Australia To Start Taxing Bank Deposits

March 30th, 2015 by Zero Hedge

Up until now, the world’s descent into the NIRPy twilight of fiat currency was a function of failing monetary policy around the globe as central bank after desperate central bank implemented negative and even more negative (in the case of Denmark some four times rapid succession) rates, hoping to make saving so prohibitive consumers would have no choice but to spend the fruits of their labor, or better yet, take out massive loans which they would never be able to repay. However, nobody said it was only central banks who could be the executioners of the world’s saver class: governments are perfectly capable too.  Such as Australia’s.

According to Australia’s ABC News, the “Federal Government looks set to introduce a tax on bank deposits in the May budget.”

Ironically, the idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticized by Tony Abbott at the time. Much has changed in two years, and as ABC reports, assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget.

Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government’s Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details.

“Any announcements or decisions around this proposed policy which we discussed at the last election will be made in the lead up or on budget night,” he said.

Speaking at the Victorian Liberal State Council meeting Mr Abbott has repeated his budget message, focusing on families and small businesses.

“There will be tough decisions in this year’s budget as there must be, but there will also be good news.”

For the banks and creditors, yes. For anyone who is still naive enough to save money in the hopes of deferring purchases for the future, not so much.

The banking industry has raised concerns about a deposit tax, saying it will have to pass the cost back onto customers.

Steven Munchenberg from the Australian Bankers’ Association said it would be a damaging move for the Government.

“It’s going to make it harder for banks to raise deposits which are an important way of funding banks. And therefore for us to fund the economy,” he said. “And we also oppose it because particularly at this point in time with low interest rates a lot of people who are relying on their savings for their incomes are already seeing very low returns and this will actually mean they get even less money.”

Don’t worry Steven, neither central banks nor government care about “a lot of people” – they just care about a select few. As for the banks, once China, and immediately thereafter Australia, launches QE as the entire world descends into a monetary supernova, and Australia’s banks are flooded with trillions in excess reserves like those in the US, all shall be forgiven. As a reminder, banks such as JPM are so flush with zero-cost cash from other sources, wellone other source, they are now actively turning away depositors.

As for Australia, while central banks are untouchable and unaccountable to anyone (except their commercial bank directors and anyone else they secretly meet during those bimonthly sessions in the BIS tower in Basel), the government can be voted in and voted out. Especially a government that is about to break one of its main election promises:

The Federal Opposition has accused the Government of breaking an election promise by planning to introduce a tax on bank deposits.

The former Labor Government put forward the policy in 2013 to raise revenue for a fund to protect customers in the event of a banking collapse.

Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh said Treasurer Joe Hockey criticised the proposal at the time. “When we put it on the table Joe Hockey said that it was a smash and grab on Australian households just aimed at repairing the budget,” he said.

It is almost surprising, but not really, how when it comes down to money, the thin white line between “us” and “them” always disappears when the money runs out.

As for Australia’s savers, welcome to the NIRP world where savers in increasingly more countries are now on the endangered species list.

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Brazil: Economic Policy, The Protest Movement and the Débâcle of the Workers’ Party (PT)

March 30th, 2015 by Alfredo Saad-Filho

Hundreds of thousands of chiefly white middle class protesters took to the streets in Brazil on 15 March in an organized upsurge of hatred against the federal administration led by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). These protests are far more cohesive and better organized than the previous wave of anti-government demonstrations, in 2013; their demands are unambiguously reactionary, and they include primarily the country’s elite.

While the protests are presented as being against corruption and for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, they are actually about party political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and disputes about political funding.

The 2015 demonstrations erupted in the political vacuum created by the paralysis of Dilma’s administration because of its own ineptitude and Brazil’s worsening economy. Those difficulties were compounded by aggressive media reporting of the Lava Jato corruption scandal, focusing on a network of firms channelling vast sums to individuals and political parties through the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Readers should not underestimate this crisis and its devastating implications for the Brazilian left.

At a deeper level, the economic and political crises in Brazil are due to the achievements and limitations of the administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-06 and 2007-10) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-14 and 2015-present). They led a partial economic and social break with neoliberalism that has delivered significant gains in employment and distribution, but also entrenched poor economic performance and left Brazil vulnerable to the global downturn. In the political domain, the PT has transformed the social character of the Brazilian state, while simultaneously accepting a fragile hold on power as a condition of power itself. There has been no meaningful attempt to reform the Constitution or the political system, challenge the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, neutralize the mainstream media or transform the country’s economic structure or international integration. The PT also maintained (with limited flexibility in implementation) the neoliberal macroeconomic ‘Policy Tripod’ imposed by the preceding administration, including inflation targeting and central bank independence, free capital movements and floating exchange rates, and tight fiscal policies. The PT administrations were limited by the ‘reformism lite’ allowed by their unwieldy political alliances. This strategy alienated the party’s base and provoked the opposition into an escalating attack that came to the boil in March 2015.

Life before Dilma

Lula, the founder of the PT, was elected President on his fourth attempt, in 2002. For the first time Brazil was led by a genuine worker-leader. Lula’s power was limited by a powerful Congress that is also fragmented across two dozen raucous and unreliable parties. The PT has consistently elected only around 15 per cent of Deputies and Senators, and the ‘reliable’ left (including the PT) rarely exceeded one-third of seats. Consequently, Lula and Dilma have had to cobble together unwieldy coalitions prone to corruption – both from government, through pork-barrel politics, or from capitalists buying votes and funding rival parties fighting elections every other year. The PT had to manage this ungainly Congress under the gaze of an unfriendly judiciary, a hostile media, an autonomous Federal Prosecution and a corporatist Federal Police often working in cahoots.

The first Lula administration introduced moderate distributional policies, including the formalization of labour contracts, rising minimum wages and new transfer programmes. However, broader social and economic gains were limited by the government’s determination to buy ‘market credibility’ through the dogged implementation of the neoliberal Policy Tripod. The ensuing policies constrained transfers, public investment and industrial restructuring, and promoted the overvaluation of the currency and the reprimarization of the economy.

Low GDP growth rates in the first Lula years frustrated everyone, especially the PT’s traditional base. They felt that their concerns were being ignored and their support was taken for granted, while government officials schmoozed with bankers and industrialists. Even this apparent sell-out was insufficient to remove the political resistance against Lula, and his administration was criticized both for what it did (‘packing up the State with acolytes’ and ‘taxing producers to fund sloth’), and for what it did not do (deliver rapid growth and social quiescence).

The political divide worsened over time. The opposition crystallized around a ‘Neoliberal Alliance’ led by the financial bourgeoisie (suffering economic losses and dwindling control of State policy), and populated by the middle class (tormented by job losses and its dislocation from the outer circle of power, and jealous of the economic and social rise of the broad working class), and scattered segments of the informal workers.

Accelerating economic growth because of the global commodity boom and Lula’s political talent supported his elevation to spectacular heights. He balanced the demands of rival groups through his legendary shrewdness and the judicious distribution of resources through state investment, development funds, wages, benefits and labour law. The economy picked up speed, and taxation, investment, employment and incomes increased in a virtuous circle. The dynamics was sufficiently strong to support bold expansionary policies in the wake of the global crisis. By the end of his second administration, Lula’s approval rates touched on 90 per cent.

Yet, the ‘Lula Moment’ was limited. Even though the neoliberal policy framework had been diluted, the government remained only weakly committed to the rearticulation of the systems of provision hollowed out by the neoliberal transition, and it was unable to diversify exports and raise the technological content of manufacturing production. Brazil created millions of jobs but they were mostly precarious, poorly paid and unskilled; urban services were neglected, manufacturing shrank, and there was alarming underinvestment in infrastructure.

Dilma Mark 1: Policy Zigzag

Dilma Rousseff was a revolutionary activist in her youth, and she rose through the ranks of the PT as a competent manager. She had never been elected to public office until she was chosen by Lula to be his successor. At a personal level, it is unquestionable that Dilma is the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart was deposed in 1964.

Dilma’s first administration shifted macroeconomic policies further toward neo-developmentalism. Interest rates fell, fiscal policy became more expansionary and new investment programmes were introduced. The government intervened widely to reduce costs and expand infrastructure, and BNDES financed an increasing portfolio of loans. Some capital controls were introduced, and the government expanded its social programmes aiming to eliminate extreme poverty. The strategic goal was to shift the engine of growth away from a faltering external sector and toward domestic investment and consumption.

This strategy failed. The international crisis tightened up the fiscal and balance of payments constraints; quantitative easing in the USA and UK destabilized the real, and global uncertainty and strident critiques of ‘interventionism’ limited investment. The public finances deteriorated, inflation crept up and GDP growth sagged.

Government perceptions that the economic strategy was not working, that its credibility was declining and that the external environment was unlikely to improve led to a policy zigzag in 2012, when Dilma’s economic team leaned back toward the neoliberal Policy Tripod. Fiscal austerity returned, and the inflation target became increasingly important. This about-turn came too late to be effective, and too hesitantly to restore faith in the government.

Dilma’s administration had to confront not only a worsening economy but also mounting political turmoil. Since Lula stepped down, the political hegemony of the PT depended on perceptions of ‘managerial competence’, the absence of corruption scandals, continuing growth and distribution, and stable political alliances. None was easily achievable under adverse economic circumstances; worse still, Dilma Rousseff never had Lula’s political talent. She is allegedly impatient with her allies, intolerant with self-interested entrepreneurs and uninterested in social movements; she also intimidates her own staff. A vacuum emerged around the President just as the economy tanked. The media ratcheted up the pressure and started scaremongering about an impending ‘economic disaster’; the government’s base of support buckled and it became difficult to pass legislation. The judiciary tightened the screws around the PT, and successive corruption scandals came to light.

In early 2013, the opinion polls suggested that support for the government was falling, and, in June, vast demonstrations erupted. They exposed the tensions due to the economic slowdown, the government’s isolation and its failure to improve public service provision in line with rising incomes and expectations. The middle classes also vented their fury against the widening of citizenship, changes in the State, transfer programmes, university quotas for blacks and state school pupils, labour rights for domestic servants, and so on.

As the economy halted, the government reverted more and more fully to the Policy Tripod: once pinned to the corner, the PT abandoned their own social and political base in order to try to please domestic, international, industrial, financial and agrarian capital. This was still insufficient. The government never had the support of the financial bourgeoisie, and was not about to gain it now. It lost the middle class because of its distributional and citizenship initiatives. It alienated the organized workers because of the worsening economic situation, corruption scandals and the policy turnaround. It distanced the informal workers for those same reasons and the limitation of the transfer policies. And it lost the internal bourgeoisie because of the economic slowdown, lack of influence over the President and erratic public policies. These groups were bestowed a semblance of coherence by a hostile media claiming that the government was incompetent and the State was out of control. Finally, the administration earned the hostility of Congress because of its inability to negotiate.

Dilma Mark 2: The Wheels Come Off

Dilma Rousseff was re-elected in 2014 by the narrowest margin in recent Brazilian history. Her victory was achieved through a last-minute mass mobilization triggered by left perceptions that the opposition would impose harsh neoliberal economic policies and reverse the social and economic achievements of the PT.

In the first weeks of her second administration Dilma faced converging crises leading to the collapse of the two axes of PT rule: the economic model and the political alliances supporting the administration. The government’s earlier unwillingness to remove the Policy Tripod, the long global crisis and the insufficiency of the country’s industrial policies fed the overvaluation of the currency, deindustrialization and a rising current account deficit. Balance of payments and fiscal constraints weakened the labour markets and induced inflation, and this vicious circle eliminated the scope for distribution and growth. Rising incomes in the previous period and insufficient investment in urban infrastructure led to an intolerable deterioration in service provision, symbolized by transport, in 2013, and water scarcity, in 2014-15. In both cases, the fulcrum was São Paulo, the country’s largest metropolitan area, its economic powerhouse and – crucially – the bedrock of the political right as well as the birthplace of the PT.

Dilma’s desperate response to these crises was to invite a representative of Brazil’s largest private bank to the Ministry of Finance, and charge him with the implementation of a ‘credible’ adjustment programme. The government’s weakness and its adoption of the macroeconomic programme of the opposition triggered an escalation of the political crisis. Another corruption scandal captured the headlines.

The Lava Jato operation led by the Federal Police unveiled a large corruption network centred on Petrobras and including cartels, fraud, robbery and illegal funding for several political parties, among them the PT. This scandal catalysed a mass opposition movement demanding the ‘end of corruption’ and ‘Dilma’s impeachment’, even though there is no legal, moral or political justification for it. Examination of the opposition’s grievances rapidly leads to a laundry list of unfocused and conflicting dissatisfactions articulated by expletives rather than logic.

The protests against Dilma’s administration are doubly misleading. First, they pretend to want her impeachment, even though this is legally untenable, the bourgeoisie knows that this would disarticulate the economic ‘adjustment’, and the PSDB (the neoliberal Brazilian Social Democratic Party, the largest opposition force) has no interest in delivering power to Vice-President Michel Temer’s centrist PMDB or allowing the PT to play the victim and recover in opposition, perhaps led by Lula. It is more convenient to keep Dilma as a lame duck President. Nevertheless, the next Presidential elections are still three years away, and the government could collapse unexpectedly.

Second, the demonstrations pretend to be against corruption in general, but this is not their target. The media and the opposition stress the financial flows involving the PT and downplay the involvement of everyone else, but almost every party and a large number of politicians are tangled up in Lava Jato and other investigations. They include the Speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the opposition leader Aécio Neves, and many more. For the media, only the PT matters, for two reasons: because scandals can be used to cut off the sources of finance to the Party, throttling it, and they can detach the PT from the internal bourgeoisie, that has supported and funded the Party since Lula’s election. The detention of prominent executives and the CEOs of some of Brazil’s largest construction and oil companies and the threat of bankruptcy against oil and shipbuilding firms because of the paralysis of Petrobras sends a clear message that the PT is not to be supported – or else.

The demonstrations against Dilma are not what they seem to be, and they are not about what they ostensibly demand. While they are presented as being against corruption and for her impeachment, they are actually about party political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and disputes about political funding. At another level, the shrivelling of Dilma’s administration signals the exhaustion of the political project of the PT: a historical cycle of the Brazilian left is now coming to the end.

Eight Lessons

The protests against Dilma Rousseff are based on a double false pretence: they are not against corruption, and they do not seek her impeachment. This implies that the mobilization cannot be controlled precisely, and it can just as plausibly grow as it can taper off. In either case, it will leave behind a residue of disgust that can fuel a political spiral of unintended consequences. Beyond this irreducible uncertainty, the fate of the federal administrations led by the PT suggests eight lessons.

First, under favourable circumstances the PT disarmed the political right and disconnected the radical left from the working class. However, when the economic tide turned policy confusion and political crisis fed a confluence of dissatisfactions that now risks overwhelming Dilma’s administration.

Second, unmet aspirations and the convergence of grievances, even if they are mutually incompatible, can trigger political isolation and volatility that can become hard to contain.

Third, while the PT administrations have managed to reduce the income gap between the middle class and the working class, the political distance between them has increased. This chasm creates political instability in the short-term and obstacles for democratic social and political reforms in Brazil in the medium- and long-term.

Fourth, economic growth, social inclusion, the distribution of income and wealth, employment creation and the expansion of infrastructure remain relevant goals, but the PT has become unable to build the political conditions to achieve them.

“This is not … a crisis of the state or the political system, but a crisis of the hegemony of the PT.”

Fifth, despite its volcanic energy the opposition remains bereft of a programme and deprived of popularity. The PT has been implementing the opposition’s neoliberal macroeconomic policies; the PSDB does not seek to overthrow the government (although Dilma may step down if the situation spirals out of control); the upsurge against Dilma and the PT did not raise the popularity of the opposition (‘they are all thieves’), and no one aims to ‘end corruption’. This is not, then, a crisis of the state or the political system, but a crisis of the hegemony of the PT.

Sixth, the experience of the PT suggests that ambitious policy changes are needed in order to break with neoliberalism and secure gains in distribution and poverty reduction. They include changes in the country’s economic base, international integration, employment patterns, public service provision, structures of political representation and the media. These were never contemplated by the PT, and those limitations have now returned to destroy the Party and its leaders. In Brazilian politics, self-imposed weakness is rarely rewarded; instead, it elicits escalating attacks targeting the jugular.

Seventh, the Brazilian opposition has become increasingly aggressive. The 2015 movement is large and cohesive; in the meantime, the left is disorganized and bereft of aspirations and leadership. Despite these successes, the right is constrained by its inability to outline a consistent programme, and it has not gained popularity despite the dégringolade of the PT. The combination of strengths and weaknesses on the sides of the government and the opposition suggests that Brazil is entering a long period of instability. The emergence of a new political hegemony may take several years – and it is unlikely to be led by the left.

Eighth, as the ‘Pink Wave’ crashes in Brazilian shores, the Kirchner administration walks toward the catafalque in Argentina and Chavismo crumbles in Venezuela. These outcomes suggest that transformative projects in Latin America, however radical (or not), are bound to face escalating resistance. Its form, intensity and impact upon the alliances supporting the government will tend to fluctuate with the global environment, making it difficult to plan reformist strategies. It follows that broader alliances are not necessarily better, because they are prone to instability, and that the social, political and institutional sources of power must be targeted as soon as possible. There can be no guarantee that the task will become easier tomorrow, and no certainty that the future will be better than the present. The future does not belong to the left; it must be seized.

Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London.

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Monsanto’s Cancer Causing Glyphosate: The Contamination of Land, Water, Air and Food

March 30th, 2015 by Institute of Science in Society

Institute of Science in Society Special Report

November 10, 2012

Glyphosate has contaminated land, water, air, and our food supply; the maximum permitted levels are set to rise by100-150 times in the European Union if Monsanto gets its way as damning evidence of serious harm to health & the environment piles up Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji and Dr Mae-Wan Ho

A fully referenced and illustrated version of this report is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download here

The use of glyphosate-based herbicides, especially Monsanto’s Roundup formulation, has increased dramatically since the introduction of genetically modified (GM) glyphosate-tolerant crops, resulting in the contamination of our food, environment and water supplies.

Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides in the world. It is still promoted as ‘safe’, despite damning evidence of serious harm to health and the environment.

Evidence of harm to health

  • Monsanto and the European Commission (EC) have known about birth defects since the 1980s. Industry studies found statistically significant skeletal and/or visceral abnormalities as well as reduced viability and increase in spontaneous abortions in rats and rabbits exposed to high doses of glyphosate. Lower doses were later shown to cause dilated hearts.  The EC dismissed all the findings.
  • Independent studies have since found caudal vertebrae loss in rats treated with sub-lethal doses of the herbicide; as well as craniofacial abnormalities, increased embryonic mortality and endocrine disruption, abnormal onset of puberty, and abnormal sexual behaviour and sperm count in male offspring of mothers exposed during gestation.
  • GM soybean-fed female rats gave birth to excessive numbers of severely stunted pups, with over half of the litter dead by three weeks, and the surviving pups were sterile.
  • Non-mammalian animals exposed to glyphosate resulted in increased gonad size, increased mortality, craniofacial abnormalities correlating with abnormal retinoic acid signalling, and reduced egg viability.
  • In vitro exposure to glyphosate resulted in endocrine disruption and death of cells of the testis, placenta, and umbilical cord.
  • A long term in vivo study on rats found females exposed to Roundup and/or Roundup Ready GM maize were two to three times as likely to die as controls and much more likely to develop large mammary tumours, while males presented large tumours four times controls and up to 600 days earlier.
  • Clinical data from Argentina are consistent with lab findings of increases in birth defects and cancers in regions with large areas cultivating glyphosate-tolerant soybean.
  • Endocrine disruption has been observed in both in vivo and in vitro studies in the laboratory, including abnormal levels of testosterone, aromatase enzyme, testosterone and oestrogen receptors, leutinising hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone. Endocrine disruption can lead to cancers and reproductive problems.
  • Epidemiological studies have found links to cancer including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and increased plasma cell proliferation. Cancer rates have risen in in glyphosate-use zones in Argentina. Lab studies found significant increases in interstitial cell tumour incidence in rats as well as skin tumour-promoting activity. Numerous lab studies including those performed by industry showed glyphosate damages DNA of cells in culture as well as in humans living in glyphosate-sprayed regions of Argentina. Non-mammalian studies found defects in cell cycle checkpoints and DNA damage repair machinery. DNA damage is a major prelude to cancers. AMPA, the glyphosate metabolite, also has genotoxic effects.
  • Neurotoxicity effects include Parkinsonism have emerged following acute exposure. Exposure to glyphosate resulted in oxidative stress in lab animals and death of neuronal cells, correlating with Parkinsonian pathology. Acute exposure in fish resulted in acetylcholine esterase (AChE) inhibition. An epidemiological study linked glyphosate -exposure to Attention-Deficit-Hyperactive disorder in children, a disorder associated with AChE inhibition. The original neurotoxicity studies carried out by industry were ruled invalid by the US Environment Protection Agency and urgently need re-examining by independent scientists.
  • Internal organ toxicity has been documented in animal feeding studies with glyphosate-tolerant soybean. Rats suffered kidney abnormalities including renal leakage and ionic disturbances, and liver pathology including irregular hepatocyte nuclei, and increased metabolic rates.
  • Acute toxicity of glyphosate is officially declared low by government agencies; however agricultural workers have reported many symptoms including skin irritation, skin lesions, eye irritation, allergies, respiratory problems and vomiting. Ingestion of large volumes causes systemic toxicity and death.

Evidence of negative environmental and agronomic impacts

  • Widespread use of glyphosate has led to the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds covering an estimated 120 million hectares globally in 2010. So far, 23 species of weeds have been recorded, forcing Monsanto to acknowledge the problem and protect their profits by declaring that their warranty does not cover yield losses. Glyphosate-resistant weeds are threatening the utility of glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops. Resistant weeds are likely responsible for increased herbicide use. Argentinian use went from 2 to 20 litres per hectare between 1996 and 2010.
  • Glyphosate-tolerant crops, as well as other crops grown subsequently in the same fields are affected by glyphosate’s metal chelating properties. Chelation and immobilisation of metal micronutrients such as manganese damages physiological processes in the plant including disease resistance and photosynthesis. Numerous diseases including Goss’ wilt, Fusarium wilt, and Take All are now widespread in the US. More than 40 diseases have been linked to glyphosate use. Reduced lignin content in glyphosate-tolerant crops leads to reduced water retention, requiring more water, and severely compromising yields during drought years.
  • Soil biology is strongly disrupted by glyphosate, which is toxic to many beneficial micro- and macro-organisms including earthworms. It harms a wide range of  microbes, those producing indole-acetic acid (a growth-promoting auxin), responsible for mycorrhizae associations, phosphorus & zinc uptake; microbes such as Pseudomonads and Bacillus that convert insoluble soil oxides to plant-available forms of manganese and iron; nitrogen-fixing bacteria Bradyrhizobium, Rhizobium; and other organisms involved in the biological control of soil-borne diseases.
  • Glyphosate may be retained and transported in soils, with long-lasting cumulative effects on soil ecology and fertility, especially in northern ecosystems with long biologically inactive winters.
  • Glyphosate’s high water solubility makes aquatic wild-life very vulnerable. Lab studies showed extreme toxicity, killing many frog species. Roundup decreased the survival of algae and increased toxic bloom-forming cyanobacteria, hence accelerating the deterioration of water quality especially in small water systems.
  • Indirect effects through habitat disruption are also a concern, as highlighted by the major decline of Monarch butterfly populations whose larvae feed on milkweed that are largely destroyed by glyphosate applications in the US.
  • Livestock illnesses are linked to GM diets, and include reproductive problems, diarrhoea, bloating, spontaneous abortions, reduced live births, inflamed digestive systems, and nutrient deficiency. This has translated into much reduced profit for farmers.
  • Contamination of ground water supplies as well as rain and air has been documented in Spain and the US, threatening our drinking water, leaving people vulnerable to exposure. Berlin city residents were recently shown to carry glyphosate levels above permitted EU drinking water levels.

Conclusion

The serious harm to health and the environment caused by the use of glyphosate herbicides is clear. There is a compelling case for banning or phasing out glyphosate-based herbicides worldwide, in favour of a global transition to non-GM, herbicide-free organic agriculture (see Food Futures Now *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free , ISIS Report).

1 Introduction

A feeding trial lasting two years on rats showed that females exposed to Monsanto’s glyphosate formulation Round-up and/or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified (GM) maize were 2 to 3 times as likely to die as controls and much more likely to develop large mammary tumours. In males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5 to 5.5 times as frequent as the controls, while kidney diseases were 1.3-2.3 times controls. Males also presented large kidney or skin tumours four times as often as the controls and up to 600 days earlier. Biochemical data confirmed significant kidney chronic deficiencies for all treatments and both sexes.

The research team, led by Giles-Eric Séralini of Caen University in France, suggested that the results can be explained by “non-linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup” and “the overexpression of the transgene in the GMO and its metabolic consequences.”

The results were dynamite, and the repercussions are still to be played out [2]. Predictably, the pro-GM brigade around the world launched a concerted campaign to discredit the scientists and their findings (see commentary by John Vidal on the Guardian website [3].

But contrary to the impression given in the popular media, this is not an isolated study suddenly to reveal that GM feed and the most widely used herbicide in the world may be toxic. It is the latest in a series of laboratory experiments backed up by experience of farmers and farm workers around the world that have found toxicity both for GM crops and for the herbicide. It is also the most thorough study to be carried out for the longest duration of two years. Currently, European regulators require companies to do feeding trials for only 90 days.

Note that the new study found toxicity not just for Roundup herbicide, but also for the Roundup-tolerant GM maize (NK603) that had not been sprayed with herbicide. In other words, GM maize has toxicity independently of the herbicide. As most Roundup tolerant GM crops have been sprayed and contain substantial amounts of herbicide and herbicide residues, they may also mask the toxicity of the GM crops themselves.

We review existing evidence on the health and environmental impacts of glyphosate herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant GM crops as the maximum permitted levels of the herbicide and herbicide residues in food are set to rise 100-150 times in the European Union if Monsanto’s new proposal is approved [4].

2 Regulators and industry both culpable

Healthy food and clean water are fundamental needs and basic human rights, but these are being compromised by the ever increasing use of synthetic chemicals in agriculture. Glyphosate-based herbicides, originally developed by Monsanto, are the most widely used in the world and increasing numbers of studies are documenting its link to serious illnesses and environmental damage. Most disturbingly, both Monsanto and the European Commission knew that the chemical could lead to cancer and birth defects prior to its approval for Europe in the 1980s; despite that, glyphosate continues to be touted as a ‘safe’ chemical [5] (see [6] EU Regulators and Monsanto Exposed for Hiding Glyphosate Toxicity, SiS 51).

The first glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup®, was launched by Monsanto in 1974 and its use has risen sharply since the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant genetically modified (GM) crops in 1996. Following the expiry of the glyphosate patent in the US in 1991 and outside the US in 2000, many commercial formulations are available. Based on US data, GM crops have been directly responsible for a 7 % increase in overall pesticide use from 1996 to 2011 [7] (see [8] Study Confirms GM crops lead to increased Pesticide Use, to appear). This is predicted to increase with the emergence and spread of herbicide-resistant weeds (see section 5.1), and insects resistant to Monsanto’s Bt toxin insecticides, as well as the introduction of GM crops with tolerance to multiple herbicides.

Proponents of industrial chemical agriculture and GM crops argue glyphosate increases crop yields, providing a more efficient, cost-effective and safe method of agriculture necessary to tackle hunger and food insecurity across the world. The US officially recognises glyphosate as a safe chemical with regards to human health [9], currently defined as a Toxicity Class III herbicide (slightly toxic) with no carcinogenic activity. The EU classifies it as an irritant that can also cause severe ocular damage [10].

The accumulation of scientific peer-reviewed publications, clinical observations and witness reports from farmers and residents living in glyphosate-treated areas however, refutes the official line. Over a hundred peer-reviewed publications show detrimental effects, proving to the scientific community what farmers in the global South have known for a long time. Not acknowledging those studies goes against fundamental scientific and medical principles as well as the basic human right to a healthy environment, not least because the evidence challenges the naïve assumption that governments’ primary concern is to protect our health and not the pockets of multinational corporations.

Brief history of Monsanto – chemical company turned biotech giant

This review focuses primarily on the scientific effects of glyphosate, but the context of its production is important when considering Monsanto’s recent move from chemical production to agriculture. Can we really trust a chemical company to produce healthy food?

Founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny in St Louis, Missouri, Monsanto’s first product was saccharin, an artificial sweetener. By the 1920s, the company was producing basic industrial chemicals, including sulphuric acid. During the 1940s they were involved in uranium research for the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb; they continued running a nuclear facility until the 1980s. In addition, they became a large manufacturer of synthetic plastics including polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs) used as a chemical insulator and banned in 1979 in the US due to carcinogenicity.  Lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto for contaminating residential areas with PCBs that have left whole towns crippled with cancers and other illnesses. Following the Second World War, Monsanto expanded into large-scale production of chemical pesticides, including DDT and Agent Orange, the latter notoriously used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. One of the components, dioxin, has now been classified as a probable carcinogen by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is estimated that Agent Orange killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers. In addition, it caused cancers and other illness in 2 million people, and birth defects affecting hundreds of thousands. Monsanto was later sued and forced to pay out $180 million to sick US war veterans. DDT was also banned in 1972 (although its use was permitted under certain circumstances) mainly due to effects on wildlife, but it was still exported to foreign countries until 1985. It is now classified by the EPA as a ‘probable carcinogen’, and has been associated with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and endocrine disruption linked to developmental defects. Lasso, another herbicide manufactured by Monsanto was banned in the EU in 2006. Monsanto was recently found guilty of chemical poisoning a French farmer who suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Lasso in 2004 [11].

The commercialisation of Roundup® in 1974 turned Monsanto into the largest pesticide manufacturer in the world. They later turned to biotechnology and the production of GM crops, generating the first GM plant cell in 1982. By 1996, the first GM crop tolerant to glyphosate – Roundup Ready (RR) soybean – was on the market. Today, there are many glyphosate-tolerant crops, including corn, canola, sugar beet, cotton, wheat and alfalfa. Similar varieties made by Bayer CropScience, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Syngenta AG are termed Gly-Tol TM, Optimum ® GAT ® and Agrisure ® GT, respectively. The generation of plants tolerant to glyphosate allows farmers to apply glyphosate while crops are growing, theoretically killing every plant but the crop. The consequence is that crops now contain residual levels, directly exposing consumers and livestock to glyphosate. Not only that, glyphosate tolerant crops accumulate the herbicide and transport it to the roots, excreting it into the root zone (rhizosphere) of the soil, harming the next crop to be planted in the same field (see main text).

3 How glyphosate works

Glyphosate or N-(phoshonomethyl) glycine (molecular formula – C3H8NO5P) acts through inhibiting the plant enzyme – EPSPS (enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase) in the shikimate pathway [12] (see [13] Glyphosate Tolerant Crops Bring Diseases and Death, SiS 47). It catalyses the transformation of phosphoenol pyruvate (PEP) to shikimate-3-phosphate, required for making essential aromatic amino acids phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan. Amino acids are essential building blocks for all proteins. This metabolic pathway exists in all plants, fungi, and some bacteria. Animals do not have the shikimate pathway, and depend on getting the essential amino acids from their diet. Inhibition of protein synthesis leads to rapid necrosis (premature cell death) in the plant.  As the EPSPS enzyme is present in all plants, glyphosate can effectively kill all plant species. The high solubility of glyphosate formulations allows it to be taken up by the plant where it acts systematically from roots to leaves.

Figure 1   Chemical Structure of Glyphosate

Glyphosate-tolerant crops are either engineered to carry extra copies of the EPSPS gene isolated from the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, or glyphosate intolerant versions of EPSPS. These GM crops are therefore tolerant to the herbicide, but are not engineered to metabolise or get rid of it, resulting in GM crops with the herbicide and its residues throughout the plant destined to become food or animal feed.

In addition to inhibition of EPSPS, glyphosate disrupts many biochemical and physiological functions of plants. Glyphosate was first patented as a general metal chelator and strongly chelates micronutrients such as manganese, which is an important co-factor of the EPSPS enzyme (see [13]). This is suggested to be the mechanism by which glyphosate kills plants. Manganese is a co-factor in over 25 plant enzymes. Other macro and micronutrients are also chelated by glyphosate such as Ca2+, Mg2+, Cu2+, Fe2+, Co2+, Ni2+ and Zn2+. This interference with biochemical pathways goes on to compromise biological functions including the immune system as well as crop productivity (see [14] USDA scientist reveals All, SiS 53).

4 Health impacts

There is a wealth of evidence on the health hazards of glyphosate. Its approval, along with other hazardous chemicals, relies on systematic flaws in the EU and US regulatory processes, which to this day, do not require evaluation by independent research, and instead rely solely on the industry’s own studies. Approval is therefore often based on data not available to the public or independent research scientists. Nevertheless, raw data have been obtained from the industry through the law courts, which, when re-analysed by independent scientists, also provide evidence of toxicity.

Taken together, glyphosate is implicated in birth and reproductive defects, endocrine disruption, cancers, genotoxicity, neurotoxicity, respiratory problems, nausea, fever, allergies and skin problems.

4.1 Teratogenicity and reproductive effects

Evidence of teratogenicity (birth defects) and reproductive problems stretches back to the 1980s [5]. Observations made by Monsanto were acknowledged by the German government (and its agencies), acting as the “rapporteur” state on risk assessment to the European Commission.  The German bodies concluded that high doses (500 mg/kg) led to significant skeletal and/or visceral (internal organ) abnormalities in rats and rabbits including the development of an extra 13th rib, reduced viability, and increased spontaneous abortions. Low doses (20 mg/kg) were later shown to cause dilated hearts. The questionable analysis and interpretation of the data by Germany (including claims that dilated hearts had unknown consequences and sample sizes were too small and lacking dose-dependent results) meant that the findings were not considered relevant to human risk assessment. This argument has been comprehensively rebutted in a report by Open Earth Source (see [6]). Most importantly, the findings have been corroborated subsequently.

Independent studies confirmed birth defects in laboratory animals. Defects in frog development were first observed with lethal doses of Roundup® (10mg/L, roughly equivalent to 0.003% dilution of Roundup®) that were still below agricultural concentrations. Effects were 700 times more pronounced with Roundup® compared to another formulation lacking the surfactant polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA), which is added to maximise glyphosate’s leaf penetration, and is thought to increase glyphosate penetration of animal cells as well [19]. POEA may also have independent toxic properties.

It is important to note that regulatory approval does not require assessment of the risk of commercial formulations, and instead relies on testing glyphosate alone. Sub-lethal doses also led to a 15-20 % increase in gonad size and reduced egg viability in Leopard frogs and catfish respectively [16, 17].

A definitive study conducted by Andrés Carrasco and his colleagues in Argentina found neural and craniofacial defects in frogs exposed to sub-lethal doses (1/5,000 dilutions) of glyphosate and Roundup® [18] (see [19] Lab Study Establishes Glyphosate Link to Birth Defects, SiS 48). These effects correlated with over-active retinoic acid (RA), a well-known regulator of the posterior-anterior axis during development (Figure 2). RA is an oxidised form of vitamin A and women are already advised against taking excess vitamin A during pregnancy. It also regulates the expression of genes essential for the development of the nervous system during embryogenesis (shh, slug, otx2), which were inhibited following glyphosate exposure.  Inhibition of RA signalling prevented the teratogenic effects of glyphosate, further confirming its involvement in the observed abnormalities.

The craniofacial defects in frogs are similar to human birth defects linked to retinoic acid signalling such as anencephaly (neural tube defect), microcephaly (small head), facial defects, myelomeningocele (a form of spina bifida), cleft palate, synotia (union or approximation of the ears in front of the neck, often accompanied by the absence or defective development of the lower jaw), polydactily (extra digit), and syndactily  (fusion of digits) ; these diseases are on the rise in pesticide-treated areas such as Paraguay [20].

Figure 2 Effect of glyphosate injection; left to right: control embryo not injected with glyphosate; embryo injected in one cells only; and embryo injected in both cells. Note the reduction of the eye, adapted from [18]

Findings in mammals are consistent with those in amphibians. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the administration of high doses of glyphosate (3 500 mg/kg per day) to pregnant rats resulted in an increased incidence of soft stools, diarrhoea, breathing rattles, red nasal discharge, reduced activity, increased maternal mortality (24% during the treatment period), growth retardation, increased incidence of early resorptions, decrease of total number of implantation and viable foetuses, and increased number of foetuses with reduced ossification of sternebra [21].  Rats orally treated with sub-lethal doses of Roundup® also showed dose-dependent reductions in craniofacial ossification (bone development), caudal vertebrae loss, and increased mortality [22], consistent with amphibian data and RA signalling defects. Prepubescent exposure led to disruption in the onset of puberty in a dose-dependent manner, reduced testosterone production, and abnormal testicular morphology [23]. Reproductive effects were transgenerational, with male offspring of exposed pregnant rats suffering from abnormal sexual behaviour, increased sperm count, early puberty as well as endocrine disruption (see below) [24].

In a feeding trial, senior scientist of the Russian Academy of Sciences Irina Ermakova found that female rats fed rat chow plus Roundup Ready soybean gave birth to an excess of stunted pups: 55.6 % compared with 6.8% in litters from control rats fed rat chow only and 9.1 % of litters from control rats fed rat chow supplemented with non-GM soybean. The stunted rats were dead by three weeks, but the surviving rats in the exposed litters were sterile [25, 26] GM Soya Fed Rats: Stunted, Dead, or Sterile (SiS 33). The experiment was repeated with very similar results. Unfortunately, Irmakova did not succeed in her attempt to get the Roundup Ready soybean analysed for herbicide and herbicide residues, so the effects could be due to a mixture of the GM soya and herbicide/herbicide residues. The second experiment included a group of females fed rat chow plus GM soya protein did not do as badly as those exposed to GM soybean; the mortality rate of pups at three weeks was 15.1 % compared with 8.1 % for controls fed rat chow only, 10 % for controls fed rat chow plus non-GM soybean, and 51.6 % for litters of females fed rat chow plus Roundup Ready soybean. This suggests that extra deaths and stunting were due to the GM soybean; as consistent with the new findings by Séralini and colleagues [1].

Irmakova too, was fiercely attacked, and attempts to discredit her continued for years afterwards, orchestrated by the journal Nature Biotechnology (see [27] Science and Scientist Abused, SiS 36).

Dr Irina Ermakov with the Occupy Monsanto demonstration 17 September 2012

Cell culture models offer insight into a possible mechanism of glyphosate reproductive toxicity. Death of testicular cells [28, 29] (see [30] Glyphosate Kills Rat Testes Cells, SiS 54) as well as embryonic, placental and umbilical cells occurs at levels 10 times below agricultural dilutions and is exacerbated by the presence of POEA in commercial formulations. Endocrine disruption was also noted at lower concentrations (see below).

Clinical and epidemiological data gathered by The Network Of Physicians Of Drop-Sprayed Towns in Argentina show a 2- and 3-fold increase in congenital and musculoskeletal defects respectively between 1971 and 2003, while another doctor noted an increase in birth defects of around 50 % among his patients. Argentina dedicates vast areas of land to RR soybean production, and as a result, an estimated 12 million people in rural/semi-urban areas are exposed to glyphosate. Increases in miscarriages, difficulty in conceiving as well as spontaneous abortions were documented. Many other illnesses were also suspected to have arisen as a result of pesticide spraying (see [31] Pesticide Illnesses and GM Soybeans. Ban on Aerial Spraying Demanded in Argentina, SiS 53). The local physicians confirmed that Carrasco’s laboratory results on amphibians (see earlier) were consistent with the illnesses of their patients.

4.2 Endocrine disruption

The endocrine system consists of various glands that release hormones into the bloodstream, acting as chemical messengers affecting many functions includingmetabolism, growth and development,tissuefunction, behaviour andmood. Disruption of the endocrine system does not commonly result in cell death, or acute toxicity. Instead, endocrine disruption can have serious health effects through interference in cell signalling and physiology, resulting in a range of developmental impacts including sexual and other cell differentiation, bone metabolism, liver metabolism, reproduction, pregnancy, behaviour, and hormone-dependent diseases such as breast or prostate cancer. Endocrine disruption may well underlie many of the reproductive, teratogenic, and carcinogenic effects of glyphosate.

The synthesis of sex hormones is disrupted by glyphosate and Roundup® in both males and females. Mouse and rat testicular Leydig cells (testosterone producing cells) have reduced testosterone levels as well as increased levels of aromatase, an enzyme complex that converts testosterone into oestrogen [28, 29].  Human placental cells, on the other hand, showed decreased aromatase expression [32]. All these imbalances were observed with concentrations well below agricultural dilutions, and effects were more pronounced with commercial formulations containing adjuvants.

Abnormal expression of testosterone and/or oestrogen receptors as well as oestrogen regulated genes has been documented in human liver cells exposed to both glyphosate alone or four commercial formulations, and breast cancer cells exposed to glyphosate [33, 34].

Other hormones were shown to be dysregulated in the presence of glyphosate, including increased expression and serum concentration of leutinising hormone and increased expression of follicle-stimulating hormone. These are both gonadotropin hormones secreted by the pituitary glands that regulate growth, sexual development and reproduction [24].

Rats exposed to Roundup and/or Roundup-tolerant maize over two years exhibited a range of endocrine disruption effects that, typically, differ between the sexes [1]. Thus mammary tumours were rife in exposed females while liver pathologies predominated in exposed males. Similarly, pathology of the pituitary was more significantly increased in exposed females; and big kidney and skin tumours were confined to males.

4.3 Carcinogenicity

Epidemiological studies found that glyphosate exposure increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer of the lymphocytes [35, 36], with one study showing a dose-dependent correlation with exposure to commercial formulations [37]. A rise in plasma cell proliferation associated with multiple myeloma was documented in exposed agricultural workers [38]. The Network of Physicians of Aerial Sprayed Towns in Argentina has implicated glyphosate (see Figure 3), along with other pesticides, in the startling increase in both childhood and adult cancers in pesticide-treated regions, particularly in the vicinity of GM soybean plantations [31]. Increased incidence of interstitial testicular cell tumour at low doses of 32 mg/kg was documented in a two- year rat feeding study [22]. Mouse experiments also showed that glyphosate promotes skin cancer, although not sufficient to initiate tumours by itself [39].  These findings make the latest results from Séralini’s team [1]  all the more significant, as the mammary cancers in herbicide-exposed females and kidney and skin cancers in males are further corroboration of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential suggested by the earlier findings.

Further epidemiological and clinical studies are urgently needed to assess glyphosate’s carcinogenic activity considering the growing evidence of its genotoxic properties.

Figure 3   Aerial spraying of herbicides, Eugene Daily News

4.4 Genotoxicity

Genotoxicity refers to damage of DNA. DNA damage can result in mutations that lead to adverse health effects including cancer, reproductive problems, and developmental defects. Evidence of genotoxicity not only relates to glyphosate, but also to its principle metabolite 2-amino-3-(5-methyl-3-oxo-1,2- oxazol-4-yl)propanoic acid (AMPA). Epidemiological data gathered in both Argentina [22] (exposure to glyphosate among other pesticides) and Ecuador [40] (exposure only to glyphosate) showed DNA damage in blood samples taken from exposed people.

Unpublished industry studies from the 1980s showed that Roundup® causes chromosomal aberrations and gene mutations in mouse lymphoid cells [5].  Increased frequency of DNA adducts (covalently bound chemicals on DNA) in the presence of glyphosate has been documented in the liver and kidney of mice in a dose-dependent manner [41]. This was consistent with the research team’s previous study showing increased frequency of DNA adducts in Italian floriculturist workers exposed to pesticides [42]. Chromosomal and DNA damage was noted in bone marrow, liver, and kidney of mice acutely exposed to sub-lethal doses of Roundup®. Significant effects with glyphosate alone were also observed in the kidney and bone marrow [43]. Human epithelial cells derived from the buccal cavity suffer DNA damage at levels well below agricultural dilutions (20 mg/L)[44], these are the cells likely to be affected by exposure through inhalation (see [45] Glyphosate Toxic to Mouth Cells & Damages DNA, Roundup Much Worse, SiS 54).

Among non-mammals, glyphosate caused cell division dysfunction and alterations in cell cycle checkpoints in sea urchins by disrupting the DNA damage repair machinery [46, 47]. The failure of cell cycle checkpoints can lead to genomic instability and cancer in humans. Glyphosate is also genotoxic in goldfish, European eels, and Nile tilapia [48-50]. Moreover, fruit flies showed increased susceptibility to gender-linked lethal recessive mutations as a result of exposure to glyphosate [51].

Not much is known regarding glyphosate’s main breakdown product AMPA; one study suggested it has acute genotoxic effects [52] and should be investigated further.

4.5 Neurotoxicity

Emerging evidence suggests that glyphosate is neurotoxic, including two published cases of Parkinsonism in humans. A 54 year old man in Brazil was diagnosed with Parkinsonism following accidental spraying; he developed skin lesions six hours after being exposed to spraying, and a month later he developed Parkinson’s disease symptoms [53]. The other case involved a woman in Serbia who ingested 500 millilitres of glyphosate solution and developed Parkinsonism along with lesions of the brain’s white matter and pons (part of brain stem), and altered mental status. The woman suffered additional non-neurological symptoms (see acute toxicity section) and eventually died [54]. Consistently, increased oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and loss of cell death markers were found in the substantia nigra, the brain region most affected in Parkinson’s disease, of rats exposed chronically to glyphosate at sub-lethal levels [55, 56].  Oxidative stress represents an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), also known as free radicals, and the body’s ability to detoxify these reactive intermediates or repair the damage caused by them. ROS are a natural by-product of oxygen metabolism such as mitochondrial respiration, and have important roles in signalling and metabolism. Excess amounts however, can have damaging effects on many components of the cell including lipids in cellular membranes, DNA and proteins. Excess ROS has been implicated in the aetiology of a wide array of diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease (PD), atherosclerosis, heart failure, myocardial infarction and cancer (see [57]  Cancer a Redox Disease, SiS 54). Activation of the tightly regulated apoptotic and autophagic cell death pathways is also implicated in neurodegenerative diseases and has been observed in rat neuronal cell lines exposed to glyphosate in a dose-dependent manner [58].

Other mechanisms of neurotoxicity include the inhibition of acetylcholine esterase (AChE), an enzyme that metabolises the excitatory neurotransmitter acetylcholine. AChE inhibitors such as organophosphate pesticides are potent nerve agents. Symptoms of AChE inhibition include miosis (closing of the eyes), sweating, lacrimation, gastrointestinal symptoms, respiratory difficulties, dyspnea, bradycardia, cyanosis, vomiting, diarrhoea, personality changes, aggressive events, psychotic episodes, disturbances and deficits in memory and attention, as well as coma and death. Further, increased risk of neurodevelopmental, cognitive and behavioural problems such as Attention-Deficit Hyperactive disorder (ADHD), deficits in short-term memory, mental and emotional problems have been associated with exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides in children and the newborn [59].  Although glyphosate is an organophosphate, it is not an organophosphate ester but a phosphanoglycine, and therefore not been assumed to inhibit AChE. New studies suggest otherwise. Catfish and another fish species, C. decemmaculatus, showed AChE inhibition at environmentally relevant concentrations of Roundup® and glyphosate respectively [60, 61]. Furthermore, these effects were seen following acute exposure of up to 96 hours. A tentative association between glyphosate and ADHD in children has been made in an epidemiological study [62].

Further studies need to be done by independent scientists as original neurotoxicology data presented by Monsanto was ruled invalid by the EPA [63].

4.6 Internal organ toxicity

As in the brain (see above), increases in reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been found in the liver, kidney and plasma of rats exposed to acute doses of glyphosate. Concomitant decreases in enzymes that act as powerful antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase occur in the liver (see [64] The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World, ISIS publication).  Liver cells exposed to four glyphosate formulations at low concentrations showed decreases in oestrogen and testosterone receptor levels, DNA damage and decreases in aromatase enzyme activity (see [65] Ban Glyphosate Herbicides Now, SiS 43). Other studies suggest mitochondrial damage to rat and carp liver cells in vitro and in vivo respectively at sub-lethal concentrations [66, 67].

A meta-analysis of 19 feeding studies originally conducted by Monsanto, but later re-analysed by a group of French scientists led by Séralini, found kidney pathology in animals fed RR soybean, including significant ionic disturbances resulting from renal leakage (see [68] GM Feed Toxic, Meta-analysis Reveals, SiS 52). This is consistent with previous results from cell cultures treated with glyphosate (see [69]Death by multiple poisoning,glyphosate and Roundup,SiS42), suggesting that glyphosate present in the GM food was responsible. Liver pathology in animals fed RR soybean included the development of irregular hepatocyte nuclei, more nuclear pores, numerous small fibrillar centres, and abundant dense fibrillar components, indicating increased metabolic rates.

4.7 Acute toxicity

Acute toxicity of glyphosate has been classified ‘low’ based on rat studies performed by industry that only showed effects at concentrations of 5 000 mg/kg. However, agricultural workers exposed at much lower concentrations have documented various symptoms, highlighted in Argentina (see [70] Argentina’s Roundup Human Tragedy, SiS 48). Acute toxicity of glyphosate through skin contact and inhalation includes skin irritation, skin lesions, eye irritation, allergies, respiratory problems and vomiting. In cases of ingestion, severe systemic toxicity and even death has occurred. Ingestion of small amounts can lead to oral ulceration, oesophageal problems, hypersalivation, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Ingestion of larger amounts (usually >85 ml) causes significant toxicity including renal and hepatic impairment, acid–base disturbance, hypotension and pulmonary oedema, impaired consciousness and seizures, coma, hyperkaliemia, encephalopathy (global brain dysfunction), Parkinsonism, respiratory and renal failure. Suicide attempts have been noted as 10-20 % successful with as little as 100 ml ingested.

5 Environmental and agronomic effects

Agribusiness claims that glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops will improve crop yields, increase farmers’ profits and benefit the environment by reducing pesticide use. Exactly the opposite is the case. Pesticide use has actually increased in successive surveys [71](see [72] GM Crops Increase Herbicide Use in the United States, SiS45). Not only that, the evidence indicates that glyphosate herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant crops have had wide-ranging detrimental effects, including  glyphosate resistant super weeds, virulent plant (and new livestock) pathogens, reduced crop health and yield, harm to off-target species from insects to amphibians and livestock, as well as reduced soil fertility.

5.1 Glyphosate resistant weeds

Critics long predicted the evolution of weeds resistant to glyphosate, consistent with all previous herbicides used in the past; and they are right. This is causing huge agronomic and ecological concern as farmers are forced to abandon whole fields of crops (see [73] GM Crops Facing Meltdown in the USA, SiS 46). So much so that Monsanto has issued a statement saying it is no longer responsible for the rising costs of weeds under the Roundup® warranty. The Weed Society of America has now launched free resistance-management courses for farmers, although the solutions are clearly towing the agribusiness line of dousing crops in additional pesticides, a terribly flawed solution that will only lead to more of the same, or worse – weeds resistant to multiple herbicides. Indeed, some species have already evolved resistance to two 0r even three types of herbicides. In some cases, these “superweeds” are so resilient that the only method of destroying them is to pull them out by hand. Palmer amaranth grows at up to 3 inches a day causing an imaginable headache for farmers (see Figure 4).

Figure 4   Field infested with Palmer amaranth ‘superweed’, Agweb

First documented in ryegrass in 1996 in Australia, glyphosate-resistance has since been observed in 23 separate species across 16 countries by 2010, covering an estimated 120 million hectares worldwide and continuing to spread [74].

Up until 2003, 5 resistant populations had been documented worldwide. Since 2007, there has been a 5-fold increase in the spread of resistant weeds (See [75] Monsanto Defeated By Roundup Resistant Weeds, SiS 53). So far, resistant species listed by the WeedScience database include: Palmer Amaranth, Common Waterhemp, Common Ragweed, Giant Ragweed, Ripgut Brome, Australian Fingergrass, Hairy Fleabane, Horseweed, Sumatran Fleabane, Sourgrass, Junglerice, Goosegrass, Kochia, Tropical Sprangletop, Italian Ryegrass, Perennial Ryegrass, Rigid Ryegrass, Ragweed Parthenium, Buckhorn Plantain, Annual Bluegrass, Johnsongrass, Gramilla mansa and Liverseedgrass.

Of all the resistant species, Palmer Amaranth and Common waterhemp have received the most attention. Waterhemp produces up to a million seeds per plant, making it difficult to prevent spreading of resistant populations. It also has a long emergence pattern, which means that multiple rounds of herbicide treatments are required. Resistant common waterhemp was first documented in fields in Missouri, US, in 2004 after at least 6 consecutive years of growing soybeans. The suggested mechanism of resistance in this population was the amplification of EPSPS genes in the plant, allowing it to compensate for glyphosate’s inhibition of the enzyme. According to Bill Johnson, an entomologist from Perdue University in Indiana US, waterhemp is a serious threat to soybean farming with the capacity to reduce yields by 30-50 % [76]. Palmer amaranth is estimated to have infested at least a million separate sites in the US alone. It is a particular hardy plant, and is considered one of the most destructive weed species in the south-eastern US. Field experiments have shown its potential to reduce cotton yields by 17-68 %, having important implications for RR cotton farmers [77].

In order to prolong the utility of herbicide-tolerant GM crops, agribusinesses are now developing crops with multiple tolerance traits, or tolerance to old herbicides like 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). Dow Agrosciences are ready to roll out 2,4-D-tolerant corn, soy and cotton even though this year saw the discovery of 2,4-D resistant waterhemp in Nebraska, making it the sixth mechanism-of-action group to which waterhemp has developed resistance [78].

The emergence of resistant weeds explains the increases in pesticide use over the last few years, as farmers apply more and more in an attempt to rid their farms of hardy weeds. As noted by the Network of Argentinian Physicians of Crop Sprayed Towns, repeated glyphosate use on the same plots of land rose from 2 litres per hectare in 1996, to almost 20 litres in 2011 [79], most likely due to the emergence of resistant weeds.

The extent of damage wreaked by glyphosate-resistant weeds has been further exacerbated by the severe US drought of 2012, which dries out weeds and makes them less sensitive to herbicides [80]. Global warming and herbicide resistant weeds may therefore have synergistic effects on crop yield losses, again highlighting the unsustainable approach of intensive chemical agriculture.

5.2 Effects on crop and plant health

Glyphosate use has been associated with the increased incidence and/or severity of many plant diseases and the overall deterioration of plant functions such as water and nutrient uptake [13].

As mentioned above, glyphosate’s mechanism of action is the systemic chelation of metals, including manganese, magnesium, iron, nickel, zinc and calcium, many of which are important micronutrients. They act as co-factors for many plant enzymes including those involved in the plants’ immune system [14]. While non-transgenic varieties are killed by glyphosate, glyphosate-tolerant crops do not die; but their physiology can be compromised. Manganese is a co-factor for 25 known enzymes involved in processes including photosynthesis, chlorophyll synthesis and nitrate assimilation, and enzymes of the shikimate pathway to which EPSPS belongs. The shikimate pathway is responsible for plant responses to stress and the synthesis of defence molecules against pathogens, such as amino acids, lignins, hormones, phytoalexins, flavenoids and phenols. The virulence mechanism of some pathogens, including Gaeumannomyces and Magnaporthe (which lead to ‘take-all’ and root rot respectively) involves the oxidisation of manganese at the site of infection, compromising the plant’s defence against it. Glyphosate-tolerant crops were found to have reduced mineral content, confirming glyphosates’ metal chelating activity [81-84].

Various plant diseases have reached epidemic proportions in the US, now in its fourth year of epidemics of Goss’ wilt and sudden death syndrome and eighteenth year of epidemic of Fusarium fungal colonisation resulting in root rot and Fusarium wilt.  Not only does glyphosate affect disease susceptibility, there is also evidence of increased disease severity. Examples include Take All, Corynespora root rot in soybean, Fusarium spp diseases, including those caused by Fusarium species that are ordinarily non-pathogenic. Head-scab caused by Fusarium spp of cereals increases following glyphosate application is now prevalent also in cooler climates when previously it was limited to warmer climates. Nine plant pathogens have been suggested to increase in severity as a result of glyphosate treatment of crops, while some 40 diseases are known to be increased in weed control programmes with glyphosate and the list is growing, affecting a wide range of species: apples, bananas, barley, bean, canola, citrus, cotton, grape, melon, soybean, sugar beet, sugarcane, tomato and wheat [85].

USDA scientist Professor Emeritus Don Huber presented detailed evidence including a photograph (Figure 5) to the UK Parliament that glyphosate-tolerant crops are less healthy and yield less. They have a compromised immune system and require extra water, which are major problems as climate change is likely to increase infectious diseases and exacerbate water scarcity [14].

Figure 5   Effects of long-term glyphosate on crop (wheat) health; left not treated with glysphosate, right, treated with glyphosate; adapted from Huber’s presentation [14] 

As consistent with previous findings, GM crops are suffering heavy yield losses in drought-stricken US in 2012 [86]. A farmer who has grown both GM and non-GM varieties of corn and soybean side by side reported an average of 100-120 bushels per acre harvested from non-GM corn compared to 8-12 bushels to 30-50 bushels per acre from GM corn.

According to a recent report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, GM crops have certainly not succeeded in increasing yields [87]; but there is as yet no comprehensive peer-reviewed study on GM crop yields.

As with animal species, endocrine dysfunction has been suggested in plants exposed to glyphosate (see above), potentially affecting health as well as crop yields. Inhibition of auxins involved in plant growth and development, as well as reduced methionine levels have been observed; methionine is a principle substrate for fruit, flower opening and shedding of leaves [88].

Various aquatic species including microalgae, protozoa and crustaceans are susceptible to glyphosate, but more so to the surfactant POEA [89] in Roundup formulations.

5.3 Effects on soil ecology

Soil fertility is fundamental in maintaining plant health and yields. However, along with the rise in industrial agrochemical farming practices, there has been a general increase in the number of plant diseases in the past 15 to 18 years.

Glyphosate has been shown to stimulate the growth of fungi and increase the virulence of soil pathogens such as Xylella fastidiosa which causes citrus variegated chlorosis, while also decreasing the presence of beneficial soil organisms [90] Scientists Reveal Glyphosate Poisons Crops and Soil (SiS47). Four primary soil fungi, Fusarium, Phythium, Rhizoccccctonia, and Phytophthora, have become more active with the use of glyphosate; and concomitantly diseases caused by these fungi have increased, such as head scab in corn, or root rot in soybeans, crown rot in sugar beets. Fusarium head blight, which affects cereal crops, is a disease that produces a mycotoxin that could enter the food chain.

Beneficial micro- and macro-organisms damaged by glyphosate include earthworms, microbes producing indole-acetic acid (a growth-promoting auxin), mycorrhizae associations, phosphorus & zinc uptake, microbes such as Pseudomonads and Bacillus that convert insoluble soil oxides to plant-available forms of manganese and iron, nitrogen-fixing bacteria Bradyrhizobium, Rhizobium, and organisms involved in the biological control of soil-borne diseases that reduce root uptake of nutrients (see [90, 13]  (see Figure 6).

In addition to soil microorganisms, Roundup® but not glyphosate alone, kills three beneficial food microrganisms (Geotrichum candidum, Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus) widely used as starter cultures in the dairy industry [91]. This may explain the loss of microbiodiversity in raw milk observed in recent years.

Figure 6   Interactions of glyphosate with plant and soil biology; adapted from Huber’s presentation [14]

It has been assumed that glyphosate is short-lived, degrading in two weeks, and has low accumulation and drift. However, this conventional view may only be applicable, if at all, in certain environments. Studies in northern regions of the globe have demonstrated that glyphosate and its main metabolite AMPA can remain in the soil even years after the last spraying [92]. That means the herbicide and its residues can remain active and accumulate in soils with increasingly devastating effects on soil ecology.

5.4 Effects on ecosystems

Glyphosate use impacts animal biodiversity and health either directly or indirectly through destruction of habitats. It is considered to be particularly toxic to aquatic and amphibian species, due to its high water solubility.

Amphibians are considered the most endangered animal class on Earth. Recent studies have highlighted glyphosate’s toxicity to frog species, with exposure killing 78 % of animals in laboratory conditions (see [93] Roundup Kills Frogs, SiS 26). A 2012 study found enlarged tails in exposed tadpoles, similar to the adaptive changes seen in response to the presence of predators. Tadpoles adapt their body shape to suit environmental conditions, so any changes not suited to the environment could put the animals at a distinct disadvantage [94]. Currently unpublished data from The Department of Herpetology at the Society of Sciences, Aranzad, Spain suggests that glyphosate concentrations below agricultural levels are sufficient to kill 10 species of amphibians in the Basque region of Spain [95].  As mentioned earlier, birth defects in frogs have also been detailed in laboratory conditions [15].

Studies in aquatic microcosms and mesocosms found that Roundup at 8 mg glyphosate/L inhibited the growth of green algae at the expense of toxic bloom-forming cyanobacteria, with potentially drastic impacts on freshwater aquatic ecosystems [96, 97]. It also accelerates the deterioration of water quality, which is already jeopardising global water supply [98] (World Water Supply in Jeopardy, SiS 56).

The indirect effect of habitat destruction is exemplified by the decline of Monarch butterfly numbers (see [99] Glyphosate and Monarch Butterfly Decline, SiS 52) (Figure 7). The larvae of this species feed almost exclusively on milkweed plants, which are being destroyed through glyphosate treatment of GM crops. In the Midwest of the US, there has been a 58 % decline in milkweed plants and a resulting 17-year decline in Monarch butterfly [100]. A decline in their winter migration to Mexico has been observed stretching back 15 years.

Figure 7   Monarch butterflies, University of Arkansas System

5.5 Diseases of livestock

The rise of certain diseases in livestock populations has been linked to glyphosate ingestion from feeding on RR crops. Huber claims that livestock are suffering a triple whammy of reproductive toxicity caused by endocrine dysfunction (as described above with regards to human health),  nutrient deficiency, and a novel unknown pathogenic ‘entity’ found in many reproductive tissues and dead foetuses as well as other body parts [14].

With regards to nutrient deficiency, manganese deficiencies have been associated with various animal diseases and reproductive failures, which are becoming increasingly common in livestock. In Australia, following two seasons of high levels of stillbirths in cattle, it was found that all dead calves were manganese deficient [101]. Moreover, 63 % of newborn with birth defects were also deficient. Manganese is known to be important for mobilising calcium into bones, correlating with abnormal bone formation in these calves.

A Danish farmer recently reversed illnesses in his pigs through reverting back to a non-GM feed. Illnesses included birth defects, reduced live births, diarrhoea, bloating and poor appetite disappeared, resulting in increased profit for his farm (see [102] GM Soy Linked to Illnesses in Farm Pigs, SiS 55).

5.6   Widespread contamination of water supplies 

With all the described toxic effects of glyphosate, it becomes imperative to assess the level of contamination of the water supplies, our source of drinking water. Recent research in Catalonia, Spain, revealed widespread contamination of their groundwater [103]. In the US, glyphosate has been detected in rain and air samples [104].

Research recently performed in Germany detected glyphosate in the urine of all tested Berlin city residents, including one person who had been eating organic food for over 10 years [105]. Levels reached 5-20 times the established permitted level in drinking water in the EU. Even those who live away from farming areas are not protected. Glyphosate was previously found in urine samples of farm workers at concentrations shown to have cause endocrine disruption.

To conclude

Glyphosate toxicity can no longer be ignored. While evidence of its harm to health and the environment grows, Monsanto is proposing to raise permitted residual levels in lentils by 100 fold in the EU [4]. This is clearly unacceptable. Brazil has recently proposed a new bill that will ban many environmental toxins including glyphosate [106]. A global ban or phase-out of glyphosate use is a matter of urgency, and with that, widespread adoption of non-GM sustainable agriculture [107] (Food Futures Now *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free , ISIS Report).

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The Politics of Surviving Guantánamo

March 30th, 2015 by Global Research News

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is one of 780 detainees imprisoned in Guantánamo.  Jailed since 2002, he fiercely maintains his innocence of any wrongdoing. To date, the U.S. has not charged him with any crime.

Many Guantánamo prisoners were taken into custody “without regard for whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all,” according to Retired Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served as a senior official in the State Department under the Bush Administration. His declaration in a D.C. federal court in spring 2010 explained:

It was politically impossible to release [those who were likely innocent]….The Defense Department would be left without any plausible explanation to the American people…The detention efforts at Guantánamo would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were….The Office of Vice President Richard B. Cheney believed that if hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.

Three years into his incarceration, Slahi wrote a diary recounting his experiences. After U.S. government censors blacked out more than 2,500 areas of text, writer and human rights activist Larry Siems edited the manuscript. Ten years later, the newly published Guantánamo Diary offers Slahi’s deeply personal account of the desperate life he and other detainees faced inside the U.S. prison.  

The following excerpts focus on how Slahi and his fellow detainees reacted to the unrelenting pressure to admit to crimes they may not have committed, to implicate friends who may not have been involved and to,  somehow, survive. 
***

“I Trusted America’s Justice System Too Much”

I wrongly believed that the worst was over, and so I cared less about the time it would take the Americans to figure out that I was not the guy they [were] looking for.

I trusted the American justice system too much, and shared that trust with the detainees from European countries. We all had an idea about how the democratic system works. Other detainees, for instance those from the Middle East, didn’t believe it for a second and trust the American system. Their argument lay on the growing hostility of extremist Americans against Muslims and the Arabs.

With every day going by, the optimists lost ground. The interrogation methods worsened considerably as time went by, and as you shall see, those responsible for GTMO broke all the principles upon which the U.S. was built….

Why Detainees Refused to Cooperate 

…I had a good time in ████ the beginning, but things started to get ugly when some interrogators started to practice torture methods on some detainees….As far as I heard and saw, the only method practiced at first was the cold room, all night. I know a young Saudi man who was taken to interrogation every night and put back in his cell in the morning. I don’t know the details of what exactly happened to him because he was very quiet, but my neighbors told me that he refused to talk to his interrogators.

██████████████████████████████████████████ also told me that he was also put in the cold room two nights in a row because he refused to cooperate.

Most of the detainees by then were refusing to cooperate after they felt they had provided everything relevant to their cases. People were desperate and growing tired of being interrogated all the time, without hope of an end. I personally was relatively new and wanted to take my chances: maybe my fellow detainees were wrong! But I ended up bumping into the same brick wall as anybody else. Detainees grew worried about their situation and the absence of a due process of law, and things started to get worse with the use of the painful methods to extract information….

Deciding Not to Cooperate

…“I am not the guy you’re looking for!” I said in French, and I repeated it in plain English.

██████ started. “I am sure you’re against killing people. We’re not looking for you. We’re looking for those guys who are out there trying to hurt innocents.” He said this while showing me a bunch of ghostly pictures. I refused to look at them, and whenever he tried to put them under my sight I looked somewhere else. I didn’t even want to give him the satisfaction of having taken a look at them.

“Look, ██████████ is twenty-seven years–and ███████ is a really bad person. Somebody like you needs to only talk for five minutes, and you’re a free man,” said ███████.

He was everything but reasonable. When I contemplated his statement, I was like, God, a guy who is cooperating is gonna be locked up for 27 more years, after which he won’t be able to enjoy any kind of life. What kind of harsh country is that? I am sorry to say that ██████ statement wasn’t worth an answer. He and ██████ tried to reason with the help of the MI guy, but there was no convincing me to talk.

You could tell that the interrogators were getting used to detainees who refused to cooperate after having cooperated for a while. Just as I was learning from other detainees how not to cooperate, the interrogators were learning from each other how to deal with non-cooperating detainees. The session was closed and I was sent back to my cell.

I was satisfied with myself, since I now officially belonged to the majority, the non-cooperating detainees. I minded less being locked up unjustly for the rest of my life; what drove me crazy was to be expected to cooperate, too. You lock me up, I give you no information. And we are both cool….

Not Giving Interrogators Control

…I have never felt as violated in myself as I had since the DoD Team started to torture me to get me to admit things that I haven’t done. You, Dear Reader, could never understand the extent of the physical, and much more the psychological, pain people in my situation suffered, no matter how hard you try to put yourself in another’s shoes. Had I done what they accused me of, I would have relieved myself on day one. But the problem is that you cannot just admit to something you haven’t done; you need to deliver the details, which you can’t when you hadn’t done anything. It’s not just, “Yes, I did!” No, it doesn’t work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. One of the hardest things to do is to tell an untruthful story and maintain it, and that is exactly where I was stuck. Of course I didn’t want to involve myself in devastating crimes I hadn’t done–especially under the present circumstances, where the U.S. government was jumping on every Muslim and trying to pin any crime on him.

“We are going to do this with you every single day, day in, day out, unless you speak about ██████ and admit to your crimes,” said ██████.

1 “You have to provide us a smoking gun about another friend of yours. Something like that would really help you,” ██████ said in a later session. “Why should you take all of this, if you can stop it?”

I decided to remain silent during torture and to speak whenever they relieved me. I realized that even asking my interrogators politely to use the bathroom, which was a dead basic right of mine, I gave my interrogators some kind of control they don’t deserve. I knew it was not just about asking for [the] bathroom: it was more about humiliating me and getting me to tell them what they wanted to hear. Ultimately an interrogator is interested in gathering Intels, and typically the end justifies the means in that regard.

And that was another reason why I refused both to drink and to eat: so I didn’t have to use the restroom. And it worked….

Falsely Incriminating Myself

…Now, thanks to the unbearable pain I was suffering, I had nothing to lose, and I allowed myself to say anything to satisfy my assailants. Session followed session since I called █████████.

“People are very happy with what you’re saying,” said ██████ after the first session. I answered all the questions he asked me with incriminating answers. I tried my best to make myself look as bad as I could, which is exactly the way you can make your interrogator happy. I made my mind up to spend the rest of my life in jail.

You see, most people can put up with being imprisoned unjustly, but nobody can can bear agony day in and day out for the rest of his life….

Falsely Incriminating Others

… “I talked today with the Canadians and they told me they don’t believe your story about ███████████ being involved in drug smuggling into the U.S., but we know he is,” he told me once.

“I can only tell you what I know,” I said.

“But we want you to give evidence linking ███████████ to the Millennium Plot. Things like, he supports the Mujs or believes in Jihad are good, but not good enough to lock him up the rest of his life,” he told me.

“Oh yes, I will,” I said. He handed me a bunch of papers and I went back in my cell, Oh, my God, I am being so unjust to myself and my brothers, I kept thinking, and then repeating “Nothing’s gonna happen to us…. They’ll go to hell….Nothing’s gonna happen to us….They’ll….” I kept praying in my heart, and repeating my prayers. I took the pen and paper and wrote all kinds of incriminating lies about a poor person who was just seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he could start a family….

…I felt bad for everybody I hurt with my false testimonies. My only solaces were, one, that I didn’t hurt anybody as I did myself; two, that I had no choice; and three, I was confident that injustice will be defeated, it’s only a matter of time. Moreover, I would not blame anybody for lying about me when he gets tortured….

Groundhog Day Interrogating

…Has there ever, in all of recorded human history, been an interrogation that has gone on, day in and day out, for more than six years? There is nothing an interrogator could say to me that would be new; I’ve heard every variation. Each new interrogator would come up with the most ridiculous theories and lies, but you could tell they were all graduates of the same school: before an interrogator’s mouth opened I knew what he ██████ was going to say and why he██████ was saying it.

“I am your new interrogator. I have very long experience doing this job. I was sent especially from Washington, D.C. to assess your case.”

“You are the most important detainee in this camp. If you cooperate with me, I am personally going to escort you to the airport. If you don’t cooperate, you’re gonna spend the rest of your life on this island.”

“You’re very smart. We don’t want to keep you in jail. We would rather capture the big fish and release the small fish, such as yourself.”

“You haven’t driven a plane into a building; your involvement can be forgiven with just a five-minute talk. The U.S. is the greatest country in the world; we would rather forgive than punish.”

“Many detainees have talked about you being the bad person. I personally don’t believe them; however, I would like to hear your side of the story, so I can defend you appropriately.”

“I have nothing against Islam, I even have many Muslim friends.”

“I have helped many detainees to get out of this place; just by writing a positive report stating that you told the whole truth….”

2And so on, in an endless recitation that all the interrogators recited when they met with their detainees. Most detainees couldn’t help laughing when they had to hear this Groundhog Day nonsense; in fact it was the only entertainment we got in the interrogation booth. When his interrogator told him, “I know you are innocent,” one of my fellow detainees laughed hard and responded, “I’d rather be a criminal and sitting home with my kids.”

I believe anything loses its influence the more we repeat it. If you hear an expression like, “You are the worst criminal on the face of the earth” for the first time, you’ll most likely get the hell scared out of you. But the fear diminishes the more times you hear it, and at some point it will have no effect at all. It may even sound like a daily compliment….

ICRC – U.S. – Detainee Politics

…Finally, in September 2004, ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] was allowed to visit after a long fight with the government. It was very odd to the ICRC that I had all of a sudden disappeared from the camp, as if the earth had swallowed me. All attempts by ICRC representatives to see me or just to know where I was were thoroughly flushed down the tube.

The ICRC had been very worried about my situation, but they couldn’t come to me when I needed them the most. I cannot blame them; they certainly tried. In GTMO the █████████ is integrally responsible for both detainees’ happiness and their agony, in order to have total control over the detainees. redacted and his colleague █████████ categorically refused to give the ICRC access to me. Only after ███████ left was it possible for the ICRC to visit me.

“You are the last detainee we had to fight to see. We have been able to see all other detainees,” said ██████.

████████████████ tried to get me talking about what happened to me during the time they couldn’t have access to me. “We have an idea because we have talked to other detainees who were subject to abuse, but we need you to talk so we can help in stopping further acts of abuse.”

But I always hid the ill-treatment when the ICRC asked me about it because I was afraid of retaliation. That and the fact that the ICRC has no real pressure on the U.S. government; the ICRC tried, but the U.S. government didn’t change its path, even an inch. If they let the Red Cross see a detainee, it meant the operation against that detainee was over.

“We cannot act if you don’t tell us what happened to you,” they would urge me.

“I am sorry! I am only interested in sending and receiving mail, and I am grateful that you’re helping me to do so.”

██████ brought a very high level ICRC ██████ from Switzerland who has been working on my case; ██████ tried to get me talking, but to no avail.

“We understand your worries. all we’re worried about is your well-being, and we respect your decision.”

Although sessions with the ICRC are supposedly private, I was interrogated about the conversations I had during that first session, and I truthfully told the interrogators what we had said. Later I told the ICRC about this practice, and after that nobody asked me what happened in our sessions.

We detainees knew that the meetings with ICRC were monitored; some detainees had been confronted  with statements they had made to the ICRC and there was no way for the █████████ to know them unless the meeting was monitored. Many detainees refused to talk to the ICRC, and suspected them to be interrogators disguised in ICRC clothes. I even know some interrogators who presented themselves as private journalists. But to me that was very naïve: for a detainee to mistake an interrogator for a journalist he would have to be an idiot, and there are better methods to get an idiot talking.

Such mischievous practices led to tensions between detainees and the ICRC. Some ICRC people were even cursed and spit on….

“Open a Torture and War Crimes Investigation”

… I have only written what I experienced, what I saw and what I learned first-hand. I have tried not to exaggerate, or to understate. I have tried to be as fair as possible, to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself. I don’t expect people who don’t know me to believe me, but I expect them, at least, to give me the benefit of the doubt. And if Americans are willing to stand for what they believe in, I also expect public opinion to compel the U.S. government to open a torture and war crimes investigation. I am more than confident that I can prove every single thing I have written in this book if I am ever given the opportunity to call witnesses in a proper judicial procedure, and if military personnel are not given the advantage of straightening their lies and destroying evidence against them….

…In the beginning, the U.S. government was happy with its secret operations, since it thought it had managed to gather all the evils of the world in GTMO, and had circumvented U.S. law and international treaties so that it could perform its revenge. But then it realized, after a lot of painful work, that it had gathered a bunch of non-combatants. Now the U.S. government is stuck with the problem, but it is not willing to be forthcoming and disclose the truth about the whole operation.

Everybody makes mistakes. I believe the U.S. government owes it to the American people to tell them the truth about what is happening in Guantánamo. So far, I have personally cost American taxpayers at least one million dollars, and the counter is ticking higher every day. The other detainees are costing more or less the same. Under these circumstances, Americans need and have the right to know what the hell is going on…

***

Excerpted from the book Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Diary and annotated diary copyright © 2015 by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Introduction and notes copyright © 2015 by Larry Siems. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.

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Far morire la NATO: l’Esercito Europeo è lo strumento per ridurre l’influenza USA in Europa?

March 30th, 2015 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Una forza militare europea viene giustificata come protezione dalla Russia, ma potrebbe anche essere una maniera per ridurre l’influenza statunitense nel momento in cui l’Unione Europea e la Germania arrivano ai ferri corti con gli Stati Uniti e la NATO sulla questione ucraina.
Parlando con il giornale TedescoWelt am Sonntag, il Presidente della Commissione Europea Jean-Claude Juncker ha annunciato che è giunto il momento per la creazione di una forza militare europea unificata. Juncker ha usato la retorica del “difendere i valori dell’Unione Europea” e ha cavalcato le polemiche antirusse per promuovere la creazione di un esercito europeo, che dovrebbe portare un messaggio a Mosca.
Le polemiche e le discussioni in merito a un Esercito Europeo possono essere intorno alla Russia, ma in realtà l’idea è diretta agli Stati Uniti. La storia che c’è sotto riguarda le tensioni che si stanno sviluppando tra gli Stati Uniti da una parte e la Germania e l’UE dall’altra. Questo è il motivo per cui la Germania ha reagito in maniera entusiasta alla proposta, fornendo il suo sostegno a una forza armata europea condivisa.
Precedentemente, l’idea di un Esercito Europeo era stata presa seriamente in considerazione durante la preparazione all’illegale invasione anglo-americana dell’Irak del 2003, quando Germania, Francia, Belgio e Lussemburgo si incontrarono per discuterne come scelta alternativa alla NATO a guida statunitense. L’idea è stata poi tirata fuori in altre circostanze simili. Nel 2003, il motivo di frizione era l’invasione dell’Irak. Nel 2015, è per la crescente tensione fra Germania e Stati Uniti in merito alla crisi in Ucraina.

Ripensamenti a Berlino e Parigi?

Per comprendere gli eventi dietro alla richiesta di un Esercito europeo comune, dobbiamo guardare a quanto accaduto dal novembre 2014 fino a marzo 2015. Tutto comincia nel momento in cui Germania e Francia iniziano a dimostrare di pensarla diversamente in merito al piano di guerra che gli Stati uniti e la NATO stavano intraprendendo in Ucraina e in Europa orientale.

Le differenti posizioni franco-tedesche sono cominciate ad emergere dopo che Tony Blinken, già vice Consigliere per la Sicurezza Nazionale del Presidente Barack Obama e attualmente vice Segretario di Stato e numero due al Dipartimento di Stato, annunciò che gli Stati Uniti avrebbero cominciato a mandare armi all’Ucraina, durante un’audizione del Congresso circa la sua ultima nomina, il 19 novembre 2014. Come l’ha descritta il Fiscal Times: “Washington ha colpito la Russia e gli Europei con un uno-due annunciando di voler armare l’Ucraina.”

Il Ministro degli Esteri russo rispose a Blinken annunciando che se il Pentagono avesse distribuito armi in Ucraina, Washington non solo avrebbe portato il conflitto su un altro livello, ma avrebbe dato anche un chiaro segnale di voler cambiare le dinamiche del conflitto interno all’Ucraina.

Avendo realizzato che le cose sarebbero potute andare fuori dal controllo, Francia e Germania hanno quindi dato vita ad una nuova iniziativa di pace, attraverso dialoghi diplomatici finalizzati a giungere ad un nuovo accordo per il cessate-il-fuoco a Minsk, in Bielorussia, attraverso il “Formato Normandia” composto dai rappresentanti di Francia, Germania, Russia ed Ucraina.

I pessimisti potrebbero sostenere che Francia e Germania hanno scelto la via della diplomazia nel febbraio del 2015 perché i ribelli in Ucraina Orientale o Novorussia, come questi la chiamano, stavano battendo le forze di Kiev. In altre parole, la prima motivazione sarebbe stata quella di riuscire a salvare il governo di Kiev dal collasso senza un valido accordo per l’Est del Paese. Questo potrebbe essere in parte vero, ma la coppia franco-tedesca non vuole vedere l’Europa ridotta ad un inferno che riduce chiunque in cenere.

Le differenze transatlantiche sono state ben visibili alla Conferenza sulla Sicurezza di Monaco, a febbraio. In quella occasione il senatore statunitense Robert Corker, capo della Commissione Affari Esteri del Senato, durante una sessione con la Cancelliera tedesca Angela Merkel, ha sostenuto che il Congresso statunitense credesse che Berlino stesse cercando di impedire a Washington di aumentare pubblicamente gli aiuti militari a Kiev.

La Cancelliera Merkel è stata esplicita nella sua risposta quando ha detto al senatore Corker che la crisi in Ucraina non può essere risolta con mezzi militari e che l’approccio statunitense non porta a nulla e che rende la situazione in Ucraina ancora peggiore. Quando alla Merkel è stato richiesto di esprimersi in merito alla militarizzazione del conflitto in Ucraina da parte del parlamentare britannico Malcolm Rifkind, capo della Commissione sulla Sicurezza e l’Intelligence del Parlamento inglese, la Cancelliera ha risposto che inviare più armi a Kiev è inutile e irrealistico. La Merkel ha detto al parlamentare inglese di “guardare la realtà negli occhi”. La Cancelliera tedesca ha anche sottolineato come in Europa non ci possa essere sicurezza senza la Russia.

La presa di posizione tedesca alla Conferenza sulla Sicurezza di Monaco ha colpito in piena faccia gli Stati Uniti e la loro richiesta agli alleati europei di militarizzare il conflitto in Ucraina. Mentre il Segretario di Stato John Kerry usciva dal consesso per rassicurare i media e il pubblico che non ci fosse una differenza tra Washington e i franco-tedeschi, è stato ampiamente riportato che il senatore guerrafondaio John McCain ha perso la calma mentre era in Baviera. Stando a quanto riportato, McCain avrebbe chiamato l’iniziativa franco-tedesca di pace “la stronzata di Mosca”. Egli avrebbe inoltre criticato Angela Merkel in un’intervista con il canale televisivo tedesco Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), che sarebbe poi stato prontamente chiamato dal Segretario Generale dell’Unione Cristiano Democratica (CDU) con la richiesta di scuse da parte del senatore McCain.

 Il risentimento tedesco per il controllo statunitense della NATO

A febbraio,Bloomberg scrisse: “Nonostante tutta la retorica allarmista verso i barbari russi ai confine, i Paesi NATO sono riluttanti nel mettere i propri soldi laddove mettono la bocca. Solo quelli più vicini ai confini russi stanno aumentando la loro spesa militare quest’anno, mentre gli altri, i Paesi più grandi, stanno effettuando dei tagli. A prescindere da quanto dicono i loro leader di Vladimir Putin, non sembrano credere che questi sia una reale minaccia per l’Occidente.”

Comunque, Washington non si è arresa. Quando l’offensiva di pace franco-tedesca ebbe inizio a febbraio, il generale Philip Breedlove – che è il Comandante supremo delle forze militari della NATO – ha detto: “Non penso che dovremmo precluderci l’opzione militare in Ucraina”. Il generale Breedlove è un generale dell’US Air Force, che prende ordini direttamente dal governo statunitense e che quindi subordina la struttura militare NATO al comando statunitense. Mentre Berlino e Parigi stavano provando a far diminuire il conflitto, Washington stava alzando la posta attraverso Breedlove e attraverso il Segretario Generale della NATO Jens Stoltenberg.

Dopo aver parlato con il Comitato per i Servizi Armati della Camera dei Rappresentanti statunitense, il generale Breedlove ha protestato perché l’aggressione russa stava aumentando in Ucraina. La Germania, ad ogni modo, ha rispedito al mittente le affermazioni di Breedlove, definendole “pericolosa propaganda.”

“I leader tedeschi a Berlino erano stupefatti. Non capivano di cosa Breedlove stesse parlando. E non era la prima volta. Una volta ancora il governo tedesco, sostenuto dalle informazioni raccolte dalla Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), l’agenzia tedesca per l’intelligence estera, non condivideva il punto di vista del Comandante supremo militare della NATO” scriveva Der Spiegel il 6 marzo.

Mentre Berlino ha cercato di smentire le voci circa un forte disaccordo con la NATO in merito ai fuorvianti commenti del generale Breedlove, il Ministro degli Esteri tedesco, in Lettonia il 7 marzo, ha candidamente ammesso che era vero che i Tedeschi non concordavano con gli Stati Uniti e la NATO. Quanto ha fatto Steinmeier è stato rigettare e confutare diplomaticamente ciò che Stati Uniti e NATO avevano dichiarato circa una presunta “aggressione russa” in Ucraina. In Lettonia, l’Alto Rappresentante per la politica estera della UE, Federica Mogherini, ha poi aggiunto la sua voce a quella di Steinmeier. La Mogherini ha detto ai giornalisti a Riga che la UE perseguirà un approccio realista verso Mosca e non sarà spinta o guidata da nessuno verso un confronto frontale. Questo è stato un tacito messaggio agli Stati Uniti: la UE ha realizzato che non ci può essere pace in Europa senza la Russia e non vuole essere utilizzata come una pedina degli Stati Uniti contro Mosca.

Destabilizzare l’Eurasia

La Germania stessa è l’ultima leva per gli Stati Uniti nel conflitto in Ucraina, perché Berlino ha una grande influenza nella direzione che la UE prende. Gli Stati Uniti continueranno ad attizzare il fuoco in Ucraina per destabilizzare l’Europa e l’Eurasia. Faranno ciò che potranno per evitare che l’Unione Europea e la Russia arrivino insieme a formare uno “spazio economico comune” da Lisbona a Vladivostok, che è spregiato come una sorta di universo alternativo dalla Cricca di Washington.

Il Fiscal Times ha raccontato meglio i diversi annunci dei vari funzionari statunitensi in merito all’invio di armi in Ucraina. “Dato il lancio coreografico, gli analisti di Washington dicono che in tutti i modi si tratta di null’altro che di un esercizio di pubblica opinione inteso ad assicurare sostegno per un programma di fornitura di armi che è già al livello pianificato” ha scritto il giornale il 9 febbraio.

Dopo la Conferenza di Sicurezza di Monaco è stato rivelato come in realtà forniture clandestine di armi a Kiev fossero già arrivate. Il Presidente russo Vladimir Putin ha reso la cosa pubblica in una conferenza congiunta assieme al Primo Ministro ungherese Viktor Orban a Budapest, quando ha sostenuto che delle armi erano già state inviate segretamente alle autorità di Kiev. Nello stesso mese un rapporto, denominato Salvare l’indipendenza ucraina resistendo all’aggressione russa: ciò che gli Stati Uniti e la NATO devono fare, sosteneva la necessità di inviare armi all’Ucraina – considerando sia singole armi e missili che personale militare – come strumento per combattere contro la Russia. Questo documento è stato scritto da un triumvirato di important think-thank statunitensi, quali Brookings Institute, Atlantic Council e Chicago Council on Global Affairs – con i primi due che appartengono alla distaccata torre d’avorio di quel “think-tankistan” che è la Cricca di Washington. Questa è lo stessa combriccola che ha deciso le invasioni dell’Irak, della Libia e della Siria.

Attenta NATO! Un Esercito Europeo condiviso all’orizzonte?

E’ all’interno del contesto di divisione tra l’UE e Washington che le richieste di un Esercito Europeo vengono avanzate sia dalla Commissione Europea che dalla Germania.

L’UE e la Germania hanno realizzato che non c’è molto da fare per fermare Washington almeno fino a quando questa ha voce in capitolo sull’UE e sulla sua politica di sicurezza. Sia Berlino che diversi Stati della UE sono risentiti per come Washington sta usando la NATO per perseguire i suoi interessi e per influenzare gli eventi interni dell’Europa. Se non rappresentano una forma di pressione per negoziazioni dietro le quinte con Washington, le richieste di un Esercito Europeo sono pensate per ridurre l’influenza statunitense in Europa e possibilmente per far morire la NATO.

Un Esercito Europeo che cancellasse la NATO avrebbe un altissimo costo strategico per gli Stati Uniti. In un contesto del genere, Washington perderebbe la sua colonna occidentale in Eurasia. Ciò “segnerebbe automaticamente la fine della partecipazione americana al gioco sulla scacchiera eurasiatica”, con le parole del già Consigliere per la Sicurezza Nazionale statunitense Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Le varie intellighenzie negli Stati Uniti sono già coscienti e allarmate per i rischi che un Esercito Europeo rappresenterebbe per l’influenza americana. L’influente rivista Commentary Magazinedell’American Jewish Committee, che è affiliate ai neocons nella Cricca di Washington, attraverso un articolo di Seth Mandel ha chiesto “Perchè la Germania sta indebolendo la NATO?” Mentre il Washington Examiner, come recita il titolo di un articolo di Hoskingson, domanda: “Cosa sta succedendo all’influenza americana?”

Questo è il motivo per cui gli Stati vassalli degli Stati Uniti in Europa -precisamente Regno Unito, Polonia e i tre Paesi baltici – hanno alzato molto forte la loro voce di opposizione a una forza militare comune europea. Mentre Parigi è stata riluttante nell’unirsi alla richiesta di un Esercito Wuropeo, l’esponente politica di opposizione Marine Le Pen ha annunciato che è giunta l’ora per la Francia di uscire dall’ombra degli Stati Uniti.

Il governo del Primo Ministro britannico David Cameron ha risposto a Jean-Claude Juncker chiudendo la porta alla sua idea, considerata una fantasia oltraggiosa e dichiarando che l’esercito è una responsabilità nazionale e non una responsabilità dell’UE. Anche la Polonia e la Lettonia hanno reagito in maniera scettica alla proposta. Tutte queste dichiarazioni sono utili agli interessi statunitensi per preservare la NATO come strumento di influenza in Europa e in Eurasia.

Al 10 di Downing Street si sono contraddetti da soli, affermando che l’esercito sia una questione nazionale e non una collettiva. Solo pochi anni fa, nel 2010, Londra ha firmato dei trattati con la Francia per creare delle unità navali congiunte e per condividere delle portaerei in quella che è una vera e propria amalgama militare. Inoltre, l’esercito britannico e l’industria bellica britannica sono legate a vario livello con gli Stati Uniti.

Ci sono diverse questioni importanti. Le proposte per un Esercito Europeo sono solamente intese a portare pressione agli Stati Uniti o rappresentano un vero tentativo di fermare l’influenza di Washington all’interno dell’Europa? E Berlino e i suoi partner stanno realmente compiendo delle mosse per estromettere Washington dall’Europa con la disattivazione della NATO attraverso un Esercito Europeo comune?

Di Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya per RT

Traduzione di M. Janigro


 

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The “Greening” of China’s Black Electric Power System

March 30th, 2015 by John A. Mathews

 While China’s energy system is still largely a “black” system depending on fossil fuel inputs, the electric power system is greening at the margins. We demonstrate, using 2014 data on additions to China’s electric power system, that the system is greening– with powerful implications for the future of the country’s energy profile. We utilize three lines of argument: first, utilizing data for electric energy generated, where we show that China actually generated less energy from thermal sources in 2014 than in 2013, while increasing generation from water, wind and solar; second, examining capacity additions, we show that new capacity in water, wind and solar (WWS) exceeded new capacity for thermal; and third, in terms of investment. We argue that such data rebut claims made that China is getting blacker while its greening efforts remain small and insubstantial, or that China will become dependent on nuclear power rather than hydro, wind and solar as it cleans its energy system.Many people have recently been avid viewers of Chai Jing’s riveting documentary/talk “Under the Dome” where she brings home the terrible costs of China’s pollution and its ultra-fast industrialization utilizing fossil fuels but particularly coal.

–

Under the Dome is a call to China to wake up and start enforcing the environmental laws – against illegal polluters in factories, in trucks entering Beijing during the night, in smokestack industries throughout the country. It’s time to grow up, she seems to be telling her mostly young audiences. And the phenomenal success her video has had in China itself shows that she has struck a nerve, and could spark a people’s movement to rein in the pollution in China – just as Rachel Carson did in the US with “Silent Spring” published in 1962.But the counterpart to the story of needing to rein in the pollution is the necessity of building an alternative energy system, one which is based on renewable sources that do not emit carbon or other greenhouse gases. It is a fact that China’s energy system generally, and its electric power system in particular, is still largely based on fossil fuels consumption – just like every rising industrial power since the industrial revolution. But it also needs to be acknowledged that China’s energy system is greening – far faster than any other comparable sized system on the planet. Many commentators continue to insist (rightly) on the black character of China’s electric power system – but ignore (wrongly) the strength of the greening tendencies. In a widely reproduced blog posting, Armond Cohen (Executive Director of the Clean Air Task Force in the US) claimed that in 2014, “the amount of new coal energy added to the China grid … exceeded new solar energy by 17 times, new wind energy by more than 4 times, and even new hydro by more than 3 times”1 This assertion and the accompanying chart is meant to imply that China’s electric power system is getting blacker rather than greener. Such an interpretation of what has been happening in China’s power sector is wrong. We use the latest 2014 data to demonstrate why it is wrong.The data for China’s electric power sector are now to hand, provided by the China Electricity Council. We use three sources of data to demonstrate that greening tendencies outrank blackening (fossil-fuelled) tendencies. These are data for 2014 electric energy generation (real generation, as compared with the “putative” generation utilized by Cohen – as discussed below); data for 2014 electric capacity additions; and data for investment in the electric power grid. All three sources demonstrate a greening tendency that outranks a blackening tendency. We hasten to add that building a green energy system is only one aspect of the problem, and (as Chai Jing insists) the existing pollution needs to be reined in, and new less-polluting technologies need to be introduced even while burning fossil fuels. But in this submission we focus on the building of a new green energy system and the progress that is being recorded.

  1. Electric energy generation

Data are now available from the China Electricity Council for real electric energy generation added to the system in 2014 from multiple sources. The headline results are that China generated less power from thermal (fossil fuel) sources in 2014 than in 2013, i.e. thermal power generation actually decreased in 2014. This is an extremely important milestone. By contrast, power generation from non-thermal sources increased by 19% — and strictly green sources, encompassing water, wind and solar (WWS), increased by 200 TWh, or 20%. This is the greening edge of a huge power generation system.

Here are the data. China’s power system generated 5,545 TWh of electricity in 2014, an increase of 173 TWh over the 2013 total, or growth of 3.2%. So the system as a whole is still growing – but not as fast as the economy as a whole (an important disjunction). Thermal (mainly coal burning) sources generated 4173 TWh in 2014, down by 48 TWh from the 2013 total (or a decrease of 1.1%) – the first reduction in thermal power generation in recent times. Non-thermal sources by contrast accounted for 1372 TWh of electric energy generated in 2014, up 221 TWh on the 2013 total. Strictly green sources (WWS) generated 1245 TWh in 2014, up 200 TWh on the 2013 total (an increase of 20%). Nuclear generated 126 TWh, up 14 TWh on the 2013 total (+13%.).

Expressed in terms of percentage changes to the system in 2014, thermal generation declined by 1.1% while WWS increased by 20%. The most dramatic growth was seen in solar power generation, which rose a staggering 175%.

We present these data as in Charts 1a and 1b. The charts show the 2014 additions (positive as well as negative) to the Chinese electric power generation system, in TWh, and in terms of percentage additions.

Fig 1. China electric generation additions (real) in 2014
Fig. 1a Changes in electric energy generated, 2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 1b Percent changes Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

 

Our chart differs greatly from the chart produced by Armond Cohen, referred to above. Cohen’s chart is based not on real electricity generation results, but rather on capacity additions in 2014 modified by assumed capacity factors. Cohen uses these quantities to produce notional additions to electric energy generated – additions he refers to as “electric generation capability additions”. His chart shows notional additions to thermal generation of 240 TWh compared with notional additions for water of 65 TWh, wind 57 TWh and solar 14 TWh; nuclear he shows as a notional addition of 42 TWh. He concludes that China added an extra (notional) 240 TWh from coal and only (notional) 136 TWh from WWS (plus 42 TWh from nuclear), so according to Cohen the system is getting increasingly “black”.

We argue that this modelling approach has misled Cohen to derive conclusions that are at odds with empirical fact. In reality the system is greening at the margin, with actual thermal contribution to electric energy generated reducing in 2014 by 29 TWh and actual WWS sources increasing by 200 TWh – much higher than Cohen allowed for with his notional data. We await Cohen’s public response to our refutation of his widely reproduced blog posting.

Note also that wind-generated electricity continued to exceed nuclear (for the third year running). And solar power sources also outranked nuclear at the margin, with additional energy generated from solar (14.73 TWh) marginally exceeding that from nuclear (14.70 TWh). This result belies arguments that China will be dependent on nuclear for non-carbon sources of electric power. 2

We elaborate on these data by showing historic trends in China’s thermal (Fig 2) and non-thermal (WWS plus nuclear) generation (Fig. 3) and the changes in the system’s composition (thermal vs. non-thermal) over the past six years.

Fig. 2 China: Fossil fuel-based power generation and its growth, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council3         

Fig. 3. China: Total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation and its growth, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 4: Shares of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources compared with non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

(Note: The share of the fossil fuel-based power generation has fallen from 81.2% in 2008 to 75.2% in 2014; while the share of the total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation increased from 18.8% to 24.7% for the same period)

We also note that the figures cited herein provide the most accurate formulation of the current contribution of thermal sources to China’s electric power generation. The correct proportion is 75.2%, and not the widely quoted “approx. 80%” as cited repeatedly by the IEA and reproduced by authors such as Matthew Kahn in Science.4The share of fossil fuel-based power generation in China has in fact fallen from 81.2% in 2008 to 75.2% in 2014, roughly 1% per year. That is a significant rate of change for any power system, let alone the world’s largest. One would think the IEA would accord it the degree of accuracy it deserves and address its global significance.

  1. Generating capacity

A second source of data on the greening of China’s electric power system is data on generating capacity itself. This does not give as accurate a picture of greening or blackening tendencies because of varying capacity factors for wind, solar, nuclear and thermal and their varying utilization hours from time to time – but when compared year by year the data do indeed indicate a trend in the generating capacity of the different sources.

The headline result is that in 2014 China increased the capacity of its electrical generating “machine” to 1.36 trillion watts (TW) – by far the largest such power generating machine on the planet. (The US generating system stands at just over 1 TW.) In 2014 China increased its non-thermal generating capacity by more than its thermal capacity – for the second year in a row. This is a second indicator of greening. In 2014 China increased its thermal generating capacity by 45 GW, reaching a total of 916 GW; while it increased non-thermal capacity by a larger amount, 56 GW, reaching a total of 444 GW. Strictly green sources (WWS) added capacity of 51 GW or 14% growth.

There is an immediate issue to address in these data. How could China add thermal capacity in 2014 but decrease its actual electric energy generation from thermal sources? There is an entirely plausible reason for this. The reason is reduced utilization of thermal capacity in 2014, as thermal power production was cut back in face of competition of non-fossil fuel-based power, as well as because of central government mandates. By contrast the utilization of WWS capacity was increased, diminishing the curtailment levels that had been keeping wind power under-utilized. (Curtailment refers to non-use of an energy source, by switching off its connection to the grid; thus power can still be generated, but is not utilized by the grid as a whole.) This also provides a plausible explanation for the difference between Cohen’s notional results, discussed above, and our results based on actual generation data.

The data for generation capacity can be elaborated as per the following charts 5 (thermal capacity), 6 (non-thermal capacity) and 7 (proportions between thermal and non-thermal capacity).

Fig. 5 China: Fossil fuel-based power generating capacity and growth 2006-2014 (Note: the fossil fuel-based power generating capacity has continued its growth at a modest rate (5.2% in 2014). The decline in fossil fuel-based power generation discussed above, therefore, was presumably due to a fall in the utilization hours in existing thermal power facilities)Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 6. China: Total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity and growth 2008-2014 (Note: the total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity has grown with a rate ranging from 11% to 19% during the past six years)

Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

China’s non-thermal generating capacity, at 444 GW, is far higher than that of any other country. Its strictly green generating capacity (from WWS sources) stands now at 424 GW, with capacity addition in 2014 of 51 GW (meaning that a 1-GW non-thermal power station was added each week, on average). This 424 GW of green generating capacity shows just how much China is investing in the building of this enormous green infrastructure – contradicting the nay-sayers in the US Congress who greeted the US-China Climate Change Accord of 2014 as meaning that China would be “doing nothing” until 2030. On the contrary, China is building the largest green power source on the planet. But again we must add that enforcement of pollution laws and introduction of pollution-controlling technologies in the burning of fossil fuels are equally as important if China’s grave environmental problems are to be solved.

Unlike other countries, China issues planning targets that then guide investment decisions. China’s official targets for renewable energy capacity additions appear to be fully attainable in light of these 2014 results. The ND&RC issued fresh targets for wind and solar PV in 2014, namely that China would have capacity of 70 GW solar PV and 150 GW wind power by 2017.5 The renewable energy targets thus far have been exceeded.

In capacity terms, it is correct to state that China now has raised its non-thermal capacity to close to one third of its total power system (and its strictly WWS green capacity to 31%) – in excess of official targets as outlined in the 12th FYP and subsequent Energy Policy statements. The Energy 12th FYP issued in 2013 projected that China’s non-fossil fuelled generating capacity would reach 30% by 2015. This target has now already been exceeded. Future targets, such as a projected goal for WWS energy sources of reaching 650 GW capacity by 2017, are also likely to be exceeded.

Fig. 7. Shares of electric generating capacity utilizing fossil fuel sources compared with non-fossil fuel-based electric capacity, 2008-2014Source of primary data: China Electricity Council(Note: The share of the fossil fuel-based power generating capacity declined from 76% to 67% during the period 2008-2014; while that of non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity increased from 24% to 32.6%)

Fig. 8. Proportion of installed power capacity from renewable sources (hydro, wind and solar): 1990 -2014, and the estimate of the 2015 target based on the 12th FYPSource of primary data: data for wind and solar power capacity up to 2013 are available from BP 2014 Review of Statistics, data for the total electric capacity and the hydroelectric capacity up to 2012 is available from the US EIA; other data are available from the China Electricity Council..

 

 

We provide an historical overview of China’s changing capacity structure, showing green sources as a proportion of the total electric power system. The share of electric power generation capacity based on non-fossil sources, especially the WWS sources, has steadily increased since 2006, when China started to pursue a green growth strategy (Fig. 8). Based on the recent development in new WWS capacity addition, it appears that the target in China’s Energy Development 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) for 2015 (about 29% from a calculation based on the estimates of the total electric generation capacity and those of individual technologies specified in the 12th FYP) has already been exceeded. These again are momentous results, of enormous benefit to China and to the world.

  1. Investment

A third source of data regarding the greening vs. non-greening of the electric power system is investment. Again the data indicate that China is investing more heavily in green sources of electric power than in non-green (thermal). Indeed China is investing more in its green energy system than any other country. Investment in thermal generation facilities has consistently declined, from RMB 167 billion in 2008 to RMB 95 billion in 2014 (approx. US$15.2 billion) , while investment on non-thermal sources has increased, from around RMB 118 billion in 2008 to at least RMB 252 billion in 2014 (approx.. US$40.3 billion). (We cannot be more precise because of a lack of data on investment in wind and solar power for several years during the recent period.) Total investment for the different sources in the years up to 2014 are shown in Fig. 9.

 

Note that investment in both wind and hydro outranked investment in nuclear sources in 2014. In terms of the investment in electricity generation capacity based on different technologies, the share of investment in renewable (WWS) electric generation has increased steadily, from 32% of the total in 2007, passing 50% in 2011 and reaching 59% in 2013. Adding the investment in nuclear power, the proportion of investment in all non-fossil fuel-based electric generation increased from less than 30% in 2005, to 37% in 2007 to 75% in 2013 while investment in thermal power plants declined from 71% to 25% during the period between 2005 and 2013 (Fig 10). The level of investment in non-fossil fuels-based electricity generation declined slightly in 2014, according to the latest data released from the China Electricity Council in Feb 2015, but still staying high at a level of 74%. It is important to add that the rapidly declining costs of most WWS capacity, especially solar, means that a given level of monetary investment yields far more delivered power. The same is not true of nuclear or thermal, whose total costs and unit-generation costs have increased.

Fig. 9. China: Investments in the electric power grid by sources                                                       

Fig. 10. Investment on non-fossil fuels-based and WWS-based projects as proportion of the total investment in power generation projectsSource of primary data: data since 2007 is available from the CEC; the figure for 2005 is based on data in a report by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (2011).6

Conclusion

We have shown that the China electric power system is greening rapidly at the margins, at the point of change. All the data for additions to the system in 2014 indicate that it is greening more than it is blackening. First, in terms of total electricity generated, thermal generation actually decreased in 2014 while generation from WWS sources increased by 20%, or by 200 TWh in absolute terms. Second, in terms of capacity additions, more capacity was added from non-thermal sources (56 GW) than from thermal sources (45 GW) – with thermal sources being exceeded even by strictly green capacity additions (from WWS) of 51 GW. (We indicated above why we think it plausible that there could be capacity additions for thermal in 2014 but a reduced amount of electric energy generated.) Third, in terms of financial investment, the year 2014 again indicated that green sources were invested in at a much higher rate than non-green (thermal) sources.

We have emphasized that the greening of China’s power system is only one facet of the need to address and resolve the country’s massive pollution and smog problems, which all stem in one way or another from pollution from fossil fuel burning factories, vehicles, ships and households. There is an energy revolution underway in China, and a huge problem to address – but there are also new means of addressing the problem, including the use of social media and the creation of a popular movement as advocated in “Under the Dome”.

Since so much hangs on the success of China’s energy reforms, and in particular on its efforts to build the world’s largest renewable power system – far larger than anything attempted in the West – it is important to report accurately on the system as it evolves, in order to comprehend the overall direction of change. Certainly it remains the case that China’s electric power system is still largely coal-based, and a lot more coal is going to be burnt before the system can be described as more green than black. But the direction of change is clear – and this needs to be acknowledged, and factored into global energy discussions.

John Mathews is professor of strategy at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney. He has taught at MGSM for the past 15 years, and was from 2009 to 2012 concurrently the Eni Chair of Competitive Dynamics and Global Strategy at LUISS Gardi Carli University in Rome. He has specialized in the catch-up strategies of firms and countries in East Asia, publishing widely in this field. He was a Rockefeller Foundation visiting fellow at the Bellagio Study Centre in 2004.

For the past several years Professor Mathews has focused on the greening of business systems. He has published several books based on this research, including Tiger Technology: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry in East Asia (Cambridge UP 2000; co-authored with Cho, Dong-Sung); Dragon Multinational: A New Model of Global Growth (Oxford UP, 2002); and Strategizing, Disequilibrium and Profit (Stanford University Press 2006) which discusses the theoretical foundations of catch-up strategies. In 2014 his new book, Greening of Capitalism: How Asia is Driving the Next Great Transformation, was published by Stanford University Press. His article “Manufacture renewables to build energy security” was published in Nature in September 2014.

Hao Tan is senior lecturer at Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia. At UoN he currently serves as an acting Head of the International Business Discipline and a Program Convenor of Master of International Business. He is an associate of the Centre of Asian Business & Economics at University of Melbourne, and was a visiting professor at National Tsinghua University in Taiwan in 2014.

Hao Tan’s current research interest is in China’s energy transition. Since 2009, he has published over 20 scholarly journal articles and book chapters, including a commentary article in the leading science journal ‘Nature’ (co-authored with John Mathews). He is a frequent contributor to both English- and Chinese-language media channels such as UK Financial Times’ Chinese website, China’s Caixin and Australia’s theconversation.com, on energy and environment-related issues in China.

Notes

1 See Armond Cohen, Feb 18 2015, “No China coal peak in sight: carbon capture will be necessary to tame emissions in this century”, Clean Energy Task Force.

2 This is an argument used frequently by US climate scientist James Hansen, in Congressional testimony. See for example his testimony on 13 March 2014 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

3 See the briefing released by the China Electricity Council on 2 Feb 2015 (in Chinese)

4 See Matthew Kahn, “Fueling the future”, Science, 16 Jan 2015, where he states “China uses [coal] to generate roughly 80% of its electricity” – an assertion sourced to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

5 For commentary on this ND&RC statement, see “China, US look to boost solar and wind capacity”, Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy, 19 May 2014.

6 Given the lack of data for the investment in solar power projects, the proportion of investment in renewables-based on electricity generation is calculated as a residual of the total investment on electricity generation in China and the investment on fossil fuels-based projects.
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The “Greening” of China’s Black Electric Power System

March 30th, 2015 by John A. Mathews

 While China’s energy system is still largely a “black” system depending on fossil fuel inputs, the electric power system is greening at the margins. We demonstrate, using 2014 data on additions to China’s electric power system, that the system is greening– with powerful implications for the future of the country’s energy profile. We utilize three lines of argument: first, utilizing data for electric energy generated, where we show that China actually generated less energy from thermal sources in 2014 than in 2013, while increasing generation from water, wind and solar; second, examining capacity additions, we show that new capacity in water, wind and solar (WWS) exceeded new capacity for thermal; and third, in terms of investment. We argue that such data rebut claims made that China is getting blacker while its greening efforts remain small and insubstantial, or that China will become dependent on nuclear power rather than hydro, wind and solar as it cleans its energy system.Many people have recently been avid viewers of Chai Jing’s riveting documentary/talk “Under the Dome” where she brings home the terrible costs of China’s pollution and its ultra-fast industrialization utilizing fossil fuels but particularly coal.

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Under the Dome is a call to China to wake up and start enforcing the environmental laws – against illegal polluters in factories, in trucks entering Beijing during the night, in smokestack industries throughout the country. It’s time to grow up, she seems to be telling her mostly young audiences. And the phenomenal success her video has had in China itself shows that she has struck a nerve, and could spark a people’s movement to rein in the pollution in China – just as Rachel Carson did in the US with “Silent Spring” published in 1962.But the counterpart to the story of needing to rein in the pollution is the necessity of building an alternative energy system, one which is based on renewable sources that do not emit carbon or other greenhouse gases. It is a fact that China’s energy system generally, and its electric power system in particular, is still largely based on fossil fuels consumption – just like every rising industrial power since the industrial revolution. But it also needs to be acknowledged that China’s energy system is greening – far faster than any other comparable sized system on the planet. Many commentators continue to insist (rightly) on the black character of China’s electric power system – but ignore (wrongly) the strength of the greening tendencies. In a widely reproduced blog posting, Armond Cohen (Executive Director of the Clean Air Task Force in the US) claimed that in 2014, “the amount of new coal energy added to the China grid … exceeded new solar energy by 17 times, new wind energy by more than 4 times, and even new hydro by more than 3 times”1 This assertion and the accompanying chart is meant to imply that China’s electric power system is getting blacker rather than greener. Such an interpretation of what has been happening in China’s power sector is wrong. We use the latest 2014 data to demonstrate why it is wrong.The data for China’s electric power sector are now to hand, provided by the China Electricity Council. We use three sources of data to demonstrate that greening tendencies outrank blackening (fossil-fuelled) tendencies. These are data for 2014 electric energy generation (real generation, as compared with the “putative” generation utilized by Cohen – as discussed below); data for 2014 electric capacity additions; and data for investment in the electric power grid. All three sources demonstrate a greening tendency that outranks a blackening tendency. We hasten to add that building a green energy system is only one aspect of the problem, and (as Chai Jing insists) the existing pollution needs to be reined in, and new less-polluting technologies need to be introduced even while burning fossil fuels. But in this submission we focus on the building of a new green energy system and the progress that is being recorded.

  1. Electric energy generation

Data are now available from the China Electricity Council for real electric energy generation added to the system in 2014 from multiple sources. The headline results are that China generated less power from thermal (fossil fuel) sources in 2014 than in 2013, i.e. thermal power generation actually decreased in 2014. This is an extremely important milestone. By contrast, power generation from non-thermal sources increased by 19% — and strictly green sources, encompassing water, wind and solar (WWS), increased by 200 TWh, or 20%. This is the greening edge of a huge power generation system.

Here are the data. China’s power system generated 5,545 TWh of electricity in 2014, an increase of 173 TWh over the 2013 total, or growth of 3.2%. So the system as a whole is still growing – but not as fast as the economy as a whole (an important disjunction). Thermal (mainly coal burning) sources generated 4173 TWh in 2014, down by 48 TWh from the 2013 total (or a decrease of 1.1%) – the first reduction in thermal power generation in recent times. Non-thermal sources by contrast accounted for 1372 TWh of electric energy generated in 2014, up 221 TWh on the 2013 total. Strictly green sources (WWS) generated 1245 TWh in 2014, up 200 TWh on the 2013 total (an increase of 20%). Nuclear generated 126 TWh, up 14 TWh on the 2013 total (+13%.).

Expressed in terms of percentage changes to the system in 2014, thermal generation declined by 1.1% while WWS increased by 20%. The most dramatic growth was seen in solar power generation, which rose a staggering 175%.

We present these data as in Charts 1a and 1b. The charts show the 2014 additions (positive as well as negative) to the Chinese electric power generation system, in TWh, and in terms of percentage additions.

Fig 1. China electric generation additions (real) in 2014
Fig. 1a Changes in electric energy generated, 2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 1b Percent changes Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

 

Our chart differs greatly from the chart produced by Armond Cohen, referred to above. Cohen’s chart is based not on real electricity generation results, but rather on capacity additions in 2014 modified by assumed capacity factors. Cohen uses these quantities to produce notional additions to electric energy generated – additions he refers to as “electric generation capability additions”. His chart shows notional additions to thermal generation of 240 TWh compared with notional additions for water of 65 TWh, wind 57 TWh and solar 14 TWh; nuclear he shows as a notional addition of 42 TWh. He concludes that China added an extra (notional) 240 TWh from coal and only (notional) 136 TWh from WWS (plus 42 TWh from nuclear), so according to Cohen the system is getting increasingly “black”.

We argue that this modelling approach has misled Cohen to derive conclusions that are at odds with empirical fact. In reality the system is greening at the margin, with actual thermal contribution to electric energy generated reducing in 2014 by 29 TWh and actual WWS sources increasing by 200 TWh – much higher than Cohen allowed for with his notional data. We await Cohen’s public response to our refutation of his widely reproduced blog posting.

Note also that wind-generated electricity continued to exceed nuclear (for the third year running). And solar power sources also outranked nuclear at the margin, with additional energy generated from solar (14.73 TWh) marginally exceeding that from nuclear (14.70 TWh). This result belies arguments that China will be dependent on nuclear for non-carbon sources of electric power. 2

We elaborate on these data by showing historic trends in China’s thermal (Fig 2) and non-thermal (WWS plus nuclear) generation (Fig. 3) and the changes in the system’s composition (thermal vs. non-thermal) over the past six years.

Fig. 2 China: Fossil fuel-based power generation and its growth, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council3         

Fig. 3. China: Total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation and its growth, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 4: Shares of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources compared with non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation, 2008-2014 Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

(Note: The share of the fossil fuel-based power generation has fallen from 81.2% in 2008 to 75.2% in 2014; while the share of the total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generation increased from 18.8% to 24.7% for the same period)

We also note that the figures cited herein provide the most accurate formulation of the current contribution of thermal sources to China’s electric power generation. The correct proportion is 75.2%, and not the widely quoted “approx. 80%” as cited repeatedly by the IEA and reproduced by authors such as Matthew Kahn in Science.4The share of fossil fuel-based power generation in China has in fact fallen from 81.2% in 2008 to 75.2% in 2014, roughly 1% per year. That is a significant rate of change for any power system, let alone the world’s largest. One would think the IEA would accord it the degree of accuracy it deserves and address its global significance.

  1. Generating capacity

A second source of data on the greening of China’s electric power system is data on generating capacity itself. This does not give as accurate a picture of greening or blackening tendencies because of varying capacity factors for wind, solar, nuclear and thermal and their varying utilization hours from time to time – but when compared year by year the data do indeed indicate a trend in the generating capacity of the different sources.

The headline result is that in 2014 China increased the capacity of its electrical generating “machine” to 1.36 trillion watts (TW) – by far the largest such power generating machine on the planet. (The US generating system stands at just over 1 TW.) In 2014 China increased its non-thermal generating capacity by more than its thermal capacity – for the second year in a row. This is a second indicator of greening. In 2014 China increased its thermal generating capacity by 45 GW, reaching a total of 916 GW; while it increased non-thermal capacity by a larger amount, 56 GW, reaching a total of 444 GW. Strictly green sources (WWS) added capacity of 51 GW or 14% growth.

There is an immediate issue to address in these data. How could China add thermal capacity in 2014 but decrease its actual electric energy generation from thermal sources? There is an entirely plausible reason for this. The reason is reduced utilization of thermal capacity in 2014, as thermal power production was cut back in face of competition of non-fossil fuel-based power, as well as because of central government mandates. By contrast the utilization of WWS capacity was increased, diminishing the curtailment levels that had been keeping wind power under-utilized. (Curtailment refers to non-use of an energy source, by switching off its connection to the grid; thus power can still be generated, but is not utilized by the grid as a whole.) This also provides a plausible explanation for the difference between Cohen’s notional results, discussed above, and our results based on actual generation data.

The data for generation capacity can be elaborated as per the following charts 5 (thermal capacity), 6 (non-thermal capacity) and 7 (proportions between thermal and non-thermal capacity).

Fig. 5 China: Fossil fuel-based power generating capacity and growth 2006-2014 (Note: the fossil fuel-based power generating capacity has continued its growth at a modest rate (5.2% in 2014). The decline in fossil fuel-based power generation discussed above, therefore, was presumably due to a fall in the utilization hours in existing thermal power facilities)Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

Fig. 6. China: Total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity and growth 2008-2014 (Note: the total non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity has grown with a rate ranging from 11% to 19% during the past six years)

Source of primary data: China Electricity Council

China’s non-thermal generating capacity, at 444 GW, is far higher than that of any other country. Its strictly green generating capacity (from WWS sources) stands now at 424 GW, with capacity addition in 2014 of 51 GW (meaning that a 1-GW non-thermal power station was added each week, on average). This 424 GW of green generating capacity shows just how much China is investing in the building of this enormous green infrastructure – contradicting the nay-sayers in the US Congress who greeted the US-China Climate Change Accord of 2014 as meaning that China would be “doing nothing” until 2030. On the contrary, China is building the largest green power source on the planet. But again we must add that enforcement of pollution laws and introduction of pollution-controlling technologies in the burning of fossil fuels are equally as important if China’s grave environmental problems are to be solved.

Unlike other countries, China issues planning targets that then guide investment decisions. China’s official targets for renewable energy capacity additions appear to be fully attainable in light of these 2014 results. The ND&RC issued fresh targets for wind and solar PV in 2014, namely that China would have capacity of 70 GW solar PV and 150 GW wind power by 2017.5 The renewable energy targets thus far have been exceeded.

In capacity terms, it is correct to state that China now has raised its non-thermal capacity to close to one third of its total power system (and its strictly WWS green capacity to 31%) – in excess of official targets as outlined in the 12th FYP and subsequent Energy Policy statements. The Energy 12th FYP issued in 2013 projected that China’s non-fossil fuelled generating capacity would reach 30% by 2015. This target has now already been exceeded. Future targets, such as a projected goal for WWS energy sources of reaching 650 GW capacity by 2017, are also likely to be exceeded.

Fig. 7. Shares of electric generating capacity utilizing fossil fuel sources compared with non-fossil fuel-based electric capacity, 2008-2014Source of primary data: China Electricity Council(Note: The share of the fossil fuel-based power generating capacity declined from 76% to 67% during the period 2008-2014; while that of non-fossil fuel-based electricity generating capacity increased from 24% to 32.6%)

Fig. 8. Proportion of installed power capacity from renewable sources (hydro, wind and solar): 1990 -2014, and the estimate of the 2015 target based on the 12th FYPSource of primary data: data for wind and solar power capacity up to 2013 are available from BP 2014 Review of Statistics, data for the total electric capacity and the hydroelectric capacity up to 2012 is available from the US EIA; other data are available from the China Electricity Council..

 

 

We provide an historical overview of China’s changing capacity structure, showing green sources as a proportion of the total electric power system. The share of electric power generation capacity based on non-fossil sources, especially the WWS sources, has steadily increased since 2006, when China started to pursue a green growth strategy (Fig. 8). Based on the recent development in new WWS capacity addition, it appears that the target in China’s Energy Development 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) for 2015 (about 29% from a calculation based on the estimates of the total electric generation capacity and those of individual technologies specified in the 12th FYP) has already been exceeded. These again are momentous results, of enormous benefit to China and to the world.

  1. Investment

A third source of data regarding the greening vs. non-greening of the electric power system is investment. Again the data indicate that China is investing more heavily in green sources of electric power than in non-green (thermal). Indeed China is investing more in its green energy system than any other country. Investment in thermal generation facilities has consistently declined, from RMB 167 billion in 2008 to RMB 95 billion in 2014 (approx. US$15.2 billion) , while investment on non-thermal sources has increased, from around RMB 118 billion in 2008 to at least RMB 252 billion in 2014 (approx.. US$40.3 billion). (We cannot be more precise because of a lack of data on investment in wind and solar power for several years during the recent period.) Total investment for the different sources in the years up to 2014 are shown in Fig. 9.

 

Note that investment in both wind and hydro outranked investment in nuclear sources in 2014. In terms of the investment in electricity generation capacity based on different technologies, the share of investment in renewable (WWS) electric generation has increased steadily, from 32% of the total in 2007, passing 50% in 2011 and reaching 59% in 2013. Adding the investment in nuclear power, the proportion of investment in all non-fossil fuel-based electric generation increased from less than 30% in 2005, to 37% in 2007 to 75% in 2013 while investment in thermal power plants declined from 71% to 25% during the period between 2005 and 2013 (Fig 10). The level of investment in non-fossil fuels-based electricity generation declined slightly in 2014, according to the latest data released from the China Electricity Council in Feb 2015, but still staying high at a level of 74%. It is important to add that the rapidly declining costs of most WWS capacity, especially solar, means that a given level of monetary investment yields far more delivered power. The same is not true of nuclear or thermal, whose total costs and unit-generation costs have increased.

Fig. 9. China: Investments in the electric power grid by sources                                                       

Fig. 10. Investment on non-fossil fuels-based and WWS-based projects as proportion of the total investment in power generation projectsSource of primary data: data since 2007 is available from the CEC; the figure for 2005 is based on data in a report by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (2011).6

Conclusion

We have shown that the China electric power system is greening rapidly at the margins, at the point of change. All the data for additions to the system in 2014 indicate that it is greening more than it is blackening. First, in terms of total electricity generated, thermal generation actually decreased in 2014 while generation from WWS sources increased by 20%, or by 200 TWh in absolute terms. Second, in terms of capacity additions, more capacity was added from non-thermal sources (56 GW) than from thermal sources (45 GW) – with thermal sources being exceeded even by strictly green capacity additions (from WWS) of 51 GW. (We indicated above why we think it plausible that there could be capacity additions for thermal in 2014 but a reduced amount of electric energy generated.) Third, in terms of financial investment, the year 2014 again indicated that green sources were invested in at a much higher rate than non-green (thermal) sources.

We have emphasized that the greening of China’s power system is only one facet of the need to address and resolve the country’s massive pollution and smog problems, which all stem in one way or another from pollution from fossil fuel burning factories, vehicles, ships and households. There is an energy revolution underway in China, and a huge problem to address – but there are also new means of addressing the problem, including the use of social media and the creation of a popular movement as advocated in “Under the Dome”.

Since so much hangs on the success of China’s energy reforms, and in particular on its efforts to build the world’s largest renewable power system – far larger than anything attempted in the West – it is important to report accurately on the system as it evolves, in order to comprehend the overall direction of change. Certainly it remains the case that China’s electric power system is still largely coal-based, and a lot more coal is going to be burnt before the system can be described as more green than black. But the direction of change is clear – and this needs to be acknowledged, and factored into global energy discussions.

John Mathews is professor of strategy at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney. He has taught at MGSM for the past 15 years, and was from 2009 to 2012 concurrently the Eni Chair of Competitive Dynamics and Global Strategy at LUISS Gardi Carli University in Rome. He has specialized in the catch-up strategies of firms and countries in East Asia, publishing widely in this field. He was a Rockefeller Foundation visiting fellow at the Bellagio Study Centre in 2004.

For the past several years Professor Mathews has focused on the greening of business systems. He has published several books based on this research, including Tiger Technology: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry in East Asia (Cambridge UP 2000; co-authored with Cho, Dong-Sung); Dragon Multinational: A New Model of Global Growth (Oxford UP, 2002); and Strategizing, Disequilibrium and Profit (Stanford University Press 2006) which discusses the theoretical foundations of catch-up strategies. In 2014 his new book, Greening of Capitalism: How Asia is Driving the Next Great Transformation, was published by Stanford University Press. His article “Manufacture renewables to build energy security” was published in Nature in September 2014.

Hao Tan is senior lecturer at Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia. At UoN he currently serves as an acting Head of the International Business Discipline and a Program Convenor of Master of International Business. He is an associate of the Centre of Asian Business & Economics at University of Melbourne, and was a visiting professor at National Tsinghua University in Taiwan in 2014.

Hao Tan’s current research interest is in China’s energy transition. Since 2009, he has published over 20 scholarly journal articles and book chapters, including a commentary article in the leading science journal ‘Nature’ (co-authored with John Mathews). He is a frequent contributor to both English- and Chinese-language media channels such as UK Financial Times’ Chinese website, China’s Caixin and Australia’s theconversation.com, on energy and environment-related issues in China.

Notes

1 See Armond Cohen, Feb 18 2015, “No China coal peak in sight: carbon capture will be necessary to tame emissions in this century”, Clean Energy Task Force.

2 This is an argument used frequently by US climate scientist James Hansen, in Congressional testimony. See for example his testimony on 13 March 2014 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

3 See the briefing released by the China Electricity Council on 2 Feb 2015 (in Chinese)

4 See Matthew Kahn, “Fueling the future”, Science, 16 Jan 2015, where he states “China uses [coal] to generate roughly 80% of its electricity” – an assertion sourced to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

5 For commentary on this ND&RC statement, see “China, US look to boost solar and wind capacity”, Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy, 19 May 2014.

6 Given the lack of data for the investment in solar power projects, the proportion of investment in renewables-based on electricity generation is calculated as a residual of the total investment on electricity generation in China and the investment on fossil fuels-based projects.
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Both Israel and Iran Should Subscribe to a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ)

March 30th, 2015 by Anthony Bellchambers

The Sunday Times yesterday reported that fears are intensifying of a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East. However, it failed to mention that to designate the Middle East including both Iran and Israel as a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) – as already proposed by EU governments – would obviate this risk, at a stroke.

Unfortunately, a resolution to this effect has fallen foul of the pro-Israel lobby and its U.S. veto in the United Nations, for the obvious reason that it would entail the State of Israel in declaring its secret nuclear arsenal – the only such nuclear stockpile in the world – estimated by American scientists to hold up to 400 warheads, enough to wipe out the whole Middle East.

But what causes the most dramatic concern is that this arsenal remains undeclared and therefore uninspected by the IAEA. What we further know is that a fleet of German-built, Dolphin-class submarines already delivered to the Israeli Navy has now been converted to being nuclear-armed with ICB cruise missiles and assumed to be patrolling the Mediterranean and Red Seas and that the potential for an Israeli attack upon Iran could increase exponentially.

The obvious answer is for the European Union and the U.S. Congress to support an urgent UN resolution for a Nuclear Weapons Free Middle East if world peace is a vital goal and nuclear war with its potential for millions of deaths – initially in the Middle East – is to be avoided.

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Flashback to March 29, 2011: Over 6 million people marched across Syria in support of President al-Assad

March 30th, 2015 by Cem Ertür

Huge demonstrations in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were held across Syria two weeks after the launch of the NATO-led covert war on Syria on March 16, 2011.

It is worth bearing in mind that back then the overall population of Syria was around 22,5 million in March 2011. Apart few exceptions, the al-Manar report below was totally ignored by the western mainstream and “alternative” media alike.

2 million Syrians marched in Damascus in support of President Bashar al-Assad on March 29th, 2011

excerpt from:  ‘Million-Man March’ in Support for Assad

by Batoul Wehbe, al-Manar, 29 March 2011

Millions of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad supporters poured into the country’s streets in a show of support for their leader calling their protests “loyalty to the homeland”.

Sources told Al-Manar TV that there are about two million protesters in Damascus, another two in Aleppo, a million in Hamah, a million in Homos and hundred of thousands in other cities.

All roads leading to Sabeh Bahrat (“Seven Seas”) square in Damascus were cut off by police, as men, women and children raised Syrian flags and pictures of [President Bashar al] Assad and his father, late president Hafez al-Assad.

Syrian state TV reported on Tuesday that Al-Assad accepted the resignation of the Syrian government.

Protesters across the country were chanting slogans in support of the President, who pledged to make reforms in the country and is expected to deliver a speech tonight addressing the nation and especially Daraa people who suffered much lately.

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الجغرافية السياسية وراء الحرب في اليمن: بداية جبهة جديدة ضد إيران

March 29th, 2015 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

إنزعجت الولايات المتحدة والسعودية جدا عندما إستولت الحركة اليمنية الحوثيين أو أنصار الله على العاصمة اليمنية صنعاء في سبتمبر 2014. تم إجبار الرئيس اليمني الذي تدعمه السعودية عبد ربه منصور الهادي بطريقة مهينة على المشاركة في السلطة مع الحوثيين وتحالف القبائل اليمنية الشمالية التي ساعدتهم على دخول صنعاء. أعلن الهادي أن المفاوضات من أجل حكومة وحدة وطنية في اليمن ستحدث وأن حلفائه الأمريكيين والسعوديين حاولا إستخدام الحوار الوطني الجديد للوساطة لإحتواء وطمئنة الحوثيين.

لقد تم قلب الحقيقة حول الحرب في اليمن رأسا على عقب. الحرب وتنحية الرئيس عبد ربه منصور الهادي في اليمن ليسوا نتيجة لـ “إنقلاب حوثي” في اليمن؟ على العكس. لقد تمت تنحية الهادي لأنه بدعم سعودي وأمريكي قد حاول أن يرجع في إتفاقية تقاسم السلطة التي أقامها والعودة باليمن إلى الحكم السلطوي. إن تنحية الرئيس الهادي من قبل الحوثيين وحلفائهم السياسين كان رد فعل غير متوقع للإستيلاء الذي كان الهادي يخطط له مع واشنطون وآل سعود.

يمثل الحوثيين وحلفائهم شريحة مقطعية متنوعة من المجتمع اليمني واليمنين. حركة الحوثيين هي تحالف محلي ضد الهادي يتضمن المسلمين الشيعة والمسلمين السنة معا. لم يفكر الأمريكين ولا آل سعود أن الحوثيين سيثبتون نفسهم بتنحية الهادي عن السلطة ولكن رد الفعل ذلك كان في طور الإعداد منذ عقد. مع تورط آل سعود في إضطهاد الحوثيين والتلاعب بالسياسة القبلية في اليمن حتى قبل أن يصبح رئيسا. عندما أصبح رئيس اليمن جرجر قدميه وكان يعمل ضد تطبيق الترتيبات التي تم وضعها عبر الإجماع والمفاوضات في الحوار الوطني اليمني والذي عقد بعد إجبار علي عبد الله صالح على تسليم سلطاته في 2011.

إنقلاب أم إنقلاب مضاد: ما الذي حدث في اليمن؟

في البداية عندما إستولوا على صنعاء في أواخر 2014 رفض الحوثيون إقتراحات الهادي وعروضه الجديدة حول إتفاقية رسمية لتقاسم السلطة قائلين أنه شخص مفلس أخلاقيا تنكر بالفعل لوعوده السابقة حلو تقاسم السلطة السياسية. في هذه النقطة إن منح هادي لواشنطون وآل سعود جعلته أضرت شعبيته بعمق في اليمن مع أغلبية السكان. بعد شهران في يوم 8 نوفمبر قام الحزب الذي ينتمي إليه هادي المؤتمر الشعبي اليمني سيلفظ هادي كرئيسه أيضا.

في البداية إحتجز الحوثيون الرئيس الهادي وإستولوا على القصر الرئاسي ومباني حكومية يمنية أخرى يوم 20 يناير. بمساندة شعبية كون الحوثيون بعد أكثر قليلا من أسبوعات الحكومة اليمنية الإنتقالية يوم 6 فبراير وتم إجبار الهادي على الإستقالة. أعلن الحوثيون أن الهادي والولايات المتحدة والسعودية يخططون لتمدير اليمن يوم 26 فبراير.

كانت إستقالة الهادي تراجعا للسياسة الخارجية الأمريكية. وقد أدت إلى تراجع عملي للسي أي أيه والبنتاجون الذي أجبر على إجلاء أفراد عسكريين أمريكين وعاملين بالإستخبارات من اليمن. كتبت لوس أنجلوس تايمز في 25 مارس نقلا عن مسؤولين أمريكين أن الحوثين وضع أيديهم على عدة وثائق سريعة عندما إستولوا على مكتب الأمن الوطني اليمني الذي كان يعمل بشكل متقارب مع السي أي إيه مما عرض عمليات واشنطون في اليمن للخطر.

فر الهادي من العاصمة صنعاء إلى عدن في 21 فبراير وأعلنها عاصمة مؤقتة لليمن في 7 مارس. أغلقت الولايات المتحدة وفرنسا وتركيا وحلفائهم الغربيين سفارتهم. وسريعا نقلت الولايات المتحدة والسعودية والكويت والبحرين وقطر والإمارات سفاراتهم من صنعاء إلى عدن فيما يرجح أنها تحرك منسق. تراجع الهادي عن خطاب إستقالته كرئيس وأعلن أنه يكون حكومة في المنفى.

الحوثين وحلفائهم السياسين رفضوا إتباع مطالب الولايات المتحدة والسعودية التي عبر عنها الهادي في عدن كما عبرت عنها الرياض بهيستيريا متزايدة. نتيجة لذلك دعى وزير خارجية الهادي رياض ياسين السعودية والممالك البترودولار العربية للتدخل عسكريا لمنع الحوثيين من السيطرة على المجال الجوي اليمني في 23 مارس. قال ياسين للشرق الأوسط المتحدثة بأسم السعوديين أن حملة القصف كانت ضرورية وأنه كان يجب فرض منطقة حظر جوي فوق اليمن.

أدرك الحوثثن أن الصراع العسكري كان يوشك على البدأ ولذلك أسرع الحوثيون وحلفائهم في الجيش اليمني للسيطرة على أكبر عدد ممكن من المطارات والقواعد الجوية مثل العند بأسرع وقت ممكن. وقد سارعوا لتحييد الهادي ودخلوا عدن يوم 25 مارس.

بحلول الوقت الذي دخل فيه الحوثيين وحلفائهم إلى اليمن كان الهادي قد هرب إلى المدينة اليمنية الساحلية. سيعود الهادي للظهور في السعودية عندما يبدأ آل سعود في مهاجمة اليمن في 26 مارس. وسيسافر عبد ربه منصور الهادي إلى مصر لحضور إجتماع جامعة الدول العربية حول اليمن.

اليمن والمعادلة الإستراتيجية المتغيرة في الشرق الأوسط

وقع إستيلاء الحوثيين على صنعاء في نفس المرحلة الزمنية التي حدثت فيها سلسلة من النجاحات الإقليمية لإيران وحز ب الله وسوريا وكتلة المقاومة التي يشكلونها مع أطراف محلية أخرى بشكل جماعي. في سوريا إستطاعت الحكومة السورية أن تثبت موقفها بينما كانت العراق تدفع حركة داعش بمساعدة ملحوظة من إيران والمليشيات العراقية الموالية لإيران.

بدأت المعادلة الإستراتيجية في الشرق الأوسط في التحرك مع إتضاح أن إيران قد أصبحت مركزية في هندسة أمنه وإستقراره. آل سعود ورئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي بينامين نتنياهو بدأوا في التذمر والشكوى من أن إيران تسيطر على أربع عواصم إقليمية – بيروت ودمشق وبغداد وصنعاء- وأن شيء ما يجب أن يتم لوقف التوسع الإيراني. نتيجة لهذه المعادلة الإستراتيجية الجديدة أصبح الإسرائيليون ووآل سعود متوازيان إستراتيجيا بشكل كامل مع هدف تحييد إيران وحلفائها الإقليمين. قال السفير الإسرائيلي رون دمر لفوكس نيوز حول التناسق بين إسرائيل والسعودية في 5 مارس “عندما يكون الإسرائيلين والعرب في نفس النقطة يجب أن تنتبه الناس”.

لم تفلح المتاجرة الإسرائيلية والسعودية بالخوف. حسب إستفتاء جالوب يرى 9% من الأمريكين فقط أيران كأكبر عدو للولايات المتحدة في وقت زيارة نتنياهو لواشنطون للتحدث ضد الصفقة بين الولايات المتحدة وإيران.

الأهداف الجيو إستراتيجية للولايات المتحدة من وراء الحرب في اليمن

بينما أعتبر آل السعود اليمن مقاطعة تابعة نوعا ما ولزمن طويل وجزء من نطق نفوذ الرياض فإن الولايات المتحدة تريد أن تتأكد أنها تستطيع أن تسيطر على باب المندب وخليج عدن وجزر سقورطة. باب المندب مضيق مهم إستراتيجيا للتجارة البحرية الدولية وشحن الطاقة ويرب الخليج الفارسي عبر المحيط الهندي بالبحر المتوسط عبر البحر الأحمر. أنه بنفس أهمية قناة السويس بالنسبة لخطوط الملاحة والتجارة بين افريقيا وأسيا وأوروبا.

كانت إسرائيل قلقة أيضا بسبب أن السيطرة على اليمن يمكن أن تقطع مدخل إسرائيل إلى المحيط الهندي والبحر الأحمر وتمنع غواصاتها من الإنتشار بسهولة في الخليج الفارسي لتهدد إيران. ولهذا فإن السيطرة على اليمن كانت بالفعل أحد نقاط المحادثات لنتنياهو في كابيتول هيل عندما تحدث إلى الكونجرس الأمريكي حول إيران في 3 مارس في ما أسمته النيو يورك تايمز من دون جميع المطبوعات “خطاب السيد نتنياهو غير المقنع إلى الكونجرس” في 4 مارس.

إن السعودية خائفة من بوضوح من أن يصبح اليمن رسميا منحازة إلى إيران وأن تنتج الأحداث عن تمرد جديد في الجزيرة العربية ضد آل سعود. كانت الولايات المتحدة قلقة بنفس القدر من ذلك أيضا ولكنها كانت تفكر في سياق المنافسات الدولية. منع إيران وروسيا أو الصين من موطئ قدم إستراتيجي في اليمن كوسيلة لمنع القوى الأخرى الإطلال على خليج عدن والتمترس عند باب المندب كان قلقا أساسيا لدى الولايات المتحدة.

بالإضافة إلى أهمية اليمن الجيوسياسية لإشرافه على الممرات البحرية الإستراتيجة فهمناك ترسانة الصواريخ الخاصة بها. يمكن لصواريخ اليمن أن تضرب أي سفينة في خليج عدن أو باب المندب. في هذا السياق فإن الهجوم السعودي على مخازن الصواريخ اليمنينة يخدم المصالح الأمريكية والإسرائيلية. الهدف ليس فقط منع إستخدامهم للإنتقام من exertions القوى السعودية ولكن أيضا لمنع توافرهم لحكومة يمنية موالية لإيران أو روسيا أو الصين.

في موقف علني ينقاض سياسة الرياض السورية تماما فإن السعوديين يهددون ببإتخاذ أعمال عسكرية لو لم يتفاوض الحوثييون وحلفائهم مع هادي. نتيجة للتهديدات السعودية إندلعت الإحتجاجات في أرجاء اليمن ضد آل سعود في 25 مارس. وهكذا دارت عجلة حرب أخرى في الشرق الأوسط بينما بدأت الولايات المتحدة والسعودية والبحرين والإمارات وقطر والكويت قي التحضير لإعادة هادي للحكم.

الزحف السعودي نحو الحرب في اليمن وجبهة جديدة ضد إيران

مع كل الكلام عن السعودية كقوة إقليمية فإنها أضعف من أن تواجه إيران وحدها. إستراتيجية آل سعود كانت أن تبني أو تدعم  نظام تحالف إقليمي لمواجهة ممتدة مع إيران وكتلة المقاومة. في هذا الصدد تحتاج السعودية إلى مصر وتركيا وباكستان – محور أو تحالف يسمى خطأ “سني” – للمساعدة في مواجهة إيران وحلفائها الإقليمين.

سيزور ولي العهد إمارة أبو ظبي محمد بن زايد بن سلطان آل نهيان المغرب للتحدث حول رد عسكري جماعي على اليمن من ممالك البترو دولار والمغرب والأردن ومصر ي 17 مارس. يوم 21 مارس إلتقى محمد بن زايد مع الملك السعودي سلمان بن عبد العزيز آل سعود للمناقشة الرد العسكري على اليمن. كان ذلك بينما الهادي يدعوا السعودية ومجلس التعاون الخليحي لمساعدته بالتدخل العسكري في اليمن. تلى اللقائات محادثات حول معاهدة أمنية إقليمية جديدة لممالك البترودولار.

من بين دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي الخمسة بقت عمان بعيدة. رفضت عمان الإنضمام للحرب على اليمن. لمسقط علاقات ودية مع طهران. بالإضافة إلى ذلك فالعمانيون نافذوا الصبر بالسعوديين ومشروع مجلس التعاون الخليجي في إستخدام الطائفية لإشعال المواجهات بين إيران وحلفائها. الأغلبية في عمان ليسوا مسلمين سنة أو مسلمين شيعة بلا مسلمين أباضية ويخشون من إشعال آل سعود وممالك البترو دولار العربية الأخرى لنيران التحريض الطائفي,

إنطلق الدعائيون السعوديون بإفراط مدعين زيفا أن الحرب ردا على الإعتداء الإيراني على حدود السعودية. ستعلن تركيا دعمها للحرب في اليمن أيضا. في اليوم الذي شنت فيه الحرب أدعى أردوغان أن إيران كانت تحاول الهيمنة على المنطعة وأن تركيا والسعودية ودول مجلس التعاون الخليجي كانت قد بدأت تغضب.

خلال هذه الأحداث قال السيسي في مصر أن أمن القاهرة وأمن السعودية وممالك البترودولار واحد. بل أن مصر قالت أنها لن تتورط في الحرب في اليمن يوم 25 مارس ولكن في اليوم التالي إنضمت القاهرة إلى السعودية في هجمة الرياض على اليمن بإرسال طائراتها النفاثة وسفنها لليمن.

في نفس المسار أصدر رئيس الوزراء الباكستاني نواز شريف بيانا يوم 26 مارس بأن أي تهديد للسعودية “سيتسبب في رد فعل قوي” من الباكستان. كانت الرسالة موجهة ضمنيا إلى إيران.

الأدوار الأمريكية والإسرائيلية في الحرب في اليمن

يوم 27 مارس أعلن في اليمن أن إسرائيل تساعد السعودية على الهجوم على الدولة العربية. كتب حسن زايد رئيس حزب الحق اليمني على الإنترنت “هذه هي المرة الأولا التي يقوم فيها الصهاينة (الإسرائيلين) بعملية مشتركة بالتعاون مع العرب” لتوضيح إلتقاء المصالح بين السعودية وإسرائيل. مع ذلك فإن التحالف الإسرائيلي السعودي حول اليمن ليس جديدا. لقد ساعد الإسرائيليون آل سعود خلال الحرب الأهلية في اليمن الشمالي الي بدأت عام 1962 بإمداد السعودية بالأسلحة لمساعدة الملكيين ضد الجمهوريين في اليمن الشمالي.

الولايات المتحدة متورطة أيضا من الخلف أو من على مسافة. بينما تعمل على عقد صفقة مع إيران فإنها أيضا تريد أن تحافظ على تحالف ضد إيران بإستخدام السعوديين. سيوفر البنتاجون ما أسماه “دعم إستخباراتي ولوجيستي” لآل سعود.

لا تخطئ في الأمر: الحرب في اليمن هي حرب واشنطن أيضا. لقد أطلقت الولايات المتحدة مجلس التعاون الخليجي على اليمن.

طالما كان هناك كلام حول تكوين قوة مسلحة عربية ولكن العروض بتكوينها تجددت في يوم 9 مارس من قبل جامعة الدول الموافقة دائما. الإقتراحات بقوات مسلحة عربية موحدة تخدم المصالح الأمريكية والإسرائيلية والسعودية. إن الحديث عن قوات مسلحة عربية كان الدافع له هو تحضيرهم للهجوم على اليمن لإعادة الهادي وكي تواجه إيران وسوريا وحزب الله وكتلة المقاومة إقليميا.

بقلم: المهدي داريوش ناظم رعایا / المهدي داريوس نازيمروايا

لمصدر:غلوبال ريسيرتش

مصدر الترجمة: فريق ترجمة موقع راقب

الأحد, مارس ٢٩ ,٢٠١٥

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The Geopolitics Behind the War in Yemen: The Start of a New Front against Iran

March 29th, 2015 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.

The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of a «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saud.

The Houthis and their allies represent a diverse cross-section of Yemeni society and the majority of Yemenites. The Houthi movement’s domestic alliance against Al-Hadi includes Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims alike. The US and House of Saud never thought that the Houthis would assert themselves by removing Al-Hadi from power, but this reaction had been a decade in the making. With the House of Saud, Al-Hadi had been involved in the persecution of the Houthis and the manipulation of tribal politics in Yemen even before he became president. When he became Yemeni president he dragged his feet and was working against implement the arrangements that had been arranged through consensus and negotiations in Yemen’s National Dialogue, which convened after Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to hand over his powers in 2011.

Coup or Counter-Coup: What Happened in Yemen?

At first, when they took over Sana in late-2014, the Houthis rejected Al-Hadi’s proposals and his new offers for a formal power sharing agreement, calling him a morally bankrupt figure that had actually been reneging previous promises of sharing political power. At that point, President Al-Hadi’s pandering to Washington and the House of Saud had made him deeply unpopular in Yemen with the majority of the population. Two months later, on November 8, President Al-Hadi’s own party, the Yemenite General People’s Congress, would eject Al-Hadi as its leader too.

The Houthis eventually detained President Al-Hadi and seized the presidential palace and other Yemeni government buildings on January 20. With popular support, a little over two weeks later, the Houthis formally formed a Yemense transitional government on February 6. Al-Hadi was forced to resign. The Houthis declared that Al-Hadi, the US, and Saudi Arabia were planning on devastating Yemen on February 26.

Al-Hadi’s resignation was a setback for US foreign policy. It resulted in a military and operational retreat for the CIA and the Pentagon, which were forced to remove US military personnel and intelligence operatives from Yemen. The Los Angeles Times reported on March 25, citing US officials, that the Houthis had got their hands on numerous secret documents when they seized the Yemeni National Security Bureau, which was working closely with the CIA, that compromised Washington’s operations in Yemen.

Al-Hadi fled the Yemeni capital Sana to Aden on February 21 and declared it the temporary capital of Yemen on March 7. The US, France, Turkey, and their Western European allies closed their embassies. Soon afterwards, in what was probably a coordinated move with the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates all relocated their embassies to Aden from Sana. Al-Hadi rescinded his letter of resignation as president and declared that he was forming a government-in-exile.

The Houthis and their political allies refused to fall into line with the demands of the US and Saudi Arabia, which were being articulated through Al-Hadi in Aden and by an increasingly hysteric Riyadh. As a result, Al-Hadi’s foreign minister, Riyadh Yaseen, called for Saudi Arabia and the Arab petro-sheikdoms to militarily intervene to prevent the Houthis from getting control of Yemen’s airspace on March 23. Yaseen told the Saudi mouthpiece Al-Sharq Al-Awsa that a bombing campaign was needed and that a no-fly zone had to be imposed over Yemen.

The Houthis realized that a military struggle was going to begin. This is why the Houthis and their allies in the Yemenite military rushed to control as many Yemeni military airfields and airbases, such as Al-Anad, as quickly as possible. They rushed to neutralize Al-Hadi and entered Aden on March 25.

By the time the Houthis and their allies entered Aden, Al-Hadi had fled the Yemeni port city. Al-Hadi would resurface in Saudi Arabia when the House of Saud started attacking Yemen on March 26. From Saudi Arabia, Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi would then fly to Egypt for a meeting of the Arab League to legitimize the war on Yemen.

Yemen and the Changing Strategic Equation in the Middle East

The Houthi takeover of Sana took place in the same timeframe as a series of successes or regional victories for Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and the Resistance Bloc that they and other local actors form collectively. In Syria, the Syrian government managed to entrench its position while in Iraq the ISIL/ISIS/Daesh movement was being pushed back by Iraq with the noticeable help of Iran and local Iraqi militias allied to Tehran.

The strategic equation in the Middle East began to shift as it became clear that Iran was becoming central to its security architecture and stability. The House of Saud and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to whimper and complain that Iran was in control of four regional capitals—Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Sana — and that something had to be done to stop Iranian expansion. As a result of the new strategic equation, the Israelis and the House of Saud became perfectly strategically aligned with the objective of neutralizing Iran and its regional allies. «When the Israelis and Arabs are on the same page, people should pay attention,» Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer told Fox News about the alignment of Israel and Saudi Arabia on March 5.

The Israeli and Saudi fear mongering has not worked. According to Gallup poll, only 9% of US citizens viewed Iran as the greatest enemy of the US at the time that Netanyahu arrived in Washington to speak against a deal between the US and Iran.

The Geo-Strategic Objectives of the US and Saudis Behind the War in Yemen

While the House of Saud has long considered Yemen a subordinate province of some sorts and as a part of Riyadh’s sphere of influence, the US wants to make sure that it could control the Bab Al-Mandeb, the Gulf of Aden, and the Socotra Islands. The Bab Al-Mandeb is an important strategic chokepoint for international maritime trade and energy shipments that connects the Persian Gulf via the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea. It is just as important as the Suez Canal for the maritime shipping lanes and trade between Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Israel was also concerned, because control of Yemen could cut off Israel’s access to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and prevent its submarines from easily deploying to the Persian Gulf to threaten Iran. This is why control of Yemen was actually one of Netanyahu’s talking points on Capitol Hill when he spoke to the US Congress about Iran on March 3 in what the New York Times of all publications billed as «Mr. Netanyahu’s Unconvincing Speech to Congress» on March 4.

Saudi Arabia was visibly afraid that Yemen could become formally aligned to Iran and that the events there could result in new rebellions in the Arabian Peninsula against the House of Saud. The US was just as much concerned about this too, but was also thinking in terms of global rivalries. Preventing Iran, Russia, or China from having a strategic foothold in Yemen, as a means of preventing other powers from overlooking the Gulf of Aden and positioning themselves at the Bab Al-Mandeb, was a major US concern.

Added to the geopolitical importance of Yemen in overseeing strategic maritime corridors is its military’s missile arsenal. Yemen’s missiles could hit any ships in the Gulf of Aden or Bab Al-Mandeb. In this regard, the Saudi attack on Yemen’s strategic missile depots serves both US and Israeli interests. The aim is not only to prevent them from being used to retaliate against exertions of Saudi military force, but to also prevent them from being available to a Yemeni government aligned to either Iran, Russia, or China.

In a public position that totally contradicts Riyadh’s Syria policy, the Saudis threatened to take military action if the Houthis and their political allies did not negotiate with Al-Hadi. As a result of the Saudi threats, protests erupted across Yemen against the House of Saud on March 25. Thus, the wheels were set in motion for another Middle Eastern war as the US, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait began to prepare to reinstall Al-Hadi.

The Saudi March to War in Yemen and a New Front against Iran

For all the talk about Saudi Arabia as a regional power, it is too weak to confront Iran alone. The House of Saud’s strategy has been to erect or reinforce a regional alliance system for a drawn out confrontation with Iran and the Resistance Bloc. In this regard Saudi Arabia needs Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan —a misnamed so-called «Sunni» alliance or axis — to help it confront Iran and its regional allies.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the crown prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE’s military, would visit Morocco to talk about a collective military response to Yemen by the Arab petro-sheikhdoms, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt on March 17. On March 21, Mohammed bin Zayed met Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud to discuss a military response to Yemen. This was while Al-Hadi was calling for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to help him by militarily intervening in Yemen. The meetings were followed by talk about a new regional security pact for the Arab petro-sheikdoms.

Out of the GCC’s five members, the Sultanate of Oman stayed away. Oman refused to join the war on Yemen. Muscat has friendly relations with Tehran. Moreover, the Omanis are weary of the Saudi and GCC project to use sectarianism to ignite confrontation with Iran and its allies. The majority of Omanis are neither Sunni Muslims nor Shiite Muslims; they are Ibadi Muslims, and they fear the fanning of sectarian sedition by the House of Saud and the other Arab petro-sheikdoms.

Saudi propagandists went into overdrive falsely claiming that the war was a response to Iranian encroachment on the borders of Saudi Arabia. Turkey would announce its support for the war in Yemen too. On the day the war was launched, Turkey’s Erdogan claimed that Iran was trying to dominate the region and that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the GCC were getting annoyed.

During these events, Egypt’s Sisi stated that the security of Cairo and the security of Saudi Arabia and the Arab petro-sheikhdoms are one. In fact, Egypt said that it would not get involved in a war in Yemen on March 25, but the next day Cairo joined Saudi Arabia in Riyadh’s attack on Yemen by sending its jets and ships to Yemen.

In the same vein, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif released a statement on March 26 that any threat to Saudi Arabia would «evoke a strong response» from Pakistan. The message was tacitly directed towards Iran.

The US and Israeli Roles in the War in Yemen

On March 27, it was announced in Yemen that Israel was helping Saudi Arabia attack the Arab country. «This is the first time that the Zionists [Israelis] are conducting a joint operation in collaborations with Arabs,» Hassan Zayd, the head of Yemen’s Al-Haq Party, wrote on the internet to point out the convergence of interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Israeli-Saudi alliance over Yemen, however, is not new. The Israelis helped the House of Saud during the North Yemen Civil War that started in 1962 by providing Saudi Arabia with weapons to help the royalists against the republicans in North Yemen.

The US is also involved and leading from behind or a distance. While it works to strike a deal with Iran, it also wants to maintain an alliance against Tehran using the Saudis. The Pentagon would provide what it called «intelligence and logistical support» to the House of Saud.

Make no mistakes about it: the war on Yemen is also Washington’s war. The GCC has been unleashed on Yemen by the US.

There has long been talk about the formation of a pan-Arab military force, but proposals for creating it were renewed on March 9 by the rubberstamp Arab League. The proposals for a united Arab military serve US, Israeli, and Saudi interests. Talk about a pan-Arab military has been motivated by their preparations to attack Yemen to return Al-Hadi and to regionally confront Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Resistance Bloc.

Click here to read part two of this article.

Obama’s Up-Side-Down “War on Terrorism”: US Warplanes Strike Iraqi Popular Forces Fighting ISIS

March 29th, 2015 by Fars News Agency

The US fighter jets once again struck the positions of Iraq’s popular forces during their fierce clashes with ISIL terrorists near Tikrit, injuring a number of fighters.

The US and coalition forces conducted eight airstrikes near Tikrit, but they hit the popular forces’ positions instead of ISIL.

This is not the first time that the US has struck the popular forces’ positions in different parts of Iraq.

Iraqi military forces, backed by Shiite and Sunni volunteer fighters, have won control over 90 percent of Tikrit after inflicting hefty losses on the ISIL.

Some 30,000 Iraqi troops and thousands of allied Shiite and Sunni militias have been involved in a month-long operation to recapture Tikrit and other key towns and villages in the Northern part of Salahuddin province from the ISIL militants.

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Rigged Trade Agreements and Rigged Government. “Secret Sections” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Revealed

March 29th, 2015 by Kevin Zeese

Note: We are still hoping that Senator Wyden will listen to the people and not his big money donors. He should announce now that he will not be supporting any fast track trade authority legislation. The three treaties being negotiated in secret by Obama are too far along and cannot meet the transparency and participation requirements that Wyden has said he supports. He should come out against fast track for all the deals currently being negotiated.

In recent town hall events Sen. Wyden has said that export from Oregon to Asia is a foundation of the Oregon economy. But, as he knows, the US already has trade deals with most of the countries involved in the TPP so it will make little difference on Oregon’s exports. What is will do is give these foreign corporations the ability to move to locations with cheaper labor and resources as well as the power to sue if Oregon takes action in the public interest to protect people and planet. The TPP is a loser for the Oregon economy and for the people of Oregon. KZ

Participating in US politics, as a citizen activist, puts you face-to-face with corruption and the ugliness of money-politics.

At least I find it ugly that a senator would be negotiating fast track legislation through Congress for secret corporate rigged trade deals while raising money from big business interests that would profit immensely from those deals. Taking money while negotiating legislation that benefits the donor should be illegal. It should be considered bribery or a pay-off, but the deep corruption of US politics has legalized that kind of bribery and made it the norm.

While this was occurring Wikileaks published the text of the Investment Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This chapter that allows corporations to sue governments when a law passed in the public interest would undermine their profits. Corporations can sue for the profits they were expecting in rigged trade tribunals where corporate lawyers play the role of judges and there is no court review. Even the US Supreme Court cannot overrule the corporate judges.

A Week With Wyden

That is what we saw this week as we focused our attention on Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). Wyden is the key Democrat on the Finance Committee. If he co-sponsors fast track with Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) then it will be harder to stop these crony capitalist rigged agreements. We’ll see if the bribes he received on Wednesday from DC’s big business lobbyists at his bribe-fest, err fundraiser, was enough for him to ignore what the people of Oregon have said they clearly oppose.Polling shows that 73 percent of Oregonians oppose fast trackand 63 percent oppose the TPP. Half of the voters in Oregon said they would be less likely to support Wyden if he works with Republicans to pass fast track. You would think in a representative democracy the elected official who represents that constituency would say ‘no’ to fast track rather than negotiate in secret with a Republican leader on how to get fast track through the Congress.But, Senator Wyden is not listening to what the people of Oregon want. Maybe he has been in Washington, DC too long or maybe he is more comfortable in his $10 million home in New York City. Or, maybe it is just that he gets paid to well by big business interests so he represents the moneyed interests instead of the people.

From meeting with Wyden’s staff, it is clear that the senator thinks the public is too dumb to vote against him because of this issue. They think trade doesn’t matter to voters. Wyden underestimates voters. In fact, because we now have the NAFTA experience people understand how trade impacts their lives and the TPP is much bigger than NAFTA. We know the results: lost jobs, lower incomes, bigger wealth divide, higher trade deficits, undermining of the environment and increased migration. People now know trade agreements have had terrible consequences on their lives.

We sat-in Wyden’s office for a week doing a “toast-in” to make the point that Wyden’s career is toast if he co-sponsors fast track. Democratic Party aligned groups are saying they will remove Wyden from office in 2016 if he supports fast track. The Hill reported how multiple groups are planning to oust him. It started with Howard Dean’s Democracy For America, when they saw the poll results showing how out-of-step Wyden is with Oregon voters they urged a primary challenge. The call was then taken up by the Working Families Party in Oregon. And, just this week MoveOn members in Oregon voted with 79 percent saying they would support a primary challenger against Wyden. MoveOn has 88,000 members in Oregon. The AFL-CIO is withholding PAC contributions, not just to Wyden, and is running advertisements in Oregon criticizing fast track.

Balanced against the views of Oregon voters is the money donated to him by big business. As the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, a lot of big business money comes his way and passing fast track for TPP and other agreements rigged for transnational corporations as a top priority. Only 3 percentof Wyden’s personal contributions come from small donations, the rest come from large donations and PACs.Open Secrets reportsthat over the past five years many of Wyden’s industry donations come from big business interests who will benefit from the rigged corporate trade agreements that fast track would help to pass. This includes private investment firms ($824,460 in Wyden donations), the insurance industry ($379,950), pharmaceuticals and health products ($356,278), manufacturing and distribution ($203,720), business services ($165,050), finance ($147,815), oil and gas ($129,414) and chemical and related manufacturing ($101,850). That is over $2 million – do those donations speak louder than voters?This week Congressional Quarterly reported that Senator Wyden was holding a fundraiser at Bistro Bis, an upscale restaurant near Capitol Hill. The invitation said “Friends of all industries welcome to attend.” The day before the event we organized a protest in order to highlight that Wyden was fundraising for industries that would profit from fast track. The afternoon before the event he moved the fundraiser to a still undisclosed location. It was interesting to see how quickly he moved to hide his actions at the big bribe-fest. He’s being tight lipped not only about where it was held but who attended and how much money was raised. What’s he hiding?

It is so common for politicians to be considering legislation that would benefit an industry or corporate interest and while doing so hold a fundraiser. What better time to stick people up for money but when you are holding the key to future profits? This is so common that it is the norm in Washington, DC. Of course, that does not make it right; indeed what it shows is that the norm in US politics is deep corruption, and Wyden exemplifies it.

TPP Secret Exposed

As this was happening, one of the most important secret sections of the TPP was published by Wikileaks. Senator Wyden has been calling for transparency, but I don’t think this level of transparency is what he has in mind. If it was he would insist the text of the full agreement be made public before fast track is considered. He has not done this because he knows that if members of Congress and the people knew what was in this agreement fast track would not even be considered; indeed the TPP would never become law. The only way for these rigged corporate trade agreements to become law is secrecy and speed, the latter so there is no time to even read them.

Secrecy is such a high priority that Wikileaks emphasized in its press release:

“The document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.”

Imagine that, secret law multiplied. It is bad enough to negotiate a law in secret and pass it through Congress with no hearings but then to keep the law secret until four years after it becomes law. Imagine that, laws that will impact every aspect of our lives keep so secret. This sounds like a dystopian science fiction novel. Would anyone think that a country that passed laws with such secrecy was a democracy? A novel about a government like this would not be about a democracy – it would about a dictatorship of corporations where the people are serfs to corporate power.

Ilana  Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program,  said :

“It is outrageous that we have to continue to rely on leaked texts to expose the details of this trade pact — and that every leak confirms the threats of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to clean air and water.”

What does the text show? Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa writes:

“corporations could sue the U.S. or other countries included in the deal if they didn’t like their laws. Such challenges would be handled by an unaccountable international arbitration forum. And taxpayers would end up paying the tab if the private sector wins.”

“With the veil of secrecy ripped back, finally everyone can see for themselves that the TPP would give multinational corporations extraordinary new powers that would undermine our sovereignty, expose U.S. taxpayers to billions in new liability and privilege foreign firms operating here with special rights not available to U.S. firms under U.S. law,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Larry Cohen, president of the Communication Workers of America describes the chapter as “worse than we imagined” and says:

“These 56 pages must be a wakeup call for our nation.  We must be defenders of democracy first and push aside the special interests of multinational corporations.”

Food and Water Watch, which opposes fast track and the TPP because of its threat to food and water, summarized the leak saying it will prevent “commonsense public health, environmental and consumer safeguards” by providing “special rights for corporations at the expense of the public interest, letting foreign companies demand financial compensation”

Under the TPP only foreign corporations can sue governments (domestic corporations do not share in that power), while people have no recourse. If dangerous food is imported and people are poisoned, they cannot sue in the tribunal; if fracking or a burst pipeline destroys the water supply of a community, they cannot sue; if workers lose their jobs to low-paid foreign workers, the workers have no recourse; if websites are forced off the Internet because of violation of extremist copyright provisions, they cannot sue. On issue after issue people will be harmed by the provisions of rigged corporate agreements but they will have no recourse, while corporations can sue thereby ensuring increased risks to all of us.

How can Senator Wyden say with a straight face that he supports transparency when he would consider co-sponsoring to fast track bill a secret agreement; a fast track bill that would not even give people enough time to read the multi-thousand page agreement?

The Moment

Now is the key moment to tell Senator Wyden that you oppose fast track. His number in DC is (202) 224-5244. You can find numbers to his six Oregon offices and submit a written comment here. If you want to take more action visit www.StopFastTrack.com. The people have the power to defeat transnational corporations on these issues but we must take action in order to do so.

Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch hope to finish their negotiations this week and introduce a bill in mid-April. They actually wanted to do so in mid-February but have been stopped. We can stop them again, if we act now. But, no matter how Wyden goes we can defeat fast track. Momentum is on the side of the people, as are the facts. Fast track is not a done deal. The coalition to stop fast track is the largest ever built to oppose corporate trade. We represent tens of millions of people. We can win.

Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance.

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The CO2 Crisis: The Social Costs Of Capitalism Are Destroying Earth’s Ability To Support Life

March 29th, 2015 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

I admire David Ray Griffin for his wide-ranging intelligence, his research skills, and for his courage.  Dr. Griffin is not afraid to take on the controversial topics.  He gave us ten books on 9/11, and anyone who has read half of one of them knows that the official story is a lie.

Now Griffin has taken on global warming and the CO2 crisis.  His book has just been published by Clarity Press, a publisher that seeks out truth-telling authors.  Griffin’s book is a hefty 424 pages plus 77 pages of footnotes documenting the information that he presents.  Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive The CO2 Crisis? is no screed. 

The book is a carefully researched document.

Readers often ask me to write about global warming, chemtrails, vaccines, and other subjects beyond my competence.  However, I can see that Griffin has made a huge investment in researching climate change.  His book provides a thorough account under one cover.

Griffin concludes that civilization itself is at stake.  His evaluation of the evidence is that humans have about three decades to get CO2 emissions under control, and he sees hope in the agreement between Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping that was announced on November 11, 2014.

Griffin argues that instead of rushing to their own destruction like lemmings, the human race must accept the moral challenge of abolishing the fossil-fuel economy.  He makes the case that clean energy permits most of modern society’s way of life to continue without the threat posed by ever rising emissions.

Nuclear energy is not among clean energy sources–just look at the ongoing radiation pollution from Fukushima. Griffin is correct in the way he has framed the issue. It is a moral challenge.

Clearly the climate is changing, whether caused by CO2 emissions or some other cause.  Every day brings more reports of perils associated with climate change.

See for example: http://www.theweek.co.uk/62989/melting-antarctic-glacier-could-lead-to-11-foot-increase-in-sealevels_mout=1&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

and   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/24/melting-arctic-ice-banned-toxins-pops

The planet is being polluted with many forms of wastes:

Our foods are also polluted. On one hand our food is polluted with herbicides and on the other hand by antibiotics.  And then we have hormones and pesticides. The World Health Organization has concluded that the glyphosate in Monsanto’s Roundup, a herbicide widely sprayed on GMO food crops, is a likely causes of cancer in humans and animals. https://www.intellihub.com/admits-monsantos-glyphosate-probably-causes-cancer-chemical-found-75-air-rain-samples/

Glyphosate, which is also believed to be exterminating honey bees and Monarch butterflies, is now present in 75 percent of air and rain samples.  Some time ago I reported on a microbiologist who wrote to the US Secretary of Agriculture about extensive findings by independent scientists that glyphosate has serious adverse effects on animal life and on animal and human fertility and on the ability of soil to produce nutrition in food crops.  The scientist pointed out that the US government’s clearance of glyphosate rested entirely on the industry’s own studies of its safety and that these “studies” are not substantiated by independent scientists.  He pointed out that not only are the studies done by scientists employed by Monsanto, but also many agricultural science university faculties are dependent on research funds from the chemical industry and thereby do not have an independent voice.

Martha Rosenberg writing in CounterPunch reports that 70 percent of all antibiotics are fed to livestock because it produces weight gain and saves money on feed costs.  Ninety-three percent of doctors are concerned about the meat industry’s excessive use of antibiotics, and independent scientists have definite evidence that the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is due to the use of antibiotics as animal feed.

Scientists at the University of Iowa found Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in 70 percent of farmed hogs.  A Consumer Reports investigation found that US meat, regardless of the meat’s source, is full of “pathogens, commensals, and antibiotic resistant bacteria.”  Pork tested contained five resistant bacteria strains.

The Food and Drug Administration, severely weakened by Republicans, cannot stand up to Big Meat.  Rosenberg reports that “when the FDA tried in 2008 to ban farm use of cephalosporins (antibiotics like Cefzil and Keflex) because they are needed for pneumonia, strep throat, and other serious human conditions, the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork, and cattle industries and the animal Health Institute stormed Capital Hill.”

Congress responded to the campaign donations, not to the health and safety of the American people.  The Animal Health Institute consists of the drug companies who make profits selling 70 percent of their production to meat, egg, and milk producers.  The members of the “health” institute are Abbott, Bayer Healthcare, Elanco/Lilly, Merck, Boehringer, Ingelheim Vetmedica, Novartis, etc.

In other words profits come far ahead of public health.  As the drug companies have more or less stopped the development of new antibiotics, the protection antibiotics provide against infections is rapidly fading.

The horror goes on.  During a time of severe drought in the western US, with California reportedly left with one year’s supply of water, the fossil-fuel fracking industry is polluting the remaining surface and ground water.

All of these activities–use of antibiotics as animal feed, use of GMO herbicides, fracking–are profitable because they impose huge external costs on the environment and on third parties who are not participants in the profits gleaned by externalizing the costs of production.  And this brings us back to Griffin’s important book.

Griffin makes the point that the external cost imposed on the climate by fossil-fuel use is the source of the life-threatening crisis that humanity confronts.  Capitalists make money by exploiting labor and by externalizing the costs of the wastes produced by the productive process by imposing the wastes on the environment.  It is the short-term time horizon of production organized by selfish private interests focused on quarterly profits that is destroying the livability of the earth.

Almost every economist on earth will rise up in opposition to that true statement, because they are brainwashed in the neoliberal ideology that masquerades as economic science, but in fact is nothing but an apology for capitalist exploitation of labor and the earth.

I happened to be one of Ronald Coase’s graduate students the year he published his famous article on “The Problem of Social Cost” (external costs) for which, together with his article, “The Theory of the Firm,” he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.  In theory, externalities can be internalized into the process of production so that the producer bears all the costs if all inputs and waste products are subject to property rights. But no one owns the atmosphere, the oceans, the rivers and streams. They remain “common property” and thus are dumping grounds for waste disposal.

Governments, despite pressure from corporations, have realized that pollution is a problem, and governments have imposed some regulation.  The regulation raises some costs to corporations, but the regulation is insufficient to halt very much of the externalization of the cost of production.  In economic terms, this is the crisis that David Ray Griffin presents to us.

Capitalism’s pursuit of profit is destroying life on earth.

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“Democracy” versus “The Institutional Ideology” of the CIA. Conversation With CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou

March 29th, 2015 by Douglas Valentine

John Kiriakou is widely known as the former CIA case officer who, in an interview with ABC News in late 2007, confirmed that the CIA had tortured prisoner Abu Zubaydah, an alleged member of al Qaeda, on the waterboard.

Kiriakou was aware of only one instance in which Zubaydah was waterboarded, but his revelations set off a slew of investigations that sent America’s secret clique of torturers and their political bosses running for cover. Even the Senate, with feigned sincerity, initiated an investigation in 2009.

The vicious CIA wasn’t pleased, to put it mildly, nor was the Obama administration, which sicced the FBI on Kiriakou. As the controversy percolated and the authorities closed in, Kiriakou became a bit of a media sensation. Caught off guard by the flurry of attention (wanted and unwanted), he perhaps inadvertently violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing, among other things, the name of a covert CIA officer.

Facing 40 years in stir, Kiriakou copped a plea in October 2012. In February 2013 he entered the federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He was released in February 2015 with an entirely new perspective on America’s racist, sadistic, but highly profitable “corrections” industry.

John Kiriakou, however, was not an ordinary convict. While in prison he enjoyed the blessings of the Reverend Farrakhan and, as an acknowledged “human rights guy” was protected from many of the harsh realities most inmates endure. He received mail from thousands of supporters and maintained a popular blog, Letters from Loretto that got him in trouble with the Bureau of Prisons. But as a celebrity with a powerful attorney, he escaped additional punishments.

That doesn’t mean Kiriakou has it easy. The fascist law enforcement establishment considers him a traitor who got off easy and would love nothing better than to get its claws in him again. Many of his former CIA colleagues feel the same way, and the unforgiving CIA reviews and censors his writings. So he must be cautious in his statements about the CIA (including, one might deduce, those he made in this interview), and thus his answers sometimes have the intonations of a talking head issuing well-practiced sound bites.

This is not a typical interview with someone who has freedom of speech. But then again, John Kiriakou is an unusual man accustomed to navigating dangerous waters.

After being recruited into the CIA by a college “talent scout”, Kiriakou spent his first eight years in the Agency as a Middle East analyst specializing on Iraq. In 1998 he transferred to the sexier Operations Division and later its premier counter-terrorism branch. The 9-11 terror attacks catapulted him into prominence as chief of CT Ops in Pakistan, in which capacity he ran an agent network that located numerous Al Qaeda safehouses. Kiriakou and his unit were responsible for apprehending dozens of “enemy combatants” in high tech paramilitary raids that included US and foreign Special Forces.

This is heady stuff, the Rambo kind of marauding that births CIA legends and leads to rapid career advancement. But for Kiriakou the adventure was short-lived, and in 2002 he returned to CIA headquarters. In 2004 he resigned to spend more time with his children, who were 9 and 6 at the time. He had recently divorced, the kids were in Ohio, and he couldn’t risk being sent overseas again for years at a time. So he took a job in the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche’s “competitive intelligence practice” section, which meant spying on the company’s competitors – Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Accenture, IBM, etc.

In 2009, through political connections to Senator John Kerry, Kiriakou became an investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Two years later he returned to a job in the private sector, while engaging in public speaking and media consulting (including Hollywood).

John Kiriakou walks a fine line. On the on hand he is an icon to idealists, in the mold of Dan Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, and Ed Snowden. As a whistleblower who has been persecuted for acts of conscience, he is a celebrity of sorts – a position that can be intoxicating and corrupting. On the other hand, Kiriakou is still recovering from the shock of being in a cage for two years. More determined than ever to help America become a better place, he has dedicated his life to prison reform.

John Kiriakou is not, however, dedicating his life to CIA reform. He’s certainly not in a position to whack that particular hornet’s nest, not unless he wants to revisit Loretto.

But a journalist must be careful too, and I wondered if Kiriakou still felt a romantic attachment to the CIA. In a recent interview with Ken Klippenstein, he acknowledged that the war on terror is as much a war of revenge as it is a paramilitary police and espionage action designed to protect Americans from harm. He acknowledged that drone strikes have killed “dozens” of innocent people at wedding celebrations and “do more to help recruitment for groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS than anything they could do.” He even equated the Al Qaeda fighters he captured with the average American prisoner or soldier – functionally illiterate, lacking job skills, propagandized and manipulated. “So these were not hardened terrorists,” he told Klippenstein, “these were just confused young men.”

But in that interview, Kiriakou also exhibits signs of remaining a dedicated and indoctrinated legionnaire. He described ISIS as “created solely out of a hatred for the United States….in American military prisons in Iraq.” A statement seems somewhat true. But when it comes to dealing with ISIS, his inclination is standard imperial CIA: “We should be encouraging and supporting the militaries of our friends in the region – the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Turks – and we should be encouraging them to send their troops. After all, it’s their countries that are under threat. Why is this our problem? Why is this our undertaking, that we have to send Americans to die in Iraq and Syria? For what?”

Is it really better to send “our friends” in Egypt and Saudi Arabia after ISIS? How are “we” in a position to even imagine sending other nations to do our dirty work and clean up our imperial messes? Remember, these are same “friends” the CIA hired to torture a lot of innocent people.

I recently had the privilege of asking John Kiriakou some questions. His answers are below.

DV – Democracy is defined as, “A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives.” America prides itself on being the freest democracy in the world. Is that a mass delusion, given the overarching power of the CIA, which American citizens have no control over?

JK – I don’t think we’ve ever had a truly free—or even exemplary—democracy. Just look at the oppressed people throughout our history. What would African-Americans, the poor, immigrants, and workers say about the strength of our democracy, especially throughout history. I think it is indeed a mass delusion.

DV – We only ever hear of the CIA sabotaging and subverting Leftist governments. As an institution, what is the CIA’s political ideology? Is it as extreme right as seems to be the case?

JK – I think the institutional ideology of the CIA is an extreme right-wing ideology. Throughout history it has been the CIA leading Presidents, not Presidents leading the CIA. It is the CIA that presents to the president the idea of covert action, not the other way around. This has led to nothing but disaster, such as in Iran, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Chile, and Central America.

DV – Our government has stated policies, which people associate with democratic values; and it has unstated policies. For example, Ronald Reagan said he would never negotiate with terrorists, a promise that ensured his re-election. Meanwhile he had the CIA sell weapons to Iran and used the money to fund the CIA’s army in Nicaragua. Is that what the CIA is: a mechanism our rulers use to make us believe they are moral and truthful, when in fact they are pursuing illegal activities that further only their own interests?

JK – That is exactly what the CIA is—a “fixer” for Presidents. Unfortunately, most of the CIA’s fixes have very serious and severe long-term consequences. Look at Greece as an example. Don’t like Communism? Overthrow the government and replace it with a military dictatorship that still, more than 40 years later, traumatizes society. Don’t like the Iranian government taking “our” oil? Overthrow the democratically-elected Prime Minister and replace him with a fascist dictator, which leads to a theocracy that we are still fighting. These poor decisions, internationally-criminal decisions in some cases, have very long-term consequences, which the CIA doesn’t seem to care about.

DV – As the primary mechanism of pursuing unstated policies that benefit only the rich ruling elite, what effect does the CIA have on our so-called democratic institutions, in particular on our “representatives” in Congress, and our so-called government watchdogs in the media?

JK – Our representatives in Congress are little more than cheerleaders for the CIA. They are afraid of being labeled “weak” on national security, and as a result, there is no oversight. There are certainly a handful of courageous Congressmen and Senators, but they are few and far between, and, as far as the CIA goes, they are ineffectual.

johnk

DV – After your CIA service, you served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. How does the CIA impose its will on the committees that affect its legislated mission, budget and operations?

JK – First and foremost, the CIA “recruits” select members of Congress. They get special briefings; they are brought “inside” the circle. Their delegations get the red carpet treatment overseas. It’s very well thought-out. The CIA really knows how to cultivate people on the Hill.

DV – You have also had extensive dealings with the print and TV media, as well as Hollywood. How does the CIA bend the media and Hollywood to its will?

JK – The CIA can use a heavy hand with the media. If a reporter is writing a story that makes the Agency look bad, the Agency can threaten to withhold any future cooperation. If a Hollywood producer is making a movie about the Agency or an Agency operation, so long as it’s pro-Agency, the producers can get insider briefings (classified briefings, in the case of Zero Dark Thirty.) If an author writes a book critical of the CIA, the Agency will tell newspapers and other outlets to not review the book. It’s all very heavy-handed.

DV – We have seen presidents use the CIA for self-serving, nefarious purposes. We’ve seen these same presidents protect CIA officers who get caught. Bush 1 pardoned CIA officers involved in the Iran Contra scandal, and Bush 2 commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence for outing CIA officer Valerie Plame. Obama continues the pattern of our leaders protecting CIA officers and punishing whistleblowers. How does this reality affect the recruitment and backing of candidates for national election by the Republican and Democratic parties?

JK – I think every candidate for office at the Congressional level wants to court the Agency. Everybody wants to look like they’re tough on national security. So in that inherently authoritarian narrative, there is no room for whistleblowers. Anybody who sheds light on the darkness is the enemy.

DV – The CIA is the organized crime branch of the government, conducting every crime imaginable. How does this immersion in illegal activities – the success of which relies upon deceiving the American public – coupled with the blanket legal protection they receive in return, affect CIA officers as individuals?

JK – Well, first let me say that I’m a realist. There will always be a CIA, even if I think that the organization is no longer necessary. The only way to change the CIA is from the inside. With that said, on the operations side of the CIA, every employee is taught to lie, about everything, to everyone. Some officers do not know when to, or cannot, turn the lies off. That leads to policy disasters. It leads to cover-ups. It leads to Congressional investigations. The only way there can be justice is if the President lets the legal system run its course. But Presidents don’t do that. They participate in the cover-ups. They issue pardons to the wrong people. It’s bad for the country, and it’s bad for democracy.

DV – An agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics once said to me that most agents “were corrupted by the lure of the underworld. They thought they could check their morality at the door – go out and lie, cheat, and steal – then come back and retrieve it. But you can’t. In fact, if you’re successful because you can lie, cheat, and steal, those things become tools you use in the bureaucracy. You’re talking about guys whose lives depended on their ability to be devious and who become very good at it. So these people became the bosses, and undercover work became the credo – and a source of boundless, profitable hype. Meanwhile the agents were losing their simplicity in subtle ways.”

The CIA’s top managers and executives likewise succeed through their ability to corrupt and deceive. Our ruling class behaves the same way, and values the CIA for its expertise. Do we as American citizens also embrace this ‘dog eat dog” philosophy, and thus tacitly understand and approve of the CIA and the established pattern of not confronting us (and our fragile consciences) with the knowledge of its various crimes?

JK – We can never accept this kind of behavior. Never. It is this kind of sociopathy that throughout history has led us into wars, coups and countercoups, and the defense of fascist dictatorships. Your FBN friend is exactly right.

DV – You were involved in operations against the Taliban in 2001, when John Lindh was captured at the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi. Did the CIA and its allied forces summarily execute prisoners during and after this battle, in which CIA officer Mike Spann was killed?

JK – I was not involved in this. I was in Washington at the time, and then I transferred to Pakistan in early 2002. When I was at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I initiated an investigation into the Dasht e-Leili Massacre, to which you refer. I have no idea of CIA officers were present at the massacre. I believe they probably were. But I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about what happened there.

DV – Apparently all but a few dozen of the 500 prisoners Qala-i-Jangi were killed. The survivors were loaded onto boxcars with several thousand other Taliban prisoners and, reportedly, suffocated to death. Those who emerged from the boxcars were gunned down and buried in mass graves by the Junbish-i Milli faction of the Afghan Northern Alliance under General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Is it true that CIA officers were advising Dostum’s forces and were complicit in the Dasht-i-Leili massacre?

JK – I think it was closer to 2,000 people who were killed. There is no evidence that anybody was “gunned down.” Instead, according to survivors interviewed at Guantanamo, most of the prisoners suffocated in the boxcars. I don’t know if there were any CIA officers advising Dostum, nor is there definitive evidence that CIA officers were present at the box-up. That is what I wanted to investigate. But my investigation was killed.

DV –Former Ohio Senator Stephen Young revealed in 1965 that CIA “black propaganda” tactics included having its mercenaries pose as enemy guerrillas and commit ghastly atrocities. Does the CIA engage in these types of “black propaganda” tactics in its war on terror? Does it infiltrate groups like ISIS, and seek to control and direct their leadership, for the undemocratic purpose of fueling conflicts and enriching its patrons in the war industry?

JK – I have not heard of the CIA participating in atrocities like those described by Senator Young in the years after the Church Committee.

DV – Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, but he also “lost an eye” while in CIA custody. Given the ferocious nature of the fighting in Afghanistan, and given what we know about CIA practices in other conflicts, including Vietnam, was our national attention focused on waterboarding to deflect us from the more horrible atrocities CIA officers were committing (like, perhaps, gouging out eyes) in secret black sites and in the field, fighting enemy guerrillas?

JK – Abu Zubaydah had a diseased eye when we caught him in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March 2002. I know that his diseased eye was removed by CIA physicians sometime after his capture, but I don’t know why. It’s my understanding that the CIA does not do things like gouge out eyes. Certainly waterboarding, cold cells, and sleep deprivation are bad enough.

DV – All sorts of crimes occur within the realm of espionage. CIA and military counter-intelligence officers have traditionally had the right to terminate by murder their agents, and agent accomplices, in the field, without legal review? Is that still the case?

JK – That has not been the case since the Ford Administration.

DV – CIA officers, and the institution itself, seem sadistic in nature, taking perverse delight inflicting pain and death upon people, directly or through intermediaries in foreign police forces and secret services. Is that so? How does that mean-streak affect out national self-image and our so-called democracy?

JK – This is a broad generality. I personally did not know anybody at the CIA who delighted in inflicting pain and death upon anybody. Certainly those officers exist. But they are few and far between. Either way, though, when a CIA officer commits torture or when the CIA as an organization sends a prisoner to a third country, where he is tortured, that weakens the Agency. It doesn’t strengthen it. And it weakens our democracy.

DV – You were a consultant on the movie “Kill the Messenger.” To what extent are CIA officers facilitating the drug trafficking activities of warlords on its payroll in Afghanistan and the Middle East? Do they provide transportation? What else?

JK – I don’t know. What I can tell you is that when I went to Afghanistan with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff in 2009, one Afghan poppy farmer complained to me, when I asked him why he was planting poppy instead of food crops, that he wished the US government would “make up its mind.” He said, “The CIA told me in 2002 that if I told them where al-Qaeda was I could grow poppy. Now you say I can’t grow poppy. I wish you would make up your mind.” We can all draw our own conclusions as to what has happened in Afghanistan with its poppy crop over the past 15 years.

DV – What chance does America have of achieving democracy, given everything we’ve discussed above about the CIA, including the complicity of our Congressional representatives and media?

JK – I don’t think we’ll ever be a true democracy. The vested interests are just too strong, and “democracy” doesn’t help them in any way.

DV – Given the extraordinary functions it serves, is it possible to abolish the CIA and divide its functions between the State Department and the military?

JK – Many Americans mocked Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he said in 1975 that the CIA should be abolished. And I believe that it should. (I don’t think it will, but believe that it should.) Certainly, the analysis can be done by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the human intelligence collection can be done by the Defense Department’s “Defense HUMINT Services; military analysis can, and is, done by the DIA; and special forces operations can and should be done by the special forces. We simply don’t need the CIA anymore.

DV – Thank you John for the interview and for your courage in standing up to the CIA. I wish you great good luck with your prison reform endeavor.

Author’s note: We know from Dewey Clarridge’s infamous terror manual Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare that the CIA never observed the reforms imposed upon it in the mid-1970s.

Douglas Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs, and The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics, and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA.

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ASEAN’s Geopolitical Arrangement Vis-à-vis The Chinese Containment Coalition

March 29th, 2015 by Andrew Korybko

The regional grouping of Southeast Asian states has catapulted to the forefront of global economics, becoming one of the fastest growing blocs in the world. Its economies have stabilized after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and have since then shown intense resilience by fully rebounding from the ‘Great Recession’ in 2010, much quicker than most other countries elsewhere in the world (especially in Europe).

Due to these factors, ASEAN has understandably become a focal point of interest and interaction for all serious global players, hence the value in comprehending its overall trends and geopolitical disposition:

Shifting Alignment

Prodded by the US’ Pivot to Asia, ASEAN countries are being pressured by Washington to take sides in its rivalry with Beijing and ideally sign on to the China Containment Coalition (CCC). Complicating matters, however, is that China is the region’s largest trade partner, although the US is trying to convince the bloc that the future lies with the its TPP, not the Chinese-led Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. This artificial choice that the US is forcing upon ASEAN runs the risk of splitting the organization, although in Washington’s view, a fractured ASEAN partially under its influence is more preferable than a unified one that’s pragmatic towards China. Not all of ASEAN’s members have committed their strategic trajectory towards one side or the other yet, and even those who already have may possibly flip sometime in the future (e.g. the Philippines or Myanmar), meaning that the shifting geopolitical alignment of the group’s associated states is one of its foremost trends.

Regional Integration

Some of the ASEAN member states seem intent on deepening their cooperation past the economic field and into the political and military ones. Pertaining to the former, Vietnam is leading efforts in lobbying the group to form a united front in dealing with China, and officially speaking at least, ASEAN intends to sign a so-called ‘Code of Conduct’ with China sometime in the future. As is its norm, China prefers to deal with its territorial disputes on a bilateral basis with the specific states involved, shying away from addressing with them in a multilateral framework that could complicate the resolution of each individual issue. However, the ASEAN states involved in these disputes with China feel weakened by this approach, and they may be moving closer togetheramongst themselves in order to present the united front that Vietnam envisions. The risk is increasingly becoming real that ASEAN may experience an internal split between the maritime/coastal states with territorial disputes against China and those which aren’t party to the conflict, and the prospects of anti-Chinese military cooperation amongst some of its members make this problem an urgent one

Vietnam and the Philippines have just entered into a strategic partnership, which is only Manila’s third, behind the ones it has with the US and Japan, underlining the growing intimacy of ties between the two anti-Chinese states. The expectation is that both states will intensify their military coordination and asean-mapform the basis of a Southeast Asian ‘NATO’ designed to counter China. It’s unclear at this point whether any other ASEAN members will sign up for the CCC, but it’s a certainty that Japan, and perhaps even India and Australia, will get in on the action. Anyhow, Vietnam and the Philippines’growing antagonism towards China is leading to the de-facto integration of their South China Sea strategy towards Beijing (via American ‘Lead From Behind’ guidance per the Pivot to Asia) at the expense of ASEAN’s unity. It’s not forecasted that the organization will disband over this or even come close to such a scenario owing to its economic and good-neighborly roots (neither of the ASEAN states have any serious disagreements amongst themselves, except perhaps for Thailand and Cambodia), but such actions certainly handicap its further peaceful integration with all members and could perhaps prematurely stunt this development in general.

Global Interest

ASEAN’s importance has attracted the interest of the most serious global players of the 21stcentury. Here’s a look at who’s involved and for what ends:

The US:
Washington has been pursuing its Pivot to Asia over the past couple of years, in what is an obvious move to counter growing Chinese influence right in Beijing’s backyard. The US wants to provoke the region against China, with the aim of then crystallizing that resentment into tangible anti-Chinese policies like the CCC and the TPP. While it would love to have a unified, pro-American, anti-Chinese ASEAN under its wing, the US will eagerly split the grouping if needed (which is currently ongoing, as described above) should it become too pragmatic in its policies towards Beijing. The South China Sea is the anvil on which the American hammer wants to smash ASEAN into two pieces.

Russia:
Moscow’s presence in ASEAN is mostly centered on its full-spectrum relationship with Hanoi, which includes military, economic, and energy components. Russia is also close to Thailand, and its citizens contribute so significantly to its tourist and real estate sectors that both are expecting a notable decline this year due to the ruble’s slump. Moscow and Bangkok could evenreboot their relations during Prime Minister Medvedev’s visit next month, which considering theexpanding trade ties between the two (including in the agricultural sector), might likely happen.

Such a development wouldn’t be unexpected, however, since Thailand’s new government has earned the consternation of American patron due to its so-called ‘undemocratic’ nature, and it’s understandable why it would want to thumb its nose at the West by working with its prime rival, Russia. Besides, the world is entering a period of multipolarity, and states are diversifying their partnerships in order to be as flexible as possible in the changing situation. Thailand, under its current government, is no exception.

Maritime-Silk-Road

China:
Beijing’s interactions with its southern neighbors are motivated by the need to retain stability in the region and encourage friendly ties between all parties, as is signified by the Maritime Silk Road, Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank proposals. The South China Sea dispute is an impediment to this, but aside from historical claims, China has strategic reasons for pushing its nine-dash line claim and not backing down. The essence of China’s concerns doesn’t relate so much to energy considerations as it does to military ones.

If Vietnam or the Philippines (the two most anti-China states in the region) were to ever be successful in gaining a significant foothold in the area, they could potentially outfit the islands/rocks with naval bases (even if they need to artificially expand their holdings through dredging) that could then be used to not only threaten China’s vulnerable economic lifeline on the seas, but to possibly even host US naval units (either permanently, temporarily, or ‘in rotation’) that could acquire forward-operating advantages vis-à-vis China. It is this latter scenario that scares Chinese decision makers the most, hence why Beijing took the initiative to more authoritatively defend its claims right around the time the US announced its Asia Pivot.

Out-Of-Region CCC Members:
This category includes the aspiring Asian powers of India and Japan that are suspected of wanting to physically involve their militaries in the South China Sea in order to contain China and clinch profitable partnerships with its neighbors, especially the anti-Chinese ones like Vietnam and the Philippines. Australia can also be included in this mix through its hosting of 1000 US Marines in Darwin and its recently decided-upon training of the Vietnamese military, although its strong dependence on the Chinese economy constraints its overall CCC behavior. Returning the focus to India and Japan, both nations’ navies have trained together under the US’ aegis three times since 2007, warming their military relations out of a perceived fear of China. The US’ new National Security Strategy also envisions India playing a greater role in China’s southern backyard, so considering the official American alliance with Japan, it’s foreseeable that Washington will continue to play kingmaker in bringing the two together to confront China along its southern periphery.

Concluding Thoughts

The situation surrounding the ASEAN states is a lot more complex than one may originally think, and it’s apparent that the group isn’t as unified as it may seem upon first glance. While some of its members are actively confronting China, others are actively cooperating with it, and the US and its out-of-region Lead From Behind partners of India and Japan are exploiting this rift to their own geopolitical advantage. In a ‘perfect world’, the US would love to fully contain China and neuter its future capabilities, opening it up to internal fragmentation and a Color Revolution, but Beijing will never let this happen without a fight. Being the asymmetrical masterminds that they are, the country’s decision makers are currently pushing back in mainland ASEAN, using Laos’ position as the regional pivot to promote a grand strategy of preemptively breaking out of the US’ intended noose and collapsing the foundation of its containment.

The subsequent article will thus address the geopivotal role of Laos in mainland ASEAN affairs and focus on how it perfectly fits into China’s proactive containment-shattering strategy.

Andrew Korybko is the political analyst and journalist for Sputnik who currently lives and studies in Moscow, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

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Macedonia: Scenario of A Ukraine Style Protest Movement and Coup d’Etat?

March 29th, 2015 by Global Research News

Additional details from the investigation over Zoran Verusevski, the former head of Macedonia UBK State Security agency, reveal that he was discussing the possibility of a Ukrainian style protests that would bring down the Government in Macedonia and bring the opposition SDSM party in power.

Verusevski, who held high positions in the security services appointed by SDSM, is charged, together with SDSM leader Zoran Zaev and several others, of trying to blackmail the Government to bring SDSM into the ruling coalition, and also of cooperating with foreign intelligence agencies.

Former Head of UBK State Security Agency Zoran Verusevski. Photo: Dnevnik

Police confiscated Verusevski’s computers and other electronic devices when he was arrested in mid­January, and since, several leaks from the investigation revealed details about his correspondence with Zaev and with Gjorgji Lazarevski, another former high ranking UBK official who is also charged. Zaev confirmed some of the leaks as authentic. Several media outlets reported on Saturday about a cache of Skype messages exchanged between Verusevski and Lazarevski, in which the two former security officials are mentioning Ukraine, as a political disturbance scenario that they could develop in Macedonia. In one message Lazarevski says that SDSM leader Zaev should move his “old behind” and be more like Vitaly Klichko, the Ukrainian boxer who energized the Maidan protests.

Verusevski responds that Zaev does not have the credibility, because “an amnestied politician is like a released pedophile”. Zaev was amnestied in 2008 by then President and leading SDSM politician Branko Crvenkovski over the charges that as mayor of the city of Strumica he allowed a corrupt real­ estate deal that benefited him and his business associates. In another batch of Skype messages, Verusevski says “Ukraine has collapsed”, with Lazarevski replying that “we are not far behind”, only to add that “SDSM doesn’t have the capacity for a coup”. An earlier leak from their correspondence showed Verusevski and Lazarevski discussing that what they are preparing could lead to a civil war in Macedonia.

The two are charged with recruiting an UBK surveillance system technician Zvonko Kostovski to wiretap phones from leading Government and opposition officials, and of preparing English language reports they then gave to a foreign intelligence service, which paid them substantially. Verusevski is charged with joining forces with Zaev, and planning to use the cache of information his rogue spy ring has gathered in an attempt to pressure VMRO-­DPMNE leader and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski into bringing SDSM to the Government. Gruevski responded by asking the Public Prosecutor’s office to investigate the case, and currently Zaev and Verusevski are charged, while Zaev is holding press conferences at which he is presenting audio files he claims prove corruption and election irregularities perpetrated by VMRO-­DPMNE officials. VMRO-­DPMNE insists that the material is taken out of context and fabricated.

Verusevski had a day long hearing at the Prosecutor’s office on Friday, with the entirety of the evidence gathered against him presented, likely for the first time. Zvonko Kostovski was already sentenced to three years in prison, in exchange for his confession, the details of which were likely presented before Verusevski on Friday as well.

The fear that political and inter-­ethnic tensions could appear as result of the political situation was often discussed by commentators on both sides. Macedonia experienced an armed insurgency by ethnic Albanian rebels in 2001, which ended with international mediation and a political agreement. That insurgency was preceded by a 2000 wiretapping scandal in which then opposition leader Branko Crvenkovski blamed then VMRO’-DPMNE leader and Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski of mass wiretapping, and presented transcripts of conversations he allegedly got from insiders in the UBK service. Crvenkovski’s source was never revealed, as the country became engulfed in the 2001 insurgency, with commentators close to VMRO­DPMNE saying that, both in 2000 and in 2015, Verusevski was the main source of the wiretapping charges.

Copyright the Independent, Macedonia 2015

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Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign Is Now Effectively Over. Wall Street Warns Democrats Not to Choose Senator Elizabeth Warren

March 29th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

Hillary Clinton’s unannounced campaign for the U.S. Presidency has already failed. Her arrogance (or else stupidity) in having wiped clean the hard drive of the private server she had used for her emails while she was the U.S. Secretary of State adds insult to the injury already done to her incipient campaign by the earlier revelation that she had evaded the State Department’s record-keeping system and had used her private server for all of her State Department emails and not only for her personal emails. (The NYT had headlined March 2nd: “Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules.”)

CNN, early Saturday morning, March 28th, bannered the big follow-up, “Hillary Clinton deleted all email from personal server,” and reported that, “Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all the emails on the private server she used to do official business as secretary of state.” Ms. Clinton immediately responded to reporters’ questions by saying that nothing of importance to, or concerning, her State Department business, was on that server, and that she had recently sent to the investigator who is looking into this matter “roughly 30,000 emails” that related to State Department business. However, the public, and prosecutors, will now not be able to see the other emails (which she says were approximately 32,000), because she then had that server wiped clean. She says she had had this done because “no one wants their personal emails made public.”

In other words: the public would just have to trust her assertion that nothing related to government business was in those “personal emails.”

Private letters from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other American leaders, are published in books; but Hillary Clinton does not think that the American public should ever have access to hers. Today’s emails are like paper-and-ink letters in that bygone era; but she has, in effect, burned them. Historians won’t get to see them; neither will the public.

Even the earlier revelation had caused her ratio of unfavorable-to-favorable ratings in polls to soar.

On March 19th, Reuters headlined, “Many Democrats want independent Clinton email probe: Reuters/Ipsos poll,” and reported: “Support for Clinton’s candidacy has dropped about 15 percentage points since mid-February among Democrats, with as few as 45 percent saying they would support her in the last week.”

In the CBS News poll, taken March 21-24, Hillary’s Favorable rating was 26%, Not Favorable was 37%; this had last been polled by CBS on September 12-16 of 2008: 51% Favorable, 35% Unfavorable. Her Favorable is down from 51% to 26%, almost half, since then. The latest Gallup poll on that question was March 2-4 (this year): 50% Favorable, 39% Unfavorable. Assuming comparability of the Gallup and the CBS polls, her figures went from 50% Favorable and 39% Unfavorable just as the first news of this email scandal broke, down to 26% Favorable and 37% Unfavorable just before the latest revelation — the revelation that she had wiped her server clean — and it’s likely to go even lower now, after that second blow.

Wall Street has banked on Hillary’s becoming President. Her husband gave them what they wanted (the end of the Glass-Steagall Act); and during the past year she has been collecting millions of dollars in ‘speaking fees’ for meeting with them in private.

According to all accounts of the collections by her nascent campaign organization, money has been flowing into it by the millions.

And Wall Street is already panicking at the news-reports of her email scandal.

On Friday March 27th, Britain’s Guardian headlined, “Elizabeth Warren: Banks Could Halt Donations in Protest at Senator’s Plans,” and reported that, “Big Wall Street banks are so upset with Elizabeth Warren’s call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said. Representatives from Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party’s tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.”

On 19 April 2014, the Guardian had headlined “Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal” and reported that, “Throughout the documents, which are among 7,000 pages released by the Clinton library on Friday, there is little discussion of internal opposition to repealing Glass-Steagall,” which was the FDR law, passed in response to the 1929 economic crash, that (up till 2000) blocked banks from ever again gambling with depositors’ money and from their leaving the Federal Government holding the bag (bank “bailouts”) when such bank-gambles produce losses, as occurred again in 2008. Senator Warren wants to reinstate those protections for depositors and taxpayers, and the megabanks are terrified against that possibility.

Naturally, then, on 21 May 2014, Mother Jones bannered, “Hillary Clinton’s Speaking Circuit Payday: $5 Million (and Counting),” and listed some of the companies that were forking over $200,000 apiece to have private sessions with her (’speaking fees’) while she was “considering” to gear up for a Presidential campaign: Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the National Association of Realtors, etc. Her donors’ list is rich; and it’s all ‘private,’ perhaps just like the emails that she destroyed.

The only Democrats who will be voting for Hillary Clinton are the ones who are satisfied for Wall Street to own Main Street.

And Republicans will vote against her because she’s not nominally “Republican.”

End of story. End of Presidential chance. (But, likely, not end of Presidential campaign. More likely, just the start for other Democrats to enter the race.)

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity

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U.S. Pays Most for Healthcare of Any Industrialized Nation … But Ranks Worst for Healthcare

March 29th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

According to Some Metrics …

The Commonwealth Fund reported last year:

The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity. In this edition of Mirror, Mirror, the United Kingdom ranks first, followed closely by Switzerland

While UK residents averaged $3,405 per year on healthcare costs (the second-lowest, trailing only New Zealand), Americans paid $8,508 per year. And yet Commonwealth ranked the UK as number 1 for healthcare, and the U.S. dead last … 11th out of 11 industrialized nations.

Of course, Commonwealth’s main complaints with U.S. healthcare are access, efficiency and equity:

Overall health care ranking

In other words, America’s extreme inequality – and lack of socialized medicine – means that healthcare is only good for those who have enough cash to pay for it.

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Impasse of Greece Debt Negotiations with Troika, Economic Support from Russia and China?

March 29th, 2015 by Asad Ismi

In a stunning victory on January 25, the leftist Syriza party won Greece’s national elections by a wide margin, earning just short of a majority of seats in parliament. Syriza campaigned on a promise to end the austerity measures (privatization, wage constraints, public service layoffs, etc.) that were a condition on 240 billion euros ($339 billion) of European finance to help pay down Greek debt. Syriza promised the electorate they would renegotiate the bailout conditions and reduce total Greek debt, now at 323 billion euros ($456 billion), by up to half. Newly elected Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made good on that promise by insisting the current bailout package, which ends on February 28, will not be extended on Europe’s harsh terms.

“Syriza’s victory came like a breath of fresh air and has given the Greek people their dignity and pride back having been fleeced by EU bankers and the establishment,” said Cyprus-based author and news commentator Andreas Chrysafis. “The Syriza Party has risen out of the ashes of despair and Tsipras and his group have provided the last glimmer of hope to the people of Greece.”

Sixty per cent of Greece’s debt is owed to European Union governments, 10% to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and 6% to the European Central Bank (ECB), all of which are collectively known as the troika. In return, these institutions demanded draconian economic and social reforms that were dutifully carried out by the previous Greek government over the past five years. They included especially severe government cutbacks in health care and education spending, privatizations, the slashing of wages (by 50% in some cases) and pensions, higher taxes, and the mass firing of public servants, including 35,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers. As a result of these cuts, the Greek economy has shrunk, the health care system has collapsed, and infant mortality has risen by more than 40%.

Public protest against the impoverishment of Greeks to the benefit of European creditors is directly responsible for bringing Syriza to power. The party is a coalition of Eurocommunists, social movements and anti-globalization activists. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new finance minister, has said austerity “turned this nation into a debt colony.” Syriza has promised to restore the minimum monthly wage to 751 euros ($1,060), rehire dismissed public sector workers, restore collective wage agreements, subsidize food and electricity for the poorest Greeks, and reverse privatizations.

Similar European austerity programs, imposed since the 2008 crisis, have devastated Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Cyprus, subjecting the continent overall to three recessions in five years. Recognizing this failure, the ECB recently initiated a limited fiscal stimulus, similar to the one launched in the U.S. in 2008, but it may be too little too late.

“The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, is a neoliberal entity, but it has acted very differently from the ECB and European authorities since the 2008-2009 world financial crisis and recession. As a result of these differences in policy, euro zone unemployment is more than twice that of the U.S. and the euro zone has had several more years of unnecessary recession,” explained Mark Weisbrot, economist and co-director of the Washington, D.C.–based Centre for Economic and Policy Research, in an interview.

The Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also blames the EU for Greece’s predicament.

“Greece could be blamed for its troubles if it were the only country where the troika’s medicine failed miserably,” he wrote in a February 5 commentary. “But Spain had a surplus and a low debt ratio before the crisis, and it, too, is in depression. What is needed is not structural reform within Greece and Spain so much as structural reform of the euro zone’s design and a fundamental rethinking of the policy frameworks that have resulted in the monetary union’s spectacularly bad performance.”

The structure of the euro zone makes Greece’s problems harder to deal with, according to Stiglitz, because monetary union means “member states cannot devalue their way out of trouble, yet the modicum of European solidarity that must accompany this loss of policy flexibility simply is not there.”

Philippe Legrain, who was an economic advisor to the president of the European Commission (the EU’s executive arm) from 2011 to 2014, agrees with Stiglitz regarding European culpability. In an article this January before the Greek election, he pointed out that the bailout benefited European banks, not Greece, and violated the EU’s own treaty rules. Legrain wrote:

Greece’s reckless borrowing was financed by equally reckless lenders. First in line were French and German banks that lent too much, too cheaply…

 By the time Greece was cut off from the markets in 2010, its soaring public debt of 130 per cent of GDP was obviously unpayable in full. It should have been written down as the IMF later acknowledged publicly. Austerity would then have been less extreme and the recession shorter and shallower. But to avoid losses for German and French banks, euro zone policymakers, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pretended that Greece was merely going through temporary funding difficulties. Breaching the EU treaties’ “no-bailout” rule, which bans euro zone governments from bailing out their peers, they lent European taxpayers’ money to the insolvent Greek government, ostensibly out of solidarity, but actually to bail out creditors… 

So whatever you think of Syriza’s left-wing politics, it is justified in demanding debt relief from the EU.

The EU does not see it this way. Amply displaying the lack of European solidarity that Stiglitz mentioned, the EU has so far refused to renegotiate the terms of its bailout loans with Greece. Varoufakis has visited seven European capitals since Syriza’s victory, meeting other finance ministers and offering concessions, but he has been rebuffed at each step.

Varoufakis then met the other 18 euro zone finance ministers on February 11 and 16 to present his proposals, which included a retraction of an earlier demand for a debt write-down, replaced by a scheme involving growth-linked bonds that would be used to repay the Greek debt. These bonds would be paid only when the Greek economy started showing growth. Varoufakis also agreed to enact 70% of the EU’s austerity conditions. In return, he asked for a bridging loan to meet Greece’s debt obligations once the austerity-based loan expired on February 28.

The February 11 and 16 meetings collapsed with no agreement. Austerity is Greece’s only option as the EU sees it. The EU finance ministers, led by Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany and his Dutch counterpart Jeroen Dijsselbloem, insisted that Greece renew the bailout agreement before February 28 and fulfill all accompanying austerity conditions. The ministers gave Varoufakis an ultimatum: agree to an extension of the bailout by the end of the week or lose all loans. The Greek finance minister stood firm, rejecting the ultimatum and holding out for a better deal.

If the bailout ends on February 28 (the Monitor went to print in mid-February), the Greek government will forgo an additional 7.2 billion euros ($10.2 billion), and will, therefore, not be able to make debt payments due in March, which could force Greece out of the euro zone.

“The Eurogroup stand was expected… The northern states never wanted to help Greece at all except within the boundaries of the existing harsh bail-in troika loan resolutions, which have destroyed the nation,” said Chrysafis. “The Eurogroup acted like a school teacher reprimanding a naughty student who dared to speak out. This is the start of the demise of the EU, which demands absolute obedience to its terms for poisoned loans.”

“One reason the EU does not want Greece to leave it, is that the most likely outcome would be that Greece, after an initial financial crisis, would recover more rapidly than the rest of the eurozone, and other governments would also want to leave”, argued Weisbrot. “If Syriza succeeds, either inside or outside of the euro, it will likely have an important effect on most or all of the euro zone,” Popular sentiment…already, correctly, sees the austerity of recent years as a failure. If Syriza can provide a successful alternative, this will encourage others to demand one.

“The most obvious place for contagion is Spain, where the leftist Podemos party, formed only about a year ago, recently shot up to first place in the polls,” he added. “The institutions of the euro zone will have to change their policies to allow for faster growth and more employment or the euro zone could eventually dissolve.”

Chrysafis suggested Europe was trapped.

“If the EU fails to agree to renegotiate the Greek debt sensibly, Greece will raise the money elsewhere. Russia has already offered a U.S.$10 billion ($12.4 billion) loan to Greece,” he said.

“EU citizens have had enough of EU incompetence and policies that bring stagnation rather than prosperity. The EU has brought ruin and unemployment to millions of citizens, especially the young, and they simply no longer trust it. I will not be surprised to see the gradual erosion and downfall of the EU in the next ten years.”

On February 10, Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos, a member of the right-wing Independent Greeks with which Syriza formed a coalition government, proposed alternative financing solutions from outside the euro zone.

 “We want a deal. But if there is no deal, and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow Europe apart, then we will have to go to Plan B. We have other ways of finding money,” he said. “It could be the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries.”

Kammenos added that Greece would prefer to leave the euro if membership means submitting to a “Europe under German domination.”

According to Nikos Chountis, Greece’s deputy foreign minister, “There have been proposals, offers I would say, from Russia for economic support as well as from China, regarding help, investment possibilities.”

 Asad Ismi is international affairs correspondent for the Monitor. He is author of the radio documentary Capitalism is the Crisis which has been aired on 42 radio stations in the U.S., Canada and Europe reaching about 33 million people. For his publications visit www.asadismi.ws.

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The Netanyahu Victory. Is there a Path to a Just Peace?

March 29th, 2015 by Michael Welch

“He’s a unifying factor among the squabbling factions of Israeli society.” -Professor James Petras

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Benjamin Netanyahu emerged triumphant from the March 17 national elections, having secured the backing of nearly a fourth of the Israeli electorate and now controlling 30 of the 120 seats in the Israeli Knesset. He is now well positioned to form a governing coalition, anticipated to be composed of several right of centre parties.

During the campaign, Netanyahu stoked fear of a nuclear Iran and announced his intention to abandon a two state solution to the long running Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu is now enterring his third consecutive term as Israeli Prime Minister, his fourth over all. Should he complete this term, he will become the longest serving Prime Minister in Israeli history.

What accounts for the success of this credibly accused war criminal among the Israeli population?

Professor James Petras thinks he knows. In fact, as he states in this feature interview, he is not at all surprised the election results went the way they did. He believes that a settler-colonial mindset that crosses over ideologies and classes is at the root of Netanyahu’s appeal. In the first half hour of the program, he elaborates on this perspective and on how it can inform meaningful activism in service of Palestine soliarity.

In Canada, elite political an economic interests within the country have typically been protective of the Israeli State. The latest example of this would be a March 13 message from Federal Liberal Party leader, and would-be Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau. As the McGill University student body was addressing a referendum question on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction of companies profitting from Israeli Apartheid. Trudeau’s twitter post read as follows:

The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a @McGillU alum, I’m disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough

In the second half hour, we hear from activist Bruce Katz about these and other obstacles facing Palestine solidarity activism in Canada.

We also hear once again from Jeff Halper of the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions. He presents the human face of Israeli Apartheid, his take on the potential of BDS and the problematic portrayals of the Israel-Palestine situation in mass media.

Dr. James Petras is Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghampton University in New York, and the author of numerous books an articles including the recent The Roots of Netanyahu’s Electoral Victory: Colonial Expansion and Fascist Ideology.

Bruce Katz is the co-founder and Acting President of Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), a human rights organization founded in November 2000  working for a lasting settlement to the Israel/Palestine conflict based on the principles of human rights and the strict application of international law. 

Dr. Jeff Halper, is the co-founder and Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) for the past 17 years, as well as a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Divisions within the Kiev Regime, the Role of Ukrainian Oligarch Kolomoysky. Report

March 29th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

The Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung reported Thursday the 26th, that the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, whom Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko recently removed from control over Ukraine’s monopoly oil-transport firm and from being governor of a Ukrainian province, had been using his private army, augmented by forces from Dmitriy Yarosh’s Right Sector party, to rob other oligarchs, especially Ukraine’s richest one, Rinat Akhmetov. 

Akhmetov’s companies are mainly in eastern Ukraine, and so Akhmetov had been trying to avoid siding with either the post-coup Ukrainian government or the anti-coup residents of the far-eastern, and pro-Russian, Donbass region of Ukraine, who reject it. (That’s the dark-purple area shown on this voting map of the last Presidential election before the coup, where 90%+ of the residents had voted for Viktor Yanukovych — the man who was overthrown in the coup.) Akhmetov was thus vulnerable after the coup.

This news report, by FAZ’s Warsaw correspondent Konrad Schuller, says that Kolomoysky’s thugs had been using “psychological pressure,” “intimidation,” “physical force,” and “kidnappings,” in order to “extend their influence.” They were “going to build in eastern Ukraine’s combat zone a network of extortion and violence that would subject everyone there to kidnapping and robbery by Kolomoysky  with the help of some of his leading battalion commanders.”

This article reports that, “In the center of it all there stood a man named K., a prominent and close associate of Kolomoysky.” Earlier, the article says, “Kolomoysky’s deputy as governor, Hennadij Korban, was preparing to organize demonstrations in his stronghold Dnipropetrovsk,” which is the region to which, after the coup, Kolomoysky had been appointed governor by Oleksandr Turchynov, who had been appointed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had been appointed by Geoffrey Pyatt, at the instruction of Victoria Nuland, who had been appointed by Barack Obama.

Kolomoysky, furthermore, himself appointed Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden to the board of Kolomoysky’s own gas-exploration company.

However, apparently, Kolomoysky, who had long been known for taking over companies by raiding them with his private army, has now become too much for Obama to take, and so Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko recently removed Kolomoysky from his posts.

Back in June, Kolomoysky said publicly that he would not take instruction from President Poroshenko. But now that Obama has turned against Kolomoysky, Kolomoysky no longer has any effective political power-base in Ukraine, despite his billions and his private army and his backing from Yarosh’s Right Sector, which includes an even larger private army, very nazi. (In Ukraine, the nazis, or racist fascists, are haters of Russians, not necessarily also of Jews; Kolomoysky himself is Jewish, yet he’s also a leading Ukrainian nazi.) Yarosh’s Right Sector troops, as well as Kolomoysky’s own mercenaries, have been the most effective of all of Ukraine’s forces at killing the residents of the rebelling region, Donbass.

FAZ‘s reporter Schuller says that the Security Bureau of Ukraine (SBU) had found that Kolomoysky was planning to become Ukraine’s “final number one among the oligarchs of the country,” by stealing from Akhmetov and others.

Apparently, Obama has decided to let Poroshenko take over. The nazis, whose guns and muscle overthrew the previous president, Viktor Yanukovych, now know that Obama will no longer be beholden to them — he has had enough of them, and he expects everyone to line up now behind President Poroshenko.

There has been a contest in Ukraine as to whether the ethnic cleansing of Donbass, to get rid of its residents, would be taken over by the nazi forces or would remain under Poroshenko’s command. Evidently, it will remain under Poroshenko’s command.

On March 24th, U.S. Abrams tanks were photographed in Linz Austria on rail cars heading toward Ukraine. If that’s where they are going, then the Ukrainian government might have better weapons this time than they did in either of their previous two invasions of Donbass.

U.S. President Obama accuses Russia of arming the residents in Donbass. In his National Security Strategy 2015, he uses the word “aggression” 18 times, 17 of them referring to Russia.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

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Israeli Fighter Jets Join Saudi Arabia in War on Yemen

March 29th, 2015 by Fars News Agency

Israel’s fighter jets have taken part in the Thursday Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen, sources in Sanaa disclosed on Friday.

“This is for the first time that the Zionists are conducting a joint operation in coalition with Arabs,” Secretary General of Yemen’s Al-Haq Political Party Hassan Zayd wrote on his facebook page.

He noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued direct orders for the Israeli air force to send fighter jets to the Saudi-led air raid on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against Yemen and killed, at least, 25 civilians early Thursday, one day after the US-backed Yemeni president fled the country.

Also, 15 more people were killed and injured in a second round of massive attacks by the Saudi Arabian fighter jets in the Northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada on Friday.

Yemen’s al-Massira TV reported that the Saudi air force targeted the Yemeni’s civilians who were shopping in a market.

Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — backed by the US have declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued earlier Thursday.

US President Barack Obama authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to the military operations, National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said late Wednesday night.

She added that while US forces were not taking direct military action in Yemen, Washington was establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support.

Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is attacking Ansarullah positions, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near Sana’a international airport. Based on early reports, the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have so far claimed the lives of 25 civilians with more deaths feared, Yemeni sources said.

The Saudi aggression has received growing international condemnation as it is pushing the region and the world into an unprecedented fast-growing war as its ISIL mercenaries are on the brink of complete annihilation in Iraq and Syria.

 

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Ancient Syria and Mesopotamia, Cradle of Civilization. From Ancient to Modern Mashriq

March 29th, 2015 by Dr. Ali Kadri

The earliest places to develop into sedentary cultures were to be found in the present-day Mashriq (Ancient Syria and Mesopotamia) pursuant to the early agricultural revolution. The crevice at the end of the Great African rift known as the Fertile Crescent is a natural gathering ground for domesticable animals; it enjoyed regular rainfall and a variety of easily cultivable cereals.

Good soil quality circa 2000 B.C. produced about the same tonnage of barley as in early 1970 (Hilou, 2004). The steady development of tools and modes of social organisations required regulation and the pacification of the labouring class. Measures for trade and laws to attenuate repression and limit the appetite of the clergy represent the first set of written rules intended to steady the course of development – the Code of Ur-Nammu, 2100 B.C. The code addresses three vital points: the ruling on weight for trade, a limit to what the clergy could extract in tribute and, a statement ensuring the protection of the vulnerable from the transgression of the powerful.

These precepts crown the notion of the ‘Just Man’ of the East (Al-Alawi, 2009).

[i]n accordance with the true word of Utu, set the monthly temple expenses at 90 gur of barley, 30 sheep, and 30 sila of butter… the bronze sila-measure, standardized the one-mina weight, and standardized the stone weight of a shekel of silver in relation to one mina… The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina (Ur-Nammu, 2100 B.C.).

Stripped of its mystique, justice was the veil behind which despotic society pacified and regimented slave labour. Not that the code itself did relieve rulers from the pressure of rebellions; this was an era characterised by a high frequency of revolts (Hilou, 2004). The codes cum welfare measures spring in response to a history of revolts. Rebellion and the quelling of uprisings were central to the myths and beliefs of the Sumerians. In Atra-Hasis (mainly a flood myth but also with a creation story circa 1800. B.C.), the creation of humankind replaced angel-workers who rebelled against superior angels as they no longer tolerated the harsh conditions of labouring the earth (Atra-Hassis as compiled by Lambert, 1999). In this myth, man was moulded from the flesh and blood of a revolutionary angel whose ideas initially instigated the lower class of angels into mutiny. Rebellion and/or the critique of living conditions in Sumerian myth constitute an inherent characteristic of humankind.

Four centuries later, the code of Hammurabi’s further embellishes the Ur-Nammu demands for justice, the right to trade and the protection of civil and property rights.

To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak, and enlighten the land, to further the wellbeing of mankind. He referred to himself as the “shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves,” and ordered that “these my precious words” be written upon his memorial stone, before his image “That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans … in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries (Hammurabi, circa 1750 BC).

In comparison to the Ur-Nammu code, Hammurabi’s Code held the sovereign accountable for the delivery of welfare. If the tort could not be redressed by the law of equal retaliation (the lex talionis), the state had to compensate for the loss itself. The other side of the lex talionis’s an eye for an eye, is a sack of wheat for a sack of wheat. The sovereign acted as an insurance institution to indemnify losses. To avert peasant unrest, the sovereign had to protect the lower echelons of peasants from injury. Moreover, the rights of women to own property and divorce husbands – rights that women lack in some states today – assumed the position of binding laws.

To the Ancient Mesopotamians as well as the Greeks whose societies were erected by slave labour, strengthening the home front by more equitable distribution plasters over the fault lines of their class ordered social structures. Material circumstances and social orders were changing and concepts were evolving, but not until Heraclitus was change considered eternal law. Heraclitus stood opposed to un-changeability and his dynamic concept would later challenge Plato’s notion that change is a matter of appearance whereas reality is unchangeable and only penetrable by discerning the forms of thought (Ilyenkov, 1977). Later in Aristotle’s Politics, a cycle of change and an organic growth schema defining development from birth, to peak and ultimate dissolution took shape. However, similarly to the Mesopotamian ‘Just Man,’ Aristotle’s ‘Rational Man,’ through implementing equality, engendered a functional role to avoid collapse from within.

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons, and no government can stand which is not founded upon justice. For if the government be unjust everyone in the country unites with the governed in the desire to have a revolution, and it is an impossibility that the members of the government can be so numerous as to be stronger than all their enemies put together (Aristotle, Politics, book 7).

However, there is a false dichotomy in contrasting the Just Man of the East to the Rational Man of Asia-Minor. The diachronic development of concepts would situate Just Man as a predecessor of Rational Man. When Alexander’s armies besieged Babylon, the Babylonian king at the time was outside the city gates conducting archaeological excavations (Durant, 1935). That may be an amplification of the facts that Durant had employed in view of his admiration of Mesopotamian culture, but its use occurs here to highlight the differences in the levels of development between Mesopotamia and the Hellenistic world. Still, the Mashriq and Asia-Minor represented a single cultural pool and ancient Greeks regarded their science to have originated in Egypt and their alphabet in Phoenicia (Purkayastha, 2012). Bestowing upon Hellenistic culture a European identity, when political Europe had not yet appeared on the map, was carried out by latter-day Europeans to justify colonial expansion (Purkayastha, 2012).

For Christopher Hill  history has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change, the present does; and new questions of the past influence the present (Hill, 1975). Cultures transcend national identities, yet no effort is being spared to patent and subjugate knowledge to accumulation requirements. Greece had sunk under fictitious debt, yet little did it matter for Europe, which perversely touts its debt to the Hellenistic heritage. By the same perverse nationalist logic, a worse level of neglect applies to the present human disaster in the Mashriq to which each of the world nationalisms owes a good part of its culture. In modern times, cultural debt qua humanity’s shared cultural heritage, although real, is insignificant when compared to fictitious financial debts. To simplify at some cost to content, fictitious capital is the excess credit that does not have a commodity counterpart in the real economy (Fine, 2010); as in all the debts that cannot be repaid and serve as instruments to extort the working population by austerity. Fictitious ideas are taken to be real and bear non-fictitious effects upon the lives of the majority – as if they are a god-like fetish that rules over people. The fetishism predominant under the present historical stage blights culture (Pappenheim, 1959). Christopher Hill talked about ideas that need to be rescued to influence the present positively: the new-old idea that has to be resurrected is the unity of historical development.

When the general law is the realisation of the social contradiction as opposed to the quantitative similitude of elements in a given phenomenon, unity does not negate diversity. Put differently, unity is the law of motion and is both progenitor and the general condition in which diversity does not contravene the universal, but reasserts it. Let us consider one significant departure that existed between the Greco-Romans and the East: the slavery of the East, patriarchal slavery differed from the slavery of the Greco-Romans or commodified slavery; the former produced a surplus product, while the latter produced a variant of surplus value (Emmanuel, 1972).

The attribute of man as commodity in Western forms of slavery that originated in Greece is thought to have been one of the reasons that facilitated the early emergence of capitalism in Europe (Bettelheim, 1970). However, the differentiated attribute on its own (the different slave institutions) is a datum and does not explain social movement from one stage to another. On its own, it is only a fact unrelated to the whole and not a law of motion nesting in a social contradiction. These slave-mode differences are instantiations of the ‘genus’ qua class relationships and are predicated by the more general antinomy of class and modes of appropriation. Reference is made to Hegel’s lecture on Aristotle: ‘as to what concerns more nearly the relation of the three souls, as they way be termed (though they are incorrectly thus distinguished), Aristotle says of them, with perfect truth, that we need look for no one soul in which all these are found, and which in a definite and simple form is conformable with any one of them’ (Hegel, 1892). The manifestation of varying forms of social organisation is the rule and it reaffirms the different class relations and inter-relations under different stages of history and their corresponding material conditions.

That the East had lagged behind Europe in moving toward capitalism in spite of the fact that eastern commerce had the freedom to grow is an oft-debated problematic. Keeping in mind that the map of Europe keeps changing and that history is not a sports race with a beginning and an end, the central point remains that European conquests (as in the realisation of class by violent expropriation) hold primacy in explaining the rise of capitalist relations in Europe over differences in the attributes of forms of social organisation (as in differences in institutions of slavery) between European and Eastern modes of productions. As early as the twelfth century, the rise of European naval supremacy pushed Islamic traders out of the western Mediterranean (Edwards 2008). Of the many reasons behind the decline of the East, the devastation over land by the Mongols, the declining population from about the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, and, more decisively, the expulsion from the seas by the Europeans, reaching a climax in the battle of Lepanto in 1571, curtailed the transition of eastern merchant capital into productive capital. European imperialist conquests, beginning prior to the onset of capitalist relations, and direct plundering, raised the wealth of European merchant capital, limited the expansion of Eastern merchants, and gave birth to capitalist production relations. The East can have the best institutions on display, but if it loses the trade platform by war, its merchant capital cannot grow into industrial capital.

In a heterogeneous, self-differentiating and inter-related world, the issue of whether the East has failed in comparison to Europe is a misplaced problematic. European capital through its colonial and class linkages extends to the East. The East through its labour, raw materials and underdevelopment by colonial diktat reaches the West. Although capitalism was a world-system nurtured relation by the sixteenth century, its strength established by the violence of European ‘voyages of discovery’ allowed Europe to undermine eastern industrialisation (Emmanuel, 1972). As the social classes cross national or geographic boundaries, the attributes of their forms of social organisation become, necessarily but not exclusively, similar (as in the replication of institutional development).

At any rate, the high rate of financialisation has homogenised much of world capital in the modern age. The lines of demarcation that set real concepts apart from hallucinatory forms of thought are the class lines that crisscross national boundaries. Where the corresponding space or the referent that defines a concept in reality vis-à-vis another ends, is where the ideological inclination becomes apparent. So when Bernard Lewis posits that Islam (for him it is most of the East) has become poor, weak and ignorant, Michael Neumann responds with relevant data showing that poverty and underdevelopment are not exclusive characteristics of Islam or the Eastern world, but are shared across cultures (Neumann, 2003). Obviously, the former author holds an unsubstantiated view that omits the interrelatedness of cultures, while the latter upholds both a factually substantiated and fuller concept of culture.

In mainstream social science with reified concepts of West and nation state, Bernard Lewis is not alone; his ideas are methodologically at the core of received discourse. Variants of the unadulterated “us” concepts, especially the nation state, were and remain the drivers of global accumulation.  The underlying trope is an “us and them” divide, a language that rips diverse social characteristics from their holistic context, objectifies them, and omits unity. But  ‘the truth is the whole’—to use an expression of Hegel—carries with it, in turn, the inescapable necessity of refusing to accept as a datum or to treat as immune from analysis, any single part of the whole. (Herbert Marcuse speaking of Paul Baran, 1966).

It is not just an issue of no nation is separate and above the rest, it is an issue of constructing the initial concept of nation (or man) in its cross-national class composition. With two world wars and several other wars to its credit in the twentieth century, including no less, unjustifiable poverty levels in contrast to immense wealth, the ‘West’ (that is if it could be separated only in the mind) carries more guilt on its consciousness (Neumann, 2003). The guilt is equally shared by the one-sidedness of mainstream social science that reproduces the ideological conditions for wars with concepts whose referent is not borne by the facts, especially as of late, with cultural superiority functioning as racial supremacy.

From its onset on world stage, the crisis of capitalism, its genocide of the natives and slavery, had outdone its progressive moments. Given the fetishism attendant upon social relations, social processes under capitalism seldom adhere to welfare requirements; modern history happens against the wishes of the many and its progress or its endogeneity of technology is eclipsed by its endogeneity of violence. When one borrows the term endogenous to characterise a social relationship, as in the objective market signals allocating resources, endogeneity becomes the equivalent of systemic. As such, it cannot be superseded within the prevailing system; the system itself has to change for instances like technology and violence to come under direct popular control. The intertwined condition of war and technological advance has an objective and uncontrollable momentum of its own that the organised dimension of capital would not want to harness for social ends.

The realisation of particular politics in the sovereign of ancient Mesopotamia was immediate and determined by adherence to faith in the prevailing myth. All are religiously alienated in the sovereign until a new crisis cum myth deposes the god-king. In modern society, particular politics are realised in an indirect way by intermediate agencies, psychological factors, the mass media, language, images prevalent in a society, and any other agencies (Marcuse, 1966); one may also add in a Mashriq context, sectarian identities that thwart the realisation of the labouring class in the structure of power. The modern alienation of particular politics in the sovereign is multi-layered and subsumed under the ideological vortex of capital, but it is also not free of myth.

Alienating conditions of existence morph the grounds for consciousness into a good versus evil process as distinct from a worldly understanding of value circuits and value relations (Sorel, [1908] 1999). In the interrelated whole, the production of knowledge qua culture, itself attendant on technological advance, is also subject to market diktat. Most knowledge under capital’s hegemony is a form of intelligence asset that serves to invert the real image of the material reproduction of capitalism. With the rise of aristocratic nations, the sanctification of the politics of the line of least resistance and bourgeois democracy, constructive alternatives that grasp the historical moment and rupture historical continuity are few and far between.

If it is only the long term that ties together advanced and developing countries’ working classes, there will not be a convergence of working class politics in the intermediate term (Emmanuel, 1972). Wither internationalism when reform in the Western hemisphere is the bribe that capital dishes out to delay revolution. Violence, as in wars of encroachments exercised under social relationships thingified by the medium of commodity exchange, is actuality and the necessary predicate of accumulation.

Bibliography:

Al-Alawi, H., al ‘Amal al-Kamila, Dar Almada, 2009.

Aristotle, Politics. Rev. Jowett eBooks@Adelaide, The University of Adelaide Library, 2014.

Bettelheim, C., Emmanuel, A., International Solidarity of Workers: Two Views: The Delusions of Internationalism; Economic Inequality between Nations and International Solidarity. Monthly Review, 22(2), (1970).

Durant, W., Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Simon and Schuster, 1935.

Edwards, J. and Ogilvie, S., “Contract Environment, Institutions and Social Capital: The Maghribi Traders Reappraised.” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2254, Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2008.

Emmanuel, A., Unequal Exchange, Monthly Review Press, 1972.

Fine, B., Locating Financialisation, HM 18 (2010) 97–116

Hegel, G. Lectures on the history of philosophy, K. Paul, London, 1892.

Hill, C., the World Upside Down, Pelican Books, 1975.

Hilou. A., Sourya alQadima. Bissan Publishers, 2004.

Ilyenkov, E.V. Dialectical Logic, Essays on its History and Theory. Translated by H. Campbell Creighton. Progress Publishers, 1974.

Lambert, W.G., Millard A.R., Civil, M., Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Eisenbrauns, 1999.

Marcuse, H., Baran’s Critique of Modern Society and of the Social Sciences 2014, Volume 65, Issue 10 (March).

Neumann M., Has Islam Failed? Not by Western Standards, Counter Punch, May 2003.

Pappenheim, F., The alienation of modern man: an interpretation based on Marx and Tönnies, MR press, 1959.

Purkayastha, P., Delhi Science Forum, “Afroasiatic Roots of Greece.” Last modified 2012. http://www.delhiscienceforum.net/history-and-philosophy-of-science/83-afroasiatic-roots-of-greece-by-prabir-purkayastha-.html.

Real History World Wide, “The Ur-Nammu Law Code.” http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Sumer/ur_nammu_law.htm.

Sorel, G., Reflections on Violence, Cambridge University press 1999.

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Why Monsanto’s Glyphosate Herbicide Should be Banned. Does it Cause Cancer?

March 29th, 2015 by Colin Todhunter

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Monsanto. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines for not reporting hundreds of uncontrolled releases of toxic chemicals at its eastern Idaho phosphate plant. It also paid out a string of lawsuit settlements totaling $350,000 as a result of its GMOs tainting wheat in seven US states. Such amounts represent little more than a tap on the wrist for a company that rakes in sales of almost $16 billion dollars annually.

However, on 20 March the World Health Organisation reached a decision that strikes at the heart of the company. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that glyphosate was “classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.” This is just one step below the risk designation of “known carcinogen.”

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, which was primarily responsible $5.1 billion of Monsanto’s revenues in 2014.  But that’s not all. The herbicide is used to support Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops, which comprise the vast bulk of the balance of its revenue stream.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, herbicide-tolerant biotech plants were grown on virtually all (94%) soybean fields in the US last year and on 89% of all cornfields. Food & Water Watch found the volume of glyphosate applied to those crops increased almost 1,000% between 1996 and 2012, from 15 million pounds to 159 million pounds. The increase in usage has been accelerating in recent years.

Glyphosate has been detected in human bodies, food, water and in the air. Its use is strongly associated with various diseases (see this and this).

Aaron Blair, a scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute who chaired the 17-member working group of the IARC that classified glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing, says that the classification is appropriate based on current science. Blair also states that there have been hundreds of studies on glyphosate with concerns about the chemical growing over time and added that the IARC group gave particular consideration to two major studies out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the US.

He stressed that the group did not classify glyphosate as definitely causing cancer:

“We looked at, ‘Is there evidence that glyphosate causes cancer?’ and the answer is ‘probably.’ That is different than yes… It is different than smoking and lung cancer. We don’t say smoking probably causes cancer. We say it does cause cancer. At one point we weren’t sure, but now we are.”

By the end of last week, Monsanto’s shares had fallen by 2.9% on the back of the IARC’s decision.

Unsurprisingly, Monsanto has wasted no time in trying to rubbish the WHO findings. The work of cancer specialists from 11 countries was speedily dismissed by Monsanto. In a press release, the company argued the findings are based on ‘junk’ science and cherry picking and are agenda driven.

Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice-president of global regulatory affairs, said:

“We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe.”

Miller implies that regulatory agencies used objective reason supported by credible science when sanctioning glyphosate. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sanctioning and testing of glyphosate for commercial was seriously and corrupted (for example, see this,this, this and this). Moreover, if Monsanto is going to accuse others of ‘junk’ science and ‘bias’, it has a serious credibility issue given that is has been a long-time leading exponent of  junk science and biased agendas.

For instance, Sustainable Pulse has discovered documents from 1991 that show how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was fully aware of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. In 1985, the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate was first considered by an EPA panel. This committee went on to classify glyphosate as a Class C Carcinogen with “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential.”

This Class C classification was changed by the EPA six years later to a Class E category which suggests “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans.” Sustainable Pulse concludes that the US government is to blame for allowing glyphosate onto the commercial market because it wanted to push it as part of as global campaign to support the US biotech industry in its attempt to dominate global agriculture. In other words, the health of the public was put before the need to protect company profits and foreign policy aims.

We can now expect to see a massive propaganda campaign by Monsanto to deny the science of the IARC and a huge amount of pressure placed on the WHO to retract the study. We can expect to see the usual cheerleaders proclaiming the faith and mouthing the tired cliches about glyphosate’s safety, regardless of mounting evidence that demonstrates its harmful health and environmental impacts.

But who needs science when the cherry-picked type mixed with a good old dose pro-biotech ideology will suffice? Time to wheel out Patrick Moore again… or maybe not!

According to Dave Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California:

“There are a number of independent, published manuscripts that clearly indicate that glyphosate … can promote cancer and tumor growth. It should be banned.”

Monsanto has for many decades been covering up its toxic practices and poisonous chemicals and has shown no regard at all for human life (read The Complete History of Monsanto). Banning the commercial use of glyphosate (and GMOs) would be a first but significant step on curbing the corrosive impact of a company that has over the decades caused so much misery and suffering.

 However, as we cannot rely on governments or regulatory agencies to act, ordinary people should act for themselves. See this by John Rappoport for advice on a practical strategy for activism directed at Monsanto.

 Read why Glyphosate should be banned

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“Unholy Alliance” between Saudi Arabia and Israel. A US-Iran Nuclear Deal Would Trigger Regional Political Re-alignments

March 29th, 2015 by Salman Rafi Sheikh

Any probable nuclear deal between the United States of America and Iran is likely to result in giving a new trajectory to their bi-lateral relations; however, it is not the US-Iran relations alone that would enter a new phase of political history. As a matter of fact, this deal is most likely to send political jolts across the entire Middle Eastern political landscape, with Saudi Arabia and Israel standing as the most sensitive areas to bear its shocks; and as such, are most likely to clutch their hands into an alliance against Iran, and by default, against the US ambitions as well.

It is not, however, to suggest that Saudia and Israel would essentially adopt an anti-US strategic posture. What is becoming evident is that these three states will be re-negotiating the terms of their mutual relations to meet changing geo-political realities in a more ‘composite’ manner. This strategic negotiation is not, however, to be manned by the US itself, nor would it be playing the role of a crucial “balancer” between regional players. The US, in the contrary, would itself be a party to this process, and as such, would be more concerned about maintaining its own relations with Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia than about merely assuring Israel and Saudia about the ‘harmless’ nature of the nuclear deal with Iran.

The process of re-negotiations has already started, and the fact that the US will be re-negotiating its own relations with her key regional allies is quite evident from the agenda John Kerry forwarded during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. The main reason(s) for Kerry to visit Saudia was not that the US needed Saudi ‘support’ for finalizing this deal; it was necessary because the US wanted to make sure Saudi support in other matters of regional importance. Convincing Saudi Arabia to accept any agreed nuclear deal is important to President Barack Obama because he needs Riyadh to work closely with Washington on a host of regional policies and to maintain its role as a ‘moderating’ influence in oil markets. While the main critics of the US push for a nuclear deal with Iran are Israel and Congressional Republicans, Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia is also concerned that an accord would allow Iran to devote more cash and energy to Shi’ite proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, and in Saudia itself, which might lead to a serious escalation in regional conflict(s) of religious and non-religious nature.

On the other hand, Saudi concerns with regard to this deal are not based upon the possibility of Iran enjoying better relations with the US; Saudi concerns are largely related to her own position in the region following this deal; for, Iran does have enough politico-military and economic potential to counter-balance Saudi led “Sunni” states in the Middle East and beyond. It is precisely for this very reason that Saudi Arabia’s anxiety about an agreement has fueled a flurry of intense diplomacy in recent days to bolster unity among “Sunni” states in the Middle East in the face of “shared threats”, especially those emanating from Iran.

In other words, the central issue between Saudia and USA on the one hand, and the US and Israel on the other hand, is not the deal itself; it is the place Iran would have in the future Middle East. And, the very fact that the US officials are unwilling to outline what strategies might curb Iran’s regional influence, and the US record in Iraq, Syria and Yemen – where armed Iranian allies have since flourished and been resisting Saudi backed proxy factions – has caused Saudi Arabia and Israel great anxiety. To this anxiety has added the ‘fear’ of the US playing a double role in paving for itself a way entry into Middle Eastern politics. As a matter of fact, Saudia’s trust in Washington during the Iran talks is still recovering from the sudden move in late 2013 towards a nuclear deal, when Saudi officials, as also Israel itself, were blindsided by the revelation of months of secret talks between the US and Iran. At that time, for Saudia, the main issue was surely preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Now that the deal between the US and Iran is preventing the latter from developing Nuclear weapons, Saudia too has made a re-assessment of the possible threats and challenges Iran can and is causing in the region. Saudia, as such, now sees Iran’s involvement in Arab countries, particularly its backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, its support for Iraqi Shi’ite militias and its ties to the Houthi group that has seized control in northern Yemen, as a more urgent problem, resolution of which requires a “grand alliance.”

It is against this background that the Saudi King Salman is working to forge a “united front” among “Sunni” states against what Riyadh sees as grand threat from Iran. Over the last few weeks, Salman has met the leaders of all Saudi Arabia’s Gulf Arab neighbors, the king of Jordan and the presidents of Egypt and Turkey, the two most populous and militarily powerful Sunni states in the region. “The understanding is that we will face a more aggressive Iran if they sign an agreement. All the restrictions on it will be lifted and it will be much stronger. This is an issue that needs some sort of unity,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with ties to the Saudi Interior Ministry.

However, notwithstanding the significance of forging anti-Iran (and anti-Shia) alliance for Saudia and its allies, Saudi is not hesitating in forging much closer relationship with Israel than it has been having for last many decades. In February 2015, Saudi Arabia reportedly agreed to let Israel use its airspace to attack Iran if necessary, in exchange for “some kind of progress” on the Palestinian issue. The move will reportedly allow Israel to bomb targets in Iran by offering a shortcut, which will save fuel and time. The Saudi position was confirmed during multiple diplomatic talks, according to the report of an Israeli TV channel. “The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” the European official from Brussels was also quoted as saying in that report.

Although there are no diplomatic ties between the two states, there have been various reports in the past showing that Riyadh and Jerusalem have been (deeply) cooperating when it came to Iran and its uranium enrichment program. For example, in November, Israel’s Mossad and Saudi officials were said to be working on contingency plans that could have included an attack on Iran if its nuclear program was not curbed enough, according to a report. It was also revealed that the Saudis were willing to assist an Israeli attack by cooperating with the use of drones, rescue helicopters, and tanker planes. On the other hand, Israeli behaviour also confirms some “abnormal” policy changes taking place. In February 2015, the White House and the US State Department stated that Israel had inaccurately provided information and twisted the official US position in nuclear talks with Iran. They also accused Jerusalem of “selectively” leaking details of sensitive talks, thereby casting Israel in the role of a “villain”, unwilling to accept Iran in a ‘new’ role.

The ‘unholy’ alliance taking shape between Saudia and Israel can decisively alter the Middle East’s geo-political landscape because of its potential to serve as the platform for many a state to practice what is otherwise known as “enemy of enemy is my friend.” Not only would it create a seriously hostile situation in the Middle East, but may also create a strong justification for Iran to contemplate going back to nukes. There are many probable scenarios that can take place in the future, given the number of regional and global actors involved in the ME. Therefore, we need not indulge in too much of speculation. However, what appears most certain and what is already on the wall is a grand anti-Iran alliance wherein the US would have minimum role to play; for, as the US takes one step towards Iran, its erstwhile allies seem taking two step backwards, and thereby, creating space for re-negotiating terms of their alliance.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

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Monsanto: A “Sustainable Agriculture” Company?

March 29th, 2015 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Monsanto, leading the pack of chemical technology companies that have infiltrated the seed business with their patented genetically engineered (GE) seeds, has spent many years trying to rehabilitate its reputation as a producer of toxic chemicals responsible for death and suffering.

It’s not working very well however, and the reason for that is because despite the user-friendly rhetoric, they still haven’t found a moral compass that points due North. They’re still producing toxic goods, and they’re still going to extreme means to hide it.

Monsanto now refers to itself as a “sustainable agriculture” company,1 delivering agricultural products that “support farmers” around the world. But it seems Monsanto has no concept of what “sustainable” really means, as its solutions are anything but.

Glyphosate Labeled ‘Probable Carcinogen’ by WHO Research Group

Further tarnishing Monsanto’s “sustainable ag” claims is the labeling of glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” (Class 2A) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO).

As reported by Bloomberg:2

“A report3 published by the WHO in the journal Lancet Oncology said Friday there is “limited evidence” that the weedkiller can cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and lung cancer and “convincing evidence” it can cause cancer in lab animals.” 

IARC’s report also notes that glyphosate and glyphosate formulations have been shown to induce DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, as well as human and animal cells in vitro.

IARC is considered the global gold standard for carcinogenicity studies, so this determination is of considerable importance. The determination was published on March 20, 2015.4,5

The IARC working group consists of 17 experts from 11 countries, and most noteworthy is the fact that these members were selected not only for their expertise, but also for the absence of real or apparent conflicts of interest.6

Along with glyphosate, the commonly used insecticides malathion and diazinon were also classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), and the insecticides tetrachlorvinphos and parathion were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B).

Monsanto has Consistently Lied and Covered Up Toxicity Issues

In response, a Monsanto spokesman said: “All labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health,” and the company has gone so far as to request a retraction of the IARC’s report.7

However, Monsanto feigned ignorance on the dangers of PCB’s for several decades, which turned out to be a bold-faced lie. Its assurances that Roundup is biodegrade and “leave the soil clean” also turned out to be a lie, so why should anyone believe Monsanto’s assurances that Roundup is safe?

Especially when you take into account the mounting research demonstrating that (as usual) Monsanto’s assessment of its product is severely flawed. For example, research by Samsel and Seneff reveals that glyphosate wrecks human health by way of your gut bacteria. Cancer is but one of the potential health outcomes.

In Sri Lanka, drinking water contaminated with glyphosate and spraying glyphosate on rice fields without protective gear has also been linked to chronic kidney disease.8

Roundup also Tied to Antibiotic Resistance, New Research Shows

Right on the heels of the IARC’s reclassification of glyphosate as a Class 2 carcinogen, another breakthrough study9 published in the peer-reviewed journal mBio on March 24 ties Monsanto’s weedkiller to antibiotic resistance.

According to this study, sublethal doses of Roundup (the actual formulation of Roundup, not just glyphosate in isolation) alter disease-causing bacteria’s response to commonly used antibiotics, including tetracycline and ciprofloxacin, thereby raising resistance to drugs used in medicine.  As reported by Rodale News:10

“The way Roundup causes this effect is likely by causing the bacteria to turn on a set of genes that are normally off, [study author] Heinemann says. “These genes are for ‘pumps’ or ‘porins,’ proteins that pump out toxic compounds or reduce the rate at which they get inside of the bacteria…

Once these genes are turned on by the herbicide, then the bacteria can also resist antibiotics. If bacteria were to encounter only the antibiotic, they would instead have been killed. 

In a sense, the herbicide is ‘immunizing’ the bacteria to the antibiotic:…This change occurs at levels commonly used on farm field crops, lawns, gardens, and parks.” [Emphasis mine]

Study author Jack Heinemann, PhD, professor and lecturer of genetics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand said:

“Antibiotic resistance is a big and growing problem. I think that a key lesson of this work is that we have to think more broadly, holistically, about medicine and the environment and not think that because herbicides are used on plants and antibiotics are used on people that they don’t have any relevance when they mix together somewhere.”

I would not be at all surprised if in the end glyphosate’s toxicity becomes well-recognized and Monsanto ends up spending decades fighting lawsuits over it, just as it’s still being sued over its PCB’s pollution, decades after the fact. Glyphosate is now massively polluting both land and waterways. So much so it’s even detected in air and rain samples. Disturbingly, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appears to have suppressed or minimized evidence in order to raise the allowable limits for glyphosate in food, which was done in 2013.

As noted by the Institute for Science in Society:11 “The amount of allowable glyphosate in oilseed crops (except for canola and soy) went up from 20 ppm to 40 ppm, 100,000 times the amount needed to induce breast cancer cells.” [Emphasis mine]

GE Foods Sold in California Will Likely have to Carry Cancer Warning

The IARC’s determination may end up having a significant impact on the sale of genetically engineered (GE) foods. As reported by PoliticoPro March 24:12

“The World Health Organization cancer research body’s determination that exposure to a key pesticide used on genetically modified crops is linked to cancer is another reason why lawmakers should move ahead with a national GMO labeling mandate, Rep. Jim McGovern said this morning.

“They are saying that glyphosate is a likely cause of cancer, that may be something people want to know,” McGovern said this morning during a House Agriculture Committee hearing on the costs of GMO labeling. “Don’t you think people should have a right to know how their food is grown?”

Indeed, the IARC’s classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen is more significant than you may realize. IARC is one of the five research agencies from which the OEHHA—which is the California agency of environmental hazards—gets its reports to declare carcinogens under Prop 65. What this means is that in a few years’ time, foods containing glyphosate will have to have a Prop 65 Warning label to be sold in California. While it will take time, that process is now in motion with the IARC classifying glyphosate as a Class 2 carcinogen.

Why Monsanto Will Never Be a Sustainable Ag Company

Part of being sustainable includes minimizing or eliminating agricultural chemicals, as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides decimate soil microbes, and Monsanto is not doing anything to limit the use of chemicals on our crop fields.

Why would it, considering the fact that its patented seeds are designed to promote and secure the expanded use of pesticides, not lessen it. As noted in a Food & Water Watch report13 on Monsanto:

“Sales from Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides accounted for 27 percent of Monsanto’s total 2011 net sales. Monsanto engineers its GE seeds to resist Roundup and Roundup alone, so that the sale of the herbicide is absolutely necessary for those who buy Roundup Ready seeds.”

In his paper “Pesticide Use on Genetically Engineered Crops,”14 Dr. Ramon J. Seidler, Ph.D., a former senior scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), presents USDA data showing that glyphosate use has increased 12-fold since 1996, when the first GE crops were introduced.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad spectrum herbicide Roundup, and its Roundup Ready seed varieties are designed to tolerate otherwise lethal doses of this chemical.

The problem is, while the crop may survive, it’s saturated with glyphosate—you cannot wash the chemical off as it is integrated systemically into all the plant’s cells. Recent research has also revealed how glyphosate promotes chronic disease, in part by inhibiting enzymes that catalyze the oxidation of organic substances.

Overall, annual herbicide use has risen by more than 500 million pounds—an increase that in part is driven by expanded use of GE crops, and in part by escalating weed resistance. This includes pesticide use on Bt plants, which are genetically engineered to produce their own internal pesticide, ostensibly to reduce the need for topical pesticide applications.

According to the latest data,15 insecticide use on Bt crops has dramatically increased since 2010. So to suggest that Bt crops has led, or will lead, to a decrease in pesticide use is patently false.

The United States now uses about 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides each year,16,17 and mounting research has linked pesticides to an array of serious health problems. Land, waterways, and food itself is also becoming increasingly toxic, thanks to companies like Monsanto. What’s sustainable about that?

Monsanto’s Best-Selling Herbicide Has Cut Monarch Population by 90 Percent

In 1996, when GE crops made their entrance, there were close to 1 billion monarch butterflies across the US. Today, their numbers have dwindled by 90 percent. Their rapid demise is tied to escalating glyphosate use, which kills the monarchs’ sole food source, the milkweed.

In the past, even as prairies and forests in the Midwest were converted to cropland, the deep, extensive root system of the common milkweed allowed it to survive tillage, mowing, harsh winters, and even the application of most herbicides, which typically didn’t affect their roots.

This changed when farmland was converted to GE crops and heavy Roundup application became the norm. Between 1995, the year before the first Roundup Ready crops were introduced, and 2013, total use of glyphosate on corn and soybeans increased 20-fold, according to a report18 by the Center for Food Safety (CFS).

A 2013 paper19 published in Insect Conservation and Diversity also links the monarchs’ decline to increased use of glyphosate, in conjunction with increased planting of genetically modified (GM) glyphosate-tolerant corn and soybeans.

Monsanto—A Champion for Monarchs?

Monsanto now claims to be committed to “doing their part” to protect monarch butterflies—but don’t think for a second that this commitment extends to curtailing the use of Roundup. It does not. Instead, Monsanto states:20

“Effective control of weeds in their fields, however, doesn’t prevent farmers from contributing to a conservation effort aimed at finding places outside farm fields for monarchs to thrive… 

That’s why we are collaborating with experts from universities, nonprofits, and government agencies to help the monarch by restoring their habitat in Crop Reserve Program land, on-farm buffer strips, roadsides, utility rights-of-way, and government-owned land.”

The article also includes the following curious statement:

“Saying a species is closing in on extinction when most disagree… makes for a great news headline. It doesn’t do anything to help solve the problem.” 

What’s confusing about that is that I’m really not aware of any experts on monarch butterflies disagreeing with the statement that these butterflies are on the verge of extinction, let alone “most” disagreeing…

As for solving the problem, Monsanto has not only failed to accept responsibility for causing the problem in the first place, it’s also unwilling to support strategies that involve cutting the use of Roundup, which is part and parcel of the solution.

Instead, it wants you to believe that because it supports the planting of milkweed in private gardens and on public lands and along roadways, Monsanto is somehow “doing its part” in solving the problem. What a joke.

Meanwhile, the answer, not only to dwindling monarch populations, but also to soil destruction, top soil erosion, water shortages, loss of biodiversity, and the threat of increased famine, is being aggressively opposed by Monsanto and other industry leaders.

I’m referring of course to regenerative land management practices and organic farming, which has been shown to outperform both GE and conventional chemical agriculture.

Part and parcel of such sustainable agriculture practices is cutting the use of chemicals, and that’s undoubtedly why Monsanto won’t have anything to do with it. It’s truly an irony of gargantuan proportions for one of the most unsustainable companies in the world to proclaim itself a leader in sustainability.

Veterans for Peace Want Monsanto to Offer Restitution for Agent Orange Before Discussing Food Security

Voice of America recently reported21 that Monsanto co-sponsored a workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, trying to sell people on their brand of sustainable farming. The feedback was mixed however, with many Vietnamese being less than enthusiastic. Monsanto was one of nine manufacturers of Agent Orange, which killed and maimed an estimated 400,000 people during the Vietnam War,22 and has continued to affect the health of millions. And, as noted in the article, some are not fooled by Monsanto’s efforts to create a new image:

“Chuck Palazzo, a founding member of the Vietnam chapter of Veterans for Peace, accused Monsanto of trying to ‘brainwash’ locals, especially young people. The company is on a public relations push to align itself with the positives of food security, he said, instead of its controversial products, Agent Orange and genetically modified seeds.

‘Even if Monsanto has pure intentions, it should wait to get involved in sustainable agriculture and first compensate Vietnamese who suffer birth defects like missing limbs and distended bodies,’ Palazzo said. ‘The first thing they need to do is benefit, somehow, the victims of Agent Orange, they need to show some good faith,’ he said. ‘Doing the right thing, in my mind, is giving financial benefits, medical benefits, and social benefits…’

[H]e can’t divorce these different sides of the company — its role in food security today, versus its role as purveyor of a wartime herbicide. Palazzo also opposes genetically modified seeds, which some fear could render long-term health problems. ‘In my mind it’s just about impossible to compartmentalize each of those and say, this is the good Monsanto and this is the bad Monsanto,’ he said.”

Remember Anniston?

Monsanto cannot rid itself of its toxic past for the simple reason that it hasn’t changed the way it does business. It’s still a major purveyor of toxic chemicals, and acts with reckless disregard for who gets hurt in the process of making a buck. In 2002, Monsanto was found guilty of decades of “outrageous acts of pollution” in the town of Anniston, Alabama. Residents accused the company of dumping PCBs into the local river—a chemical that the US government ended up banning in 197623 due to its carcinogenic potential. Monsanto also buried PCBs in a landfill, and PCBs can linger in the environment for centuries. In the end, they won. According to an article24discussing the case:

“Lawyers claimed Monsanto had deliberately covered up evidence that the PCBs were harmful, including evidence of fish dying in nearby creeks. Internal memos were produced that insisted they should protect the image of the corporation. One said: ‘We can’t afford to lose one dollar of business.’ Although a clear link between the chemicals and cancer has not been proven, the people of Anniston have argued for years that their cancer rate is abnormally high. Some of the plaintiffs were found to have PCBs in their blood 27 times higher than the national average. 

Monsanto’s defense was that it closed the plant in 1971, eight years before the government ban. The company said it was not aware the chemicals were being released or that they could be dangerous. It has spent $40m (£27m) on a clean-up operation…The company has paid $80m in out of court settlements…

The jury in Gadsden, Ala., a town 20 miles from Anniston… held Monsanto and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. Under Alabama law, the rare claim of outrage typically requires conduct so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”

Documents revealed that Monsanto had known about the severity of the pollution problem it caused for at least three decades. Anniston residents didn’t learn the horrid truth until 1996; 30 years prior, in 1966, Monsanto managers found that fish placed in the river floated to the surface within 10 seconds, “spurting blood and shedding skin.” In 1969, the company found a fish in another creek that had a PCB level 7,500 times the legal limit. Yet Monsanto never told anyone, and decided it wasn’t worth going through “expensive extremes” to limit its toxic discharges.

San Diego Sues Monsanto for Polluting Bay with PCBs

Now San Diego is suing Monsanto for polluting the Coronado Bay with PCBs.25 According to the complaint, “PCBs manufactured by Monsanto have been found in bay sediments and water and have been identified in tissues of fish, lobsters, and other marine life in the Bay.” In its complaint, the city also claims that “the risks did not deter Monsanto from trying to protect profits and prolong the use of PCB compounds such as Aroclor, as shown in a report from an ad hoc committee that Monsanto formed in 1969.”

According to a Food & Water Watch report26 on Monsanto, the company produced 99 percent of all the PCBs in the US prior to it being banned, and the documentation revealed in the Anniston case over a dozen years ago shows that Monsanto was far from unaware of its extreme toxicity. Yet it put profits before all else—including the health of women, children, wildlife, and waterways—and hid what it knew while doing nothing to curtail its pollution. This company now proclaims to be a leader in “sustainable agriculture,” and Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer sends out tweets wondering why so many people “doubt science”…

As noted in a recent Counter Punch article:27

“[T]he answer to the question “Why do people doubt science” is not because… a bunch of ‘irrational’ activists have scared them witless about GM crops or some other issue. It is because they can see how science is used, corrupted, and manipulated by powerful corporations to serve their own ends. It is because they regard these large corporations as largely unaccountable and their activities and products not properly regulated by governments. That’s why so many doubt science – or more precisely the science corporations fund and promote to support their interests.”

That’s precisely right, I think, yet Monsanto along with all the other chemical technology companies are trying their best to make you think that if you don’t believe their corrupted science, you’re somehow intellectually deficient. The problem is, Monsanto is like the boy who cried wolf too many times. Too many times it has assured us that its products are safe, if not harmless, only to later be proven wrong. Remember France found Monsanto guilty of lying when it said Roundup was biodegradable? A few years later France again found Monsanto guilty in a pesticide poisoning case.

Tens of thousands of residents in Nitro, West Virginia also sued Monsanto in a class-action lawsuit over carcinogenic dioxins, which they claim the company spewed all over the city over the course of 20 years. The plant in Nitro produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which is a component of Agent Orange. As noted by Reuters28 in July last year:

“In lieu of going to trial over the contamination, the biotech company agreed in 2012 to spend millions of dollars on a program that for the next three decades will assist residents of Nitro impacted by the plant.” 

And these are just a handful of examples of Monsanto’s brand of “sustainability.” For a rundown on Monsanto’s checkered history, check out this Waking Times’ article29from last year.

PR Firm Boasts Doubling Positive Media Coverage on GMOs by Supervising Social Media

In February, US Right to Know posted a series of press releases30,31,32,33 “outing” the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s new lobbying firm, hired to combat GMO labeling, and how the GMO industry’s PR firm made the mistake of bragging about using well-known propaganda tactics to double positive GMO messages.

“Food company CEOs worried about losing the trust of the American public… might want to take note: their trade association has taken another tone-deaf step into the abyss by hiring the law firm of a famous felon to do their dirty work… [T]he Grocery Manufacturers Association has retained the law firm K&L Gates to lobby against GMO labeling. K&L Gates was formed in a 2007 merger between Kirkpatrick & Lockhart and Preston Gates – which was Jack Abramoff’s law firm from 1994 to 2000. Jack Abramoff, as we know, was sentenced to four years in prison for political corruption, and ended up as the poster child for corruption in Washington.”

Monsanto, as most of you may already know, has long been referred to by those in the know as “the most evil company on the planet.” But it has stiff competition. Before there was Monsanto, junk food companies were already hard at work influencing American politics to further their own agenda.

In 2014 I named the GMA “the most evil corporation on the planet,” considering the fact that it consists primarily of pesticide producers and junk food manufacturers who are going to great lengths to violate some of your most basic rights—just to ensure that subsidized, genetically engineered and chemical-dependent, highly processed junk food remains the status quo.

Indeed, Jack Abramoff went on 60 Minutes (below) revealing in shocking detail how he spent years illegally influencing Congress as a lobbyist. Considering the fact that the GMA was caught red-handed in an illegal money laundering scheme during the Washington State GMO labeling campaign, their choice of lobbying firm is certainly an ironic but fitting one.

According to the PR firm, Ketchum, it was hired by the Council for Biotechnology Information to improve GMO’s public image and “balance” the online conversation. US Right to Know calls attention to a video ad in which the firm talks about how it doubled positive GMO coverage using online social media monitoring—a tactic that smacks of Internet “sockpuppets”—fake Internet personas who interject themselves into social media conversations to steer the debate.

(In 2008, Mother Jones34 implicated Ketchum in an espionage effort against nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth.) Ketchum also created the GMO Answers website, in which professors at public universities answer GMO questions from the public—supposedly without remuneration from the industry.

In late January, US Right to Know filed state public records requests35 to obtain “correspondence and emails to and from professors at public universities who wrote for the agrichemical industry’s PR website, GMO Answers… and agrichemical companies such as Monsanto, as well as to and from PR firms such as Ketchum or Fleishman Hillard, and to and from trade associations such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Council for Biotechnology Information.” It remains to be seen just how independent all these GMO experts answering questions on GMO Answers really are.

The Way Out of This Nightmare Starts at Home

The way off this out-of-control chemical treadmill will decimate profits for the chemical technology industry, and THAT is why they do not want you to know which foods contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). If Americans started making dramatically different food choices, it could quickly revolutionize the US agricultural system because farmers will grow that which sells. If people want uncontaminated organic foods, that’s what farmers will grow—and there’s already evidence that biodynamic farming can be done even on the large scale. In fact, using regenerative agriculture principles, you can grow a lot more food on fewer acres.

Real solutions are available. What’s lacking is the political will to stand up to the chemical technology industry and break its iron grip on our food supply. But we can still get it done, by making conscious choices each and every time we shop for food. Remember, your money either goes to support the chemical-based system that threatens the survival of the Earth and your descendants, or it supports a system that can regenerate and revitalize the soil and the environment so that healthy food and healthy people can thrive. To make conscious choices, we need information, and that is why GMO labeling is so crucial.

Help Support GMO Labeling

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)—Monsanto’s Evil Twin—is pulling out all the stops to keep you in the dark about what’s in your food. For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture.

Finally public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back.

The insanity has gone far enough, which is why I encourage you to boycott every single product owned by members of the GMA, including natural and organic brands. More than 80 percent of our support comes from individual consumers like you, who understand that real change comes from the grassroots.

Thankfully, we have organizations like the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) to fight back against these corporate giants. So please, fight for your right to know what’s in your food and help support the GMO labeling movement by making a donation today.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

Together, Let’s Help OCA Get The Funding They Deserve

Let’s Help OCA get the funding it deserves. I have found very few organizations who are as effective and efficient as OCA. It’s a public interest organization dedicated to promoting health justice and sustainability. A central focus of the OCA is building a healthy, equitable, and sustainable system of food production and consumption.

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NSA Spy Agency Behind “Malware” Infection of Computer Hardware Used by “Enemies” of the U.S.?

March 29th, 2015 by Ulson Gunnar

 The NSA’s “Equation Group” is apparently behind the infection with malware of hard drive firmware on computers used by nations considered “enemies” by the United States. The installation of the malware is believed to have required access to trade secrets of IT manufacturers as well as physical access to the soon-to-be infected computers. Popular Science in their article “The World’s Most Sophisticated Malware Ever Infects Hard Drive Firmware“suggests that the NSA intercepted computers in transit through global logistical chains.

However, a simpler and more logical explanation remains, though it is one manufacturers vehemently deny; that the NSA had/has direct access to the factory floors of several IT giants. These include Western Digital Corpororation, Seagate Technology, Toshiba Corporation, IBM, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

The infection of hardware starting on the factory floor is nothing new. Australia’s Financial Review revealed in 2013 in an article titled, “Intel chips could let US spies inside: expert,” that, “one of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines.”

Blank made his comments after it was revealed that many processors posses potential backdoors that could allow intelligence agencies to rig a computer’s encryption process, rendering it virtually useless.

Such concerns have already prompted Russia to begin requiring computers used for the government sector to include Russian-made processors. With hard drives now potentially compromised, the NSA has once again given the world a reason to boycott US tech giants and those within America’s sphere of influence, and replace them with locally produced alternatives manufactured under tighter security controls.

Besides access to factory floors, several high profile “cyber attacks” attributed to China targeting US tech giants, may have been in fact the NSA itself attempting to steal source code required to rewrite hard drive firmware.

Reuters in its report “Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program” would claim, “concerns about access to source code flared after a series of high-profile cyberattacks on Google Inc and other U.S. companies in 2009 that were blamed on China. Investigators have said they found evidence that the hackers gained access to source code from several big U.S. tech and defense companies.”

When big US tech and defense companies aren’t directly cooperating with the NSA, it appears they are pillaged regularly by them. This was also likely the case regarding Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto, which was also recently compromised by the NSA and its British equivalent, GCHQ. The hijacking of the company’s SIM cards required direct access to company trade secrets and likely involved the NSA and GCHQ stealing encryption keys from company servers.

The dangerous dance the NSA and industry leaders perform often makes it difficult to tell who is leading and who is following. It was during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that it became clear US Internet giants Google, Facebook and Twitter were directly involved with the US State Department in helping organize unrest across much of North Africa and the Middle East. Source code being raided in 2009, then turning up as the key ingredient necessary to cook up what is believed to be NSA malware in 2015, suggests every once in a while the NSA steps on its partners’ toes.

IT Independence is National Security 

Regardless of whether or not US tech giants are directly involved, or the hapless victims of NSA info-piracy, nations finding themselves at the receiving end of American cyber espionage have found the necessity of working toward developing their own independent IT infrastructure. Nations like Russia, China and Iran, for instance, have created their own indigenous versions of Google, Facebook and Twitter. Russia, as already mentioned, is already working on replacing hardware with locally produced equipment to mitigate the threats of tampered hardware, firmware and software imported from US tech giants and other manufacturers susceptible to NSA infiltration.

Like a ship at sea built out of a multitude of watertight compartments to stave off sinking in the event its hull is compromised, IT infrastructure should likewise include compartmentalization. The idea of a handful of manufacturers producing the world’s hard drives makes the unsavory work of organizations like the NSA easy. Decentralizing hardware manufacturing nationally, then decentralizing it even further domestically, means the NSA must compromise an increasing number of physical locations and networks online to infect the same number of machines as it has easily done by compromising a handful of locations and networks worldwide before.

Instead of water passing through a single hole in the ship’s hull and sinking it, it would be required to pass through and flood dozens or more compartments. On a national scale and in terms of IT, particularly in a country like Russia, China or Iran with the considerable geographical and demographic dimensions of each, the NSA would be faced with hundreds if not thousands of targets it would have to compromise before it could achieve the same scale in spying it has previously achieved.

Each agency, department or ministry in each country could even develop its own software and hardware houses where complex and close relations make it even harder for outsiders to compromise. Nationally, security breaches could be quickly mapped, traced back to their sources and isolated in infrastructure distributed in this manner.

Ultimately, independence in technology is national security. Allowing one’s nation to be dependent on outside corporate or government interests is to resign freedom and a degree of control over one’s own destiny and security. The age of monopolies allows malevolent organizations to easily compromise large segments of the global population. In order to stop this, these monopolies must be replaced by a more localized and more tightly controlled infrastructure.

If a nation lacks the human resources to build this infrastructure, then national security requires such human resources to be developed, implying greater investment in technical education as well as in research and development. It appears that nations like Russia, China and Iran understand these lessons and have already begun down this road. Other nations might benefit by following suit. As the doors close on the NSA in one region of interest around the world, it will turn its attention toward others.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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France Must Pay Restitution to Haiti: President François Hollande’s Forthcoming State Visit To Haiti

March 29th, 2015 by Jean Saint-Vil

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

How The “French Republic” Stole Haiti’s Breast Milk…

In 1825, French ruler King Charles X offered to recognize Haiti’s independence on the condition that the new Black Republic pays 150 million gold francs in ransom. The extorted bounty was distributed to white slave holders for the loss of “property” they claim to have suffered as a result of the abolitionist Haitian Revolution.

This illegal and barbaric ransom was collected from 1825 to 1947. It was collected by violent means with an official ordinance of the French State which threatened to re-enslave the self-liberated Africans.

1853: French Admiral Duquesne threatens to bombard Port-au-Prince to restart payments on the French ransom which had been stopped in 1852 by Haitian Emperor Faustin Soulouque.

March 1877: French gun-boat aggression against Haiti. At issue: resumption of payments on the 1825 ransom – balance then re-estimated at 20 million gold Francs.
…
On April 7, 2003, the value of the infamous Charles X ransom was estimated at $22 Billion by Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who demanded its restitution.

A delegation of Haitian children (descendants of abolitionist leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines) from all corners of the island shall await French President François Hollande as he sets foot in Haiti, on May 12, 2015.
Their demand is clear and simple: TIME TO RETURN TO US OUR STOLEN BREAST MILK!

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Germanwings Flight 9525: Depression, Motivation and the Language of Terrorism

March 29th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The language of supposedly rational classification and categorisation has done terrible things. In the desperate need to find links, corollaries, causation, or simply correlations, we package, box and categorise like addicts in search of fixes.  And when it comes to suspicious catastrophe, the next pundit will venture into the dangerous world of kiss and tell – what was the motivation for that particular act?

The loss of all those on board Germanwings Flight 9525 is another blight on the air industry, the next disaster story in the aviation chronicles.  Again, it is dwarfed by frequency and lethal accidents in other forms of transport. But the spectacular nature of such an event – no survivors, suspect conduct by a pilot – have propelled various individuals into the expert seats to fill media slots.  Why the seemingly senseless mayhem? 

One thing that careful regard is being paid to is the use of a word that has become an impulsive point of reference where infliction of mass death is concerned.  Evading the issue of “terrorism” meant that other forms were sought.  The character profile of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was rapidly psychologised – it was a case of mental illness and concealed depression, which supposedly the thorough Lufthansa program would have rooted out.  Alison Griswold, writing in Slate, wondered if “better psychological testing” could “prevent a tragedy like the Germanwings crash”.  The short answer: “Probably not.”[1]

The Daily Mail decided to add to the account with its own thesis: that the pilot was suffering from a vision deficiency.  “A haunting new image has emerged of killer co-pilot Andreas Lubitz as it was claimed he may have sought treatment for problems with his vision in the weeks leading up to the moment he deliberately flew a Germanwings passenger plane into the French Alps.”[2] 

Impaired, with psychosomatic illness, depression – this is the picture of Lubitz being conveyed through the tabloid currency, and even the higher brow accounts.  It has led to warnings that such matters should not be stigmatised.  Depression should not, on its own accords, prevent a pilot from taking to the skies.  “That is wrong,” claimed Professor Simon Wessely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, “as much as saying that people with a history of broken arms shouldn’t be allowed to do something.”[3]

 If the individual had sported a capacious beard, a dark countenance, and a few other culturally cosmetic additions, that would have made for a different set of observations. The uncomfortable reality about designations matter for what, effectively, is the same outcome.  Prosecutors in this case were quick to dispel suggestions of a terrorist cause, excluding any political or religious motive. 

 Yet it is hard to forget that, in those last few minutes, passengers were subjected to an act of pan filled terror that would qualify, in any substantive sense, as terrorism.  Refined terminology on such infliction of fear hardly helps before being obliterated in the Alps.  The aim of the entire act did resemble that of any misguided martyr – to make a sorrowfully impressive mark, or at the very least an etching, on the history records.  The black dog that is depression can be truly vicious.

 The acts of Norwegian Anders Breivik, which involved the shooting of 69 people at a youth summer camp on Utoya Island in 2011, matched every terrorist tick box imaginable.  There was political motive: a dislike of progressive multiethnic policies.  There were religious undertones: a fear of the Islamisation of Europe.  There was an intention to inflict terror.  But the response to Breivik by a good number of critics was to refuse using the term in the hope of delegitimising it.  Emphasis was placed, instead, on “white supremacist” and fantasist, marginalised stellar nut-job.

 The terror tag is ennobling, adding impetus to a message that would otherwise be seen as obnoxious and dangerous.  Hence Deborah Orr’s effort in The Guardian to insist on Breivik’s insanity, urging “those trying to give meaning to his actions” to stop.[4] The flipside, then, is to mark out the insane and classify it accordingly.  A mass murderous Caucasian is deemed mad; the murderous Islamic follower is, well, an inspired terrorist.

 Jonathan Freedland refused to fall for that caper, noting the vast inconsistency between the treatment of terrorists, so-called or otherwise.  Individuals like Abu Qatada of al-Qaeda, argued Freedland during Breivik’s trial, are given no platform to vent, no opportunity to engage in vast disclosures of any world view.  Breivik, in contrast, was given a chance to “testify for five solid days, given an extended opportunity to expound” his world view and have his “psychology and video game habits, probed and debated” (Guardian, Apr 21, 2012).[5] Again, one is either patient or religious follower, depending on how the ethnic cookie crumbles.

 That issues of ethnicity and mental should meet is something that rocks the observer’s boat.  Those examining the lethal antics of the Sydney hostage taker, Man Haron Monis, could not wait to throw him into the global whirlpool of terrorist indulgence – a “lone wolf” feeding on the teet of Islamic fundamentalism.  “The lone wolf,” insisted Charles Krauthammer, “is the new nightmare, dramatised and amplified this week by the hostage-taking attack in Sydney” (Washington Post, Dec 18, 2014).  There was an abundance of evidence suggesting mental unhinging and plain old depression, but that did not stop the terrorist punditry from finding what they wanted to see: coherent ideology in absurdist tragedy. 

 In this line, selectivity is everything.  As Zak Cheney-Rice would suggest on Mic, the issue here was not even whether terrorist tags should automatically float in the direction of Lubitz’s action.  “On the contrary, it is an argument for holding people who commit mass murder to similar standards, regardless of their race or religion.”[6]

 Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Notes

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US Attacks “Closest Ally” UK For “Constant Accommodation” With China

March 29th, 2015 by Zero Hedge

On the heels of a diplomatic spat between Hanoi and Washington regarding Russia’s use of a former US air base in Vietnam to refuel nuclear-capable bombers on the way to conducting “provocative” runs in the Pacific, we get yet another, larger, sign that it may indeed be the US that’s isolated and not (as Western media would have you believe) the Kremlin. 

The UK (Washington’s “special” friend) has announced it’s joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is essentially China’s answer to the Asian Development Bank over which Beijing feels the US has undue influence.  

The bank, which will fund infrastructure projects across the region and may indeed be part and parcel of China’s implicit attempt to establish a Sino-Monroe Doctrine, represents “an unrivaled opportunity for the UK and Asia to invest and grow together,” according to Britain’s George Osborne. Unsurprisingly, the US doesn’t see it that way and although Washington was generously willing to concede that this was the UK’s decision to make for itself, US officials are clearly perturbed that Britain didn’t ask for permission:

A spokesman for the National Security Council says the US will allow the UK to make its own decisions…

“This is the U.K.’s sovereign decision.”

…but the next time David Cameron thinks about appeasing a country that is a possible threat to US hegemony, he really needs to ask first…

“[The decision was made with] virtually no consultation with the US.”

“We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.” — From FT, quoting a senior US Official

Washington was also quick to make clear just what the US’s “expectations” are going forward now that London has made a misguided decision to support an effort to improve infrastructure in Asia:

“We hope and expect that the U.K. will use its voice to push for the adoption of high standards.”

Because this really is all about standards, as the US made clear last year when Washington may or may not have operated behind the scenes to discourage Australia, South Korea, and Japan from joining the bank.

From NY Times:

Washington has expressed reservations about the new institution, on the grounds that it would not meet environmental standards, procurement requirements and other safeguards adopted by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank for their lending projects.

But fundamentally, Washington views the Chinese venture as a deliberate challenge to those postwar institutions, which are led by the United States and, to a lesser extent, Japan, and the Obama administration has put pressure on allies not to participate…

South Korea and Australia, both of which count China as their largest trading partner, have seriously considered membership but have held back, largely because of forceful warnings from Washington, including a specific appeal to Australia by President Obama. 

But as one official from the rival Asian Development Bank told The Times: “This horse is out of the barn.” 

And that means in short order Australia and South Korea will likely be on board and at that point, the stigma the US has created around membership will have completely disappeared (if it hasn’t already), opening the door for other US “allies” to join despite the bank’s alleged “low” standards.

So again we ask: “Who’s really isolated?”

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US Attacks “Closest Ally” UK For “Constant Accommodation” With China

March 29th, 2015 by Zero Hedge

On the heels of a diplomatic spat between Hanoi and Washington regarding Russia’s use of a former US air base in Vietnam to refuel nuclear-capable bombers on the way to conducting “provocative” runs in the Pacific, we get yet another, larger, sign that it may indeed be the US that’s isolated and not (as Western media would have you believe) the Kremlin. 

The UK (Washington’s “special” friend) has announced it’s joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is essentially China’s answer to the Asian Development Bank over which Beijing feels the US has undue influence.  

The bank, which will fund infrastructure projects across the region and may indeed be part and parcel of China’s implicit attempt to establish a Sino-Monroe Doctrine, represents “an unrivaled opportunity for the UK and Asia to invest and grow together,” according to Britain’s George Osborne. Unsurprisingly, the US doesn’t see it that way and although Washington was generously willing to concede that this was the UK’s decision to make for itself, US officials are clearly perturbed that Britain didn’t ask for permission:

A spokesman for the National Security Council says the US will allow the UK to make its own decisions…

“This is the U.K.’s sovereign decision.”

…but the next time David Cameron thinks about appeasing a country that is a possible threat to US hegemony, he really needs to ask first…

“[The decision was made with] virtually no consultation with the US.”

“We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.” — From FT, quoting a senior US Official

Washington was also quick to make clear just what the US’s “expectations” are going forward now that London has made a misguided decision to support an effort to improve infrastructure in Asia:

“We hope and expect that the U.K. will use its voice to push for the adoption of high standards.”

Because this really is all about standards, as the US made clear last year when Washington may or may not have operated behind the scenes to discourage Australia, South Korea, and Japan from joining the bank.

From NY Times:

Washington has expressed reservations about the new institution, on the grounds that it would not meet environmental standards, procurement requirements and other safeguards adopted by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank for their lending projects.

But fundamentally, Washington views the Chinese venture as a deliberate challenge to those postwar institutions, which are led by the United States and, to a lesser extent, Japan, and the Obama administration has put pressure on allies not to participate…

South Korea and Australia, both of which count China as their largest trading partner, have seriously considered membership but have held back, largely because of forceful warnings from Washington, including a specific appeal to Australia by President Obama. 

But as one official from the rival Asian Development Bank told The Times: “This horse is out of the barn.” 

And that means in short order Australia and South Korea will likely be on board and at that point, the stigma the US has created around membership will have completely disappeared (if it hasn’t already), opening the door for other US “allies” to join despite the bank’s alleged “low” standards.

So again we ask: “Who’s really isolated?”

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“Economic Genocide”: Ukraine Cuts off Payment of Pensions to One Million Senior Citizens in Donbass

March 29th, 2015 by Global Research News

by Konstantin Dolgov

Ukraine wants to improve the state of its economy at the expense of a million of lives of the retired people in Donbass.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly secured the key rights that all the people should possess. The regime that was established in Kiev after the coup of 2014 had de facto abolished the implementation of this document in regard to a group of citizens of Ukraine.

As we know, Kiev keeps on considering the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s Republics as part of Ukraine. Hypocritically declaring “the unity of the country” and “the anti-terrorist operation” in order to please the West, in reality Kiev authorities are engaged in the genocide of the population of the region with the aim of improvement of Ukraine’ s economy at the expense of human lives.

Only in accordance with the official data, in the territories of Donbass not controlled by Kiev government more than a million of Ukrainian citizens live, who are living exclusively off the retirement pensions and other social payments. They are the elderly, the WWII veterans, who defeated Hitler or went through Buchenwald or Oswensim. They are the disabled people. They are the people, who have the credit of Ukraine. They had worked for the Ukrainian state all their lives long and paid taxes in Ukraine. Social payment is the natural obligation of the state to these people — they are the only means of livelihood for many of them. Nevertheless since the summer of 2014 Ukraine terminated all social payments to the citizens living in these territories.

In autumn it became a real problem. A million (!) of the elderly and disabled people were forced to travel to the distance of hundreds kilometers for their homes to the territories controlled by Ukraine in order to receive deserved by them payments.  However, eventually the Ukrainian government went even further. Since January 1, 2014 Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet terminated social payments to the people living on these territories. Millions of people were faced with a choice: to leave homes and move for good to the territories controlled by Ukraine (then the payments, although hilariously meager, are resumed), or lose the only source of livelihood and starve. Article 13 of the above mentioned Declaration says that “every person has the right to move freely and chose his/her residence within the limits of each state”. However, the “democratic” Kiev government is not going to pay attention to such trifle as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its strive to reach its goals.

Moreover, the first mentioned option is unrealistic in principle. The average retirement pension in Ukraine amounts to 1600 Hryvnya now (about 65 Euro) per month. The average cost of a bedsitter rent in Ukraine is about 2500 Hryvnya per month (a bit less than 100 Euro). A retired person cannot afford to leave his apartment in Donetsk, Lugansk, Snezhnoye, Ilovaysk and rent an apartment in a city under Ukrainian control. Kiev regime deliberately made such a decision in order to free itself from the obligations in regard to social payments – at the expense of the lives of a million of Donetsk retired people.

On March 12 the International Monetary Fund demanded that Ukraine should resume the payments, but the memorandum adopted implies the settlement of this issue toll the end of 2015, and a million of people have not been receiving the routine payments for half a year already.

Notably, this resolution of Kiev government contradicts Ukrainian laws as well. Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine states responsibility for the non-payment of pensions and other legally asserted payments. Predictably, the retired dwellers of Donbass started to sue the social bodies of Ukraine. Nevertheless the lawsuits proceeded in accordance with the predictable scenario.

The most well-known precedent is the cases handled by human right activists Kirill Beloshytskiy, Tatyana Volkova and Irina Khyzhnyak. 15 inhabitants of Donbass sued Ukrainian government for the refusal in payment of envisaged by the law pensions with the support of these layers. Surprisingly, the court verdict was just, and the first lawsuit was won by the appellants. On February11, 2015 Kiev District Administrative Court ruled the relevant government statement illegal and ordered to resume social payments to the dwellers of Donbass. However it was just the beginning of the epic.

At once after this court ruling the Ukrainian government submitted an appeal, the consideration of which is still being delayed deliberately. Although Kiev did not stop at that and decided to repress the judges who dared to defend the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ukraine living in Donbass.

As early as on February 16 search was carried out in the building of Kiev District Administrative Court. The search was conducted by the inevitable armed people in face masks, and only later the Prosecutor of Kiev Yuldashev informed the public that the search was sanctioned by him. Moreover, one of the judges concerned, Valeriy Kuzmenko, received an enlistment note soon after that. Sending of disagreeable people to war has long been viewed by Kiev as the repressive means, but it was the first time it had been used as the method of squeeze on court.

The Convention of Prevention of Genocide Crime and Punishment for It, recognized by the entire civilized world, defines genocide as “actions committed with the aim of extermination, complete or partial, of some national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such”, including by way of “deliberate creation for such group of such living conditions, which are aimed at total or partial physical elimination of it”.

If Kiev’s deprivation of a million of the Donbass aged people of all means of livelihood does not suit this definition, then in reality the Convention is not worth of the paper it is written on.

Konstantin Dolgov, the Co-Chairman of the Peoples’ Front of Novorossia, specially for “Russkaya vesna”.

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Israel Welcomes Complicit Amnesty International Report: Palestinian “Armed Groups” Allegedly “Guilty of War Crimes”

March 29th, 2015 by Timothy Alexander Guzman

Amnesty International (AI) is at it again. The Western-based human rights organization says the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance against Israeli aggression has committed war crimes against Israeli and Palestinian citizens alike. The timing could not be more perfect for an Israeli propaganda campaign against its Palestinian neighbors. Will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu use the AI report as a justification to launch yet another war in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank? I could just visualize Netanyahu’s fourth speech to the U.S. Congress if speaker of the U.S. House of Representative John Boehner were to invite him again:

My friends, I’m deeply honored by the opportunity to speak here for a fourth time before the most important legislative body in the world, right here in Washington D.C., the U.S. Congress. My friends, Amnesty International just released a report confirming that the Israeli population was a victim of war crimes committed by Hamas terrorists. We as a “Jewish State” are under a serious threat to our existence. It is time for you to support our military efforts in order to defend ourselves. This is crucial. We are on the same side. So my friends join us in our long term goal of eliminating all terrorists’ threats from the face of the earth beginning in the holy land. It is our duty to spread democracy and freedom in the face of terrorism and it is the reason why we have an unbreakable bond. My friends we are on the right side of history, so let us fight this common enemy once and for all.

The AI report accuses “Palestinian armed groups of carrying out “war crimes” during the 50-day conflict in the Gaza Strip which resulted in over 2,300 Palestinians deaths with more than 19,000 injured according to an August 2014 report by the State of Palestine Ministry of Health. Israel had recorded over 70 Israeli deaths and over 700 injured according to a report published by the Jerusalem Post. According to a Sky News report, a multi media news organization based in the U.K., Amnesty International says that “Palestinian armed groups” broke international human rights laws:

The report entitled ‘Unlawful and Deadly’ condemned militants, including the armed wing of Hamas, for using “inherently indiscriminate” rockets and mortars to “kill or injure civilians”. “In launching these attacks, they displayed a flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law and for the consequences of their violations on civilians in both Israel and the Gaza Strip,” said Amnesty International’s Middle East Director Philip Luther.

The Middle East Director Philip Luther plays “Good cop, Bad cop” when he says that “the devastating impact of Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians during the conflict is undeniable, but violations by one side in a conflict can never justify violations by their opponents” according to the report. The Sky News report also used statistics from the United Nations (UN) own report which “claims 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars were fired towards Israel during the last conflict, with 243 intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system, and 31 landing inside Gaza. A total of 224 rockets and mortars hit residential areas in Israel. Six Israeli civilians, including a four-year-old child, and 67 soldiers were killed.”

However, the U.N.’s official report on Palestinian deaths and injuries during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ states that“more than 2,250 Palestinians were killed, of which 1,585 were civilians, including 538 children.” Amnesty International also said that the Palestinian armed groups are responsible for jeopardizing the lives of their own people “due to their decisions to operate in or near civilian areas.” Here are the report’s findings:

Nevertheless, there is substantial evidence that some of the military operations and conduct of Palestinian armed groups endangered civilians in Gaza and violated their obligation to take all feasible precautions to avoid and minimise harm to civilians

Jon Queally, Staff writer at www.commondreams.org wrote ‘World Stands Disgraced’ as Israel Bombs another UN-Designated Shelter in Gaza’ during the Gaza conflict and said:

A United Nations school in the northern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of Palestinians were seeking refuge from Israeli bombing, was itself hit by missile strikes on Wednesday night, killing at least 16 people and wounding close to one hundred others.

“Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza,” said Pierre Krähenbühl, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in a statement. “Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.” Krähenbühl voiced outrage over the behavior of the Israeli military, who he says was repeatedly given the coordinates of the school:

The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection; the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling

More than 485,000 Palestinians from Gaza were displaced, although many did return. More than 100,000 were permanently displaced while more than 10,000 still live in U.N. shelters. In the meantime, Israel continues to expand more illegal settlements which will most likely accelerate under Netanyahu’s fourth term in office. Although the report calls for UN inspectors to have “unrestricted access” to Gaza and for the Israeli authorities to release tax revenues and to lift its blockade, the report is less critical of Israel’s war crimes although it did issue a “watered-down” report back in November 2014 titled ‘Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Families under the rubble: Israeli attacks on inhabited homes” criticizing Israel. Sky News noted “a Hamas spokesman dismissed the report as being inaccurate and containing “false allegations”.

In September 2014, Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a political activist and a medical doctor spoke at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign in London and said:

18,000 homes and buildings were destroyed completely, 41,000 houses partially damaged, 145 schools, eight hospitals, 13 health centres damaged. 180 mosques damaged, 71 destroyed completely. Even cemeteries were bombarded, 10 bombarded, nine Muslim cemeteries, one Christian cemetery. They bombarded the graves. The bones of the people came out of the graves. The amount of explosives they used was beyond description.

Amnesty International declares that the Palestinian armed groups (who resist any form of Israeli aggression) in Gaza were guilty of war crimes since 2001:

According to the Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups fired more than 15,200 rockets and mortars towards Israel between 2001 and the start of the latest round of hostilities on the evening of 7 July 2014, when the Israeli military launched Operation Protective Edge. In all, 25 civilians, including four children and one adult foreign national, were killed in Israel by rockets and mortars launched from Gaza between June 2004, when the first fatality from such attacks occurred, and the beginning of Operation Protective Edge. This included the three civilians killed during Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 and the four civilians killed during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. Many other civilians have been injured, some of them very seriously, and civilian property in Israel – including homes, businesses, schools, other public buildings and vehicles – has been damaged or destroyed. Over the years, rockets and mortars launched by Palestinian armed groups have also killed Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children. According to media reports, a three-year-old Palestinian girl was killed, and several of her family members injured, by a Palestinian rocket that landed in Beit Lahiya on 24 June 2014, two weeks before the hostilities erupted into full-scale war.

Sky News noted an official statement from the Israeli government which was delighted by Amnesty International’s report on Hamas actions during the Gaza conflict:

An Israeli government statement welcomed the report’s highlighting of “deliberate targeting of Israel’s civilian population”, and claimed that, while Israel was “vigorously investigating its conduct, aiming to draw lessons”, Hamas was preparing for further violence.

The Israeli government welcomes any report critical of its enemies. They will use it to their advantage especially when the World is highly critical of Israeli policies towards its neighbors. The report made a clear statement that “two wrongs don’t make right”:

Palestinian officials who attempt to justify rocket attacks and other violations regularly point to violations by Israeli forces, whose attacks as part of Operation Protective Edge had a devastating effect on Gaza. However, violations by one party cannot justify violations by its opponents. It is this perverse logic, fostered by decades of impunity that has helped perpetuate the cycle of violations for which civilians on all sides have been paying such a heavy price.

In either case, a Palestinian or an Israeli life that is lost in any conflict is a lost for humanity as a whole. But what should an occupied country with no basic human rights do against one of the most powerful militaries in the world which is supported by the most dangerous empire in human history? Is there hope for a new peace plan with a two-state solution with the newly re-elected Prime Minister of Israel? I seriously doubt it. Unfortunately, Amnesty International just gave Israel everything it needs to justify its next war.

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Rolling Bombs: Crude-Oil Rail Tankers Threaten U.S. Canada Populations, Environment

March 29th, 2015 by Mary Papenfuss

This article was originally published by WhoWhatWhy

Choking black smoke roiled the skies of the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic the summer of 2013 as orange flames shot from pierced oil tankers in the biggest Canadian rail disaster since 1867. An unattended 74-car freight train carting crude oil from North America’s Bakken region hurtled down a hill, derailed and exploded, killing 47 people.

Half of the town was flattened in the blast, leaving it looking like a World War II bomb site. Over a million gallons of crude gushed ablaze down streets and into the local waterways. “Disasters don’t get any bigger,” said an editor of the Vancouver Sun.

A record amount of crude oil is rolling down the tracks of America’s rail system in aging, puncture-prone cars with little regulation or safeguards. It’s only a matter of time before these moving bombs explode again, triggering a disaster in a population center or an ecologically sensitive environment, warns a troubling report from the U.S. environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).

The “transport of large volumes of highly volatile oil poses a significant risk to life, property and the environment … putting people, wildlife and special places at risk,” notes the report, Runaway Risks: Oil Trains and the Government’s Failure to Protect People, Wildlife and the Environment.

The Explosive Growth of Oil Trains

“These are clearly ‘bomb trains,’” attorney Jared Margolis, author of the Runaway Risks report, toldWhoWhatWhy. Yet despite the recent spate of fiery derailments, “Federal regulatory agencies have allowed this dangerous increase in oil-train traffic with little to no environmental review and a complete lack of adequate response plans.”

The Department of Transportation hasn’t conducted a formal review of the potential environmental harms or risk to public safety from the drastic increase in use of oil trains to move flammable crude across the country — mostly in aging tank cars that lack vital safety features, Margolis said. And even though the DOT is phasing out the older tank cars, even newly designed and tougher tank cars are prone to puncturing.

The number of rail cars transporting oil has increased from 10,000 in 2008 to 400,000 last year. Some 25 million Americans now live within a one-mile evacuation zone in the event of an oil train derailment. Oil trains pass through 34 national wildlife refuges and within a quarter mile of critical habitats for 57 threatened or endangered species, according to the CBD report.

A network of oil train “virtual pipelines” crisscross the nation, putting at risk such heavily populated metropolitan areas as Chicago, Houston, and Albany, NY. Already, crashes in the last two years have spilled over a million gallons of oil into American waterways.

***

Flaming derailments have happened in Alabama (750,000 gallons), North Dakota (nearly 500,000 gallons spilled and the town of Casselton evacuated) and Lynchburg, VA, where 17 of 105 tank cars loaded with Bakken crude derailed downtown last year. One punctured car shot flames and oily black smoke into the air. Three cars crashed into the James River, releasing up to 30,000 gallons of crude.

***

West Virginia’s governor declared a state of emergency last year after a Fayette County derailment triggered explosions and a massive fire, setting a building ablaze and spilling crude into the Kanawha River. That disaster involved the newer, safer CPC-1232 Model tank cars supposedly less prone to rupture, as did a similar disaster in Canada’s Ontario province in February.

There were 117 crude-oil rail spills in the United States in 2013 alone — releasing an astonishing 1.15 million gallons of the poisonous, flammable stuff. That’s a near tenfold jump since 2008, and more than the entire previous four decades, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. There were significantly more spills last year (140 “unintentional releases”), according to the CBD report.

The CBD report draws a frightening picture of what could happen without more vigorous regulation: “Images of mushroom clouds described as akin to atomic bomb blasts have been all over the news, which should be a wake-up call to regulators, who have dragged their feet on new regulations for tank cars hauling explosive crude. … The next time, it could be in a more populated area, where hundreds or even thousands of people may be in harm’s way.”

Margolis, who lives in Oregon, cites an oil-rail route along the Columbia River, where an accident could seriously endanger Portland, as well as the wildlife home of several species of salmon.

Puncture-Prone Cars

Particularly worrisome are the puncture-prone DOT-111 cars used to transport the crude. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that these cars will almost always breach in the event of a train accident. An NTSB official testified before Congress that the DOT-111 cars present an “unacceptable public risk.” Yet under current federal regulations, they continue to be the cars most often used to transport crude.

The Department of Transportation recently proposed new rules, but these allow continued use of the dangerous DOT-111 cars through a five-year phase-out. Meanwhile, the DOT has issued a series of “non-binding”  advisories,” urging the use of safer tanker cars and stressing the importance of safety testing. These suggestions have been uniformly ignored by the industry.

To minimize the risk of a catastrophic accident, the CBD report calls for an immediate ban on DOT-111 tank cars, and forbidding crude oil shipments to any area without a comprehensive oil spill response plan, including the training of critical response personnel.

It also recommends: 1) instituting a permit system for rail shipments of all hazardous material; 2) limiting the length of oil-train shipments to 30 cars and 4,000 total tons; 3) capping the speed below the puncture rate of cars (typically less than 20 mph) in population centers and within a quarter-mile of any waterway, national park or sensitive ecological area. (The DOT’s new regulations would allow speeds of up to 50 mph.)

Yet the same old story appears to be playing out, Margolis said. People will have to live with the risks until the government’s regulations match their stated intentions.

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Germany Accuses NATO of “Dangerous Propaganda”. America’s Strategic Objective is to Prevent a German-Russian Alliance

March 29th, 2015 by Dr. Daniele Ganser

This article originally appeared at NachDenkSeiten. Translated for RI by Mihajlo Doknic

The German Chancellery has accused NATO chief Philip M. Breedlove of “dangerous propaganda”. The question: what to think about this critique coming from a government that uses this kind of propaganda technique itself. Jens Wernicke, media scientist and author of several books, talked with the renowned Swiss peace researcher and NATO expert Dr. Daniele Ganser.

Mr. Ganser, the German Chancellery accuses NATO chief Philip M. Breedlove, of “dangerous propaganda”. Breedlove exaggerates Russia’s military involvement in East Ukraine, for example. What is going on here? Is the German government just accusing NATO of war propaganda?

The German Chancellery is right with its critique. In my opinion, something dangerous is happening right now: US generals like Breedlove are trying to provoke a war, where Germans and Russians would kill each other in order to weaken both countries. This is a cynical, actually a diabolical plan. But this is exactly what US strategist like Georg Friedman, director of the Stratfor think tank, are suggesting. United, Germany and Russia are the only power that could threaten the US, Friedman said in a speech in February 2015 in Chicago.

“Our primordial interest [preventing a German-Russian alliance] is to ensure that will never happen,” said Friedman.

“The US, as an empire, cannot intervene in Eurasia all the time,” he explained. Therefore they must turn countries against each other, so they don’t build close alliances. “I suggest something President Ronald Reagan used against Iraq and Iran: He supported both war parties!” Freidman stated. The war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988 claimed at least 400.000 dead, so from the point of peace science it is frightening what Friedman suggests. “So the Iranians and Iraqis fought against each other and not against us,” explained Freidman in his speech. “That was cynical and amoral. But it worked.”

The USA cannot occupy Eurasia. The same moment we put our boots on European soil, we will be outnumbered due to demographics. In my opinion the radical US generals like Breedlove are trying to implement this strategy, where in future German and Russian Soldiers kill each other in Ukraine, thus destabilizing and weakening the whole of East Europe. That would be a catastrophe. Therefore a peace movement needs to encourage an alternative solution, like the neutrality of Ukraine. No NATO membership and friendship between Germany and Russia.

How is NATO trying to fuel this conflict?

NATO General Breedlove often sticks out by spreading exaggerated and untrue claims. This is how NATO is fueling the war. This is dangerous, because the situation is very tense, as we know. On the 12th of November 2014 Breedlove claimed that Russian toops and tanks have marched into Ukraine! But that wasn’t true and it wasn’t just a little thing. Literally the NATO general said: “We have seen that Russian troops, Russian tanks, Russian artillery and air defense systems have moved into Ukraine.” BBC and other mass media spread that worldwide but it was a lie.

And US General Ben Hodges, commander of the US troops in Europe, also pushes for war by supporting the Ukrainian army. In January 2015 he visited a military hospital in Kiev and handed over a medal for bravery of the US Army to a wounded Ukrainian soldier! That, of course, increases tension.

However, the US General Hodges shows symbolically: The US is an “active party of war” in the Ukraine. It stands by the Ukrainian army that is fighting the Russian supported separatists in East Ukraine. Because Germany is a NATO member, there is a danger that German soldiers are dragged into this war by the US. Similar to Afghanistan after 2001. If that happens, then we have exactly the situation Friedman is asking for: Germans and Russians shooting at each other in the Ukraine. Of course I hope that this won’t happen. However, a peace movement needs to raise this and warn of such dangers in order to avoid them.

Is this a very common thing, I mean, that NATO lies, exaggerates or deceives?

Yes, regrettably NATO has, on a regular basis, combined lies and war. In my book NATO’s secret armies in Europe. Staged terror and clandestine warfare I show how, during the Cold War, NATO had built in Western countries, supported by CIA and the British secret service MI6, secret armies, of which existence the governments and population didn’t know anything.

Especially the US generals are dangerous, because they have been continuously fighting wars in different countries during the last 70 years. As representatives of an empire they are not only used to kill but also to deceive. General Lyman Lemnitzer, for example, who served as SACEUR of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) between 1963 and 1969, so one of Breedlove’s predecessors, suggested in the 60s that the US should stage a war against Cuba by destroying an American ship at the military base in Guantanamo and by staging terror attacks in Washington, and then for both crimes accuse Fidel Castro in order to get the American public behind the war. John F. Kennedy, however, stopped the operation [Northwoods]. But it shows, how dangerous the officers in the Pentagon are.

Is only the US pushing for wars or are other countries also involved?

NATO has 28 members and unfortunately other NATO countries are involved in war propaganda as well. For example, the Brits! In March 2003, before they attacked Iraq, Tony Blair, the then prime minister, said: “Iraq is in possession of chemical and biological weapons. Its rockets are ready for use within 45 minutes.” That was a lie! The attack on Iraq by USA and Great Britain started, nevertheless, without an UN mandate. So it was illegal!

It was also an illegal aggression when NATO, on the 24th of March 1999, started bombing Serbia. Because NATO didn’t have a mandate of the UN Security Council. Back then it was Germany under the Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping and the Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, that actively took part in the aggression [War on Yugoslavia], together with the US. In the run-up to the aggression lies were spread to get the people behind this war. Later, in 2014, Schröder admitted that NATO violated International Law. “When the question came up how to deal with developments in Yugoslavia and Kosovo respectively, we sent our planes, our Tornados [German warplanes] to Serbia together with NATO and bombed a sovereign state without a Security Council Resolution,” admitted Schröder self-critically.

How come that in those cases nobody raises its voice and we only read the same NATO statements with their arguments?

The mass media in Germany are pushing people into a direct confrontation with Russia, in a way the radicals in the US, like Stratfor director Friedman, are asking for. It means, they fuel animosity towards Russia. And very rarely there is a critical discussion about NATO or about the strategic interests of the US, those powers that are fueling the war in Ukraine.

Many journalists don’t even call the US an empire fearing for their jobs and other things. But it is apparent that the US is an empire of our times, the most powerful nation that, of course, is pursuing its national interests. This fact is rarely raised by the mass media. So many people watching TV don’t even know the term ‚US Empire’ or the strategic interests of this empire in Eurasia. Therefore, critical people disappointed by the TV and Newspapers are trying to inform themselves through alternative media on the Internet.

So, do you think the critique by our [German] government is a sign that they finally try to break the global spiral of violence and distance itself from propaganda in favour of respectful dialogue with Russia? And, is our government more credible than NATO itself?

I am from Switzerland, whicht is not part of NATO. So I do look at the German policy and Chancellor Merkel from the outside. And I see that many people are concerned with the situation [war] in Ukraine, because of its proximity. And most of the Germans that I know, they don’t want a future, where German soldiers and Russian soldiers shoot at each other! But I am not sure what the German government wants. They move in a zigzag course. One day, as a NATO member, they fuel, together with the US, the war in the Ukraine by increasing tensions with Russia. And sometimes they try to keep the friendship or at least the respect with Russia by publically criticizing NATO war-hawk Breedlove. So which line will be predominant in future its hard to tell.

What is your assessment of the departure of the hawk Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO General Secretary? Will Jens Stoltenberg establish himself as a peaceful successor? To put it differently: How much influence has a Secretary General actually on NATO policies?

If you study the history of NATO it is easy to notice that the post of Secretary General is always staffed with an European, now Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, and before that, Rasmussen, a Dane. But the Europeans should not be mistaken as to who is calling the shots in NATO, it is the US! Secretary General is not the most important post. It is actually the one of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, because here lies the military command. An American, now Breedlove, always holds this position.

Has Stoltenberg publically criticized Breedlove or tried to stop him? No, he is not able to. His job as Secretary General is primarily to give NATO an European face. This is better received in Europe, than having a US diplomat appear all the time.

So I don’t believe that Stoltenberg is able or willing to transform NATO into a peaceful organization. Also because of the track record of NATO in the past two decades: NATO wars and the technique of, Regime Change’ have left countries in ruins and traumatized people, in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. So I hope that Ukraine won’t be put on this list too!

Thank you for the interview.

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The Money Trail: How the US Fostered Yemen’s Separatist Movement

March 29th, 2015 by Sputnik

As Saudi Arabia and its allies have begun the bombing campaign against Yemen, in the south, a separatist movement calling for a “State of South Arabia” is emerging. Fostered by the US, it will leave the Houthis with two hostile states at their borders and locked access to the sea, if it succeeds. 

Shi'ite Muslim rebels

Welcome to phase two of US regime change operations. After Yemen’s 2011 revolution failed and Houthi militias overthrew President Hadi, forces trained and sponsored by the US government are being activated as a separatist movement.The Southern People’s Committees (SPC), founded around 2007 although USAID has been conducting political workshops as part of a $695,000 project and actively grooming leadership in Yemen since 2005. (Also in 2007, weekly protests began, organized by women’s organizations, fostered by the workshops.) The SPC were similar to many color revolution movements such as Serbia’s Otpor in that they did not have a central leadership, but rather an autonomous cell-based organization. In addition, they were very capable in the use of social media technologies, text messaging and the circumventing the government’s internet censorship to organize protests.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies, which received $193,000 from the EU and US-funded Foundation for the Future in 2009, conducted a poll in January 2010, which found that 70 percent of southern Yemenis favored secession.Another USAID-funded project, the $43 million Responsive Governance Project (RGP), launched in May 2010, conducted “New Social Media training for Youth leaders to equip Yemeni youth groups in the use of media to enhance their participation in formulating public issues.” The project focuses on establishing contacts with the Yemeni government and providing “leadership and civic education training to youth NGOs.”

At the same time, USAID funded a $3.58 million project called Promoting Youth for Civic Engagement (PYCE) to train Aden youth ” in PACA [political activity training], first aid, self-defense, photography, calligraphy and various other topics,” including “media skills,” according to an evaluation report of the PYCE Project, conducted in 2012. The project was constrained to Aden and did not conduct workshops in the northern capital, Sanaa, after reportedly receiving threats.

The project is presented as a youth “sports program,” and although it does include basketball, handball and chess, these were not the primary goal, as the report shows. At the same time, first aid, self-defense, photography and calligraphy (making protest signs) sound a lot more like protest tactics than sports. The program, initially planned to last for two years, did not make any progress reports after March 2012, when President Hadi assumed power.After the 2011 revolution, the SPC became more of a military outfit and took part in a fight against al-Qaeda in Yemen, which coincided with the CIA’s expanded drone campaign in the area. This is also where the organization fades from public view when it comes to USAID expense reports, as the organization appeared to lose interest in developing democracy in the country. In a June 4, 2012 a field commander of the People’s Committees gave an interview to the Yemen Times, in which he described the group’s fight against the Ansar al-Sharia Islamists together with the government.

However, the group reappeared in public view on September 23 2014, two days after Houthis took control of Sanaa, and issued a statement in which they call on security forces to “undertake its historical role in providing security and maintaining people’s property because it is in order to preserve the revolution, which is the most important accomplishment achieved by the Yemeni people.”

At the same time, in southern Yemen, the People’s Committee has been very active on Facebook and Twitter since around October 2014. The Facebook and Twitter pages publish slick anti-Houthi propaganda and call for separatism and a “State of South Arabia,” within the bounds of former South Yemen, and using South Yemen’s flag.

Since mid-March, the SPC have been fighting against Houthis and see Saudi Arabia as an ally of convenience, although some of their social media accounts, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and other royal family figures are glorified. However, the splitting of Yemen benefits Saudi Arabia, as it secludes the Houthis to a smaller Northern Yemen, which would be surrounded by two hostile states, with Saudi Arabia to the north and the new South Arabia to the south, which would also control access to the sea at the Gulf of Aden.

The current situation has considerable parallels with Ukraine, which has led the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to call the situation one of “obvious double standards, but we clearly did not want neither what is happening in Ukraine, nor what is happening in Yemen.”

Indeed, while Russia has been repeatedly accused of helping Donbas independence supporters, the US has openly fostered the south Yemen separatist movement. At the same time, while Ukraine’s President Yanukovych was called illegitimate by the US after fleeing the country, Yemen’s Hadi has remained “legitimate” and has even called for a Saudi Arabian military operation against the people who ousted him.The ongoing conflict in Yemen is currently at the second phase of US regime change operations, rebel conflict. The first stage, the color revolution, has failed, and now the last stop, foreign intervention and ground invasion remains. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have already begun the airstrikes, and the South Arabia movement has begun its separatist campaign.

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Fukushima: Uranium and Plutonium Contamination of Large Areas of Oceans, Ground-water, Soils.

March 29th, 2015 by Edmondo Burr

Scientists have raised concern over the rate of radioactive contamination of the Pacific, due to the Fukushima nuclear accident.

  • Expert : Plutonium-241 from Fukushima nearly 70,000 times more than atomic bomb fallout in Japan.
  • Officials : Molten fuel now ‘particle-like’, contains ‘special’ nuclear materials.
  • Gov’t Labs : Large areas of oceans contaminated by plutonium from events such as Fukushima; Build-up in biosphere expected; Considerable hazard to humans.

Energy News statement :

Detection of long-lived plutonium isotopes in environmental samples by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) — Plutonium isotopes 239Pu, 240Pu and 242Pu are anthropogenic radionuclides emitted into the environment by nuclear activities. Pu is accumulated in the human body and hence, poses a considerable hazard to human health. Due to the long half-lives, these isotopes are present in the biosphere on large time scales and a build-up can be expected. Therefore it is important to study the contamination pathway of Pu into the drinking water… a method to detect long-lived Pu isotopes by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is being developed. AMS requires only few milligrams of sample material… Consequently, more samples from different locations can be taken which is essential when searching for locally increased Pu concentrations as in the Pacific Ocean after the Fukushima accident… Samples from different locations in the Pacific Ocean and from the snow-hydrosphere are planned…

Statement by: Taeko Shinonaga, head of Radioanalytical Laboratory at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen (research institution founded jointly by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education & Research and Bavaria’s Finance Ministry), scientists from Technische Universitat Munchen (Germany), Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft 2013 meeting (emphasis added)

Presentation by: Taeko Shinonaga, head of Helmholtz radioanalytical lab (pdf), Nov 2014: Comparison of activity between [nuclear bomb testing] fallout Pu particle and Fukushima origin Pu particle:
Global Fallout Pu in Japan [GF]Global Fallout Pu in Japan
> Pu240: 1,360 Bq
> Pu241: 645 Bq
> Total: 208,005 Bq

Fukushima Pu found in our study
> Pu240: 197,000 Bq [145 times GF]
> Pu241: 43,700,000 Bq [67,752 times GF]
> Total: 44,061,000 Bq [212 times GF]

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Univ. of Notre Dame, 2014: Interstitial incorporation of plutonium into a low-dimensional potassium borate…

[E]vents such as the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan [have] resulted in the contamination of large areas of oceans, ground-water, soils, and sediments by actinides, such as uranium and plutonium… migration of actinides [is] an important environmental concern… Knowledge of the incorporation mechanisms of actinides into… natural materials is therefore required… for predicting the migration of radionuclides…

European Commission Joint Research Centre (pdf), 2014:

[The Joint Research Centre] is studying emerging safety issues…examining mixed oxide (MOX) properties [and] preparing further severe accident studies on specific aspects of the Fukushima accident [such as] off-vessel fuel-concrete interactions… Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) selected a JRC-developed method as one of the most suitable approaches to characterise [Fukushima’s] molten fuel… This characterisation is an international obligation during the decommissioning phase, according to IAEA safeguards. Japanese researchers are now developing and optimising the methodology to quantify special nuclear materials in particle-like debris of the molten reactor fuel.

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Fukushima: Uranium and Plutonium Contamination of Large Areas of Oceans, Ground-water, Soils.

March 29th, 2015 by Edmondo Burr

Scientists have raised concern over the rate of radioactive contamination of the Pacific, due to the Fukushima nuclear accident.

  • Expert : Plutonium-241 from Fukushima nearly 70,000 times more than atomic bomb fallout in Japan.
  • Officials : Molten fuel now ‘particle-like’, contains ‘special’ nuclear materials.
  • Gov’t Labs : Large areas of oceans contaminated by plutonium from events such as Fukushima; Build-up in biosphere expected; Considerable hazard to humans.

Energy News statement :

Detection of long-lived plutonium isotopes in environmental samples by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) — Plutonium isotopes 239Pu, 240Pu and 242Pu are anthropogenic radionuclides emitted into the environment by nuclear activities. Pu is accumulated in the human body and hence, poses a considerable hazard to human health. Due to the long half-lives, these isotopes are present in the biosphere on large time scales and a build-up can be expected. Therefore it is important to study the contamination pathway of Pu into the drinking water… a method to detect long-lived Pu isotopes by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is being developed. AMS requires only few milligrams of sample material… Consequently, more samples from different locations can be taken which is essential when searching for locally increased Pu concentrations as in the Pacific Ocean after the Fukushima accident… Samples from different locations in the Pacific Ocean and from the snow-hydrosphere are planned…

Statement by: Taeko Shinonaga, head of Radioanalytical Laboratory at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen (research institution founded jointly by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education & Research and Bavaria’s Finance Ministry), scientists from Technische Universitat Munchen (Germany), Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft 2013 meeting (emphasis added)

Presentation by: Taeko Shinonaga, head of Helmholtz radioanalytical lab (pdf), Nov 2014: Comparison of activity between [nuclear bomb testing] fallout Pu particle and Fukushima origin Pu particle:
Global Fallout Pu in Japan [GF]Global Fallout Pu in Japan
> Pu240: 1,360 Bq
> Pu241: 645 Bq
> Total: 208,005 Bq

Fukushima Pu found in our study
> Pu240: 197,000 Bq [145 times GF]
> Pu241: 43,700,000 Bq [67,752 times GF]
> Total: 44,061,000 Bq [212 times GF]

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Univ. of Notre Dame, 2014: Interstitial incorporation of plutonium into a low-dimensional potassium borate…

[E]vents such as the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan [have] resulted in the contamination of large areas of oceans, ground-water, soils, and sediments by actinides, such as uranium and plutonium… migration of actinides [is] an important environmental concern… Knowledge of the incorporation mechanisms of actinides into… natural materials is therefore required… for predicting the migration of radionuclides…

European Commission Joint Research Centre (pdf), 2014:

[The Joint Research Centre] is studying emerging safety issues…examining mixed oxide (MOX) properties [and] preparing further severe accident studies on specific aspects of the Fukushima accident [such as] off-vessel fuel-concrete interactions… Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) selected a JRC-developed method as one of the most suitable approaches to characterise [Fukushima’s] molten fuel… This characterisation is an international obligation during the decommissioning phase, according to IAEA safeguards. Japanese researchers are now developing and optimising the methodology to quantify special nuclear materials in particle-like debris of the molten reactor fuel.

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Saudi Invasion: Yemeni Forces Arrest 40 Saudi Military Men

March 29th, 2015 by Fars News Agency

“The fighters of the Yemeni Ansarullah and popular committees held, at least, 40 Saudi military personnel as captive in heavy clashes in Razeh district of Al-Tawila region,” informed sources told FNA on Friday.

Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against Yemen early Thursday, one day after the US-backed Yemeni president fled the country.

Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase.

But despite Riyadh’s claims, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near Sana’a international airport. Based on early reports, the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have so far claimed the lives of 25 civilians with more deaths feared, Yemeni sources said.

At least 25 Yemeni civilians, including children, were killed and tens of other wounded in the Saudi air strike.

Also, 15 more people were killed and injured in a second round of massive attacks by the Saudi Arabian fighter jets in the Northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada on Friday.

Yemen’s al-Massira TV reported that the Saudi air force targeted the Yemeni’s civilians who were shopping in a market.

Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — backed by the US have declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued earlier Thursday.

US President Barack Obama authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to the military operations, National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said late Wednesday night.

She added that while US forces were not taking direct military action in Yemen, Washington was establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support.

Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is attacking Ansarullah positions, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near Sana’a international airport. Based on early reports, the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have so far claimed the lives of 25 civilians with more deaths feared, Yemeni sources said.

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Invading Yemen: Criminality in Support of Hegemony

March 29th, 2015 by Ajamu Baraka

Wednesday evening Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States announced that Saudi Arabia had commenced military operations against the Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement in Yemen. The Saudi intervention was not unexpected. Over the last few weeks there were signs that the U.S. and the Saudi’s were preparing the ground for direct military intervention in Yemen in response to the Houthi’s seizing state power in January.

The appearance of a previously unknown ISIS element that was supposedly responsible for the massive bomb attack that killed over 130 people on Friday and the withdraw of U.S. personnel on Saturday were the clear signals that direct intervention by the Saudi’s was imminent.

And this week with the fall of al-Anad military base, the base where the U.S. military and CIA conducted its drone warfare in Yemen, to Ansarullah fighters and the capture of the port city of Aden where disposed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi had fled, it was almost certain that the U.S. would the green light for its client states to intervene.

The Saudi Ambassador cloaked the role of Saudi Arabia within the fictitious context of another grand coalition, this time led by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) –  the corrupt collection of authoritarian monarchies allied with the U.S. and the other Western colonial powers.

Ambassador Al-Jubeir announced that before launching operations in Yemen all of its allies were consulted. The meaning of that statement is that the U.S. was fully involved in the operation. Even though the Ambassador stressed that the U.S. was not directly involved in the military component of the assault, CNN reported that an interagency U.S. coordination team was in Saudi Arabia and that a U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. would be providing logistical and intelligence support for the operation.

And what was the justification for launching a military  operation not sanction by the United Nations Security Council? According to the Saudi’s they have legitimate regional security concerns in Yemen. Their argument was that since they share a border with Yemen, the chaos that erupted over the last few months that culminated in what they characterize as a coup by the Houthi insurgency, forced them to intervene to establish order and defend by “all efforts” the legitimate government of President Hadi.

But this is becoming an old and tired justification for criminality in support of hegemony.

The intervention by the Saudi’s and the GCC continues the international lawlessness that the U.S. precipitated with its War on Terror over the last decade and a half.  Violations of the UN Charter and international law modeled by the powerful states of the West has now become normalized resulting in an overall diminution of international law and morality over the last 15 years.

The double standard and hypocrisy of U.S. support for the Saudi intervention in Yemen and Western and U.S. condemnations of Russia’s regional security concerns in response to the right-wing coup in Ukraine  will not be missed by most people.

And so the conflagration in the Middle East continues.

U.S. and Saudi geo-strategic interest in containing the influence of Iran has trumped international law and any concerns about the lives of the people of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. Militarism and war as first options has now become commonplace as instruments of statecraft in an international order in which power trumps morality and law is only applied to the powerless.

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights defender whose experience spans three decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. http://www.ajamubaraka.com

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Looking Back at the Vietnam War

March 28th, 2015 by Andy Piascik

This Spring marks 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War. At least that’s what it’s called in the United States, the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, it’s called the American War to distinguish the phase involving the United States from those involving other aggressors and colonizers — China, France and Japan most notably.

The occasion has been marked by widespread commentary, reminisces and what passes for history in the corporate media. The Pentagon has chimed in with a fanciful account posted on its website that evokes the propaganda it spun during the actual fighting of the war: US imperialism good, Vietnam bad. On a more positive note, peace and veterans groups around the country have held events and otherwise tried to put forward analysis about the horrific nature of US aggression that haunts Vietnam to this day.

A more mixed aspect is the degree to which the war still hovers over our own country like a cloud. Several decades back, mainstream commentators regularly referred to the Vietnam Syndrome, which until the 1991 Persian Gulf War served to keep US imperialism in check to some extent. Media elites referred to the reluctance of our political class to go to war for fear of getting bogged down in “another Vietnam.” What they were unwilling to say openly is that the Vietnam Syndrome is really the gulf in opinion between elites and the public on the matter of US aggression.

In short, the US has found it extremely difficult since Vietnam to count on significant public support for its wars. Throughout the decade of the 1980’s, for example, the US desperately sought to impose its will on Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, to name just three, utilizing proxy armies to defend landed elites against the people of those countries. If not for ongoing public opposition, US troops would likely have been fighting in Central America as early as 1980. Because the US was unable to send troops, the kind of bloodletting the US inflicted on Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia did not happen in Central America. One result is that the popular movements and revolutionary forces were able to carry on the struggle, to a point where a one-time revolutionary guerrilla is today president of El Salvador and longtime Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega is again president of Nicaragua.

This is not to say a horrible number of deaths and incalculable damage was not inflicted on those countries; the US was especially determined to destroy the revolutionary experiment in Nicaragua, an effort that was largely successful. More ominously, though the hell of the military terror of the 1980’s is past, Guatemala remains in the grips of wealthy elites tied to the United States and is one of the most class-stratified, repressive societies in the Hemisphere.

But the damage inflicted on Central America does not compare to what was done in Indochina and that was due in no small part to the efforts of millions of everyday Americans. Unlike in Indochina, solidarity efforts with the people of Central America began early and in earnest. In Nicaragua, they began soon after the US moved against the popular revolt that overthrew the hated Somoza dictatorship in 1979. In El Salvador, solidarity work began in the wake of the murder by paramilitary terrorists of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 and grew ever larger over the next ten years. That work included demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins, medical aid, Sister City projects, accompaniment by doctors, electricians and others with skills to offer, as well as making available sanctuary, usually in churches, to people fleeing the violence to the US.

Sporadic opposition within the US to aggression in Indochina, by contrast, popped up in 1963 and 1964 but it was very small and isolated. What we know as the anti-war movement did not take shape until 1965, more than a decade after the US unleashed its murderous puppet Ngo Dinh Diem on the southern part of Vietnam, and a full four years after President Kennedy began major escalation.

More recently, the US has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and, as this is written, is contemplating sending troops elsewhere in the Middle East. Just as in Indochina, the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have in important ways been failures. And because of the massive use of superior military force, the US has become something of a pariah internationally — feared but extremely isolated. Again, domestic organizing has contributed significantly to that isolation. No small feat that, and one that is important to recognize both because of the suffering that would have resulted from the use of greater force, as well as for what it teaches about the impact the public can have on imperial war. There’s still much to do, however, and for both ourselves and those who suffer under bombardment done in our names, we need to get to it.

Combatting the official, distorted history of Vietnam can assist us in those efforts and this admittedly cursory background is offered in that spirit. One aspect of that distorted history spun in some recent commentaries is that the War began in February 1965 when North Vietnamese and US troops clashed for the first time, the result, it’s claimed (naturally) of an unprovoked North Vietnamese attack. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the arrogance required to claim that point as the start of the war when tens of thousands — probably hundreds of thousands — of Vietnamese were already dead at US hands by that time, but such is the level of dishonesty and subservience to power in US political culture.

Pinpointing where US aggression in Vietnam began depends on how one determines how a war begins but 1945 is a good place to start in order to best understand what transpired over the ensuing 30 years. It was in the summer of that year that Vietnamese revolutionary forces grouped around the Viet Minh defeated Japan, whose army had invaded their country four years before. Like so many around the world who suffered greatly under the forces of fascism and militarism during the Second World War, the Vietnamese considered their victory the dawn of a new day. In that spirit, Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh read a proclamation inspired significantly by the US Declaration of Independence (large sections of which were included word for word) to a massive assembly in Vietnam that was also directed at Washington and people around the world.

It was at this point that the US made the crucial decision to reject Ho’s overtures and throw in with Vietnam’s long-time colonizers, France. Most of the French colonial administration and army had run away when Japan invaded Vietnam, ceding the country to the invaders; those French who remained collaborated with the Japanese. Yet in its imperial wisdom, France decided it was entirely within its rights to re-colonize Vietnam, which it did, with crucial arms, money and diplomatic support from the US.  The Vietnamese, not surprisingly, were not so enthusiastic about being invaded yet again and resisted just as they had resisted colonization and occupation for centuries.

As the French inflicted horrific violence in a failed attempt at re-conquest that lasted nine years, the US bore more and more of the war’s burden. When the Vietnamese achieved final victory by annihilating the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there was again the possibility that they had achieved independence. It was not to be, though. With Vietnam looking on skeptically, the US, other Western powers and the Soviet Union brokered the Geneva Accords that stipulated, among other things, that national elections unifying all of Vietnam be held within two years. The division of the country into North, where revolutionary forces had won complete victory, and South, which except for Saigon and the surrounding area was under Viet Minh control, was rightly seen by the Vietnamese as a ploy by US imperialism to buy time and a sell-out by the Soviet Union.

Though they had no faith that the US would live up to the agreement, the Vietnamese had little choice but to go along. Their fears were justified in no time, as the US made clear that the Geneva Accords were nothing but paper that could be shredded into a million worthless pieces. Since Washington knew Ho would win an election in a landslide, no such election ever took place. As in dozens of other cases over the past 100+ years, the US opposed democracy in favor of aggression. Elections are all well and good but only if the right people win; if the wrong people win, then out come the machine guns.

So in 1954, the US threw its considerable weight behind Ngo Dinh Diem, an expatriate living at the time in a New Jersey seminary run by the arch-reactionary Francis Cardinal Spellman, and installed him as dictator of what was now known as South Vietnam. During Diem’s nine years in power, the US looked on approvingly as he waged a war of terror against the people of the South. Resistance continued and eventually grew, though for a time Washington shifted its regional attention to neighboring Laos, where there was also a strong insurgency fighting against a US-backed dictatorship.

That changed under the Kennedy Administration, however, as the US expanded its aggression in Vietnam and the resistance rapidly grew. The resistance was led largely by the National Front for Liberation, successor group to the Viet Minh and known by its French acronym NLF, but it was made up of a broad cross section of Vietnamese society including, significantly, a large number of Buddhist monks.

Though Kennedy is often portrayed as desiring peace in Vietnam, something the Camelot mythmakers claim he supposedly would have accomplished had he not been assassinated, the sordid facts reveal the opposite. At every point where peace or even de-escalation could have been achieved, Kennedy opted instead for escalation: through saturation bombing, through the widespread use of napalm and other chemical weapons, through the organization of strategic hamlets (such a great phrase, strategic hamlets; kind of like calling Auschwitz a country getaway), and, finally, through the introduction of ground troops.

Though a despot, Diem revealed himself to be a despot with something of a conscience in 1963 when, weary of the fighting tearing apart his country, he independently made peace overtures to the NLF and unification overtures to the North. It was a fateful decision, as Washington soon ordered that he be taken out, as he was, assassinated just three weeks before Kennedy himself was murdered. (It was this sequence of events that the great Malcolm X referred to as “chickens coming home to roost,” precipitating his break with the Nation of Islam).

Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson was only in office nine months before he  fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, another Vietnam turning point.

Simultaneously, Johnson, dubbed the Peace Candidate by some (probably including himself), was warning the nation that Barry Goldwater, his opponent in that year’s presidential election, was a dangerously unhinged war monger. That theme produced the most memorable moment of the campaign, a TV ad featuring a little girl counting the petals she picks off a flower that morphs into a countdown to Armageddon.

Once he secured re-election and with the Gulf of Tonkin incident as justification, Johnson in early 1965 expanded aggression to all of Vietnam via a massive bombing campaign against the North (though the bulk of US destruction was always directed at the South). Parenthetically, Johnson would later that year order an invasion of the Dominican Republic to keep from power moderate reformer Juan Bosch and provide the usual substantial arms, money and diplomatic support to a murderous coup in Indonesia that brought the butcher Suharto to power. At least 500,000 people were killed during the coup and its aftermath; Amnesty International, generally blind to crimes committed by the US and its proxies, puts the figure at 1.5 million. The Peace Candidate, indeed.

So it remained in Vietnam for three years, a yin and yang of escalation and heightened resistance, until the Tet Offensive in January 1968. Before Tet, the US had largely gotten away with lying about the progress of the war, the burgeoning anti-war movement notwithstanding.  After Tet, it was clear that the promised victory at hand was delusional and a fabrication. Still, Tet remains a bone of contention for the most extreme supporters of the war who claim the US capably defeated the uprising, only to be sabotaged by antiwar media and Democratic politicians.

In reality, the Tet Offensive followed the NLF strategy of never engaging the US in a battle as that word is traditionally understood. It was a hit and run operation with the purpose of inflicting great damage, yes, but designed primarily to display once and for all that its forces were formidable and the will of the people unconquerable. In short, the goal was not to win a battle of Tet; the goal was to show anyone who still doubted that the US could not win. I recall reading years ago something said around the time of Tet by a Vietnamese elder who had probably seen as much death and destruction as anyone who ever lived (I’m paraphrasing): We can settle this now or we can settle it a thousand years from now. It’s up to the Americans.

One group who became convinced after Tet that the Vietnamese were right in their assessment was the US business community. As always, their view, unlike generals, policy wonks and national politicians, was sober and geared to the long run. What they saw were war expenditures that were a huge economic drain, attention to Indochina that would have been better placed in outdoing global competitors in the expansion of markets, an army increasingly reluctant to fight, and the spread of domestic insurgencies from the isolation of college campuses to crucial points of production, most notably the Revolutionary Union Movement sweeping the auto industry.

One of the business elite’s first moves was to push Johnson aside in favor of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Kennedy was a long-time Cold Warrior going back to his days working with Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn whose plans for Vietnam, much like his brother’s, were predicated on victory first and then peace. McCarthy, meanwhile, had no connection to the anti-war movement before or after his thoroughly opportunistic six-month effort to cash in as the new Peace Candidate, and the 1968 election serves as well as any example of the disparity between rulers and ruled: a majority of the population in favor of immediate withdrawal having to choose between candidates who all favored continuing the war.

Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization — shifting the burden of the war to the South Vietnamese army — was Washington’s last failed act. The killing continued and the war was expanded to Laos and Cambodia but still the US could not win. Before the end, in 1973, the US perpetrated another fraud, the Paris Peace Accords, every tenet of which Nixon violated before the ink on the document was dry. By the time the revolutionary forces took Saigon on April 30 1975, the US had been involved in Vietnam for thirty years.

The list of outstanding books about Vietnam is a long one and mention will be made only of recent scholarship by Christian Appy who, among other contributions, has meticulously documented the working class nature of the war and the domestic opposition to it. That last flies in the face of the official history, as elites prefer to foster the notion that the movement consisted exclusively of privileged white college students. In reality, workers and the poor opposed US aggression in higher numbers from start to finish and not only because sons of the working class were far more likely to do the fighting. Ineluctably, it was overwhelmingly working class active duty resisters and recently returned veterans whose opposition to the war ultimately proved decisive on the home front.

Virtually every American who knows even a little about the war knows that 55,000 US soldiers died in Vietnam. Only a tiny percentage, however, come anywhere near the correct number of Indochinese killed when polled. Noam Chomsky has written of one poll where the average given by respondents was 200,000 and likens this to people believing that 300,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, as in both cases the count is off by a factor of 20. Such a gross misunderstanding underscores the effectiveness of the intellectual class in propagating a self-serving, highly distorted nature of the war – who suffered, who died, who the wronged are.

Even the largely accepted figure of four million Indochinese dead is probably low, possibly dramatically so, though the truth will probably never be known. Those best equipped to make that determination are the very ones who either waged the war or have a vested interest in burying its truths. As a US general speaking of a more recent conflagration put it: “We don’t do body counts.” Not, anyway, when the dead bodies are victims of American violence.

Also completely ignored here is the Vietnamese experience of Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example. Take the terrible suffering of US soldiers and multiply their numbers ten thousand fold or more and we get a sense of the damage to the Vietnamese. Additionally, Vietnam and the rest of Indochina (the official histories generally and conveniently leave out the wars waged against Laos and Cambodia) are full of unexploded ordinances that regularly cause death and injuries, to this day. And though Vietnam and Laos were able to avoid catastrophic famine, Cambodia was not, not surprising given that it’s a small country whose countryside was bombed back to the Stone Age. Destruction on such a scale combined with an ironclad US-imposed postwar embargo essentially doomed hundreds of thousands to death by starvation. That’s an unpleasant truth, though; so much easier to blame everything bad that happened in Cambodia after April 1975 on the despotic Khmer Rouge.

However, though neither Vietnam or Laos experienced the postwar cataclysm of Cambodia, the war was so destructive that it could be argued that the US won in the sense that an alternative mode of social organization was rendered impossible (much like 1980’s Nicaragua). The US views all societies that put people before profits as a threat, particularly if they’re in the global South. It is the only way to understand the 50 years plus war of terror against Cuba, today’s bellicosity directed at Venezuela and the continuation of the war in Indochina in the 1970’s long after the US knew it could not win. In large part because of the scale of destruction, Vietnam today is well integrated into the global economy with all the negatives that entails, full of sweatshops, venture capitalists and major disparities in wealth and power.

Discussions of Vietnam are hardly academic exercises; the US is currently on a global rampage and falsifying history is part and parcel of the effort to whip up support for the next war. Because of the domestic gulf between rulers and ruled on the question of US aggression, we have the US going ahead with a second invasion of Iraq in 2003, destroying Libya, supporting war-hungry neo-Nazis in Ukraine, threatening Venezuela and engaging in a proxy war designed to destroy Syria, all despite opposition from a majority of the public on every count. Put simply, that means we will have to more effectively do our work of building an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement toward a day when we may live with the people of the world in something approximating harmony.

Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author who writes for Z, Counterpunch and many other publications and websites. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Four Years of Syrian Resistance to Imperialist Takeover

March 28th, 2015 by Sara Flounders

By Sara Flounders and Lamont Lilly

U.S. efforts to overturn the government of Syria have now extended into a fifth year. It is increasingly clear that thousands of predictions reported in the corporate media by Western politicians, think tanks, diplomats and generals of a quick overturn and easy destruction of Syrian sovereignty have been overly optimistic, imperialist dreams. But four years of sabotage, bombings, assassinations and a mercenary invasion of more than 20,000 fighters recruited from over 60 countries have spread great ruin and loss of life.

The U.S. State Department has once again made its arrogant demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down. This demand confirms U.S. imperialism’s determination to overthrow the elected Syrian government. Washington intends to impose the chaos of feuding mercenaries and fanatical militias as seen today in Libya and Iraq.

A delegation from the International Action Center headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark traveled to Syria in late February to present a different message.

Visits to hospitals, centers for displaced families and meetings with religious leaders, community organizations and government officials conveyed the IAC’s determination to resist the orchestrated efforts of U.S. imperialism acting through its proxies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel.

The IAC’s opportunity to again visit Syria came following its participation in a packed and well-organized meeting of the International Forum for Justice in Palestine, held in Beirut on Feb. 22 and 23. The conference was initiated by Ma’an Bashour and the Arab International Centre for Communication and Solidarity and again confirmed the centrality of the burning, unresolved issue of Palestine in the region.

The solidarity delegation to Syria included Cynthia McKinney, former six-term member of the U.S Congress; Lamont Lilly, of the youth organization FIST – Fight Imperialism, Stand Together; Eva Bartlett, from the Syrian Solidarity Movement; and Sara Flounders, IAC co-director.

The delegation traveled the rutted, mountainous, blacktop road from Beirut to Damascus to the Lebanon-Syria border. On the Syrian side, this road was a modern, 6-lane highway, a reminder of Syria’s high level of infrastructure development. Even after four years of war, this is still a well-maintained highway. Due to sanctions against Syria, hundreds of trucks attempting deliveries stretched for miles on both sides of the border.

Compared to two years ago, when the IAC visited Damascus, this year we didn’t hear the constant thud of incoming rockets from mercenary forces shelling the city. These military forces have been pushed back from their encirclement of the capital. Syrian military units, checkpoints, sandbags, blast walls and concrete blocks were now less pervasive. Markets were full of people and held more produce.

A visit to Damascus’ largest hospital showed the cumulative impact of four years of devastation. At the University Hospital, where children with amputated limbs receive treatments in the ICU, many children had been brought in maimed from explosives and with shrapnel wounds from mortars and rockets fired on Damascus by terrorist forces.

At a visit to a center for displaced families at a former school, we met with university students, who provide sports, crafts, tutoring and mentoring programs. Medical care, free food and education programs are provided by the centers. But conditions are desperately overcrowded. Each homeless family, often of 6 to 10 people, is allocated a single classroom as housing. Almost half the population has been displaced by the terror tactics of mercenary forces.

A Mosaic of cultures

A theme in almost every discussion was Syria’s heritage as a diverse, rich mosaic of religious and cultural traditions. Sectarian divisions and intolerance are consciously opposed. One can see the determination to oppose the rule of foreign-funded forces.

A visit with Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun and Syrian Greek Orthodox Bishop Luca al-Khoury reflected the centuries of religious harmony that previously existed in Syria.

Mufti Hassoun stressed the need for reconciliation. He described to the visitors the assassination three years ago of his 22-year-old son, Saria, who “had never carried a weapon in his life.” Saria was gunned down after leaving his university. At the funeral, Mufti Hassoun declared he forgave the gunmen and called on them to lay down their weapons and rejoin Syria. He described his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Bishop Luca al-Khoury, as his cousin and brother.

Bishop Khoury described the ease with which he received a visa to the U.S., while Mufti Hassoun was denied a visa, although both are religious leaders. “Why do they differentiate between us?” said Khoury. “It’s part of the project to separate Christians and Muslims here. It’s over gas pipelines which are supposed to run through Syrian territory. This will only happen if there is a weak Syrian state.

“If the Syrian government would agree to give a monopoly to France to extract gas from Syria, then you would find [President François] Hollande visiting Syria the next day. If the Syrian government would give the monopoly to [the United States of] America, [President Barack] Obama would declare President al-Assad as the legitimate ruler of the Syrian people.”

“Turkey is warring on us,” Khoury continued, “with financial support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and political support from America, Europe and Britain. Drones cross our borders daily, providing coordinates for the terrorists as to where to strike.”

Both religious leaders declared, as did many others in Syria, that the only solution is an international effort to stop the flow of arms: “If the American government would like to find a solution for the Syrian crisis, they could go to the Security Council and issue a resolution under Chapter 7 for a total ban of weapons from Turkey to terrorists in Syria. In one week this would be over.”

Syria’s accomplishments

Political and media adviser to President al-Assad, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, described the problem of stopping the weapons and mercenaries flooding into the country: “With external support and financing, and an over 800-kilometer border with Turkey, it’s very difficult to stop the flow of terrorists.

“Syria was formerly one of the fastest developing countries in the world,” Shaaban continued, “and one of the safest. We have free education and health care. We did not know poverty; we grew our food and produced our own clothing. At universities, 55 percent of the students were women. In whose interest is it to destroy this heritage? Who is the beneficiary of this?”

Shaaban described her time as a Fulbright scholar at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and later as professor at Eastern Michigan University: “I always wanted to be a bridge between Syria and Western cultures. At the beginning of the crisis, they tried to buy me. They urged me to ‘come to a civilized place,’” she said. “We have baths which are over 1,000 years old and still functioning. I studied Shelley: They didn’t have baths 800 years ago in England. We did. We were having baths and coffee.”

Meeting with PFLP Leaders

The delegation headed by Ramsey Clark also had an important opportunity to meet with Abu Ahmad Fuad, deputy general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Abu Sami Marwan, of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, and hear of the ongoing developments in Palestine and the region.

According to a Feb. 25 statement released by the PFLP after the meeting, “The PFLP leaders discussed the nature of the U.S./Zionist aggression against the people of the region, their intervention in Syria and the attempts of colonial powers to impose their hegemony by force and military aggression, through division of the land and people, and by pushing the region into sectarian or religious conflict.

“This U.S. policy is nothing new.” The Front noted that the colonial powers have waged an ongoing war against the Arab people to prevent any real progress for the region on the road to liberation, self-determination and an end to Zionist occupation.

“The U.S. delegation discussed the urgent need for building ongoing solidarity with Palestine in the United States and internationally,” continued the release, “in particular to confront the deep involvement of the United States — militarily, politically and financially — in the crimes of the occupier, and to end its attacks on Syria, Iraq and the people of the entire region.

“The solidarity delegates noted that there is a colonial scheme to divide and repartition the region according to the interests of major corporations and imperial powers, targeting the resources of the people, sometimes through blatant political interference in the affairs of the region and other times through wars and military attacks on states and peoples.

“The two sides emphasized the importance of communication between the Palestinian Arab left and progressive and democratic forces in the United States to confront Zionism and imperialism in the U.S. and in Palestine alike.”

Ramsey Clark described the aim of the visit: “To find more opportunities for dialogue and coordination among the Syrian and American people.  We saw culture and credibility in Syria and we appreciate the struggle of this people. We will disallow them to shift Syria into Iraq or Libya.”

Cynthia McKinney, former member at the U.S. Congress, said that she appreciated “Syria’s heroic stance, as people and leadership, in its war against the U.S. imperialism. The Syrian people are exceptional in their capability of resistance as the acts during four years have failed to achieve their goals.”

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Drought in São Paulo: Brazil’s Megacity on Verge of Crisis as Water Rationing, Shutoffs Continue

March 28th, 2015 by William Hawes

The past three months have seen the driest winter in 84 years in southeastern Brazil. Water shortages are now critical in São Paulo, home to twenty million people. The city’s primary reservoir is fluctuating between 6-13% of capacity, and officials are estimating São Paolo’s reserves will last a mere 90 days without additional rainfall. The rainy season, from December through February, is over, and sadly, recent flooding within the city has not raised main reservoir levels, which are located further inland. (1) 

The primary reservoir at Cantareira feeding much of the metropolitan city is nearly bone-dry. People in São Paulo are resorting to deliveries from bicycle riders carrying jugs of water. Others are digging their private wells on their own land or even in basements, which can lead to contamination issues. Those who can afford it are hoarding water, and the more resourceful are using cisterns and building rainwater catchment systems. Local rivers are polluted due to sewage problems and cannot be used for drinking water. Some have simply fled the city, becoming 21st century “water refugees”. (2)

Due to the massive glaciers of the Andes, the Amazon and its tributaries, Brazil holds 12% of worldwide freshwater and is called “the Saudi Arabia of water”. So why is this drought happening? Scientists are citing deforestation of the Amazon, Brazil’s very own “chainsaw massacre”, as the causal factor of the drought. As climatologist Antonio Nobre explains:

“That’s what we have learned – that the forests have an innate ability to import moisture and to cool down and to favour rain… If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up. If we don’t act now, we’re lost.” (3)

Government officials deserve part of the blame, as Brazilians cited recent elections and last year’s World Cup, which conveniently allowed politicians to procrastinate and avoid the problem. This could eventually become a public health issue, as a surge in demand for new wells has led to unprofessional drilling techniques. Well experts estimate only 20% of new drilled wells meet guidelines. (4)

São Paolo isn’t the only city in Brazil facing drought conditions. Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte are also facing water shortages, putting a total of 40 million people at risk in the region, comparable to the entire NYC and LA metro areas in the US. The situation is taking a toll as GDP is predicted to fall in the area, and experts question the government’s readiness for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. At the same time, the Petrobas bribery scandal widens and the Rousseff government is coming under intense scrutiny, which may distract leaders from solving the water crisis.

Due to state incompetence and fealty towards private industry, southeastern Brazil’s water reserves have been irrevocably altered. The megaregion will now be forced to limit public and industrial use if it wants to maintain civil stability. Whether the political class has the guts to go through with a major conservation program is questionable. Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, dubbed as leftist by mainstream analysts, is more accurately a blend of center-left democratic socialism and neoliberal economic practices. The government swings between populist Bolivarian policies to appease its vast working class, and deregulated financial and industrial policy to please its corporate masters.

Brazil is far from the only nation at risk from drought: last year, parts of India, China, Ethiopia, Australia and many smaller countries were at risk. California is estimated to have only one year of water supplies at current usage rates. São Paulo presents a particularly dangerous test case because it is one of the first modern megacities facing this issue.

Despite the siren calls of the global elite, the 21st century may not turn out to be a model of technological advancement and social stability. Global warming, deforestation, and resource depletion are all intensifying, and could easily lead to a century of climate refugees and worldwide impoverishment. World leaders working with NGOs should be at the forefront of climate change issues, rather than indulging in political chess games in Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, and beyond.

 William Hawes is an independent author specializing in environmental issues and politics.

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Canada’s Strikes against Syria. Violating International Law: The Canadian Recipe Against ISIS

March 28th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

How is it possible to expand something that is, by definition, immeasurable?  Such length of string arguments are bound to dog Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s opinion that the air campaign against ISIS needs expansion, lengthening, and deepening.  “ISIL has made it clear that it targets, by name, Canada and Canadians.”  

Earlier in the week, Harper told the House whilst announcing a one-year extension of its military mission against the Islamic State about his intention to avoid that stumbling block called sovereignty, and the UN charter that acknowledges it with solemn clarity.  Canada would “not seek the express consent of the Syrian government” in launching strikes against ISIS targets on Syrian soil.[1]

The suggestion here is that Canada becomes the third country after the United States and Israel to launch airstrikes on Syrian soil on the pretext of targeting mischief making “non-state actors”.  This reverses the position the prime minister took last fall, when Syria was declared to be “off-limits” to fighters of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In so doing, long-time legal observer Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia, suggested that Canada was “taking sides in a decade-long debate” which was shaped by “George W. Bush and cultivated by his administration – very controversially.”  Central to the debate was the breakdown of supposedly traditional views about one state taking action against another.  Supposedly threatening non-state actors have become targets of the US-Israel view that, irrespective of which country is hosting them, they constitute legitimate targets.

The justifying counter to traditionalists comes in the form of self-defence arguments that are permitted under Article 51 of the UN Charter, though Harper initially tiptoed around it.  In fact, Harper could only be dismissive of the questioning by Opposition leader Tom Mulcair as to whether the United Nations had been informed of this decision to move on Syria.  “Has the prime minister,” posed the NDP leader, “written to the United Nations, laying out Canada’s justification for its planned intervention in Syria?”  ISIS lawyers, sneered Harper, would hardly be taking Canada to court on the subject, a view that suggests much on the impoverishment of legal debate.

The task of picking a legal framework fell to Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who produced the apologetics of self-defence out of his bag of tricks, citing the views of Canada’s top legal eagle in the military.  Self-defence remains the last refuge of the international law scoundrel – or at least one who wishes to see it used in violation of territorial integrity.  According to James Bezan, parliamentary secretary to the minister of defence, “Collectively, the coalition – which includes the government of Iraq – needs to defend themselves and have the right to defend themselves from ISIL [ISIS].”

Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson decided to shift the onus on the Assad regime for not doing enough to curtail and destroy the forces of ISIL.  “If Syria is unable or unwilling to prevent ISIL from staging operations into Iraq, that is a legal justification to get involved.”  Ever a poor precedent, Nicholson cited the indiscrete and stomping US lead on the subject.  “The Americans have operated in there for six months without resistance from the Syrian government.”

Tim Harper of The Toronto Star has found the brazen manner of Harper’s decision stunningly slothful.  Canadians, “even those who slavishly back this mission – deserve more than a simplistic, ‘there are bad guys out there and we’re going to get them’ rationale, the product of either a tired, complacent government or one that values domestic politics over the inconveniences of international convention.”[2]

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau believes that such strikes will have another unintended consequence.  Even the targeting breaches Syrian sovereignty, the Assad regime will profit from such fabulously expansive rationales of Canadian self-defence.  “I believe the unintended but predictable consequence of helping (Assad) consolidate his grip on power in Syria is definitely something we could qualify as making things worse.”[3]

The open-ended conflict, interminable, and impossible to gauge in terms of success, is here to stay.  With that has come a relentless attenuation of state sovereignty.  US forces strike with impunity in global borderlands.  The term “self-defence,” which has been extended since 2001 via the US Congress Authorisation for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists resolution, is characterised by “precision munitions” and drone warfare.

Lawyers have warned that the sheer nature of such resolutions would be abused, as it has been.  But others resort to that old idea that responsibility is also a relevant excuse in using violence to combat violence. To protect civilians, irrespective of their nationality, it may be necessary to wade into the murky waters of humanitarian intervention at the end of a missile.  ISIS, for the University of Toronto’s Aurel Braun, represented a “credible, immediate and global threat” that justified the use of Article 51 (CBC, Mar 26).  Besides, “Sovereignty is not only about right, but also about duties and responsibilities.”

The result of all of this?  Territorial limits prove to be less relevant. Governments in power are inconsequential if they do not doff their hats to the holy church that is the responsibility to protect.  If the designated enemy is an associate of terrorism, however one defines it, it constitutes a legitimate target irrespective of who governs the territory of residence.  This is the law of the jungle moderated by the disingenuousness of moral force.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

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Why Latin America Rejects US Military Presence

March 28th, 2015 by Joachim Hagopian

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 the United States has claimed territorial rights to the Western Hemisphere, essentially warning the rest of the world to back off from USA’s backyard. The American way of proclaiming itself the big cheese of the New World manifested by quickly ousting colonial competitor Spain from Florida and the Southwest and two decades later declaring war on Mexico, stealing a third of its sovereign territory to ensure that Texas, New Mexico and Arizona became part of the bountiful chosen nation fast expanding from sea to shining sea. Next came more than a century of constant military interventions from the 1850’s in Nicaragua and Panama that brought forced labor and slavery to the indigenous population. 

Long before the US became the global bully, it was the Western Hemisphere’s neighborhood thug. The 1898 Spanish American War born of the false flag sinking of the USS Maine facilitated colonial expansion and occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Genocide-war casualty expert RJ Rummel estimates up to near half a million Filipinos died in the bloodbath when the US military invaded, conquered and re-colonized the freshly independent nation of the Philippines during the Spanish American War.

As the US ascended to global power throughout the course of the following century, it became increasingly intolerant toward other nations’ autonomy or any and all regional claims of a “Monroe Doctrine” of their own. Having fought its own colonial wars far beyond its own hemisphere, the United States increasingly engaged in tampering with other countries’ internal affairs, regularly resorting to assassination of foreign leaders and inciting coups as it so chose around the world. And true to its New World Doctrine, the US maintained tightest control over the hapless nations of Central America and the Caribbean.

As examples of various “Monroe interventions,” a brief history follows. In 1903 for global trading purposes the US wanted a canal, so it invaded Panama, snatching up its land to construct and hold the Panama Canal from its 1914 opening up until 1999. Over this last century countless US Marine invasions took place in Central American nations like Panama and Nicaragua. Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean were also constantly victimized with military aggression and regime changes, in Haiti right up to the present. US backed coups of democratically elected leaders during the last half century alone occurred in 1964 Brazil, 1965 Dominican Republic, 1973 Chile (ushering in brutal dictator Pinochet), 1973 Uruguay, 1980 El Salvador (that brought Reagan’s death squads also to Nicaragua), a CIA linked plane crash in 1981killing Panama’s leader, and more coups and invasions in 1982 and again 1983 in Guatemala and 1989 Panama. And then there are the incessant economic sanctions and embargos used against smaller nations like Cuba and Nicaragua that resist US oppression. Over the years thousands of Latin Americans died in the name of America’s “manifest destiny.”

By the end of the twentieth century when the US anointed itself as the only global superpower on the planet, American Empire powerbrokers began their ambitious campaign of world domination against its defeated cold war enemies still deemed its strongest potential threats. Thus the plan was launched to systematically isolate Russia and China from the rest of the world by implanting hostile puppet governments in every nation that borders them, with the ultimate aim of placing missiles aimed at Russia, completely usurping all other nations’ regional rights by expanding the Monroe Doctrine well beyond America’s own hemisphere but to the entire globe.

Once the Soviet Empire was broken up in the early 1990’s, at this point no other country could dare make similar claim of exercising any regional power over its neighbors anywhere in the world except the mighty US Empire that self-justified its longtime double standard hypocrisy always with its grandiose sense of empowered exceptionalism. This notion of exclusive impunity that the US is simply immune from compliance with any and all international laws and treaties including all Geneva Convention or United Nations Charter rules just because it happens to be the most powerful nation on earth meant that as the global village bully it can at will threaten, impose, dictate, control and even destroy all other nations through unchallenged global hegemony.

And so goes the US foreign policy enraptured by its own regime change madness to makeover any nation it so chooses using the worn out lie of spreading democracy when it really spread its own selfish agenda of destabilizing, plundering and enslaving in insurmountable debt every nation and people possessing precious dwindling resources or geopolitical chessboard significance to the US Empire as the self-serving master of the world. Without as much as declaring war, the United States in recent years has constantly violated international laws and committed countless war crimes invading, occupying for decades at a time, raping and destroying nations like Afghanistan, Iraq (several times over), Libya, and Syria (of course with a little proxy help from its secretly created and funded “terrorist” mercenary monster allies al Qaeda/ISIS), never failing to leave demolished failed states in its wake.

Then just over a year ago the neocon megalomaniacs assaulted another autonomous nation, investing $5 billion to subversively overthrow another democratically elected president in Ukraine. Then when a vast majority of ethnic Russians living in Crimea that for centuries were always part of Russia voted overwhelmingly to once again become annexed, and President Putin moved to protect both the citizens of Crimea as well as defend his strategically located Russian naval base in Sebastopol, Crimea, suddenly the world bully American Empire began its next propaganda war in futile attempts to demonize Putin with nonstop lies and false flags behind a thinly veiled design to manipulate the Russian leader into reacting, thus serving as provocation for the US-NATO forces as the clear aggressor to invade and occupy yet another country in yet another war.

But this time what could easily turn into World War III would be against a nuclear powered enemy and would risk the end of all life on planet earth. Yet these suicidal gestures of an evil Empire in freefall decline both morally and economically are being puppeteered by Western oligarchs in the midst of losing power and control to the emerging power of the East. For many centuries the central banking cabal has used war to drive both its power and profit.

On April 7, by the overwhelming House vote of 348-48, Congress moved forward with the Obama plan to provide heavy armaments to the corrupt de facto Ukrainian government despite Putin’s warnings and Europe’s ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict through peaceful negotiations. The vast majority of treasonous American leaders controlling the US crime syndicate government possess absolutely no regard for humanity, truth or justice and apparently are determined to plunge the planet headlong into catastrophic world war. A year ago researchers concluded the US government no longer represents the interests of American citizens but instead those of the Western oligarchs, the 1% of the world’s richest population of ruling elitists that as of next year will own more wealth than the rest of us 99% of the 7.2 billion earth inhabitants combined. Something’s demonically wrong and obscene with that NWO equation.

Yet with all this doom and gloom so rapidly unfolding and accelerating during these first few months of 2015, there remains but one populated continent on this earth that appears relatively free of US military domination and control. That laudable distinction belongs exclusively to nations in the US Empire’s own south facing backyard within the Western Hemisphere – South America. Suffering centuries of abuse and exploitation as Empire’s so called banana republics, despite their economic challenges that remain to this day, Latin American nations are emerging as a formidable political force endowed with natural resources and an empowering, growing independence and defiance toward the global giant to the north.

Emboldened by the largest oil reserves on the planet, this century has witnessed the charismatic leadership of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (until his death a couple years ago) leading the continental rebellion against the United States, calling Bush the “devil” before the UN, while calling upon South America to develop its own self-protective line of defense – a walled off independence, unity and solidarity away from the aggressive, controlling and destructive US Empire’s global dominance.

Hugo Chavez led the way for fourteen years shunning Washington’s claws bent on tapping into his nation’s vast oil reserves. But Chavez used his nationalized oil company to provide important revenue to uplift Venezuelans’ standard of living with improved educational opportunity, increased hospitals, affordable housing and transportation infrastructure. Any time a smaller nation in the world rejects US Empire and its predatory system of exploitation of the nation’s people and its land resources through privatized, greed-driven transnational corporations, through lies and propaganda that nation is invariably declared a US enemy. In other words, if a leader does what is best for his or her nation’s residents producing economic growth and prosperity for its own population, that nation is automatically targeted for “regime change” attack economically, politically and often even militarily by the US Empire. Viewed as a revolutionary champion of the people from humble roots much like his own constituents, and willing to boldly challenge and successfully outmaneuver blatant failed US attempts to overthrow him from power and temporarily did in 2002 and failed in more attempts later, Hugo Chavez overcame the Empire wrath and regional conflict with bordering Colombia and ultimately embraced continental Latin unity as an emerging defense against US imperialism.

The pivotal turning point came in August 2010 when enough pressure was brought to bear on Colombia by Chavez and other neighboring countries after Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe signed an agreement the year before to allow eight more US military bases. The nixed plan was ostensibly to fight the same cocaine smuggling trade the US government makes billions in profits from as well as defeat the leftist insurgent rebels operating inside Colombia. Ultimately the Colombian courts wisely decided the bases were “unconstitutional” because they were never approved of by the nation’s legislators. It was simply a deal that the corrupt outgoing Colombian president had acquiesced to after American Empire pressured for a stronger military foothold on the continent. Though no new bases or additional US soldiers and contractors would be coming to Colombia, 1400 US personnel that were already part of a previously ratified agreement stationed at existing bases were allowed to stay. As a result of the Colombian court decision, the US was successfully banished from making any further inroads of a US military presence inside South America.

This Colombian decision came just a year after Ecuador gave the boot to the US Air Force occupying an air base sharing the runway of Manta’s city airport.  The US base designed to be the primary South American “drug interdiction” watchtower from the sky was formally closed in 2009 after the United States had invested $71 million in airport renovation and over the last decade in operation had brought an annual revenue to the city of $6.5 million.

But the city of Manta moved onto bigger and better investments than the US Empire could offer with its thinly disguised imperialistic hegemony. Instead Ecuador went ahead with joint business ventures in partnership with both neighboring Venezuela and Hong Kong. Chavez made a sweet deal with Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa to construct a $6 billion oil refinery on the outskirts of Manta. Meanwhile, a Hong Kong firm secured a deal to finance and construct over a half billion dollar deepest water port on the Pacific coast of South America that geographically lies closest to Asia. Instead of giving the same half bill over to the fake enemy terrorists ISIS in Yemen like stupid Empire does resulting in a far more dangerously destructive world, China smartly invested the same amount of money into our same hemisphere’s nations but in renewable and sustainable infrastructure that offers win-win outcomes to both Asia and South America. In contrast, the US foreign policy for too long has always self-servingly invested in militarization and privatization that only benefits a small ruling elite rather than nations and whole populations. What goes around, comes around.

Ecuador’s security minister Gustavo Larrea framed it a little more diplomatically:

The U.S. stopped being the benchmark of what is good for Latin America. Because Latin America did everything that the US asked it to do and wasn’t able to get out of poverty, the North American myth lost political weight.

Latin American countries have long realized that the drug cartels work hand in hand with US government agencies to export their illegal drugs into North America. The US government’s criminal enterprise is partnered by the central banking cabal for safe money laundering. Just this week American Drug Enforcement Agency personnel got busted partying with drug cartel money.

The corrupt political system profiting from the international drug trade has not been more apparent than in Central American nations where local criminal cartels’ and Washington’s criminal interests appear one and the same. Honduras readily comes to mind as the worst Central American victim of another covert US-induced coup in June 2009when another democratically elected leader closely associated with Chavez, President Manuel Zelaya, was ousted because as a rancher he attempted to improve the lives of his indigenous agrarian poor class.

Honduras was targeted for regime change as Obama and his Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s strategy to roll back democratic gains made in various countries during the Bush years. After training virtually the entire Honduran officer corps, the US planted a murderous military junta into power that’s been brutalizing Hondurans as the murder capital of the world ever since while partnering with the local drug cartels, their criminal gangs and agents of the US government moving drugs from South America into Mexico and North America. The 50,000 children largely from Honduras and El Salvador who showed up at the US border last year was but one among many tragic outcomes of the morally reprehensible US policy.

When Chavez died two years ago, the US realized that his successor Nicolas Maduro was far more vulnerable as the US has repeatedly attempted to undermine his power and position with its fanatical regime change agenda. While Ukraine was deposed of its president a year ago last February, CIA and State Department NGO’s were hard at work in Venezuela drumming up Maduro opposition culminating in violent street protests not unlike those in Kiev. Like clockwork a year later, Washington attempted yet another coup but once again failed on Valentine’s Day this year. Obama recently hypocritically declared Venezuela a threat to US national security, with more outright lies as he reacts with sour grapes to his recent botched coup effort and his jailed coup co-conspirators, attempting to scare weak links in both the Venezuelan government as well as all the Latin American governments assessing if he can lure any defectors away from their unified continental anti-Empire stance.

Leaders from Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador immediately responded to Obama’s verbal attack on Venezuela, verbalizing strong condemnation against his overt threats. If anything, the US president’s harsh words that have no real consequence (other than certain Venezuelan families cannot enter the United States) are in effect motivating South American nations to rally around Maduro and strengthening their alliances and mutual support against their common threat (not unlike Russia and China has been forced to do in response to the US Empire renewing its cold war enemies).

Meanwhile, the designated military structure for US presence in Latin America and the Caribbean – the US South Command – is hollow and more in name only as it hardly has anything to command these days because almost no US military outposts are located in the Western Hemisphere south of the United States. Very nearly to a country, every government has either kicked out the US military or has consistently refused to let the Empire wolf back in. One too many invasions from the past have come to haunt the rejected US Empire today. In fact, these days more often a visible Russian military presence is occasionally observed on Latin soil or sailing in southern waters or docked in South American ports than any US military deployments.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov last April visited Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua and Peru. Additionally, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu even went further, stressing the importance that Russian military forces should be assigned to foreign military bases, without naming exactly where. It was likely more a public relations ploy to excite the US national security neocons since clearly the Empire forces are being shunned while Latin America courts favor with the Russians. South American nations are unlikely to invite another foreign power to any permanent military bases since they collectively are emerging as an autonomous and independent political force unto themselves, and injecting Russia or the United States military into that mix would be both disruptive and counterproductive.

In Central America only Honduras has US military personnel stationed at Soto Cano Air Base listed to provide medical support to Hondurans as well as disaster relief. Another base located in El Salvador is Comalapa Naval Base opened in 2000 after the 1999 US departure from Panama. Comalapa employs just 25 US military and 40 civilian personnel (according to its website). Its mission is primarily narco-surveillance. Two more small anti-drug monitoring stations are located in the Caribbean Dutch territories on the islands of Curacao and Aruba. An air station on the island of Antigua is in the process of relocating to Western Australia. The radar station is moving to the Pacific to mainly monitor China’s growing military satellite activity in that part of the globe. Finally a secret black ops station in the Bahamas called “Area 51 of the Caribbean” is said to develop new naval military technology.

But outside these small scale outposts according to the Pentagon, no other active military bases are occupied by US armed forces. South Command commander General John F Kelly maintains that there is little current need for deployment of US troops in southern nations of the Western Hemisphere. His commander-in-chief notwithstanding, the general believes that no major security issues or serious threats in Latin America warrant a greater US military presence since numerous global hotspots that do require American military forces obviously take priority. Additionally, recent fiscal budget cuts factored in are also given to explain the near complete lack of US military presence in Central and South America. But then these “official reasons” sound more like a face-saving rationale rather than admitting the truth that the dominant mindset of Latin Americans who at one time chanted in protest “Yankee go home!” are now in unison and solidarity chanting even louder “Yankee stay home!”

What does unfortunately remain open as the Caribbean blight on the US Empire is an old US naval base operating since 1903 – Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. It’s the Western Hemispheric mecca for housing illegal, unaccounted for US torture, false, unjustified imprisonment and grossest inhumanity still going on daily today since 2002. Though Obama has continued for seven years feebly promising and vowing to close it, the puppet president has yet to keep his word. Last week a teenager asked the president what he would like to change from the first day he was elected and Obama answered, “I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day.” That lame response failed to bolster his nonexistent credibility. After all, he also promised to be the “most open and transparent president in US history.” The man ad nauseam throughout his regime has only proven he cannot be trusted. But then neither can 99% of the United States leaders in government or the military.

It’s a bit of irony that the global superpower killing machine occupies over 1000 military posts throughout every corner of the globe except one, the one sitting in its south-side backdoor no less – Latin America. All those past military interventions, coups and tyrannical violence and injustice toward Latin America have soured relations now. The up and coming nations south of our border were brutally beaten down for more than a century by the US and now that they are rising in power with friendlier ties to cold war enemies Russia and China, once again karma’s come home to roost, biting the big evil Empire squarely in its imperial ass.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/.

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Week in Review: US Guiding Airstrikes against Syrian Government and Clinton Foundation’s Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch

March 27th, 2015 by Global Research

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“Manufacturing Dissent”

March 27th, 2015 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the author of many important books. His latest is The Globalization of War: America’s Long War Against Humanity. Chossudovsky shows that Washington has globalized war while the US president is presented as a global peace-maker, complete with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Washington has its military deployed in 150 countries, has the world divided up into six US military commands and has a global strike plan that includes space operations.

Nuclear weapons are part of the global strike plan and have been elevated for use in a pre-emptive first strike, a dangerous departure from their Cold War role.

America’s militarization includes military armament for local police for use against the domestic population and military coercion of sovereign countries in behalf of US economic imperialism.

originalOne consequence is the likelihood of nuclear war. Another consequence is the criminalization of US foreign policy. War crimes are the result. These are not the war crimes of individual rogue actors but war crimes institutionalized in established guidelines and procedures. “What distinguishes the Bush and Obama administrations,” Chossudovsky writes, “is that the concentration camps, targeted assassinations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain ‘the global war on terrorism’ and support the spread of ‘Western democracy.’”

Chossudovsky points out that the ability of US citizens to protest and resist the transformation of their country into a militarist police state is limited. Washington and the compliant foundations now fund the dissent movement in order to control it. He quotes Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman about manufacturing consent. He lets Paul Kivel describe how funding of dissent by the elite results in the co-option of grassroots community leadership. The same thing is happening to environmental organizations. Black Americans also have lost their leaders to the elite’s money and ability to bestow position and emoluments.

Chossudovsky notes that progressive, left-wing, and anti-war groups have endorsed the “war on terror” and uncritically accept the official 9/11 story, which provides the basis for Washington’s wars.

Having accepted the lies, there is no basis for protest. Thus its absence.

As Professor Stephen Cohen has observed, dissent has disappeared from American foreign policy discussion. In place of dissent there is exhortation to more war. A good example is today’s (March 26, 2015) op-ed in the New York Times by neoconservative John R. Bolton, US ambassador to the UN during the George W. Bush regime.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=0 

Bolton calls for bombing Iran. Anything short of a military attack on Iran, Bolton says, has “an air of unreality” and will guarantee that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey will also develop nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves from Iran. According to Bolton, the Israeli and American nuclear arsenals are not threatening, but Iran’s would be.

Of course, there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but Bolton asserts it anyway. Moreover, Bolton manages to overlook that the agreement being worked out with Iran halts the Iranian enrichment program far below the level necessary for nuclear weapons. Bolton’s belief that Iran would be able to hide a weapons program if permitted to have nuclear energy is unsubstantiated. It is merely an implausible assertion.

The neoconservatives constitute a war lobby. When one war doesn’t work, they want another. They have an ever expanding war list. Remember, the neoconservatives are the ones who promised us a 3-week “cakewalk” Iraq war costing $70 billion and paid for by Iraq oil revenues. After 8 years of war costing a minimum of $3,000 billion paid for by US taxpayers, the US gave up and withdrew. Today jihadists are carving a new country out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

It is now a known fact that the neocon Bush regime’s Iraq war was totally based on lies, just as is every other neocon war and the current drive for war with Russia and Iran. Despite their record of lies and failure, the neocons still control US foreign policy, and neocon Nuland is busy at work fomenting “color revolutions” or coups in the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

Without the support of the New York Times, the neocons could not have got the Iraq War going. Now the New York Times, faithful to the neocons but faithless to the American people, is helping the neocons get a war going with Iran and Russia.

I have friends who are college presidents who still read and believe the New York Times. The wars with Iran and Russia that the New York Times is encouraging will be much more dangerous than the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. Humanity might not survive them.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
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King Richard III, The last Plantagenet King, will once again be Laid to Rest

March 27th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“But it’s all vanity, all vanity.  This is truly the theatre of the absurd.” – Rev. David H. Clark, The Leicester Mercury, Mar 20, 2015

The things bones can do to people. In the case of Richard III, his remains have become an opportunity. Those liking pageantry got their show in Leicester cathedral on Thursday, a grand, somewhat bizarre spectacle to draw in audiences and the media ratings.  Period attire was worn.  The clergy got busy.  Benedict Cumberbatch, a distant relative of the long deceased sovereign, read a poem by the poet laureate.  The residents of Leicester – at least some of them – have decided that, “The world is watching.  Let’s put Leicester and our county on the map.”

Such occasions dispel notions that the British are somehow shedding their monarchical mania, becoming the upright citizens of a modern state.  Even in this era, enjoyment can be gained from such a burial, bathed as it is in tones of the governors and the governed.  Be submissive.  Be humble.  The man was a king.  This was an attempt at allegorised celebrity – reading a monarch’s legacy of five hundred years through the narrowest prism of the twenty first century, Richard transformed into a pop phenomenon – absent those blighting references to child and wife butchery.

Tom Sykes, writing for The Daily Beast, suggested that, in burying Richard III a second time, the nation would be “doing it right” which seemed to suggest that monarchs need exceptional burials. He writes in the tone of true sovereign worship, with a suggestion that the divine right has somehow survived, a nostalgic binge and twinge. “More than 500 years after his death in August 1485, King Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, will once again be laid to rest on Thursday in the grandeur of Leicester Cathedral, surroundings undoubtedly more suited to a king than the unmarked and forgotten grave under which a municipal car park from which he was exhumed a little over two years ago.”[1]

Not all have suffered that level of nostalgic bloom over a monarch who did receive the classic Tudor treatment of historical blackwashing.  Polly Toynbee in The Guardian proved particularly savage. This sweet commemorative ceremony was nothing short of grotesque. “He may have been a child-murdering tyrant, but he was a king.  So, in a nation where we still think like subjects, not citizens, thousands came to humble themselves before his 500-year-old bones.”[2]  His bones were effectively being sanctified, with his remains rendered holy in historical time. The quality of the monarch, let alone his character, was quite something else.  Royalty as station is always forgiven.

Then there was the choice of venue and ritual – Richard was being given a curious treatment at a location he would not have given a second thought to.  York, for instance, has been deemed by some, especially those in York, to be far more fitting, with some measure gathered from e-petitions.  Biographers have undertaken their own battle of the script, wondering where the ill-fated monarch would have hoped to be buried.  Rosemary Horrox pitted for York Minster; Professor Mark Ormrod of York University thought otherwise.  “It would certainly have been unusual in 1485 for a king of England to be buried in York.”[3]

Having received the fatal battle blows at Bosworth Field, mused Alex Thompson of Channel 4, “logic suggests Leicester is about the last place he’d want to be laid to rest.”[4]  Then came the ceremonialism of “Anglicanism, all cooked up by the spooky Tudors because one of them couldn’t get Rome to endorse regal domestic crime.”  The monarch would have been bemused, and perhaps even dismayed.  It was John Ashdown-Hill, the discoverer of the remains, who suggested that a Catholic burial would be more fitting.

To hell, then, with the history and its tawdry accounts.  The festivities were very much an attempt, as it has been historically, to worship bones and make some ruddy cash out of it.  The Church bone industrial complex has proven to be an effective and enduring one, with Europe covered in pilgrimage arteries that feature the finger of a saint, the nose of another miracle worker, and, well, feet.  All very Catholic of course, an irony that was evidently lost on the Anglican organisers.

In the case of King Richard, getting him to be buried in Leicester itself was a money point, a phenomenal wastage of council funds even as governments are supposedly tightening their belts before the austerity demon.  No doubt the wish to see those funds recouped over time is very strong.

In the local paper, Anglican clergyman Rev. David H. Clark, thought it all rather silly, taking an old snipe at the misuse of religious resources, not least of all the use of £500,000 from the diocesan kitty.  “This claim ‘with dignity and honour’ is a successful attempt to hook this pile of old bones into the religious establishment and has wasted thousands of ecclesiastical man-and-woman hours, which might have been better spent practicing and promoting Christianity.”[5]  That the bishop and the dean weighed in to support the royalist escape was beyond Clark.  “It’s all faintly idolatrous: as if Monarch’s Bone Worship had come into fashion.”  As indeed it has.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

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U.S. Government Secrecy At All-Time High. “Secret Witnesses” and “Secret Evidence” To Prosecute Americans

March 27th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

The Sunlight is Fading … and America Is Falling Into Darkness

US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said:

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

But there’s no longer much sunlight to disinfect the corruption of the government or the powers-that-be.

More and more commonly, the government prosecutes cases based upon “secret evidence” that they don’t show to the defendant … or sometimes even the judge hearing the case.

As just one example, government is “laundering” information gained through mass surveillance through other agencies, with an agreement that the agencies will “recreate” the evidence in a “parallel construction” … so the original source of the evidence is kept secret from the defendant, defense attorneys and the judge.   A former top NSA official says that this is the opposite of following the Fourth Amendment, but is a “totalitarian process” which shows that we’re in a “police state”.

The government uses “secret evidence” to spy on Americans, prosecute leaking or terrorism charges (even against U.S. soldiers) and even assassinate people. And see this and this.

Secret witnesses are being used in some cases. And sometimes lawyers are being prevented from reading their own briefs.

Indeed, even the laws themselves are now starting to be kept secret. And it’s about to get a lot worse.

American citizens are also being detained in Guantanamo-like conditions in Chicago … including being held in secret, with the government refusing to tell a suspect’s lawyer whether his client is being held.   And see this, this and this.

The Department of Defense has also made it a secret – even from Congress – as to the identity of the main enemies of the United States.

Today, Glenn Greenwald adds yet another twist to the trend towards secrecy:

A truly stunning debasement of the U.S. justice system just occurred through the joint efforts of the Obama Justice Department and a meek and frightened Obama-appointed federal judge, Edgardo Ramos, all in order to protect an extremist neocon front group from scrutiny and accountability. The details are crucial for understanding the magnitude of the abuse here.

At the center of it is an anti-Iranian group calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), which is very likely a front for some combination of the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services. When launched, NBC described its mission as waging “economic and psychological warfare” against Iran. The group was founded and is run and guided by aroster of U.S., Israeli and British neocon extremists such as Joe Lieberman, former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and current CNN “analyst”) Fran Townsend, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan. One of its key advisers is Olli Heinonen, who just co-authored a Washington Post Op-Ed with former Bush CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden arguing that Washington is being too soft on Tehran.

This group of neocon extremists was literally just immunized by a federal court from the rule of law. That was based on the claim — advocated by the Obama DOJ and accepted by Judge Ramos — that subjecting them to litigation for their actions would risk disclosure of vital “state secrets.” The court’s ruling was based on assertions made through completely secret proceedings between the court and the U.S. government, with everyone else — including the lawyers for the parties — kept in the dark.

In May 2013, UANI launched a “name and shame” campaign designed to publicly identify — and malign — any individuals or entities enabling trade with Iran. One of the accused was the shipping company of Greek billionaire Victor Restis, who vehemently denies the accusation. He hired an American law firm and sued UANI for defamation in a New York federal court, claiming the “name and shame” campaign destroyed his reputation.

Up until that point, there was nothing unusual about any of this: just a garden-variety defamation case brought in court by someone who claims that public statements made about him are damaging and false. That happens every day. But then something quite extraordinary happened: In September of last year, the U.S. government, which was not a party, formally intervened in the lawsuit, and demanded that the court refuse to hear Restis’s claims and instead dismiss the lawsuit against UANI before it could even start, on the ground that allowing the case to proceed would damage national security.

When the DOJ intervened in this case and asserted the “state secrets privilege,” it confounded almost everyone. The New York Times’s Matt Apuzzo noted at the time that “the group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so­-called state­ secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.” He quoted the ACLU’s Ben Wizner as saying: “I have never seen anything like this.” Reuters’s Allison Frankel labeled the DOJ’s involvement a “mystery” and said “the government’s brief is maddeningly opaque about its interest in a private libel case.”

Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the “state secrets privilege,” it is because they are a party to the lawsuit, being sued for their own allegedly illegal acts (such as torture or warrantless surveillance), and they claim that national security would be harmed if they are forced to defend themselves. In rare cases, they do intervene and assert the privilege in lawsuits between private parties, but only where the subject of the litigation is a government program and one of the parties is a government contractor involved in that program — such as when torture victims sued a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, for its role in providing airplanes for the rendition program and the Obama DOJ insisted (successfully) that the case not go forward, and the victim of U.S. torture was thus told that he could not even have a day in court.

But in this case, there is no apparent U.S. government conduct at issue in the lawsuit. At least based on what they claim about themselves, UANI is just “a not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group” that seeks to “educate” the public about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program. Why would such a group like this even possess “state secrets”? It would be illegal to give them such material. Or could it be that the CIA or some other U.S. government agency has created and controls the group, which would be a form of government-disseminated propaganda, which happens to be illegal?

What else could explain the basis for the U.S. government’s argument that allowing UANI to be sued would risk the disclosure of vital “state secrets” besides a desire to cover up something quite untoward if not illegal? What “state secrets” could possibly be disclosed by suing a nice, little “not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group”?

We don’t know the answers to those questions, nor do the lawyers for the plaintiffs whose lawsuit the DOJ wants dismissed. That’s because, beyond the bizarre DOJ intervention itself, the extreme secrecy that shaped the judicial proceedings is hard to overstate. Usually, when the U.S. government asserts the “state secrets privilege,” at least some information is made public about what they are claiming: which official or department is invoking the privilege, the general nature of the secrets allegedly at risk, the reasons why allowing the claims to be adjudicated would risk disclosure, etc. Some redacted version of the affidavit from the government official making the secrecy claim is made part of the case.

Here, virtually everything has been hidden, even from the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Not only did the U.S. government provide no clue as to what the supposedly endangered “state secrets” are, but they concealed even the identity of the agency making the claim: was it the CIA, the Treasury Department, the State Department, some combination? Nothing is known about any of this, not even who is making the secrecy claim.

Instead, the DOJ’s arguments about why “secrecy” compels dismissal of the entire lawsuit were made in a brief that only Judge Ramos (and not even the parties) gets to read, but even more amazingly, were elaborated on in secret meetings by DOJ lawyers in the judge’s chambers with nobody else present. Were recordings or transcripts of these meetings made? Is there any record of what the U.S. government whispered in the ear of the judge to scare him into believing that National Security Would Be Harmed™ if he allowed the case to proceed? Nobody knows. The whole process is veiled in total secrecy, labeled a “judicial proceeding” but containing none of the transparency, safeguards or adversarial process that characterizes minimally fair courts.

This sham worked. This week, Judge Ramos issued his ruling dismissing the entire lawsuit (see below). As a result of the DOJ’s protection, UANI cannot be sued. Among other things, it means this group of neocon extremists now has a license to defame anyone they want. They can destroy your reputation with false accusations in a highly public campaign, and when you sue them for it, the DOJ will come in and whisper in the judge’s ear that national security will be damaged if — like everyone else in the world — UANI must answer in a court of law for their conduct. And subservient judicial officials like Judge Ramos will obey the U.S. government’s dictates and dismiss your lawsuit before it begins, without your having any idea why that even happened.

Worse, in his written ruling, the judge expressly acknowledges that dismissal of the entire lawsuit at the start on secrecy grounds is what he calls a “harsh sanction,” and also acknowledges that “it is particularly so in this case because Plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why” (emphasis added). But he does it anyway, in a perfunctory 18-page opinion that does little other than re-state some basic legal principles, and then just concludes that everything the government whispered in his ear should be accepted. Just read for yourself what Judge Ramos said in defending his dismissal to see how wildly disparate it is from everything we’re propagandized to believe about the U.S. justice system:

What kind of “justice system” allows a neocon “advocacy” group to be immunized from the law, because the U.S. government waltzed into court, met privately with the judge, and whispered in secret that he had better dismiss all claims against that group lest he harm national security? To describe what happened here is to illustrate what a perverse travesty it is. Restis’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement this week:

We are disappointed that some secret relationship between UANI and the government allows UANI to hide from disclosing that association or to defend what has now been proven to be its false and defamatory allegations directed at Mr. Restis and his company. We are mystified that the U.S. government has such a stake in this case that it would take such extraordinary steps to prevent full disclosure of the secret interest it has with UANI or others. And, we are concerned that, in our court system, such a result could occur on the basis of sealed, one-sided filings and meetings in which we were not allowed to participate.

Indeed, the government is going to incredible lengths to keep secrets, including:

  • Treating reporters like terrorists. And see this
  • Prosecuting and demanding draconian jail sentences for whistleblowers
  • Framing whistleblowers with false evidence

Sadly, the sunlight is fading … and America is falling into darkness.

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Ukraine Negotiates Creating New Neo-Nazi Division In Army, 1,000 U.S. Soldiers In Ground Operations In Eastern Europe

March 27th, 2015 by Global Research News

Ukraine Negotiates Creating New Neo-Nazi Division In Army

Interfax-Ukraine
March 27, 2015

Right Sector negotiates joining Ukrainian Army as independent division under Yarosh command

The volunteer battalion Right Sector is ready to join the Ukrainian Army as a separate division under the command of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh.

“We can only agree on ‘legalization’ in one situation: if the volunteer Ukrainian corps remains a whole structure and if we continue reporting directly to our leader Dmytro Yarosh,” Right Sector press officer Artem Skoropadsky told reporters on Friday.

“We want everything to stay as it is now: we are now cooperating with the Defense Ministry and the Ukrainian Security Service,” Skoropadsky said…

U.S.-NATO Absorb Ukraine Into “World’s Biggest Defense Structure” – Poroshenko

Interfax-Ukraine
March 27, 2015

National Guard, U.S. military exercises in Lviv region mean integration in the world’s biggest defense structure – Poroshenko

A large-scale international military exercise involving U.S. instructors will be conducted on the Yavoriv training area in the Lviv region of Ukraine in April, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

“The large-scale international military exercise involving U.S. instructors, which will begin on the Yavoriv training area in April, will be an important stage. It means integration in the world’s largest defense structure,” Poroshenko said at a graduation ceremony conducted in the National Academy of the Ukrainian National Guard in Kharkiv on Thursday…

Czech Republic: Protest Held Against U.S. Military Convoy

Xinhua News Agency
March 27, 2015

Czech people hold protest against U.S. army convoy

PRAGUE: A protest here on Thursday against U.S. soldiers’ scheduled crossing of the Czech territory marks the first public protest against the U.S. convoy that is to arrive in the Czech Republic from Poland on March 29.

The protesters said they did not like it that the U.S. soldiers had decided to go for a demonstrative ride in a convoy from a military exercise in the Baltics to their home base in Vilseck, Bavaria. They also opposed the soldiers spending the night of March 29 in the Vyskov barracks in the south Moravian region of the country.

The protest organizers said it was cynical to allow foreign troops to cross Czech territory in a year when they are marking the 70th anniversary of their country’s liberation and the end of World War II, especially given the aggravated geopolitical situation which calls for hostilities to be negotiated. This action only escalates the tension, they said…

Ukraine’s Poroshenko Inspects Arrival Of First U.S. Military Vehicles

Ukrinform
March 25, 2015

Poroshenko to meet plane with first batch of American Humvees

KYIV: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will take part in the ceremony of meeting the plane with the first batch of U.S. military vehicles HMMWV on Wednesday.

This is reported by the presidential press service.

“On Wednesday, March 25, at 13:40, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will participate in the ceremony of the meeting the plane with the first batch of U.S. military vehicles HMMWV (Boryspil International Airport),” reads the statement.

===========================================================================

UNIAN
March 25, 2015

U.S. Humvees already in Ukraine
President Poroshenko examined the vehicles and test-drove one of them.

An aircraft with the first batch of U.S. High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV), commonly known as the Humvee, arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko examined their arrival and personally test-drove one of them.

At an official ceremony of meeting the Humvees, Poroshenko said that the Ukrainian troopers had been driving such type of vehicles for many years so far.

The first 10 Humvees Ukraine has already received from the United States will be transferred mainly to Ukraine’s airmobile troops…

Europe: NATO Holds First Live Exercise In A Decade

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
March 19, 2015

Deputy Commander visits Italy’s Joint Operational Command in preparation for large NATO Exercise

General Mirco Zuliani recently visited the Italian Joint Operational Command, responsible for organising Italy’s part of the Trident Juncture (TRJE) 2015 exercise.

TRJE15 is NATO’s first live exercise in a decade, since before the NATO operation in Afghanistan started, and will also take place in Portugal and Spain. Most of the ‘Air Scenario’ will be exercised in Italy.

During the exercise, the Italian JFACC (Joint Force Air Component command) will be certified as Air Component Command, in light of the ‘NATO Response Force’ (NRF) rotation for 2016. The NRF is a highly ready and technologically advanced multinational force made up of land, air, maritime and Special Operations Forces components that the Alliance can deploy quickly, wherever needed. In addition to its operational role, the NRF is used to increase cooperation in education and training, better use of technology or, like in this case, increased exercises…

U.S. Expands Operation Confront Russia To Romania, Bulgaria

U.S. Army Europe
March 24, 2015

Army Europe expands Operation Atlantic Resolve training to Romania, Bulgaria
By Staff Sgt. Opal Vaughn (The 173rd Airborne Brigade)

SMARDAN, Romania: Paratroopers, from U.S. Army Europe’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, and Soldiers, from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, conducted an early-entry training exercise together with Romanian allies, March 24, to mark the expansion of Operation Atlantic Resolve, or OAR, into Romania and Bulgaria.

“The Smardan [Romania] portion of [Exercise] Saber Junction is an early entry exercise,” said Capt. Patrick Leen, a plans officer assigned to 173rd Airborne Brigade. “It takes place in advance of the majority of the events [in Germany].”

The early-entry portion in Smardan, also phase 1 of Exercise Saber Junction, began with an airborne operation of approximately 200 paratroopers and heavy equipment such as 105mm Howitzer artillery from the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Once on the ground, the paratroopers linked up with allies from the Romanian army’s 280th Brigade and assaulted enemy positions while supported by artillery fire…

Romania: U.S. Troops Start War Games, Medics To Treat Ukrainian Troops

ACTMedia
March 25, 2015

Romanian military doctors will start providing triage services for the wounded in the Ukraine conflict

Defence Minister Mircea Dusa said Tuesday at the Smardan firing range of Galati County that Romanian military doctors on Wednesday will start providing triage services for the wounded in the Ukraine conflict who will then be treated in Romanian military hospitals.

“Tomorrow, a team of military doctors will leave for Kiev to provide triage services for the wounded troops and the injured that will be treated in Romanian military hospitals. For the time being, I only mean military hospitals because we have been entrusted with the mission to provide such humanitarian aid to Ukraine. As our doctors provide triage for the wounded and the injured, we will also provide transportation services using a military aircraft,” said Dusa.

Dusa on Tuesday met Romanian and American troops taking part at the Smardan firing range in the “Early Entry” stage of the Sabre Junction 15 multinational defence exercise.

1,000 U.S. Soldiers Currently In Ground Operations In Eastern Europe

ACTMedia
March 25, 2015

1,000 US soldiers on ground ops in Eastern Europe

More than 1,000 U.S. troops were moving across Eastern Europe on Tuesday on several training exercises, the latest effort to reassure allied nations…a Pentagon official said. About 200 paratroopers with the Army’s Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade jumped into the Smarden training area in Romania along with heavy artillery …(Article accessible to subscribers only)

Polish Defense Chief Says No War With Russia, Brzezinski Disagrees

Polish Radio
March 25, 2015

Security inconsistincies

Experts, including former US security advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński, and Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Simoniak, have contradicting views of the future of Polish national security.

“Poland should be armed, buy military equipment, modernize and increase its army,” Zbigniew Brzeziński told an interview with Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

“Poles must rely on each other to be able to defend themselves as long as possible,” said Brzeziński, the former National security adviser under the 39th US President, Jimmy Carter.

The Polish-born Brzeziński – who was one of the top international-relations experts during, and after, the Vietnam War – said that in the case of an attack on Poland, NATO could have its hands tied, and take some time to respond.

This is because Greece is part of NATO, and since it has close ties with Russia, the Southern EU country could veto a military intervention, Brzeziński said…

Barbarossa II: U.S.-NATO Expand Offensive From Baltics To Black Sea, Caucasus

Stars and Stripes
March 24, 2015

Atlantic Resolve mission pushes beyond Baltics into Romania
By John Vandiver

SMARDAN TRAINING AREA, Romania: Almost 200 U.S. paratroops dropped into Romania on Tuesday and were joined by a ground force of cavalrymen, marking the official expansion into southeastern Europe of a campaign to reassure allies worried about Russia’s intentions.

For almost a year now, U.S. troops have maintained a constant presence in the Baltic states and Poland…Now, Operation Atlantic Resolve is moving south, with a series of exercises slated to take place in Romania, Bulgaria — another NATO ally — and the Republic of Georgia, an aspiring NATO member.

“Today marks the beginning of Atlantic Response South,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, as soldiers with the Vicenza, Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted onto the training grounds in eastern Romania…

Poland: U.S. Launches Interceptor Missile Drills

10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command
March 22, 2015

Army Europe Air Defense unit begins combined missile defense exercise in Poland

SOCHACZEW, Poland: American Soldiers from US Army Europe and Polish airmen kicked off their combined missile defense exercise during a short ceremony on March 21 outside of Warsaw, Poland.

10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command sent Delta Battery, a unit of their 5-7 Air Defense Artillery Regiment, to train with their Polish air defense partners in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve. The goal of the training exercise is to certify the Delta battery Soldiers on their Patriot ground-to-air missile systems, while coordinating the emplacement of the American and Polish air defense equipment to provide mutual air defense coverage in the area.

The battery was able to plan and execute their 1200 km convoy from U.S. Army Garrison Rhineland-Pfalz in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in a matter of days due to close cooperation with their Polish counterparts. “From the planning aspect, they had their objectives and we had our objectives, and we worked to nest them both together which was great,” said Capt. Jason Bryant, Delta Battery commander…

NATO Allies: U.S. A-10s Train In Britain For War In Europe

U.S. Air Forces in Europe
U.S. Air Force Africa
March 23, 2015

A-10s train at RAF Lakenheath
By Airman 1st Class Erin R. Babis
48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England: A theater security package comprised of A-10C Thunderbolt IIs and Airmen from the 355th Fighter Wing, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., arrived at the Liberty Wing March 13 to train with NATO allies in new environments and cultures.

“Working with our NATO allies helps strengthen the bonds between us, and demonstrates the U.S. commitment to them,” said Senior Master Sgt. Nathan Kerr, TSP maintenance superintendent.

The pilots and maintenance crews from the 355th FW took part in unique training opportunities, and shared their training and knowledge with Liberty Airmen during their five-day visit.

Maj. Ben Rudolphi, TSP detachment commander, explained that the pilots trained on several different missions, to include: low altitude tactical navigation, dissimilar air combat maneuvering, helicopter escort, basic surface attack and U.K. joint terminal attack controller coordination.

Frontline State: NATO Commander Inspects Baltic War Games

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
March 24, 2015

JFC Brunssum Commander visits NATO forces in Latvia

BRUNSSUM, The Netherlands: The Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, General Hans-Lothar Domrőse, was on hand to commemorate the opening of Operation Summer Shield in Latvia on Sunday, 22 March 2015. At the same time, Domrőse met up with U.S. soldiers taking part in Dragoon Ride.

At the Adazi Military Base, the Commander visited and thanked the troops participating in Operation Summer Shield. Summer Shield is a Latvian-led exercise which includes military personnel from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Lithuania and Luxembourg. The exercise is being held in two phases. The first phase includes cross training and live fire exercises while the second phase includes defensive operations with integration of indirect fire and close air support…

NATO Allies: U.S., Romanian Pilots Train For Air War Over Black Sea

U.S. Air Forces in Europe
U.S. Air Force Africa
March 23, 2015

Dacian Warhawk members host Media, DV day
By Staff Sgt. Armando A. Schwier-Morales
86th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

CAMPIA TURZII, Romania: U.S. and Romanian Airmen participating in the Dacian Warhawk training event hosted more than 20 local and national media agencies and distinguished personnel from Romania, March 22 at Campia Turzii.

The two air forces showcased the what they learned during the two-week training mission designed to increase the interoperability between U.S. and Romanian air forces, to the media members and distinguished visitors.

While there, media members were able to witness static displays of the F-16CJ Fighting Falcon and MiG-21 Lancer, as well as aerial formations of the aircraft flying side-by-side. The media representatives were also afforded the opportunity to talk to several of the pilots in addition to the Romanian Minister of Defense, Mircea Dusa.

“The close cooperation we have forged in the planning and execution of this event shows the commitment of our two NATO countries,” Lt. Col. Ryan Nudi, 52nd Fighter Wing chief of safety. “The training has been absolutely fantastic…”

War In Eastern Europe: F-16s Head To Estonia For Drills

U.S. Air Forces in Europe
U.S. Air Force Africa
March 20, 2015

F-16s head to Estonia for training
By 31st Fighter Wing Public Affairs

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy:- Airmen and aircraft assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing departed Aviano Air Base, Italy, March 20, 2015 to participate in bilateral training with the Estonian air force and simultaneous but unrelated training with the Finnish and Swedish air forces in their airspace.

The 510th Fighter Squadron will launch sorties from Ämari Air Base, Estonia, March 20 through April 17. Training with the Estonian air force will take place on nearby Tapa Range with Estonian Joint Terminal Attack Controllers. The focus is to maintain joint readiness while enhancing interoperability with a NATO ally, particularly in the F-16 Fighting Falcon’s Forward Air Controller (Airborne) mission. The other training event with the Finnish and Swedish air forces will focus on air-to-air tactics that also increases interoperability…

U.S. Congress Demands Sending Lethal Arms For Ukraine War

Interfax-Ukraine
March 23, 2015

U.S. House urges Obama to send weapon to Ukraine

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on Monday night asking President Obama to send lethal arms to Ukraine, media said.

Representatives endorsed the resolution in a 348 to 48 vote, and such a proposal is also likely to enjoy widespread support in the Senate.

Monday’s measure urges Obama to provide Ukraine with “lethal defensive weapon systems” that would enhance Ukraine’s ability to “defend their sovereign territory from the unprovoked and continuing aggression of the Russian Federation.”

House Speaker John Boehner described the vote as a call to action, and said Congress broadly supports more military aid…

Serbia: Sixteen Years Since NATO’s First Full-Fledged War

Serbia marks another anniversary of NATO attacks

SOURCE: B92, BETA, TANJUG

BELGRADE — Serbia is on Tuesday marking the 16th anniversary since the beginning of NATO’s air war against the country, then a part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Interior Ministry in Belgrade (Tanjug, file)
The attacks lasted for 11 weeks and resulted in the deaths of between 1,200 and 4,000 people, according to different sources.

NATO caused heavy damage to Serbia’s infrastructure, economy, schools, health institutions, media outlets, monuments of culture.

The western military alliance made the decision to attack Serbia without the approval of the UN Security Council, which represented a precedent.

The order was given to its then commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark by then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

A bridge in Novi Sad (Tanjug, file)

Clark later wrote in his book entitled “Modern Warfare” that the planning of the war was already under way in mid-June in 1998 and was completed in August of that year.

Serbia came under attack as the culprit for “the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo and the failure of negotiations in Rambouillet, Paris on the future status of the province.”

The Paris conference presented Serbia with the proposal to have foreign troops deployed in its territory, which was rejected. The decision not to accept foreign troops was confirmed by the Serbian Assembly, and on March 24, 1999 NATO launched its attacks…

The Radio Television of Serbia building in Belgrade (Tanjug, file)

19 countries took part in the operation, using ships in the Adriatic Sea, four air bases in Italy, supported by strategic operators who took off from bases in western Europe…

Just The Start: Largest Reinforcement Of NATO “Collective Defense” Since Cold War

U.S. Department of Defense
March 23, 2015

NATO Responding to Russia’s Actions Against Ukraine
By Jim Garamone

WASHINGTON: NATO is responding to Russia…with the largest reinforcement of collective defense since the end of the Cold War, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said over the weekend in Brussels…

Russia also has troops in Moldova [that is, Transdniester] and Georgia [Abkhazia and South Ossetia], and Russian forces are working to destabilize Eastern Ukraine.

Russian Actions Spur NATO

…NATO [is making] sweeping changes. “The adaptation that is taking place now is a very big and fundamental adaptation of the NATO defense posture,” Stoltenberg said

The alliance is doubling the size of its response force, the secretary general said. Once finished, he said, the lead elements of this force will be able to move in within as little as 48 hours.

The alliance, he added, is establishing command and control units in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

This is just a start, the secretary general said…

343-Day War In Eastern Europe: U.S. Transits Combat Vehicles Through Latvia

Xinhua News Agency
March 23, 2015

U.S. military equipment moves through Latvia

RIGA: More than 40 pieces of the U.S. military equipment, including 20 Stryker armored vehicles, are being moved through Latvia on Sunday and Monday as the United States is sending troops from Estonia to Germany in the Dragoon Ride trek, the Latvian Defense Ministry said Sunday.

Soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, currently stationed in the Baltic states and Poland, began the Dragoon Ride trek with the Strykers and support vehicles on Saturday in Estonia.

The convoy is moving through Latvia as the U.S. troops make their way to Vilseck, Germany, concluding their participation in Operation Atlantic Resolve…

Top NATO Commander Calls For Information Warfare Against Russia

Ukrinform
March 23, 2015

Breedlove urges West to start information warfare with Russia

KYIV: The western countries, primarily the NATO member states, should engage in the informational confrontation with aggressive Russian propaganda.

NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Philip Breedlove said this in Brussels on Sunday, Ukrinform reports.

“We need as a western group of nations or as an alliance to engage in this informational warfare. The way to attack the false narrative is to drag the false narrative into the light and expose it,” Breedlove said…

NATO Ready To Welcome Ukraine As Full Member: Stoltenberg

Ukrinform

March 21, 2015

NATO ready to consider Ukraine’s bid for membership

KYIV: NATO is ready to consider the Ukraine’s bid for membership in the alliance, if Ukraine decides to submit it.

This has been stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels at the forum organized by the German Marshall Fund.

“It is up to Ukraine decide whether to submit the bid for NATO membership or not. Ukraine should decide that. If it submits, we will consider the application in the same way as we consider the application of any other country,” Ukrainian media telegraf.com.ua quotes him.

In 2015, the units and the individual officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will take part in 237 events of the individual partnership program [Individual Partnership Action Program] with NATO.

Atlantic Resolve: Continuous NATO War Games On Russia’s Western, Southern Borders

U.S. Department of Defense
March 19, 2015

Army Commander in Europe Details Assurance Efforts
By Jim Garamone

WASHINGTON: Thirteen months after Russia began its occupation of Crimea, the United States and its European allies must remain steadfast against the threat such actions pose, the commander of U.S. Army Europe said here this week.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told the Defense Writers Group at a March 17 breakfast that the Russian action of illegally annexing Crimea from Ukraine and its continuing threat to the eastern part of Ukraine is a game-changer on the continent…

Hodges told reporters to think of Atlantic Resolve as a continuous series of exercises, with American troops operating with troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, demonstrating America’s commitment to the defense of these NATO allies. Later this month, Atlantic Resolve exercises will expand to include Bulgaria and, later in the year, Romania, he said…

U.S. Paratroopers Guarded NATO Interceptor Missiles In Turkey

U.S. Army
March 19, 2015

173rd Airborne Brigade paratroopers secure NATO missile-defense sites
By Sgt. A.M. LaVey

VICENZA, Italy: Paratroopers, from Company A, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, returned from NATO Operation Active Fence in Turkey, March 12.

Two weeks earlier, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, arrived in southern Turkey to relieve them.

“Operation Active Fence is the United States’ contribution to the NATO Patriot missile defense mission,” said Sgt. Ian Carlson, an intelligence analyst, with 1st Battalion. “We are the security forces tasked to guard the missile sites from outside threats.”

Operation Active Fence started in December 2012 in response to Turkey’s concerns…In response, NATO authorized the deployment of Patriot missile defense batteries. The United States, Germany and the Netherlands provided initial forces. Spain has since replaced Dutch forces.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, is the Army’s contingency response force in Europe and has the ability to rapidly deploy paratroopers with specialized parachute infantry capabilities anywhere in the U.S., European, Africa and Central areas of operations…

U.S. To Lead Three Military Exercises In Ukraine This Year

Interfax-Ukraine
March 19, 2015

Rada speaker signs bill allowing foreign military drills in Ukraine in 2015

The speaker of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Hroisman, has signed a bill, which was proposed by the president and backed by the parliament, to allow foreign troops into Ukraine in 2015 to take part in five multinational military exercises, the parliament announced on its website on Thursday.

It was reported that 305 Ukrainian parliamentarians voted for the bill on March 17.

Under the bill, the drills Ukraine is planning to host in 2015 include three U.S.-Ukrainian exercises, Fearless Guardian, Sea Breeze, and Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident, and two Polish-Ukrainian ones, Safe Skies and the Law and Order.

Fearless Guardian will take place in Yavoriv district, Lviv region, in the period from March to November and will bring together a maximum of 2,200 troops. Ukraine is providing up to 200 armed forces troops and up to 1,000 National Guard personnel, and the U.S. will be represented by a maximum of 1,000 servicemen…

Pentagon To Begin Training Ukrainian Military Next Month

Interfax-Ukraine
March 20, 2015

Pentagon to begin training Ukrainian forces next month

The Pentagon has said that it is moving forward with plans to train six Ukrainian National Guard companies and headquarters staff next month.

The training is scheduled to begin in late April and will focus on “internal defense capabilities,” according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez, who is quoted by The Hill online edition.

“This assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations,” Lainez said.

A total of 300 U.S. soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vincenza, Italy, will conduct the training in western Ukraine near the border with Poland, she said…

Bulgaria: NATO Commander Discusses Operations In East And South

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
March 19, 2015

DSACEUR Discusses Training and Co-operation during Visit to Bulgaria

SOFIA, Bulgaria: NATO’s current efforts to adapt to emerging hybrid challenges from the east and south were a focus of discussions between Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR) General Sir Adrian Bradshaw and the Chief of Defence Bulgarian Armed Forces, Vice Admiral Rumen Nikolov, in Sofia, Bulgaria on 17 and 18 March 2015.

During the visit, General Bradshaw also met with the Bulgarian Deputy Minister of Defence, Dimitar Kyumyurdzhiev. Main areas of discussion included ongoing enhancements to the NATO Response Force in response to hybrid threats, as well as investigating future exercise and training opportunities involving NATO and Bulgarian forces…

U.S. Paratroopers To Train Ukrainian Troops For Second Year Of War

Stars and Stripes
March 19, 2015

US training of Ukraine forces to go forward
By Jon Harper

WASHINGTON: The U.S. military is moving forward with plans to deploy U.S. paratroopers to war-torn Ukraine to train local forces, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The training will likely begin in late April, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters.

The mission, which was scheduled to occur this month, was delayed due to concerns that the training effort would undermine the Minsk II cease fire agreement between Kiev’s forces and Russia-backed insurgents, according to Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe.

That deal was brokered in February, but fighting has continued in eastern Ukraine.

Approximately 290 U.S. soldiers from the Army’s 173rd “Sky Soldiers” Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, will deploy to western Ukraine to train three battalions of the Ukrainian national guard, Warren said…

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The $160 Billion Cost: Why Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych Spurned EU’s Offer, on 20 Nov. 2013

March 27th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

“Burying the lede” is a way that ‘news’ professionals hide or “bury” things while ‘reporting’ on them; and the biggest example of this in modern times occurred when Germany’s Spiegel (Mirror) magazine headlined its cover-story on 24 November 2014, “Summit of Failure: How the EU Lost Russia over Ukraine.” On the magazine’s front cover, it was instead bannered as “Kalte Krieger — Geschichte einer Machtprobe: Wie Merkel und Putin Europa an den Rand des Abgrunds brachten” which translates as: “Cold Warrior — History of a Showdown: How Merkel and Putin brought Europe to the Edge of the Abyss.” This was a very lengthy report, 7,000 words, but the historically blockbuster revelation in it, which the global press has ignored, and/or themselves buried by similarly mentioning it without headlining it or leading with it (nor even linking to it), was this (which would have been a fair headline for that news report, since it’s 99% of that news-report’s real value): “EU’s Offer to Ukraine Would Have Cost Ukraine $160B.” (I hope that the headline that I used above is even better, however.)

And, so: now you know why, on 20 November 2013, Yanukovych turned that offer down — and the rest was history (the “Maidan” demonstrations, and all the rest, producing the Ukrainian civil war, and the new and much hotter version of the old Cold War, including all of those economic sanctions against Russia, and the resulting boom in nuclear weapons on both sides, and the thousands of corpses in the eastern Donbass region of what used to be Ukraine).

This blockbuster revelation was in merely a brief, 231-word passage within the 7,000-word article, and nothing further was said about it than these mere 231 words.

Here it is (as given in Spiegel’s online English edition of the article’s second half — and the article’s first half was here, but it contains nothing of this blockbuster revelation):

Kiev, Presidential Palace

Nov. 19, 2013

At Barroso’s behest, Füle traveled to Kiev once again to meet with Yanukovych — and the Ukrainian president got straight to the point. In talks with Putin, Yanukovych told Füle, the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. “I was really surprised to learn about it,” Yanukovych said. … “There are the costs that our experts have calculated,” Yanukovych replied. “What experts?” Füle demanded to know. The Ukrainian president described to his bewildered guest the size of the losses allegedly threatening Ukraine should it sign the agreement with the EU.

Later, the number $160 billion found its way into the press, more than 50 times greater than the $3 billion calculated by the German advisory group. The total came from a study conducted by the Institute for Economics and Forecasting at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and it was a number that Yanukovych would refer to from then on.

“Stefan, if we sign, will you help us?” Yanukovych asked. Füle was speechless. “Sorry, we aren’t the IMF. Where do these numbers come from?” he finally demanded. “I am hearing them for the first time.” “They are secret numbers,” Yanukovych replied. “Can you imagine what would happen if our people were to learn of these numbers, were they to find out what convergence with the EU would cost our country?”

Though that was a poorly-written passage, it does clearly state why Yanukovych couldn’t possibly have accepted the offer. The passage makes no connection between, on the one hand, “the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. ‘I was really surprised to learn about it,’ Yanukovych said,” and, on the other, “‘There are the costs that our experts have calculated,’ Yanukovych replied.”

Did Putin’s statement cause Yanukovych to request this new analysis from Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences? We just don’t know. The reporters didn’t say. Maybe they didn’t even wonder about that. All that the article tells us is: the latter scientific institution calculated that if the EU’s offer were to be accepted, the cost to Ukraine would be $160B.

Why, then, was this blockbuster news-item buried, so that virtually no one noticed it? Perhaps the key passage to provide a hint to explain this burying (which hint appears in the article’s first half) was “Berlin continued to focus its efforts on Tymoshenko [whom the Ukrainian government had imprisoned on a corruption conviction, but Merkel — like Obama — was insisting that she be freed from prison], it failed to recognize the real danger: The Russian Federation’s power play.” The only actual “power play” that the article describes from Russia was “the Russian president explained just how deeply the Russian and Ukrainian economies are interconnected. ‘I was really surprised to learn about it,’ Yanukovych said.” Apparently, Putin’s “danger,” his merely “explaining” that, was, to the writers of the Spiegel ‘news’ report, a “power play.” The anti-Russian slant is blatant there.

In other words: This article’s writers, evidently, needed to find a way to present a negative view of Russia, and especially of Putin. Therefore, focusing their story and presentation around this particular blockbuster revelation (which went in the contrary direction) was out of the question for them — and especially for their employer.

So: now you know why Yanukovych, the very next day after his learning about the $160B price tag of the EU’s offer, turned it down, and also why this revelation is still news, more than a year later — just as it was news to me until I happened upon it only today.

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US-Saudi Blitz into Yemen: Naked Aggression, Absolute Desperation

March 27th, 2015 by Tony Cartalucci

The “proxy war” model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen.

Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the “Islamic State,” pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American “soft power” and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are.

Though Saudi Arabia claims “10 countries” have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a “coalition,” it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with “coalition partners” added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy.

The New York Times, even in the title of its report, “Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen,” seems not to notice these “10” other countries. It reports:

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country. 

The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

Proxy War Against Iran 

Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in.

Iran’s interest in Yemen serves as a direct result of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” and attempts to overturn the political order of North Africa and the Middle East to create a unified sectarian front against Iran for the purpose of a direct conflict with Tehran. The war raging in Syria is one part of this greater geopolitical conspiracy, aimed at overturning one of Iran’s most important regional allies, cutting the bridge between it and another important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And while Iran’s interest in Yemen is currently portrayed as yet another example of Iranian aggression, indicative of its inability to live in peace with its neighbors, US policymakers themselves have long ago already noted that Iran’s influence throughout the region, including backing armed groups, serves a solely defensive purpose, acknowledging the West and its regional allies’ attempts to encircle, subvert, and overturn Iran’s current political order.

The US-based RAND Corporation, which describes itself as “a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis,” produced a report in 2009 for the US Air Force titled, “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent : Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East,” examining the structure and posture of Iran’s military, including its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and weapons both present, and possible future, it seeks to secure its borders and interests with against external aggression.

The report admits that:

Iran’s strategy is largely defensive, but with some offensive elements. Iran’s strategy of protecting the regime against internal threats, deterring aggression, safeguarding the homeland if aggression occurs, and extending influence is in large part a defensive one that also serves some aggressive tendencies when coupled with expressions of Iranian regional aspirations. It is in part a response to U.S. policy pronouncements and posture in the region, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iranian leadership takes very seriously the threat of invasion given the open discussion in the United States of regime change, speeches defining Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and efforts by U.S. forces to secure base access in states surrounding Iran.

Whatever imperative Saudi Arabia is attempting to cite in justifying its military aggression against Yemen, and whatever support the US is trying to give the Saudi regime rhetorically, diplomatically, or militarily, the legitimacy of this military operation crumbles before the words of the West’s own policymakers who admit Iran and its allies are simply reacting to a concerted campaign of encirclement, economic sanctions, covert military aggression, political subversion, and even terrorism aimed at establishing Western hegemony across the region at the expense of Iranian sovereignty.

Saudi Arabia’s Imperative Lacks Legitimacy 

26Yemen-articleLargeThe unelected hereditary regime ruling over Saudi Arabia, a nation notorious for egregious human rights abuses, and a land utterly devoid of even a semblance of what is referred to as “human rights,” is now posing as arbiter of which government in neighboring Yemen is “legitimate” and which is not, to the extent of which it is prepared to use military force to restore the former over the latter.

The United States providing support for the Saudi regime is designed to lend legitimacy to what would otherwise be a difficult narrative to sell. However, the United States itself has suffered from an increasing deficit in its own legitimacy and moral authority.

Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed.

In reality, Saudi Arabia’s and the United States’ rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess.

Saudi Arabia’s Dangerous Gamble 

The aerial assault on Yemen is meant to impress upon onlookers Saudi military might. A ground contingent might also attempt to quickly sweep in and panic Houthi fighters into folding. Barring a quick victory built on psychologically overwhelming Houthi fighters, Saudi Arabia risks enveloping itself in a conflict that could easily escape out from under the military machine the US has built for it.

It is too early to tell how the military operation will play out and how far the Saudis and their US sponsors will go to reassert themselves over Yemen. However, that the Houthis have outmatched combined US-Saudi proxy forces right on Riyadh’s doorstep indicates an operational capacity that may not only survive the current Saudi assault, but be strengthened by it.

Reports that Houthi fighters have employed captured Yemeni warplanes further bolsters this notion – revealing tactical, operational, and strategic sophistication that may well know how to weather whatever the Saudis have to throw at it, and come back stronger.

What may result is a conflict that spills over Yemen’s borders and into Saudi Arabia proper. Whatever dark secrets the Western media’s decades of self-censorship regarding the true sociopolitical nature of Saudi Arabia will become apparent when the people of the Arabian peninsula must choose to risk their lives fighting for a Western client regime, or take a piece of the peninsula for themselves.

Additionally, a transfer of resources and fighters arrayed under the flag of the so-called “Islamic State” and Al Qaeda from Syria to the Arabian Peninsula will further indicate that the US and its regional allies have been behind the chaos and atrocities carried out in the Levant for the past 4 years. Such revelations will only further undermine the moral imperative of the West and its regional allies, which in turn will further sabotage their efforts to rally support for an increasingly desperate battle they themselves conspired to start.

America’s Shrinking Legitimacy 

It was just earlier this month when the United States reminded the world of Russia’s “invasion” of Crimea. Despite having destabilized Ukraine with a violent, armed insurrection in Kiev, for the purpose of expanding NATO deeper into Eastern Europe and further encircling Russia, the West insisted that Russia had and  still has no mandate to intervene in any way in neighboring Ukraine. Ukraine’s affairs, the United States insists, are the Ukrainians’ to determine. Clearly, the US meant this only in as far as Ukrainians determined things in ways that suited US interests.

This is ever more evident now in Yemen, where the Yemeni people are not being allowed to determine their own affairs. Everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved specifically to ensure that the people of Yemen do not determine things for themselves, clearly, because it does not suit US interests.

Such naked hypocrisy will be duly noted by the global public and across diplomatic circles. The West’s inability to maintain a cohesive narrative is a growing sign of weakness. Shareholders in the global enterprise the West is engaged in may see such weakness as a cause to divest – or at the very least – a cause to diversify toward other enterprises. Such enterprises may include Russia and China’s mulipolar world. The vanishing of Western global hegemony will be done in destructive conflict waged in desperation and spite.

Today, that desperation and spite befalls Yemen.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

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US Congress urges President Obama to Provide Ukraine with More Weapons, Encourages Torture

March 27th, 2015 by Oriental Review

On Monday March 23, the US House of Representatives adopted H. Res. 162 urging president Obama “to provide Ukraine with military assistance” in dire attempt to reignite conflict in the East of Ukraine, mainly frozen as a result of February 2015 Minsk agreements between Kiev and the outbreak Donetsk and Lugansk provinces with French, German and Russian mediation.

The general presumptions of the resolution are as evident as false: it contains routine mantras about “Russian aggression”, “Crimea occupation”,  “violent separatist proxies” and “insurrection that has resulted in over 6,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and more than a million displaced persons”, as if the insurgents are using heavy artillery against their own cities and killing their own children (to say nothing about the fact that “displaced persons” are predominantly running to Russia to seek protection and personal safety away from the conflict zone).

Meanwhile earlier this month the Foundation for the Study of Democracy (FSD) has published a new comprehensive report «War Crimes of the Armed Forces and Security Forces of Ukraine». It is based on the evidence provided since August 2014 to January 2015 by at least 200 residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces who were forcefully detained and kidnapped by the Ukrainian military and security forces and later handed back to Donetsk and Lugansk authorities according to “hostages release” provisions of the September 2014 Minsk protocol. Here we provide a dozen of citations of this bone-chilling document:

Report tortures UkraineThe prisoners were electrocuted, beaten cruelly and for multiple days in a row with different objects (iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle butts, bayonet knives, rubber batons).

Techniques widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces include waterboarding, strangling with a ‘Banderist garrotte’ and other types of strangling.

In some cases prisoners, for the purposes of intimidation, were sent to minefields and run over with military vehicles, which led to their death.

Other torture methods used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces include bone-crashing, stabbing and cutting with a knife, branding with red-hot objects, shooting different body parts with small arms.

The prisoners taken captive by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces are kept for days at freezing temperatures, with no access to food or medical assistance, and are often forced to take psychotropic substances that cause agony.

An absolute majority of prisoners are put through mock firing squads and suffer death and rape threats to their families.

Many of those tortured are not members of the self-defense forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

The report relates a huge number of shocking cases which would make stand the hair of any sane human being:

Andrey Runov: ‘During the night 23–24 November I was arrested at my home by the Aidar battalion. We were taken to the airport of Mariupol. The beating and torture there were so severe that we kept blacking out. They would beat us on the heels, ribs and head. They said they were going to break our legs, threatened to cut off our ears and gouge our eyes out. One of my cellmates got his insides beaten up and skull fractured; he was paralyzed as a result.’

Alexander Ryabchenko: ‘… I was crucified in a locker room on a sheet of wire mesh. They would come every hour and kick me. The next day I was taken to Debaltsevo. There they took me to the chief investigator who asked me if I would cooperate. I said there was nothing I could tell them, that I knew nothing. After that he called three assistants in and ordered them to beat everything they needed out of me. They tied my hands behind my back and suspended me on the door; my right foot was tied to the handle of another door by a rope, so I was standing only on my left foot. Two of them started to kick me on my left leg. Then I was taken to the hall, hands tied with scotch tape behind my back, and suspended by a rope tied to my hands and right foot. They put a black bag over my head and kept beating me until I blacked out.’

Oleg Fuhrman: "They used electro-shock devices, made us kneel with bags on our heads, and fired their guns near the ear. I was put on a chain in a pit, handcuffed. I could not stand on my feet, nor could I lie down, so I was hanging on that chain because my ribs and fingers were broken.’

Oleg Fuhrman: “They used electro-shock devices, made us kneel with bags on our heads, and fired their guns near the ear. I was put on a chain in a pit, handcuffed. I could not stand on my feet, nor could I lie down, so I was hanging on that chain because my ribs and fingers were broken.’

Yury Slusar: ‘On 4 November I was arrested by the Azov and SBU men when I was at work in the town of Druzhkovka. I was taken to Kramatorsk. They beat me on the head and feet with a saw chain, fired a gun close to my ear, threatened to shoot me in the head or to shoot my feet. They humiliated me and said they were going to rape me. They threatened to bring my wife and daughters in and torture them in front of me. I could not eat for three days. The only food I got was water and rusks.’

German Mandrikov: ‘I am just a civilian, I had not participated in the military actions but the SBU investigators forced me to incriminate myself through torture. In early October I went to see my mother and was arrested by unknown men. They took me to the airport of Mariupol where for three days in a row I suffered beastly torture. They used both psychological and physical abuse: they gave me electric shock, suffocated me with a plastic bag, beat on the feet with a tire iron, poured freezing water on me, etc. The torturers had an Azov insignia on their sleeves. They threatened to rape my mother and bride. I could not bear the torment any longer and signed some documents without even reading them.’

According to accounts by the victims, the Ukrainian army, the National Guard, various units of the Ministry of the Interior and the Security Service of Ukraine employ a whole range of torture techniques.

Many of the victims say that they were stabbed and cut with a knife.

Dmitry Klimenko: ‘I was captured on 8 July 2014 by the Donbass battalion when I was at home. I lost conscious during the arrest and came to only in the car. I had a bag on my head. They began beating me. They kicked me on the ribs, broke three of them. They kicked me on the head too. And I fainted once again. I gained conscious only when they poured water on me. One the men took a knife and started stabbing me in the leg while continuing the questioning. Another one gave me electric shock. This inquisition continued for ten hours. In the morning they decided to carry on with the interrogation. I was kicked on the body and on the ribs. It was then that I realized I had had my ribs broken. I fell with my face to the ground, heard the bolt of a rifle click and a burst shot into the ground. When they saw that I was not going to tell them anything, they put me in a car trunk and took somewhere. Then I found myself in an office. I instantly understood that it was the SBU. I spent two days there. Afterwards I was taken to a court and to an attorney. I had a chat with him and then came the investigating officer. I was brought into a court room. The judge took no notice of my wounds, though they were evident.’

Igor Kozlov: ‘I was arrested on 18 July at a checkpoint not far from Popasnaya by the VSU. They beat me up, tortured me and tried to cut my ear off.’

Mikhail Lyubchenko: 'I saw a guy standing waist-deep in a hole in the ground and being buried with a shovel bucket and then the truck run over him.'

Mikhail Lyubchenko: ‘I saw a guy standing waist-deep in a hole in the ground and being buried with a shovel bucket and then the truck run over him.’

Alexander Kashenkowas captured by the “Dniepro” battalion on 13 November 2014 and describes in detail the torture inflicted on him by the Ukrainian security forces, ‘I had a bag on my head during the beating. They beat me with metal-plastic tubes. There were two, then three of them. They would hit me on the head, back, feet and kidneys. They tried to suffocate me with a fist stopping me from breathing, used an electro-shock device on me. They beat me with a rifle butt and kicked me with their army boots. I had ribs broken. The beatings with the use of a metal-plastic tube left six lesions on my skull. They would hit me with a hammer, too. I got fingers, arms and a bone in my hand injured. I blacked out twice. The beatings continued for more than a day. They began cutting me with a knife asking questions they wanted to be answered. They stabbed a knife into my leg, turned it and stuck it even deeper, turned it again and so on. Then they tried to cut off my fingers.’

A large number of victims assert that the torture techniques used include burning skin with the gas burners or burning-hot objects and burning various inscriptions into the skin of the prisoners.

Alexander Piksunov: ‘We were ambushed and captured by the National Guard. For three days in a row they kept torturing us, they would beat us and burn us nonstop; they would suspend us from the ceiling. I was hooded and they burnt me with what I think was a gas burner. They hung me by my arms; the scars have not healed yet and I cannot feel my right arm, it’s numb. My ribs still hurt. Those people, they would kick me, and tie my hands behind my back and strap a hand grenade safety pin to my finger. You move – you pull the pin. As a result, I had to sit still through the night so as not to pull it. I had to sit still but sometimes even wanted rip the pin out. Some asked to be shot, but those people would say that it was too easy of a death, though they repeatedly put us against the wall menacing with a gun, pulled the trigger but there was no shot, just the sound. Some of us asked them to shoot us, to stop torturing us, but the answer was that it was too easy of a death for us, that we were no human, traitors of our country. They are not human at all, they are animals.’

Stanislav Stankevich: ‘On 24 August 2014, our car was shot at by teh National Guard. The driver and I were taken to Kramatorsk, where we were tortured, questioned, beaten by National Guardsmen. They beat me so hard they injured my eye; I cannot see with that eye now. They burnt the word “sepr” (separatist) into my chest and a Nazi cross into my buttocks. After three days of beating, we were taken to the office of the Security Service in Kharkov. Only after spending 24 hours on the stone floor in a bathroom did we join the others in the mass cells.”

The methods of torture being used include crashing different parts of the victim’s body.

Denis Gavrilin: 'They would throw me in a pit with dead bodies... I know a guy who got four of his front teeth pulled out with pliers.’

Denis Gavrilin: ‘They would throw me in a pit with dead bodies… I know a guy who got four of his front teeth pulled out with pliers.’

Alexey Stenov was taken prisoner on 26 August 2014: ‘When I was captured and they put me face down on the ground, the only thing I heard was, “Let’s take the big one. Get rid of the short one and the old one.” There were nine of us in the group. We were put in an APC and taken to an unknown locality; later it became clear that it was the 11th reconnaissance battalion. It was there that they started hitting us on the toes with a sledge and on the knees and on the legs – with a hammer, they beat us with shovel handles…at night they tied us to some fence, stripped to underwear, and poured cold water on us throughout the night.’

The torture victims indicate that the Ukrainian army and law enforcement bodies systematically employ a torture technique called ‘waterboarding’. Previously, this method was used by the American secret services:

V. Popov: ‘I was captured by the Shakhtersk battalion and taken to the transit police station. I was tortured there. They put me on my back and poured water into my mouth. I felt as if I was drowning. Thenthey brought me to my senses. They threatened to shoot me.’

Sergey Skidan: ‘I was arrested by the SBU on September 11 2014. They brought me in and started beating me; they also waterboarded and cross-questioned me and gave me electric shock. At a certain moment I blacked out and came to in another cell. After a while, they followed the same procedure and threw me into a cell again. Then a man came to me and asked me what I wanted to say to my family; he forced me to stand on my knees and pressed a gun against me between the shoulder blades. I heard a click and then he said that the next time would be different.’

Denis Gavrilin was captured by the Ukrainian National Guard on 31 July 2014 and handed over to the Azov battalion, describes the same torture technique: ‘I was blindfolded; they put a cloth on my face and poured water. I could not see anything. And my hands were handcuffed behind my back. They were holding my head from behind and pouring water over the cloth that was covering my face. I do not know whether they were pouring water from a teapot or a bottle…I felt as if I was drowning. Then they brought me to… and then did the same thing.’

The victims indicate that the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces use other torture techniques as well, for example suffocation with plastic bags, gas masks, etc.

Vladimir: 'They tortured people severely. A lot of broken fingers, cut hands, beaten by hammers, There is a pit near Mariupol airport - those who couldn't stand tortures are buried there...'

Vladimir: ‘They tortured people severely. A lot of broken fingers, cut hands, beaten by hammers, There is a pit near Mariupol airport – those who couldn’t stand tortures are buried there…’

Leontiy Lazarev: ‘On 4 November armed soldiers of the 71st airborne brigade force-entered my house. They hit my wife and pushed me down on my belly. Three people jumped onto me and started jumping on my body and trampling all over it. Then, not having found anything in my house, the soldiers put a bag on my head, tied my hands, and brought me outside the village. They were kicking me. Some time passed, and finally an SBU car came and took me to a location unknown to me. One of the men in the car told me to address him as Yesaul1. In a while, we stopped; they led me out of the car and fired over my head. Then, they hit me on the head with something heavy, and I passed out. When I came to again they were dragging me out of the car. They sat me on a bench, and Yesaul, not saying a word, started beating me with a metal rod. He was putting a gas mask on me, over and over, until I began to suffocate. I had to sign their protocols even though I had no chance to read them. They were grounds for the criminal case against me and for my imprisonment in the Mariupol pre-trial detention facility.’

The so-called ‘Banderist garrotte’ is used as a weapon – both for intimidation and torture.

Yevgeny Pavljuk, captured on 10 September 2014 by the SBU, says, ‘At the SBU, they put a garrotte round my throat, kicked me and beat me on the head and in the kidneys with a rifle butt, hooded me, poured water on me. And later on, at a pre-trial investigation facility beat me on the head with the Criminal Code of Ukraine.’

Based on the information collected by the FSD, a clear conclusion can be drawn that most of the torture victims are not members of the Donetsk or Lugansk People’s Republics’ self-defense forces, but civilians. A ‘reason’ for arrest and torture of civilians by the Ukrainian side can be as simple as involvement in anti-Euromaidan rallies, participation in Russian TV shows, expression of your opinion on the Internet, involvement in pro-DPR rallies, participation in the referendum on independence, ‘possession of a telephone number of a Russian journalist’, ‘Caucasian names – Aslan, Uzbek’ in the personal phone contacts, a phone conversation with people from ‘the Donetsk People’s Republic’, ‘receiving medical assistance in the DPR’, etc. The same absurdity and lack of substantial evidence is characteristic of the other accusations.

VIDEO EVIDENCE (audio in Russian, dated February 7, 2015, important timeline points: 0:30, 1:17, 1:30, 2:06):

War Crimes of the Armed Forces and Security Forces of Ukraine VIDEO (audiotrack and subtitles in Russian):

The extent to which torture is being used by the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the National Guard and other military units of the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine, as well as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership and their patrons overseas.

As the military victory of Kiev over the breakaway provinces is hardly achievable even with the outdated NATO arms pouring into Ukraine, the only lethal weapon Pres. Obama can authorize to export now are the new torture techniques…

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The Objective of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. is the Invasion and Occupation of Yemen

March 27th, 2015 by Alalam

Houthis leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi on Thursday accused the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel of launching a campaign aimed at invading and occupying Yemen.

This move that created a huge turn of events, and to be honest caused a humiliating and unprecedented defeat of those criminals. After committing the ugliest crimes in the Hashoush and Badr mosques in Sanaa, they committed the worst crimes towards the Yemeni military in Aden, and they continue to commit these ugly crimes by targeting a lot of areas via a spreading military hoping for full control”, Houthis leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said.

Today the warplanes of the Saudi-led alliance have attacked a popular market in the northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada, killing or injuring at least 15 people, according to Yemen’s al-Massira TV on Friday.

People listening to Houthis leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi TV address 

“If the stupid, arrogant and unfair Saudi regime wagered on America and other regimes… to participate in the aggression towards the people, then our dear Yemeni people are betting on God’s support.”

The attack occurred as Saudi-led warplanes have pounded the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a for the second consecutive day.
The airstrikes against Sana’a resumed during the early hours of Friday.The planes bombed military and civilian targets in and around the Yemeni capital.

“Today and after this unfair and brutal aggression and after this sinful, ugly, criminal and unjustified targeting (of the Houthis) and after moving in this way, by putting under siege, starving, killing and suffocating 24 million great Yemeni people, they became more determined to defend themselves”, he added.

“If the stupid, arrogant and unfair Saudi regime wagered on America and other regimes – which they bought off with some cheap money to participate in the aggression towards the people, one of the most honourable and honest people of the world – then our dear Yemeni people are betting on God’s support, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi stressed.

“Our dear Yemeni people are a free people and will not be enslaved to anyone ever. If the stupid and unfair Saudi regime which imagines that the Yemeni people will kneel for him and surrender to him and that he can step over the Yemeni people, then no and a thousand nos, that could never happen. Therefore, I address our great Yemeni people to seriously and responsibly move to face this unfair and ugly aggression through forming two fronts, the first is an internal one which will take care of the situation inside the country and the second is to face and defend against these attacks and try and stop any attempts for occupation”, he said.

“Today is the day for all Yemeni people, it is a day for parents, a day for glory, a day for heroism, a day for loyalty and a day that represents every honest, free and loyal man, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a TV address.

Saudi Arabia bombed key installations in Yemen on Thursday, leading a regional coalition in a campaign against the Shiite Houthis who have taken over much of the country and drove out the former president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Thousands of Houthi’s supporter.

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Yemeni capital on Thursday to show their support for the Houthi group.

Al-Masirah Television, which is affiliated with the Houthis, broadcast footage of the huge demonstration in Sanaa, which took place after Saudi Arabia’s attack.

Hadi, who fled the country Wednesday as the Houthis advanced on his stronghold in the southern port of Aden, reappeared Thursday. He arrived by plane in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh, Saudi state TV reported.

Today Al-Massira television, run by Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters, said anti-aircraft defenses opened fired on the warplanes following the raids.

At least 25 people were killed and dozens of others injured on Thursday during the first day of the Saudi military aggression against Yemen. Sa’ada and the southern city of Ta’izz were also pounded on the same day.

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“Proof that Russia and Iran Want War”: Look How Close They Put Their Countries To Our Military Bases!

March 27th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

Proof!

Bad people are putting their countries closer and closer to our military bases:

http://i.imgur.com/xgBMhBb.jpg

http://caelumetterra.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/bases-overseas.jpg

Look how close Russia put its country to our military bases:

Credit: Small People Against Big Government

Iran is just as bad:

http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1878/3684/original.jpg

This proves that Russia and Iran are the bad guys!

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Costa Rican Ambassador Fired for Defending Venezuelan Government Amid Escalating Media War

March 27th, 2015 by Lucas Koerner

Federico Picado, a Costa Rican diplomat, was fired from his post as ambassador to Venezuela after praising Venezuelan democratic practices in an interview. (archives/Ultimas Noticias)

Caracas – The Costa Rican government fired its recently appointed ambassador to Venezuela yesterday after the latter expressed support for the Bolivarian government in an interview with a prominent rightwing Venezuelan newspaper.

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis stated that his government did not share the opinions of ex-ambassador Federico Picado, which have generated an uproar in the small Central American country with rightwing politicians demanding the ambassador’s immediate dismissal.

In his interview with La Nacion conducted via email, the 69 year-old ex-ambassador ridiculed suggestions of a lack of press freedom in Venezuela and attributed scarcities of essential goods to sabotage by “political factors” and “big business” seeking “internal destabilization”. Picado also contrasted the image of the country presented by international media externally and the reality that he experienced on the ground.

Picado praised the example of Venezuela in the area of citizens’ referenda and advocated that Costa Rica institute the option of midterm plebiscites for unseating inefficient leaders from their elected posts.

However, not all Costa Rican political leaders sanctioned the firing of Picado.

Patricia Mora of the leftwing Broad Front party stood up for the ex-ambassador, informing La Nacion, “It seems that they were objective declarations, he is experiencing what is happening [in Venezuela].”

Kidnapping False Claim

The dismissal of the Costa Rican ambassador for voicing support for the Bolivarian government comes in midst of an intensifying misinformation campaign directed against Venezuela in the international media.

Over the past few days, news headlines and social media feeds have been dominated by the story of an alleged kidnapping of a child in Venezuela.

Nevertheless, Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz announced today that there was no kidnapping and that the child’s mother was paid $18,000 of a total of $1 million Bolivars in order to issue the false claim.

Carmen Yanet Briones, who is of Ecuadorian nationality, was detained yesterday, along with those accused of paying her, after the child’s father dismissed the claim as false.

President Nicolas Maduro denounced the false kidnapping as an instance of “psychological war” waged against Venezuela and called for those responsible to be brought to justice, mentioning the name of rightwing Venezuelan media consultant and fugitive J.J. Rondón.

The Venezuelan leader compared the plot to previous misinformation campaigns against Venezuela and other revolutionary governments, invoking the example of “Operation Peter Pan” in the 1960s, in which the CIA circulated the lie that the Cuban government intended to take custody of the island’s children, while transporting thousands of Cuban children to the United States and placing them under foster care.

Venezuelan authorities have stated that they will release further information on the case as it becomes available.

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Why is the American Federation of Teachers Promoting Israeli Apartheid?

March 27th, 2015 by Ali Abunimah

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten led a propaganda tour to Israel and uses her union to push J Street’s anti-Palestinian-rights agenda. (Flickr)

The Israel lobby group J Street has just wrapped up its annual conference in Washington, DC.

The prevailing mood of alarm and despair in the wake of Israel’s election was captured by keynote speaker Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5 million-strong American Federation of Teachers (AFT) trade union.

“This is a difficult moment for those of us who believe in the ideal of Jews and Palestinians living side by side, in two states, with real rights, and with security,” Weingarten lamented.

She lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “last-ditch effort to retain power.” It was, she said, “both painful and pitiful – just days after thousands of us went to Selma to honor those brutally beaten fighting to exercise the right to vote – to watch Netanyahu renounce the two-state solution and demonize Israel’s Arab citizens for exercising their basic democratic rights.”

Weingarten fretted about a status quo that “threatens the future of the State of Israel.” She posited herself as a representative of the reasonable middle in a “vast chasm between those who believe: Israel, right or wrong, and never mind the occupation or democracy; and those who believe: Israel is evil and doesn’t have a right to exist, which then justifies BDS, or worse, violence or terrorism.”

Fighting BDS

Her attack on BDS – the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions – and her attempt to associate it with “violence” and “terrorism,” echoes her earlier condemnation of the American Studies Association for endorsing the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli institutions complicit in occupation and human rights violations.

Weingarten then began to speak about a delegation of AFT officials earlier this year to “Israel and the West Bank” that she traveled on along with J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami.

Liberal Zionism

Weingarten is one of the most influential and high-profile union leaders in the country. But at a time when inner city public school teachers are battling against education cuts and privatization, she is spending her time on advocacy for Israel that has nothing to do with that agenda.

Without consulting her constituents, she is using her union platform to push a Zionist agenda informed by her view that the Israeli occupation army is the sacred and miraculous answer to the Holocaust.

Her address to J Street represented precisely the kind of liberal Zionism that Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf condemned when he appeared on the same stage: full of easy potshots at the bogeyman Netanyahu, but total silence about Israel’s siege and massacres in Gaza.

Union funds

The AFT president’s speech was not the only involvement of a US teacher’s union in the conference. The J Street program lists the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) as a major donor to the conference.

IFT, which represents more than 100,000 educators and public employees in Illinois and is affiliated with the AFT, ignored repeated requests for comment about the amount of the donation and its purpose.

But here’s a clue: IFT president Dan Montgomery, who serves as a vice-president of the AFT, also went on the junket with Weingarten and Ben-Ami.

Israel lobby’s kinder face

J Street poses as the kinder, gentler face of the Israel lobby, the alternative to hardline AIPAC. But it is just as adamantly opposed to fundamental Palestinian rights.

Its insistence on a “two-state solution” is motivated by a desire to rescue Israel as a “Jewish state” by hiving the Palestinians off into bantustan-like reservations where they can pose no “demographic threat” to Israeli Jewish power.

For the same reason, J Street opposes the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

It has unyieldingly supported recent Israeli massacres of Palestinians, including the attack on Gaza last summer that killed more than 2,200 people. It has endorsed the Obama administration’s campaign to end all efforts to bring Israeli war criminals to justice.

J Street has regularly hosted and honored Israeli leaders implicated in war crimes. At the same time, it staunchly opposes the nonviolent BDS movement.

Normalizing apartheid

Neither Weingarten nor Ben-Ami responded to requests for comment about the AFT/J-Street visit to “Israel and the West Bank.”

But we can gain much insight into the delegation and its pernicious politics from this ten-minute video released by AFT to coincide with Weingarten’s appearance at the J Street conference.

Bearing Witness: AFT Leaders Mission to Israel and the West Bank

It opens with Weingarten standing against the backdrop of occupied East Jerusalem and waxing poetic about looking out over “four thousand years of history.”

She enthuses about Israel’s “Declaration of Independence” as a document that embodies Israel’s supposed egalitarian, open and democratic spirit. (This is the same document that historian Ilan Pappe describes in the current issue of The Link as “window dressing aimed at safeguarding Israel’s future international image and status” from the reality of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.)

With uplifting music playing throughout, the video reproduces almost every conceivable trope of what Palestinians condemn as normalization.

There is a relentless insistence on “dialogue” and heart-warming singing groups and schools bringing Arab and Jewish children together. There is constant chatter about “both sides,” obscuring the enormous power imbalance between a nuclear-armed, US-backed military occupation engaged in industrial-scale colonization, and a nearly defenseless, impoverished, occupied and disposessed people.

The American delegates are presented as caring innocents who just want to make a difference.

J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami (far right) with AFT president Randi Weingarten and Illinois Federation of Teachers president Dan Montgomery (fifth and sixth from right, respectively) with other members of the AFT delegation and Dalia Rabin (center) at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv. (via Facebook)

PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, defines normalization as: “cultural activities, projects, events and products involving Palestinians and/or other Arabs on one side and Israelis on the other … that are based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed or that assume that both colonizers and colonized are equally responsible for the ‘conflict.’”

Such activities, PACBI states, “are intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible forms of normalization that ought to be boycotted.”

PACBI is not opposed to all contact between Israelis and Palestinians, but says context and politics are critical.

It welcomes “co-resistance” activities in which “the Israeli party in the project recognizes the comprehensive Palestinian rights under international law” corresponding to the rights set out in the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions: an end to occupation, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and full respect of the rights of Palestinian refugees.

Obscuring reality

But even when the AFT video documents delegates being shown some of the most brutal aspects of the occupation, it is overlaid with an anesthetizing, normalizing fog.

The delegates are seen on a tour of Hebron, led not by Palestinians who live there but by an Israeli Jew from the group Breaking the Silence. They witness the emptiness of Shuhada Street, once the bustling heart of the Old City, but forbidden to Palestinians by the occupation army.

One AFT delegate says the situation in Hebron is “symbolic of the distrust on both sides.” But what former UN Special Rapporteur and international jurist John Dugard hasdocumented in Hebron is an Israeli-imposed regime he explicitly likens to the apartheid that existed in his native South Africa.

The forcible closure of much of Hebron to Palestinians is the direct act of a brutal colonial occupation, done solely for the benefit of a few fanatical settlers.

This episode, like the rest of the video, deceptively presents occupier and occupied as equally vulnerable and equally responsible.

Erasing Gaza massacre

The only exception is when Israelis are shown as the victims of Palestinians.

“We went to a community right along the Gaza Strip,” Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery explains.

He talks about how “when fighting broke out in Gaza,” Israelis living in the area got fifteen-second warnings of rocket strikes. “And you’re frantically trying to find out where your small kids are,” he adds.

As he speaks, the video lingers on Israeli elementary school children. It then shows how many “safe places” – bomb shelters – they have.

This Israeli-centric view regularly instilled in participants of hasbara, or propaganda, tours completely ignores the 900,000 children – half the total population imprisoned in the Gaza Strip under Israeli siege – who have no shelters.

There is no mention of the UN schools repeatedly bombed during Israel’s attack, as they served as makeshift shelters, killing children and their families.

Montgomery does not fret about the more than 500 children killed – many wiped out with their entire families – and more than 3,300 injured, during Israel’s 51-day bombardment of Gaza last summer.

Neither is there any mention of Israel’s relentless ceasefire violations and attacks on Gaza, before and after the summer massacre.

Palestinians in Gaza are invisible, not a subject of concern for AFT or for J Street.

Weingarten made no mention of them in her speech, except, like the video, as a threat to Israelis.

Palestinians: visible but absent

The AFT delegates, however, do remind us repeatedly that they met and spoke to Palestinians in many places in the West Bank – an assertion meant to deliver an impression of even-handedness.

But in the film all the analysis and framing is given by Israeli and American Jews. No Palestinian is seen or heard providing analysis or bearing witness to Israeli crimes.

At one point, J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami is seen lecturing to the group. In the background is a slide showing relative population figures of Arabs and Jews – the “demographic threat” supposedly posed by Palestinian births is a particular obsession of liberal Zionists.

Palestinians only appear as a smiling, harmless backdrop, eagerly welcoming their American guests and grateful for tokenistic and depoliticized training programs provided by AFT in collaboration with the Palestinian Authority.

Scholars Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock have termed AFT’s US-funded teacher training programs in the Middle East “labor imperialism” that serves “US government foreign policy interests in maintaining and extending American control and influence over the region.”

At the same time, the video suggests AFT is encouraging normalization between Palestinian and Israeli teachers’ groups.

Selective amnesia

Towards the end of the video, there is a sanitized segment on how the Nakba – the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine – is commemorated at Jerusalem’s Hand in Hand School, one of a tiny number of mixed Jewish-Palestinian schools.

Jewish and Palestinian students and teachers briefly speak about how difficult it is. A Palestinian teacher talks about how she teaches the history from “both sides.”

A Palestinian girl says that Nakba Day “reminds us that we need to move on and not just stick to the past and all the bad things that happened.”

The message is clear: forget about the past, and forget about its present – the unfulfilled rights of millions of Palestinian refugees.

But forgetting is only a prescription for Palestinians, never for Jews.

After the visit to Palestine, Weingarten and the rest of the AFT delegation went to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland – and this is featured in the video.

The lesson of Auschwitz, Weingarten explains, is “Never forget. You can’t combat hate and prejudice if you forget.”

Using the Holocaust

The inclusion of Auschwitz in a video on the situation in Palestine seems calculated to send the not so subtle message that whatever is happening to Palestinians is dwarfed morally and in scale by the Holocaust.

In her address to J Street, Weingarten made the connection clear, using the Holocaust – or Shoah – as a rhetorical device to justify Zionism and whitewash and elevate the Israeli state to a sacred principle and manifest destiny.

She intersperses this passage with “dayenu” – a word taken from the Passover ritual meaning roughly “it would have sufficed for us”:

For our ancestors, if we had said: There will be a Jewish state – for the 6 million who died in the Shoah, there is now a homeland where more than six million Jews live – they would have said, “Dayenu.” A state with a powerful military. Dayenu. A vigorous economy. Dayenu. A proud democracy. Dayenu.

Here, Weingarten really lays out her cards. Her interactions with and ostensible concern for Palestinians are nothing but a liberal cover for Jewish nationalism. In the end she represents the Israeli army as the answer to the Holocaust – a classic Netanyahu talking point.

In addition to Weingarten, Montgomery and Ben-Ami, the delegation included Ted Kirsch, president of AFT Pennsylvania; Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco; Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers; Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, leader of Congregation Simchat Beit Torah in New York; Louis Malfaro, an AFT vice-president and an officer of Texas AFT; Ruby Newbold, an AFT vice-president and vice-president of AFT Michigan and Patricia Keefer, AFT’s director of international affairs.

AFT’s sordid history

A little history is useful to put the AFT’s support for Israel and for the anti-Palestinian rights agenda of J Street in perspective.

The union had a long and sordid history of zealous participation in McCarthyist purges, expelling members and affiliates accused of communism.

During the decades of the Cold War, AFT functioned as an arm of US imperialism and foreign policy, particularly in Latin America.

The union’s leaders, foremost among them Albert Shanker, its president from 1974 to 1997, formed close alliances with the CIA and other US government agencies. Their mission was to stem the influence of communism by creating politically amenable US-sponsored international labor organizations. In the process they helped divide and destroy the trade union movements in many countries.

AFT was central to a nexus of organizations doing such work, including the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the US-financed organization sponsored by the AFL-CIO labor federation. AIFLD notoriously worked closely with the CIA and the US embassy to destabilize Chile and instigate Pinochet’s 1973 coup.

A pamphlet on the AFT’s relationship with the CIA by George N. Schmidt, a long-time Chicago Teachers Union activist and publisher of Substance News, includes a letter from David Selden, who preceeded Shanker as president of AFT.

This quotation from Selden suggests that much of the international activity undertaken by Shanker and like-minded associates was motivated by a desire to advance Israel’s interests:

The whole AIFLD, CIA, AFT, AFL-CIO and Social Democrats USA web of relationships is complicated by the Israel problem. American Jews are understandably concerned for the future of Israel, and rightly or wrongly they consider the policy of the Soviet Union to be anti-Israel, at least in its effect. This in turn leads many Israeli supporters to condone activities of the interlocking defense-intelligence labor establishment which they otherwise would indignantly denounce. It is hard to take a balanced view of such an emotional problem.

Democracy’s Champion, a book published by the AFT’s Albert Shanker Institute to honor Shanker’s legacy, confirms that his Zionism was a strong motivation throughout his life and leadership, turning the union into a perfect tool for both Israel and US imperialism.

Soon after he took office, for instance, Shanker appointed AFT staffer Eugenia Kemble to join AFL-CIO delegations to the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO). One of Kemble’s “main tasks,” according to Democracy’s Champion, “was to help defeat the anti-Israel resolutions that arose quite regularly at ILO conferences.” Kemble received the “Israel State Medal” for her efforts.

During the 1970s, the AFT regularly adopted resolutions pledging staunch support for Israel. A 1974 resolution railed against the UN for voting to allow Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat to address the General Assembly.

“Not even the terrorists’ most ardent supporters seriously envision the wolf turning into a lamb,” the resolution states, before asserting, “We stand firm with the State of Israel and her heroic people, Jews, Arabs and Christians alike.”

Similarly, a 1976 resolution called Israel “our only remaining sister democracy in the Middle East” and “a cornerstone of America’s defense against the spread of totalitarian movements and military dictatorship into the Mediterranean and the Middle East.”

Supporting Israeli and American wars

Shanker’s successors continued his legacy of serving US imperialism. AFT supported and helped the Bush administration justify the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2006, the AFT adopted a resolution fully supporting that year’s invasion of Lebanon, during which Israel killed more than 1,200 civilians and deliberately destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.

It was not without opposition, however. “The delegates narrowly passed this resolution after heated debate,” wrote AFT San Francisco Local 2121 member and past president Allan Fisher in a letter published by the The Boston Globe.

According to Fisher, “half the delegates on the convention floor vigorously opposed this resolution because it does not call for a ceasefire and makes no criticism whatsoever of Israel’s unjust and brutal behavior.”

Michael Letwin, co-convener of the solidarity group Labor for Palestine, says that despite the complicity of union leaderships like the AFT’s, rank-and-file labor is playing a growing role in the Palestinians’ struggle to regain all their rights.

“That is why BDS is championed by the Congress of South African Trade Unions and numerous other trade unionists around the world, including dockworkers on the US West Coast who refuse to handle Israeli Zim line cargo, and UAW 2865 at the University of California,” Letwin told The Electronic Intifada.

“Weingarten and other US labor leaders must end their longstanding complicity with apartheid Israel, and support a free Palestine, from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all,” he added.

“Partnership”

The support for Israel may be rooted in the AFT’s history but it is also symptomatic of the approach Weingarten takes to politics and power today when it comes to the union’s core mission.

Weingarten and her leadership team have faced persistent challenges from segments of the membership for being “too willing to partner with the corporate elite allied to the Obama administration’s attempt to ‘reform’ public education.”

She was criticized for cozying up to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – appearing with him on a June 2012 Clinton Global Initiative panel supporting privatization – at a time when the city’s teachers were preparing to strike.

The strike by the AFT-affiliated Chicago Teachers Union the following September was seen as a model and inspiration for educators across the US facing neoliberal “reform” and privatization agendas.

Chicago has long been ground zero for the assault on public education, especially stealth privatization through the creation of charter schools. In 2013, Emanuel announced the closure of dozens of schools, overwhelmingly in long-neglected African American neighborhoods.

Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, was tipped as a possible challenger to Emanuel for mayor, but declined to run for health reasons.

Still, for many, her grassroots leadership offers a marked contrast to Weingarten’s approach.

While Chicago teachers fought for and won major concessions on the picket lines, Weingarten was there with them.

But she has been accused of being late to come to their side and then downplaying their victory. Her members may ask why she has so much time to promote Israel through hasbara tours and so little time for teachers on the frontlines.

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Amnesty: Gaza Firing of Indiscriminate Rockets is War Crime

March 27th, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

Amnesty notes in a new report that attacks by Gazans resisting Israeli occupation, invasion, and terrorist attacks amount to war crimes, due to the uncontrollable nature of the rudimentary projectiles Gazans are forced to use because of the Israeli occupation and siege keeping Gaza isolated from the rest of the world.

“According to UN data, more than 4,800 rockets and 1,700 mortars were fired from Gaza towards Israel during the conflict.”

By contrast, Israel, both the occupier and aggressor, fired more than 7,000 high explosives into just one neighborhood of Gaza in a 24 hour period during its massive assault on the whole of Gaza.  The assault on the residential neighborhood of Shujaiya included Israel firing 4,800 high explosives in just one seven hour period, prompting a senior US military officer to remark

“The only possible reason for doing that is to kill a lot of people in as short a period of time as possible … It’s not mowing the lawn [the term, implying an indiscriminate and genocidal mindset, that Israelis often use for their assaults on the trapped Gazans]. It’s removing the topsoil.”

The Western response to Amnesty’s report is typical.  Whereas Western media is relatively silent over US collaborators in Kiev’s forces using indiscriminate rockets to kill more people than Israelis killed by rockets from Gaza (7, plus 13 or more Palestinians, due to the low quality of the Gazan projectiles), the report on Gaza is all over the corporate news outlets.

(Human Rights Watch reported of Kiev: “Unguided Grad rockets launched apparently by Ukrainian government forces and pro-government militias have killed at least 16 civilians and wounded many more… [this] may amount to war crimes.” Note that while occupied Gaza’s firing of similar weapons “amounts to war crimes”, a US collaborator’s firing of also-unguided weapons only “may amount to war crimes”.)

While Amnesty, in its new report, does give the death toll from Israel’s massacre against the trapped refugees of Gaza – “At least 1,585 Palestinian civilians, including more than 530 children, were killed in Gaza, and at least 16,245 homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by Israeli attacks” while 67 Israelis, almost all soldiers and including less than ten civilians and one child, were killed – the New York Times, in its story on Amnesty’s new report, does not give the death tolls, as, obviously, it is damning to be on the side, as the US is, of an illegal colonial-settler occupier that commits massacres against the occupied, refugee population, slaughtering children at a rate of nearly 600 to 1.

Western reports also contain an implicit genocidal mentality: they make no suggestions for how Gazans should fight back (against illegal Israeli occupation and terrorism), the legal right of people struggling for self determination. Gazans, they thus suggest, should simply lie still and do nothing.

A proposal that instantly comes to mind for an alternative to unguided projectiles might be for Israel to trade Gaza its unguided projectiles for some guided ones, so that Gaza could have a deterrent that is legal to use (as unguided weapons are not).  It would still be a completely unfair fight, which Israel and the West want.  However, Gazans would then be able to train those weapons directly at Israeli government and military installations, which are woven throughout the cities of Israel, and Israeli officials would much rather have the projectiles whizzing off in random directions, hitting civilian and open areas or, rarely, being intercepted by the Iron Dome system, than increase the chance that they themselves face consequences for their aggression.

Another proposal would be for an Iron Dome system (ineffective as they are, stopping ~10% of projectiles) to be installed in Palestine.

But Israel’s ideal situation, of course, is for Gazans to simply lie still and die, to go away or disappear, allowing their land to be absorbed and annexed by Israel.

…

Here are is a comparison between the damage done by projectiles fired from Gaza and the ones fired by Israel:

Damage caused in Israel by Gaza projectiles:

Damage caused in Gaza by Israeli projectiles:

The head of the Red Cross recently commented that he had never seen such destruction, and Oxfam noted that, with Israel’s siege against Gaza in place, it will take 100 years to repair the destruction Israel inflicted.

Amnesty reported that Israel “deliberately flattened entire homes full of civilians”.

In a damning act of self-incrimination, Israel is now physically blocking human rights monitors from entering Gaza to report on what Israel did.

In Israel’s 2008,/2009 massacre against Gaza, in which Israel also committed aggression (being the occupier and breaking the ceasefire), the UN was able to enter, and reported that Israel’s operation was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to … terrorize a civilian population” (UN fact-finding mission, pg. 408, par. 1).

Israel remains the largest recipient of US funding and backing.

…

More background and details on the situation here and here.

Also note that Israel has recently re-confirmed its position against the two-state solution required by international law and supported virtually uniformly by the international community for ~40 years.  The solution affirms the right of Israel to exist – within its legal borders – to have as many arms as it wants, and even to build a wall, but only on its legal border.  Israel currently uses the building of the wall to steal land and resources reserved for the Palestinians by the United Nations.

The charter of Israel’s ruling party, Likud, promises that it will never allow a Palestinian state to exist.  See prof. Juan Cole’s “The Hateful Likud Charter Calls for the Destruction of Any Palestinian State“.

Robert Barsocchini, Author and UK-based colleague on Twitter.

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Flight 9525 Crash: What’s Religion Got To Do with It? German Co-Pilot as Terrorist

March 27th, 2015 by Prof. Juan Cole

Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked “what was his religion?” (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn’t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was “terrorism.”

Lubitz is from Rhineland-Palatinate, known for its wine-growing and pharmaceuticals. It is roughly 2/5s Roman Catholic and a third Lutheran. A fourth of its people don’t really care about religion one way or another.

Why in the world would his religion be relevant? If he did crash the plane on purpose then presumably he was depressed and wanted not only to commit suicide but also to be a mass murderer. You could understand how a depressed person with low self-esteem might think it ego-boosting to determine the fate of so many others.

It isn’t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.

But we know why they asked. It was out of bigotry against Muslims, probing whether another one had gone postal. The subtext is that white Christians don’t go off the deep end, even though obviously they do, in large numbers. It isn’t a logical question about Andreas Lubitz from Rhineland-Palatinate. Zeynep Tufekci tweeted,

Maybe I need to add some more principles to my Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others, like “terrorism is only ruled out when the whiteness of the perp can be firmly established.”

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