveighed against those who wish to “strike, smite, strangle and stab” established authority. And a “(reactionary) prince can better merit Heaven with bloodshed (of the peasants), than another prince who instead uses prayer.” He also added, “No one should think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.”

Tawney, author of “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” wrote,

“… the axe takes the place of the stake. The maintenance of Christian morality is to be transferred from the discredited ecclesiastical authorities to the hands of the state. Skeptical as to the existence of unicorns and salamanders, the age of Machiavelli and Henry VIII found food for its credulity in the worship of that rare monster, the God-fearing Prince.”

As a result of the Reformation, the Church ceased to exist as an independent power and it became part of the machinery enforcing submission to the secular government. Then, through its Calvinist strain, the Protestant Revolution further evolved and ended by giving social and theological grounds and reasons for the triumph of capitalism.

History has a long tail – it’s not hard to see a Calvinist connection in the addition of “under God” to the American dollar bill, in 1954.

The inventive Henry VIII, by making kings and queens of England the keeping equivalent of Rome’s pope and popesses, made religion secular and national, while keeping most of the rituals that previously helped maintain obedience to the Catholic Church among the masses.

It followed that in England the king could alter dogmas essentially at will and execute those who objected. The attendant dissolution of the monasteries increased the crown’s revenue, which also proved useful to repress revolts by rewarding the repressors.

Henry VIII: a dangerous and treacherous fellow, like most medieval potentates. Compared to modernity, things haven’t changed that much, as corruption and self-seeking continue to rule the power game albeit with a touch of democratic “dilution”.

In comparing the Church of England with the Church of Rome, the king was functionally equivalent to God, while the Archbishop (of Canterbury), performed the Papal function – in Rome the Pope served God, but in England the king was God. A setup that proved the job of any Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite hazardous to his life and safety.

Henry VIII’s penchant for changing wives, and his quarrel with the Pope for refusing to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, have obscured a more important issue. Namely the similarity or even identity, in England, of the root causes of the Reformation Revolution that had just occurred in Germany. Namely, the corruption of the Church, in turn associated with its wealth and the independent administration of that wealth.

But those who hoped that the English Reformation be true to its reforming objectives were sorely disappointed. The dissolution of the monasteries was similar (allowing for changes in time and circumstances), to the rape of the Soviet resources in 1991, literally stolen by sordid profiteers, instantly turned billionaires.

In England, the wealth of the dissolved monasteries attracted a similar strain of profiteers, thieves, greedy merchants, speculators and usurers, who drove the majority into poverty and despair, especially those employed in agriculture. Rebellions comparable to the Peasants Wars in Germany were quickly crushed in blood.

The original sincere Reformers could not believe their eyes. Martin Bucer, tutor of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son who briefly reigned before dying of illness, wrote a manual for the young king. Appalled at the turn of events, Bucer outlined in the manual what an orderly reformed kingdom should be. Just one quote is illustrative,

“It (the kingdom), is to take a high line with the commercial classes. For, though trade itself is honorable, most traders are rogues – indeed, next to sham priests, no class of men is more pestilential to the Commonwealth.”

Make minor lexical changes and it’s like reading about Wall Street.

Still, the religious arrangement with the King as God was shaky, but then with Elizabeth I, it became necessary to defeat Spain, a very Catholic empire – wherefore Church-of-England Protestantism become associated with a new form of nationalism.

A few decades later, the Left, represented by Cromwell, sprang into action, leading to the English Revolution and the Civil War of 1642-1648. Though Cromwell’s Protectorate was defeated and King Charles II returned, the situation could not satisfy the growing number of Independents who rejected both State and Church as theological authorities.

They claimed the right to private judgment and religious toleration. That ideological trail led to a revolt against secular despotism. Hence the Glorious (English) Revolution of 1688. ‘Glorious’ because England was still tired from the Civil War and the shift from the Stuarts to the Hanoverian (German) royal dynasty was essentially bloodless.

But if everyone has a right to his own theological opinion, may he not have other rights as well? How far could a government intrude into the life of an individual? These ideas, developed and matured in the 18^th century, issued in the Rights of Man. Those very ideas, already carried across the Atlantic by Cromwell’s defeated followers, were embodied in the American Constitution by Thomas Jefferson, and were brought back to Europe via the French Revolution.

The British’s hatred and fear of Napoleon (shared by the rest of the crowned heads of Europe and passed on as a value to America) was like today’s hatred of communism by the privileged classes. Napoleon and the threat of spreading French revolutionary ideas, was for a while what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro, represented to the wold’s plutocrats in our time. The anti-Napoleonic propaganda generated by the British against Napoleon has even informed several Hollywood movies.

In a sense, the French Revolution was the Revolution of the Rights-of-Man. It produced a bloody Civil War, just as the Civil War in Russia that followed the 1917 Revolution. And, just as in Russia, foreign powers gathered their forces to defeat the French and their new ideology.

They finally succeeded at Waterloo, but unlike in England immediately after Cromwell, the restoration of the old regimes did not go according to plan. For by 1848, the Rights-of-Man movement transformed itself into nationalism, in Germany and throughout Europe. And in the end, the idea of nationalism overpowered that of the Rights-of-Man. Overpowered, but not dead, for we still enjoy today the freedoms it helped to win. Including the principle that no man should be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law.

Similarly, the forces of reaction managed to end the Soviet Union and to reduce Russia for a while to the brink of starvation. But the spirit of egalitarianism that was the cornerstone of the USSR is not dead.

To ensure that it is, the usual spit-lickers, on the occasion of the 1917 anniversary, have resurrected the ghost of Stalin’s repressions, that caused “100 million victims” – one pundit said. Citing millions of unsubstantiated victims for political purposes is established practice.

Nor they spared nonsense and deformations about life conditions in Eastern Europe, as if they had been better before the Revolution, under Czarist, Hapsburg, or Ottoman autocracies. While conveniently omitting that currently, in Eastern Europe, there is some longing for the older times and remorse for having believed as true what proved false about the West.

Nor mention was made of the structure of advanced societies and the social protections developed during the XXth century. Protections and social advancements that owe their existence to the presence of a Communist entity. Entity powerful enough to frighten the ruling bourgeoisies into granting concessions otherwise impossible. Proof being that as soon the USSR was gone, the same bourgeoisies have launched a furious aggression against the previously conquered rights.

Looked-at in the same spirit adopted with those previously reviewed, the Russian Revolution preached doctrines, like early Christianity, which were international and, at least at the beginning, anti-national. Like Islam, but unlike Christianity, the Revolution was essentially political and it challenged Liberalism.

Paradoxically, until 1917, only reactionaries challenged Liberalism. Marxists advocated democracy, free speech and free press. But when the Soviet Government seized power, it adopted the teachings of the Catholic Church in its days of splendor. Namely that it is the business of authority to propagate truth, by positive teaching and by suppressing rival doctrines.

Invitably, this led to establishing an undemocratic dictatorship in the name of democracy. Though we should consider that the Western bourgeoisie kept Russia under siege, but for the short and brutal five years of WW2.

For what is worth, historians who make a living by repeating the establishment’s line, usually omit referring to the conditions arising from a siege mentality. Equally, they conveniently disregard some social and psychological traits, uniquely Russian, which had a significant weight in the prelude, the preparations and the denouement of the 1917 Revolution. Those interested may watch my video of the “Historical Sketches” series, “The Historical Roots of Russian Communism – part 1”

Also, new and unique to the Russian Revolution was the amalgamation of political and economic power, which gave unlimited rein to government control. On the other hand, the Revolution’s rejection of Liberalism was extraordinarily successful and enthusiastically imitated, in Italy at first and then in Germany, thanks to Mussolini and Hitler. And even in countries that remained ‘democratic’, Liberalism lost much of its popularity.

For example, true Liberals maintain(ed) that if terrorists destroy public buildings, a serious effort should be made by the police and the law courts to discover the actual culprits. The new political executive(s) of the 1930s believed that the guilt should be attributed, through manufactured evidence, to whatever party, personality or state they dislike. As it happened with the fire of the Berlin’s Reichstag.

But in similar circumstances, the American neo-Liberals, when dealing with 9/11, behaved very un-liberally – when they attributed to 19 Saudi bunglers the organization and implementation of the operation. An operation that could be conducted only by a State or Entity with a direct interest in its bloody and apocalyptic success – and with sufficient weight, power and cover, already established in the targeted country, to make the venture feasible.

In summary, we can say that, common to all revolutions, the impetus to reform springs in every age from realizing the contrast between the external order of society and the moral standards recognized as valid by the conscience or reason of the individual.

Finally, a (probably) neglected point of personal psychology. When Mark Twain said that “In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane,” he said more than he thought he did in jest.

For it may happen that after reaching our personal conclusions on historical, social or psychological matters, we may say to ourselves, “yes… but,” or “yes… however.” That ‘but’ or ‘however’ are the Doors of Doubt. And here doubt is the tip of a curiously slippery slope.

It starts with “There is nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet). It continues with “Truth is in the eye of the beholder” (anonymous), “Truth is a matter of style” (Oscar Wilde), “There are no facts but only interpretations” (Nietzsche) etc. And at the bottom of the slide we find Pascal’s “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” Which, following Pascal’s discovery to its logical conclusion, makes a mockery of our established notions of good and bad, and of good and evil.

In a similar spirit, at the end of our brief meditation on past revolutions, readers may concur with the idea that history resembles the number π (‘pi’), where every new added digit increases accuracy without reaching precision, for π is an irrational number, with an infinite number of decimals.

Just like any new addition to our historical knowledge, augments perspective without nearing truth – one of the several paradoxes of life. Paradoxes that tend to fill an individual with uncertainty or anxiety, and at times make him feel “like one upon a rock, surrounded with a wilderness of sea, who marks the advancing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will, in its brinish bowels, swallow him.” (5)

Which may be why many prefer dogmatic certainty to articulate uncertainty, even when certainty is absurd.

Reference:
** 1. Macbeth
** 2. Coriolanus
** 3. King Henry V
** 4. Hamlet
** 5. from Titus Andronicus

Image Source: goo.gl/Ck3yz2

About the author

Jimmie Moglia is a Renaissance man, and therefore he's impossible to summarize in a simple bioblurb. In any case, here's a rough sketch, by his own admission: Born in Turin, Italy, he now resides in Portland, Oregon. Appearance: … careful hours with time’s deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face (2); Strengths. An unquenchable passion for what is utterly, totally, and incontrovertibly useless, notwithstanding occasional evidence to the contrary. Weaknesses: Take your pick. Languages: I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse. My German is not what it used to be but it’s not the horse’s fault. Too many Germans speak English. Education: “You taught me language and my profit on it Is, I know how to curse.” (3); More to the point – in Italy I studied Greek for five years and Latin for eight. Only to discover that prospective employers were remarkably uninterested in dead languages. Whereupon I obtained an Engineering Degree at the University of Genova. Read more here.

Source: Your Daily Shakespeare.

Excerpt

Megadeaths From America – Yemen Is the Worst Case Among Many

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

“Let me be clear: The use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.”

– UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, January 15, 2016, warning the warring parties in Syria

“People are dying; children are suffering not as a result of an accident of war, but as the consequence of an intentional tactic – surrender or starve. And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war.”

– US Secretary of State John Kerry, February 1, 2016, denouncing atrocities in Syria

As Americans get ready for Thanksgiving 2017 over-eating, their government is on the verge of successfully starving millions of Yemenis to death by siege warfare. The US naval blockade of Yemen has been unrelenting since March 2015. The US Navy is an essential element of this perpetual war crime, this endless assault on a civilian population of about 25 million. This is the kind of collective punishment of innocents that we once put Nazis on trial for at Nuremberg. The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual, however, advises (section 5.20.1, page 315) that: “Starvation is a legitimate method of warfare.” So now the US is a blithe mass-murdering state with impunity, qualities hardly ever mentioned in the world’s freest media (with one remarkable exception in Democracy NOW, where coverage of Yemen has been excellent at least since 2009).

The Saudi aerial onslaught on Yemen is not easily repulsed by a nation lacking the requisite air defences. The upshot is the Saudis largely bomb with impunity.

Well, never mind, at least Taylor Swift’s reputation is soaring and everyone gets to throw figurative rocks at Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and other serial predators. Predator is also the name of one of the US drones that the US President sends to assassinate people who may or may not have done anything wrong, but who showed up at the wrong time on the wrong list, and what more due process do those un-white foreign people deserve anyway? You don’t hear Congress complaining, do you? Or mainstream media? Or the courts? This is beyond bipartisan thrill killing, this is national consensual mass murder.

OK, to be fair, there has been some tepid, insincere, sporadic objection to wiping out millions of innocent people. Why, just as recently as October 10, The New York Times ran an op-ed article – NOT an editorial – that began with a pretty fair summary of the carnage being visited on Yemen by the US and its allies:

Imagine that the entire population of Washington State — 7.3 million people — were on the brink of starvation, with the port city of Seattle under a naval and aerial blockade, leaving it unable to receive and distribute countless tons of food and aid that sit waiting offshore. This nightmare scenario is akin to the obscene reality occurring in the Middle East’s poorest country, Yemen, at the hands of the region’s richest, Saudi Arabia, with unyielding United States military support that Congress has not authorized and that therefore violates the Constitution.

The headline on this op-ed piece is “Stop the Unconstitutional War in Yemen,” which is something of a deception since the war is truly criminal by any standard of international law and its “unconstitutionality” is but one aspect of its overall criminality. Like the Times, the authors of the op-ed have yet to face the raw criminality of the aggressive war on Yemen. The authors are three members of Congress, two Democrats, Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, together with a rare Republican of some integrity, Walter Jones of North Carolina. But they do not call out the gross criminality of American siege warfare against Yemen, they come hat in hand arguing that the war is unconstitutional because Congress hasn’t approved it formally. Congress has approved it with silence. No party leadership on either side has joined with these three in their gentle effort to “Stop the war.” These three Congress members, with Republican Thomas Massie, were the original sponsors of the House resolution introduced September 27, as a hint “to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.” The resolution has so far gathered an additional 42 co-sponsors (one more Republican) from the House’s 435 members. One measure of where we are as a country is that something as bland and incomplete as this resolution is seen somehow as a radical act that gets little support in Congress or coverage in the media, where the forced starvation of millions of people is not a big issue.

Saudis often attack using US-supplied cluster bombs. The list of war crimes is long, and the criminals in Ryadh, Washington and Tel Aviv deserve to be tried in a Nuremberg-type tribunal—but of course, nothing of the sort will happen, as only the force of arms can establish some justice as it did in Syria.

Yemen is a nation under siege from the air with daily bombings. The Saudis and their allies control the air over Yemen, which has almost no air force and almost no air defenses. Nothing flies in or out of Yemen without Saudi permission, which is rarely given, even for food or medical supplies. The Saudi air force could not function without American support. US military forces select targets, provide intelligence, re-fuel Saudi jets in mid-air and repair them on the ground. Every bomb that falls on Yemen has American fingerprints on it, especially the cluster bombs (another war crime) made in America.

Yemen is a nation under siege from the water, where the US Navy enforces a blockade not only of food, medicine, and other humanitarian relief coming in. The US Navy also turns back Yemenis trying to flee, essentially reducing their choices to risking drowning or starvation. And thanks to the effectiveness of the blockades, there is a massive risk of cholera in Yemen as well, as the US and its allies deliberately wage biological warfare in Yemen as well.

Yemen is a nation under siege on the ground. The Saudis control Yemen’s northern border, which has been under dispute between the two countries for decades. Nothing crosses the border into Yemen without Saudi permission, mostly granted to artillery fire. Little effectual return fire comes from Yemen. Yemen’s eastern border is with Oman, which is a friendly state. In between Oman and Yemeni population centers in the west, the territory is mostly controlled by al Qaeda and ISIS, with the Saudi-backed puppet regime tucked in around Aden. All of those forces oppose the Houthis in control of the northwest, which has been their homeland for centuries. Just to be clear: the US is deliberately starving a population that is fighting al Qaeda and Isis.

With its recent governmental purges, Saudi Arabia maybe have become the second most dangerous nation in the world. Not to worry, the USA is still Number One. But the US/Saudi axis can hardly be much better news for the region than it is for Yemen.

On November 8, the United Nations and some twenty international relief agencies issued a statement of alarm at and opposition to the US/Saudi-enforced siege on Yemen. The human cost of two and a half years of US/Saudi aggression is already unforgivably punishing and cruel. Now the US/Saudi siege threatens unprecedented catastrophe:

There are over 20 million people in need of humanitarian assistance; seven million of them are facing famine-like conditions and rely completely on food aid to survive. In six weeks, the food supplies to feed them will be exhausted. Over 2.2 million children are malnourished, of those, 385,000 children suffer from severe malnutrition and require therapeutic treatment to stay alive. Due to limited funding, humanitarian agencies are only able to target one third of the population (7 million)…. outbreaks of communicable diseases such as polio and measles are to be expected with fatal consequences, particularly for children under five years of age and those already suffering from malnutrition … the threat of famine and the spread of cholera … deadly consequences to an entire population suffering from a conflict that it is not of their own making.

Also on November 8, the day of the statement of alarm, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock briefed the UN Security Council on the crisis in Yemen. The briefing was secret, on the request of Sweden. After the briefing, Lowcock met with reporters. He warned that, unless there is a significant, massive humanitarian response soon:

There will be a famine in Yemen. It will not be like the famine that we saw in South Sudan earlier in the year where tens of thousands of people were affected. It will not be like the famine which cost 250,000 people their lives in Somalia in 2011. It will be the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims.

The aggression against Yemen has been a nexus of war crimes from the beginning, when it was sanctioned by the Obama administration to appease Saudi peevishness over international peacemaking with Iran on nuclear development. For almost three years, Yemen has been a holocaust-in-the-making, with this difference: turning most of the country into a death camp, with America’s (and Britain's) blessing and collusion. Repubs will choose to confirm 300 unqualified judges before they’ll choose to intervene in one criminal war, and mostly Democrats will not seriously object to either choice.

If the United States doesn’t kill you, it’s perfectly happy to let you die (what health care?). The question – with hope embedded – is whether most Americans support the legal reign of terror that is Pax Americana. Given US treatment of Americans from Ferguson to Flint to Standing Rock to Puerto Rico, the prospect is grim.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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For months a stream of media reports have warned of coordinated propaganda efforts targeting political websites based in the U.S., particularly in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

We too were alarmed at the patterns we were, and still are, seeing. It is clear that the provocateurs are far more savvy, disciplined, and purposeful than anything we have ever experienced before.

It is also clear that we still have elements of the same activity in our article discussion forums at this time.

We have hosted and encouraged reader expression since the turn of the century. The comments of our readers are the most vibrant, best-used interactive feature at Reader Supported News. Accordingly, we are strongly resistant to interrupting those services.

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Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

+2# WBoardman 2017-11-14 19:15

Unbeknownst to the author, shortly after he finished this piece
on Monday night, the Congress acted on the Resolution
that is quoted in the piece. The Congress abandoned it.
Opposition to it it was bi-partisan, including
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and
Democratic minority whip Steny Hoyer. Instead, by a 360-30 vote, the House passed a longer
but less meaningful resolution essentially calling for nothing: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-resolution/599/text Debate on the empty posturing lasted about an hour
in the early evening of Nov 13: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-resolution/599/all-actions-without-amendments This was a shame and a shame and an act of collective
cowardice and irresponsibilit y that the sponsor, Rep Khanna called a "win," which it was for genocide supporters. Khanna's mealy-mouthed press release concluded:
“I particularly want to thank Whip Hoyer for his diligent efforts to help craft a resolution on U.S. involvement in Yemen and to reach an agreement with Republicans for it to be considered by the House. This is an important debate for Congress to have, and I appreciate Whip Hoyer’s dedication to ensuring this debate can be held and his focus on shining a light on the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Yemen,” said. Rep. Ro Khanna. I also want to acknowledge the staffs of Leader Pelosi, Ranking Member Engel, and Representative McGovern for their leadership.”

About the Author

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

WILLIAM BOARDMAN—Imagine that the entire population of Washington State — 7.3 million people — were on the brink of starvation, with the port city of Seattle under a naval and aerial blockade, leaving it unable to receive and distribute countless tons of food and aid that sit waiting offshore. This nightmare scenario is akin to the obscene reality occurring in the Middle East’s poorest country, Yemen, at the hands of the region’s richest, Saudi Arabia, with unyielding United States military support that Congress has not authorized and that therefore violates the Constitution.

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Israel Lobby is Slowly Being Dragged Into the Light

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by JONATHAN COOK

The scandal surrounding Priti Patel, who was forced to resign as Britain’s international aid minister last week after secret meetings with Israeli officials during a “family holiday”, offers a small, opaque window on the UK’s powerful Israel lobby.

What led Pritti Patel to act like an idiot? Boundless confidence in the power of the Israeli lobby? Native imbecility or sheer hubris? Either way it did not end well. Or is she merely the fall guy in a sordid ruse by the apologists and usually hidden agents for Jerusalem?

Patel’s off-the-books meetings with 12 Israelis, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were organised by a British lobbyist in violation of government rules requiring careful documentation of official meetings. That is to prevent conflicts of interest and illicit lobbying by foreign powers.

Government protocol was flouted again when Patel headed to the Golan Heights, occupied Syrian territory, escorted by the Israeli army. There she was shown an Israeli military field hospital that patches up Syrians, including Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters, wounded in Syria’s civil war.

Afterwards, Patel pressed for the Israeli army, one of the most powerful in the world, to receive a chunk of Britain’s overseas aid. Meanwhile, she has sought to cut aid to the Palestinians, including to vital projects in Gaza. A clue as to how she reached such absurd “humanitarian” priorities is provided in the figure of Stuart Polak, mentor on her Israel “holiday”.

The honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel, Lord Polak has recruited four-fifths of Conservative MPs, and almost every government minister, to a group whose explicit goal is to advance Israeli interests in Britain. The prime minister, Theresa May, is regarded as one of Israel’s most fervent supporters in Europe.

That should be a cause for public indignation – no other foreign state enjoys such unabashed, high-level political support.

Another window on Israel’s meddling opened briefly last week. The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, took to Twitter to relay a damning comment from an unnamed “senior” member of Patel’s party. In a clear reference to Israel, the source observed: “The entire apparatus has turned a blind eye to a corrupt relationship that allows a country to buy access”.

A short time later, presumably under pressure, Kuenssberg deleted the tweet. The BBC has not reported the comment elsewhere and the senior Conservative has not dared go public. Such, it seems, is the intimidating and corrupting influence of the lobby.

More than a decade ago, two leading American academics wrote a study of the Israel lobby’s role in the United States, Israel’s chief patron for half a century. It was a sign of the lobby’s influence that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt could not find a publisher at home. They had to turn to a British journal instead.

What is special about the Israel lobby in the US – an amalgam of hawkish Jewish leadership organisations and messianic Christian evangelicals – is the fear it exploits to silence critics. No one wants to be labelled an anti-Semite. Rarely identified or held to account, the lobby has entrenched its power.

The Israel lobby’s strength in western capitals has depended precisely on its ability to remain out of view. Simply to talk about the lobby risks being accused of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish cabals.

But Mearsheimer and Walt described a type of pressure group familiar in the US – and increasingly in European capitals. Everyone from Cuba to health insurers and arms manufacturers operate aggressive lobbyists in Washington to secure their interests.

Rarely identified or held to account, the lobby has entrenched its power.

That is what Britain’s heir to the throne, Prince Charles, was talking about three decades ago – even if he misidentified it as a “Jewish” rather Israel lobby – in a forgotten letter found in the public archives and publicised at the weekend.

“Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!” he wrote to a family friend in 1986.

Today, as recent events illustrate, the lobby is struggling to stay in the shadows. Social media and Palestinians with camera phones have exposed a global audience to systematic abuses by the Israeli army the western media largely ignored. For the first time, Israel supporters sound evasive and dissembling.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s strident efforts in the US Congress through 2014 and 2015 to prevent a nuclear accord with Iran dragged the lobby even farther into the light.

The Israel lobby’s dirty tricks in the UK were exposed earlier this year too. An Al Jazeera TV documentary showed Conservative party officials colluding with the Israeli embassy to “take down” Alan Duncan, a foreign office minister who supports the Palestinian cause.

It is noteworthy that Ms Patel’s downfall came about because of social media. Israeli officials like police minister Gilad Erdan were so unused to scrutiny or accountability themselves that they happily tweeted photos with Patel. Erdan is a key player in the lobby, running a “smear unit” to target overseas critics of Israel.

We may never know why Patel so grossly flouted ministerial rules or what she quietly promised in those meetings in Israel. Colleagues have hinted that, in a pattern familiar from US politics, she hoped to win over the lobby and its wealthy donors for a future leadership bid.

There is no way to know, given the lobby’s penchant for secrecy, whether Patel simply proved less adept at treading a path marked out by former Conservative and Labour party leadership hopefuls. But it is also possible that the lobby is discovering changes to the political and cultural environment are making its work much harder.

There is growing hysteria about foreign interference in US and European politics. Is it not time for western states to show as much concern about the malign influence of Israel’s lobbyists as they do about Russian hackers? (Assuming the Russiagate story has any basis, which remains to be proved.—Editor)

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

About the Author

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

JONATHAN COOK—What is special about the Israel lobby in the US – an amalgam of hawkish Jewish leadership organisations and messianic Christian evangelicals – is the fear it exploits to silence critics. No one wants to be labelled an anti-Semite. Rarely identified or held to account, the lobby has entrenched its power.

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Trump’s Pivot to Asia – An Arms Sales Bonanza – An Anti-Peace Trip

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

President Trump’s 5-country Asia tour has nothing to do with seeking peace anywhere, it has not even to do with diplomacy – it is entirely a warmongering business trip for the Military Industrial Complex. It is amazing that the world doesn’t catch on.

We know about Obama’s several years of pivoting to Asia. It resulted largely in the TPP, the Transpacific Partnership, a trade agreement between 12 countries including the US. The first thing Trump did when he came on board was canceling it, claiming that it would only harm the US. Canceling it, in fact, was a good thing, since contrary to what Trump understands, or claims to understand, of US-made international trade, the Asian partners would have suffered, not the US. There is not one single trade agreement the US has instigated, bilateral or multilateral, where the US came out as a loser, or even as an equal, always a winner. The original meaning of trade is not winning or losing, but it is an exchange of equals with equal benefits for all partners. ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) is perhaps one of the few living examples.

Trump doesn’t like multilateral trade agreements, because – even though he is in control – he may not be in total control. He wants to call the shots, every shot. Literally. This is what this 8-day ‘pivot’ to Asia is all about. It is about selling weapons, ‘the best, the most accurate, the deadliest the world has ever produced. Trump’s words – almost. And repeated over-and-over-and-over again.

Trump pretty much treating Japan's Abe as a vassal. Subtlety and the diplomatic touch eludes Trump completely. He normally behaves like a petulant 11 year old.

At a press conference in Tokyo, with Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe, Trump said literally, when pointing at Prime Minister Abe, “[He] will shoot [North Korea’s] missiles out of the sky when he completes the purchase of lots of equipment from the United States. One very important thing is that Prime Minister Abe is going to be purchasing massive amounts of [US-made] military equipment, as he should. We make the best by far … it’s a lot of jobs for us, and a lot of safety for Japan (The Guardian, 6/11/2017).”

Trump had the audacity, as he always does, of calling North Korea (DPRK – Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) a “threat to the civilized world”. And this, when he knows – or should know – that Pyongyang is only defending North Korea from the constant threats and aggressions of the United States, that Kim Jon-Un has no intention of attacking any country – but still has the memory deep inside, inherited by generations of North Koreans born after the atrocious Washington initiated 1953 Korean war, that devastated literally the entire country and killed 3 million people, about a third of the then North Korean population.

The entire world knows, including Trump’s predecessors, that the only threat to not only the world’s civilization, but to the entire humanity, are the United States of America – a rogue state, not respecting any international laws, no international contracts – and no human life, not even that of her own citizens. Tens of millions of people around the globe have been killed since the end of WWII directly by the US military, or NATO, or indirectly through proxies or mercenaries by the United States. All for wars that aim at complete world hegemony, at ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ – as described by the PNAC – Plan for a New American Century. Nobody wants to touch this reality – almost nobody. Fortunately, in the last few years there are countries emerging that dare stand up to the killing monster, resisting it, by disobedience, despite ‘sanctions’, and through economic measures, like detaching their economy from the fraudulent fiat dollar. Recent examples are Venezuela and Iran.

Trump’s arms sales bonanza started actually already with Saudi Arabia, when he sold King Salman 110 billion worth of the best killer instruments – bombs, planes and tanks – America produces. A record weapon sales-contract.

In Saudi Arabia the alliance between Ryadh and Washington is proclaimed everywhere, as a security talisman for the regime.

On the pivot’s second leg, South Korea – Trump trumped up his tone, not at all for peace but to threaten once more Pyongyang and the North Korean leader, the American bully cum President calls derogatorily the ‘Little Rocket Man’. – Where are we in this world? Does this man Trump not see how much he is despised? Or is he so sick to actually enjoy being hated?

More than eighty percent of South Koreans want peace with the North. President Moon Jae-in was recently elected on a platform of uniting the South with the North – to bring back together families that were separated for more than half a century. How could he be such a dreamer? With close to 30,000 American soldiers on South Korean soil and a weapons arsenal, including nuclear arms, that could destroy all of east Asia in a jiffy. – And billions worth of more weapons sales to Seoul are on Trump’s murderous sales agenda. He is not only a bully par excellence, but the best salesman the US military industrial complex could wish for – and a booster of the US’s GDP of death and destruction.

The bully at the pulpit had no intention of addressing a road to peace. To the contrary, he boasted about the extraordinary unsurmountable weapons might of “America First” – and using South Korea's Parliament as a platform to launch yet another slanderous tirade towards North Korea’s leader, Kim Jon-un, and her people, “[I] have come here to this peninsula to deliver a message directly to the leader of the North Korean dictatorship—the weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer. They are putting your regime in great danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face. North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned. It is a hell that no person deserves. Yet despite every crime you have committed against god and man… we will offer a path towards a much better future. It begins with an end to the aggression of your regime, a stop to your development of ballistic missiles and complete verifiable and total denuclearization.”

While Emperor Donald was talking, three US Navy aircraft carriers were positioning themselves in attack mode in front of North Korea’s coast, preparing for more intimidating war games. More provocation, knowing damn well that DPRK’s President Kim Jon-un will not let go of his defense strategy – and rightly so. Anyone who knows a bit of North Korea’s history understands. Kim’s several requests for dialogue, as he wants peace for his country and for his people, were rejected by Washington. Instead he was showered with Trump’s outrageous warmongering language like “we will unleash ‘fire and fury’ the world has never seen” – or “we will destroy your country to rubble” – and more of such ridiculous and shameful threats – shameful for the so-called ‘leader’ of the “free world”, of the globe’s self-proclaimed Almighty, and shameful for all the other nations of this globe that just watch and listen to the monster’s angry outbursts – but are afraid to counter him, though they know he is wrong.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ccording to Reuters, Han Tae Song, Ambassador of the DPRK to the United Nations in Geneva, told on Wednesday the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “The United States and other hostile forces impede the enjoyment by our people of their human rights in every possible way, resorting to the vicious ways and means of all kinds in their attempt to stifle the ideas and system of the DPRK,” He continued saying that Washington “manipulated” sanctions resolutions against his country at the U.N. Security Council that violated North Korean sovereignty and rights to existence and development.

“Due to these inhumane economic sanctions, vulnerable peoples like women and children are becoming…victims. Such sanctions against humanity which block even the delivery of medical equipment and medicines for maternal and child health and the basic goods for daily life…..threaten the protection and promotion of our women’s rights and even the right to survival of the children.”

Next stop on Trump’s ‘pivot’ was Beijing, where, to the surprise of most media, he behaved like a statesman, trying to persuade President Xi of the benefits of a friendly US-Sino relation – and of course, of the importance that China adhere to the UN imposed sanctions on North Korea. The South China Sea, Human Rights and China’s alleged lack of Democracy – the usual Washington swan song – were not mentioned. Even the Chinese media hailed Trump’s visit as a success. The two leaders signed contracts for some 250 billion dollars-worth of investment and trade deals, or rather, as per Bloomberg, “non-binding memoranda of understanding”, between the two countries.

Xi, who is a real statesman and diplomat, doing his best, for the sake of peace, to play gracious host to the obnoxious bully whose imperialist agenda is nothing if not transparent. Who does Trump think he is kidding?

The deals, many of which were already concluded or planned before the Beijing meeting, included goods and services in transportation (Chinese purchase of 300 Boeing civilian aircraft), agriculture (pork and beef), IT, the financial sector (with Goldman Sachs – who else?) – and more. Nothing controversial. Trump expects to be appreciated at home for his salesmanship in Beijing – and for helping reducing the 250 billion US trade deficit with China.

Interestingly though, during the perhaps strategically most important stop of his Asia journey – Beijing – Trump did not use his usual vitriolic language to condemn and threaten Pyongyang and putting Xi on guard to follow the strict sanctions regime against the DPRK – or else. Why didn’t he? – Did he realize that it was worthless? That China would never let her neighbor die – and he would make himself ridiculous making believe his sanctions threat would work on China? – Or did he have a deeper agenda, like winning China over – or neutralizing her – for a possible future strike on Iran? – Of course, if carried out, then by proxies like the armed-to-the-teeth with US and UK weaponry Saudis and Israel? – Time will tell. But there is no doubt that the clear winner of this meeting was President Xi – with his calm manner and Tao philosophy of smiling and non-aggression.

On his last stop in Da Nang, Vietnam, Trump attended the APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit (10-11 November), where he was expected to meet with President Putin, even briefly at the margin of the meetings. However, no official meeting was scheduled and as RT reports, ”Hopes of a bilateral Putin-Trump meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit have waned with the White House citing “scheduling conflicts,” but at least the two were all smiles while shaking hands during the photo call.”

Well, why would President Putin want to meet with Trump, who after a meeting with seemingly positive chemistry, in Hamburg in July 2017, at the G20 summit, has been nothing but deceptive? Why faking more trust in a flamboyant billionaire bully, who has no ethics, who doesn’t honor contracts, promises, multilateral agreements or even international law – and allows his government to keep slandering Russia for ‘interfering’ in the 2016 US Presidential Elections?

The truth is, Trump, his predecessors, the UK leadership, the NATO allies, the Saudis, Gulf States and the EU puppets are shameless, ‘legalized’ murderers. – Legalized, because they dance to the tune of Trump’s canons, or to the dark deep state’s strings that pull the triggers of mayhem and death. For these people – are they still to be called people? – Trump has accomplished what he set out to do: Selling hundreds of billions worth of arms. In less than a year of his Presidency, he did more good to the military-security industrial complex than Obama did in his last four years in office.

Arms are made to kill and destroy. Killing and destroying is contributing big-time to the US GDP; in fact, this industrial octopus with all its associated tentacles – finance, IT, research, sub-contracting, mercenary funding abroad and within the US, spying and surveillance the world over – amount to more than half of the US total economic output. The United States of America lives off an economy of war, an economy of destruction and death.

The new tyrant in Ryadh—the young and impetuous "MbS" is already putting his mark on the volatile Middle East. Backed by the anglozionists he is carrying a shameless genocidal campaign to defeat the Houthi insurgency. Ryadh's recent political tumult may end up distracting bin Salman from turning Yemen into total rubble, thereby giving that nation an unexpected respite.

Take Yemen. Since March 2015, the US and UK backed and armed Saudis have bombed Yemen to ruins, destroying schools, hospitals, roads, ports – vital infrastructure for any civilization. In addition to hospitals and schools, they targeted specifically water and sanitation systems to cause utmost harm to civilian populations. As a result, cholera cases are estimated at 500,000-plus, mostly children and women and elderly (UNICEF), the worst in recorded history. Many die, because the Saudis, again backed by the US and the UK, have banned import and distribution of essential drugs.

With major ports closed – also by the Saudis, the US and the UK, Yemen is facing one of the worst famine the world has ever seen in recent history. Daily Saudi shelling with US planes and UK bombs, has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, women and children – some estimates range from 60,000 to 80,000. Nobody really keeps count. Yemen has been (kept) poor before. And now, who cares. Yemen already today is the worst humanitarian crisis in decades. And there is no end in sight.

Since the US / UK backed Saudi attacks began some 20 months ago, UK arms sales have increased 50 times. Yet a case filed with the International Court of Justice (ICC) by UK citizens against ‘illegal’ weapons sales, was dismissed by the court, as it could not find anything illegal with these weapon deliveries. That only shows ICC’s worthlessness, as it is totally controlled by the Zion-Anglo-Saxon hegemon.

What might be more effective than the ICC in stopping the boundless assassination raids, is chaining up Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Theresa May and David Cameron, and parachuting them onto Hudaydah, one of Yemen’s hardest hit towns, in the west of the country. Let them see and feel and smell the pain, death and desperation of the survivors. Would it light up the remnants of their spark of ethics and morality they may still have left from birth?

About the Author

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

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PETER KOENIG—Trump had the audacity, as he always does, of calling North Korea (DPRK – Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) a “threat to the civilized world”. And this, when he knows – or should know – that Pyongyang is only defending North Korea from the constant threats and aggressions of the United States, that Kim Jon-Un has no intention of attacking any country – but still has the memory deep inside, inherited by generations of North Koreans born after the atrocious Washington initiated 1953 Korean war…

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WANTED: MEDIA FELONS
All abject servants of the plutocracy

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