The John James Newsletter 143
22 October 2016
The first war crime committed in any war of aggression is against the truth
Michael Parenti
In 2015 the US imposed penalties on Volkswagen for emission violations of more than $13b. In revenge the EU imposed a $14.5b fine on Apple for unpaid taxes. The US now seeks penalties of $14b against Deutsche Bank for its part in the 2008 bubble. Shuttlecock?
David Hungerford
As the Philippines braces for its second major typhoon in five days, a Canadian glacier spawns a giant iceberg and eastern Australia mops up from a record wet spell, climate scientists can pick from a world of weird weather for the evidence that global warming is under way.
Peter Hannam
HOW CLOSE IS WAR? Each item indicates escalating and deliberate provocation by the US.
Pics of US jets painted in Russian colours
Photos showing US jets being painted Russian colours suggest plans to conduct false flag attacks in Syria and blame them on Moscow.
https://www.rt.com/viral/362321-us-jets-russian-colors/
Vladimir Putin knows who bombed the UN convoy
Terrorist groups were behind the attack on the humanitarian convoy. We know that the US is well aware of this, but they prefer to blame Russia.
http://theduran.com/vladimir-putin-knows-who-bombed-the-aleppo-un-convoy-now-hes-talking/
Obama to discuss bombing Syrian military positions
Direct US military action in Syria, including airstrikes on Syrian military, radar and anti-aircraft bases, as well as arms depots, striking Syrian government forces could result in a direct confrontation between the US and Russia. Is Obama totally out of control?
https://www.rt.com/news/362758-obama-syria-military-options/
RAF Pilots Ordered To Shoot Down “Hostile” Russian Jets Over Syria
As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears willing to precipiate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, RAF pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot Russian military jets when flying over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now “one step closer” to being at war. The Syrian government invited the Russians, but not the British – well!!!
Russia Reads US Bluster as Sign of War
As US politicians and pundits have fun talking tough about Russia and demonizing President Putin, they are missing signs that Moscow isn’t amused and is preparing for actual conflict,
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/11/russia-reads-us-bluster-as-sign-of-war/
German Think Tank Warns Of Growing Nuclear War Danger
All the ingredients are present in the eastern Baltic area for conflict escalating to nuclear. This is a “prescription for catastrophe.”
http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/16/german-think-tank-warns-of-growing-nuclear-war-danger/
Putin Throws Out the Old Nuclear Rules, Rattling Washington
Washington and Moscow used to keep arms control separate from other crises around the world. But that era is over and the next president will have to decide how to deal with it.
War between US and Russia Could Be Sooner than Later
Barely noticed in a virtual media blackout are at least a half dozen significant developments that all indicate a nuclear war at any time. In response Russia has been preparing its citizens for potential nuclear war. 40 million Russian citizens, that’s near one-third of the nation’s total population, just completed an unprecedented nuclear war defence drill. Moscow ordered all Russian citizens, diplomats and students traveling, working or studying abroad to immediately return home. Members of Russia’s diplomatic corps were threatened with career demotions should they refuse to comply.
Gorbachev says world at ‘dangerous’ point
As tensions between Russia and the US have spiked over Syria, relations between Moscow and Washington – already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict – have soured further in recent days as the US pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks. The Kremlin meanwhile has suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.
http://www.news24.com/World/News/gorbachev-says-world-at-dangerous-point-20161010
MAD: The Nuclear Debate America Should be Having
Washington’s Global Economic Wars
Washington has escalated its global economic war against major economic rivals and no longer confines itself to peripheral economic countries, but has declared trade wars against world powers that include Russia, China, Germany, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba and the Donbas region of Ukraine. There is an increasingly thinner distinction between military and economic warfare.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-global-economic-wars/5551800
NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence
The motivation of the hacker was concern over Hillary Clinton’s disregard of national security secrets when she used a personal email and consistently lied about it. NSA has all of Clinton’s deleted emails, and the FBI could gain access to them. No need for Trump to ask the Russians for those emails, he can just call on the FBI or NSA to hand them over.
http://theduran.com/nsa-whistleblower-says-dnc-hack-not-done-russia-us-intelligence/
The War campaign
This campaign is driven by a deep and bitter divide: whether to risk war with Russia, or not. Not since 1860 has a presidential election been affected by a basic divide between a War Party that is tremendously strong (Its candidate is Hillary Clinton, with Wall Street and Big Oil among its constituents) while Donald Trump speaks for a faction that sees the risk of war as just too dangerous.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45677.htm
AND OTHER NEWS …..
A collapse in Arctic sea ice volume spells disaster for the rest of the planet
Global warming drives a stunning collapse in sea ice volume.
The Middle East and the Next Administration
Osama bin Laden surely died happy. He devoted the last third of his life to creating animosity between the West and Islam and to driving a wedge between Saudi Arabia and the US. Today, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are all estranged. And, as an unexpected bonus, so is Israel. The US is making enemies all over the Muslim world. And every day millions pay homage to the memory of Osama as they remove their shoes to pass through metal detectors and are stripped of their dignity by body-imaging devices at airports. Americans are less secure, less prosperous, and less free than as this century began. In life, Osama was transformative. In death, he continues to shape the world he left behind.
http://lobelog.com/the-middle-east-and-the-next-administration/
US Military Operations Are Biggest Motivation for Homegrown Terrorists
A secret FBI study found that anger over US military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism, and identified no coherent pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that it remained near impossible to predict future violent acts.
Hurricane Sandy-level flooding is rising so sharply that it could become normal
The US is already in the grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures. An analysis of past storms and models of future events as the planet warms has shown that Sandy-like floods have become three times more common in the New York area
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/11/hurricane-flooding-us-climate-change
Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities
According to a startling Pentagon video the future of global cities will be brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers. That’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University.
and the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb9ZV_eFd3I
Electric cars set to pass 2m globally by end of 2016
China leads EU and US in market size, with Nissan Leaf taking the top spot for best-selling model followed by Tesla’s Model S and two Chinese-made models
Brazil: The Billion Dollar Coup
Dilma Rousseff was removed from office through a well-organized, carefully planned operation among the corrupt Brazilian political elite, closely linked to the stock-market, financial institutions and foreign energy companies. This ‘legislative coup d’état ’eliminated the democratically-elected president and installed a regime directly controlled by the CEOs of leading multi-nationals. The corporate composition of the post-coup regime insured there would be a radical restructuring of the Brazilian economy, with a massive shift from wage support, social spending and public ownership toward profits, a foreign capital take-over of strategic sectors and foreign-domestic elite dominance over the entire economy.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45662.htm
Prepare for severe stock market crash, warns HSBC
Warning that recent stock market moves look eerily similar to just before 1987’s ‘Black Monday’, which saw the largest one-day market crash in history.
https://www.rt.com/business/362618-stock-market-severe-fall/
Monsanto Goes on Trial for Ecocide
A people’s tribunal against Monsanto began Friday in The Hague, with representatives from hundreds of organizations coming together to put Monsanto on trial for crimes against humanity and ecocide. “If Mother Earth could speak, Monsanto ought to be in jail long before now,”
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Monsanto-Goes-on-Trial-for-Ecocide-20161014-0007.html
Pakistan’s Gwadar Port Is Now Operational As First Chinese Ship Docks
This reflects a major shift in geopolitical alliances in central Asia. Gwadar Port in Pakistan became operational and the first Chinese ship has docked. It’s a major breakthrough for China geopolitcally as well as strategically. Now China can’t be isolated by closing the Malacca straits. It also opens a pathway to oil rich Central Asian region. Gwadar port will punch a big hole in US pivot to Asia strategy. India won’t be amused to see Pakistan inching closer to China. The money China is planning to pour into Pakistan is more than twice the amount of all foreign direct investment Pakistan has received since 2008, and considerably more than the entire US assistance since 2002 It directly links Iranian heavy oil with China.
Millions Face Hunger by 2030 Without ‘Deep Transformation’ of Agriculture:
Over 120 million people could be forced into extreme poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change on small-scale food producers. Abrupt changes would make adequate adaptation almost impossible with major declines in crop yields and increasingly high and volatile food prices. “In the longer run, unless measures are put in place to halt and reverse climate change, food production could become impossible in large areas of the world.” The report cites diversifying crop production, better integration of farming with the natural habitat, agroecology, and “sustainable intensification” as strategies to help small-scale farmers adapt to a warming world. The report notes that subsidies for fertilizers and pesticides hinder the progress of more sustainable, organic farming.
Spiders can ‘tune’ their webs to sound out plucky potential mates
“They’re able to very closely change the tension of their webs … This means they have a mechanism for directly controlling both the tension and the stiffness of their silk fibres. [These mechanisms] allow them effectively to tune their web’s properties so that they can control how sensory information is getting to them in the middle of the web.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/21/spiders-tune-webs-plucky-mates-food
Will “They” Really Try to Kill President Duterte?
The hitless of the Empire reads like a catalogue of illustrious world leaders: from Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Sukarno (Indonesia), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Salvador Allende (Chile) to Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), Al-Basheer (Sudan) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), to name just a few. Some were directly assassinated; others were ‘only’ toppled, while only a handful of ‘marked’ leaders actually managed to survive and to stay in power. There were several grave crimes committed by almost all of them include: defending the vital interests of their nations and people, refusing to allow the unbridled plunder of natural resources by multinational corporations, and standing against the principles of imperialism. Simple criticism of the Empire has also been often punishable by death.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/17/will-they-really-try-to-kill-president-duterte/
Rodrigo Duterte interview: Death, drugs and diplomacy
“We have three million drug addicts, and it’s growing. So if we do not interdict this problem, the next generation will be having a serious problem. If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.”
Citigroup Chose Obama’s 2008 Cabinet, WikiLeaks Document Reveals
One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/citigroup-chose-obamas-2008-cabinet-wikileaks-document-reveals/5551327
Coral biologist Charlie Veron: the rise and fall of the Great Barrier Reef
Threats caused by humans, accelerated climate change and ocean acidification, have put the reef on the brink of complete collapse. He said, “it is unstoppable. If we wipe out coral we wipe out the life of the oceans”. This is symptomatic of everything we do. Its time to plan for the unthinkable.
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-charlie-veron-corals/7927724
‘Island of despair’: Australia intentionally torturing refugees on Nauru
The cache of evidence details allegations of recurrent self-harm and attempted suicide, children being hit by teachers and threatened with machetes by peers, deficient medical care and persecution akin to that which refugees had fled in their homelands. The offshore processing regime was “explicitly designed to inflict incalculable damage on hundreds of women, men and children” as an act of deterrence, by isolating them “on a remote place from which they cannot leave, with the specific intention that these people should suffer harm”. Amnesty International said it had interviewed 62 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru, and more than a dozen current or former contract workers who delivered services on behalf of the Australian government,
The Real Purpose Behind the “Liberation” of Mosul?
When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to the safety of Syria. But what then? The entire Isis caliphate army could be directed against the Assad government and its allies – a scenario which might cause some satisfaction in Washington