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For the past several years, the international pseudo-left has barely mentioned Assange’s name. To appease their reactionary gender politics constituency, they would happily throw him to the wolves. These “left” and liberal forces play an objective social role. The realities of neo-colonial invasion, occupation and war are far from pretty. If the thugs of the Pentagon and CIA were left to their own devices, forced to face the American public and justify their actions without any intermediaries or interpreters, they would be seen through almost immediately.

by MIKE WHITNEY

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON.

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Is Vladimir Putin the most popular Russian leader of all time?

It certainly looks like it. In a recent survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center,  Putin’s public approval rating soared to an eye-popping 86 percent, which is twice that of Obama’s when he left office in 2016.  And what’s more surprising is that Putin’s popularity has held up through a severe economic slump and nearly two decades in office. Unlike most politicians, whose shelf-life is somewhere between 4 to 8 years, the public’s admiration for Putin has only grown stronger over time.

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And the phenom is not limited to Russia either.  According to a recent survey by the pollster YouGov, “Putin is the third most admired man in Egypt, the fourth in China, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and the sixth most admired man in Germany, France and Sweden.” And don’t even mention Syria, where naming babies after the Russian president is all-the-rage.

Putin also won Time magazine’s prestigious Person of the Year award in 2007, and has remained among the top ten on that list for the last decade. The only place that Putin is not popular is in the United States where he is relentlessly demonized in the media as a “KGB thug” or the “new Hitler”. According to a 2017 survey by Gallup, only “22% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Putin” while “72% hold an unfavorable opinion of him.”

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Unconstrained by any serious rival, Washington felt free to impose its corporate-friendly system on the world, redraw the map of the Middle East, occupy countries in Central Asia, and topple secular regimes wherever it went. The triumphalism of western capitalism was summarized in the jubilant words of President George H. W. Bush who stated in 1990 before the launching of Desert Storm: (From now on) “what we say, goes”. The pronouncement was an unambiguous statement of Washington’s determination to rule the world and establish a new order.

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There’s no doubt that the media’s personal attacks on Putin have dramatically impacted his popularity. The question that open-minded people must ask themselves, is whether their opinion of Putin is the result of their own research or if their views have been shaped by a vicious, corporate-owned media that denigrates anyone who stands in the way of Washington’s geopolitical ambitions? My advice to these people is to simply read Putin’s words for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

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Blair and Bush Jr.: Two of the biggest criminals of our age, although Obama, Cameron and others are quickly disputing this dubious distinction. Of late the media whores have been busy "rehabilitating" the image of Bushie junior.

The western media claims that Putin is responsible for a number of crimes including the killing of well-known journalists and political rivals. But is it true? Is the man, who is so revered by the vast majority of Russians,  a common Mafia hitman who snuffs out his enemies without batting an eye?

I can’t answer that, but having followed Putin’s career (and read many of his speeches) since he replaced Boris Yeltsin in December 1999, I think it’s highly unlikely.  The more probable explanation is that Russia’s foreign policy has created insurmountable hurtles for Washington in places like Ukraine and Syria, so Washington has directed its propaganda ministry (aka– the media) to smear Putin as an evil tyrant and a thug. At least that’s the way the media has behaved in the past.

The US political class loved Yeltsin, of course, because Yeltsin was a compliant buffoon who eviscerated the state and caved in to all the demands of the western corporations. Not so Putin, who has made great strides in rebuilding the country by nationalizing part of the oil industry, asserting his authority over the oligarchs, and restoring the power of the central government.

More important, Putin has repeatedly condemned Washington’s unilateral war-mongering around the world, in fact, the Russian president has become the de facto leader of a growing resistance movement whose primary goal is to stop Washington’s destabilizing regime change wars and rebuild global security on the bedrock principle of national sovereignty. Here’s how Putin summed it up at Valdai:

“We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels…First of all, there must be equal and indivisible security for all states.” (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, ” The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, From the Office of the President of Russia)

This is a familiar theme with Putin and one that goes back to his famous Munich manifesto in 2007, a speech that anyone with even the slightest interest in foreign affairs should read in full. Here’s an excerpt:

“We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?….”

“I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue.” (“Wars not diminishing’: Putin’s iconic 2007 Munich speech, you tube)

The Munich speech was delivered a full four years after Washington launched its bloody invasion of Iraq, an invasion that Putin bitterly opposed. The speech shows a maturity of thought on Putin’s part who, unlike other world leaders,  isn’t quick to judge or draw hasty conclusions.  Instead, he takes his time, analyzes a situation thoroughly, and then acts accordingly.  Once he’s made up his mind, he rarely wavers. He’s not a flip flopper.

Putin’s opposition to unipolar world rule, that is, Washington dictating policy and everyone else falling in line, is not a sign of anti-Americanism, but pragmatism. Washington’s 16 year-long rampage across Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, has only intensified crises, fueled instability, bred terrorism, and increased the death and destruction. There have been no victories in the War on Terror, just endless violence and mountains of carnage. On top of that (as Putin says) “No one feels safe.”

This is why Putin has drawn a line in the sand in Syria and Ukraine. The Russian president has now committed troops and military aircraft to stop Washington’s aggressive behavior.  Once again, this is not because he hates America or seeks a confrontation,  but because Washington’s support for violent extremists requires a firm response. There’s no other way. At the same time, Moscow continues to actively seek a peaceful settlement for both crises. Here’s Putin again:

“Only after ending armed conflicts and ensuring the peaceful development of all countries will we be able to talk about economic progress and the resolution of social, humanitarian and other key problems….

It is essential to provide conditions for creative labour and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems.”…

Another priority is global healthcare…. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development.” (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

This is why I think that the stories about Putin killing journalists are nonsense. It seems very improbable to me that a man who believes in universal health care, creative labor, ending poverty and “investing in all priority areas of human development” would, at the same time, murder political rivals like a common gang-banger. I find that extremely hard to believe.

The most interesting part of Putin’s Valdai speech is his analysis of the social unrest that has swept across the EU and US resulting in the widespread rejection of traditional political candidates and their parties.  Putin has watched these developments carefully and given the matter a great deal of thought. Here’s what he says:

“With the political agenda already eviscerated as it is, and with (American) elections ceasing to be an instrument for change but consisting instead of nothing but scandals and digging up dirt…And honestly, a look at various candidates’ platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mold – the difference is slight, if there is any. …

Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power….

It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class…(but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood.

Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy.

As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem….

People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking center stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside.

At first, these inconvenient results were hastily declared anomaly or chance. But when they became more frequent, people started saying that society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities’ labor for the public good. Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda.” (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

Putin makes some important points, so let’s summarize:

1/  Elections are no longer an instrument for change.

2/ The appearance of democracy remains, but people no longer have the power to change the policies or the process.

3/ Political impotence has led to frustration, depression and rage.  New movements and candidates have emerged that embrace more extreme remedies because the traditional parties no longer represent the will of the people.

4/ Insulated elites have grown more obtuse and unresponsive to the seething anger that lies just below the surface of  a  seemingly-quiescent  society.

5/ More and more people are afraid for the future. They see little hope for themselves, their children or the country. The chasm between rich and poor continues to fuel widespread populist anger.

6/ Trump’s election indicates a broad rejection of the country’s political class, its media, its economic system and its primary institutions.

This is first-rate analysis from a man who has not only spent a lot of time thinking about these things, but also pinpointed the particular event from which the current crisis emerged; the breakup of the Soviet Union. Here’s what he says:

“Last year, the Valdai forum participants discussed the problems with the current world order. Unfortunately, little has changed for the better over these last months. Indeed, it would be more honest to say that nothing has changed.

The tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence continue to grow. … Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed.

I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries’ elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalization process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature.

But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests.

In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organisations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalisation and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all.”   (Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

He’s right, isn’t he?  The globalization project IS in crisis, and the reason it’s in crisis is because all of the benefits have gone to the people who crafted the original policy, the 1 percenters. So now the people in the US and EU are lashing out in anger, now they are taking desperate measures to reassert control over the system. That’s what Brexit was all about. That’s what the election of Trump was all about. And that is what the faceoff between Macron and Le Pen is all about. All three are examples of the seething populist rage that’s aimed at the elites who have imposed their own self-aggrandizing system on everyone else precipitating the steady decline in living standards, massive economic insecurity, and the loss of national sovereignty.

This is the first time I’ve seen the current wave of social turbulence traced back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but it makes perfect sense. Western elites saw the breakup of the USSR as a greenlight to maniacally pursue their own global agenda and impose their neoliberal economic model on the world,  a process that greatly accelerated following 9-11. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers became the seminal event that triggered the curtailing of civil liberties, the enhancing of executive powers and the beginning of a global war of terror. Unconstrained by any serious rival, Washington felt free to impose its corporate-friendly system on the world, redraw the map of the Middle East, occupy countries in Central Asia, and topple secular regimes wherever it went.  The triumphalism of western capitalism was summarized in the jubilant words of President George H. W. Bush who stated in 1990 before the launching of Desert Storm: (From now on) “what we say, goes”. The pronouncement was an unambiguous statement of Washington’s determination to rule the world and establish a new order.

Now, 27 years later, the United States has been stopped in its tracks in Syria and Ukraine. New centers of economic power are emerging, new political alliances are forming, and Washington’s authority is being openly challenged.  Putin’s task is to block Washington’s forward progress, create tangible disincentives for aggression, and put an end to the foreign interventions.  The Russian president might have to take a few steps backward to avoid WW3, but ultimately the goal is clear and achievable. Uncle Sam must be reigned in, the war-making must stop, global security must be reestablished, and people must be free to return to their homes in peace.

Appendix

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

EDITOR'S NOTE

This is perhaps one of the most important documents we have ever published by our friend and people's correspondent Andre Vltchek. Read it carefully, reflect on what it says, and then pass it on to your friends, colleagues, kin, and why not? even your doctors. American doctors, usually conservative, are notorious for their political illiteracy. Show them this, and challenge them to think about the role of their profession and government in all this human tragedy. Does a doctor's duty to heal stop at the border? In any case, here's Andre in his own words introducing these marvelous interviews: •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• "This is my discussion here in Beirut, with a great Palestinian doctor, head of reconstructive surgery department at the AUB Medical Center, Gus Abu-Sitta. He and others here began what I believe is a wonderful and groundbreaking scientific program, which is called "Ecology of War". A program in which I am already participating with this discussion, but for which I want to do much more in the future, bringing evidence from all over the world. The program is investigating some essential aspects of war, from medical, scientific and philosophical points of view. And also, what exactly is a war, what is a conflict? Is it just bullets and shrapnel flying all around? Definitely not! War, as I always insisted, is also hidden in extreme poverty, in slums, or desperate refugee camps. I showed it in my films, described in my books and essays. Perhaps more than half of our planet's population is living in war/conflict zones. Now here at the AUB, several brilliant doctors are proving the same points scientifically. And here, finally, science, medicine, philosophy and art are merging, for some truly noble goals."

The ‘Ecology of War’.
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek

Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back.

Dr. Abu-Sitta is also a thinker. (See main cover image above). A Palestinian born in Kuwait, he studied and lived in the UK, and worked in various war zones of the Middle East, as well as in Asia, before accepting his present position at the AUB Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon.

We were brought together by peculiar circumstances. Several months ago I burned my foot on red-hot sand, in Southeast Asia. It was healing slowly, but it was healing. Until I went to Afghanistan where at one of the checkpoints in Herat I had to take my shoes off, and the wound got badly infected. Passing through London, I visited a hospital there, and was treated by one of Abu-Sitta’s former professors. When I said that among other places I work in Lebanon, he recommended that I visit one of his “best students who now works in Beirut”.

I did. During that time, a pan-Arab television channel, Al-Mayadeen, was broadcasting in English, with Arabic subtitles, a long two-part interview with me, about my latest political/revolutionary novel “Aurora” and about the state of the global south, and the upsurge of the Western imperialism. To my surprise, Dr. Abu-Sitta and his colleagues were following my work and political discourses. To these hardened surgeons, my foot ‘issue’ was just a tiny insignificant scratch. What mattered was the US attack against Syria, Palestine, and the provocations against North Korea.

My ‘injury’ healed well, and Dr. Abu-Sitta and I became good friends. Unfortunately I have to leave Beirut for Southeast Asia, before a huge conference, which he and his colleagues are launching on May 15, 2017, a conference on the “Ecology of War”.

[metaslider id=148784]

I believe that the topic is thoroughly fascinating and essential for our humanity, even for its survival. It combines philosophy, medicine and science.

What happens to people in war zones? And what is a war zone, really? We arrived at some common conclusions, as both of us were working with the same topic but looking at it from two different angles: “The misery is war. The destruction of the strong state leads to conflict. A great number of people on our Planet actually live in some conflict or war, without even realizing it: in slums, in refugee camps, in thoroughly collapsed states, or in refugee camps.”

We talked a lot: about fear, which is engulfing countries like the UK, about the new wave of individualism and selfishness, which has its roots in frustration. At one point he said: “In most parts of the world “freedom” is synonymous with the independence struggle for our countries. In such places as the UK, it mainly means more individualism, selfishness and personal liberties.”

We talked about imperialism, medicine and the suffering of the Middle East.

Then we decided to publish this dialogue, shedding some light on the “Ecology of War” – this essential new discipline in both philosophy and medicine.

ECOLOGY OF WAR

(The discussion took place in Beirut, Lebanon, in Cafe Younes, on April 25, 2017)

Broken Social Contract In The Arab World, Even In Europe

G.A-S: In the South, medicine and the provision of health were critical parts of the post-colonial state. And the post-colonial state built medical systems such as we had in Iraq, Egypt and in Syria as part of the social contract. They became an intrinsic part of the creation of those states. And it was a realization that the state has to exercise its power both coercively, (which we know the state is capable of exercising, by putting you in prison, and even exercising violence), but above all non-coercively: it needs to house you, educate you, and give you health, all of those things. And that non-coercive power that the states exercise is a critical part of the legitimizing process of the state. We saw it evolve in 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. So as a digression, if you want to look at how the state was dismantled: the aim of the sanctions against Iraq was not to weaken the Makhabarat or the army, the aim of the sanctions was to rob the Iraqi state of its non-coercive power; its ability to give life, to give education, and that’s why after 12 years, the state has totally collapsed internally – not because its coercive powers have weakened, but because it was robbed of all its non-coercive powers, of all its abilities to guarantee life to its citizens.

AV: So in a way the contract between the state and the people was broken.

G.A-S: Absolutely! And you had that contract existing in the majority of post-colonialist states. With the introduction of the IMF and World Bank-led policies that viewed health and the provision of health as a business opportunity for the ruling elites and for corporations, and viewed free healthcare as a burden on the state, you began to have an erosion in certain countries like Egypt, like Jordan, of the non-coercive powers of the state, leading to the gradual weakening of its legitimacy. Once again, the aim of the IMF and World Bank was to turn health into a commodity, which could be sold back to people as a service; sold back to those who could afford it.

AV: So, the US model, but in much more brutal form, as the wages in most of those countries were incomparably lower.

G.A-S: Absolutely! And the way you do that in these countries: you create a two-tier system where the government tier is so under-funded, that people choose to go to the private sector. And then in the private sector you basically have the flourishing of all aspects of private healthcare: from health insurance to provision of health care, to pharmaceuticals.

AV: Paradoxically this scenario is also taking place in the UK right now.

G.A-S: We see it in the UK and we’ll see it in many other European countries. But it has already happened in this region, in the Arab world. Here, the provision of health was so critical to creation of the states. It was critical to the legitimacy of the state.

AV: The scenario has been extremely cynical: while the private health system was imposed on the Arab region and on many other parts of the world, in the West itself, except in the United States, medical care remains public and basically free. We are talking about state medical care in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

G.A-S: Yes. In Europe as part of the welfare state that came out of the Second World War, the provision of healthcare was part of the social contract. As the welfare state with the advent of Thatcherism and Reagan-ism was being dismantled, it became important to undergo a similar process as elsewhere. The difference is that in the UK, and also in countries like Germany, it was politically very dangerous. It could lead to election losses. So the second plan was to erode the health system, by a thousand blows kill it gradually. What you ended up in the UK is the piece-by-piece privatization of the health sector. And the people don’t know, they don’t notice that the system is becoming private. Or in Germany where actually the government does not pay for healthcare – the government subsidizes the insurance companies that profit from the private provision of healthcare.

AV: Before we began recording this discussion, we were speaking about the philosophical dilemmas that are now besieging or at least should be besieging the medical profession. Even the social medical care in Europe: isn’t it to some extent a cynical arrangement? European countries are now all part of the imperialist block, together with the United States, and they are all plundering the rest of the world – the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia – and they are actually subsidizing their social system from that plunder. That’s one thing. But also, the doctors and nurses working for instance in the UK or Germany are often ‘imported’ from much poorer countries, where they have often received free education. Instead of helping their own, needy people, they are actually now serving the ageing and by all international comparisons, unreasonably spoiled and demanding population in Europe, which often uses medical facilities as if they were some ‘social club’.

G.A-S: I think what has happened, particularly in Europe is that there is a gradual erosion of all aspects of the welfare state. Politically it was not yet possible to get rid of free healthcare. The problem that you can certainly see in the United Kingdom is that health is the final consequence of social and economic factors that people live in. So if you have chronic unemployment, second and third generation unemployment problem, these have health consequences. If you have the destruction of both pensions and the cushion of a social umbrella for the unemployed, that has consequences… Poor housing has health consequences. Mass unemployment has health consequences. Politically it was easy to get rid of all other aspects of the welfare state, but they were stuck with a healthcare problem. And so the losing battle that the health systems in the West are fighting is that they are being expected to cater to the poor consequences of the brutal capitalist system as a non-profit endeavor. But we know that once these lifestyle changes are affecting people’s health, it’s too late in terms of cure or prevention. And so what the European health systems do, they try to patch people and to get them out of the system and back on the street. So if you have children with chronic asthma, you treat the asthma but not the dump housing in which these children are living in. If you have violent assaults and trauma related to violence, you treat the trauma, the physical manifestation, and not the breakdown of youth unemployment, or racism that creates this. So in order to sustain this anomaly, as you said, you need an inflated health system, because you make people sick and then you try to fix them, rather than stopping them from being sick. Hence that brain drains that have basically happened, where you have more Ghanaian doctors in New York than you have in Ghana.

AV: And you have an entire army of Philippine nurses in the UK, while there is suddenly a shortage of qualified nurses in Manila.

G.A-S: Absolutely! This is the result of the fact that actually people’s health ‘happens’ outside the health system. Because you cannot get rid of the health system, you end up having a bloated health system, and try to fix the ailments that are coming through the door.

Collapse Of The Health Care In The Middle East 

AV: You worked in this entire region. You worked in Iraq, and in Gaza… both you and I worked in Shifa Hospital in Gaza… You worked in Southern Lebanon during the war. How brutal is the healthcare situation in the Middle East? How badly has been, for instance, the Iraqi peoples’ suffering, compared to Western patients? How cruel is the situation in Gaza?

G. A-S: If you look at places like Iraq: Iraq in the 80’s probably had one of the most advanced health systems in the region. Then you went through the first war against Iraq, followed by 12 years of sanctions in which that health system was totally dismantled; not just in terms of hospitals and medication and the forced exile of doctors and health professionals, but also in terms of other aspects of health, which are the sewage and water and electricity plants, all of those parts of the infrastructure that directly impact on people’s lives.

AV: Then came depleted uranium…

G.A-S: And then you add to the mix that 2003 War and then the complete destruction and dismantling of the state, and the migration of some 50% of Iraq’s doctors.

AV: Where did they migrate?

G.A-S: Everywhere: to the Gulf and to the West; to North America, Europe… So what you have in Iraq is a system that is not only broken, but that has lost the components that are required to rebuild it. You can’t train a new generation of doctors in Iraq, because your trainers have all left the country. You can’t create a health system in Iraq, because you have created a government infrastructure that is intrinsically unstable and based on a multi-polarity of the centers of power which all are fighting for control of the pie of the state… and so Iraqis sub-contract their health at hospital level to India and to Turkey and Lebanon, or Jordan, because they are in this vicious loop.

AV: But this is only for those who can afford it?

G.A-S: Yes for those who can, but even in those times when the government had cash it could not build the system, anymore. So it would sub-contract health provisions outside, because the system was so broken that money couldn’t fix it.

AV: Is it the same in other countries of the region?

G.A-S: The same is happening in Libya and the same is happening in Syria, with regards of the migration of their doctors. Syria will undergo something similar to Iraq at the end of the war, if the Syrian state is destroyed.

AV: But it is still standing.

G.A-S: It still stands and it is still providing healthcare to the overwhelming majority of the population even to those who live in the rebel-controlled areas. They are travelling to Damascus and other cities for their cardiac services or for their oncological services.

AV: So no questions asked; you are sick, you get treated?

G.A-S: Even from the ISIS-controlled areas people can travel and get treated, because this is part of the job of the state.

AV: The same thing is happening with the education there; Syria still provides all basic services in that area.

G.A-S: Absolutely! But in Libya, because the state has totally disappeared or has disintegrated, all this is gone.

AV: Libya is not even one country, anymore…

G.A-S: There is not a unified country and there is definitely no health system. In Gaza and the Palestine, the occupation and the siege, ensure that there is no normal development of the health system and in case of Gaza as the Israelis say “every few years you come and you mown the lawn”; you kill as many people in these brutal and intense wars, so you can ensure that the people for the next few years will be trying to survive the damage that you have caused.

AV: Is there any help from Israeli physicians?

G.A-S: Oh yes! Very few individuals, but there is…

But the Israeli medical establishment is actually an intrinsic part of the Israeli establishment, and the Israeli academic medical establishment is also part of the Israeli establishment. And the Israeli Medical Association refused to condemn the fact that Israeli doctors examine Palestinian political prisoners for what they call “fitness for interrogation”. Which is basically… you get seen by a doctor who decides how much torture you can take before you die.

AV: This actually reminds me of what I was told in 2015 in Pretoria, South Africa, where I was invited to participate as a speaker at the International Conference of the Psychologists for Peace. Several US psychologists reported that during the interrogation and torture of alleged terrorists, there were professional psychologists and even clinical psychiatrists standing by, often assisting the interrogators.

G.A-S: Yes, there are actually 2-3 well-known American psychologists who designed the CIA interrogation system – its process.

AV: What you have described that is happening in Palestine is apparently part of a very pervasive system. I was told in the Indian-controlled Kashmir that Israeli intelligence officers are sharing their methods of interrogation and torture with their Indian counterparts. And of course the US is involved there as well.

CONFLICT MEDICINE

Gus Abu-Sitta: War surgery grew out of the Napoleonic Wars. During these wars, two armies met; they usually met at the frontline. They attacked each other, shot at each other or stabbed each other. Most of injured were combatants, and they got treated in military hospitals. You had an evolution of war surgery. What we have in this region, we believe, is that the intensity and the prolonged nature of these wars or these conflicts are not temporal-like battles, they don’t start and finish. And they are sufficiently prolonged that they change the biological ecology, the ecology in which people live. They create the ecology of war. That ecology maintains itself well beyond of what we know is the shooting, because they alter the living environment of people. The wounds are physical, psychological and social wounds; the environment is altered as to become hostile; both to the able-bodied and more hostile to the wounded. And as in the cases of these multi-drug-resistant organisms, which are now a big issue in the world like the multi-drug-resistant bacteria, 85% of Iraqi war wounded have multi-drug-resistant bacteria, 70% of Syrian war wounded have it… So we say: this ecology, this bio-sphere that the conflicts create is even altered at the basic DNA of the bacteria. We have several theories about it; partly it’s the role of the heavy metals in modern ordnance, which can trigger mutation in these bacteria that makes them resistant to antibiotics. So your bio-sphere, your bubble, your ecological bubble in which you live in, is permanently changed. And it doesn’t disappear the day the bombs disappear. It has to be dismantled, and in order to dismantle it you have to understand the dynamics of the ecology of war. That’s why our program was set up at the university, which had basically been the major tertiary teaching center during the civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. And then as the war in Iraq and Syria developed, we started to get patients from these countries and treat them here. We found out that we have to understand the dynamics of conflict medicine and to understand the ecology of war; how the physical, biological, psychological and social manifestations of war wounding happen, and how this ecology of war is created; everything from bacteria to the way water and the water cycle changes, to the toxic reminisce of war, to how people’s body reacts… Many of my Iraqi patients that I see have multiple members of their families injured.

AV: Is the AUB Medical Center now the pioneer in this research: the ecology of war?

G.A.-S: Yes, because of the legacy of the civil war… of regional wars.

AV: Nothing less than a regional perpetual conflict…

G.A-S: Perpetual conflict, yes; first homegrown, and then regional. We are the referral center for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, referral center for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, so we act as a regional center, and the aim of our program is to dedicate more time and space and energy to the understanding of how this ecology of war comes about.

AV: In my writing and in my films, I often draw the parallel between the war and extreme poverty. I have been working in some of the worst slums on Earth, those in Africa, Central America and Caribbean, South Asia, the Philippines and elsewhere. I concluded that many societies that are in theory living in peace are in reality living in prolonged or even perpetual wars. Extreme misery is a form of war, although there is no ‘declaration of war’, and there is no defined frontline. I covered both countless wars and countless places of extreme misery, and the parallel, especially the physical, psychological and social impact on human beings, appears to be striking. Would you agree, based on your research? Do you see extreme misery as a type of war?

G.A-S: Absolutely. Yes. At the core of it is the ‘dehumanization’ of people. Extreme poverty is a form of violence. The more extreme this poverty becomes, the closer it comes to the physical nature of violence. War is the accelerated degradation of people’s life to reaching that extreme poverty. But that extreme poverty can be reached by a more gradual process. War only gets them there faster.

AV: A perpetual state of extreme poverty is in a way similar to a perpetual state of conflict, of a war.

G.A-S: Definitely. And it is a war mainly against those who are forced to live in these circumstances. It’s the war against the poor and the South. It’s the war against the poor in the inner-cities of the West.

AV: When you are defining the ecology of war, are you also taking what we are now discussing into consideration? Are you researching the impact of extreme poverty on human bodies and human lives? In this region, extreme poverty can often be found in the enormous refugee camps, while in other parts of the world it dwells in countless slums.

G.A-S: This extreme poverty is part of the ecology that we are discussing. One of the constituents of the ecology is when you take a wounded body and you place it in a harsh physical environment and you see how this body is re-wounded and re-wounded again, and this harsh environment becomes a continuation of that battleground, because what you see is a process of re-wounding. Not because you are still in the frontline somewhere in Syria, but because your kids are now living in a tent with 8 other people and they are in danger of becoming the victims of the epidemic of child burns that we now have in the refugee camps, because of poor and unsafe housing.

Let’s look at it from a different angle: what constitutes a war wound, or a conflict-related injury? Your most basic conflict-related injury is a gunshot wound and a blast injury from shrapnel. But what happens when you take that wounded body and throw it into a tent? What are the complications for this wounded body living in a harsh environment; does this constitute a war-related injury? When you impoverish the population to the point that you have children suffering from the kind of injuries that we know are the results of poor and unsafe housing, is that a conflict-related injury? Or you have children now who have work-related injuries, because they have to go and become the main breadwinners for the home, working as car mechanics or porters or whatever. Or do you also consider a fact that if you come from a country where a given disease used to be treatable there, but due to the destruction of a health system, that ailment is not treatable anymore, because the hospitals are gone or because doctors had to leave, does that constitute a conflict-related injury? So, we have to look at the entire ecology: beyond a bullet and shrapnel – things that get headlines in the first 20 seconds.

AV: Your research seems to be relevant to most parts of the world.

G.A-S: Absolutely. Because we know that these humanitarian crises only exist in the imagination of the media and the UN agencies. There are no crises.

AV: It is perpetual state, again.

G.A-S: Exactly, it is perpetual. It does not stop. It is there all the time. Therefore there is no concept of ‘temporality of crises’, one thing we are arguing against. There is no referee who blows the whistle at the end of the crises. When the cameras go off, the media and then the world, decides that the crises are over. But you know that people in Laos, for instance, still have one of the highest amputation rates in the world.

AV: I know. I worked there in the Plain of Jars, which is an enormous minefield even to this day.

G.A-S: Or Vietnam, with the greatest child facial deformities in the world as a result of Agent Orange.

AV: You worked in these countries.

G.A-S: Yes.

AV: Me too; and I used to live in Vietnam. That entire region is still suffering from what used to be known as the “Secret War”. In Laos, the poverty is so rampant that people are forced to sell unexploded US bombs for scrap. They periodically explode. In Cambodia, even between Seam Reap and the Thai border, there are villages where people are still dying or losing limbs.

G.A-S: Now many things depend on how we define them. It is often a game of words.

AV: India is a war zone, from Kashmir to the Northeast, Bihar and slums of Mumbai.

G.A-S: If you take the crudest way of measuring conflict, which is the number of people killed by weapons, Guatemala and Salvador have now more people slaughtered than they had during the war. But because the nature in which violence is exhibited changed, because it doesn’t carry a political tag now, it is not discussed. But actually, it is by the same people against the same people.

AV: I wrote about and filmed in Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, on several occasions. The extreme violence there is a direct result of the conflict implanted, triggered by the West, particularly by the United States. The same could be said about such places like Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti. It has led to almost absolute social collapse.

G.A-S: Yes, in Jamaica, the CIA played a great role in the 70’s.

AV: In that part of the world we are not talking just about poverty…

G.A-S: No, no. We are talking AK-47’s!

AV: Exactly. Once I filmed in San Salvador, in a gangland… A friend, a local liberation theology priest kindly drove me around. We made two loops. The first loop was fine. On the second one they opened fire at our Land Cruiser, with some heavy stuff. The side of our car was full of bullet holes, and they blew two tires. We got away just on our rims. In the villages, maras simply come and plunder and rape. They take what they want. It is a war.

G.A.-S: ICRC, they train surgeons in these countries. So the ICRC introduced war surgery into the medical curriculum of the medical schools in Colombia and Honduras. Because effectively, these countries are in a war, so you have to train surgeons, so they know what to do when they receive 4-5 patients every day, with gunshot wounds.

AV: Let me tell you what I witnessed in Haiti, just to illustrate your point. Years ago I was working in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. They say it is the most dangerous ‘neighborhood’ or slum on Earth. The local wisdom goes: “you can enter, but you will never leave alive”. I went there with a truck, with two armed guards, but they were so scared that they just abandoned me there, with my big cameras and everything, standing in the middle of the road. I continued working; I had no choice. At one point I saw a long line in front of some walled compound. I went in. What I was suddenly facing was thoroughly shocking: several local people on some wooden tables, blood everywhere, and numerous US military medics and doctors performing surgeries under the open sky. It was hot, flies and dirt everywhere… A man told me his wife had a huge tumor. Without even checking what it was, the medics put her on a table, gave her “local” and began removing the stuff. After the surgery was over, a husband and wife walked slowly to a bus stop and went home. A couple of kilometers from there I found a well-equipped and clean US medical facility, but only for US troops and staff. I asked the doctors what they were really doing in Haiti and they were quiet open about it; they replied: “we are training for combat scenario… This is as close to a war that we can get.” They were experimenting on human beings, of course; learning how to operate during the combat…

G.A-S: So, the distinction is only in definitions.

AV: As a surgeon who has worked all over the Middle East but also in many other parts of the world, how would you compare the conflict here to the conflicts in Asia, the Great Lakes of Africa and elsewhere?

G.A-S: In the Middle East, you still have people remembering when they had hospitals. Iraqis who come to my clinic remember the 80’s. They know that life was different and could have been different. And they are health-literate. The other issue is that in 2014 alone, some 30,000 Iraqis were injured. The numbers are astounding. We don’t have a grasp of the numbers in Libya, the amount of ethnic cleansing and killing that is happening in Libya. In terms of numbers, they are profound, but in terms of the effect, we are at the beginning of the phase of de-medicalization. So it wasn’t that these medical systems did not develop. They are being de-developed. They are going backwards.

AV: Are you blaming Western imperialism for the situation?

G.A-S: If you look at the sanctions and what they did to their health system, of course! If you look at Libya, of course! The idea that these states disintegrated is a falsehood. We know what the dynamics of the sanctions were in Iraq, and what happened in Iraq after 2003. We know what happened in Libya.

AV: Or in Afghanistan…

G.A-S: The first thing that the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan or the Nicaraguan Contras were told to do was to attack the clinics. The Americans have always understood that you destroy the state by preventing it from providing these non-coercive powers that I spoke about.

AV: Do you see this part of the world as the most effected, most damaged?

G.A-S: At this moment and time certainly. And the statistics show it. I think around 60% of those dying from wars are killed in this region…

AV: And how do you define this region geographically?

G.A-S: From Afghanistan to Mauritania. And that includes the Algerian-Mali border. The Libyan border… The catastrophe of the division of Sudan, what’s happening in South Sudan, what’s happening in Somalia, Libya, Egypt, the Sinai Desert, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, even Pakistan including people who are killed there by drones…

AV: But then we also have around 10 million people who have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo, since the 1995 Rwandan invasion…

G.A-S: Now that is a little bit different. That is the ‘more advanced phase’: when you’ve completely taken away the state… In the Arab world Libya is the closest to that scenario. There the oil companies have taken over the country. The mining companies are occupying DRC. And they run the wars directly, rather than through the Western armies. You erode the state, completely, until it disappears and then the corporations, directly, as they did in the colonialist phase during the East Indian Company, and the Dutch companies, become the main players again.

AV: What is the goal of your research, the enormous project called the “Ecology of War”?

G.A-S: One of the things that we insist on is this holistic approach. The compartmentalization is part of the censorship process. “You are a microbiologist then only look what is happening with the bacteria… You are an orthopedic surgeon, so you only have to look at the blast injuries, bombs, landmine injuries…” So that compartmentalization prevents bringing together people who are able to see the whole picture. Therefore we are insisting that this program also has social scientists, political scientists, anthropologists, microbiologists, surgeons… Otherwise we’d just see the small science. We are trying to put the sciences together to see the bigger picture. We try to put the pieces of puzzle together, and to see the bigger picture.

AV: And now you have a big conference. On the 15^th of May…

G.A-S: Now we have a big conference; basically the first congress that will look at all these aspects of conflict and health; from the surgical, to the reconstruction of damaged bodies, to the issues of medical resistance of bacteria, infectious diseases, to some absolutely basic issues. Like, before the war there were 30,000 kidney-failure patients in Yemen. Most dialysis patients are 2 weeks away from dying if they don’t get dialysis. So, there is a session looking at how you provide dialysis in the middle of these conflicts? What do you do, because dialysis services are so centralized? The movement of patients is not easy, and the sanctions… One topic will be ‘cancer and war’… So this conference will be as holistic as possible, of the relationship between the conflict and health.

We expect over 300 delegates, and we will have speakers from India, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, from the UK, we have people coming from the humanitarian sector, from ICRC, people who worked in Africa and the Middle East, we have people who worked in previous wars and are now working in current wars, so we have a mix of people from different fields.

AV: What is the ultimate goal of the program?

G.A-S: We have to imagine the health of the region beyond the state. On the conceptual level, we need to try to figure out what is happening? We can already see certain patterns. One of them is the regionalization of healthcare. The fact that Libyans get treated in Tunisia, Iraqis and Syrians get treated in Beirut, Yemenis get treated in Jordan. So you already have the disintegration of these states and the migration of people to the regional centers. The state is no longer a major player, because the state was basically destroyed. We feel that this is a disease of the near future, medium future and long-term future. Therefore we have to understand it, in order to better treat it, we have to put mechanisms in place that this knowledge transfers into the medical education system, which will produce medical professionals who are better equipped to deal with this health system. We have to make sure that people are aware of many nuances of the conflict, beyond the shrapnel and beyond the bullet. The more research we put into this area of the conflict and health, the more transferable technologies we develop – the better healthcare we’d be allowed to deliver in these situations, the better training our students and graduates would receive, and better work they will perform in this region for the next 10 or 15 years.

AV: And hopefully more lives would be saved…

PART TWO: INTERVIEW ON AL MAYADEEN
(If you like, skip to 3:18 to go to the start of the interview with Andre Vltchek (which is in English).

Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

read the New York Times’ Roger Cohen cover the French presidential election in an extended Sunday Review format.

Joy of joys! Our “paper of record” has sent Cohen back to cover his old beat for the election. Get ready for some enlightening, edifying, inspirational analysis! The title is: “France in the End of Days”. Well…Paris can be gloomy in the spring, I suppose.

Now let’s hear the case before we judge, but let’s make one thing clear: The globalization candidate must win, of course.

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“For some time France has been a country that does not like itself.”

Well I know America does not like France – they’re pretty much the only country we can make fun of with total impunity – so I’m glad Cohen began his feature op-ed by writing something that already agrees with my assessment. A good columnist plays to his audience, after all.

But, you know, I met a French guy once and he seemed to go and on about how great French culture was, French history, French language, French food, the French countryside, the French cityside, French painting – I mean that guy loved France to pieces. He must have been an outlier….

Cohen started to write about Marine Le Pen, and at that point I started to notice my hands shaking uncontrollably.

---

I was about to reach for my medication, because I knew what the problem was: I was going through “Russia withdrawal”: I had been interacting with an American news media for nearly 30 seconds without any reference to Vladimir Putin! That bane of everyone’s existence! The reason for what’s wrong in the world! The cause of my childhood problems! Thankfully, I can save my pills for later because Cohen gave me my fix before his 2nd paragraph was done – tough luck Pfizer!

“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has been meddling, would be happy.”

Ahh, we can’t have that! Never-happy Vladdy! That should be a new slogan! Hell, it’s a damned political platform as far as this patriotic American is concerned!

And just read for yourself– he has been “meddling”…in France, I assume? Or maybe Cohen means just “meddling” in general? Does Vladimir ever not “meddle” – can’t he just ever mildly “tinker” or “fiddle”?

There are non-right wing candidates in the election, apparently, but why waste time on them?

Melenchon: a man (by definition) of “extremes” according to the priggishly complacent Cohen.

“…and an extreme leftist, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the Unbowed France movement, whose support has surged in recent days. The left, still singing the Internationale and plotting class struggle, is in disarray.”

Seems odd that the extreme left has done well enough to have “surged” and yet is in “disarray”? The existence of such a paradox must be due to the end of days – and today is Easter, no less!

If Melenchon is an “extreme leftist”, then I wonder what’s a communist or even an anarchist? An “extreme extreme-leftist” and an “extreme extreme extreme-leftist?” This is like “postmodernism” – I don’t get any of it. Best to move on to the Times’ approved experts.

Pascal Bruckner, is the lead quote. Ah yes, I remember him: He helped convince everyone to bomb Yugoslavia. He wrote that great updating of Kipling with The Tears of the White Man, which is exactly what it sounds like. And let’s not forget The Tyranny of Guilt – I wondered why he didn’t add “White” in front of “Guilt” that time? 

What’s certain is that Bruckner is not the extreme right, much less the extreme extreme-right: Marine Le Pen is!

After all, she called to abolish the CFA Franc in order to return economic independence to 14 African countries, even calling it a “hindrance to the economic development”? Such extreme right tyranny will make White Men in corporations cry tears of guilt over lost profits! Who is she, Ghadaffi, another extreme extreme rightist?!

Well, let’s hear what these economic extremists have to say:

“’There is no right or left. This election is about patriotism versus globalization,’ Nicolas Bay, the secretary-general of the National Front, told me.”

---

Macron: The American establishment’s darling, naturally. Pragmatism uber alles.

You know who else goes on and on about patriotism and its corollary of national sovereignty? Must I name the evil name and risk bad spirits entering my body and requiring more medication? My therapist said it was not enough that Rachel Maddow focused on this man for 53% of her reports over a 6-week period, so I’ll be strong and say it: Putin. My therapist agreed with me that Maddow needs to bump that percentage up to 80% over 12 weeks – my fingers are crossed, and my TiVo is set.

Cohen then sat down with Emmanuel Macron, who appears to be the only candidate according to many media. I love Cohen’s description of him: “Small, with glittering blue eyes…” Wow, he sounds dreamy, but manageable.

“In an interview, Macron told me: ‘Look, do you want to strengthen Europe, to have a strong reformed France, or do you just want to leave this world and return to the 19th century?’”

You had me at “reformed France”, eyes of blue!

Clearly, There Is No Alternative: more globalism or regression by three centuries. It’s not complicated! America gets this, why can’t France?

“The red state-blue state chasm, in various guises, is the core cultural condition of the West,“ wrote Cohen.

It’s reassuring to have my preexisting assessments confirmed again: the problems with Brussels, Europe’s peculiar history, local specificities – all that is just a “guise,” and not a real difference: France is just like us. Or they should be more like us but won’t accept it! Well, Macron will.

Cohen cites a poll conducted in 2014 that found that 74 percent of French workers felt they were no longer “at home”.

I’m not really sure what that means: they’re French…they’re as at home as can be? I mean, the outside world is not your living room, so c’mon – get hip to geography. But this is the key existential problem, after all: Wherever you go, there you are…and, sadly, you are French. I don’t have that problem, thankfully.

“Europe used to signify stability and peace,” writes Cohen.

That is absolutely the case! What is all this anti-EU, anti-Euro nonsense I’m reading about? All their anti-austerity protests have been happening regularly for years – that’s called stability!

---

The 30 Years War, one of countless episodes of reckless mayhem in the sociopathic, blood-soaked greed-driven story of Europe. The Continent has been at it possibly since prehistory. Not surprising that Europe’s progeny in the “New World” would eventually spawn the Big Bully.

---

ISIS would be envious. The butchery of St Bartholomew’s Day over religious nonsense (1572) etched itself in humanity’s memory but taught them nothing. By 1914, with war industrialized, a generation drowned in its own blood. It would only get worse.

---

Of course, there isn’t peace now in Ukraine, or during the breakup of Yugoslavia, or the Cold War, or WWII, or WWI, or the period of conquering colonization, or the period of religious wars. But history books confirm that there was a day – I think it was a Tuesday – back in the year 1145 where not one country in Europe was at war.

“74 percent saw globalization as a threat (while 68 percent of managers saw it as an opportunity).”

Finally, some common sense from the bosses of the common men! There are a lot of private businesses in France, so I’m going to assume that 68% of managers equals an overall majority – stop denying democracy, Le Pen!

Polls are not always interesting.

I have this co-worker whom I can’t stand – his name is Fazlollah Bittermani. No one can pronounce that, so we just call him Lefty. He’s from…someplace west of China and not Europe. Maybe Western China. Nobody can really understand him, but he keeps talking.

We were talking about France and Lefty told me about a poll: he said that 77% of France thinks their parliamentarians are corrupt, so what kind of a democracy is that to emulate? Before I could respond, he said he knew about another poll which found that 99% of 18-34 year-olds think all of France’s politicians are corrupt.

My coworkers seemed interested in these alternative facts, so I quickly asked Fazlollah where he got this information: he said, “Uh….Rachel Maddow”. I told him the truth: such high numbers of dissatisfaction and popular rejection can only possibly exist in Russia.

I heard murmurs of approval, but perhaps they were of doubt?

“Fazlollah,” I shouted. “When are you going to finally change your crazy name?! It sounds like you took two totally different names and just joined them together!”

Everybody laughed! When things are getting away from me I always just make fun of his name. Or better yet, his accent. Lefty just stalked off and went to eat that weird-colored rice stuff he always brings. Rice is supposed to be white!

Anyway, the real problem is not multicolored rice-ism, but the National Front. Cohen will get to the bottom of them – he was introduced to Florian Philippot, one of Le Pen’s top advisers

“Philippot is a slick operator. He did not have time to talk…”

What? Are you saying that Philippot turned down an interview? He deigned to not be in the world’s greatest newspaper, The New York Times?

The effrontery of the man! You don’t have time for the Times? You make time, baby! If not – you are an agent of Trump! Which makes you an agent of Putin! Upon touching down at De Gaulle Airport Roger Cohen became the most credible, the most important journalist possible: a regular columnist for the New York Times! You’re lucky we’re even covering your lousy election because they should be talking about Russia! Now where are my pills?!

Cohen attended a National Front meeting, where this appalling Philippot guy called Macron an agent of high finance. I mean like it was an insult or something!

“Somebody in the crowd shouted ‘Rothschild!’ and then again ‘Rothschild!’ — a reference to the bank where Macron once worked. The attempt to rid the National Front of its anti-Semitism is clearly a work in progress.”

I’ll admit: I didn’t get this. I didn’t see the link between the fact that Macron worked for the first family of international finance and anti-Semitism.

But now I do: being against the Rothschilds is bad because they are Jewish. And being against any Jew is bad, regardless of what they do personally.

No, wait…I think it’s that the Rothschilds are powerful bankers, and that powerful bankers are Jews, and…wait, that’s not coming out right.

Here it is: The National Front supporters hate the Rothschilds because they are Jewish bankers; if the Rothschilds weren’t Jewish, there would be no problem…because National Front supporters love high finance, like everyone else!

I have a banker friend – I have many banker friends – who said he was glad the Rothschilds are Jewish: said it was a good distraction. I didn’t get what he meant? Maybe he understood what Cohen meant, too? Anyway, forget about that poseur Philippot.

“Le Pen entered to thunderous applause in a black pantsuit. It’s easy to imagine her an everywoman telling it like it is.”

Roger has an eye for ladies’ fashions – very chic of him – but why doesn’t he report on what the men were wearing? I spend big bucks on my French fashions and want to make sure I’m au courant.

The larger point is: what’s more “everywoman” than a pantsuit? Hillary couldn’t have been more salt of the earth, after all, and she popularized the pantsuit! I like to imagine Hillary in a pantsuit while being a supermarket cashier, farmer, cubicle worker, factory worker, farmer, housewife, etc.

Well, the National Front is a problem in France, but they have even bigger problems.

“Over 31 percent of gross domestic product is spent on health, unemployment and other benefits, compared to 24.6 percent in Germany. France has in effect made a structural choice for unemployment. Everyone knows this.”

What is with the French and their insistence on having a benefit which includes health? Health is not a benefit! And everyone knows the French have made a structural choice for unemployment – it’s great to be unemployed in France!

All those Mohammads and Jean-Claudes and Maries living on their 400 euros a month RSA “benefit” without working…appalling. Oh yes, they chose to be unemployed for so long! I wish I got 400 euros a month for being unemployed! Why I’d cash in my stock options and my 401k and I’d be quite happy with my 400 euros per month, splitting time between my 3 residences, I can tell you that!

Everyone also knows that France should have made a structural choice for under-employment instead. Like Germany with their “mini-jobs” or the US with their part-time work.

That saves me a fortune in wages and benefits like health!

I brought that up to old Lefty and he said something about France’s poverty rate being much lower than in the US, UK or Germany. So I told him: “Everyone knows that France should have made a structural choice for under-employment instead.”

He had no response for that one! Stupid Lefty….

What I like about Cohen is that he isn’t afraid to take on the system. That’s why he puts stuff like “the system” in quotes, because the system obviously doesn’t exist:

“Le Pen’s line of attack on Macron is clear: he is the perpetuation of Hollande, the representative of “the system” and a product of “international finance,” with all the attendant innuendo.”

Oh yes, quotes for “international finance” too – it’s like the Mafia, never admit its existence, Roger!

And the “innuendo” is clearly another anti-Semitic trope sniffed out by Cohen! Why, even the New York City WASP bankers are being victimized by this anti-Semitism! The bankers in Hong Kong and Dubai – more victims of clear anti-Semitic innuendo! When will the persecution of bankers end?!

Why are we demonizing the Jews with crazy conspiracy theories when we should be demonizing Russia?! Thankfully Cohen did with his very next line – thank God (Jewish or not) for honest journalism:

“This attack is pretty disgusting, which is not to say it won’t work. Russia is helping.”

Russia is helping to spread anti-Semitism?! Who has Rachel Maddow’s phone number?! This is her lead item from tonight until May sweeps week!

Cohen went back to Macron.

“Modernity is disruptive,” Macron declared, “and I endorse that.”

Yes! That is what the people want! Disruptions, not stability! Peace, land, bread – no! Liberty, equality, fraternity – no!  Education and safety – no! Modern people prefer disruption, get with the times!

Are you unemployed? It’s simply disruptive modernity, stop whining! Are you laying on a hospital gurney in a hallway instead of being in a room? Being against disruptive modernity is your only illness – walk it off! Can’t hear me because your pension made you choose between heat and hearing aids? VOTE FOR MACRON AND DISRUPTIVE MODERNITY!!!!!

“When neoliberal economics was triumphing everywhere, we refused to adopt it,” said Macron (as Cohen gazed deeply into his glittering blue eyes.) “And now when demagogues are winning, in France pragmatism is going to win.”

This is my guy: the resistance to the triumph of neoliberal economics (Argentina, Indonesia, Greece, etc.) is the number one problem of Europe.

Macron has the eyes of an angel, and the mind of an artist. Which is why Cohen then referenced the great French writer Michel Houellebecq.

Houellebecq is part of that wonderful French intellectual tradition exemplified by that great humanist the Marquis De Sade and Céline, who found Hitler’s tolerance too generous. I once read a poetry book by Houellebecq – The Art of Struggle – his vision of the world is so depressing that when I put it down I sincerely contemplated suicide. What a great artist!

This was really some great journalism right here: Not only did Cohen dare to go the Muslim suburbs, but he actually got a man to go on the record with his first and last name and then publicly turn in his criminal son:

“My son drifts around the projects selling drugs,” he says. (I’d reprint this father’s name, but I didn’t get the quote of someone accusing someone of a crime – libel laws, and all that.)

But thank God Cohen printed that – I’m sure the police will be immediately notified and his son will be arrested shortly. This is why The New York Times is so good – they find informants, publish them, and help clean up society’s big problems.

I’m sure that guy is quite happy he talked to Cohen! The guy’s wife, too! Happy Easter!

“As I leave (the 30% immigrant suburb of) Sevran, a lanky kid barges into me. “You could excuse yourself,” he says, looking for a fight. We square up; he moves off, muttering insults. Violence simmers just beneath the surface.”

More anti-Semitism? More anti-high finance sentiment? Was the kid Palestinian – they’re hungry, so they must be lanky? Who is at fault here, Cohen? Please be clearer when including the culture-defining moment of almost bumping into someone on the street. (It can never happen here.)

After this short trip to the Muslim “no-go zones”, Detective Cohen decided one arrest was enough, and he resumed interviewing the National Front, this time a mayor, to learn about modern France.

“Another Macron stumble — the decision to go to Algiers to tell an autocrat that France should apologize for its colonial-era ‘crimes against humanity’ — caused the mayor to explode.”

Totally a stumble, Cohen is right – why should France apologize for colonial era “crimes against humanity”? I’m glad to see Cohen wasn’t bashful with those quotation marks!

Let’s recap: Right-wing author for a lead quote, breathless support of right-wing economic Macron, right-wing poet for cultural reference, right-wing mayor for an interview, right-wing politicians turning him down for more right-wing interviews, anti-imperialist Algerian government denigrated as “autocrat” – this is exactly the type of American leftist journalism we desperately need! Sorry, Fox News!

“After the meeting, I am joined by two leftists who worked in education before retirement….”

Ohhh, Roger. You’re getting soft – soft like old, retired leftists.

“Their issue is growing inequality and what they call the ‘pauperization’ of France as the welfare state and workers’ rights and salaries are gradually eroded. They wanted a ‘social Europe’; they got what they see as a Europe of ruthless capitalism.”

Pauperization, social Europe – don’t they just look wrong without the quotation marks?   

Cohen was smart: He joined these two ancient, outdated leftists stuck in the past for lunch…and then he immediately cut their nonsense short by inviting the entrepreneurial restaurant owner to give his political views.

“People need to know they can be fired. Otherwise all sense of responsibility is lost. You have to decide in life: Do you want to work or not?”

I say the same thing to my employees: “Do you want to work for ME or not?”

Because my thing is clear: I’m the boss, you are the slave, excuse me, the worker, excuse me that’s too class conscious, the employee.

Anyway, you can’t work for “the people” – we’re cutting government jobs anywhere possible.

So you can work for ME or not work at all, for all I care. I mean, what is this – Russia?

I didn’t really mean to write that last part – it just comes out: force of habit. More pills, please.

Cohen gets to the heart of the matter with his final paragraph – a sad lament of the glorious aristocratic past…which I am currently enjoying in first-class, and I’ll bet Cohen did too.

“Seeking quiet, I wander into a park that was once the grounds of the chateau where Francis I made French the language of the land. The chateau, its roof sagging, its windows boarded up, is collapsing into ruin.”

Francis I and his ruined feudal-era castle…things were so much better then – where did we go wrong? I’m getting misty!

I bet Francis the First was a great man (he was “the first”, after all) but lived modestly in his enormous castle, surrounded by his slaves, I mean his beloved employees, I mean his fellow teammates. 

One thing is sure: I bet Francis the First was a wonderful job creator…if the French only listened to him.

Maybe the French will shake off their depressed laziness, embrace their inner American, avoid the end of days, and vote for Emmanuel the First, I mean Emmanuel Macron?

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About the author

 RAMIN MAZAHERI, Senior Correspondent & Contributing Editor, Dispatch from Paris

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.

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(If you haven’t yet, be sure to read this: Experts: “In a nuclear war between the US and Russia, everybody in the world would die.”)

If a nuclear war is to be avoided, the US should not set any preconditions for direct talks with North Korea.

Yea. What to do? There's no quick fix to the damage inflicted on the US population by decades of passivity, massive ignorance, runaway jingoism and constant lies. Gross mendacity issuing practically from the entire political class and the corporate media will not stop tomorrow—or ever. The whole damn corporate system has to be liquidated for that to happen. In fact, it is possible to imagine that even in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, the old lies and liars will still be in power. Wars do not exactly bring sudden political lucidity to severely brainwashed people.

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That said, it is imperative that those who do see what is going on, what is at stake, try and do something to derail the mad rush to Armageddon. There's no time to organize Third Parties or a new party by normal processes. So we are stuck with the existing whores in the political class, and these abject people respond only to one thing: their own political and (maybe) personal survival. If these bastards see a mighty surge of people calling and demonstrating with clarity in their demands and anger on their lips, they may grow enough of a spine to stem the warmongering and actually begin to isolate the main carriers of this disease, sociopaths like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, the Clintons and their cliques, and of course, the Liar in Chief and his clique of insane billionaires and militarists.

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So call, fax, write and demonstrate, and support the long overdue growth of an antiwar movement. Stopping a nuclear war is the foremost issue of our time. Call your Congress buffoon and state in clear terms that you are fed up, and that you want change or else, and that you won't put up with any votes for more wars—anywhere. This may sound counter-intuitive for us, to be advising you that you call your representative in a false democracy, a person obviously most likely doing the bidding of the plutocracy, those who brought humanity to this pass. But for reasons already mentioned, their own sense of short-term political self-preservation and opportunism, they may actually screw up the courage to do the right thing, for once, something these characters should have been doing all along without needing anyone to tell them to do the obvious. While you are at it, and if you can stomach it, also contact MoveOn.org and similarly pseudo democratic orgs, and challenge them to do the right thing or get lost. Please do this today. Or as soon as you can. Time is precious. Start by finding your Congressional (so-called) representative: http://www.house.gov/htbin/findrep

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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