With the topic of infrastructure investing dominating today’s newsflow after the NYT report that Democrats would support Trump if he endorsed their propsed list of some $1 trillion in infrastructure projects, which would create as many as 15 million jobs, the Kansas City Star and The News Tribune have compiled a presentation – based on internal White House documents – of about 50 infrastructure projects nationwide which comprise the “priority list” for US infrastructure projects in the coming years.

As McClatchy reports, the documents, circulated within the congressional and business communities, offer a first glimpse at which projects around the country might get funding if Trump follows through on his campaign promise to renew America’s crumbling highways, airports, dams and bridges.

Among the potential projects are a new terminal for the Kansas City airport, upgrades to Interstate 95 in North Carolina and the construction of a high-speed railway from Dallas to Houston. The document obtained by the Star proposes funding the projects as public-private partnerships, with half the money coming from private investment.

The priority list of “Emergency & National Security Projects” was put together by the Trump team, a senior congressional aide told Kansas City Star. It includes cost estimates and job impact numbers. According to the source, it is not clear whether that document is a draft or a final version.

The National Governors Association circulated a similar list as a spreadsheet among state officials in December, requesting further suggestions. All but two projects on both lists are the same. Some projects that governors suggested — in California and Washington state in particular — do not yet appear on either list. The governors’ association has received 43 responses from states and territories so far, said Elena Waskey, a spokeswoman for the association.

“The total number of projects is more than 300,” Waskey said. “We are working to convene information for as many states as possible that we will then forward to the administration.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Among the projects listed is a $10 billion proposal to replace the nation’s radar-based air traffic control system with one called NextGen, based on satellites. The document projects the project could create 2,300 direct jobs. 

For those concerned about partisan bias among the proposed projects, here are some stats: in some states, such as Missouri, more than one project is listed, while others states appear to have come up empty. Neither document lists any projects in Kansas, for example. The National Governors Association asked governors’ offices last month for input on a preliminary list of infrastructure projects compiled by the Trump team, said Jaime Smith, a spokeswoman for Washington’s Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.

“They seek examples of priority infrastructure projects that might be incorporated into a future infrastructure investment program,” said the letter from the governors’ association, dated Dec. 16. “Specifically, the transition team is looking for 3 to 5 project suggestions from each state that they would vet for inclusion in a new program.” The letter said the vetting would be done by a bipartisan infrastructure commission overseeing investments.

“The initial spend on these projects for 2017 is expected to be $150 billion, and the transition team hopes that this type of project will be continued over the next 2 years,” according to the letter. The letter also noted that any contributions governors made would not be binding, and that this was “just an initial information-gathering request.”

Once the Trump administration officially took office, the letter said, “there will be a more formal process for states to submit information. Projects will be chosen through a more formal process as well.” The projects have to meet specific criteria:

  •  A national security or public safety “emergency.”
  • “Shovel-ready,” with at least 30 percent of initial design and engineering work complete.
  • Direct job creator.
  • Project with the potential for increased U.S. manufacturing.

The governors’ association letter included a list of projects already being vetted, with the request that governors use it as a model for submissions.

The summary list of 50 proposed projects is below:

California’s Democratic governor Jerry Brown’s office sent nine examples of big shovel-ready projects in California, including the Sacramento River Bank Protection Project and Bay Area Commuter and Freight Projects. That preliminary list appears to be similar to the document obtained by McClatchy’s Star, with two differences: The preliminary list includes the Alaska Pipeline & LNG Project instead of the Texas Central Railway and it lists the Fort Mojave Solar Project instead of the Howard Street Tunnel.

Both the preliminary list and the more detailed document obtained by the Star include a new terminal for Kansas City International Airport. The detailed document says the project would cost $972 million and generate 1,000 jobs.  The Kansas City airport is one of three airport projects on the Trump team’s document. The others are expansions of the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“The business case for a new terminal was bolstered after Southwest and the other airlines told the City Council on April 26 that they would finance the nearly $1 billion new terminal, to be built where Terminal A is now,” reads the document’s description for KCI, which lifts word-for-word a passage in a June 24 article in The Star. In North Carolina, the I-95 project would provide urgent improvements to one of the oldest sections of the busiest interstate in the nation, according to the document. The cost is listed at $1.5 billion, and the project would produce an estimated 5,400 jobs, the document says.

The 250-mile high-speed railway in Texas would enable commuters to travel between Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth in less than 90 minutes, according to the document. It is a $12 billion proposal that would create 40,000 direct jobs, the document says.

Other proposals include I-395 reconstruction in Florida and a Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project designed to conserve billions of gallons of renewable groundwater in California’s Mojave Desert.

The full presentation of 50 proposed projects is below (link)

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Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works

January 25th, 2017 by Robert J. Burrowes

Nonviolent action is extremely powerful.

Unfortunately, however, activists do not always understand why nonviolence is so powerful and they design ‘direct actions’ that are virtually powerless.

I would like to start by posing two questions. Why is nonviolent action so powerful? And why is using it strategically so transformative?

When an activist group is working on an issue – such as a national liberation struggle, war, the climate catastrophe, violence against women and/or children, nuclear weapons, drone killings, rainforest destruction, encroachments on indigenous land – they will often plan an action that is intended to physically halt an activity, such as the activities of a military base, the loading of a coal ship, the work of a bulldozer, the building of an oil pipeline. Their plan might also include using one or more of a variety of techniques such as locking themselves to a piece of equipment (‘locking-on’) to prevent it from being used. Separately or in addition, they might use secrecy both in their planning and execution so that they are able to carry out the action before police or military personnel prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately, the focus on physical outcomes (including actions such as ‘locking-on’ and its many equivalents), and the secrecy necessary to carry out their plan, all functionally undermine the power of their action. Why is this? Let me explain how and why nonviolent action works so that it is clear why any nonviolent activist who understands the dynamics of nonviolent action is unconcerned about the immediate physical outcome of their action (and what is necessary to achieve that).

If you think of your nonviolent action as a physical act, then you will tend to focus your attention on securing a physical outcome from your planned action: to prevent the military from occupying a location, to stop a bulldozer from knocking down trees, to halt the work at an oil terminal or nuclear power station, to prevent construction equipment being moved on site. Of course, it is simple enough to plan a nonviolent action that will do any of these things for a period of time and there are many possible actions that might achieve it.

But if you pause to consider how your nonviolent action might have psychological and political impact that leads to lasting or even permanent change on the issue in question but also society as a whole, then your conception of what you might do will be both expanded and deepened. And you will be starting to think strategically about what it means to mobilise large numbers of people to think and behave differently.

After all, whatever the immediate focus of your action, it is only ever one step in the direction of more profound change. And this profound change must include a lasting change in prevailing ideas and a lasting change in ‘normal’ behaviour by substantial (and perhaps even vast) numbers of people. Or you will be back tomorrow, the day after and so on until you get tired of doing something without result, as routinely happens in campaigns that ‘go nowhere’ (as so many do).

So why does nonviolent action work?

Fundamentally, nonviolent action works because of its capacity to create a favourable political atmosphere (because of, for example, the way in which activist honesty builds trust), its capacity to create a non-threatening physical environment (because of the nonviolent discipline of the activists), and its capacity to alter the human psychological conditions (both innate and learned) that make people resist new ideas in the first place. This includes its capacity to reduce or eliminate fear and its capacity to ‘humanise’ activists in the eyes of more conservative sections of the community. In essence, nonviolent activists precipitate change because people are inspired by the honesty, discipline, integrity, courage and determination of the activists – despite arrests, beatings or imprisonment – and are thus inclined to identify with them. Moreover, as an extension of this, they are inclined to change their behaviour to act in solidarity.

It is for this reason too that a nonviolent action should always make explicit what behavioural change it is asking of people. Whether communicated in news conferences or via the various media, painted on banners or in other ways, a nonviolent action group should clearly communicate powerful actions that individuals can take. For example, a climate action group should consistently convey the messages to ‘Save the Climate: Become a Vegan/Vegetarian’, ‘Save the Climate: Boycott Cars’ and, like a rainforest action group, ‘Don’t Buy Rainforest Timber’.

A peace group should consistently convey such messages as  ‘Don’t Pay Taxes for War’ and ‘Divest from the Weapons Industry’ (among many other possibilities). Groups resisting the nuclear fuel cycle and fossil fuel industry in their many manifestations should consistently convey brief messages that encourage reduced consumption and a shift to more self-reliant renewable energies. See, for example, ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

http://tinyurl.com/flametree

Groups struggling to defend or reinstate indigenous sovereignty should convey compelling messages that explain what people can do in their particular context.

It is important that these messages require powerful personal action, not token responses. And it is important that these actions should not be directed at elites or lobbying elites. Elites will fall into line when we have mobilized enough people so that they are compelled to do as we wish. And not before. At the end of the Salt March in 1930 Gandhi picked up a handful of salt on the beach at Dandi. This was the signal for Indians everywhere to start collecting their own salt in violation of British law. In subsequent campaigns Gandhi called for Indians to boycott British cloth and make their own khadi (handwoven cloth). These actions were strategically focused because they undermined the profitability of British colonialism in India and nurtured Indian self-reliance.

A key reason why Mohandas K. Gandhi was that rarest of combinations – a master nonviolent strategist and a master nonviolent tactician – was because he understood the psychology of nonviolence and how to make it have political impact. Let me illustrate this point by using the nonviolent raid on the Dharasana salt works, the nonviolent action he planned as a sequel to the more famous Salt March in 1930.

On 4 May 1930 Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, advising his intention to lead a party of nonviolent activists to raid the Dharasana Salt Works to collect salt and thus intervene against the law prohibiting Indians from collecting their own salt. Gandhi was immediately arrested, as were many other prominent nationalist leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel.

Nevertheless, having planned for this contingency, under a succession of leaders (who were also progressively arrested) the raid went ahead as planned with hundreds of Indian satyagrahis (nonviolent activists) attempting to nonviolently invade the salt works. However, despite repeated attempts by these activists to walk into the salt works during a three week period, not one activist got a pinch of salt! Moreover, hundreds of satyagrahis were injured, many receiving fractured skulls or shoulders, and two were killed.

But an account of the activists’ nonviolent discipline, commitment and courage – under the steel-tipped lathi (baton) blows of the police – was reported in 1,350 newspapers around the world. As a result, this nonviolent action – which ‘failed’ to achieve the stated physical objective of seizing salt – functionally undermined support for British imperialism in India. For an account of the salt raids at Dharasana, see Thomas Weber. ‘“The Marchers Simply Walked Forward Until Struck Down”: Nonviolent Suffering and Conversion’

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0130.1993.tb00178.x/

If the activists had been preoccupied with the physical seizure of salt and, perhaps, resorted to the use of secrecy to get it, there would have been no chance to demonstrate their honesty, integrity, courage and determination – and to thus inspire empathy for their cause – although they might have got some salt! (Of course, if salt had been removed secretly, the British government could, if they had chosen, ignored it: after all, who would have known or cared? However, they could not afford to let the satyagrahis take salt openly because salt removal was illegal and failure to react would have shown the salt law – a law that represented the antithesis of Indian independence – to be ineffective.)

In summary, nonviolent activists who think strategically understand that strategic effectiveness is unrelated to whether or not the action is physically successful (provided it is strategically selected, well-designed so that it elicits one or other of the intended responses, and sincerely attempted). Psychological, and hence political, impact is gained by demonstrating qualities that inspire others and move them to act personally too. For this reason, among several others, secrecy (and the fear that drives it) is counterproductive if strategic impact is your intention.

If you are interested in planning effective nonviolent actions, a related article also explains the vital distinction between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/articles/political-objective-strategic-goal/

And if you are concerned about violent military or police responses, have a look at ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/articles/minimizing-risk-violent-repression/

For those of you who are interested in planning and acting strategically in your nonviolent struggle, whatever its focus, you might be interested in one or the other of these two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy

https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/

and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/

And if you are interested in being part of the worldwide movement to end all violence, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Struggles for peace, justice, sustainability and liberation often fail. Almost invariably, this is due to the failure to understand the psychology, politics and strategy of nonviolence. It is not complicated but it requires a little time to learn.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

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Just days after taking office, the Trump administration has set course for a conflict with China over the South China Sea that threatens military clashes and war.

President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, on Tuesday backed up an earlier assertion by the administration’s nominee for secretary of state, former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, that Washington would bar Chinese access to islets being built up by Beijing in the South China Sea.

In his first full press briefing, Spicer bluntly declared,

“The US is going to make sure that we protect our interests there.” Referring to Chinese-controlled islands in the disputed waters, he continued: “It’s a question if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we are going to make sure we defend international territories from being taken over by one country.”

The reckless character of the Trump administration’s threats was underscored by the Washington Post’s headline: “Is Trump ready for war in the South China Sea, or is his team just not being clear?” While the Post suggested the problem was unclear or misspoken remarks, Spicer’s statements were fully in line with what was said less than two weeks ago by Tillerson.

At his congressional confirmation hearing, Tillerson lashed out at China, declaring that its land reclamation activities in the South China Sea were “akin to Russia’s taking Crimea.” He warned that China’s island-building would have to stop, adding that its “access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”

These comments mark a decisive shift from Washington’s previous stance, which, nominally at least, took no position on the territorial disputes, but declared that it had a “national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. Under the Obama administration, the US Navy provocatively sent guided missile destroyers on three occasions within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around Chinese islets.

The Trump administration is directly challenging China’s control over the islets. Asked how the US would carry out its threat to bar Chinese access, Spicer said that “we’ll have more information on that” as the situation develops.

As various analysts have pointed out, the only means of barring China would be a naval and air blockade in the South China Sea. Such action, a clear breach of international law, would constitute an act of war.

The islets in the South China Sea are not “international territories,” but are occupied by various countries and subject to longstanding disputes. Washington’s cynicism and hypocrisy are staggering. It is not proposing to take action against islets occupied by rival claimants—the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan.

The Chinese foreign ministry yesterday reaffirmed that China had “indisputable sovereignty” over the islets and warned that “we are firm in safeguarding our rights and interests.” After pointing out that US had no direct claim in the South China Sea, spokeswoman Hua Chunying urged Washington to “speak and act cautiously to avoid damaging peace and stability in the area.”

An earlier editorial in the state-owned Global Times declared that any attempt to prevent China’s access to its islands would “involve large-scale war” and suggested that Tillerson “bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories.”

The willingness of US imperialism to threaten a nuclear-armed power and risk a nuclear conflagration cannot be ascribed simply to the outlook or psyche of the right-wing demagogue Donald Trump or the militaristic and fascistic individuals in his administration. While Trump’s rise to power represents a qualitative shift in global politics, the basis for the looming confrontation with China was laid by the Obama administration’s aggressive “pivot to Asia.” If Hillary Clinton, one of the chief architects of the “pivot,” had won office, her administration, whatever the differences in style, timing and tactics, would have pursued essentially the same war-mongering course.

The aim of Obama’s “pivot to Asia” was to arrest the historic decline of US imperialism and subordinate China to the “international rules based system” dominated by Washington. Trump’s advisers do not disagree with the aim, but have been scathing in denouncing the failure of the “pivot” to achieve those ends.

During his election campaign, Trump made clear that he intended to confront China across the board over trade and monetary issues, alleged cyber-spying, and some of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints—North Korea and Taiwan as well as the South China Sea. He has promised a vast expansion of the US military, including its nuclear arsenal, to back his demands with the threat of war.

A fundamental sea change is underway in global politics and economy. The election of Trump marks the final breakdown and collapse of the post-World War II order. Trump’s decision to tear up the Trans Pacific Partnership—the economic component of Obama’s “pivot”—spells the end to the era of “free trade” and multilateralism. Trump’s “America First” policy means a turn to punitive trade measures, in the first instance against China, and the return of the “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies of the 1930s that led to World War II.

The speculation by the media and governments around the world that Trump would moderate his views once in office is rapidly turning to consternation and fear. In the major capitals, calculations are being made as to how best to defend the national interest.

Germany’s economic affairs minister Sigmar Gabriel declared that Europe had to define its own interests, suggesting that it turn to China and Asia if the US starts a trade war with Beijing. Any shift towards China, particularly by the European powers, will intensify Washington’s bellicose words and actions, as it feels its geo-political position slipping away and concludes it must act sooner rather than later.

At this month’s World Economy Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Chinese President Xi Jinping presented his regime as the defender of the “liberal” capitalist trade and economic order in opposition to Washington, in a bid to increase Chinese influence among the traditional allies of the United States.

The US-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) released a report last week entitled “Preserving the Balance: A US Eurasia Defence Strategy.” It declares that the US must prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by a rival power or powers. “If a single power came to dominate either Europe or Asia, it would possess substantially greater manpower, economic and technical capacity—and thus greater military potential—than the United States. Therefore, if possible, the emergence of such a power must be resisted,” it states.

The report rules out nothing, including the use of nuclear weapons to achieve US objectives. After declaring there is “a need to rethink the problem of limited nuclear war,” it continues: “US forces must be prepared to respond to a range of stra­tegic warfare contingencies along the Eurasian periphery. The US military’s ability to conduct operations to end such a conflict promptly and on favourable terms, as well as in a manner that discourages future nuclear use, could be crucial to America’s long-term security.”

The Trump administration’s menacing threats on the South China Sea are the sharpest of warnings that the world is heading with gathering speed towards a nuclear catastrophe. But the same crisis that impels world capitalism on the road to world war impels the international working class on the road to socialist revolution.

The issue will in the end be decided by the level of political consciousness, unity and organisation of the working class, and that depends on the building of the new political leadership of the working class. That leadership—which alone is fighting to build an international movement against war on the basis of a united struggle of the working class against capitalism, the source of imperialist war—is the International Committee of the Fourth International. The urgent task is to join and help build the ICFI and its national sections.

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Trump’s Executive Order to ban Muslims from entering the US, will have devastating consequences both in the US and internationally.

It also has a bearing on America’s military agenda in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In his inauguration speech, President Donald Trump called for  the “civilized world” to unite “against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.”

It is worth noting that Trump’s Executive Order to ban Muslims coincides with the confirmation of Rep. Mike Pompeo as head of the CIA.  Pompeo is a Tea Party Republican, member of the House Intelligence Committee, with little experience in the practice of  US intelligence. 

Pompeo favors the reinstatement of “waterboarding, among other torture techniques”. He views Muslims as a threat to Christianity and Western civilization. He is identified as “a radical Christian extremist” who believes that the “global war on terrorism” (GWOT) constitutes a “war between Islam and Christianity”.

In other words, he is a firm support of the “global war on terrorism” (GWOT) doctrine, under the banner of a “holy war against Islam”.

GWOT is “On the Table” of the Trump Administration as an instrument of US intelligence. (Amply documented Al Qaeda and ISIS are “intelligence assets” i.e. constructs of the CIA. In turn, Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliated terrorists in Syria and Iraq are the foot-soldiers of US-NATO).

To put it bluntly,  both Trump and CIA Director Pompeo firmly believe in their own counter-terrorism propaganda. Continuity is ensured. The mainstay of US intelligence ops. using “Islamic terrorists” as instruments of destabilization and destruction prevails. Of relevance, the ban on Muslims entering the US is also part of a Homeland Security agenda.

It is therefore unlikely that there will be a major shift under a Trump administration in regards to America’s military agenda in the Middle East. According to Reuters: “President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders starting on Wednesday that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries”. These countries are identified as “terror prone” nations, despite the fact that the US is covertly supporting terrorism in these countries.

Sectarian profiling prevails in regards to immigration. The ban does not apply to Christian refugees from Syria and Iraq:

Trump is expected to order a multi-month ban on allowing refugees into the United States except for religious minorities escaping persecution, until more aggressive vetting is in place.

Another order will block visas being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, said the aides and experts, who asked not to be identified.

The border security measures could include directing the construction of a border wall with Mexico and other actions to reduce the number of illegal immigrants living inside the United States.

Both Trump and his nominee for Attorney general, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, (yet to be confirmed by the US Senate) have said  “they would focus the restrictions on countries whose migrants could pose a threat, rather than placing a ban on people who follow a specific religion”. Yet the executive order does not seem to make that distinction:

Other measures may include directing all agencies to finish work on a biometric identification system for non-citizens entering and exiting the United States and a crackdown on immigrants fraudulently receiving government benefits, according to the congressional aides and immigration experts.

To restrict illegal immigration, Trump has promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and to deport illegal migrants living inside the United States.Reuters, Emphasis added)

Michel Chossudovsky 

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Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) has been confirmed as CIA director, after 14 Democrats fell in line with almost all Senate Republicans Monday night.

Pompeo, who has hinted that he is open to reauthorizing torture and mass surveillance, will lead the intelligence agency under President Donald Trump.

The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

The lone dissenting Republican was Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

View the complete roll call here.

Pompeo is a Tea Party Republican who has previously referred to CIA agents who engaged in torture as “patriots.” In a series of written responses to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he indicated that he would consider reinstating waterboarding, among other torture techniques, as well as the bulk metadata collection that effectively ended in 2015 with the passage of the USA Freedom Act.

“I would expect to consult with the full Congressional Intelligence Committees on any differences that are appropriate, including any changes to law that would be required,” he wrote.

His nomination was opposed by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which noted that his written responses contradicted testimony he gave during his Senate hearing earlier this month.

“Mike Pompeo’s confirmation is a clear sign that Congress has not done enough ‘extreme vetting’ of President Trump’s nominees’ views on human rights,” said Amnesty USA’s executive director Margaret Huang. “While Pompeo sailed through his confirmation hearing, his written answers to the Senate contradict his earlier testimony and could lay the groundwork for the agency to return to torture and secret detention. Torture is a war crime and a grave human rights violation. Moving forward, Congress needs to aggressively scrutinize Pompeo’s CIA to ensure there is no backsliding into torture in the name of security.”

On the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called Pompeo “the wrong man for the job.” Wyden has been outspoken in his opposition to Pompeo, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“On issue after issue, the Congressman has taken two, three, or four positions, depending on when he says it and who he is talking to. He has done this with surveillance, with torture, with Russia, and a number of other subjects,” Wyden said.

But Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, argued that although he does “not agree with some of the views that Congressman Pompeo” holds, he “convinced me that he will follow the law banning torture.”

As The Intercept‘s Alex Emmons put it, Pompeo’s bipartisan confirmation means the Democrats failed “a crucial first test of whether [they] would present a united front to defend human rights and civil liberties in the Trump era.”

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Fake News, Propaganda and Threats to Journalism

January 25th, 2017 by Professor Piers Robinson

Threats to journalism and journalistic autonomy come in many forms. At the most extreme, journalists are directly threatened, intimidated and, all too frequently, harmed by political actors seeking to influence the ‘information environment’.

As a form of coercion, aimed at controlling what journalists write and say, threats and attacks can be understood as a form of propaganda: as a kind of ‘propaganda of the deed’ they function not only to silence individual journalists but also to send an unequivocal message to other journalists.

More common forms of propaganda involve approaches to shaping perceptions and actions through the manipulation of information. Although of a different scale to threats and killings, their effect can also be profoundly damaging to the autonomy of journalists. Understood by some to refer to any form of persuasive communication, most definitions of propaganda throughout the 20th and 21st century have recognised that, at some level, propaganda is a form of persuasion that works via manipulation and subversion of the rational will.

One important way in which propaganda manifests itself, and perhaps the one which is most frequently associated with propagandistic communication, involves some form of deception. Whether through outright lying, omission of important information, distortion or misdirection, propaganda frequently involves manipulation through deceiving people with respect to reality.

For Western publics, the most recent high-profile and well-documented example of this occurred in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During this period, through a combination of distortion and omission, US and UK government information campaigns misled many people into believing there was a clear and imminent threat from Iraqi WMD.  As Chilcot, (chair of the Iraq Inquiry) recently noted, Tony Blair went ‘beyond the facts of the case’ in promoting the war against Iraq.

Of course, recently, the issue of deception and manipulation has become a major focal point for debate in the so-called ‘fake news’ crisis. Much of this debate has been driven by concerns from within the liberal centre ground that political crises surrounding the debate in the UK over Brexit, and the election of Trump as US President, have been fuelled by the resort to outright lies by anti-establishment actors utilising alternative media outlets.

At the same time, the term ‘fake news’ has itself become a propaganda meme providing a useful shorthand to discredit information being provided by alternative media, whether truthful or deceptive, and serving to underpin the frequent allegations being levelled at Russia with respect to interference in the US elections and its military actions in Syria. At this point, no evidence has been presented to confirm the allegations being levelled at Russia. Moreover, there has been little sustained mainstream media attention to the content of the DNC (Democratic National Congress) leaks/hack which have fuelled so much of the controversy regarding the US elections and alleged Russian information warfare.

Indeed, these leaked/hacked emails, released by Wikileaks, showed that the DNC actively favoured Clinton over Sanders during the primaries whilst evidence of question fixing with CNN was also revealed. There are no serious challenges to the authenticity of these emails and, as such, they do not appear to be actual examples of fake news. This has not stopped, however, media coverage linking Russia with the leaks and, arguably, conflating all of this with a fake news/propaganda narrative. Moreover, whilst the fake news debate has been overwhelmingly focused on alternative media and external actors (i.e. Russia), little attention has been paid to the use of deception and propaganda by Western governments.

Moving beyond claims and counter-claims regarding fake news, bias and deception, it is also critical to recognise that propaganda involves coordinated actions and activities beyond simply the crafting of manipulative media messages: It also involves the mobilisation of resources and physical actions.

For example, in relation to the current Syrian conflict, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton authorised the ‘training for more than a thousand (Syrian) activists, students, and independent journalists’ in order to promote her regime change preference in 2011. More prominently, the much-lauded White Helmets Syria Civil Defence entity has been critiqued for its function as a pro-intervention propaganda toolThis group, apparently set up to rescue injured civilians in Syria, and which has been an important source for Western mainstream media outlets, is heavily funded by Western governments and associated only with opposition groups and opposition-held areas.

We are also witnessing a worrying increase in organised attempts to silence dissenting voices here in the West. For example, the apparently self-styled Propornot entity now provides a list of news sites which it claims to be distributing Russian propaganda, whilst Professorwatch blacklists US professors accused (anonymously) for alleged liberal bias and ‘anti-American values’.

It is likely that these, and similar activities, are contributing to a significant restriction of freedom of expression here in the West, as well as across non-liberal democratic states, and are inhibiting news media from performing their expected roles as watchdogs and truth seekers. Indeed, as has recently been argued by Louis Allday, individuals challenging official claims regarding Syria have frequently been met with tirades of abuse whilst former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford and mainstream commentator Peter Hitchens have recently both stated that Western publics are being profoundly misled with regard to the reality of the situation in Syria.

We must now seriously entertain the possibility that the war in Syria has involved similar, if not greater, levels of manipulation and propaganda than that which occurred in the case of the 2003 Iraq War: In a nutshell, it appears increasingly likely that a Western-backed regime-change operation in Syria, which includes the supporting and arming of extremist groups, has been obscured via a propaganda campaign aimed at demonising Assad’s autocratic regime and promoting a simplistic narrative of good vs. evil.

Does it go too far to say there is now a crisis across Western public spheres whereby propaganda and ‘fake news’ emanating from mainstream media and governments has created a situation in which there is ‘major media malfunction’?

There probably is a crisis. Government communications strategies involving deceptive combinations of exaggeration and omission, as well as probably occasional outright lies, and the organisation of entities whose objective it is to shape the information environment, including via the intimidation of dissent and free thought, mean that journalistic autonomy and freedom are under severe threat.

When a country can be invaded based upon spurious and bogus claims regarding weapons of mass destruction whilst a second subjected to a five-year-long regime-change war based upon, it seems likely, propaganda and lies, all within the space of 10 years, there are signs that something is seriously wrong. The means are less brutal than those instances of threat and violence usually seen outside the West. But they are, nonetheless, effective. Before casting stones, the West needs to get its own house in order.

Professor Piers Robinson is chair in politics, society and political journalism at the the University of Sheffield.

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Fidel Castro en Oran

January 24th, 2017 by Ahmed Bensaada

Era un día hermoso y cálido el mes  de mayo de 1972. Nubes blancas y algodonosas  salpicaban ese cielo azul tan típico de la primavera oranesa. No faltaba más que el triángulo rojo y la “Estrella Solitaria” para perfeccionar la bandera del país del huésped  del día. Pero el tiempo no había osado empujar la extravagancia  hasta ese punto, ni siquiera  si, para ser franco, el visitante del día valía  la pena. Es cierto que Oran, capital del oeste de Argelia, no estaba acostumbrado a recibir a  personajes de esta magnitud. Y ese día, una década después de la independencia de Argelia, el invitado era  un icono Fidel Castro, en persona!

El “Líder Máximo“, el compañero del Che, el ilustre “barbudo“, el rebelde de la Sierra Maestra, el héroe de la “Bahía de Cochinos”, “El Comandante“: Estaba en Oran.

Desde  la altura de mis 14 años,   yo me había abierto paso, no sin dificultad, a través de una densa multitud, compuesta por decenas de miles de personas que venían a reunirse en esta plaza que acogía este memorable acontecimiento.

El que desafiaba a la potencia  más grande  del mundo  a partir de su  minúscula isla del Caribe, situada  a una distancia ridícula de las costas  norteamericanas, estaba allí delante de mí, en  carne y hueso. Con una dicción tan apasionada como teatral, él comenzó su discurso:

« Querido compañero Houari Boumediene ;

Queridos camaradas dirigentes del FLN y del Gobierno Argelino ;

Queridos amigos de Orán ».

Las primeras frases en español de “Comandante”, amplificados por los altavoces potentes, tuvieron una resonancia particular en este inmenso espacio. De hecho, no había más que levantar la cabeza y mirar hacia el norte, para ver, majestuosamente ubicado en una cresta del macizo de Murdjadjo, la famosa fortaleza de Santa Cruz  que domina El  Bahia. Este imponente edificio, erigido entre 1577 y 1604 es una de las grandes obras que testimonian la ocupación española de la ciudad durante casi tres siglos (1509-1792). Oran, la más hispánica de las ciudades argelinas, guarda todavía las improntas de platos y palabras que dan testimonio de esta presencia que  no ha sido realmente interrumpida más que con la independencia de Argelia en 1962.

Y yo, que he crecido en el viejo barrio de Scalera (escalera : escalier en espagnol), yo sabía algo.  En Orán a la figue de barbarie se le llama « chumbo », al l’eau de javel « lejía »,  a l’armoire « armario » y  la paella et la « calentita »  son platos auténticamente oraneses!

Azares de la  historia,   España conquistó Oran  y Cuba casi  al mismo tiempo.  En efecto,  el conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar coloniza  Cuba en 1511  y funda La Habana en 1514.  ¿Otra coincidencia?   La liberación de los pueblos cubano y argelino  ha sido arrancada con algunos años de intervalo (Cuba : 1959 ; Argelia : 1962).

El Comandante continúa  expresando cada vez cosas más bellas:

“Estamos aquí con ustedes, simplemente porque en Argelia había una revolución y porque en Cuba había una revolución […]. […] Cada combate, cada batalla, cada acción de la lucha del pueblo argelino ha sido seguida cada día  por nuestro pueblo. La lucha heroica contra el ejército colonialista de Francia, la firmeza del pueblo argelino, su patriotismo, ha suscitado enormemente la simpatía en nuestro país”

Fidel no exageraba en nada la  simpatía  que sentía el pueblo cubano hacia la revolución argelina y su lucha heroica contra la colonización francesa. Entre 1956 y 1957, más de 20 artículos sobre la Guerra de Independencia de Argelia fueron publicados por Bohemia, el diario cubano de oposición al dictador cubano Batista. Ilustrado con fotografías, los artículos  relataban tanto la lucha revolucionaria en Argelia como los éxitos militares  del FLN (Frente de Liberación Nacional de Argelia) o la práctica de la tortura por los franceses. Y los títulos fueron elocuentes: “Lágrimas, terror y sangre en Argelia ” (« Larmes, terreur et sang en Algérie », Bohemia, 14 avril 1957    ) o “¡Así es la guerra en Argelia!” (« Ainsi est la guerre en Algérie ! », Bohemia, 7 juillet 1957), etc.

Pero aunque Fidel tuvo la decencia de no subrayarlo  públicamente, la simpatía del pueblo cubano no ha sido solo sentimientos “protocolarios”  entre dos naciones separadas por miles de kilómetros. Más allá de la lengua, de la religión, de la geografía y de la cultura, Fidel y Cuba han ayudado concretamente a Argelia a hacerse un lugar en el concierto de las naciones, a recobrar su independencia, a preservar su integridad territorial y a cuidar a su pueblo.

Fidel añadió:

« En esta época, nadie podría pensar en un reencuentro como éste. La solidaridad era de otro tipo. ¿Qué se podía hacer para sostener la lucha argelina, la causa argelina, qué se podía hacer para cooperar con el pueblo argelinoen esta combate?>>

Y estas preguntas no  han quedado sin respuesta, sino todo lo contrario. Según Giraldo Mazola, ex embajador de Cuba en Argelia (1974-1978), una delegación del gobierno provisional de la República argelina (GPRA) fue recibida en 1960 por las autoridades cubanas. El 27 de junio de 1961, sólo 2 meses después del desembarco de la Bahía de Cochinos (abril de 1961), Cuba reconoció  al gobierno de Argelia en el exilio. Esto no era insignificante: Cuba fue el primer país del hemisferio occidental en hacerlo, lo que le valió las represalias del gobierno francés

El apoyo a la causa argelina durante su revolución no se detiene allí. Hacia finales de octubre de 1961, Fidel envió un emisario, el joven periodista argentino Jorge Ricardo Masetti, para encontrarse con los combatientes argelinos en Túnez y preguntar sobre sus necesidades.  Masetti encuentra allí a los líderes del FLN, entre ellos  Benyoucef Benkhedda, el presidente del gobierno provisional de la República argelina (GPRA)

Dos meses más tarde, el barco cubano Bahia de Nipe  deja La Habana en dirección a Casablanca (Marruecos). La carga que transportaba comprendía 1500 fusiles, más de 30 ametralladoras y  4 morteros de fabricación estadounidense. Fue transportada hacia un campo del FLN instalado en la proximidad de la ciudad de Oujda, en la frontera argelina.  Este episodio es reconocido como la primera ayuda militar enviada por Cuba a África.

A su regreso, el Bahía de Nipe llevará a 76 combatientes argelinos heridos  y 20 niños argelinos procedentes de los campos de refugiados, para la mayor parte de los orfelinatos.   Como explica el profesor Piero Gleijeses, la ayuda otorgada por Cuba a Argelia no tenía nada que ver con el conflicto Este-Oeste. Sus raíces son anteriores a la victoria castrista en 1959 y  señala la identificación de un gran número de cubanos con la lucha del pueblo argelino.

El apoyo del pueblo cubano no se detiene con la  independencia de Argelia en 1962. Continúa  especialmente durante lo que se llamó las “arenas de la Guerra”, un conflicto fronterizo entre Marruecos y Argelia. Hassan II, joven rey de Marruecos había decidido “ampliar” su país a expensas de la joven Argelia, exangüe después de 132 años de colonización y casi 8 años de guerra sin tregua  contra el colonialismo francés.  De este modo,  el  25 de septiembre de 1963, poco más de un año después de la independencia de Argelia, las tropas del monarca cherifiano invadirán el territorio argelino para ocupar los importantes puestos fronterizos  de Hassi Beida y Tindjoub Hassan II, que había accedido  al trono apenas dos años y medio antes, inicia un sangrante conflicto  que causa docenas de muertos y cientos de heridos.

Argelia se apresuró a pedir ayuda militar a Cuba para hacer frente a la invasión marroquí. No precisaron las autoridades cubanas más que algunas horas para aceptar el apoyo a la Argelia agredida. A pesar de la violencia del huracán Flora,  uno de los peores desastres  naturales en décadas que devastó la parte oriental de la isla matando a más de 1.000 personas, Cuba fletó dos barcos con destino a Argelia: el Aracelio Iglesias  y el Andrés González Lines.

El primero arriba al puerto de Orán el 21 de octubre de 1963. A bordo lleva  un batallón de tanques compuesto de  22 T-34 rusos y 50 técnicos militares cubanos. El segundo llegó a Orán el 28 de octubre con un batallón de infantería y un cargamento de fusiles, cañones y morteros. Con el resto de las tropas que llegaron al aeropuerto de Orán en avión el 29 de octubre, los efectivos cubanos ascendían a 686 militares. Y eso no era todo: El Andres Gonzalez transportaba un regalo para el pueblo argelino: 4744 toneladas de azúcar

Las fuerzas cubanas no tuvieron necesidad de participar en el combate  contra el ejército marroquí. La llegada de la ayuda masiva de Cuba (que había sido señalada  en la prensa) precipitó un acuerdo de alto el fuego entre los dos países vecinos, firmado el 29 de octubre en Bamako.

Los cubanos no tomaron el camino de regreso inmediatamente después del cese de hostilidades.  Ellos permanecieron en Argelia hasta el 17 de marzo de 1964 para formar a los militares argelinos en el manejo de las armas que ellos habían llevado. El responsable cubano de la misión declarará que todo el armamento fue ofrecido al ejército argelino « sin coste alguno, ni un céntimo ».

El compromiso de Cuba junto a  Argelia ha sido excepcional no solo por la ayuda material y humana otorgada por el país hermano, sino también por el hecho de que dañaba a sus intereses como fue el caso en 1961. En efecto, el  apoyo cubano a Argelia levantó la ira de Marruecos que rompió relaciones diplomáticas con Cuba el 31 de de octubre de, 1963 y canceló un enorme contrato de suministro de azúcar cubano de un millón de toneladas  por  3 años. Un déficit de $ 184 millones de dólares cuando los Estados Unidos trataban de asfixiar a Cuba y Fidel Castro.

Pero no era solo la política internacionalista militar cubana la que comenzó en Argelia. La tradición médica internacionalista también comenzó allí. Bajo la iniciativa de Fidel Castro, el primer grupo médico llegó a Argelia el 24 de mayo de 1963. Fue un momento en que Cuba necesitaba su personal médico a causa del éxodo post-revolucionario. Sin embargo, como declaró en esa época  Machado Ventura, el ministro cubano de Salud Pública, “el pueblo argelino tenía más necesidad que nosotros y lo merecía”.  Era un acto de verdadera solidaridad  que no aportaba ningún beneficio tangible Cuba y que ocasionaba  costes materiales para el país.  La presencia médica cubana nunca ha cesado  desde entonces. Todavía existe en la actualidad en diversas regiones del territorio de Argelia y es muy apreciada por las poblaciones locales.

Para Piero Gleijeses, no hay ninguna duda: « Argelia ha sido el primer amor de Cuba en África». Un amor noble, desinteresado, humanista, que promete la dignidad de los pueblos. Además, « su  ayuda a Argelia refleja un nivel de idealismo que no es habitual en las relaciones internacionales de las grandes o pequeñas potencias […]».

Hay que reconocer que Fidel Castro, el estratega de esta incomparable política, es la conciencia de que se interpone entre los colonizadores y los pueblos oprimidos, entre los que quieren dominar el mundo y los que sólo buscan vivir en paz entre las naciones depredadoras  y sus presas indefensas.

Es preciso admitir, sin ofender a bienpensante occidental “mainstream”, los que quieren dominar el mundo,  aquellos contra los cuales Fidel se ha levantado durante su vida…

El discurso llega a su fin. El Líder Máximo acaba en apoteosis, bajo las aclamaciones de una multitud jubilosa:

« ¡Viva la Revolución Argelina!, ¡Viva la amistad entre Argelia y Cuba !

¡Patria o Muerte !, ¡Venceremos! »

Cada vez que paso por este lugar al azar de mis viajes a Oran, siempre me  parece oír en torbellino estas palabras y  resonar estas voces.

A partir de ahora, levantaré  la cabeza hacia el cielo azul y buscaré  el rostro de Fidel entre las nubes blancas y algodonosas. Quién sabe, con un poco de suerte, lo escucharé  decirme:

« ¡Hasta la victoria siempre, querido amigo de Orán ! »

Ahmed Bensaada

P.S. : Al anuncio de la muerte de Fidel Castro,  Argelia decretó 8 días de luto nacional, un día menos que Cuba.

Articulo en francés :

Acr615435.tmp.pdf

Fidel Castro à Oran

Fuente original : Afrique Asie

Traducción : Tercerainformacion.es

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Fidel Castro a Orano

January 24th, 2017 by Ahmed Bensaada

Era una bella e calda giornata del mese di maggio 1972. Soffici e bianche nuvole decoravano quel cielo blu così tipico della primavera oranese. Mancava solo il triangolo rosso e la «Estrella Solitaria» per riprodurre al completo la bandiera dell’ospite del giorno. Ma il meteo non aveva osato spingere la sua stravaganza fino a questo punto, per quanto – a essere sinceri – per l’ospite del giorno ne sarebbe valsa la pena. Vero è che Orano, capitale dell’ovest algerino, non era adusa a ricevere ospiti di questa levatura. E quel giorno, un decennio dopo l’indipendenza dell’Algeria, l’invitato era una icona: Fidel Castro in persona!

Il «Líder Máximo», il compagno del Che, l’illustre «barbudo», il ribelle della Sierra Maestra, l’eroe della «Baia dei Porci», «El Comandante»: era ad Orano.

 Fidel Castro a Orano, nel maggio 1972

Dal basso dei miei 14 anni, mi ero aperto, non senza difficoltà, una strada attraverso una folla densa, composta da decine di migliaia di persone venute ad ammassarsi nella piazza che ospitava il memorabile avvenimento.

Fidel Castro e Boumedienne per le strade di Orano

Colui che sfidava la più grande Potenza del mondo dalla sua minuscola isola dei Caraibi, posta ad una distanza ridicola dalle coste statunitensi, stava là, dinanzi a me, in carne ed ossa. Con un tono tanto appassionata quanto teatrale, cominciò il suo discorso:

«Querido compañero Houari Boumedienne ;

Queridos camaradas dirigentes del FLN y del Gobierno Argelino ;

Queridos amigos de Orán» [1].

Le prime frasi in spagnolo del «Comandante», amplificate da gracchianti altoparlanti, ebbero una risonanza particolare in questo immenso spazio. Bastava infatti sollevare lo sguardo verso nord, per vedere, maestosamente appollaiato su una cresta del massiccio del Murdjadjo, il famoso forte di Santa Cruz che domina El Bahia [2]. Questo imponente edificio, costruito tra il 1577 e il 1604, è una delle maggiori opere che testimoniano dell’occupazione spagnola durata quasi tre secoli (1509 – 1792). Orano, la più ispanica delle città algerine, conserva ancora nel suo dialetto tracce delle pietanze e delle parole che testimoniano di questa presenza mai realmente interrotta, se non con l’indipendenza dell’Algeria nel 1962.

E io, che sono cresciuto nel vecchio quartiere di Scalera (escalera: scala in spagnolo), ne sapevo qualcosa. A Orano, il fico d’India si chiama «chumbo», la candeggina «lejía», l’armadio «armario» e la paëlla e la «calentita» sono piatti «autenticamente» oranesi!

Il forte di Santa Cruz, che domina la città di Orano

Ironia della storia, la Spagna ha conquistato Orano e Cuba quasi contemporaneamente. Infatti il conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar colonizzò Cuba nel 1511 e vi fondò La Avana nel 1514. Altra coincidenza? La liberazione dei popoli cubano e algerino è stata strappata a solo qualche anno di intervallo l’una dall’altra (Cuba: 1959; Algeria: 1962).

El Comandante continuò a parlare:

«Siamo qui con voi semplicemente perché in Algeria vi è stata una rivoluzione e perché a Cuba vi è stata una rivoluzione […]. […] ogni lotta, ogni battaglia, ogni azione del popolo algerino è stata seguita, momento per momento, dal nostro popolo. L’eroica lotta contro l’esercito colonialista della Francia, la fermezza del popolo algerino, il suo patriottismo, hanno suscitato enormi simpatie nel nostro paese»

Fidel non esagerava per nulla la simpatia che il popolo cubano provava per la rivoluzione algerina e la sua eroica lotta contro la colonizzazione francese. Tra il 1956 e il 1957, più di 20 articoli sulla guerra di indipendenza algerina furono pubblicati da Bohemia, il giornale cubano di opposizione al dittatore Batista. Corredati da foto, gli articoli riportavano fedelmente sia notizie sulla lotta rivoluzionaria in Algeria, che sui successi militari del FLN (Fronte di liberazione nazionale algerino), e anche sull’uso della tortura da parte dei Francesi [3]. E i titoli erano eloquenti: «Lágrimas, terror y sangre en Argelia» («Lacrime, terrore e sangue in Algeria», Bohemia, 14 aprile 1957) o «¡ Asi es la guerra en Argelia!» («Così è la guerra in Algeria!», Bohemia, 7 luglio 1957), ecc.

Ma, per quanto Fidel abbia avuto la sensibilità di non sottolinearlo pubblicamente, la simpatia del popolo cubano non si era limitata ai sentimenti «protocollari» tra due nazioni separate da migliaia di chilometri. Al di là della lingua, della religione, della geografia e della cultura, Fidel e Cuba hanno aiutato concretamente l’Algeria a costruirsi un posto nel concerto delle nazioni, a recuperare la propria indipendenza, a preservare la propria integrità territoriale e ad assicurare cure mediche al suo popolo.

Fidel disse ancora:

«All’epoca, nessuno poteva immaginare un incontro come quello di oggi. La solidarietà era di altro tipo. Che cosa potevamo fare per sostenere la lotta algerina, la causa algerina, cosa potevamo fare per cooperare col popolo algerino in questa lotta?»

E questi interrogativi non erano solo retorici, tutt’altro. Secondo Giraldo Mazola, ex ambasciatore di Cuba in Algeria (1974-1978), una delegazione del Governo provvisorio della Repubblica algerina (GPRA) venne ricevuta fin dal 1960 dalle autorità cubane. Il 27 giugno 1961, appena due mesi dopo lo sbarco alla Baia dei Porci (aprile 1961), Cuba riconobbe il governo algerino in esilio. E non fu qualcosa di semplicemente simbolico. Cuba fu il primo paese dell’emisfero occidentale a farlo, cosa che gli costò le rappresaglie del governo francese [4].

L’aiuto alla causa algerina durante la sua rivoluzione non si limitò a questo. Verso la fine di ottobre 1961, Fidel Castro inviò un emissario, il giovane giornalista argentino Jorge Ricardo Masetti, per incontrare i combattenti algerini a Tunisi e informarsi sulle loro necessità. Masetti incontrò i leader del FLN, tra cui Benyoucef Benkhedda, il presidente del governo provvisorio della Repubblica algerina (GPRA).

Jorge Ricardo Masetti in compagnia del Che

Due mesi dopo la nave cubana Bahia de Nipe salpò da La Avana in direzione di Casablanca (Marocco). Il suo carico comprendeva 1500 fucili, più di 30 mitragliatrici e 4 mortai di fabbricazione statunitense. Venne trasportato in un campo dello FLN nelle vicinanze della città di Oujda, sulla frontiera algerina. Questo episodio viene ricordato come il primissimo aiuto militare di Cuba all’Africa.

Nel viaggio di ritorno, il Bahia de Nipe portò 76 combattenti algerini feriti e 20 bambini algerini provenienti da campi di rifugiati, per lo più orfani. Come spiega il professore Piero Gleijeses, l’aiuto fornito da Cuba all’Algeria non aveva niente a che vedere con la Guerra Fredda e il conflitto Est-Ovest. Le sue ragioni affondavano molto in profondità e sono anteriori alla vittoria castrista del 1959, attenendo più al fatto che un gran numero di Cubani si identificava con la lotta del popolo algerino [5].

Il sostegno del popolo cubano non si interruppe con la conquista dell’indipendenza da parte dell’Algeria nel 1962. Proseguì, soprattutto durante quella che venne chiamata la «Guerra delle sabbie», un conflitto di frontiera tra il Marocco e l’Algeria. Hassan II, il giovane del re del Marocco aveva deciso di «ingrandire» il suo paese a spese della giovane Algeria, esangue dopo 132 anni di colonizzazione e quasi 8 anni di guerra spietata contro il colonialismo francese. Così, il 25 settembre 1963, poco più di un anno dopo l’indipedenza dell’Algeria, le truppe del monarca dello sceriffato invasero il territorio algerino per occupare le importanti postazioni frontaliere di Hassi-Beida e Tindjoub [6]. Hassan II, che era stato incoronato solo due anni e mezzo prima, diede inizio ad un sanguinoso conflitto che provocò decine di morti e centinaia di feriti [7].

La guerra delle sabbie

L’Algeria si affrettò a chiedere aiuto militare a Cuba per fronteggiare l’invasione marocchina. Bastarono solo poche ore alle autorità cubane per accettare di aiutare l’Algeria aggredita. Nonostante la violenza dell’uragano Flora, una delle peggiori catastrofi naturali degli ultimi decenni che devastò la parte orientale dell’isola uccidendo più di 1000 persone, Cuba noleggiò due navi da mandare in Algeria: l’Aracelio Iglesias e l’Andres Gonzalez Lines. La prima attraccò al porto di Orano il 21 ottobre 1963. A bordo aveva un battaglione di carri composto da 22 T-34 russi e 50 tecnici militari cubani [8]. La seconda giunse ad Orano il 28 ottobre con un battaglione di fanteria e un carico di fucili, cannoni e mortai. Col resto delle truppe che giunsero all’aeroporto di Orano in aereo, l’effettivo cubano raggiunse il numero di 686 militari. E non è tutto: l’Andres Gonzalez Lines trasportava anche un regalo al popolo algerino: 4744 tonnellate di zucchero [9] !

Le forze cubane non ebbero bisogno di partecipare ai combattimenti contro l’esercito marocchino. L’arrivo degli aiuti massicci provenienti da Cuba (che era stata segnalato dalla stampa) ha precipitato un accordo di cessate-il-fuoco tra i due paesi vicini, firmato il 29 ottobre a Bamako.

I Cubani non ripresero la via del ritorno immediatamente dopo l’arresto delle ostilità. Restarono in Algeria fino al 17 marzo 1964 per formare alcuni militari algerini all’uso delle armi che avevano portato. Il responsabile cubano della missione confesserà che l’intero armamentario venne offerto all’esercito algerino «senza ricaricare nemmeno un centesimo» [10].

L’impegno di Cuba nei confronti dell’Algeria è stato eccezionale per l’aiuto materiale e umano offerto al paese fratello, ma anche per il fatto che esso nuoceva agli interessi di Cuba, come fu nel 1961. Infatti il sostegno cubano all’Algeria suscitò le ire del Marocco, che ruppe le relazioni diplomatiche con Cuba il 31 ottobre 1963 e annullò un colossale contratto di acquisto di zucchero cubano per un milione di tonnellate in tre anni. Una perdita di 184 milioni di dollari, proprio nel momento in cui gli Stati Uniti tentavano di asfissiare Cuba e Fidel Castro [11].

Ma si trattava della politica internazionalista militare cubana, che proprio in Algeria mosse i suoi primi passi. E in Algeria si avviò anche la tradizione medica internazionalista. Per iniziativa di Fidel Castro, il primo gruppo di medici giunse in Algeria il 24 maggio 1963. Era un momento in cui Cuba aveva bisogno del suo personale medico, a causa dell’esodo di professionisti prodotto dalla rivoluzione. Ma, come sottolineò all’epoca Machado Ventura, il ministro cubano della sanità pubblica, «il popolo algerino ne aveva più bisogno di noi e se lo meritava». Era un atto di vera solidarietà che non portava alcun beneficio tangibile a Cuba e che comportava costi materiali per il paese [12]. La presenza medica cubana non è mai cessata. La si trova ancora oggi in diverse regioni del paese ed è apprezzatissima dalla popolazione locale [13].

 

Ospedale oftalmologico “Amicizia Algeria-Cuba”

Per Piero Gleijeses, non c’è alcun dubbio: «L’Algeria è stato il primo amore di Cuba in Africa». Un amore nobile, disinteressato, umanitario, che promuove la dignità dei popoli. Inoltre, «il suo aiuto all’Algeria riflette un livello di idealismo che è rarissimo nelle relazioni diplomatiche delle grandi e piccole potenze […]» [14].

 

Bisogna riconoscere che Fidel Castro, lo stratega di questa incomparabile politica, rappresenta la coscienza che si leva tra i colonizzatori e i popoli oppressi, tra quelli che vogliono dominare il mondo e quelli che vogliono solo vivere in pace, tra le nazioni predatrici e le loro prede indifese.

Occorre ammetterlo, non se ne dolgano i benpensanti occidentali «mainstream», quegli stessi che difendono coloro contro i quali Fidel si è levato nel corso di tutta la sua vita…

Il discorso giunse al termine. Il Líder Máximo lo concluse alla grande, tra le acclamazioni festose della folla:

«¡Viva la Revolución Argelina!, ¡Viva la amistad entre Argelia y Cuba!

¡Patria o Muerte !, ¡Venceremos! » [15]

Quando mi capita di passare per questa piazza, trovandomi per caso ad Orano, mi sembra sempre che queste parole ancora volteggino nell’aria e che quella voce ancora risuoni.

D’ora in poi, leverò lo sguardo verso l’azzurro e cercherò il volto di Fidel tra le nuvole bianche e soffici. Chissà che con un po’ di fortuna non lo intenda dirmi:

«¡Hasta la victoria siempre, querido amigo de Orán!» [16]

 

P.S.: All’annuncio della morte di Fidel Castro, l’Algeria ha decretato 8 giorni di lutto nazionale, solo uno in meno rispetto a quelli decretati a Cuba.

 

 Bandiera a lutto, al Conoslato generale di Algeria a Montreal, per la morte di Fidel Castro

 

 

Ahmed Bensaada

 

Acr615435.tmp.pdf

Fidel Castro à Oran

italiano : http://www.ossin.org/uno-sguardo-al-mondo/documenti/2064-fidel-castro-a-orano

Note e riferimenti

1- «Caro compagno Houari Boumedienne; cari compagni del FLN e del governo algerino; cari amici di Orano».

Il discorso completo di Fidel Castro, pronunciato ad Orano il 12 maggio 1972, lo si può leggere all’indirizzo seguente: http://www.fidelcastro.cu/es/discursos/discurso-pronunciado-por-el-comandante-fidel-castro-en-la-ciudad-de-oran-argelia

2- El Bahia è il soprannome arabo della città di Orano e vuol dire «La Radiosa».

3- Rodriguez Drissi, Susannah, « Between Orientalism and Affective Identification : A Paradigm and Four Case Studies towards the Inclusion of the Moor in Cuban Literary and Cultural Studies », Thesi di Ph.D., Università di Los Angeles (UCLA), 2012, p. 124.

4- Giraldo Mazola, «La independencia del pueblo argelino nuestro pueblo la siente como propia», Granma, 5 luglio 2012, http://www.granma.cu/granmad/2012/07/05/interna/artic01.html

5- Piero Gleijeses, «La primera experiencia cubana en África: Argelia, 1961-1965», Temas No. 16, Ottobre 1998 – Giugno 1999

6- Idem

7- Alexander Mikaberidze, «Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World : A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1», ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara (USA), 2011, p.797.

8- William J. Durch, «The Cuban Military in Africa and the Middle East : From Algeria to Angola», Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. XI, N° 1 &. 2. Spring/Summer 1978. 34-74

9- Vedi rif. 5

10- Idem

11- Yasmina Allouche, «Algeria and Cuba allied by a shared revolutionary struggle», The New Arab, 27 ottobre 2016, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/10/28/algeria-and-cuba-allied-by-a-shared-revolutionary-struggle

12- Vedi rif. 5

13- Alex MacDonald, «Fidel Castro laisse au Moyen-Orient un héritage durable», Arrêt sur Info, 27 novembre 2016, http://arretsurinfo.ch/fidel-castro-laisse-au-moyen-orient-un-heritage-durable/

14- Vedi rif. 5

15- «Viva la rivoluzione algerina! Viva l’amicizia tra l’Algeria e Cuba! Patria o Morte! Vinceremo!»

16- «Fino alla vittoria sempre, caro amico di Orano!»

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trump

Divided Nation: President Trump “Declares War” on Ruling Elite as Media and Protesters Declare War on Him

By Joachim Hagopian, January 24 2017

Two extreme, very polarized paradigms have emerged as President Donald Trump takes command of the White House. After the shattered hopes and fraud perpetrated by America’s first African-American president, Trump supporters naively believe they’ve elected their “great white hope” of a president who will “make America great again,” taking at face value his “America comes first” rhetoric.

Chelsea Manning

Obama’s “Pathological Legacy”: Heartless War Crimes, “Saving the Victims”. “Political Munchausen Syndrome” by Proxy

By Prof. James Petras, January 24 2017

The malady, common among political leaders who commit heartless crimes while craving popular adulation as heroes and misunderstood saints, is ‘Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ (PMSP). PMSP best explains the pathologic drive of politicians and policy makers who inflict relentless, systematic mass destruction and then intervene in a most theatrical manner to save a few victims.

CIA-trump

The Revolt of the US Intelligence Community: Future Battles with President Donald Trump

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 24 2017

Factionalism and fury are basic ingredients of the US Republic. Designed as a classic response to the lynch mob fantasy of direct democracy, and the weakness of unaccountable monarchy, those behind the US constitution contrived a select form of paternal snobbery: letting groups fight it out in the amphitheatre of politics. Such a battle would always adhere to certain demarcations of power along the separation of powers.

gambia

USAFRICOM’s Neo-colonial Dominance in West Africa: Behind the Change of Government in Gambia

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 24 2017

Ousted Gambian President Yahya Jammeh was flown out of his country on Friday January 20 after the military intervention of troops from neighboring Senegal and air support from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Jammeh had initially accepted the results of the elections until the following week when he went on national television to challenge the authenticity of the poll claiming there were gross irregularities. However, ECOWAS and their western imperialist supporters were determined to act immediately in order to remove Jammeh not only from his post but from the country.

Mideast Syria

The War in Syria, Debunking Lies and Fake News: Eva Bartlett’s Canada Tour

By Global Research, January 24 2017

We are very pleased to inform you that the Canadian Peace Congress and the Syria Solidarity Movement are co-sponsoring this speaking tour featuring Eva Bartlett, the courageous independent Canadian journalist who has been exposing the lies and misinformation spread by Western imperialist governments and the mainstream corporate-controlled media about the ongoing conflict in Syria.

russia-usa

The Russians Are Coming

By Oliver Stone, January 24 2017

As the “failing” (to quote Trump) New York Times degenerates into a Washington Post organization with its stagnant Cold War vision of a 1950s world where the Russians are to blame for most everything — Hillary’s loss, most of the aggression and disorder in the world, the desire to destabilize Europe, etc. — the Times has added the issue of ‘fake news’ to reassert its problematic role as the dominant voice for the Washington establishment.

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El pasado 16 de enero del 2017, la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ) anunció que Costa Rica inició un nuevo procedimiento contencioso contra Nicaragua ante la CIJ, esta vez debido a la presencia de un campamento militar ubicado en la playa contigua a la Laguna de Portillos en la costa caribeña, correspondiente al último sector de la frontera entre ambos (véase nota de La Nación). Con esta demanda (ver texto integral e inglés), ambos ribereños del Río San Juan suman la cuarta demanda en los últimos seis años, una cifra nunca registrada en los estrados de la justicia internacional (Nota 1), y que denota una capacidad de negociación de ambos aparatos diplomáticos bastante reducida.

Costa Rica y Nicaragua en La Haya: una sostenida presencia de dos Estados ante el juez internacional

Por más conflictivas sean las relaciones entre dos Estados vecinos, nunca se había observado en la historia un uso tan sostenido como recurrente del juez internacional. Con relación a canales de diálogo y concertación, en Costa Rica se ha podido apreciar en años recientes las presiones recibidas por parte de ministros y de diputados, incluyendo a Presidentes de lo que se considera el Primer Poder de la República (Congreso) para que no viajen a Nicaragua. El desaconsejar a autoridades políticas de Costa Rica viajar a Nicaragua para reunirse con sus homólogos nicaragüenses usualmente encuentra su origen en el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de San José. En marzo del 2015, se invocaron “razones de Estado” para cancelar la visita prevista a Nicaragua del Presidente del Congreso costarricense, Henry Mora (véase nota de CRHoy).

En una emisión de radio en France Culture del pasado 2 de mayo del 2016, se habló de una verdadera “sociologie du contentieux” por parte de un experimentado jurista como lo es el Profesor Serge Sur (Profesor emérito de la Universidad de Paris II y ex juez Ad Hoc en la CIJ) (Nota 2). Según este experto, hay sectores que, de ambos lados del Río San Juan, encuentran algún tipo de beneficios y de ventajas en mantener tensa la relación, con la consiguiente judicialización de cada controversia entre ambos Estados.

Para tener una idea más completa de esta inusual presencia en La Haya de ambos ribereños del San Juan en años recientes, se puede determinar cuánto representa en el quehacer diario de la CIJ, a cargo de otros casos: al revisar el detalle de la lista de casos pendientes de resolución ante la CIJ, se puede apreciar que de trece casos pendientes , tres corresponden a casos entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua (véase listado oficial al 21/01/2017).

La posición externada por Costa Rica a la CIJ

En el comunicado de prensa de la CIJ del 16 de enero del 2017 (ver texto en inglés), se precisa que:

In its Application, Costa Rica asks the Court to “determine the precise location of the land boundary separating both ends of the Los Portillos/Harbor Head Lagoon sandbar from Isla Portillos, and in doing so to determine that the only Nicaraguan territory existing today in the area of Isla Portillos is limited to the enclave consisting of Los Portillos/Harbor Head Lagoon and the sandbar separating the Lagoon from the Caribbean Sea, insofar as this sandbar remains above water at all times and thus this enclave is capable of constituting territory appertaining to a State”. It claims that “the land boundary runs today from the northeastern corner of the Lagoon by the shortest line to the Caribbean Sea and from the northwestern corner of the Lagoon by the shortest line to the Caribbean Sea”. The Applicant also requests the International Court of Justice “to adjudge and declare that, by establishing and maintaining a new military camp on the beach of Isla Portillos, Nicaragua has violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Costa Rica, and is in breach of the Judgment of the Court of 16 December 2015” in the case concerning Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua). Consequently, Costa Rica “further requests the Court to declare that Nicaragua must withdraw its military camp situated in Costa Rican territory and fully comply with the Court’s 2015 Judgment”. Costa Rica indicates that it “reserves its rights to seek any further remedies with respect to any damage that Nicaragua has [caused] or may cause to its territory”.

Foto satelital extraída de artículo de La Nación

Mapa indicando la ubicación del campamento militar de Nicaragua, según artículo de La Nación.

El texto en francés (véase comunicado oficial de la CIJ) se lee de la siguiente forma:

Dans sa requête, le Costa Rica prie la Cour «de déterminer l’emplacement précis de la frontière terrestre séparant les deux extrémités du banc de sable d’Isla Portillos, et, ce faisant, de dire que le seul territoire nicaraguayen existant aujourd’hui dans la zone d’Isla Portillos se limite à l’enclave composée de la lagune de Los Portillos/Harbor Head et du banc de sable qui sépare la lagune de la mer des Caraïbes, dans la mesure où ce banc de sable émerge en permanence et où cette enclave peut constituer un territoire relevant d’un Etat. Il soutient que «la frontière terrestre court aujourd’hui du coin nord-est de la lagune à la mer des Caraïbes par la ligne la plus courte et du coin nord-ouest de la lagune à la mer des Caraïbes par la ligne la plus courte». Le demandeur prie également la Cour internationale de Justice de «dire et juger qu’en établissant et maintenant un nouveau camp militaire sur la plage d’Isla Portillos, le Nicaragua a violé la souveraineté et l’intégrité territoriale du Costa Rica et contrevient à l’arrêt du 16 décembre 2015 de la Cour» en l’affaire relative à Certaines activités menées par le Nicaragua dans la région frontalière (Costa-Rica c. Nicaragua). En conséquence, le Costa Rica «prie encore la Cour de dire que le Nicaragua doit retirer son camp militaire situé en territoire costa-ricien et se conformer intégralement à l’arrêt de 2015 de la Cour». Le Costa Rica indique qu’il «se réserve le droit de former tous autres recours utiles à raison des dommages que le Nicaragua a causés ou pourrait causer à son territoire».

El campamento militar de Nicaragua en la playa apareció en fotos divulgadas en la prensa en noviembre del 2016 (ver nota de La Nación). En su demanda a la CIJ (ver texto integral), las fotos satelitales (p.5) indican con precisión la ubicación de estas carpas militares en la playa, haciendo ver que en el 2013 Nicaragua ubicó otros campamentos en otras partes de la franja de arena. A ese respecto el Anexo I adjunto a la demanda presenta tomas diversas de las diferentes ubicaciones del campamento militar de Nicaragua. También tomas aéreas circularon en Costa Rica a raíz de una inspección in situ de dos expertos designados por la CIJ para ubicar un punto fijado en la playa en 1897. Remitimos al lector a nuestra breve nota sobre la decisión – un tanto inédita – de la CIJ de ordenar dicho peritaje, tomada por los jueces de La Haya en el mes de junio del 2016.

La posición de Nicaragua con relación a este campamento militar

En un breve intercambio de notas diplomáticas de noviembre del 2016, Nicaragua consideró que sus soldados están ubicados en territorio de Nicaragua y que sus autoridades no tienen ninguna intención de retirarlos, mientras que Costa Rica sostiene que esta nueva ubicación corresponde a su territorio (véase nota de La Nación que incluye la respuesta oficial – texto integral – de Nicaragua con fecha del 17/11/2016, así como nota de CRHoy). En la nota diplomática de Nicaragua, sus autoridades hacen ver que la presencia de militares en la barra de arena que colinda con la Laguna de Portillos es de “muchos años”, y que Costa Rica así lo ha reconocido en diversas ocasiones: este aspecto será dilucidado con documentos y pruebas que ahora Nicaragua deberá aportar a los jueces internacionales en La Haya. Cabe señalar que al tratarse de una zona costera que ha sufrido severos cambios geomorfológicos desde la firma del tratado de delimitación en 1858 (siempre vigente) y desde los trabajos de una comisión mixta de demarcación en 1897 (Comisión Alexander), la fijación de la línea divisoria en el delta del río San Juan presentó problemas de interpretación en el pasado, en particular con relación a formaciones de arena (o playones, que aparecen y desaparecen en función de las corrientes y de la carga de sedimentos).

Intercambiadas la notas diplomáticas, no pareciera que ambos Estados optaran por realizar alguna concertación adicional. Según la CIJ, en su petición formalmente presentada el pasado 16 de enero, para Costa Rica el playón no puede ser considerado como un territorio salvo que “insofar as this sandbar remains above water at all times and thus this enclave is capable of constituting territory appertaining to a State…/  dans la mesure où ce banc de sable émerge en permanence et où cette enclave peut constituer un territoire relevant d’un Etat ”. No cabe duda que los peritajes de ambos Estados con relación al carácter permanente o no permanente de estos playones serán, entre otros puntos, de sumo interés por parte de los jueces en los próximos años (cuatro como mínimo). ¿Porqué esperar cuatro años para saber si estas tiendas de campaña militares están ubicadas en terrirorio costarricense? Porque ello corresponde a la duración usual de todo procedimiento contencioso en La Haya, es decir el tiempo que transcurre entre la presentación formal de una demanda y la lectura final del fallo de la CIJ sobre el fondo.

Ir a La Haya: un ejercicio que conlleva un costo

En efecto, el procedimiento contencioso en La Haya dura usualmente cuatro años. En materias muy técnicas como por ejemplo la delimitación marítima, el plazo de 12 meses para cada alegato escrito fijado entre Perú y Chile (ver ordenanza de la CIJ del 31/03/2008) explica que en vez de cuatro fueran cinco los años del procedimiento (2008-2013). De igual forma, la CIJ acordó un plazo de un año a Chile y a Bolivia en el caso de las aguas del Silala (ver ordenanzadel 1/07/2016). Cuando se presentan incidentes procesales entre las Partes, se dilata el procedimiento: la demanda interpuesta por Nicaragua contra Colombia en el 2001 dió lugar a la presentación de excepciones preliminares (por parte de Colombia) y a la solicitud de intervención (de Honduras y de Costa Rica en el 2010). Estos incidentes procesales explican que el fallo sobre el fondo entre Nicaragua y Colombia se haya adoptado tan solo 11 años después de presentarse la demanda, en noviembre del 2012.

En la prensa se leyó que para enfrentar la demanda de Argentina por el caso de las pasteras en el Río Uruguay (2006-2010), Uruguay debió desembolsar unos 8 millones de US$ (ver nota de prensa). Se estima – ante la extrema discreción de los Estados sobre el particular – que para cada Estado, el costo de una demanda en La Haya oscila entre unos 6 a 9 millones de US$ en gastos varios para asegurar su respectiva defensa (Nota 3). No obstante el precitado rango de 6 a 9 millones de US$ en un procedimiento normal, dos casos más recientes en América Latina arrojan otros datos:

– en el caso de la demanda de Perú contra Chile ante la CIJ, el Poder Ejecutivo chileno reconoció, después de un intento inicial para evadir la consulta (ver decisión de la Corte de Apelaciones del 13/11/2013) haber incurrido en un gasto superior a los 20 millones de US$ (ver nota de prensa);

– en el caso de la demanda de Ecuador contra Colombia interpuesta en el 2008 por aspersiones químicas aéreas, Colombia optó, al obtener el retiro de la demanda, por depositarle a Ecuador la suma de 15 millones de US$ (que incluye, entre otros, los gastos de Ecuador en el procedimiento ante la CIJ): ver punto 9 del  texto del acuerdo suscrito Colombia y Ecuador el 9/09/2013.

En reportes de la prensa de Nicaragua (y sin que se haya logrado consultar por parte nuestra algún documento oficial más preciso) se indicó que se habían destinado más de 10 millones de US$ con relación a la demandas con Costa Rica ante la CIJ (ver nota de prensa).

En el caso de Costa Rica, el 10 de diciembre del 2010, el canciller de la época, René Castro, precisó en una nota publicada en La Nación “País presupuesta $2 millones por año para juicio en La Haya” la previsión presupuestaria hecha para el único caso de Isla Portillos de aquel momento, la cual se ubica en el rango precitado (6 a 9 millones de US$, tomando en cuenta que el procedimiento dura como mínimo cuatro años). Si bien en la prensa han aparecido posteriormente datos sobre estimaciones de gastos realizados por Costa Rica en estos últimos años, a la fecha se desconoce un monto exacto que se origine en algún documento oficial público en Costa Rica (y que incluya todos los rubros sugeridos en la Nota 3). En noviembre del 2013, se pudo leer por parte del canciller de Costa Rica que en tres años se había desembolsado unos 3 millones de US$ únicamente en honorarios a abogados internacionales y viajes a La Haya (ver notade La Nación).

Además de poder evaluar con precisión los gastos que genera una defensa legal en La Haya para un Estado, se debería también de proceder a evaluar la defensa como tal de las pretensiones esgrimidas. No necesariamente los derechos pretendidos por el Estado que presenta la demanda (el demandante) son confirmados por el juez internacional. Como en todo ejercicio ante un juez, existe siempre un riesgo de no lograr lo que se pretende como Estado demandante: por ejemplo, desde el fallo de la CIJ leído el 13 de julio del 2009, los policías de Costa Rica ya no pueden navegar por el Río San Juan, sea en tareas de vigilancia o de observación o de simple abastecimiento de puestos fronterizos en tierra, operativos que sí realizaban en los años 90 con la anuencia de las autoridades de Nicaragua, y ello hasta mediados del año 1998 (Nota 4). Se trata de un interesante ejercicio ante la CIJ en el que un derecho de un Estado estipulado en un tratado de 1858 (cuyo ejercicio es aceptado de manera reticente por el otro Estado más no ignorado) finaliza ante los jueces de La Haya (a solicitud de su titular) con su negación. La crísis diplomática acaecida en octubre del 2010 con la incursión de Nicaragua en Isla Portillos (territorio costarricense) evidenciaría la enorme dificultad de las autoridades costarricenses para vigilar la frontera fluvial con Nicaragua que se extiende por más de 140 kilómetros.

Con relación a la inusual demanda de Costa Rica contra Nicaragua presentada el 25 de febrero del 2014, solicitando a la CIJ delimitar ambas fronteras marítimas al mismo tiempo, el ejercicio es inédito: en los anales de la jurisprudencia en materia de delimitación marítima de la CIJ, no se registra demanda solicitando en una sola solicitud delimitar fronteras en dos costas tan diferentes como disímiles en cuanto a su configuración gerográfica como la costa del Pacífico y del Caribe entre ambos Estados. En América Latina, los casos que han llegado a conocimiento de la CIJ en la materia (El Salvador-Honduras, Nicaragua-Honduras, Nicaragua-Colombia, Perú-Chile) fueron sometidos luego de largos años, a veces decenios, de esfuerzos infructuosos sin lograr una solución negociada. Adicionalmente, esta demanda, en nuestra opinión precipitada, conlleva algunos riesgos para Costa Rica, y que tuvimos la oportunidad de mencionar en esta nota publicada en marzo del 2014. La inclinación sufrida por la línea horizontal pretendida por Honduras en el fallo de la CIJ del 2007 entre Nicaragua y Honduras, y por Chile en el fallo de la CIJ del 2014 entre Perú y Chile, ratifican ambas el serio riesgo para Costa Rica de ver inclinarse la línea horizontal que Nicaragua pareciera reconocerle en el Mar Caribe (al menos en sus mapas sobre bloques a concesionar en materia de hidrocarburos). Con relación al Pacífico, al no contar con una sola isla en su litoral, Nicaragua se presentará a la barra como “Estado geográficamente desventajado“, una noción consagrada en el el derecho del mar contemporáneo a la que el juez internacional se ha mostrado muy receptivo. Recordemos, en particular para el lector poco familiarizado con estas zonas marítimas de Centroamérica, que la Isla del Coco le permite a Costa Rica beneficiar de una muy extensa Zona Económica Exclusiva (ZEE) en el Océano Pacífico. La fecha escogida para presentar esta demanda, de forma sorpresiva, entre las dos vueltas electorales del 2014 vividas en Costa Rica, añade una característica un tanto inusual, adicional a las anteriormente esbozadas. Notemos que mientras que Costa Rica solicitó un plazo de 6 meses para la elaboración de cada alegato escrito, Nicaragua solicitó 12 meses. En su decisión de abril del 2014, la CIJ fijó el plazo a 10 meses (ver ordenanza del 1/04/2014).

No quisiéramos omitir también el hecho que recurrir a La Haya de forma unilateral no siempre significa que un asunto quedará resuelto. En materia territorial, la aplicación de la norma jurídica no necesariamente logra apaciguar los ánimos y resolver una controversia: pese a no tratarse de una decisión de la CIJ sino de la de un tribunal arbitral, la sombra del caso del canal de Beagle entre Argentina y Chile (1974-1977) persiste. Este caso constituye un peculiar precedente en el que una decisión arbitral jurídicamente fundamentada no logró sino colocar a ambos Estados al borde de una confrontación bélica, y debió ser posteriormente objeto de una mediación pontifical de carácter político entre ambos Estados (Nota 5). Los límites de la ciencia jurídica para resolver disputas inter-estatales constituye un aspecto que ha pocamente interesado a los especialistas del derecho internacional, usualmente muy prestos a considerar, que toda controversia puede ser resuelta mediante la aplicación irrestricta de reglas jurídicas (y sin dejar a los decisores políticos el tiempo de ponderar otros aspectos, de corte más político y diplomático).

Dos Estados, una playa y un punto borrado por el mar a ubicar

Con relación a la costa caribeña entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua, el proceso de erosión marina ha sido tal en la zona fronteriza que, según las mismas declaraciones públicas de autoridades costarricenses, el punto fijado en 1897 en tierra como punto inicial de la frontera terrestre, actualmente se situaría a unos 500 metros mar adentro.

Figura del inicio de la línea fronteriza en la costa caribeña entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua a finales del siglo XIX, extraida de la obra MOORE J.B.History and digest of the international arbitrations to which the United States have been party, Washington, Government Office Priniting, 1898 (6 volumes), Vol. V.,p. 5079

En esta entrevista publicada por La Nación, el actual jefe de la diplomacia costarricense indica que: “El canal estaba en un sitio ubicado hoy 150 metros metido en el mar, imagínese que el primer mojón está hoy como 500 metros metido en el mar, eso muestra los cambios constantes que se dan”“.

En esta misma entrevista, se puede leer que el actual canciller, ante una situación muy similar a la vivida en octubre del 2010 (detección de presencia de militares de Nicaragua en territorio costarricense), opta por otra actitud: “Tampoco vamos a hacer el ridículo que se hizo en el 2010, mandar nuestros policías y toda aquella alaraca y todo ese absurdo, que terminó en lo que sabemos (sic.)”. Salvo error de nuestra parte, no se registran reacciones a estas valoraciones por parte de quiénes participaron en la toma de decisiones en octubre del 2010 y en los meses posteriores. Recordemos que la ocupación ilegal en octubre del 2010 de Isla Portillos por parte de efectivos de Nicaragua dió lugar en Costa Rica a un despliegue mediático raramente visto sobre la “agresión” e “invasión” sufrida, a la que se prestaron declaraciones virulentas de las mismas autoridades de la época y algunos analistas y editorialistas. Desde el punto de visto jurídico, se discutió el punto de saber si Costa Rica podía acceder directamente a la CIJ o si debía primero agotar los mecanismos regionales. En el 2011, el Estado de la Nación (Informe XVII, 2011) propició un interesante debate sobre este preciso punto, solicitando la opinión al ex canciller Bruno Stagno y a uno de los asesores jurídicos de Costa Rica, Arnoldo Brenes. Para el ex canciller “Basándose en una lectura incompleta y obsoleta de las cartas de la ONU y de la OEA, el Gobierno desarrolló una estrategia reactiva basada en la falsa premisa de que era necesario quemar etapas antes de acudir a la ONU o a la CIJ” /…/ Desafortunadamente, Costa Rica desaprovecho o se tardó en activar estos frentes, enfocándose en la OEA para lograr dos resoluciones que difícilmente pueden calificarse de “victorias diplomáticas” (Nota 6). Sobre este interesante debate, debemos inclinarnos por la posición de Bruno Stagno, y puede sorprender que un asesor del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, en el 2011 (después de varios precedentes ampliamente conocidos por la CIJ en los años 80), pueda aún sostener que antes de acudir a una instancia como la CIJ, Costa Rica debió obligatoriamente agotar los mecanismos regionales.

Dejando a un lado la sutileza del debate entre el ex canciller y el siempre asesor, y volviendo a los meandros de la parte final del Río San Juan, es de notar que desde los años noventa, publicaciones científicas explican, desde el punto de vista geográfico, las razones por las cuáles las desembocaduras de los ríos en el Caribe en Centroamérica son particularmente dinámicas en cuanto a cambios en su morfología (Nota 7), complicando las relaciones entre Estados: el punto terminal de la frontera terrestre no solamente interesa la demarcación en tierra, sino que debería coincidir con el punto inicial de la frontera marítima. La indeterminación de este punto es susceptible de causar roces y tensiones. En el 2003, en la localidad fronteriza de San Juan del Norte (Nicaragua), los delegados de ambos Estados buscaron determinar la ubicación exacta del mojón 1 “como paso preliminar para el cálculo de las proyecciones que ambos países se intercambiarían en la siguiente reunión de la Subcomisión de Límites y Cartografía” (Nota 8). Estas negociaciones se suspendieron luego de la presentación de la demanda ante la CIJ por parte de Costa Rica contra Nicaragua en septiembre del 2005, que resolvió la CIJ en julio del 2009 (Asunto de los derechos de navegación en el Río San Juan y derechos conexos).

El daño ocasionado en Isla Portillos: un nuevo procedimiento ante la CIJ para que sea ella la que fije el monto

Con relación al caso pendiente de resolución en cuanto a la indemnización por los daños ocasionados por Nicaragua en Isla Portillos, Costa Rica anunció también en la fecha del 16 de enero del 2017, mediante un comunicado de prensa de la misma fecha, que solicitó a la CIJ fijar el monto, ante la ausencia de respuesta de Nicaragua.

Gráfico de la zona de Isla Portillos en la costa caribeña, extraído de articulo de La Nación (Costa Rica)

En junio del 2016, Costa Rica estableció un monto de 6,7 millones de US$ de forma unilateral, y el 16 de diciembre del 2016 venció el plazo de un año otorgado por la CIJ para que ambos Estados fijaran el monto de manera conjunta. Remitimos al lector a nuestra notapublicada en el OPALC (Sciences-Po, Paris) con relación a la la fijación unilateral de este monto indemnizatorio hecha por Costa Rica, y que evidencia (entre otros puntos), que Costa Rica no cuenta oficialmente con una metodología para cuantificar el daño ambiental, y que la sugerencia hecha por la misma CIJ para que ambos negociaran un monto de forma conjunta no se materializó.

A modo de conclusión: justas en La Haya en detrimento de la agenda bilateral

Es un hecho que pese a la gran cantidad de controversias y de disputas entre Estados que sacuden regularmente a la sociedad internacional, las que llegan a solucionarse mediante la intervención del juez internacional constituyen una ínfima minoría. Como entidades políticas, los Estados se sienten más cómodos con mecanismos de solución pacífica de controversias de carácter político en los que mantienen una libertad de acción y de negociación amplia. No obstante, desde el 2005, Costa Rica y Nicaragua ofrecen una situación muy particular en esta materia. Ante la mirada perpleja de un observador un tanto intrigado por un uso tan frecuente como inusual de la CIJ por parte de Costa Rica en estos últimos años, se podrá señalar que de las cuatro demandas presentadas por Costa Rica contra Nicaragua (en el 2005, 2010, 2014 y ahora 2017), tres de ellas lo fueron cuando el titular de la cartera ministerial de relaciones exteriores en Costa Rica era un abogado.

Incluso dentro de la misma CIJ, la actitud de ambos Estados ha generado cierto malestar en sus mismos integrantes, que tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar (cuando, en el 2013, la CIJ rechazó las solicitudes de ambos Estados de revisar su ordenanza de marzo del 2011: véase sobre el particular nuestra breve nota).

Además de confirmarle al juez internacional que sus reiterados llamados a dialogar y a negociar (desde la primera ordenanza del 2011 hasta el mismo fallo de diciembre del 2015) han sido ignorados, esta nueva demanda contra Nicaragua presentada por Costa Rica tiene otro efecto: es muy probable que la agenda bilateral, suspendida desde muchos años, se mantenga como tal. Se trata de lo que podríamos denominar un “efecto colateral” de la presentación unilateral de una demanda en La Haya cuando se trata de Estados vecinos. Como bien se sabe, el buscar una salida negociada, solicitar los buenos oficios de un tercero, su mediación, o bien negociar un compromiso arbitral para someter la cuestión a un tibunal arbitral, o – en última instancia – someter de forma conjunta un punto de discordia al juez internacional mediante una solicitud elaborada por ambos Estados, permite evitar el carácter “inamistoso” que tiene para cualquier Estado demandado una demanda presentada en forma un tanto sorpresiva y unilateral por un Estado vecino.

Según las palabras del ex juez de la CIJ (1987-2003) y ex Presidente de la misma (2000-2003), el jurista francés Gilbert Guillaume (y que nos permitimos citar en razón de su larga experiencia como juez): “C´est que là encore le recours unilatéral à la justice internationale est trop souvent vécu par les Etats comme une détérioration de leurs relations. Il est fréquemment ressenti comme un ultime appel ou comme un atout supplémentaire dans une négociation parallèle difficile. Dans l´une ou l´autre perspective, il est une nécessité difficilement acceptée plus qu´une solution aisément consentie» (Nota 9).

En términos generales, se puede decir que la compleja agenda bilateral entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua lleva más de diez años suspendida, precisamente debido al efecto de estas demandas recurrentes presentadas de forma unilateral. A ello hay que añadir la falta de interés de los dos Estados en buscar primero una salida política. Y añadir otro aspecto adicional: la lectura de un fallo por parte de la CIJ abre usualmente un compás de tiempo que dos Estados vecinos pueden aprovechar para volver al diálogo y a normalizar paulatinamente sus relaciones, deterioradas después de muchos años de procedimientos en La Haya. Nada de ello ocurrió entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua: la lectura del fallo de la CIJ del 13 de julio del 2009 – ver texto integral – o el del 16 de diciembre del 2015 – ver texto integral) fueron ocasiones desaprovechadas para buscar algun tipo de acercamiento entre ambos ribereños del Río San Juan. Tal y como ya lo advertíamos en este artículo de opinión de noviembre del 2005, publicado en La Nación, con relación a la primera demanda ante la CIJ presentada por Costa Rica en su historia:

Además del alto costo político (dado que nadie puede vaticinar del contenido del fallo de la CIJ), de las dificultades de diversa índole (logística, lingüística, administrativa) que deben superar las cancillerías al organizar la defensa jurídica del Estado, existe también un desgaste humano e institucional (la CIJ enfrenta problemas para rendir una justicia pronta y cumplida, pero ello obedece a que, usualmente, son las mismas partes las que deciden extender los plazos para presentar sus respectivas réplicas y dúplicas, solicitando incluso una tercera ronda de alegatos). Ello sin contar el efecto perturbador para las relaciones bilaterales entre Estados vecinos por el hecho de esperar entre 4 y 6 años un fallo precisando el alcance de sus respectivos derechos“.

Nicolas Boeglin

Notas

Nota 1: Estas son las demandas registradas desde el 2010 hasta la fecha en La Haya entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua. En noviembre del 2010, demanda de Costa Rica contra Nicaragua por la ocupación ilegal de Isla Portillos (ver texto de la demanda con fecha del 18/11/2010); en diciembre del 2011, demanda de Nicaragua contra Costa Rica por la denominada “trocha fronteriza” (ver texto de la demanda con fecha del 21/12/2011); en febrero del 2014, demanda de Costa Rica contra Nicaragua para determinar la frontera marítima en ambos oceanos (ver texto de demanda con fecha del 25/02/2014). En esta nota se pueden observar los bloques concesionados a Statoil (empresa noruega) por parte de Nicaragua, en el Océano Pacífico (en color celeste): se trata de bastante distantes de las áreas que pretende Costa Rica. En el 2013, la edición de un mapa de bloques a concesionar por parte de Nicaragua había provocado una protesta de Costa Rica (ver nuestra nota publicada en CRHoy).

Nota 2: Escuchar audio en el minuto 48:21 de dicha emisión radial francesa disponible  aquí.

Nota 3: Este monto, sobre el que los Estados se muestran extremadamente discretos, debería incluir los honorarios de abogados internacionales, los salarios de funcionarios nacionales, consultores y asesores nacionales, los diversos estudios solicitados, viajes y perdiem en La Haya, peritajes, elaboración de mapas, de fotografías satelitales, gastos secretariales, traducciones, certificaciones y demás rubros, durante los cuatro años que (como mínimo) dura un procedimiento de este tipo en La Haya. En muchos casos, funcionarios de las cancillerías están abocados a tiempo completo o casi, lo cual también debería ser registrado, o por lo menos ponderado si no se trata de una asignación a tiempo completo.

Nota 4: Cabe recordar que en 1998 Costa Rica y Nicaragua resolvieron mediante negociaciones diplomáticas el único tema de la portación de armas de policías de Costa Rica en tareas de operaciones de vigilancia y de abastecimiento de puestos fronterizos en las aguas del río San Juan. El tratado de límites de 1858 refiere a competencias en materia de “guarda” del San Juan (artículo IV); Nicaragua, si bien no objetaba el ejercicio de este derecho como tal, se mostraba indispuesta con el uso de armas de cierto calibre para estas tareas y cuestionaba que los policías de Costa Rica pudieran navegar con estas sin pedir autorización alguna. El acuerdo alcanzado conocido como el acuerdo Cuadra-Lizano suscrito en julio de 1998, en tan solo cuatro artículos (ver texto del acuerdo), logró plasmar una solución técnica a un problema técnico, en lo que pareciera ser el último ejercicio de negociación bilateral exitoso entre ambos Estados. Lamentablemente, Nicaragua desconocería días después este acuerdo debido a cuestionamientos en Nicaragua (ver nota de La Nación de agosto de 1998). Leemos en esta misma nota un detalle de cierto interés, redactado por quién hoy es Ministro de Comunicación en Costa Rica: “ /…/ el director de la Policía de Fronteras, coronel Max Cayetano Vega, circuló una nota entre los guardias civiles donde les notifica que podrán transitar el río siempre y cuando informen a los soldados nicaragüenses. La nota advirtió a los policías que “deberán observar una conducta adecuada, sin hacer alardes de prepotencia o exhibicionismo” /…/”. La denuncia posterior del acuerdo Cuadra-Lizano por parte de Nicaragua iniciaría una fase de incertidumbre y de turbulencia entre ambos Estados. Posteriormente, las buenas relaciones personales entre los mandatarios de ambos Estados llevarían a negociar un acuerdo para que Costa Rica no presentara demanda alguna durante 3 años (acuerdo Tovar-Caldera suscrito el 26 de septiembre del 2002). Vencido el plazo establecido, y sin que hayan trascendido datos sobre reuniones o negociaciones entre ambos, Costa Rica anunció que acudiría a la CIJ en el 2005 (ver nota de La Nación) para defender este y otros derechos de navegación. Pese a que se presentó como favorable para Costa Rica dado que la CIJ ordenó a Nicaragua no exigir visados para embarcaciones turísticas de Costa Rica, obtuvo un fallo adverso sobre el uso de las aguas del San Juan por parte de sus policías (ver texto de la sentencia del 13 de julio del 2009 de la CIJ, y en particular el párrafo 156 inciso h, adoptado por unanimidad por los jueces de la CIJ).

Nota 5: “L´arbitrage de Beagle est peut-être bon du point de vue de la technique juridique mais mauvais du point de vue politique. C´est un arbitrage qui viole un principe traditionnel de la réalité politique et géographique de l´Amérique Latine » según lo explicaba el Profesor Héctor Gros Espiell (Véase SFDI, La frontière, Colloque de Poitiers, Paris, Pedone, 1980, p. 176).

Nota 6: Véase la nota STAGNO B., “Análisis de la estrategia seguida por la administración Chinchilla Miranda a la agresión/invasión en Isla Portillos”, la cual debe leerse en relación a la nota anterior que sostiene la tesis contraria, BRENES A. “Acciones tomadas por la Cancillería frente al conflicto con Nicaragua”, Estado de la Nación, Informe XVII, 2011, pp. 260-262. Texto disponible descargando el Capitulo “Fortalecimiento de la Democracia” del Informe XVII del Estado de la Nación, 2011, disponible aquí.

Nota 7: Véase por ejemplo SANDNER G. & RATTER B.,”Topografical problem areas in the delimitation of maritime boundaries and their political relevance: case studies form the Western Caribbean”, 15, Ocean and Shoreline Managment (1991), pp. 239-308.

Nota 8: Véase Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de Costa Rica, Memoria Institucional, 2003- 2004, San José, 2004, p.86

Nota 9: Véase GUILLAUME G., La Cour International de Justice à l´aube du XXI ème siècle. Le regard d´un juge, Paris Pedone, 2003, p. 7.

 

Nicolas Boeglin, Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). Contacto: nboeglin(a)gmail.com

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We are very pleased to inform you that the Canadian Peace Congress and the Syria Solidarity Movement are co-sponsoring this speaking tour featuring Eva Bartlett, the courageous independent Canadian journalist who has been exposing the lies and misinformation spread by Western imperialist governments and the mainstream corporate-controlled media about the ongoing conflict in Syria. 

The speaking tour itself will bring Eva, along with anti-war activist Ken Stone and author Stephen Gowans among others, to Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from Jan. 24-28.

Author Mark Taliano will be present at the Hamilton event, Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research and Yves Engler will be present at the Montreal event. 

Eva Bartlett is an independent Canadian journalist from Fergus, Ontario, who has visited Syria and covered the war there on six separate occasions since 2014, including two months in summer 2016 and one month at the end of 2016. She writes for and speaks on different media outlets but always maintains her blog, In Gaza, which she started some years ago while living for a period of three years in Gaza.

Hamilton will be the first stop on Bartlett’s Central Canadian tour, organized by the Syria Solidarity Movement (Canada), the Canadian Peace Congress, and the HCSW.  The other cities are Toronto (January 25), Ottawa (January 27), and Montreal (January 28). The tour is entitled

“The War on Syria: debunking lies and fake news…and finding a path to peace” and is intended to help Canadians clear up any confusion they may have about what actually transpired during the liberation of Aleppo, in particular, and during the past five years in Syria, in general.

The link to the Facebook events page for the whole tour can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/events/145763812589034/ 

Eva’s first talk in Hamilton will take place at 7 pm at New Vision United Church, 24 Main Street West, Hamilton L8P 1H2, across from Hamilton City Hall, on Tuesday, January 24.

Her second talk will take place at 12:30 pm at McMaster University’s Student Centre, Room 313, on Wednesday, January 25. There will be free admission to both events, which are both wheelchair accessible.  The McMaster event is co-sponsored by OPIRG McMaster, McMaster Muslims for Peace and Justice, McMaster Womanists, and the Young Communist League.

Here are the details of the various events during the tour:

January 24: HAMILTON
TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: New Vision United Church, 24 Main West

January 25: HAMILTON
TIME: 12:30 pm
LOCATION: McMaster Student Centre, Rm. #313

January 25: TORONTO
TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: USW (Steelworkers) Hall, 25 Cecil St.

January 27: OTTAWA
TIME: 7:30 pm
LOCATION: U of Ottawa, Fauteux Hall, room #147 – Moot Court, 57 Louis Pasteur.

January 28: MONTREAL
TIME: 4:00 pm
LOCATION: Delta hotel, 475 President Kennedy, Salon OPUS 2

February 2: WINNIPEG
TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Carol Shields Auditorium, Millenium Library (Downtown), 251 Donald Street

February 3: REGINA
TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Knox Metropolitan Church, Lower Hall, 2340 Victoria Ave.

To consult Eva Bartlett’s Global Research Articles, click here

For further info, please contact Ken Stone at 905-383-7693 or [email protected]

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La muerte del Acuerdo Transpacífico (TPP)

January 24th, 2017 by Pedro Miguel

Para estrenarse en el cargo, el presidente Donald Trump mató ayer al Acuerdo Transpacífico (TPP, por sus siglas en inglés, ATP por su abreviatura en español), que estaba llamado a ser una de las tres piedras de toque del edificio de la globalización neoliberal, un mecanismo de anulación de los estados nacionales ante las embestidas de los capitales sin patria y un muro de contención en contra de India, Rusia y China. Así como el fin de semana multitudes en diversos países repudiaron con toda la razón el hecho monstruoso de que un individuo racista, misógino, inescrupuloso, demagógico e ignorante preside la principal potencia económica, militar y tecnológica del planeta, debería haber mucha gente en las calles celebrando el aborto del ATP en todos los países que iban a quedar bajo el imperio corporativo de ese tratado.

Ciertamente, hay muchos motivos para preocuparse por ese elefante que se mueve a sus anchas en la cristalería de la Casa Blanca y muchas y muy urgentes acciones necesarias para contrarrestar o paliar el desastre que va a traer la nueva presidencia de Washington en diversas naciones, empezando por México, donde ya se sienten las primeras turbulencias de la era Trump.

En concreto, es preciso intensificar la presión social sobre el gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto, que para hacer frente al nuevo escenario no tiene más reflejos que el entreguismo y la claudicación. A fin de cuentas, desde los años 80 del siglo pasado la camarilla gobernante sigue al pie de la letra un programa histórico claro y simple: vender el país (territorio, recursos, bienes y población) a los intereses corporativos extranjeros y nacionales y lograr, en la compraventa, riquezas personales inusitadas para quienes forman parte del clan, independientemente de que sean priístas, panistas, perredistas, verdes o de otras franquicias electorales menores.

Al mismo tiempo, es urgente ahondar y extender la construcción de un tejido social que sea capaz de asimilar a los connacionales que serán expulsados del país vecino y a los que se quedarán sin trabajo aquí por la inminente renegociación (que podría llegar a ser una abrogación de hecho) del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte. Hoy más que nunca, la fortaleza del vapuleado mercado interno depende de la vocación gregaria y colectiva que aún persiste en la sociedad, a pesar de tres décadas de prédica individualista de los neoliberales en el poder, y de la cooperación más que de la competencia. Ese empeño habrá de realizarse desde abajo, por la sociedad misma, por la simple razón de que la administración peñista carece de la voluntad, de la capacidad y de la cultura para pensar la economía nacional en términos distintos a los de la inserción en la globalidad neoliberal.

Es posible que los bruscos manotazos trumpistas sobre el modelo de supeditación económica de México a Estados Unidos acelere y agrave la bancarrota del grupo en el poder pero no parece haber a la vista una posibilidad concreta de reconfiguración radical del poder público. Eso significa que probablemente habremos de vivir dos años de crisis y deterioro crecientes y de una profundización de la pesadilla que es el peñato, y que el momento pleno de la sociedad deba a los tiempos de la legalidad institucional, es decir, a las elecciones presidenciales de 2018, y que esa coyuntura haga posible la conformación de un gran frente popular y social que haga realidad el cambio de rumbo que se necesita.

Por lo pronto, la muerte del ATP, así haya provenido de la misma mano que amenaza a México y al mundo con emprender una reconstrucción de la prepotencia imperial de Estados Unidos, es un hecho digno de celebrarse porque con ella se desvanece un peligro gravísimo de disolución del Estado nacional y se frustran los planes más entreguistas del presente régimen.

Pedro Miguel

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América Latina y el Caribe – La disputa por el Litio

January 24th, 2017 by Manuel Salazar S.

En 1998 el precio de la tonelada de litio alcanzaba los 1.770 dólares; en 2009, superaba los 6.000 dólares; hoy, se empina por sobre los 7.600 dólares y sigue subiendo. En 2008, según el Servicio Geológico de Estados Unidos, USGG, se produjeron en el mundo 27.400 toneladas de litio; en 2015, se llegó a las 32.500 toneladas y se espera que en 2020 se alcancen 60.000. El mismo USGG afirma que las reservas mundiales son cerca de 10 millones de toneladas y que más del 80 por ciento están en Chile, Bolivia y Argentina.

El rápido crecimiento de esta industria se sustenta -por ahora- en el auge de los vehículos de propulsión eléctrica que requieren baterías de litio. Tesla, el principal fabricante de automóviles de este tipo, ya está entregando al mercado más de 60 mil unidades al año. En 2016 la producción y comercialización de vehículos eléctricos en el mundo alcanzó los 1,3 millones, casi el doble del nivel registrado en 2014; se espera que para 2025 se llegue a los primeros 30 millones y para 2040 serán 150 millones.

Más allá del mercado de las baterías, el litio se encuentra en la industria farmacéutica, en aleaciones metálicas, en productos para la industria aeronáutica, en los sistemas de aire acondicionado y en algunos tipos de lubricantes. También avanza rápidamente su incorporación a la industria energética, donde se emplean baterías de litio para conservar los elementos activos.

En la actualidad existen nueve elaboradores de productos de litio extraído de salmueras en Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, China y Estados Unidos. Se añaden otros doce productores a partir de minerales en Australia, China, Zimbabwe, Portugal y Brasil.

Al vislumbrarse el término de los combustibles fósiles y empezarse a enfrentar las consecuencias del cambio climático, algunos científicos han afirmado que el posible enfriamiento del hemisferio norte multiplicará el interés industrial por el litio para la construcción de grandes generadores de energía que puedan abastecer a las ciudades y a los medios de transporte. La industria del litio parece tener un futuro próspero. Incluso diversos medios de prensa y analistas ya bautizaron al triángulo de salares ubicados entre Chile, Bolivia y Argentina como la “Arabia Saudita blanca” o el “Triángulo del Oro Blanco”. De allí, entonces, que también se haya iniciado una lucha sin cuartel entre los grandes consorcios mundiales del ramo para adueñarse de esos recursos. Uno de esos consorcios es SQM, la firma minera chileno- canadiense que controla Julio Ponce Lerou, sindicado como uno de los principales financistas de la política a través de pagos irregulares y presuntos sobornos y cohechos.

LA EXTRACCION DE LITIO EN CHILE

SQM extrae el litio desde el Salar de Atacama, por concesiones obtenidas en 1992 en la estatal Corporación de Fomento y bajo óptimas condiciones naturales que le permiten grandes ventajas en relación a los costos de extracción que tienen sus competidores. La empresa Soquimich, origen de SQM, fue privatizada en un 99,99% por la misma Corfo entre 1983 y 1988. Julio Ponce pasó de ejecutivo de la entidad estatal a la presidencia y al control mayoritario de la compañía a través de varias controvertidas operaciones que no se aclaran hasta hoy.

En enero de 2015 la transnacional química estadounidense Albermarle adquirió su símil Rockwood Lithium en 6.200 millones de dólares, entrando de lleno al negocio del litio. Rockwood es en Chile la principal competidora de SQM y mantiene dos sitios de producción: la planta solar de Atacama, donde la compañía pretende invertir en los próximos tres años 75 millones de dólares, y la planta química La Negra, en Antofagasta, donde se le agrega valor al recurso.

A mayo de 2006, Albermarle controlaba el 33% del mercado mundial. Le seguía SQM, con cerca del 25% y la también estadounidense FMC Corporation, con 12%. Tanto Rockwood como SQM son los únicos productores de litio en Chile, mediante los contratos de arrendamiento que mantienen con Corfo en el Salar de Atacama. SQM ya ha ocupado el 55% del contrato que mantiene con la corporación estatal. En enero de 2016 Rockwood selló un acuerdo con Corfo que le permitirá sobrepasar a SQM como el mayor productor local, pasando de producir 24 mil toneladas anuales hasta 80 mil toneladas. El convenio elevará los royalties pagados por Rockwood, equiparándolos -dependiendo del precio del litio- a los de la minería metálica. Rockwood, además, deberá entregar aportes a la investigación y desarrollo -entre 6 y 12,4 millones de dólares al año- y una contribución a los pueblos originarios adyacentes, entre otras condiciones. El gobierno chileno espera recaudar desde la entrada en vigencia del acuerdo hasta la fecha de término, en 2043, unos 2.700 millones de dólares.

Paralelamente, a comienzos de 2016 el gobierno anunció una nueva política nacional sobre el litio y encargó a Codelco la responsabilidad de explotar el litio en los salares de Maricunga y Pedernales, para lo cual está buscando un socio estratégico. Codelco definirá a su socio este año y ya hay más de diez interesados.

Un consorcio de tres empresas chinas -Vision Group, Kanhoo Group y MTL Shenzhen Group- junto a empresarios coreanos radicados en Chile se han reunido con diversas autoridades del gobierno para manifestar su interés por levantar una planta de litio con un aporte inicial de 500 millones de dólares y una inversión final de 2.000 millones de dólares. Mauricio Mora, representante de Nexis Consulting SPA, firma que asesora a los asiáticos, ha dicho que la iniciativa daría trabajo a unas cinco mil personas.

También han sostenido reuniones en el Ministerio de Minería representantes de la firma internacional de ingeniería Worley Parson; de los fabricantes de acero Posco; del equipo económico de la embajada de Francia y de uno de los mayores fondos soberanos del mundo: Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Otros interesados en el litio son inversionistas locales como la minera Salar Blanco, de los empresarios salmoneros, forestales y de alimentos Martín Borda Mingo y Cristóbal García Huidobro, que se acaban de asociar con la australiana Lithium Power para extraer el mineral en el Salar de Maricunga, en la alta cordillera de Atacama. La sociedad australiana de Borda surgió tras comprar los activos en Chile de la estadounidense LI3, y el proyecto consiste en invertir 360 millones de dólares. Lithium Power International desarrolla otros proyectos en Argentina.

También la Empresa Nacional de Minería tiene propiedades mineras en el Salar de Aguilar y está recibiendo ofertas de eventuales socios para su explotación.

Ejecutivos de Tianqi, la principal empresa estatal china en el negocio del litio, también han acudido al Ministerio de Minería y visitado el Salar de Atacama. Tianqi es socia de Rockwood en Tallison, un gigantesco yacimiento de litio en Australia. A través de Tallison tiene un proyecto de salmuera de litio ubicado en la Región de Atacama, aún no operativo, que consiste en siete salares, cinco de los cuales están en un radio de unos 30 kilómetros.

Ganfeng Lithium es otra importante productora china que busca crecer fuera del gigante asiático y que ha adquirido participaciones en firmas junior de Australia. Según fuentes del sector, también ha visitado Chile y está interesada en entrar en SQM -con la que ya tiene negocios- a través de la compra de acciones en Pampa Calichera.

EN ARGENTINA

Las mineras del litio activas en el norte argentino han asegurado que respetan las regulaciones ambientales y que su labor ha significado grandes beneficios para la región. Mencionan la creación de cientos de empleos y la inversión de cientos de millones de dólares en una de las zonas más pobres de Argentina. También afirman que han construido escuelas e invertido en proyectos de desarrollo local. Los pueblos originarios, en cambio, están indignados porque consideran que las plantas de litio secarán los escasos recursos de agua que aún les quedan. Se estima que para extraer una tonelada de litio se ocupan alrededor de dos millones de litros de agua.

No obstante, el avance de las mineras parece incontrolable. Reporteros de The Washington Post revelaron que una firma de litio financiada con capitales chilenos y canadienses llamada Minera Exar llegó a acuerdos con seis comunidades aborígenes para crear una nueva mina. Se espera que la operación genere 250 millones de dólares al año en ventas, pero cada comunidad recibirá un pago anual de entre 9.000 y 60 mil dólares. Durante las visitas a las seis comunidades indígenas que se encuentran en un desierto rodeado de montañas, a unos 25 kilómetros de la frontera noroeste entre Argentina y Chile, los periodistas del Post encontraron un sorprendente contraste: las multinacionales se benefician de las riquezas minerales mientras que las comunidades luchan para pagar por los sistemas de saneamiento, el agua potable y la calefacción en las escuelas. Todo ello mientras la sequía perdura en esas comarcas. Allí caen menos de cuatro pulgadas de lluvia al año.

El presidente Mauricio Macri, en tanto, eliminó los controles cambiarios y de capital, así como un impuesto a la exportación de minerales con el propósito de atraer inversionistas extranjeros y afianzarse como exportador mundial de carbonato de litio. En la actualidad el país produce a través de FMC, en el Salar del Hombre Muerto, en Catamarca, y Sales de Jujuy, en el Salar de Olaroz, donde se extraen cerca de 40 mil toneladas. También en Sal de Vida, entre las provincias de Catamarca y Salta, mineral propiedad de la empresa australiana Galaxy Resources.Otro proyecto es Cauchiri-Olaroz, desarrollado entre Lithium Americas y SQM, que comenzará a construirse el primer semestre de 2017 con una inversión de 200 millones de dólares y una meta productiva de 50 mil toneladas de carbonato de litio al año.

Algunas multinacionales en la demanda final de litio, como en el caso de Toyota, se animaron a meterse en el proceso de explotación del mineral, y en el caso particular de Argentina participan desde 2012 en la sociedad Sales de Jujuy, que desde 2014 explota litio en el Salar de Olaroz, junto con la empresa de Jujuy Energía y Minería Sociedad del Estado. También figuran Orocobre, una sociedad entre capitales estadounidenses y australianos, y la firma canadiense Enirgi Group, que inició en el Salar del Rincón, en Salta, a 3.660 metros de altura, lo que consideran será la planta de litio más grande del mundo.

Por su parte, SDIC, de China; Posco, de Corea del Sur; Galaxy y Orocobre, de Australia; Eramet, de Francia; FMC Lithium, de EE.UU; y Mitsubishi, de Japón, informaron al gobierno de Macri su decisión de profundizar su “interés” en los salares de la puna. “Nos parecen excelentes los cambios que están teniendo lugar. Ahora Argentina es mucho más atractiva”, aseguró Patricio de Solminihac, director ejecutivo de SQM, al anunciar el proyecto Caucharí-Olaroz, en Jujuy.

Albermarle Corporation, que ahora controla la mayoría de las exportaciones de litio desde Chile, adquirió también los derechos exclusivos de exploración del Salar de Antofalla en Catamarca, para lo cual invertirá entre 8 y 12 millones de dólares anuales. La empresa firmó un acuerdo con Bolland Minera, para obtener los derechos de exploración y adquisición del salar, que según estimaciones tiene el potencial de ser uno de los más importantes de Argentina. Albemarle ha dicho que su objetivo en el mediano plazo es tener el 50% de la producción mundial de litio, y están en un plan de compras por todo el mundo para conseguirlo.

Las empresas mineras prometieron a Macri más de 20 mil millones de dólares en inversiones dentro de los próximos cinco años.

Para el analista argentino Atilio Boron no hay cabos sueltos y el denominado Plan Belgrano que impulsa el gobierno argentino revela los intereses de las potencias en la región. Anunciado como un programa de desarrollo social, productivo y de infraestructura para Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, La Rioja, Catamarca, Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco, Formosa y Santiago del Estero, el Plan Belgrano es discutido por otros especialistas en geopolítica que pretenden saber a cambio de qué llegarán las “ambiciosas inversiones” anunciadas. “Ese plan forma parte de una iniciativa de Estados Unidos para apropiarse de los recursos naturales de Sudamérica y, especialmente, de esta parte del continente. El noroeste es una región muy rica en litio, para los norteamericanos uno de los recursos estratégicos del siglo XXI”. Boron ha insistido en que si este plan se materializa “habrá una fuerte presencia militar y de agencias estadounidenses en la región y, probablemente, se avance en la instalación de una base militar en la Triple Frontera”, donde converge el acuífero guaraní, una de las mayores reservas de agua dulce del planeta.

EN BOLIVIA

Bolivia busca producir para el último trimestre de 2018 alrededor de 50 mil toneladas de carbonato de litio a escala industrial y para ello construyó una planta piloto ubicada en el Salar de Uyuni. Esta instalación demandó una inversión de 19 millones de dólares y las obras registran un avance superior al 20% y se espera producir unas 350 mil toneladas de sales de potasio al año.

A fines de 2016, fuentes gubernamentales informaron que la norteamericana Tesla Motor había manifestado su interés por construir una planta de baterías de litio en el país. También se dijo que otras cinco empresas extranjeras -de Rusia, Australia y Japón- estaban interesadas en instalar plantas. El país que preside Evo Morales concentra la mitad de las reservas mundiales de litio y las empresas extranjeras han visto frustrados sus intentos de instalar el modelo extractivista. Morales puso en marcha un plan de industrialización soberana de los recursos minerales que contempla la producción de carbonato de litio y cloruro de potasio, y la elaboración de baterías de ion-litio. Hasta 2019, el Estado boliviano pretende invertir más de 900 millones de dólares para explotar 400 kilómetros de superficie del Salar de Uyuni. “Con esa explotación e industrialización del litio tenemos para mantenernos cien años”, sostuvo el presidente Morales.

Manuel Salazar S.

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Desde cuatro puntos de esta capital marcharon miembros de la oposición venezolana, sin rumbo, pero al fin marcharon, presuntamente para exigir al gobierno elecciones.

Mientras, en el país se abren paso variadas interrogantes, quiénes irán a elección, cuáles son los candidatos, cuáles son los partidos que aún conservan su personería; esas preguntas habría que hacérsela a la heterogénea masa de ‘líderes’ que tiene la llamada Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD).

Recientemente, el diputado chavista, Juan Marín, describió con breves palabras la situación de caos que enfrenta la oposición camino a unos comicios ya fijados por el Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), para este año.

Será un proceso destructivo que nos hace recordar ‘La Noche de los cuchillos largos’ u Operación Colibrí, una purga que tuvo lugar en Alemania entre el 30 de junio y el 2 de julio de 1934, cuando el régimen nazi llevó a cabo una serie de asesinatos políticos, dijo.

Muy pocos dentro de la MUD pueden presentar candidatos a las elecciones aprobadas por el CNE, por lo que se espera una fuerte lucha interna o una purga al estilo nazi.

Desde el mes de octubre de 2016 el CNE aprobó el calendario electoral 2017, en el cual queda claramente establecido que se efectuarán comicios regionales durante el primer semestre de este año, municipales durante el segundo, y según establece la ley, se debe convocar a elecciones nacionales en 2018.

Una muestra de la fragmentación de los opositores se produjo la víspera cuando algunos partidos políticos marcharon -cada uno por su cuenta- desde cuatros puntos distantes entre sí del este de Caracas.

En Plaza Venezuela, un grupo minoritario entregó a uno de los rectores del CNE, Luis Emilio Rondón, un documento sin validez jurídica firmado por la junta directiva del Parlamento, en desacato al Poder Judicial de la República.

Los pocos que aún marchan exigen al poder electoral ‘que se respete el derecho al sufragio del pueblo venezolano’, algo que nadie negó y que solo la posición beligerante de la oposición impide, según analistas y autoridades judiciales.

Lo de ayer aclaró en algo el panorama opositor, hay muchos dirigentes, entre ellos el diputado Julio Borges, actual jefe de la AN, cuya convocatoria a la marcha giró en torno a su imagen personal, como si se tratara de un candidato presidencial, totalmente distanciado de su partido político, Primero Justicia (PJ), y de la MUD.

Más aún Borges estuvo apartado de otro que quiere usar el cuchillo, Henrique Capriles, quien salió a marchar prácticamente solo desde su comando de campaña en el municipio Baruta, aquí en Caracas.

Sin rumbo andan una veintena de partidos que todavía integran la coalición opositora y llegado el momento, la lucha interna y los ‘cuchillos’ darán cuenta de más de una aspiración a figurar en gobiernos regionales, municipales y ni hablar de las presidenciales en 2018, para las cuales el chavismo marcha a paso firme y muestra gran unidad.

Mientras tanto, algunos como el saliente presidente de la AN, Henry Ramos Allup, siguen apostando por el enfrentamiento y se apartan del diálogo.

Allup, un viejo militante de Acción Democrática (AD), asegura que ellos no aceptarán las 21 propuestas planteadas por los mediadores al Gobierno y la oposición en el proceso de diálogo político.

El político adeco estima que es necesaria ‘la presión de calle para salir de la situación actual’ pero, ¿dónde está la presión?, si apenas llenaron una manzana con su convocatoria a marchar, opinan venezolanos de a pie.

Lapidaria es la reflexión del presidente de la encuestadora Datanálisis, Luis Vicente León, quien en su cuenta en Twitter abordó la crisis de la MUD y su poco empuje en las calles del país. Eso muestra ‘una pérdida de motivación’ de los opositores, dijo.

En contraparte al fracaso de la MUD, una marea roja llenó las calles y avenidas de Caracas para rendir homenaje al líder revolucionario Fabricio Ojeda, cuyos restos descansan desde ayer en el Panteón Nacional, a la vez que mostró el empuje de la Revolución Bolivariana, que si marcha firme hacia todos los aprestos electorales por venir, según afirman sus dirigentes.

Luis Beaton

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¿La hora de los pueblos?

January 24th, 2017 by Gabriel Fossa

La élite financiera mundial sabe muy bien que no puede haber un gobierno del pueblo y para el pueblo, de corte nacionalista, o la tan famosa palabra que está de moda, populista, donde éste protege a su pueblo, su territorio, su cultura, su moneda, y sus empresas; esto es intolerable para los dueños del mundo.

La élite ya tiene su fábrica de bienes, con más de mil cuatrocientos millones de chinos produciendo, donde una dictadura “comunista capitalista” establece los mandatos de Londres.

Para la élite de la City, el pueblo norteamericano siempre fue su enemigo, cuando lograron la independencia de las 13 colonias británicas, las recuperó en forma invisible con sus relaciones de sangre y cooptación en las universidades, creando luego el CFR.

EEUU pasaba a ser el gendarme de la City peleando guerras para la corona británica y sus mercaderes de Venecia.

El pueblo norteamericano está endeudado en más de 16 veces su PBI, donde el dólar es mantenido a fuerza por la USAF o mejor dicho por la City. En EEUU hay 90 millones de pobres, casi no tienen industrias, y en donde tampoco hay que olvidarse que la FED es un holding de bancos privados, por ende no es un ente estatal.

La City ya tiene su nueva moneda global, que es el yuan chino, donde ese dinero tiene el respaldo en bienes y trabajo genuino, donde ellos utilizarán esas divisas para endeudar en este nuevo escenario mundial cobrando un interés sobre deuda prestada.

El imperio británico invisible (Commonwealth), y la City, es el que está digitando todo esto, ya que no le importa sacrificar una vez más a su colonia Norteamérica.

Por algo Gran Bretaña sale de la Comunidad Europea, sabiendo que el euro tiene los días contados, por ende la Comunidad Europea también tiene los días contados.

La balcanización de la Comunidad Europea, en donde tendrán que enfrentar todo tipo de situaciones de reacomodamiento en lo económico y político, esto es, estableciendo nuevamente las fronteras, el fin del euro, y volverán las monedas soberanas como la lira, la peseta, el franco, el marco alemán, etc.

Europa tendría que alinearse con Rusia para su supervivencia, en donde ya sabe por experiencia, que los atlantistas, EEUU hasta ahora, Gran Bretaña e Israel,son sus enemigos existenciales.

Europa estará nuevamente a la deriva por haber sido sometida por caprichos de los atlantistas y mercaderes de la City, finalizada la segunda guerra mundial.

Trump le declara la guerra económica a China, pero en realidad se la está declarando a la City, ya que China es el taller del liberalismo económico.

Todos, absolutamente todos los presidentes norteamericanos que se desviaron de los mandatos de la élite, fueron asesinados.

Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, los demás son “dudosos”.

Donald Trump patea el tablero y pronuncia un discurso patriótico para el pueblo, donde establece que el poder, que está en Washington, no es del pueblo, y que sus ganancias no son las del pueblo, y dice:

“Sacaremos el poder de Washington y lo trasladaremos al pueblo norteamericano”.

Hasta ahora sólo son palabras, hay que verlo caminar, como dice el refrán.

La élite ya tiene su plan trazado, si Donald Trump hace los cambios que prometió le sucederá como a los demás presidentes que no lograron terminar su mandato, habrá un estallido social, campos de concentración, anulación de garantías constitucionales, toque de queda, y seguramente una guerra civil.

¿Por qué puede suceder esto? Porque el ciudadano medio norteamericano ya no quiere más ser esclavo de la élite y está fuertemente armado, y le élite lo sabe y se adelantará.

El Nuevo Orden Mundial no acepta estados soberanos.

Todos tienen que estar endeudados,con un índice de pobreza del 40% o más, dejarse saquear sus recursos naturales, y abrir las importaciónes de China.

La humanidad se encuentra en un camino sin salida, la élite o los pueblos.

Gabriel Fossa

Gabriel Fossa: Analista Político, dirigente de Unidos x Perón.

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La globalización es un fenómeno geopolítico-histórico  caracterizada  esencial y fácticamente por  la transferencia de poder individual y comunitario de las naciones hacia la Súper Elite que busca una creciente homogeneización global para lograr la hegemonía total.

Los propietarios de la Elite Global, tras la consecución de sus objetivos y a través de ideologías (calentamiento global, de género, desindustrialización, desarme poblacional, multiculturalismo, entre otras)  y esquemas empíricos, plasman un nuevo giro antropológico, buscando uniformizar  el pensamiento y el  modus vivendi  de la humanidad. Asimismo, preconizan una economía global, centrada en la usura, para que el hombre sea deudor permanente, un mero consumidor de la manufactura y/o servicios (de electrónica, robótica y comunicativa)  de las empresas multinacionales adheridas a las redes del formato globalizador  y, finalmente, reconstituirlo en mano de obra barata.

Proceso que  ineluctable y gradualmente pauperiza y esclaviza a las naciones, erosionando la soberanía política y la independencia económica de los estados. A éstos los reconvierte en gerencias funcionales para  dinamizar mejor el proyecto globalista y eficientizar el método recaudador.

Por lo tanto, geolocalizar exclusivamente al Poder Global del Dinero en territorio e institucionalidad estadounidenses constituye un error ya que precisamente la puesta en funcionamiento de la propia  globalización perjudicó a la mayoría de su población.

Y fue dicho menoscabo en general lo que posibilitó la gran adherencia poblacional que tiene Donald Trump. Su apoyatura en la base social se debe específicamente a que su discurso y programa de gobierno se basan en  la defensa de un nacionalismo económico, en el respeto y la observancia del orden natural; en el abandono del perfil de “Estado policial del mundo” que los Estados Unidos desempeña desde hace un siglo y en una nueva pujanza del estado-nación.

Efectos económicos negativos de la globalización en los EE. UU. 

La economía de la  nación de los Estados Unidos en relación a deudas presenta los siguientes indicadores:

  • Deuda de consumidores, 12 billones de dólares.
  • Deuda Corporativa, 16 billones de dólares.
  • Deuda Pública, 20 billones de dólares.

La Reserva Federal y Wall Street, actores bancarios y financieros históricos íntimamente relacionados, son señalados como los grandes beneficiarios de la globalización.

La Reserva Federal fue creada por los grandes bancos de Wall Street y en beneficio de los grandes bancos de Wall Street.

Históricamente la  Reserva Federal ha jugado un papel importante en la creación del auge y de la recesión económica y dicha institución desde su creación en el año 1913 colaboró en la existencia de 18 recesiones o depresiones, disminuyendo el valor del dólar estadounidense (aproximadamente en un 98%),  siendo la tasa media anual de la  inflación un 3,5%.

De acuerdo con un informe de la Oficina de Rendición de Cuentas del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos (GAO) la Reserva Federal  salió al rescate de  los grandes bancos, entre 2007 y 2010, inyectándole 16.1 billones de dólares. (En ese momento, la deuda nacional pública de los EE.UU. era un poco más de 15 billones de dólares)

Con la globalización también las grandes empresas pudieron desplazar  fábricas a países como  México, China e India, a Bangladesh; producir allí con menor salario e impuestos para luego enviar los productos fabricados de vuelta a los EE.UU.

Esa libertad de trasladar la producción fuera de los EE.UU. empeoró la economía nacional.

En los últimos 25 años,  el registro de desempleo en el sector manufacturero creció exponencialmente en millones de personas, habiendo cerrado miles de fábricas por la imposibilidad de competir sana y vigorosamente contra lo producido en el extranjero a bajo coste laboral.

El salario real no crece significativamente desde hace 25 años.  La calidad de los empleos en Estados Unidos  estuvo mermando  constantemente desde que las diferentes administraciones federales aceptaron el formato de la globalización. –Uno de cada cuatro empleados en el sector privado   estadounidenses tiene remuneración  mínima de  10 dólares la hora e inclusive menos.

  • La brecha entre el 1%  que más tiene y el resto del país es ahora la más grande desde 1920.
  • 50 millones de personas viven en la pobreza.
  • Oficialmente, se considera que existen 7.4 millones de desocupados en los Estados Unidos. A ese registro hay que agregarle  95.06 millones enmarcados en “not in the labor forcé”, sumando más de 102 millones de personas.
  • Aproximadamente 17 millones de niños en los Estados Unidos se enfrentan a la inseguridad alimentaria.
  • Alrededor del 20 %  de todos los adultos jóvenes están actualmente viviendo con sus padres.
  • 7 de cada 10 estadounidenses tienen  menos de  1.000 dólares en ahorros.
  • La balanza comercial de los EE.UU con China, México, Canadá y  Japón, entre otros países, le da  como resultante saldo negativo.

Medidas a implementar

Ante ese cuadro situacional complicado, Trump desde la Casa Blanca maniobrará con realismo político coordinando las distintas tendencias que coexistirán en su gobierno.

Él y ciertos asesores suyos coinciden en que es más positivo tener como patrón al Oro que al dólar.

Planea  evitar que la Reserva Federal manipule las tasas de interés y la masa monetaria y  poner freno a las ganancias exorbitantes del capital especulativo de Wall  Street. Donald Trump sabe que el inversor de clase media global busca confianza y seguridad de rentabilidad y le brindará ello. Bajo su gestión intentará impedir  que salga la menor cantidad de dinero de su país. Redirigirá ciertos capitales de los fondos de inversión a la economía real para desarrollar la infraestructura  pública e implementar la reindustrialización.

Promocionará el ahorro y la inversión.

Revisará los términos de comercio internacional que deterioren la economía estadounidense y cumplirá gradualmente con la repatriación de las fábricas geolocalizadas  en países con mano de obra barata y  gran exención fiscal. Aumentará el nivel salarial de los trabajadores y habrá crédito empresarial y crédito social necesario. El mercado interno se revitalizará.

Expulsará a los inmigrantes  delictivos e ilegales y a los inmigrantes que quieran sumarse a la economía formal observando  las leyes de los gobiernos federal y estatal no les pondrá obstáculos.

En suma, rechazará el transnacionalismo y la globalización.

A Trump no le resultará fácil continuar desde la Casa Blanca su batalla contra la globalización pero con tan sólo materializar el 40% de sus promesas económicas electorales podrá darle otra estocada a la globalización.

Los Estados Unidos bajo el formato Trump también  precisará de países cuyas poblaciones  tengan un considerable nivel salarial para que puedan comprarle lo manufacturado. Naciones hispanoamericanas  con elevado índice inflacionario, relevante decrecimiento salarial y anarquía social no pueden resultarle necesarias por su posible beneficio al proceso reindustrializador de Trump.

Pero esas naciones deberán sumarse con racionalidad y realismo al emergente antiglobalizador que se está produciendo en otras partes de Occidente.

Porque, como asertivamente lo señala el insigne comentarista político Pat Buchanan “Un cambio radical en el pensamiento está llevandose a cabo en Occidente.”

Diego Pappalardo

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Introduction: 

The malady, common among political leaders who commit heartless crimes while craving popular adulation as heroes and misunderstood saints, is ‘Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ (PMSP).

PMSP best explains the pathologic drive of politicians and policy makers who inflict relentless, systematic mass destruction and then intervene in a most theatrical manner to save a few victims – thus drawing gratitude from the victim and public support for their ‘humanitarian intervention’ – ignorant of their fundamental role in creating the mayhem in the first place.

The actions of the outgoing President Barack Obama in the last three days of his administration present an example of PMSP on the domestic front.

Throughout his eight years as President of the United States , Obama exhibited many symptoms of PMSP – both abroad and in the US .  For his cynical crimes, he was awarded the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ among other honors.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/munchausen-syndrome#1

PMSP – The Abuser as Savior

Each of Obama’s relentless military interventions, including Libya , Somalia , Yemen , Iraq , Afghanistan and especially Syria , were characterized by the deliberate and total destruction of the means of normal civilized social existence for defenseless civilians – the bombing of homes, factories, markets, weddings, funerals, schools, hospitals – leading to the deaths of many thousands and the uprooting of millions into desperate flight.  In each case, Obama would proclaim that he was saving the victims from imminent genocide by an abusive ruler or ethnic group.  He would rush in to provide a few baskets of relief and a few blankets to some bedraggled survivors of his own bombing campaigns and bask in the glowing praise of mass media propagandists and fellow imperialists.  Choreographed applause and adulation would seem to follow America ’s First Black Presidenteverywhere.

Obama’s bombs, arms and mercenaries drove hundreds of thousands of families into the streets, into the mountains and most horrifically onto rickety, overloaded boats on the seas.  In each series of destruction and chaos, he would calculate the point at which his ‘humanitarian intervention’ would most effectively reflect on his heroism.

He destroyed the entire nation of Libya, shredded its institutions and infrastructure, bombed its cities and villages, even deliberately sending a deadly missile into the home sheltering a half dozen of President Muammar Gadaffi’s small grandchildren and finally ended up with the public death by torture of the wounded Libyan president sodomized by stakes documented in a imperial-pornographic snuff film that should have revolted the entire world.  That the main victims of Obama’s ‘liberation of Libya ’ were hundreds of thousands of black Libyan citizens and sub-Saharan African workers did little to detract from his public persona as the first ‘African American’ world hero.  The capsized boatloads of fleeing black Libyans and the bloated bodies washing ashore on the beaches of Spain and Italy were never linked to the criminal policies of our Nobel Prize recipient!  He even urged Europe to accept the miserable refugees fleeing his war – in a gesture of supreme PMSP.  He could do no wrong.  This serial political killer had an unquenchable thirst for sympathy and admiration – and a wholly corrupt propaganda machine to polish his halo.

Obama’s PMSP and Chelsea Manning

In his last few days in power, Obama turned his ‘heroic and humanitarian’ attention to individual American victims of grotesque injustice in our bloated and racist prison system – just to prove that the great man could ‘set up’ and then save individuals as well as nations.

The cold, calculus of the Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy President finally focused on the fragile form of the imprisoned and tortured Chelsea Manning – hero to millions and condemned traitor to the empire’s ruling elite.  For eight years, Barack Obama pursued the arrest, torture, kangaroo court-martial, virtual life sentencing and prison mistreatment of the US soldier who had dared to expose large-scale war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and release thousands of damning documents of systematic political war crime hidden from her compatriots.  She released videos of US pilots playing ‘execution games’ against a crowd of defenseless Iraqi civilians, including children, as well as equally egregious war crimes elsewhere.

Obama and his fellow war criminals were furious at Manning’s revelations – and approved of her sentence of 35 years, some of which had been served before her conviction in solitary confinement, often stripped naked – in a condition described by the United Nations as torture and inhumane treatment.  After her conviction, she was harassed and driven to multiple attempts to take her life.

After seven years of brutal and degrading treatment, spanning almost the entire Obama Administration, the condition of the frail transgender soldier-hero, almost a martyr to truth and justice, her supporters and the world community were desperate with concern for her safety, survival and sanity.  At this point, and in the last three days of her administration on January 17, 2017, Obama ‘commuted Manning’s sentence’ but left it to the incoming Trump Administration to free her five months later in May.

Instead of celebrating the liberation and vindication of the hero Chelsea Manning in May, the media drowned out the plight of the frail tortured whistleblower with its loud tributes to the mercy and heroism of the serial abuser – Barack Obama.

Conclusion

In his last days, Obama played the ‘Merciful Pasha’ commuting Manning’s virtual life sentence – which he still justified.  Obama did so in a way that literally begged the incoming rabidly reactionary regime of Donald Trump to rescind the commutation or at least impose such levels of torture and pressure on Manning that her very survival and sanity in prison up to her scheduled release in May will be in grave jeopardy.

The most virulent militarists in the US Congress, including the war criminal John McCain, are howling for Manning’s head.  While they will torture Manning during the next 5 months behind thick prison walls, the press will compare the vindictive Trump with the benevolent Obama. This is a cynical ‘set-up’ for our hero, Chelsea Manning to be driven to suicide by Trump while her ultimate persecutor, the ‘saintly’ Barack Obama will ‘shine’ for having issue the belated commutation.  Obama could easily have released Manning earlier and spared her this mortal danger – but he chose to tie the poor prisoner to a stake – under the blood-lusting noses of our most sadistic militarists – and invite their public display of savagery.

In one very self-glorifying pronouncement, three days before leaving office, Obama has sanctified himself at Manning’s expense and insured Chelsea ’s destruction.  This is virtuosic Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy by a true master!

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La falsa accusa di Trump a Obama

January 24th, 2017 by Manlio Dinucci

Di fronte all’accusa del neoeletto presidente Trump all’amministrazione Obama, perché avrebbe ottenuto poco o niente dagli alleati in cambio della «difesa» che gli Stati uniti assicurano loro, è sceso in campo il New York Times.  Ha pubblicato il 16 gennaio una documentazione, basata su dati ufficiali, per dimostrare quanto abbia fatto l’amministrazione Obama per «difendere gli interessi Usa all’estero».

Sono stati stipulati con oltre 30 paesi trattati che «contribuiscono a portare stabilità nelle regioni economicamente e politicamente più importanti per gli Stati uniti». A tal fine gli Usa hanno permanentemente dislocati oltremare più di 210 mila militari, soprattutto in zone di «conflitto attivo».

In Europa mantengono circa 80 mila militari, più la Sesta Flotta di stanza in Italia, per «difendere gli alleati Nato» e quale «deterrente contro la Russia». In cambio hanno ottenuto l’impegno degli alleati Nato di «difendere gli Stati uniti» e la possibilità di mantenere proprie basi militari vicine a Russia, Medioriente e Africa, il cui costo è coperto per il 34% dagli alleati. Ciò permette agli Usa di avere la Ue quale maggiore partner commerciale.

In Medioriente, gli Stati uniti mantengono 28 mila militari nelle monarchie del Golfo, più la Quinta Flotta di stanza nel Bahrain, per «difendere il libero flusso di petrolio e gas e, allo stesso tempo, gli alleati contro l’Iran». In cambio hanno ottenuto l’accesso al 34% delle esportazioni mondiali di petrolio e al 16% di quelle di gas naturale, e la possibilità di mantenere proprie basi militari contro l’Iran, il cui costo è coperto per il 60% dalle monarchie del Golfo.

In Asia orientale, gli Stati uniti mantengono oltre 28 mila militari nella Corea del Sud e 45 mila in Giappone, più la Settima Flotta di stanza a Yokosuka, per «contrastare l’influenza della Cina e sostenere gli alleati contro la Corea del Nord» In cambio hanno ottenuto la possibilità di mantenere proprie «basi militari vicino alla Cina e alla Corea del Nord», il cui costo è coperto dagli alleati nella misura del 40% in Corea del Sud e del 75% in Giappone. Ciò permette agli Usa di avere il Giappone e la Corea del Sud  quali importanti partner commerciali.

In Asia sud-orientale, gli Stati uniti mantengono un numero variabile di militari, nell’ordine di diverse migliaia, per sostenere Thailandia e Filippine unitamente all’Australia nel Pacifico. In tale quadro rientrano «le esercitazioni militari per la libertà di navigazione nel Mar Cinese Meridionale», da cui passa il 30% del commercio marittimo mondiale. In cambio gli Stati uniti hanno ottenuto la possibilità di «proteggere» un commercio marittimo del valore di oltre 5 mila miliardi di dollari annui. Allo stesso tempo hanno ottenuto «una regione più amica degli Stati uniti e più in grado di unirsi contro la Cina». Viene dimenticato in questo elenco il fatto che il Pentagono, durante l’amministrazione Obama, ha cominciato a schierare contro la Cina, a bordo di navi da guerra, il sistema Aegis analogo a quello già schierato in Europa contro la Russia, in grado di lanciare non solo missili anti-missile, ma anche missili da crociera armabili con testate nucleari.

È dunque infondata la critica di Trump a Obama, il quale ha dimostrato con i fatti ciò che afferma nel suo ultimo messaggio sullo Stato dell’Unione: «L’America è la più forte nazione sulla Terra. Spendiamo per il militare più di quanto spendono le successive otto nazioni combinate. Le nostre truppe costituiscono la migliore forza combattente nella storia del mondo». Questa è l’eredità lasciata dal presidente «buono».

Che cosa farà ora quello «cattivo»?

 Manlio Dinucci

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AFRICOM and “Vanguard Africa” usher in a renewed phase of neo-colonial dominance

Ousted Gambian President Yahya Jammeh was flown out of his country on Friday January 20 after the military intervention of troops from neighboring Senegal and air support from the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Reports surfaced that Jammeh will be taken to Equatorial Guinea far away from his home in Gambia. The regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had pressured Jammeh to relinquish power in the aftermath of an election in December when he was said to have been defeated by a coalition of opposition parties headed by rival candidate Adama Barrow.

Jammeh had initially accepted the results of the elections until the following week when he went on national television to challenge the authenticity of the poll claiming there were gross irregularities. The president had requested a revote and the parliament inside the country granted him a 90-day extension of office.

However, ECOWAS and their western imperialist supporters were determined to act immediately in order to remove Jammeh not only from his post but from the country. In a matter of days Senegalese troops were poised to invade with the full military support of other regional states including Nigeria and Ghana.

The events in Gambia were hailed by members of the corporate media and the government-controlled press of the western countries who framed the conflict inside the small West African state as a case of political intransigence and the suppression of democratic control. Barrow, who has been labelled as a successful “real estate developer” was installed at the Gambian embassy in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Nonetheless, days after the removal of Jammeh, Barrow has still not entered Gambia saying he will only return when the situation is “stable.”

The Role of AFRICOM in West Africa

The entire military, political and public relations operations utilized to remove Jammeh from the country and to inaugurate President Adama Barrow were engineered by the United States military and State Department along with leading news agencies in alliance with the British Foreign Office. Senegal, which renewed a comprehensive defense cooperation agreement with the U.S. in July 2016, has close ties with the U.S. AFRICOM was founded in February 2008 under the administration of former President George W. Bush, Jr.

During the successive Democratic Party government of former President Barack Obama, AFRICOM has been strengthened and enhanced. Joint maneuvers with African military forces, the training of troops and officers, the supply of weapons, intelligence and defense technology, has become standard practice across the continent with specific reference in the case of Gambia in the ECOWAS region.

In the Horn of Africa, Camp Lemonier has been expanded in Djibouti while drone stations and training operations conducted by the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are proliferating in the eastern region of the continent. Obama pledged over two years ago that Washington would deploy at least 3,500 U.S. Special Forces and trainers in over 35 African states as part of what was described as “counter-terrorism” exercises designed to improve the security capacity of African states.

Operation Flintlock in West Africa is an annual training exercise which set the stage for the current intervention in Gambia. The early 2016 operation was led by the Pentagon and included agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) utilizing Senegal as its base for the joint military field training in cooperation with 30 other states.

In an article published by Deutsche Welle, it says: “The operations in this year’s (2016) Flintlock exercises took a global dimension but also put much emphasis on the African regions where terrorist activities are rife. The FBI trainers grouped police officers and gendarmerie custom officers from Mauritania and Senegal in a team and gave them tactical and operational trainings.” (Feb. 29)

The U.S. Army Africa (USARAF) website reported that:

“The Flintlock exercise started in 2005 across the Sahel region of Africa. Participating nations are members in the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and are planned by African partner nation Special Operations Forces and Special Operations Command-Africa to develop the capacity and collaboration among African security forces to protect civilian populations.”

Another report published by the New York Times emphasized the participation of military forces from The Netherlands, which houses the International Criminal Court (ICC), along with other NATO members. This institution, the ICC, has been pre-occupied with indicting, arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning African governmental and rebel leaders. At present former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo is facing trial after he was overthrown at the aegis of French paratroopers in 2011.

African Union (AU) member-states have expressed their trepidation related the apparent racist and pro-imperialist character of the ICC. Nonetheless, the mass exodus from the institution has yet to be forthcoming.

Three states have withdrawn from the ICC being Burundi, South Africa and interestingly enough, Gambia, which is the focus of the current ECOWAS intervention.  Jammeh had rejected the interference into Gambian national affairs by ECOWAS, a regional structure which remains within the orbit of former colonial powers and the U.S.

Eric Schmitt, the author of the NYT article, stressed in relationship to Operation Flintlock that:

“The exercise pairs Western trainers with African partners in different outposts scattered around Senegal and Mauritania. In Senegal, for instance, Estonian alpine experts are training Senegalese Special Forces; Italian commandos are working with troops from Chad; and Austrian Special Forces are also with Senegalese soldiers. Dutch marines, who have been training with Senegalese naval forces since 2007, were a natural fit for the new riverine mission. The recent beach landing was the first phase in training that over the next two weeks will build up to a two-day simulated mission with a night landing — as the commandos would do in a real operation to preserve the element of surprise and allow more time to surveil the target.” (Feb. 15, 2016)

Allegations of corruption by the ousted Jammeh administration are now making the case for the deportation of the former leader to the Netherlands. Reuters press agency quoted a Gambian citizen

“Trader Aji Jagne, 32, who had screamed ‘we are free’ until her voice was hoarse on Sunday (Jan. 22) but by the end of the day, less than 24 hours after Jammeh flew out of the country and into exile, her toothy grin had disappeared. ‘Why should he escape…? If he ever sets foot in Gambia again, we shall take him to the ICC,’ she said, referring to the International Criminal Court, from which Jammeh had planned to withdraw before his December 1 electoral defeat.” (Jan. 23)

Regime Change Agents and the Removal of Jammeh

A key aspect of overthrow of the Gambian government was a well-funded public relations campaign led by so-called non-profit organizations in cooperation with corporate media outlets and government-controlled press agencies. One such institution is Vanguard Africa which is based in the U.S.

The Atlanta-based Cable News Network (CNN) reported on January 23 that:

“Jeffrey Smith is the executive director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit organization that provides support to pro-reform political candidates and backed Barrow’s campaign. Smith told CNN: ‘The priority right now is getting the country back on track. Gambians just want to get on with building the country back up again.’”

Smith has worked with similar operations including Robert F. Kennedy Center, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA), and UNESCO. Others associated with the Vanguard Africa group includes Joe Trippi as Senior Advisor, who as explained by the organization’s website: “In 2008 helped Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change receive the most votes, and helped garner international media attention to Robert Mugabe’s democratic subversion and violence which led to a ‘unity’ government and Tsvangarai becoming Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.”

The Zimbabwe government has been a target of the imperialist states led by Britain and the U.S. since 1998 when the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) declared that it would redistribute land taken during the colonial onslaught of the late 19th century. Since 2000, when the Third Chimurenga was launched, the economy of the mineral and agricultural rich state has been strangled through a draconian sanctions regime coupled with a massive anti-President Robert Mugabe propaganda campaign seeking the leader’s overthrow and expulsion from the country.

Similar Patterns Throughout Africa

The developments in Gambia are by no means an isolated incident prompted by the purported excesses of the Jammeh government. Just days prior to the Senegalese intervention, thousands of Europeans and other guests were residing unmolested inside the country which relies on the tourist industry for 40 percent of its national revenue. In fact it was the British Foreign Office which declared a travel advisory coupled with alarmist reports from corporate media and imperialist press agencies which led to the mass evacuation of the small state.

In Libya during 2011, it was the U.S. State Department and the western media that spread falsehoods about an imminent massacre of opposition forces in the oil-rich North African nation. The Obama administration accompanied by Britain and France set the stage for the blanket-bombing of Libya, the overthrow of the Jamahiriya system, the brutal execution of leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi and the subsequent destruction of the Libyan state. Today Libya is a source of regional instability and economic destabilization spreading throughout North and West Africa.

Ivory Coast leaders President Laurent and Simone Gbagbo are at present in the prisons of the Netherlands, in the case of the former leader, while the previous First Lady, has been railroaded through a biased court under the administration of the installed incumbent President Alassane Ouattara, and sentenced to twenty years in detention. The same fate is awaiting any other African leaders who dare to defy the dictates of western imperialism and its allies in the region.

These events will continue until the post-colonial African states break their political and economic dependency on imperialism. African unity must be based upon the sanctity of territorial sovereignty and genuine independence. Regional African military operations cannot be guided and coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO without forfeiting the inherent right to self-determination. They should be based upon the imperatives of African unity and the reconstruction of the continent on socialist development processes.

 

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Two extreme, very polarized paradigms have emerged as President Donald Trump takes command of the White House. After the shattered hopes and fraud perpetrated by America’s first African-American president, Trump supporters naively believe they’ve elected their “great white hope” of a president who will “make America great again,” taking at face value his “America comes first” rhetoric.

Many see Trump as a modern day George Washington figure, leading Americans in their second revolution, fighting to take back their country from the globalists. But Trump’s legions of supporters fail to realize that the entrenched power machine that appears to reluctantly and covertly be behind Trump’s ascendance at the same time opposing him at every turn is in fact the very same power elite that’s been backing his opponent all along – the Hillary-Obama-Bush DC establishment cabal.

Indeed the trumped up “establishment outsider” image that’s won Trump the presidency belies the fact that in actuality he is an establishment insider who until now just hasn’t held political office. In stark contrast to the new president’s loyal constituency, the anti-Trump, “liberal-minded,” pro-Clinton-CIA minions’ world-view steadfastly insist that Donald Trump along with “partner-in-crime“ Vladimir Putin are the devil-incarnate themselves. To do an actual reset with Russia (unlike Obama’s fake one 8 years ago) and cease the neocons’ insane push for WWIII, within weeks President Trump will be meeting with Putin in Iceland’s capital (report to be confirmed). Of course Trump haters will see this as “proof” the two were in cahoots all along to “steal” the election.

Meanwhile, America has never been this divided a nation since the War Between the States more than a century and a half ago. With present battle lines so bitterly and fiercely drawn, the planetary rulers are once again laughing in their mansions over having so effectively divided and conquered Americans as their reliable go-to formula for strengthening their power and control over the masses, regardless of who occupies the White House, setting the stage for America’ssecond civil war and Europe’s counterpart.

Speculation amongst those following the money behind these two polarized political camps posit a Hatfield versus McCoy inner power struggle within the global elite currently taking place between the Clinton-Bush-Obama crowd backed by the Rothschild cartel and a Trump-Netanyahu/Sheldon Adelson-Kissinger-soft countercoup merger supported by the Rockefeller cabal, and that the real powerline story here might be the Rothschild versus the Rockefeller feud competing and vying for increased power and control at the expense of the other.

Yet this too is far more apt to just be more sleight of hand chicanery to project an illusion of difference between the Trump and Clinton camps. Bottom line – deep pocket money from both the Rothschild and Rockefeller dynasties have been funding both Hillary and Trump. Even the West versus East showdown leading humanity towards World War III could secretly be the pre-plotted machinations between the Western oligarchs and the Eastern oligarchs. How much of this economic and geopolitical division is real or unreal is extremely difficult to determine and prove or disprove. With elitist shills controlling both the mainstream media as well as much of the alternative media, deciphering actual truth becomes nearly impossible. Perhaps one helpful method of seeking the truth can be conveniently found on the mainstream media’s “fake news” list that blacklists 200 actual alt news sites that ironically most closely approximate and consistently deliver the truth.

That said, the truth that we can sure of is that for well over a century the ruling elite has backed and promoted both sides to every major war it manufactures, just as it has selected, backed and promoted every two-party candidate who ends up its president, keyword being “its” president as no president over the last half century has clearly acted in the best interests of American citizens. We’ve been living inan oligarchy where a handful of powerbrokers control the masses because they own and control virtually all the elected representatives who function on their explicit behalf rather than their constituent voters’ behalf. And sadly, it’s been operating this way in America for a very long time.

On January 20th Donald Trump opened his presidency with a fiery 16-minute inaugural address that in a nutshell encapsulated his 18-month campaign, spouting his populist rabblerousing message. Having said that he himself would be writing his inauguration speech, in his first presidential oratorical display, in essence the brand new Commander-in-Chief just declared war against the ruling elite:

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have bore the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.

Donald Trump goes on to describe “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories” across our nation, an education system depriving students “of all knowledge,” and “the crime and gangs and drugs” robbing “our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Trump follows with:

We are one nation, and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

Unlike his critics claiming that Trump failed to offer words that unifythe divided nation, the president’s accurate observations of a nation in decline were followed immediately by statements reaching out to and inclusive of the millions of forgotten and downtrodden Americans who’ve been left behind by an ever-widening inequality gap that only benefits the wealthy class. Yet the consensus review by mainstream media that vehemently opposes Trump responded predictably, calling it “combative,” “divisive,” “polarizing” and “gloomy.”

Answering millions of his liberal haters insisting from day one of his candidacy that Trump is nothing but a racist wannabe dictator who’ll rival Hitler’s coldblooded tyranny, the newly sworn-in president predicts:

A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget – that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.

Rather than echoing the usual sentiments that past inaugural addresses customarily deliver, espousing the Politically Correct clichéd pretenses calling for mending the differences while repeatedly resorting to flowery references to America’s glorious past, Trump once again defied tradition, angrily fighting against status quo elitism. But his contentious tone was clearly not directed at the American people, but limited to the Washington insiders, many of whom sat in the audience appearing uncomfortable hearing Trump directly attack them for nearly destroying America to make themselves and the rich richer and the rest of us poorer. In contrast, Trump stated:

That a nation exists to serve its citizens… We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

True to their heavily biased repulsion towards Trump, the mainstream presstitutes didn’t hesitate to trash Trump’s first presidential speech. A day later on Saturday the new White House press secretary Sean Spicer held an impromptu first press conference to push back against the faulty inauguration day coverage, citing a false tweet claiming Trump removed a Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office and the New York Times disputing the inauguration crowd size based on a White House tweeted photo. Spicer said Trump is trying to unify the country but it requires fair reporting by the press that on his very first day was grossly lacking. With the press and Trump sworn enemies prior to inauguration, the war will only become more volatile. And with Trump haters the dominant majority in the media and a thin-skinned reactionary for president, the fireworks have only just begun.

The mega media outlets all made certain to repeatedly emphasize that Trump suffers the lowest approval rating at 40% for any incoming president in history. Ironically the three previous presidents who will go down in that same US history for nearly destroying America – Bill Clinton, Bush junior and Obama – all had approval ratings at their outset 20% or higher than Trump. Obama, perhaps the worst president in history, entered the White House with a 79% approval. And if this survey is anything like all those pre-election polls, it too isrigged as Trump is quick to point out. MSM also focused on how near 70 Democratic Party politicians in symbolic protest refused to even attend the inaugural ceremony and how the attendance was roughly half of Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

The fake-stream press of course works in tandem with the fake Hollywood entertainment industry. So the media went out of its way to feature each and every celebrity who publicly refused to perform at Trump’s big day commencement events. On inauguration eve all the A-list celebs joined thousands of New Yorkers, Michael Moore and their mayor protesting outside Manhattan’s Trump Tower.

Receiving the most airtime were Trump’s opposition forces gathering in the Big Apple and the Washington Mall. The star-studded kickoff on Thursday night in New York had the likes of Madonna, Cher, Robert De Niro and their ringleader Michael Moore leading the counteroffensive charge with his “first 100 days of resistance,” designed to rain their propaganda woes on Trump’s parade. Moore lathered up the crowd warning that America has entered “a very dangerous” time after electing a “sociopath.” Interesting to note that it’s the certifiable sociopath Obama whose agenda has been toplunge America into WWIII with Russia that all these anti-Trumpsters worship while the new president’s aim is to avert war against Putin as a potential life-extinction event. But then these people conveniently overlook those small details.

Rather than ponder that reality, MSM “fake news” prefers to concentrate all eyes on the so called resistance movement, endowed with $10 million of globalist regime money. Never mind that the hired anti-Trump leftist brigade turns violent, that’s what they’re paid to do. In Washington they again clashed and injured a half dozen police officers in riot gear that countered with pepper spray and concussion grenades. When the Elite  mercenaries weren’t blocking Air Force veterans from the inaugural ceremony, they were busy rioting as brick-throwing vandals shattering a number of storefront windows, setting fire to a limousine and causing extensive property damage that resulted in 217 arrests.

Those swept up in the turmoil and detained in Washington are apparently being held on felony riot charges punishable up to ten years in prison. Local police were joined by a deployment of National Guard units and Homeland Security. It appears that police state under Obama remains police state under Trump. Additionally, 15 arrests were made in New Orleans after a couple of patrol car windows were smashed and two police officers were injured. Armed with bottles, rocks and bats the anti-Trump protesters showed their real colors. This same violence was observed elsewhere, resulting in five arrests in Portland, Oregon and three in Oakland in addition to a man shot at a Seattle demonstration.

And while on Saturday the women’s multiple-city marches were being hyped up in the national press, Madonna was at it again, firing up the DC crowd with little Molotov cocktail gems like “I thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House” but luckily for the Donald she knows that “this won’t change anything.” Being a celebrity, she must have figured she could get away with threatening to kill the president of the United States. The Secret Service has taken her violent threat seriously and Madonna now finds herself under investigation. Officials claim a half million strong marched where Trump was sworn into office the day before. The so called anti-Trump movement was touted as a worldwide event with “sister marches” taking place in 600 locations across America as well as in Myanmar, Sydney, Copenhagen, Berlin and Prague.

 

Meanwhile, receiving little MSM attention was the fact that women from a pro-life group that were originally a co-sponsor of Saturday’s“unity” march were banned from participation. Thus, those not sharing the same political dogma as the march organizers were expressly forbidden, leaving on full display the hypocritical inconsistency of practicing the very same exclusionary behavior attributed to Trump that supposedly was the very purpose of conducting the protest.

Obviously the inclusionary message within Trump’s speech was totally ignored by these same anti-Trump protesters and the mass media. Its amazing how the “progressive-minded, so inclusive” left, always preaching unity while professing to be such staunch anti-globalists, anti-TPP, peace-loving anti-interventionists, yet they can turn dangerously violent, starting riots, and making threats to blow up the White House. Then they worship politicians like Obama and the Clintons who have pushed the globalist agenda more than any other American leaders in history. And now that we finally have a president committed to anti-globalism and non-interventionism, other than eliminating the terrorists that Obama and Hillary created, the progressive left is determined to take him down.

The last US president who exercised any real conscience and resolve to shake up the power establishment by acting in the best interests of the American people never made it past his first term in office. And the same criminal operation that took down JFK – key players within the CIA, the CFR and Kennedy administration including his own VP LBJ, those same shadow government rogue elements still remain alive and fully in power today. Case in point, that same CIA has bogusly charged Trump with colluding with Putin to overturn the election outcome, which has proven to be false. Yet sore-losing Democrats are still falsely claiming the lie in desperation to delegitimize and undermine the Trump presidency. And finally, the same CIA guilty of plotting and murdering JFK is still scheming and plotting the demise of President Donald J. Trump.

The very real prospect of Trump getting assassinated during his presidency has been repeatedly kept on the table, mostly couched in hypothetical terms behind barely contained wishful thinking by hordes of fake stream pundits and commentators representing the same crime cabal still in power. Not so veiled threats to Trump’s life have been brashly hyped repeatedly by all six oligarch owned and controlled mega media giants as well as Washington’s elite. Clearly many both in and out of the seats of power do want Trump dead.

Last February a New York Times columnist “joked” about ultimately halting Trump’s presidential campaign by assassination. Several weeks later conservative talk show host Glenn Beck threatened on the air to repeatedly “stab Trump.” Then in June just three months later a 20-year old British citizen actually did attempt to assassinate Trump, trying to pull a gun out a police officer’s holster at a Las Vegas rally. Ever since late 2015 when the inflammatory Trump emerged as the Republican frontrunner for good, aside from ongoing death threats from the left on social media, a rapper and a couple of GOPestablishment strategists also joined the fray openly calling for Trump’s assassination apparently with complete impunity. But now that Trump’s president, all that has changed. Ask Madonna. Recently more assassination concerns have been voiced by conspiracy theorists surrounding Trump’s upcoming inauguration. As perhaps the most blatant anti-Trump mainstream fake news network, CNN has notoriously carried the assassination torch right up to inauguration day. It’s as if CNN and others like Madonna are subliminally planting the seed to incite other lame brains into MK Ultra violent reaction to take down the 45th US president. And with so many mentally unstable individuals out there, and mind control techniques utilizing black ops electromagnetic weaponry, undoubtedly more attempts on Trump’s life are bound to be in store.

Another aging remnant linked to the Kennedy assassination is the still alive George H.W. Bush who, as a young Skull & Bones CIA operative, was photographed in front of the book depository building in Dallas the same day Kennedy was assassinated. And H.W.’s still alive war criminal son was observed still smirking, laughing and joking with his fellow cabalist war criminal cronies the Clintons and Obama at the inauguration, just prior to the one man who successfully thwarted the Bush-Clinton-Obama dynasty after near four decades, began outing them as traitors. Suddenly the smirk disappeared.

After opening his inaugural address lavishing compliments on Barack Obama for being so graciously helpful during the presidential transition, the just sworn in President Trump then proceeded to expose both Congress and all the attending former presidents for turning their backs on the American people, stopping just short of calling them America’s traitors from within, which of course they clearly are.

Trump’s speech was his first shot across the bow as the brand new sheriff in town, directly blaming those in Washington for selling America out to foreign interests, selling off American workersto offshore foreign factories and globalist “free” trade deals, selling off America’s crumbling infrastructure to costly hegemonic warsoverseas, selling off America’s national security AND citizens’ legal rights for Obama’s illegal permanent war that’s made us far less safewith an open border policy inviting terrorist cells to flourish on US soil, selling off and abandoning America’s poor and middle classes for military industrial security complex profit and greed, and selling America out to a globalized fake mass media.

In his inauguration speech Trump laid out a plan to stop the bleeding and reverse the damage, reiterating all his campaign priorities as a nationalist, clearly opposing globalism as his enemy. To millions of long forgotten Americans viciously victimized by elitist rulers, his words came as music to their ears, reinforcing their belief that finally a president has arrived who’s once again looking out for them. Caution bears not getting your hopes up too high but simply holding Trump to his word.

Of course eight years ago after surviving eight painful years under Bush and Cheney’s reign of terror, Obama promised to end unwinnable foreign wars and deliver the most open and transparent presidency in US history that so captured and resonated with America’s hopes, was also welcomed as music to our ears. Soon enough though, we learned Obama’s domestic and foreign policies were pretty much the same as his predecessors and that voting a Democrat or a Republican into the White House really didn’t matter at all when the puppet in charge is never actually in charge. Like clockwork every eight years, America’s short term memory forces us to relive the disillusioning nightmare of déjà vu all over again… that the new boss turns out to be same as the old boss simply because he’s never been the boss to begin with. The figurehead occupying the White House has always taken his marching orders directly from the ruling elite. Perhaps the globalist design to dumb down Americans has been so successful that we may never learn this critical history lesson, however harsh the consequences.

If Trump really does mean business and attempts to make good on his campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” finishing the job that JFK started by abolishing the CIA, Trump most definitely has his work cut out for him. Once he completes that task, he must move on to destroying destructive, enslaving monsters like the Federal Reserve,Homeland Security and the DEA, drastically reducing the self-serving cancerous bureaucracy and cronyism of ever-sprawling big government. In addition to gutting the feds’ fat, President Trump’s priorities must also include eliminating the parasitic glut of thousands of private contractors, bilking billions more from taxpayers. Trump must also normalize relations with Russia (as well with China and Iran), and in partnership as mentioned in his inaugural, eradicate the cabal’s proxy ally the terrorists “off the face of the earth.” Trump needs to revoke all the unconstitutional Obama executive orders as well as dismantle and repeal a number of Obama passed laws, including reinstating the Smith-Mundt Act to once again hold all the fake MSM accountable for propagating unlawful lies and false propaganda.

Perhaps more important than anything else, President Trump needs to restore the US Constitution as America’s rule of law and our government back to a democratic republic. Trump’s website promises he will honor and uphold our Constitution as taking his oath of office demands. That means he needs to immediately begin rolling back the totalitarian police state tyranny and invasive violation of our constitutional freedoms already demolished under the Bush-Obama regime. Finally, Trump built his entire campaign on the promise to jump start the lifeless national economy by creating massive employment opportunity for millions of under- and unemployed Americans, vowing to create 25 million jobs within the decade. He also says that he’ll entice many companies back to the US as well as resurrect our lost manufacturing base and shrinking middle class. A tall if not impossible order that again we need to hold him to the task.

Shortly after President Kennedy warned of the shadow government and made it known he was committed to a course of peace instead of war (calling for withdrawal of all US military advisors from Vietnam), eliminating the CIA (prior to it eliminating him) and signing ExecutiveOrder 11110 that threatened to cut the authority of the Federal Reserve banksters by returning responsibility of America’s money supply over to the US Treasury, President Kennedy was suddenly shot dead. On a parallel course, Trump insists that he will not go to war with Russia or interfere in other nations’ internal affairs, and last week he called NATO “obsolete,” a radical departure from the hyper-aggressive unipolar US foreign policy. He’s also made overtures to end the Federal Reserve and the CIA, all reminiscent of our last assassinated president. For Trump to avoid this same tragic fate and be victorious in thoroughly “draining the swamp,” he will need to move gradually, steadily and stealthily, exercising extreme prudence and caution while navigating the formidable economic and geopolitical minefield that his powerful enemies have laid before him.

The Federal Reserve will soon be raising interest rates that will tighten the wallets of already strapped Americans, 76% of whom are living one paycheck away from homelessness. Interest rates across the boards on housing mortgages as well as credit cards and bank loans will be going up significantly in 2017. The elite’s policy in recent years has been to kick the can down the road temporarily averting the impending financial crash, that is until after Trump becomes president. Last week’s Davos meeting agenda no doubt placed the final touches on the globalist timetable to implode the house of cards economy this year. Be prepared for the 3 plus cents worth on our dollar since the Federal Reserve took over in 1913 to shrink even further into oblivion as the financial crisis deepens, and the US dollar/petrodollar as international reserve currency slips into its death throes. Hyperinflation will kick in and soon enough the United States will likely be following the same gloomy path as countries like current Venezuela and Zimbabwe 15 years ago. By globalist design the currency demonetization occurring in Venezuela and India will be arriving soon in the US. After all, absolute NWO surveillance and control can best be attained only when living in a cashless society.

With the national debt soaring to near $20 trillion, when the SHTF, like in Cyprus and Austria, expect the likelihood of bail-ins where you wake up one day to find your personal life savings stolen out of your private bank account. Gas, energy and food prices will be rising and in a crisis, grocery shelves will quickly empty. Americans are pretty jumpy and jittery these days. When earlier this month a minor winter storm moved across the south and southeastern US, it caused public panic. If an actual major crisis suddenly hits, you can imagine the outcome. On hungry stomachs, civil unrest quickly turns to uncivilized violence that could sweep across the nation, especially in large urban areas. And of course now that we have a brand new president already on tenuous ground as the elite’s designated fall guy, President Trump will be blamed. Buckle up folks, 2017’s shaping up to be one hell of a bumpy ride. Stay alert and informed, be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best.

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 with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist.

His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.

 

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Is the TPP Hegemonic Trade Deal Dead or Dormant?

January 24th, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

The Obama administration went all out for its approval – a hugely secretive anti-consumer, anti-freedom, anti-environment, jobs-killing corporate giveaway race to the bottom.

It’s all about greater than ever corporate empowerment under its rules, overriding domestic laws for maximum profit-making.

Obama lied, claiming it aims to “promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in the signatories’ countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labor and environmental protections.”

It’s polar opposite on all counts. Secret negotiations went on for years, owing to TPP’s controversial provisions. Congress never ratified it.

Trump’s opposition to the deal greatly aided his electoral triumph. Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach explained Obama’s support “signaled to those whose lives have been turned upside down by the trade policies of the past 25 years that (Democrats don’t) care about them.”

Candidate Obama in 2008 campaigned against unfair trade deals. President Obama betrayed US workers by supporting them. Trump’s memorandum killed TPP on his watch.

He didn’t end talks on TTIP – TPP’s transatlantic equivalent or the secretive Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) – though his January 23 memorandum said his administration will “deal directly with individual countries on a one-on-one (or bilateral) basis in negotiating future trade deals.”

Wallach explained TISA “roll(s) back the improvements made after the global financial crisis to safeguard consumers and financial stability and cement us into the extreme deregulatory model of the 1990s that led to the crisis in the first place and the billions in losses to consumers and governments.”

She said “NAFTA is so packed with incentives for job offshoring and protections for…corporate interests” that Trump’s only responsible action is abandoning it altogether, not tweaking or renegotiating a measure too flawed to fix.

Is TPP dead or will a new administration and Congress revive it or something similar under a different name to disguise its hellishness?

Commenting on Trump’s executive order, the Electronic Freedom Foundation said his reasons for killing TPP aren’t in line with its opposition.

In his inaugural address, he said for too long, US trade policies “enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry.” He said nothing about TPP’s secrecy “and its impacts on digital rights.”

His “withdrawal from the TPP may not have achieved a long-lasting victory on those underlying issues.” Future trade deals under his stewardship “may be just as secretive, and equally harmful to Internet users’ rights,” EFF explained.

It urged a whole new approach to future negotiations, featuring “public transparency and openness.” Trump said “every decision on trade…will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

Abandoning all one-sidedly pro-business, anti-consumer, anti-worker, anti-environment free trade deals for fair ones is the only way to keep his public pledge.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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The Russians Are Coming

January 24th, 2017 by Oliver Stone

As 2016 closes, we find ourselves a deeply unsettled nation. We’re unable to draw the lines of our national interest. Is it jobs and economy, is it national security, or is it now in our interest to ensure global security — in other words, act as the world’s policemen?

As the “failing” (to quote Trump) New York Times degenerates into a Washington Post organization with its stagnant Cold War vision of a 1950s world where the Russians are to blame for most everything — Hillary’s loss, most of the aggression and disorder in the world, the desire to destabilize Europe, etc. — the Times has added the issue of ‘fake news’ to reassert its problematic role as the dominant voice for the Washington establishment. Certainly this is true in the case of Russia’s ‘hacking’ the 2016 election and putting into office its Manchurian Candidate in Donald Trump. Apparently the CIA (via various unnamed intelligence officials), and the FBI, NSA, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (who notoriously lied to Congress in the Snowden affair), President Obama, the DNC, Hillary Clinton, and Congress agree that Russia, and Mr. Putin predominantly, is responsible.

Certainly the psychotic, war-loving Senator John McCain is right up there alongside these patriots, calling President Putin a “thug, bully and a murderer and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.” He actually said this — the man whose sound judgment chose Sarah Palin as his VP nominee in ’08. And the Times followed by printing the story in its full glory on page one, clearly agreeing with McCain’s point of view. I don’t remember Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, or Reagan, in the darkest days of the 1950s/80s, ever singling out a Russian President like this. The invective was aimed at the Soviet regime, but never were Khrushchev or Brezhnev the target of this bile. I guess this is a new form of American diplomacy. If a black youth in our inner cities were killed or a Pakistani wedding party were murdered by our drones, would President Obama be singled out as a murderer, bully, thug? Such personalization is a sign of sickness in our thinking and way beneath what should be our standards.

Note the enclosed link (“US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims”) from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (which includes the ex-NSA reformer Bill Binney, a mathematical genius who inspired the Nic Cage character in “Snowden”). He talks here about what hacking really means, as opposed to a ‘leak’. The Times and other mainstream media have surprisingly evaded any contrary evidence, such as that presented by Craig Murray, ex-ambassador and Wikileaks spokesman who says he was given the information in a Washington park by a Democratic ‘insider’ who was disgusted by the behavior of the DNC; Murray then gave it to Wikileaks. This was a ‘leak,’ not a ‘hack,’ and always seemed to me the likely source for this scandal (as I think the Sony leak was as well, falsely blamed on North Korea, but that’s another matter). And if this were to be properly investigated, it might very well lead to the discovery that this was Hillary Clinton’s ‘Nixon moment.’ Clearly the DNC offices were up to no good. Ironically, Clinton first made her name as one of the investigators into Watergate. See Mark Ames’s article, “Site Behind McCarthyite Blacklist,” tracking this foul play to Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg.

I remember well in the 1950s when the Russians were supposed to be in our schools, Congress, State Department — and according to many Eisenhower/Nixon supporters — about to take over our country without serious opposition (and they call me paranoid!). It was this same media who insisted on our need to go to Vietnam to defend our freedoms against the communists 6,000 miles away. And after the Red Scare finally went away for good in 1991, let us remind ourselves that It never ended. It became Hussein of Iraq with his weapons of mass destruction, and talk of the ‘mushroom cloud.’ It became the Demon, as real as any Salem Witch Trial. It was Gaddafi of Libya, and then it was Assad of Syria. In other words, as in an Orwellian prophesy, it never ended, and I can guarantee you it never will — unless we the people who still think for ourselves in this existential matter, can say “Enough” to this demon act. “Enough,’ “go away” — laugh in their faces.

Of course, the NYT/WaPo nexus rarely publishes any of our serious dissents and therefore we take refuge in alternate media, such as ‘The Nation,’ ‘Consortiumnews,’ ‘The Intercept,’ ‘Naked Capitalism,’ ‘Counterpunch,’ ‘Zero Hedge,’ ‘Antiwar.com,’ ‘Truthdig,’ ‘Common Dreams,’ etc. I think then we were all quite shocked (but not surprised) when recently we saw 200 WEBSITES listed as tools of the Kremlin (WaPo’s November 24, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election”).

My God, the ghost of Izzy Stone is back from the 1950s! For that matter, so is Tom Clancy from the ’80s. False thrillers will now be written about the Russians hacking the American elections. Money and TV serials will be made. I’ve never read such hysterical junk in the New York Times (call it what it is — “fake news”), in which the editorials have become outrageous diatribes of alleged crimes by Russia, many of them presumably written by Serge Schmemann, one of those ideologues who still looks for Russians under his bed at night; they were called ‘White Russians’ in the old days and, like right-wing Cubans in Miami, are unable to live down past grievances. Schmemann is obviously riding high at the NYT edit board. This type of thinking has clearly influenced the Pentagon and many of our Generals’ statements, and has pervaded MSM reporting. When one group-think controls our national conversation, it becomes truly dangerous. In this spirit, I’m linking several crucial essays of new vintage, pointing out the disgrace the MSM has become.

As much as I may disagree with Donald Trump (and I do) he’s right now target number one of the MSM propaganda — until, that is, he jumps to the anti-Kremlin track because of some kind of false intelligence or misunderstanding cooked up by CIA. Then I fear, in his hot-headed way, he starts fighting with the Russians, and it wouldn’t be long then until a state of war against Russia is declared. I have no doubt then that our over-financed military ($10 to every 1 Russian dollar) will mean NOTHING against a country that right now believes the US, with the largest buildup of NATO on its borders since Hitler’s World War II, is crazed enough to prepare for a preemptive strike. In his analysis, “The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable,” Robert Parry points out that this conflict ironically started in the 1980s with the Neoconservatives defining Iran as the number one terrorist sponsor in the world. How this leads to our present mess is a brilliant analysis that is unknown to the American public.

I urge you to read the following articles and stay calm in your thinking. But bring it to bear in some way. As a believer in what the Dalai Lama says, every single one of us, even through our prayers, can add to the betterment of this world. I never thought I’d find myself praying for the level-headedness of a Donald Trump. Remember “The Iliad”? As Homer would have it, the gods would hover over each day’s battles and decide on the outcome. Who would die and who would live. Are the gods still listening?

Robert Parry, “Making Russia ‘The Enemy

Joe Lauria, “Russia-Hack Story Another Media Failure

Justin Raimondo, “Stop the CIA Coup

Robert Parry, “The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable

Ray McGovern, “US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims

Mark Ames, “Site behind Washington Post’s McCarthyite Blacklist

Robert Parry, “A Sour Holiday Season for Neocons

Oliver Stone: Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter. Films include Untold History, Scarface, Platoon, Wall Street, JFK and Natural Born Killers.

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Factionalism and fury are basic ingredients of the US Republic. Designed as a classic response to the lynch mob fantasy of direct democracy, and the weakness of unaccountable monarchy, those behind the US constitution contrived a select form of paternal snobbery: letting groups fight it out in the amphitheatre of politics. Such a battle would always adhere to certain demarcations of power along the separation of powers.

This was all well and good, bar one fundamental problem. The State blossomed and ballooned. Bureaucracy became both purpose and fetish, despite being opposed in a rhetorical way by various presidential administrations and politicians. WhileUS politicians – at least a good number of them – feared the growth of the unelected classes within the US government system, the empire’s appetite proved voracious.

Supply met demand.  Functionaries were hired; modern foot soldiers were sought for the task of building empire in freedom’s glades.  The National Security Agency, child of a new, post-World War empire, grew up alongside the Central Intelligence Agency.  A vast intelligence community mushroomed in the dark rhetoric of Cold War doom and nuclear fears.

What, then, of that elusive quantity known as the people?  Where would they fit in the administrative schemes of such behemoths? History shows them as subjects to be spied upon and suspected.  The security rationale became the necessary shibboleth.  Despite various imposed restrictions, warrantless surveillance took place in leaps and bounds, notably after September 11, 2001. The CIA became executor, under President George W. Bush’s watch, of extraordinary rendition and torture.

Now, the intelligence community is again creating its form of mischief.  A few days before the inauguration of Donald J. Trump we bore witness to unveiled threats and promises of an internal conflict, the anger of the Washington professionals against the out-of-town entertainers.

It continued the sentiment expressed by former CIA chief Michael J. Morell during the campaign, arguing that the USpeople were effectively going for a dangerous, destabilising defective.[1]  The language is important here, for democracies which do not yield the favoured candidate need, as Henry Kissinger famously noted, direction.  The wishes of the voter, in other words, require correction from time to time.

Trump’s critics within the intelligence community see the problem as Trump.  But in such criticism lies the most perverse tilt favouring the CIA’s stance.  This traditional bug bear of the Left, a body with various nasty character references, suddenly finds common ground with anti-Trump critics on both sides of the spectrum.  Unholy and unruly sympathies seem to be springing up in the untrimmed jungle of US politics.  The entire mood there is against Trump, against his legitimacy and, it follows, the nature of the US political system.  Who, then, is the emperor without clothes?

Last week’s antics gave us a few clues.  The outgoing Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, yielded a cranky example.  Brennan, in the last few years, has seen himself as the reformer, the moderniser.  Recently, he also fumed as school teacher and patriarch against the incoming president.

He was already facing enemies within his own organisation.  Attempts to bring the operational side of the organisation closer to the analytical side were efforts that trampled on sacred ground.  His stomping proposals sought to integrate four main directorates within the agency: those of operations, analysis, science and technology.[2]  It was the analyst desperate to move push up the value of analysis to professional parity with the operations officer.

Trump’s sallies against Brennan and the intelligence community set up the scene for the next round of institutional brawling.  The intelligence community has been subjected to the trash talk of historical comparisons – and notorious ones at that.  “Intelligence agencies,” tweeted Trump, “should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public.  One last shot at me.  Are we living in Nazi Germany?”[3]

In a series of other tweets, Trump also suggested in responding to Brennan’s view of a perceived Russian threat that he could hardly do “much worse – just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes.  Not good!  Was this the leaker of Fake News?”[4]

Brennan then spoke about drawing lines and maintaining perspective.  “It’s when there are allegations about leaking or about dishonesty or a lack of integrity, that’s where I think the line is crossed.”[5]Former CIA deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro also explained that Brennan was “deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.”[6]

Trump did make some effort to pour oil on the waters on Saturday, though there are suggestions this did little. “There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,” claimed the President in his usual third person address.[7]

The new president certainly wants that organisation on side, even if it is only to use it as a rapid attack dog for the USrepublic.  Waterboarding, for instance, is said to make  a return. Counter-terrorist efforts are to be beefed up.  But the greatest question there is how that organisation reconciles itself with Trump’s approach to the Kremlin.

The battle of the lobbies is looming in Trumpland.  If there is one awful reality to play itself out here, lobbies, with their stifling tentacles, will be it.  The idea of an intelligence lobby that has stepped out of the shadows to actively barrack for their own candidate should be a worrying sign of the times, the rank smell of a potential coup d’état in the wings.

Now in office, Trump is coming at this from behind, having to face a multiple number of factions who are keen to frustrate, if not demolish him. Street marchers call for him to repealed; political pundits predict impeachment within months.  The choice of the US electoral system, not being the choice of a good number within the intelligence community, makes the initial period of the Forty Fifth Presidency precarious indeed.

Notes

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/campaign-stops/i-ran-the-cia-now-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-john-brennans-controversial-cia-modernization-survive-trump/2017/01/17/54e6cc1c-dcd5-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.ca45f2e3358c

[3] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/819164172781060096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[4] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/820789938887294977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/17/the-director-of-the-cia-just-went-off-on-donald-trump-it-was-a-long-time-coming/?utm_term=.6b00079daa81

[6] http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/intelligence/315503-former-cia-director-trump-should-be-ashamed-of-himself

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/21/trump-to-visit-cia-headquarters-after-sharply-criticizing-the-intelligence-community/?utm_term=.5179b306d979

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Like Odysseus, Douglas Valentine is a wily warrior who managed to enter the enemy’s stronghold disguised as a gift. Not Troy, and not within a wooden horse, but in the guise of a nice young “Nobody,” he was able, thirty or so years ago, to breach the walls of the CIA through William Colby, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The guileful thing he brought was his proposal to demystify the Phoenix program, “the controversial CIA assassination program that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians during the Vietnam War,” with which Colby was notably associated.

Colby naively assumed “demystify” meant justify, so he welcomed Valentine into his inner sanctum. As in days of yore, Colby, and the CIA officers he referred Valentine to, were so disarmed by the bright young trickster that they divulged their secrets without being asked, defeating themselves in the boastful ways of men drunk on their own youthful exploits. Wanting to be heroes in their own myths, they became unwitting accomplices in their own besmirchment. So much for intelligence.

When the Trojan Horse that became Valentine’s 1990 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, was opened, and many truths rushed out to slay them, they reacted with shocked outrage that they had been double-crossed by an amateur counterspy.

Legends fall, of course, battles are lost, but when the self-anointed heroic warriors of the CIA fell, they summoned their acolytes and media scribes to silence the counterspy who did not love them. It was not the Valentine that these spurned lovers were expecting.

In this case, their defender was the media celebrity reporter, Morley Safer, who had reported from Vietnam and was friendly with William Colby. Safer owed Colby a favor. When he was in Vietnam, Safer had accepted Colby’s Mephistophelian offer to take a tour of the infamous Phoenix program’s interrogation centers and meet the counterterrorism teams, but with one stipulation. In Safer’s words, delivered to a conference in 2010: “I showed up and [Colby] said, ‘Okay, here are the rules. . . . You can’t take notes and you can’t report anything you hear. . . . to this day, I still feel constrained in terms of talking about’” (what he saw and heard).

Valentine: “And like Don Corleone dispensing favors in The Godfather, Colby knew that one day Safer would be obligated to return it. That is how the CIA, as the organized crime branch of the US government, functions like the Mafia through its old boy network of complicit media hacks.”

So The New York Times, which Valentine had criticized in his book for not reporting the truth about the CIA’s Phoenix program, had Safer write a book review of The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam. He wrote a scathing review in which he said the book was “as turgid and dense and often incomprehensible book as I have ever had the misfortune to open.” Thus Valentine’s work was disappeared like the Vietnamese victims of the Phoenix program. (Safer’s “misfortune,” however, became our fortune when in 2014 Open Roads publishers announced a “Forbidden Bookshelves” series and resurrected Valentine’s exposé in a new edition.)

In his latest book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America And The World, Valentine explains it thus:

“But the left’s leadership is part of the CIA’s old boy network and like all American intellectuals, they look to the Times for direction and validation. So the word went out to ignore the book, not just because it revealed CIA secrets, but because it identified the media, and the Times in particular, as the reason why the public can’t see the CIA clearly for what it is: a criminal conspiracy on behalf of wealthy capitalists.”

But Valentine had been “neutralized,” and over the next quarter century the CIA, through its placement of its people throughout the media, including Hollywood and television, resurrected its mythic image—phoenix-like—from the fleeting and rarely examined ashes Valentine had reduced it to. Using what the CIA officer Frank Wisner called the agency’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”—its deep penetration of the news and cultural apparatus—it played the American people to a tune of CIA heroes defending the “homeland” from mad Muslim terrorists and evil drug dealers besieging the U.S. citadel through deception and direct attack. Movies, television shows, cognitive infiltration of the mainstream media across platforms repeated the message over and over again: We are the good guys in this mythic battle of good against evil. We are defenders of the “Homeland.”

But over these years Valentine had not disappeared, despite the CIA’s wish that he had. It took him fifteen years to recover from his “neutralization,” and then he wrote two books—The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack—that examine the nexus between the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and the Drug Enforcement Administration in which he explains in documented detail how the CIA hijacked drug enforcement as it became a prime player in international drug trafficking. Joining hands with organized crime and corrupting law enforcement, the drug running and murder that was crucial to the CIA’s Phoenix program went international.

Most importantly, the Phoenix program’s organizational structure became the template for these world-wide bloody operations: among them, the Salvadoran Option, undertakings throughout South and Central America, the Middle-East, and later the war on terror, “the greatest covert op ever.” And the Phoenix became the conceptual model for The Department of Homeland Security, as “both are based on the principle that governments can manage societies through implicit and explicit terror.”

Valentine shows how the federal drug agencies protect the CIA’s drug running assets and operations, and spread addiction throughout the “homeland.” This is accomplished by CIA agents posing as federal narcotics agents. “The DEA has a public affairs branch staffed by creative writers who filter out anything bad and tell you only what the bosses want you to know. The media echoes what the DEA and the CIA PR people say. But it’s a big lie and it’s pervasive.”

But those important books had little effect on a drug addled population. They appeared in the midst of the dramatic rise in the use of “legal” pharmaceutical drugs (see Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare by Dr. Peter C. Gotzsche) and the epidemic of heroin (Greek, heros, hero + German chemical suffix, ine, coined in 1898 by the Bayer Company as a morphine substitute) that has reduced so many people to walking zombies, while minorities have long had their neighborhoods devastated by CIA facilitated crack cocaine. The zombie myth itself has become a staple of American culture—pure entertainment for a brain devouring and brain dead population—entertainment for dummies.

It is no wonder. Because from 1990 when Valentine’s The Phoenix Program was trashed by the Times until today, the U.S. government and the scientific/media establishment have worked to convince Americans that all our lives revolve around our brains and that the answers to our problems lie with more brain research, drugs, genetic testing, etc. It’s been a quarter century deluge of propaganda of scientific materialism and biological determinism that we are not free but victims of our genes, neurotransmitters, brains/computers, and chemicals. Having lost our minds and fixated on our brains as instructed, we have chosen to be determined to be determined, not free. It is not coincidental that the U.S. government, beginning with ex-CIA Director and then President George H.W. Bush, declared the 1990s the decade of brain research, followed up with 2000–2010 as the decade of the behavior project, and our present decade being devoted to mapping the brain and artificial intelligence, organized by the Office of Science and Technology Project and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Brains and drugs, Big Pharma and the CIA, drug running and drug dealing, deaths at home and deaths abroad—a neat circle that has corrupted the country at the deepest levels.

This corruption is dependent on the creation of fictions that penetrate public consciousness to the level of myth. “The government,” Valentine writes, “is creating conditions across the board that are conducive to taking drugs. The pharmaceutical industry is part of the problem, along with its co-conspirators in the advertising industry; every time you turn on the TV there’s a commercial telling you to take a pill. The next commercial says don’t take that pill, take this pill. This is the free market at work, sucking the life out of people.”

But myths rise and fall, and recently the CIA’s invincibility has come under increased scrutiny. As the Greeks warned us long ago, hubris leads to humiliation. Today, more and more Americans are learning, through independent Internet sources and a growing list of books, how to deconstruct the ways the CIA “uses language and mythology to control political and social movements.” The fight is on.

Valentine, a warrior of astute knowledge from his wanderings in the CIA’s labyrinth, has reemerged with his new guidebook to the Minotaur’s deadly ways. The CIA As Organized Crime is a tour de force, a counterpuncher’s no-holds-barred passionate battle to reverse “the terrible truth . . . that a Cult of Death rules America and is hell-bent on world domination.” Unlike many writers, he holds back nothing. He names names. He is adamantine in his accusations against those he considers accomplices—in particular, “the compatible left”—“liberals and pseudo-intellectual status seekers who are easily influenced”—in the CIA/media/elite’s efforts at domination and mind-control. He claims that media celebrities of the left serve the function of pacifying the liberal bourgeoisie in these enterprises.

But knowing how leads on to way and one can easily get lost in a labyrinth, let me not tell the story of the man, Valentine, skilled in all ways of contending with such a formidable foe as the CIA. Better to give you a sampling of his words that explain what he has learned in his long wanderings in these strange and sick worlds.

“I have a very broad approach. . . . psychological, political, anthropological, sociological, historical, philosophical. When I look at a subject I look at it comprehensively from all those different points of view. Literary criticism teaches the power of symbolic transformation, or processing experience into ideas, into meaning. . . . one must, above all, understand the archetypal power of the myth of the hero. That way you can transform, through words, Joe the Plumber or even a mass murderer, into a national hero. When I decided to research and write about the CIA’s Phoenix program, that was how I went at it.”

“They [CIA] create the myths we believe. If we were allowed to understand the CIA, we’d realize it’s a criminal organization that is corrupting governments and societies around the world. It’s murdering civilians who haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Nowadays, the only way you can discern what’s going on is by studying and understanding the historical arc of these bureaucracies. Where did the CIA come from? Where is it going? If you look at it historically, you can see beyond the spin and it becomes demystified. And that is not a happy story. As power gets more concentrated in the security services, the media is no longer simply compliant, it’s functioning as their public relations arm. It simply ignores anything that contradicts the official line.”

“The most important fiction of all is the need for secrecy to preserve our national security.”

“If you want to understand the CIA, you have to understand how it’s organized. . . . The media organizes itself the way the CIA does.”

“Journalism in the US is a traditional cover for CIA officers. And when the owners of the media aren’t covering for the CIA, they’re selling commercial time slots to the multi-national corporations that in turn are selling you commodities made in sweatshops in foreign nations that have been subverted by the CIA. You could almost say there is no such thing as factual reporting. . . . The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy. You’re never going to learn anything substantive by reading what mainstream reporters dish out about the CIA. You can’t take a journalism course in CIA Criminal Conspiracies 101.”

“I’m sure the anthrax scare after 9/11 was a CIA provocation designed to justify a mail intercept program codenamed HTLINGUAL.”

“The CIA and the military hire the smartest anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists to figure out how to do this stuff [social engineering]. . . . That’s why you need a broad historical view. If you focus on just what’s happening now, you’re shocked every day by what you see.”

“When the United States took over drug law enforcement in Afghanistan, opium production increased dramatically. All of a sudden Afghan heroin is flooding the US and Europe. It still is. You can say it’s a coincidence, except all the opium warlords are on the CIA payroll. The DEA sends six hundred agents to Afghanistan to make sure nobody knows about it.”

“Phoenix is the conceptual model for the DHS [Department of Homeland Security]. Both are based on the principle that governments can manage societies through implicit and explicit terror. The strategic goal is to widen the gap between the elites and the mass of the citizenry, while expunging anyone who cannot be ideologically assimilated.”

“Through their control of the media, political and bureaucratic systems, America’s secret rulers engage in terrorism abroad and at home for economic purposes. . . . The objective is to maximize profits and concentrate wealth and political power in fewer and fewer hands. The global War on Terror and its domestic homeland security counterpart are flip sides of the same coin. They are the capitalist ideology applied to foreign and domestic security policy. And like the capitalist system it serves, an unstated national security policy is consolidated in fewer and fewer ideologically correct hands as the empire expands and its contradictions become more apparent.”

This sampling of Valentine’s insights should be enough to show the depth and breadth of his demythologization of this “religious” cult of death that is the CIA. Yet myths die hard. And even when they do, they often rise again, especially when one controls the levers of a society’s storytelling powers, as does the CIA to a great extent through its incestuous coupling with the mainstream corporate media. That is why it is so important for people to take the time to read Valentine’s work.

While The CIA As Organized Crime is filled with detailed information labyrinthine in its complexity, his primary goal is to help us grasp the big picture, to see how the myth and the mythmaking work and how we might break through these fictions. He repeatedly reminds us that we are truly caught in the belly of the whale, in the underworld that will overwhelm us if we do not make the sustained effort to get beyond the blur of daily events and understand how the illusionists who are deluding us create and structure their evil propaganda.

Perhaps the only way to heaven is through hell, as Dante told us. Virgil was his guide. The valiant Valentine can be ours, if we are willing to accompany him on the journey.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is edwardcurtin.com.

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Obama backed the horrendous Trans Pacific Partnership.

Trump has just killed it.

The Teamsters and other union leaders – traditionally a solid part of the  Democratic base, who endorsed Hillary Clinton – praised Trump for driving a stake in the heart of the corporatist power grab (which would have destroyed privacy and the ability of signatory nations’ to follow their peoples’ wishes) … and had an “excellent” meeting with Trump today on labor issues.

Bernie Sanders praised Trump for stopping TPP, and said he’d work with Trump on trade.

Other Democrats in Congress are praising Trump’s move, as well.

Note: One of the main campaigners against the TPP (Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach) noted shortly after Trump won the election:

The election of Donald Trump did not kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

***

But the Obama administration’s relentless push for the TPP did help elect Trump. 

***

Did we have to get to this to end the era of smug Democratic and Republican political elites scoffing at the notion that trade is a salient political issue — and relentlessly pushing more of the same policies to the detriment of a voting bloc otherwise known as a majority of our fellow Americans?

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The relationship you have with your doctor is founded on trust, but your doctor or hospital might have a stronger obligation to “big pharma” than to your health.

The below infographic created by The Law Firm highlights the impact of big pharma on Americans.

Big pharma refers to the most influential pharmaceutical companies in the U.S., and this influence goes beyond profits. On average, Americans are spending $1,112 per capita on prescription drugs, four times more than Mexico. Also, the average child has four prescriptions filled per year, while adults fill 12 each year and seniors fill a whopping 27 separate prescriptions each year.

Between August 2013 and December 2014, these pharmaceutical companies spent $3.49 billion in disclosed payments. If you’ve been prescribed drugs from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer or AstraZeneca, you might benefit from knowing these companies are spending a significant amount more on marketing than on research and development. Johnson & Johnson spent more than double on marketing in 2013, a total of $17.5 billion – and these companies aren’t alone. In fact, 90% of pharmaceutical companies engage in this practice.

If you’re a parent, you’ll be surprised to see that the two doctors earning the highest pharma profits are in family medicine and pediatric critical care. Even more, the top spending pharmaceutical company, Genentech Inc., spent a total of $388 million in payments to doctors. This company is behind the drugs Valium, Klonopin and Xenical.

These aren’t the only statistics presented in this infographic – and with a thorough read, you’ll be able to fully understand how you or your loved one’s health could be impacted in the pursuit of profits.

Take a look at the below infographic to learn more about the power and influence of pharmaceutical companies in the U.S., and how they can be stopped.

 

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The Rohingyas are a people struck by tragedy. Persecuted in their home country, Myanmar, over 65,000 of them have fled to Bangladesh between October 9, 2016, and January 5, 2017, according to a report from the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. Every day, as reported by The Daily Star, scores of Rohingya people, mostly women and children, are seen dotting a 15 kilometre stretch of road from Ukhia to Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar.

Having barely escaped with their lives leaving all their belongings, if any, behind, they are seen begging on and around the roads there. Hoping for someone to stop for a moment, sympathise with their sufferings and lend them some assistance, however trivial it may be.

The persecution of Rohingyas in Myanmar is, of course, nothing new. It has been going on for quite a while now. But ever since the attacks on Myanmar’s border guard posts on October 9, 2016, it has again escalated. This is obvious from the fact that, on average, over 1,000 Rohingyas have been entering Bangladesh every day since late last year, while the previous rate of Rohingya influx was 50 a day.

From the looks of various reports concerning the latest round of crackdown on the Rohingya people, it seems that some sections of the Myanmarese authority have not been shy in handing out collective punishment to all Rohingyas, regardless of their innocence or guilt.

Although some had expected things to improve for the Rohingyas under the stewardship of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, no such signs are currently visible. In fact, many have gone so far as to criticise her for her nonchalant attitude towards the sufferings of the Rohingyas, particularly her reluctance to condemn the attacks on occasions and for playing them down at times.

And this has been the official stance of the Myanmarese government for years now – to deny that the Rohingyas are being persecuted as severely as reports suggest. And in all honesty, with the rest of the world being busy dealing with other problems, it has served them well in avoiding taking any responsibility for the atrocities that have been committed against the Rohingyas.

But for how long can the government of Myanmar insist that the Rohingyas are not being persecuted mercilessly? For how long will people avoid asking: “Why then are Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar, risking their lives to resort to begging on the streets of Bangladesh or elsewhere”? Surely begging is not a profession many would take up willingly.

Even the UN, which some believe, has played a less than impressive role in helping to find a solution to the Rohingya crisis, seems to have lost its patience with the Myanmar government. The UN Human Rights envoy to Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, for example, said at a news briefing in Yangon that the Myanmar government would “appear less and less credible” if it continues being defensive in response to  the allegations of persistent human rights violations against Rohingyas (UN rights envoy: Myanmar losing credibility, Bangkok Post, January 21).

Furthermore, shifting from the UN’s routine position, she said: “I must remind again that these attacks took place in the context of decades of systematic and institutionalised discrimination against the Rohingya population.” Some strong words indeed, which, members of international observant groups have, unfortunately, failed to use with regards to the persecution of Rohingyas in the past.

With such strong words coming out even from within the ranks of the UN, is it a sign of hope for the Rohingyas? Will the international community finally take the matter as seriously as it should have all along? It will, of course, be unfair to include all nations under that umbrella. The Malaysian Prime Minister, for example, has already condemned the handling of Rohingyas by the Myanmarese government quite severely.

He has even gone so far as to push “the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s largest Muslim intergovernmental organisation, to apply pressure on Myanmar to end the persecution and killing of ethnic Muslim Rohingyas in the country” (Myanmar urged to end persecution of Rohingya, Bangkok Post, January 19). Encouragingly, he said: “I believe I speak for all neighbouring countries when I say that we want to avoid a repeat of the 2015 ‘boat people’ crisis”, referring to the thousands of Rohingyas who fled Myanmar in boats for Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in 2015.

Finally, he urged on the whole of South Asia to unite in an attempt to resolve the crisis, warning that it may otherwise explode into something much bigger — such as increasing petty crimes, human trafficking and various forms of militancy — which will obviously harm the region as a whole. But for various geostrategic reasons, many leaders in South Asia have so far refused to condemn the government of Myanmar, despite the possible long term dangers its policies may pose to their respective countries.

But with the passing of time, it is becoming clearer by the day that things cannot be allowed to continue as usual. It is time for the other leaders of the region to realise that and heed the warning of the Malaysian Prime Minister and condemn the atrocities being committed against the Rohingyas.

Although one could take the comments made by the UN Human Rights envoy to Myanmar as an encouraging sign, what is needed is for the leaders of South Asia to solve the problem through dialogue before it gets much bigger and leads to many more atrocities than what has already been witnessed. It is a challenge which must be faced head on, rather than be criminally avoided, as it has been, despite the tragic consequences.

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The Rohingyas are a people struck by tragedy. Persecuted in their home country, Myanmar, over 65,000 of them have fled to Bangladesh between October 9, 2016, and January 5, 2017, according to a report from the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. Every day, as reported by The Daily Star, scores of Rohingya people, mostly women and children, are seen dotting a 15 kilometre stretch of road from Ukhia to Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar.

Having barely escaped with their lives leaving all their belongings, if any, behind, they are seen begging on and around the roads there. Hoping for someone to stop for a moment, sympathise with their sufferings and lend them some assistance, however trivial it may be.

The persecution of Rohingyas in Myanmar is, of course, nothing new. It has been going on for quite a while now. But ever since the attacks on Myanmar’s border guard posts on October 9, 2016, it has again escalated. This is obvious from the fact that, on average, over 1,000 Rohingyas have been entering Bangladesh every day since late last year, while the previous rate of Rohingya influx was 50 a day.

From the looks of various reports concerning the latest round of crackdown on the Rohingya people, it seems that some sections of the Myanmarese authority have not been shy in handing out collective punishment to all Rohingyas, regardless of their innocence or guilt.

Although some had expected things to improve for the Rohingyas under the stewardship of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, no such signs are currently visible. In fact, many have gone so far as to criticise her for her nonchalant attitude towards the sufferings of the Rohingyas, particularly her reluctance to condemn the attacks on occasions and for playing them down at times.

And this has been the official stance of the Myanmarese government for years now – to deny that the Rohingyas are being persecuted as severely as reports suggest. And in all honesty, with the rest of the world being busy dealing with other problems, it has served them well in avoiding taking any responsibility for the atrocities that have been committed against the Rohingyas.

But for how long can the government of Myanmar insist that the Rohingyas are not being persecuted mercilessly? For how long will people avoid asking: “Why then are Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar, risking their lives to resort to begging on the streets of Bangladesh or elsewhere”? Surely begging is not a profession many would take up willingly.

Even the UN, which some believe, has played a less than impressive role in helping to find a solution to the Rohingya crisis, seems to have lost its patience with the Myanmar government. The UN Human Rights envoy to Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, for example, said at a news briefing in Yangon that the Myanmar government would “appear less and less credible” if it continues being defensive in response to  the allegations of persistent human rights violations against Rohingyas (UN rights envoy: Myanmar losing credibility, Bangkok Post, January 21).

Furthermore, shifting from the UN’s routine position, she said: “I must remind again that these attacks took place in the context of decades of systematic and institutionalised discrimination against the Rohingya population.” Some strong words indeed, which, members of international observant groups have, unfortunately, failed to use with regards to the persecution of Rohingyas in the past.

With such strong words coming out even from within the ranks of the UN, is it a sign of hope for the Rohingyas? Will the international community finally take the matter as seriously as it should have all along? It will, of course, be unfair to include all nations under that umbrella. The Malaysian Prime Minister, for example, has already condemned the handling of Rohingyas by the Myanmarese government quite severely.

He has even gone so far as to push “the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the world’s largest Muslim intergovernmental organisation, to apply pressure on Myanmar to end the persecution and killing of ethnic Muslim Rohingyas in the country” (Myanmar urged to end persecution of Rohingya, Bangkok Post, January 19). Encouragingly, he said: “I believe I speak for all neighbouring countries when I say that we want to avoid a repeat of the 2015 ‘boat people’ crisis”, referring to the thousands of Rohingyas who fled Myanmar in boats for Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in 2015.

Finally, he urged on the whole of South Asia to unite in an attempt to resolve the crisis, warning that it may otherwise explode into something much bigger — such as increasing petty crimes, human trafficking and various forms of militancy — which will obviously harm the region as a whole. But for various geostrategic reasons, many leaders in South Asia have so far refused to condemn the government of Myanmar, despite the possible long term dangers its policies may pose to their respective countries.

But with the passing of time, it is becoming clearer by the day that things cannot be allowed to continue as usual. It is time for the other leaders of the region to realise that and heed the warning of the Malaysian Prime Minister and condemn the atrocities being committed against the Rohingyas.

Although one could take the comments made by the UN Human Rights envoy to Myanmar as an encouraging sign, what is needed is for the leaders of South Asia to solve the problem through dialogue before it gets much bigger and leads to many more atrocities than what has already been witnessed. It is a challenge which must be faced head on, rather than be criminally avoided, as it has been, despite the tragic consequences.

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A Republican-proposed House Resolution has quietly slipped past the public radar – proposing that the United States withdraw its membership from the United Nations, just as another bill was being concocted to cut US funding to the body.

The bill, proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), entitled American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2017, seeks a complete US withdrawal from the UN, that the international body remove its headquarters from New York and that all participation be ceased with the World Health Organization as well.

Rogers and other prominent Republicans have repeatedly voiced the idea that US taxpayer money should not go to an organization that does not promote US interests – especially one that does not stick up for Israel together with the US. The new document is merely the latest manifestation of sentiment that has been brewing for some time.

The bill was quietly introduced on January 3 and was passed on to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. If approved, the bill would take two years to take effect. It would also repeal the United Nations Participation Act of 1945, signed in the aftermath of WWII.

“The President shall terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations…The United States Mission to the United Nations is closed. Any remaining functions of such office shall not be carried out,”according to the text of HR 193.

The bill would also prohibit “the authorization of funds for the US assessed or voluntary contribution to the UN,” which would also include any military or peacekeeping expenditures, the use of the US military by the UN, and the loss of “diplomatic immunity for UN officers or employees” on US soil.

Rogers had tried to pass the same bill in 2015, albeit unsuccessfully.

“Why should the American taxpayer bankroll an international organization that works against America’s interests around the world?” Rogers asked at the time in defense of his idea.

“The time is now to restore and protect American sovereignty and get out of the United Nations.”

Another supporter of HR 193, Rend Paul (R-KY) also put it like this in January 2015: “I dislike paying for something that two-bit Third World countries with no freedom attack us and complain about the United States… There’s a lot of reasons why I don’t like the UN, and I think I’d be happy to dissolve it,” added the Kentucky senator.

Later, in June 2015, Rogers had introduced his document – then named HR 1205, but essentially the same USExit idea he’s proposing now.

“The UN continues to prove it’s an inefficient bureaucracy and a complete waste of American tax dollars.” Rogers went on to name treaties and actions he believes “attack our rights as US citizens.” These included gun provisions, the imposition of international regulations on American fossil fuels – but more importantly, the UN attack on Israel, by voting to grant Palestine the non-member state ‘permanent observer’ status.

“Anyone who is not a friend to our ally Israel is not a friend to the United States.”

That same logic was used this January when House Republicans prepared a legislation that would decrease – even potentially eliminate – US funding to the UN. According to calculations by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the US provides over 22 percent of all UN funding.

The bill to cut the funding was introduced shortly after the UNSC voted 14-0 to condemn the continued construction of illegal Israeli settlements – the resolution Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered a backstab from the US, which declined to veto it, as per former President Barack Obama’s suddenly critical attitude to Israel at the end of his presidency.

Still, the resolution vote came the same year the Obama administration awarded Israel with its largest military aid package ever, signing a memorandum of understanding in September that would give it $38 billion over 10 years.

However, with Donald Trump now in power, many Republicans seem to be attacking the idea of participating in the UN or cutting funding with renewed fervor.

Each year, the US gives approximately $8 billion in mandatory payments and voluntary contributions to the international peace agency and its affiliated organizations. About $3 billion of that sum goes the UN’s regular peacekeeping budgets.

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Bahrain: The Derogation of Fundamental Human Rights

January 24th, 2017 by Dr. Amir A. Amirshekari

Sunday, January 15, the government of Bahrain executed three young Shiite Muslim in charge of killing three policemen. Many social media are unable to verify whether or not such a crime has been committed by the executed people. Thousands of people poured to the streets demonstrating against the government of Bahrain.

Although more than 70% of the population of Bahrain are Shia Muslims, their fundamental human rights is disregarded by Bahraini administration. The law of Bahrain deprives Bahraini Shias of living in more than 40% of Bahrain’s territory; for example, the city of Riffa is a forbidden area for them. Whilst the Shias remain generally in the low level of Bahraini social classes, the most important jobs have been allocated to Sunni Muslims. The Shias have no right to be employed in police or army; their children are educated at different low level schools; and they have limited rights, in contrast to their Sunni counterparts, with regard to their bank accounts. The king of Bahrain, all his family and Bahraini elites belong to the minority of Sunni Muslims.

There exist a lot of impediments to the Shia party of Al Wefaq, the most important political force of Bahrain, in this country. Since the beginning of parliamentary elections in Bahrain, the Shia majority gain eccentrically the minority of parliament seats.

Bahraini Shias sought recurrently to modify this discriminatory situation, but the government as well as the King of Bahrain did not take their requests into consideration. Instead of paying attention to the demands of political activists, the government of Bahrain has incarcerated many of them; a large number of them have been tortured and tens of them have been killed.

In 1999, when Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa became Emir of Bahrain, The Shias, being optimistic, welcomed his reign. From 1999 to 2002, Hamad brought several political reforms to Bahrain. But his attitude has been changed since 2002, when discrimination in housing and jobs, recruiting foreigners to military service, and bringing Sunni tribes from other countries to change the demographic composition of Bahrain have been resumed.

In 2010, although the opposition got 60% of votes, it could gain just 18 out of 40 seats at the parliament. In the same year, 23 political activists have been arrested under the charge of terrorism. In the recent twenty years, tens of thousands of the nationals of Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, and Yemen, who are Sunni Muslims, acquired Bahraini nationality. The government of Bahrain employs the newcomers in police or special organisations completely loyal to Royal family, and many analysists believe that this action is done in order to change the demographic composition of Bahrain and the reduction of the density of Shia population in this country. In addition to gaining Bahraini nationality, newcomers acquire many privileges in comparison to indigenous Shia or even Sunni people. For example, new citizens can use the privilege of public housing swiftly; but as far as the native people are concerned they have to wait even up to twenty years, or even more, to use such a facility. Whilst most of the indigenous Bahraini people are unemployed, the new citizens are employed as soon as they settle in Bahrain.

In addition to the above-mentioned discriminations, violence also can be seen amongst the actions of the government of Bahrain against the Shia majority. The government has spurred “Sunni vigilantes” to attack Shia areas. In April 2012, hundreds of armed vigilantes attacked some Shia villages in response to their opposition to Formula One races. Bahraini security forces did not impede the vigilantes. Although formal governmental proclamations have not referred to the number of victims, eyewitnesses testified that some people were killed and many were injured during the attack.

The US has a good relationship with the court of Bahrain. The US Fifth Fleet shares headquarters with US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain. On the other hand, Russia whose deputy of Ministry of State met with the general secretary of Al Wefaq party in 2012, has delivered hope, since then, that all political parties can have a constitutive dialogue with each other. But this request has always met with a negative response on behalf of the government of Bahrain.

It seems that the only way of coming Bahrain out of the crisis is the negotiation between the great world and regional powers, as well as all efficient Bahraini parties. International community has to pay attention to Bahrain.

Amir A Amirshekari, PhD in International Law (University of Tehran, Iran), Advocate (Iran Bar Association)

[email protected]

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For years now I have been pointing out that Obama’s lasting legacy would be his ill-advised decision back in 2009 to normalize assassination, which his administration successfully rebranded as “targeted killing”. This was supposed to be the latest and greatest form of “smart war”: the use of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), or lethal drones, to go after and eliminate evil terrorists without risking US soldiers’ lives.

It all sounds so slick and, well, Obama cool. The problem is that any sober consideration of Obama’s foreign policy over the course of his eight years as president reveals that the reality is altogether different. Judging by the murder and mayhem being perpetrated all across the Middle East, “smart war” was not so smart after all.

It’s not easy to tease out how much of the mess in the Middle East is specifically due to Obama’s accelerated use of lethal drones in “signature strikes” to kill thousands of military-age men in seven different lands. For he also implemented other, equally dubious initiatives. Planks of Obama’s bloody “smart power” approach included deposing Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and massively arming (from 2012 to 2013) a group of little-understood “appropriately vetted moderate rebels” in Syria.

Adding fuel to the fire, Obama oversaw the largest exportation of homicidal weapons to the Middle East ever undertaken by a single US president. Saudi Arabia wasted no time in using its US (and also UK) military provisions to lay Yemen to waste. Conjoined with Obama’s use of drones in that land, the result has been a horrific civil war in which many civilians have been killed and many civilian structures destroyed.

As if all of this were not bad enough, Obama also managed to drop more than 26K bombs in 2016, after having dropped more than 23K in 2015. Given all of this very warlike behavior in undeclared wars, no one can truly say precisely how much drones are to blame for the ongoing carnage throughout the Middle East. What is beyond dispute is that together these measures culminated in a huge expansion and spread of ISIS and other radical jihadist groups.

At the same time, given the tonnage of bombs dropped by Obama in seven different countries, the use of drones does seem to have led directly to a willingness of the president to use also manned combat aerial vehicles, notably in countries with which the United States was not at war when Obama assumed his office. While his predecessor, George W. Bush, can be properly credited with the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama managed to contribute heartily to the destruction of Libya, Yemen, and Syria, while attacking the people of Somalia as well.

Enter Donald J. Trump, who became the new US president on January 21, 2017. On that same day, two drone strikes in Yemen killed a slew of people, three of whom were said to be “suspected Al Qaeda leaders”. The US government has not confirmed that it launched the strikes. It is the policy of the CIA, put in charge by Obama of the drone program “outside areas of active hostilities” (in countries such as Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, et al.), not to share the details of its covert operations. This would seem to imply that the drone strikes on January 21, 2017, were not the doings of the Pentagon, now under the direction of General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who was sworn in on the same day as the new president.

Trump’s choice for CIA director, Mike Pompeo, has not yet been sworn in, as his confirmation process is still underway. In other wordsthe drone strikes carried out under the auspices of the CIA this past weekend were done so without a director in place. Obama therefore succeeded not only in normalizing assassination as “targeted killing” when the implements of homicide used are missiles, and they are launched by the CIA, but he also left the killing machine on autopilot. Note that the former CIA director, John Brennan, who first served as Obama’s drone killing czar, before being promoted to director, has spent his time in recent days bashing the new president, not serving as Trump’s interim adviser.

The incineration of military-age men using missiles launched from drones has become so frequent and commonplace that US citizens, including legislators, did not blink an eye at the fact that the killing machine set in motion by President Obama is now effectively on autopilot. It’s worth remembering that, once upon a time, acts of war were to be approved by the congress. Now even acephalic agencies such as the directorless CIA are permitted to use weapons of war to kill anyone whom they deem to be worthy of death. All of this came about because Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack “no boots on the ground” Obama wanted to be able to prosecute wars without appearing to prosecute warsFait accompli.

Laurie Calhoun, a philosopher and cultural critic, is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age(Zed Books, September 2015; paperback forthcoming in 2016) and War and Delusion: A Critical Examination(Palgrave Macmillan 2013; paperback forthcoming in 2016). Visit her website.

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Negotiating with terrorists is risky under any circumstances, especially with Turkey one of the key players involved.

Throughout six years of conflict, it supported ISIS, al-Nusra and likeminded groups it now says it opposes. Has Erdogan turned a page or is he engaged in a grand deception for his own self-interest?

He’s long sought annexation of northern Syrian territory. He profited hugely from sale of stolen Syrian oil. He proved many times he can’t be trusted.

Saying he now seeks peaceful conflict resolution can’t be accepted at face value without lots of proving on his part – much more needed than agreements reached with Russia and Iran.

Day one in Astana resolved nothing. Day two concluded with a joint statement, saying Russia, Iran and Turkey will establish a trilateral mechanism for monitoring ceasefire.

They agreed to continue combating ISIS and al-Nusra, as well as other groups breaching the ceasefire, stressing conflict resolution is only possible diplomatically.

Opposition delegation spokesman Yahya al-Aridi said “(t)here will be no signing. The guarantor countries (Russia, Iran and Turkey) will just release a document.”

An unnamed Syrian delegation source said his delegation won’t sign the document. It’s “being drawn up by the guarantor countries in order to present it to other talks participants.”

Astana set the stage for further discussions in Geneva next month. Three previous efforts there failed because of Obama obstructionism.

With Trump rhetorically opposed to US interventionism, hopefully a better outcome is possible this time – by no means certain given Western and regional opposition to Syrian sovereignty, Obama’s war waged for regime change, wanting puppet governance replacing Assad.

If Trump follows through responsibly on what he’s said, he’ll focus solely on combating terrorism. Doing it requires ending US support and cooperating jointly with Russia for a common objective.

From Astana, Putin’s special envoy to Syria Aleksandr Lavrentiev predicted a “good outcome” despite no direct talks between Syrian delegates and their Saudi cobbled together High Negotiations Committee counterparts, representing anti-Assad terrorist groups (excluding ISIS and al-Nusra).

Lavrentiev called day one “fruitful” – diplomatic code language for nothing achieved toward conflict resolution. Monday talks excluded discussions on “such relevant topics as the ceasefire regime, the distinction of opposition forces from Daesh and Al-Nusra Front, and the joint fight against terrorism,” he explained.

On Turkey’s insistence, Kurdish YPG representatives weren’t invited to Astana. On Monday, a statement said they’re “not bound” by decisions reached, if any.

It’s too early to call Astana a major breakthrough. Key is what Trump decides, unknown so far. Tuesday is only his fifth day in office.

Senate members haven’t yet confirmed his secretary of state designee Rex Tillerson. On Monday, he got Senate Foreign Relations Committee approval, assuring his confirmation in short order with Republicans holding a Senate majority.

In a Monday Astana meeting opening statement, Syrian delegation head Bashar al-Jaafari explained hordes of anti-government terrorist fighters were recruited, trained, funded, armed, and deployed cross-border from neighboring countries (mainly Turkey) to wage war on Syrian sovereignty and its people.

“Astana hosting the intra-Syrian meeting represents the mediation policy and the openness of Kazakhstan, and is the fruit of the joint efforts exerted by several parties, particularly Russia and Iran, with the aim of fixing the decision of cessation of hostilities all over Syria except for the areas where terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and others which rejected to join the agreement are active,” he said.

He blasted the Obama administration and its rogue allies for using terrorist foot soldiers as weapons to destroy Syrian independence.

He hopes talks in Astana and Geneva next month will advance the cause of conflict resolution and peace.

“Syria which we love is the homeland of diversity in all its forms, a homeland where the Syrians believe in the basis and principles of their independent democratic secular state based upon political pluralism, the rule of law, independence of the judiciary system, equality among citizens in rights and duties, guaranteeing cultural and social variety among all spectrum of the Syrian people, as well as maintaining the continuation of the work of the state institutions,” he said.

He called on all parties to work responsibly for ending six years of devastating carnage – while criticizing opposition representatives for inappropriate, undiplomatic, inflammatory remarks at the start of Monday’s session.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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Filmmaker Regis Tremblay states what few others dare to say. Humanity is on the brink of extinction! Nuclear power is not safe. 48 of America’s nuclear power plants are leaking and there is no way to get rid of nuclear waste. America’s reckless provocations of both Russia and China, two nuclear-armed countries, risk a nuclear holocaust from which no one survives. Climate change and global warming, if not mitigated immediately, will end the human experiment on earth sooner rather than later.

A shocking documentary that traces the origins of U.S. genocides, military interventions and wars from the 15th century when the white, colonial explorers first came to the Americas to  the very present. American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the right to claim the earth  and its resources as their own are the beliefs that are the foundation of American foreign  policy in the 21st Century that has humanity on the brink of extinction.

Dr. Helen Caldicot, Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Ann Wright, Peter Kusnick, Bill McKibben, David Vine and other activists, scholars, and authors explain and clarify the crisis and  threats to life on the planet.

The only real hope lies in the result of the epic battle for humanity’s survival between two contrasting world views. On one side is the unipolar, capitalist world-domination by the U.S. enforced by the most lethal military the world has ever seen.

On the other side is a view held by Russia, China and the BRICS nations built on a multi- polar world based on respect, the sovereignty of all nations, international law, the equal value of all people, and cooperation.

So here we are. Humanity’s epic battle for survival. An old  paradigm based on white, colonial domination and empire versus the shared vision of others who are working for a  peaceful world based on justice, international law and the prosperity of all people.

The only question is, will the crazed neocons in Washington, realizing they have lost, take the whole world down with them.

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The single fact which make the latest offensive by ISIS eastern Syria so frightening and serious is that the way for it was paved by the US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition.

Before discussing this, let me repeat a point I made for The Duran previously, the truth of which as a Syrian in Syria who is an actual witness of this war I can personally vouch for

In Syria fighters call themselves the “Free Syrian Army” or “Islamic state fighters” or Daesh or by any other name that suits them.  There is nothing “magical” about this.  It is just a  kaleidoscope of names intended to cause confusion.  In reality it is always the same people calling themselves by these different names.

The US and its allies of course know this.  They keep up this game of names so that they can go on pretending that there are “moderates” in Syria who they can support in place of the terrorists they actually support, and that these so-called “moderates” are fit to form a transitional government in place of the legitimate Syrian government and can also be persuaded to fight Daesh.  In Syria nobody is fooled by any of this.

The truth is that the Syrian people are being slaughtered by cold-blooded mercenaries.   They may call themselves the “Free Syrian Army,” “Ahrar Al Sham”,  “Ahlo Al Sonna”, “Jaish Al Esalm” or any of a myriad of other names all of which however simply designate factions affiliated with Al-Qaeda’s local franchise the Al Nusra front.  They are however always the same cold-blooded mercenaries pouring into Syria from Turkey paid for the Gulf Arab states to commit aggression upon Syria’s people

The organisation that is now most commonly called “ISIS”, but which has at various times in its history called itself by different names, is obviously a part of this.

As I have said previously, its phoney “Islamic State” was intentionally created to draw like a magnet Takfiri fighters to Syria in order to get them to wage war on the Syrian people and to break the Axis of Resistance which brings together the people and states of the Middle East (Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and now increasingly Iraq) who resist US-Israeli-Saudi power

The “Islamic State” has been designed to attract  Takfiri fighters from all over the world to join the war against Syria.  That way the war to destroy Syria and break the Axis of Resistance is fought with no shortage of fanatical recruits. The war is sponsored and funded by Saudi Arabia, the true factory of Wahhabism, as well as by countries like Qatar and Turkey.

That this is the case is shown by the fact that whenever the Syrian Arab Army shows pictures of dead ISIS terrorists they turn out to be mostly from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia and other places, not from Syria.

That there is a continuity between the fighters who are now called ISIS and the Takfiri fighters who established themselves in the area since the start of the war is easily shown by looking at what has happened in Deir El-Zour.

This area has been under attack from Takfiri fighters since the very start of the war.   At that time they did not call themselves “ISIS” or whatever they call themselves now.  They called themselves the “Free Syrian Army”, and later “Jabhat Al-Nusra” (ie. Al-Qaeda).  Today they call themselves the “Islamic State” (ie. ISIS) but they are and always have been the same cold-blooded terrorists, united under the same slogan – “tell these pro-government people, we are their slaughterers!” – that they have always been.

Once these terrorists established themselves in this area it took them no time to act on their boasts.  They began their reign of terror by murdering two teachers who had come to teach in Deir El-Zour from the coastal regions of Syria’s west (Syrian law required teachers from the more developed regions of western Syria to spend time teaching children in places like Deir El-Zour).

This is how these criminals behave wherever in Syria they establish themselves, regardless of what name they call themselves by.  It is exactly how they behave in ISIS’s phoney capital Al-Raqqa, and in many other places.

The US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition for the first time actively assisted ISIS in this area on 7th December 2015 when it bombed a Syrian military camp in Deir El-Zour, killing (according to the Syrian Foreign Ministry) three Syrian soldiers, and destroying weapons, stores, and equipment.

In September 2016 Israeli and US air strikes took place against Syrian army positions, by the Israelis in the Golan Heights, by the US on 17th September 2016 in Deir El-Zour.  Whilst it is the US air strike which has attracted the most attention, the fact the two strikes happened so close together suggests more than coincidence.

The US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition airstrike of  17th September 2016 struck a key Syrian military position in the Thardeh mountains, which protected the Syrian forces’ key air base in the area.  It killed 83 Syrian soldiers and destroyed vehicles, weapons stores, radar stations, tanks, and other armoured vehicles.

The air strike was immediately followed by an ISIS attack which overran the position, enabling ISIS to break through to the road leading through the Al- Therdah Mountain which the terrorists had been trying – until then unsuccessful – to reach since 2014.

Moreover the US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition has also targeted bridges and power stations in Deir El-Zour in what seems to be an attempt to paralyse the Syrian forces there, hampering the Syrian air force’s ability to carry out air strikes on ISIS positions during the night (by making it impossible for Syrian forces on the ground to distinguish themselves from the Takfiri fighters) and making it more difficult for them to communicate with other Syrian forces elsewhere.

Furthermore  on  8th January, 2017 the US-led “anti- ISIS” coalition carried out a ground operation in eastern Syria, with US Special Forces landing there by helicopter, supposedly aimed at capturing ISIS commanders.   Colonel John Dorrian, the spokesman for the US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition, has confirmed that the raid took place, but has declined to provide details or say whether any ISIS commanders were in fact captured.

Some days after this raid ISIS terrorists attacked Deir El-Zour province on a far bigger scale than they had ever done before.  Not only were they more numerous but they appeared better organised and better armed than they had been at any other time.  Moreover they seemed to have a detailed knowledge of the defence positions of the Syrian army.

Inevitably that makes one wonder what the real purpose of the raid actually was.

The US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition has released no pictures of ISIS captives or of ISIS dead caused by this raid.  All one can say for sure is that after the raid ISIS seemed stronger and better organised, and in possession of more intelligence, than ever before.

During the US election Hillary Clinton spoke about US policy towards ISIS in this way

We’re hoping that within the year we’ll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then, you know, really squeeze them in Syria.

It is the results of this policy which we are now seeing in Deir El-Zour.

This escalation is going to cost the Syrians and the Syrian Arab Army many more martyrs.  All this whilst the world looks away, its gaze transfixed by the peace conference in Astana.

In reality the true masters of these armed factions continue to dream of reversing the Syrian, Iranian and Russian victory in Syria, regardless of whatever the negotiators in Astana say to each other.  They are planning to do this by capturing Deir El-Zour, thereby bringing the border between Syria and Iraq under the terrorists’ control, cutting this region off from the rest of Syria.

Deir El-Zour is a vital strategic point in this war.  It is a key link binding together the geography of the Axis of Resistance, which extends all the way from southern Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast, through Damascus further inland, and then through to Baghdad, and on to Tehran.

That is why the USA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are so anxious for the terrorists to take it.

The Syrian Arab Army, supported by the Russian air force, will however make sure that the task is not easy for them.

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Syria Peace Talks In Astana. What To Expect?

January 24th, 2017 by South Front

Negotiations between the Syrian government and the so-called “opposition groups” kicked off in the Kazakh capital of Astana on January 23. Jaish al-Islam is the biggest militant group which participates in the talks. Another powerbroker, Ahrar al-Sham, which had been set to participate in the negotiations, rejected the idea last week.

In total 15 armed groups arrived to participate in the event. While the involved groups don’t have a united command, they all have one main foreign backer – Turkey. So, de-facto, the success of the Ankara talks will depend on ability of Ankara, Damasucs, Moscow and Tehran to reach some appropriate compromise.

Meanwhile, Anakra has announced that it does not see a reason to push “Assad must go” mantra and prefers to focus on keeping its influence in northern Syria between Jarabulus and Azaz.

The most practical goal of the talks is to agree terms and conditions of the ceasefire in order to improve the humanitarian conditions in the areas where it’s implemented. However, even in this case, many will depend on ability of Ankara to control its proxies on the ground.

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The powerful pro-Israel Zionist lobby in Britain, which wields money and influence within parliament, is threatening to bring down the entire Conservative-led government over an escalating row which has been simmering for weeks, long before last week’s Israeli Embassy scandal erupted. Zionist support for Israel has often led to accusations of political manipulation inside the British government and the accusations were apparently vindicated when an embassy official was caught on camera plotting to “take down” MPs who are vocal in their support of Palestine.

However, it has now emerged that while the diplomatic spat between the Israeli Embassy and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been played out in banner headlines across the front pages, a far more sinister row has been brewing behind the scenes over the British government’s support for UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s illegal settlements. In a copy of a redacted email and other material seen by MEMO, a direct threat was made to the chair of Conservative Friends of Israel, Sir Eric Pickles MP, from one of the most senior figures in the Zionist lobby. The email delivers a blunt message: Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson should be “made to understand that Jewish support for the Conservative Party at the next General Election is at risk.”

The explosive threat was sent to Pickles and copied in to Lord (Stuart) Polak, a long-term Conservative Friends of Israel director who was given a peerage in 2015. He stood down from his CFI role ahead of his appointment to the House of Lords.

With the bold header of “UNSC Resolution 2334”, the email’s author — whose identity is not known by MEMO — wanted to record his “utter dismay” at the British government’s decision to support the resolution, which was passed just before Christmas. The author, whose name is redacted from the email shown to MEMO, lays the blame entirely at the feet of May and Johnson. “This Resolution does much more than merely restate previous policy positions of the UK government in relation to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. It labels Jewish holy places – including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall — as existing on ‘occupied Palestinian territory.’ In demanding that Israel return to the 1949 armistice lines the resolution imperils the right of Jewish worship in these places, from which – as you know — Jews were barred between 1948 and 1967.”

The writer expresses regret to have to say that British support for 2334 must call into question the sincerity of the recent statement by Mrs May’s government on 12 December 2016 apparently evincing support for the Jewish state. The writer understands that CFI is writing to the prime minister and seeking an urgent meeting with Johnson. “These steps,” the email continues, “are necessary but insufficient. Mrs May and Mr Johnson must be persuaded to apologise to the Jewish people for their failure to veto 2334. If they do not do so, they must be made to understand that Jewish support for the Conservative Party at the next General Election is at risk.”

Details of this email and other correspondence from within the British Board of Deputies of British Jews, the UK Zionist Federation and the Jewish Leadership Council, clearly threaten to destroy the Tory vote at the next General Election in areas where Jewish voting influence has a major impact, such as Glasgow, Manchester and parts of North West London.

The move prompted an urgent meeting with Tobias Ellwood, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, on Wednesday. While the MP attempted to appease Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies, demands were made for face-to-face meetings with May and Johnson.

After the meeting, Ellwood issued what many saw as a placatory statement which read: “While I reiterated the government’s continued belief that settlement building is illegal, I was clear that it is far from the only obstacle to peace and the international community must not forget this. The government is unwavering in its commitment to Israel’s security and we will continue to call out the scourge of Palestinian incitement and terrorism that blights the lives of ordinary Israelis.” Naturally, he made no mention of the brutality of Israel’s military occupation and how that “blights” the lives of all Palestinians.

Following his meeting with Ellwood, Arkush also issued a statement condemning British support for 2334. Around the same time, similar statements were issued by the United Synagogue and the Federation of Synagogues. United Synagogue President Stephen Pack urged his congregation to write to their local MPs.

Days earlier a rally of around 300 pro-Israel supporters was held by leading Zionist groups outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster to add to the pressure on the government.

According to Jewish historian and political analyst Professor Geoffrey Alderman, “In obsessing over an Al-Jazeera scam involving a minor figure reportedly employed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry the press has been following the wrong story. The real action has involved the quite legitimate activities of UK-based Jewish lobbies and Jewish voters. Once UNSC Resolution 2334 had been passed, Conservative Friends of Israel swung into action, using its influence to demand a meeting with Tory foreign minister Boris Johnson.”

He pointed out that the Jewish community in Britain is small – less than 350,000 — but is concentrated in London, South Hertfordshire and Manchester. “Ever since the days of Maggie Thatcher the Jewish vote has been predominantly Conservative. Any mass abstention by Jewish voters would place several Tory-held seats in jeopardy.”

You would have to go back to the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 to find a similar level of anger amongst Jewish voters, he explained. At that time the anger was directed at the Tory embargo on arms shipments to Israel. “We can assume that Ellwood’s 11 January statement condemning Palestinian terrorism was a late attempt to placate this lobby.”

Alderman, a Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham, has authored several books, including The Jewish Community in British Politics and British Jewry Since Emancipation. He says that he is neither a member nor supporter of the Conservative Party or Conservative Friends of Israel.

The high profile involvement of the Board of Deputies was criticised severely by Mick Napier, a co-founder of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. “The current Zionist leadership of the Board of Deputies of British Jews is more committed to promoting the interests of the Israeli State against the Palestinian people than in furthering any legitimate collective concerns of a group of British citizens. Given that Israel’s settlement building project is a war crime, efforts to align British Jews with such criminality is a reckless and dangerous campaign.”

In the meantime, it has emerged that Israeli diplomats in London issued a warning several months ago that attempts to “operate” British Jewish organisations from Jerusalem could be unlawful. This was long before the Al-Jazeera exposé of the embassy official talking about “taking down” MPs and setting up pro-Israel political groups in British.

“The strategic affairs ministry must understand that ‘operating’ organisations directly from Jerusalem by email and telephone isn’t good for their health,” warned a cable from the embassy in London. “It’s not clear that the strategic affairs ministry understand the local law with regards to the activities of charities.”

The Al-Jazeera documentary, some contents of which were leaked in advance, was actually broadcast on Wednesday. Shai Masot, the official at the centre of the Israeli embassy storm in London, was caught in an undercover sting boasting about plans to “take down” MPs who he regarded as hostile to Israel. One of his targets was Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Australian-born Mark Regev, has already issued a grovelling apology to Duncan and said that the embassy considered the remarks “completely unacceptable”.

Described as a “senior political officer” on his business cards, the embassy denied that Masot was a diplomat; it is understood that he will return to Israel before the end of the month. As well as establishing what he has described as “several political support groups in the UK”, Masot claimed credit for persuading the British government to adopt procurement guidelines preventing local authorities and the NHS from boycotting Israeli goods.

The Labour Party and the SNP, along with a number of Conservative MPs, have called for a public inquiry to be launched into what some have described as an issue of “national security”. Others are said to be mystified by Theresa May’s apparent reluctance to take the matter further. This could be explained, however, with the emergence of this latest correspondence which fuels speculation that the prime minister is under pressure not to further anger the powerful Zionist lobby or alienate the Jewish vote.

All of this prompts further questions about how much influence the state of Israel has had on successive British governments and their policies. Anyone who cares anything for democracy in Westminster must have serious concerns about this.

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Distracted Media Fails To Catch Trump Policy Decisions

January 24th, 2017 by Moon of Alabama

For two days the media have been busy counting people gathering in Washington DC. 90.3% of the voters in Washington DC had chosen Clinton.

A recent DC gathering of a Republican aligned crowd on a rainy work-day attracted many people. A following gathering of a Democratic aligned crowd on a work-free day without rain attracted more people.

The media watched, counted and was “astonished”. Thousands of lines of “political analyses” were written to explain the difference of the crowd size without mentioning the significance of where it happened, what day of the week it happened and the environmental circumstances. The result of such analysis was a lot of bullshit.

The new Trump administration was quite happy about this diversion of attention. It additionally lampooned the media when its new spokesperson condemned the press for not being able to count at all. More lines of bullshit analysis were written about that insult.

Just like during the election campaign the media fell for the cheap stunt and thereby missed the serious processes and the decisions that were taking place behind the curtains.

Today the Trump administration announced the end of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement:

The president’s withdrawal from the Asian-Pacific trade pact amounted to a drastic reversal of decades of economic policy in which presidents of both parties have lowered trade barriers and expanded ties around the world. Although candidates have often criticized trade deals on the campaign trail, those who made it to the White House, including President Barack Obama, ended up extending their reach.

The NYT seems astonished that, unlike Obama, Trump stood by his words. The media had expected different and was distracted. It failed to report the issue until the decision was taken.

The TPP would have imposed “free trade” on more countries and products. The “free” in those trades would have meant that private companies would have been “free” to overrule national governments and their jurisdiction. They could have sued for “compensation” if a country, for public health or environmental reasons, rejected or hindered one of their businesses. Everyone should be happy that this monster died.

In another policy surprise a new coordination between Russian and U.S. intelligence circles in Syria is bearing fruits:

Russia has received coordinates of Daesh targets in Al-Bab, Aleppo Province, from the US via the ‘direct line,’ the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday.The United States has provided coordinates of the terrorists’ targets in the city of Al-Bab in Aleppo province for Russian airstrikes. After the reconnaissance check, Russia and two coalition jets have conducted joint airstrikes on the Daesh targets in the region.

The U.S. military seems to deny:

Any involvement or participation of American assets on the ground in country, in support of a series of Russian airstrikes against the northern Syrian town of al-Bab was “100 percent false,” said Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway.

The U.S. coalition spokesperson also said it is:

“not coordinating airstrikes with the Russian military in Syria”

Before jumping up and down and claiming that the Russians are lying the media should take a fine comb and reread the statements.

The DoD only denied it coordinated airstrikes or helped with “assets on the ground”. It does not deny the transfer of coordinates. The Russians do not claim U.S. airplanes took part in the mission – only “coalition jets”. Turkey is part of the U.S. coalition and coordinates airstrikes with the Russian forces in Syria:

Earlier, Russian and Turkish combat planes have carried out a new series of joint airstrikes against Daesh targets in war-torn Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.”The Russian and Turkish planes carried out joint airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists in the outskirts of the town of al-Bab in Aleppo province on January 21,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Russian statement is likely as correct as the DoD statement.

The political significance here is the transfer of ISIS targeting coordinates from some U.S. agency directly to the Russian forces in Syria. That is something Russia has asked for for over a year and it now suddenly seems to happen.

This is next to the TTP decision a second significant change under Trump the media missed to report on as it developed.

While the blustering against Trump in U.S. media as well as in some countries abroad goes on and on, serious decisions are taken and implemented by the new administration. The media fail in some systematic way. Minor diversions from “political correctness” are blown up into big headlines while big policy decisions pass unnoticed. It is simple: The task with reporting on the Trump administration is the same as with any politician. Do not listen to what they say, watch what they do. It is high time for the media to get back to that basic rule.

Digression:

As a German I am embarrassed on how much my government failed to anticipate Trump and, since he is elected, fails to prepare for the coming onslaught on its export orientated economic model. Wages in Germany were held down by all means (including by importing additional workforce from Syria and elsewhere) and a huge export surplus was created that benefited only a few moneyed pockets. The scheme created a huge imbalance in Europe and the credit crisis in Spain, Greece and elsewhere. Trump’s policies will finally blow this model apart.

But neither of the ruling parties in Germany has yet developed an alternative or prepared a way towards one. Germany needs to re-orientate its industry from export to local consumption. That requires higher buying power for the general public via higher wages and lower taxes. A lower degressive VAT compensated by higher progressive taxes on non-work income would be a way to go. If such steps are delayed the economic damage will be serious and further open the way for a demagogic right.

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Trump Declares War on Regulations and Offshoring Jobs

January 24th, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

On his first Monday in office, Trump hit the ground running, convening an advisory panel on manufacturing led by Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris.

Other business leaders from Dell, Whirlpool, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Lockheed Martin, Arconic, US Steel, Telsa Motors, Under Armour Inc, International Paper and Corning were present.

Trump promised regulatory reductions of 75% or more, significant corporate tax cuts, and a “very major” border tax on products imported by US companies made abroad, saying:

If you go to another country and you decide that you are going to close (a US factory) and get rid of 2,000 people or 5,000 people, we are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in, which I think is fair.

“Buy American and hire American” is what his America first policy is all about.

He told business leaders if they plan new domestic plant construction or expansions, they’ll get “approvals really fast.”

He signed executive orders withdrawing from job-killing, anti-consumer TPP and on renegotiating NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, ahead of planned afternoon meetings with labor leaders and workers.

His Friday inaugural address highlighted “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation. (America) “made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon,” he said, vowing to turn things around.

In earlier campaign addresses to the Detroit and New York Economic Clubs, he outlined the following regulatory steps he’d take if elected:

  • ask all department heads to submit lists of regulations impeding jobs creation for elimination, providing public safety isn’t compromised.
  • revamp the entire regulatory code to keep jobs and wealth at home.
  • end regulations destroying jobs in US communities and inner cities. “We will stop punishing Americans for working and doing business in the United States,” he said.
  • temporarily halt new agency regulations not urged by Congress or needed for public safety – to incentivize US companies to invest domestically and create jobs. “We will no longer regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence,” he said.
  • immediately cancel all “illegal and overreaching executive orders.”
  • eliminate “our most intrusive regulations…”
  • reduce “the size of our already bloated government after a thorough agency review.”

His immediate priority is getting Senate confirmation for his agency heads and other officials. Democrats slowed the process instead of letting it move ahead smoothly.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

 

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La nueva oleada de nacionalismos

January 23rd, 2017 by Mouris Salloum George

Los secretarios de Hacienda  y de Economía del gobierno de México, Luis Videgaray e Ildefonso Guajardo, respectivamente, serán la avanzada del presidente Enrique Peña Nieto en su excursión a Washington  el próximo 31 de enero.

Conviene puntualizar que, en el equipaje de esos enviados mexicanos, el texto principal del alegato con sus pares norteamericanos lleva una etiqueta: Resistencia a la restauración del proteccionismo.

Por supuesto, en las mesas de alto nivel se conocerá el discurso de los emisarios mexicanos al respecto. Pero, por lo escuchado en México al menos desde el otoño de 2015, ese planteamiento, que pareció irreversible, será el leitmotiv de las conversaciones.

La posición del gobierno mexicano se fijó a punto de formalizarse la inserción del país en el Acuerdo Transpacífico de Asociación Comercial (ATP), cuyo bastión eran en aquellos meses los Estados Unidos, gobernados por Barack Obama.

Hoy mismo se divulga la declaración de la Casa Blanca en el sentido de que Estados Unidos se retira del ATP. De esa brocha, México se ha quedado colgado pero, por lo anunciado hace unas horas por el presidente Peña Nieto, su gobierno se aferrará a la tabla de supervivencia del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN).

A ese efecto, el presidente mexicano agregó dos nuevas zanahorias: El inclusión en el clausulado del TLCAN de los sectores Energía y Telecomunicaciones.

El mexiquense anuncia que asistirá al encuentro con Donald Trump con la convicción de que es una cita entre dos países soberanos, en cuyo caso México dialogará “con seguridad, dignidad, firmeza, confianza y la fortaleza” de México. Soberanía de por medio, pues.

La significación del encuentro con Theresa May

En la agenda del nuevo ocupante de la Casa Blanca, desde la semana pasada se anunció como prioridad recibir a la primera ministra del Gran Bretaña, Theresa May.

No es ese un dato menor: Tomar en cuenta que la señora May es sucesora de Margaret Thatcher, quien, con el republicano  Ronald Reagan en la Casa Blanca, proclamaron hace más de tres décadas la Revolución conservadora, punto de partida de la globalización neoliberal.

Para efectos prácticos, Theresa May es la antípoda de Margaret Thatcher. Arribó a su encargo como consecuencia del triunfo del Brexit por el que el Reino Unido abandona la Unión Europea.

Theresa May, la primera ministro del Reino Unido

La significación de ese retiro de Reino Unidos de la UE, radica en que el referéndum fue ganado en 2016 por los más radicales sectores nacionalistas.

Ese es el punto: Sin una declaración explícita de la señora May, los especialistas en Relaciones Internacionales la inscriben en la nómina de gobiernos que, encabezados por Rusia e India, algunos regímenes del Medio Oriente, al menos cuatro latinoamericanos, cada uno con sus peculiaridades, profesan como doctrina política el nacionalismo. ¿Es casual que a Trump se le conceptúe como “amigo” de Vladimir Putin?

En el marco de la reunión del Foro Económico Mundial, reunido en Davos, Suiza, aquella fue una de las preocupaciones más recurrentes.

Si, de acuerdo con los expertos, la globalización va de retirada desplazada por los nuevos nacionalismos, ¿México seguirá embarcado en una embarcación que navega a contracorriente? Es pregunta.

 Mouris Salloum George

Mouris Salloum George: Director del Club de Periodistas de México A.C.

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El Mercosur en la era Trump

January 23rd, 2017 by Antonio Elías

Para realizar el análisis de cuáles podrían ser los impactos del gobierno de Trump sobre el Mercosur debe tenerse en cuenta, en primer lugar, que la economía mundial se encuentra en un punto de inflexión: la globalización está retrayéndose y es cuestionada en los países periféricos y en los países centrales. En efecto, genera desocupación estructural, precarización del trabajo y el descenso en el nivel de vida de amplios sectores en los países centrales y, como contracara, provoca la sobre explotación de la mano de obra en los países periféricos.

El programa económico de Trump está dirigido, en parte, a los desplazados de la globalización a los que les prometió reindustrializar los Estados Unidos para que haya fuentes de trabajo para los norteamericanos.

Con ese fin realizaría una política de sustitución de importaciones, cuyos principales instrumentos serían: aumento de los aranceles a la entrada de productos “maquilados”;  redefinir y acotar los tratados de libre comercio, como el NAFTA;  rechazar los tratados plurilaterales como el Transpacífico; bajar los impuestos y subsidiar a las corporaciones que vuelvan a producir dentro de los Estados Unidos.

Para aumentar el nivel de actividad realizaría un shock de demanda tipo keynesiano a través de grandes inversiones en infraestructura financiada en parte por el Estado y en parte por el sector privado, la asociaciones público privadas. La expulsión de los trabajadores inmigrantes “ilegales” -que tienen menores salarios y prestaciones- es otra de las medidas para favorecer  a la mano de obra local. Todo esto enmarcado en un discurso xenófobo,  básicamente contra mexicanos y  musulmanes.

Otro punto de su plataforma de indudable importancia es su rechazo a los acuerdos contra el calentamiento global y su decisión de utilizar al máximo las energías tradicionales, incluido el fracking.

El Mercosur en la periferia

Con la profundización de la crisis han caído sustancialmente los precios de los productos primarios que exportan los países periféricos y se procesa un debilitamiento económico de los mismos y un empobrecimiento creciente de las clases subordinadas.

Complementariamente se está revalorizando el valor del dólar y su papel como principal moneda internacional mientras pierden peso las monedas que se plantearon como alternativas, caso del Euro,  y se deprecian las monedas de los países periféricos.

En ese marco el Mercosur fue severamente afectado con el cambio de ciclo de los precios de sus exportaciones lo cual produjo procesos recesivos en las principales economías del bloque: Argentina y Brasil.

Las políticas de conciliación de clases impulsadas por los gobiernos progresistas decayeron fuertemente por la falta de recursos para atender simultáneamente los requerimientos de los trabajadores, los capitalistas y amplios sectores de la población desocupada o con trabajos precarios que dependen básicamente de las políticas sociales. Por supuesto, a todo lo anterior debe sumársele la corrupción y el burocratismo.

La derecha retomó el gobierno en Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay con posiciones claramente favorables a la firma de acuerdos de libre comercio con los Estados Unidos y, consecuentemente, a la expulsión de Venezuela del Mercosur, habilitado por la abstención de Uruguay que podría haber vetado esta decisión.

 La relación económica

En primer lugar hay que señalar que ni el Mercosur como bloque, ni ninguno de sus países miembros, tiene acuerdos de libre comercio con Estados Unidos y sólo dos países, Argentina (1991) y Uruguay (2005) tienen tratados bilaterales de inversión con dicho país.

La Inversión Extranjera Directa (IED) de los Estados Unidos en los países miembros del Mercosur es relativamente baja, según lo reporta la CEPAL en su informe sobre la IED de 2016. A título de ejemplo, la mayor economía del bloque, Brasil recibe de Estados Unidos 14% del total de la IED, 22% de los Países Bajos y 50% de otros países europeos. En los casos de Argentina y Paraguay, la participación de la IED estadounidense, en 2014, es cercana al 40%; en Uruguay solo llega al 5%. Debe tenerse en cuenta que, aproximadamente, las tres cuartas partes de la IED que llega de Estados Unidos al Mercosur va a Brasil, otra cuarta parte a Argentina y solo un uno por ciento a Paraguay.

Las exportaciones del Mercosur a Estados Unidos llegaron en 2015 a 13,2%, lo que representa solo 2% del total de importaciones de los Estados Unidos. Así lo registró la CEPAL en el “Panorama de la inserción internacional de América Latina y el Caribe – 2016”. Cabe destacar que los productos exportados son en su mayor parte bienes primarios que no desplazan mano de obra estadounidense y no serían afectados por las medidas proteccionistas.

A partir de estos datos, se podría conjeturar que las medidas que se apresta a implementar Trump no tendrían un impacto económico directo y significativo sobre el Mercosur, aunque es muy probable que los impactos que estas políticas tendrán en México y Centroamérica lo afecten en forma indirecta.

Aspectos geopolíticos

Desde el punto de vista geopolítico, para la administración Trump el verdadero enemigo es China, tanto por lo que denomina “competencia desleal”, como por la amenaza que significa la enorme masa de dólares en poder del gobierno chino.

Barak Obama también actuó frente a China como un “enemigo económico” a desplazar para lo cual impulso un conjunto de acuerdos plurilaterales que excluían a China, en particular el Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) y el Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) que  restringirían la expansión comercial y la presencia de la IED China en el mundo.

La estrategia de Trump es mucho más confrontativa planteando un profundo distanciamiento comercial con China y una política de alianzas con Rusia y sus aliados para lograr la estabilidad en Oriente Medio garantizando el acceso al petróleo y reduciendo el flujo de refugiados. Busca, también, el acercamiento con todas aquellas fuerzas políticas europeas de derecha que tienen como bases sociales a los desplazados por la globalización, tales como los líderes del Brexit en Gran Bretaña y Marie Le Pen en Francia.

Con esa misma lógica sus aliados naturales en el Mercosur serán los países gobernados por la derecha –Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay– quienes han acordado la suspensión, paso previo a la expulsión, de Venezuela.

El enemigo, por supuesto, será el gobierno de Venezuela y, obviamente, todos aquellos que fomenten el avance Chino en el continente.

La derecha política y los grandes grupos económicos que operan en el Mercosur –al igual que en los Estados Unidos– hubieran preferido que continuara la estrategia norteamericana basada en los  tratados de “nueva generación”  como el TPP que, según fue anunciado, sería rechazado por Trump. Con dichos tratados buscaban la profundización, hasta sus últimas consecuencias, del modelo de acumulación vigente, lo que implicaba la expansión del capital a los ámbitos que aún están en manos del Estado y la consolidación de una nueva estructura institucional favorable al capital transnacional.

A modo de conclusión

La era Trump augura un proceso de agudización de las contradicciones entre los sectores  ligados al capital transnacional – principales impulsores y beneficiarios de la globalización – y sectores ligados a la producción para el  gigantesco mercado interno norteamericano. El resultado de esa disputa incidirá, sin duda, en las políticas económicas que se apliquen en el Mercosur, pero no afectará la alianza estratégica de las clases dominantes, ni las políticas de sobre explotación del trabajo y de los bienes comunes.

Cualquiera sea la fracción ganadora y los instrumentos que utilice la clase trabajadora debera enfrentar un acrecentamiento de la ofensiva del capital.

Antonio Elías

Antonio Elías: Máster en Economía,  docente de la Universidad de la Republica, Vicepresidente de la Sepla, miembro de Redem y Director del Instituto de  Estudios Sindicales (INESUR). 

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A Associação Revolucionária das Mulheres do Afeganistão (RAWA, na sigla em inglês), organização clandestina e independente de mulheres afegãs que atuam no anonimato em favor dos direitos humanos, especialmente feministas, luta contra quatro inimigos em solo afegão: os senhores da guerra da Aliança do Norte colocada no poder pelos Estados Unidos em 2001, a ocupação norte-americana, o Taliban, e o Estado Islamita recém-surgido.

A representante da RAWA, que se identifica como Friba, concedeu esta entrevista sobre a situação de seu país há 15 anos de ocupação dos Estados Unidos sob promessa de promover liberdade, igualdade e justiça. A voz de Friba, que representa a dos mais de 30 mil afegãos inocentes assassinados e mais de 100 mil feridos por atos de terror e crimes de guerra desde outubro de 2001, enfrenta sérios riscos em um país historicamente estratégico para as grandes potências, e dos mais efervescentes do planeta hoje.

A militante afegã traz à luz fatos ocultados pela mídia predominante que explicam a atual conjuntura global, especialmente as causas do terrorismo e as reais intenções do Império agonizante em promover guerras, e perpetuar ocupações militares. “Os Estados Unidos não se interessam pela prosperidade do Afeganistão. Instabilidade, insegurança, pobreza, analfabetismo e outros problemas sociais e econômicos profundamente enraizados, ajudam os Estados Unidos e seu governo fantoche a permanecer no poder”, afirma a entrevistada, direto de Cabul.

“Os Estados Unidos cometeram crimes hediondos no Afeganistão na década passada, matando milhares de pessoas inocentes em ataques aéreos e incursões noturnas, e torturando afegãos inocentes em seus locais negros dentro de suas bases”, afirma a pacifista ao comentar a “Guerra ao Terror” que, apenas nos primeiros meses, matou muito mais inocentes que nos ataques em solo norte-americano há 15 anos, que apenas tem gerado mais radicalismo e violência no Oriente Médio, e em todo o mundo.

A seguir, a situação afegã vivida por dentro segundo a combativa líder da RAWA, uma das tantas heroínas anônimas de um dos países mais pobres e oprimidos pela propalada Operação Liberdade Duradoura dos Estados Unidos e da OTAN, formulada nos porões do poder global para levar caos e servir como pretexto para uma guerra sem fim.

Edu Montesanti: Por favor, fale sobre a RAWA e as dificuldades que seu país enfrenta hoje.

Friba: A Associação Revolucionária das Mulheres do Afeganistão é a mais antiga organização das mulheres no Afeganistão, a qual luta por liberdade, democracia, justiça social e secularismo.

A fundadora da RAWA foi Meena, quem formou este grupo ainda jovem, em 1977, com a ajuda de algumas outras estudantes universitárias em Cabul. Meena foi assassinada em Quetta, Paquistão em 1987 por agentes do KHAD (sucursal afegã da KGB), com a ajuda do grupo fundamentalista sanguinário de Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Ela tinha apenas 30 anos de idade.

O que distingue a RAWA de outras associações é o fato de que somos uma organização política. Quando a RAWA foi fundada, o Afeganistão estava sob a opressão do governo fantoche da União Soviética e, posteriormente, da invasão russa, e Meena percebeu que a luta por independência, liberdade e justiça era inseparável da luta pelos direitos das mulheres.

Depois do martírio de Meena, a RAWA deu seguimento à luta contra os fundamentalistas islamitas afegãos e seus apoiadores internacionais, o que faz até hoje. A RAWA ainda atua na clandestinidade na maior parte do Afeganistão, e enfrenta enormes dificuldades.

Os líderes jihadistas, senhores da guerra com passados sangrentos de crimes horríveis, estão no controle do atual governo e do parlamento, e tem seus domínios separados em diferentes partes do Afeganistão. Abdullah Abdullah, o chefe de Estado do Afeganistão, é um desses líderes jihadistas que pertence ao grupo criminoso de Shorae Nizar.

Isso cria uma situação perigosa para nós já que esses bandidos, nossos maiores inimigos, não param de dificultar nosso trabalho e nos prejudicar. Em outras partes do Afeganistão, onde os fundamentalistas talibans estão no controle, a RAWA enfrenta a mesma opressão. Todas as nossas ativistas usam pseudônimos por precaução, e nunca podemos aparecer em público com nosso trabalho.

Apesar destes obstáculos, ainda é possível continuarmos as atividades políticas na maior parte do país devido ao nosso contato com os habitantes locais, e ao fato de que o ódio destes contra aqueles criminosos traduz-se em apoio a nós.

Nossas atividades políticas incluem a publicação de revistas e artigos, a mobilização de mulheres para que adquiram esta consciência e, assim, juntem-se à nossa luta. Coletamos e documentamos assassinatos, estupros, roubos, extorsões e outros crimes desses senhores da guerra, nas partes mais remotas do Afeganistão.

Nossas atividades sociais são proporcionar educação às mulheres – e não apenas as aulas de alfabetização, mas também a consciência social e política quanto aos seus direitos e como alcançá-los -, ajuda emergencial, criação de orfanatos e atividades relacionadas à saúde.

Edu Montesanti: Como está o Afeganistão hoje, 15 anos após a invasão norte-americana?

Friba: Os Estados Unidos cometeram crimes hediondos no Afeganistão na década passada, matando milhares de pessoas inocentes em ataques aéreos e incursões noturnas, e torturando os afegãos inocentes em suas prisões secretas dentro de suas bases militares.

O massacre de Bala Baluk na província de Farah em 2009, que matou 147 afegãos inocentes, o massacre de Panjwai na província de Kandahar em 2012, que matou 16 afegãos inocentes, a matança de doze crianças inocentes na província de Kunar em 2013, e o ataque ao hospital de Médicos sem Fronteiras em 2015, na província de Kunduz, que matou 42 e feriu mais de 30 pessoas, são apenas alguns casos envolvendo derramamento de sangue causados por forças dos Estados Unidos e da OTAN no Afeganistão.

Apesar disso, a maior traição dos Estados Unidos ao Afeganistão é a reedição de criminosos fundamentalistas islamitas no poder. Como a história tem mostrado sempre e o presente prova, nenhuma intervenção ou ocupação estrangeira é inteiramente bem-sucedida sem a cooperação de um grupo de traiçoeiros internos, mercenários do país ocupante.

Hoje, o Afeganistão é governado por senhores da guerra fundamentalistas sanguinários e criminosos que compactuam com a ideologia do Taliban, e que cometeram crimes piores do que os do Taliban no passado. A Aliança do Norte, composta pelos elementos mais traiçoeiros e misóginos dos senhores da guerra e comandantes militares, foi imposta ao nosso povo através de três eleições historicamente fraudulentas.

Esses criminosos provocaram a guerra civil de 1992 a 1996 que matou mais de 65 mil civis em Cabul, e saquearam a cidade. Suas milícias cometeram assassinatos sistemáticos, estupros, estupros coletivos, extorsões, roubos, detenções arbitrárias, cortaram os seios das mulheres, cravaram pregos em crânios, realizaram rituais de matança horrível e centenas de outros crimes. Em vez de enfrentar a acusação nos tribunais internacionais por tais crimes, esses assassinos desfrutam da mais absoluta impunidade e engordam suas contas bancárias, com o apoio do Ocidente.

Inúmeros relatórios de organismos internacionais como a Human Rights Watch e a Anistia Internacional documentaram os crimes cometidos pelos poderosos senhores da guerra em todo o Afeganistão, tanto no passado quanto no presente. Apesar disso, sabemos que este apoio é inabalável e continuará por décadas.

O novo governo do Afeganistão, denominado “Governo de Unidade Nacional”, é dirigido pelos mercenários de longa-data dos Estados Unidos, Ashraf Ghani e Abdullah Abdullah, ambos da Aliança do Norte que estavam unidos em um acordo quebrado por John Kerry, após os dois não terem concordado com os resultados das fraudulentas e repugnantes eleições presidenciais, repleta de sujeira; o resultado daquelas eleições foi oficialmente lançado um ano depois!

O vice de Ashraf Ghani é Rashid Dostum e outro foi Sarwar Danish, famosos criminosos enquanto os companheiros de chapa de Abdullah foram Mohammad Khan e Mohammad Mohaqiq, outros dois criminosos bem conhecidos. A primeira medida do novo governo foi assinar o Acordo de Segurança Bilateral, que legitima a presença a longo prazo dos Estados Unidos em nossa pátria, e foi o documento que oficialmente vendeu nossa independência aos Estados Unidos.

Não há nenhuma cara nova no governo. A única diferença é que, desta vez, os famosos criminosos das facções Khalq e Parcham, que eram marionetes da União Soviética, também têm recebido uma parte do poder apesar de terem sido incriminados em uma Lista da Morte que revelou os nomes de cinco mil ativistas políticos e intelectuais, mortos pelo regime nas décadas de 1970 e de 1980.

É desnecessário dizer que tal regime fantoche não pode trazer paz, liberdade, democracia, justiça e os direitos das mulheres, mesmo que se submeta a eleições cem vezes.

Segundo a ONU, o alcance do Taliban hoje é o mais amplo desde 2001. Os ataques suicidas do Taliban e a guerra constante entre o governo afegão e Taliban, fizeram um inferno na vida do nosso povo. A taxa de mortalidade civil em 2015 foi a maior já registrada, sendo que grande parte das vítimas era composta de mulheres e crianças.

Enquanto as feridas que o Taliban causou ao nosso povo ainda estão sangrando, as negociações de paz estão em andamento para incluir o Taliban no governo. Em vez de colocá-los em julgamento pelos crimes hediondos, estão sendo convidados para o governo com o objetivo de completar o círculo de fundamentalistas criminosos e mercenários no Afeganistão. Como pode uma força tão criminosa trazer paz ao tomar o poder?

Hoje, a economia do Afeganistão está em frangalhos. Mais de 60 bilhões de dólares foram doados ao Afeganistão para o propalado esforço de reconstrução, mas nem sequer alguns centavos chegaram ao nosso povo enquanto encheram os bolsos da máfia, dentro e fora do governo. Nos últimos treze anos nenhum projeto contribuiu para a reconstrução da base do país. Nenhuma infra-estrutura básica foi construída no país, e o desemprego atinge novos picos a cada dia.

A pobreza e a fome no Afeganistão estão entre as mais altas do mundo, apenas comparável às nações africanas. O Afeganistão tem a maior taxa de mortalidade infantil do mundo, milhões de pessoas sofrem de fome e desnutrição. 25% das crianças no Afeganistão trabalham para alimentar suas famílias, o que as impede de frequentar a escola e de ter acesso a outros direitos básicos.

O Afeganistão foi considerado o país mais corrupto do mundo nos últimos anos. Graças à invasão norte-americana, o Afeganistão é hoje um narco-Estado. Não é apenas o maior produtor de drogas fornecendo 90% do ópio mundial, mas também tem o maior índice [proporcional, grifo nosso] de usuários de drogas, com cerca de três milhões de viciados. Na recente entrevista coletiva de Londres, Ashraf Ghani afirmou que do lucro de 500 bilhões de dólares de drogas no Afeganistão, 480 bilhões fluíram para a Europa.

Isto não apenas revela o fracasso do Ocidente em sua chamada guerra contra as drogas no Afeganistão, como também suscita dúvidas em relação ao seu envolvimento neste negócio.

Edu Montesanti: Anos atrás, a escritora, ativista pelos direitos humanos e ex-parlamentar expulsa injustamente do cargo, Malalaï Joya, denunciou que a CIA segue coordenando o tráfico de drogas a partir do Afeganistão. Em uma entrevista por correio eletrônico (censurada) ao jornal brasileiro O Tempo, mais tarde enviada para mim na íntegra também por correio eletrônico, ela afirmou que “a economia de narcóticos do Afeganistão é um projeto traçado pela CIA, apoiada pela política externa dos Estados Unidos. Há relatos no Afeganistão de que até mesmo o Exército norte-americano está envolvido no tráfico de drogas. A máfia da droga faz parte dos porões do poder, apoiada pelo Ocidente”. O que você pode dizer sobre isso?

Friba: Nós apoiamos fortemente esta declaração de Malalaï Joya, baseada em fatos.

A CIA tem uma longa história de envolvimento no comércio global de drogas em todas as partes do mundo, sob controle dos Estados Unidos ou onde Washington exerce considerável influência. Alguns poucos casos foram investigados e expostos por jornalistas, mas a questão permanece encoberta.

A história da CIA começou na década de 1980. As drogas foram vistas como a maneira mais rápida e mais fácil de se obter dinheiro para financiar representantes da CIA e as forças paramilitares que os serviam, em diferentes países. Gary Webb, o corajoso jornalista que expôs o escândalo do tráfico de drogas dos Contra da Nicarágua, e que acabou sendo levado ao suicídio por uma extensa campanha de difamação pela grande mídia, descreveu o processo desta maneira:

“Nós [CIA] precisamos de dinheiro para uma operação secreta, e a maneira mais rápida para aumentá-lo é vendendo cocaína; vocês a venderão em algum lugar, não queremos saber nada sobre isso.”

Essa tática funcionou com muito sucesso no Afeganistão durante a Guerra Fria, quando as forças mujahideen que servem os EUA foram financiadas através das drogas.

Antes da invasão dos Estados Unidos em 2001, os campos de plantação de papoula foram erradicadas pelos talibans. Logo após a invasão dos Estados Unidos, a produção de drogas começou a aumentar drasticamente, e hoje o Afeganistão produz 90% do ópio do mundo, à beira de se tornar um narco-Estado. Há relatos de que as forças norte-americanas admitem que as drogas são transportadas a partir do Afeganistão em aviões norte-americanos.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, irmão do fantoche dos EUA, Hamid Karzai, ex-governador hoje morto na província de Kandahar, foi ao mesmo tempo o maior traficante não apenas do Afeganistão, mas da região. O tempo todo, ele esteva na folha de pagamento da CIA.

Houve, até mesmo, alegações por parte de oficiais norte-americanos diretamente envolvidos nas operações de drogas no Afeganistão sobre o envolvimento da CIA. Um agente da DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration, agência de fachada dos Estados Unidos, teoricamente anti-narcóticos que funciona como órgão da agência de inteligência norte-americana em todo o mundo], Edwrad Follis, afirmou que a CIA “fechou os olhos” para o tráfico de drogas no Afeganistão. Mais recentemente, John Abbotsford, ex-analista da CIA e veterano de guerra que lutou no Afeganistão, confessou que a CIA desempenhava seu papel em operações de contrabando de drogas.

Mesmo se excluirmos estas reivindicações e relatórios, é difícil acreditar que uma superpotência que possui a mais moderna tecnologia em vigilância e coleta de informações, não consegue encontrar campos de ópio e nem rastrear rotas de fornecimento dentro de um país que ocupa. O fato de que 8 bilhões de dólares foram gastos em esforços de erradicação da droga durante a última década, mas a produção de ópio tem apenas subido, é por si só uma indicação de que o negócio da droga serve a algum interesse dos Estados Unidos no Afeganistão, ou que teria sido concluído há muito tempo.

Outras protagonistas desses tão chamados esforços “antinarcóticos” são empresas privadas norte-americanas que ganham milhões de dólares por meio de contratos antinarcóticos. Uma das maiores beneficiárias é a notória empresa militar Blackwater, agora conhecida como Academi que, de acordo com a [rede de notícias] Russia Today, ganhou 569 milhões de dólares através desses contratos. Empreiteiras privadas têm uma enorme parcela sobre os lucros da guerra no Afeganistão, e essa fracassada guerra às drogas proporciona enormes lucros a elas.

Na verdade, uma das razões para a invasão do Afeganistão pelos Estados Unidos é que os norte-americanos devem manter o controle sobre o negócio de narcóticos, terceiro mais importante produto de comércio em termos de rendimento, depois do negócio das armas e do petróleo.

Edu Montesanti: Qual a situação das mulheres no Afeganistão hoje, as quais os Estados Unidos prometeram libertar da forte misoginia local em 2001?

Friba: A terrível situação das mulheres afegãs sob o regime de mentalidade medieval do Taliban foi explorada pelos Estados Unidos como uma das principais razões para invadir o Afeganistão em 2001. Vejamos como esta “libertação” foi cumprida.

Como todas as pessoas do Afeganistão, as mulheres estão esmagados entre diversas forças em uma guerra contínua, e a insegurança que assola nosso país por mais de uma década: os Estados Unidos e seus aliados, os jihadistas e fundamentalistas do Taliban, e o recém-surgido ISIS [Estado Islamita].

O Parlamento tentou legalizar o apedrejamento até a morte por adultério, a surra na esposa e assassinato em nome da honra [do homem]. A maioria das mulheres em prisões afegãs hoje foram condenadas pelo Judiciário misógino por “crimes morais”, tais como fugir de casa de maridos e de sogros crueis, fugir com amante, etc.

Inúmeros casos de amarração pública e execuções foram realizados pelos tribunais simulados de talibans, senhores da guerra locais e mulás em todas as partes do Afeganistão.

A situação das mulheres hoje é catastrófica. A violência contra as mulheres subiu a níveis sem precedentes hoje. As mulheres sofrem de violência doméstica, estupro, estupro coletivo, abuso sexual, homicídio, imolação, o assassinato honroso, casamentos forçados a menores de idade com homens muito mais velhos que elas, troca de meninas no casamento por mercadorias, e dezenas de outras desgraças semelhantes. As meninas têm sido torturadas nos porões, têm tido narizes, lábios e orelhas decepados, têm sido privadas de comida e espancadas até a morte, pelas famílias ou pelos sogros. O que ficamos sabendo através da mídia é apenas a ponta do iceberg.

Em 2001, os Estados Unidos e seus aliados usaram a situação das mulheres afegãs como pretexto para ocupar o Afeganistão; eles usaram especialmente a imagem de uma mulher afegã chamada Zarmina, assassinada publicamente pelo Taliban no estádio esportivo de Cabul. Contudo, apenas algumas semanas atrás uma mulher afegã foi executada publicamente de maneira semelhante, e os meios de comunicação ocidentais fecharam os olhos diante disso, e ainda não relataram o fato.

As taxas de auto-imolação atingiram novos picos. Muitas mulheres queimam-se vivas ao não enxergar outra solução aos seus problemas. Os legisladores, magistrados e policiais em todo o Afeganistão são fundamentalistas misóginos que impõem suas mentalidades anti-feministas em forma de leis, e oferecem impunidade total aos autores desses horrendos crimes. É natural que, em tal situação, a violência contra as mulheres apenas vai continuar subindo.

No ano passado, o Afeganistão testemunhou o crime mais horrível já cometido contra uma mulher afegã em plena luz do dia, no centro de Cabul, debaixo o nariz dos policiais locais e do governo. Farkhunda, estudante de 26 anos de idade, foi linchada por uma multidão de bandidos que, falsamente, acusaram-na de ter queimado o Alcorão. Ela levou chutes, socos, foi atropelada por um carro, apedrejada e, em seguida, queimada e jogada no seco rio de Cabul. A maioria dos assassinos de Farkhunda foram liberados dias após a detenção. Dos quatro detidos, um foi condenado a apenas dez anos de prisão, e os outros três a 20 anos. Suas penas de morte foram revogadas em sessões de julgamento ridiculamente curtas.

Mais tarde, ainda no ano passado, Rukhshana de 19 anos foi apedrejada até a morte por um tribunal desonesto do Taliban em uma província ocidental do Afeganistão dominada por mulás, por ter fugido. Seus gritos ecoaram por todo o país enquanto ela era lentamente assassinada por uma multidão enfurecida de talibans. Uma delegação foi enviada por Ashraf Ghani, presidente afegão, para investigar e punir os autores dos crimes. A delegação foi chefiada por um mulá, que apoiou o Taliban e defendeu abertamente o apedrejamento da jovem como sendo islamita e juridicamente legal, alguns dias após o incidente. A investigação foi, sem surpresa, inútil.

Talvez o reflexo mais claro da mentalidade da atual legislatura partiu de Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, proeminente legislador afegão cuja acalorada entrevista com Isobel Yeung culminou com uma evidente ameaça: “Talvez eu devesse entregar-lhe a um afegão para que decepasse seu nariz”, em referência à mutilação de uma jovem de 20 anos, Reza Gul, que teve o nariz mutilado pelo esposo pelo “crime moral” de ter fugido de casa.

O Afeganistão ainda tem uma das mais altas taxas de mortalidade materna do mundo, com milhares de mulheres morrendo durante o parto a cada ano. A taxa de alfabetização oficial está em 18%, ainda que considerando a realidade do território nacional a taxa seja muito menor que essa. O Afeganistão é, com razão, chamado de um dos piores lugares para ser mulher.

Os Estados Unidos têm feito uma piada em nome da democracia e com os direitos das mulheres em nosso país, apoiando os criminosos mais misóginos do governo, e descaradamente usando a presença simbólica de funcionárias governamentais, do sexo feminino, para enganar o mundo sobre a situação real. A maioria dessas mulheres estão vinculadas aos mesmos partidos fundamentalistas e criminosos, e são tão antidemocráticas e misóginas quanto seus homólogos masculinos. Os outros estão, simplesmente, usando esta oportunidade para engordar suas contas bancárias com a corrida do ouro da ajuda externa.

As outras realizações das mulheres, tais como reabertura de escolas e de postos de trabalho para mulheres, são limitadas a algumas cidades urbanas do Afeganistão com a maioria das mulheres ainda sofrendo com o atual fogo do Inferno.

Neste momento, o governo fantoche afegão está negociando com Gulbuddin; quer tirar seu nome da lista negra da ONU, dar-lhe proteção jurídica e impunidade. Mas este é o mais notório senhor da guerra afegão, e maior inimigo dos direitos das mulheres que costumava jogar ácido no rosto de mulheres, publicamente.

Os Estados Unidos usam esses “ganhos” superficiais como pretexto para darem seguimento à ocupação militar no Afeganistão, ameaçando que eles serão perdidos após sua chamada retirada. É uma verdade fundamental que os ganhos hard-lutou feitas pela verdadeira luta das mulheres nunca são perdidas, e os EUA usa essas mudanças cosméticas como uma cortina de fumaça para justificar a sua invasão ao povo do mundo.

Edu Montesanti: Como o povo afegão, em geral, vê a longa ocupação dos Estados Unidos?

Friba: Os afegãos estão fartos, sabem que o Ocidente os traiu, que vieram com longas alegações de “direitos humanos”, “direitos das mulheres” e “democracia”, mas na verdade eles empurraram o Afeganistão no sentido de desastres e de um Estado mafioso, e tudo o que fizeram foram apenas mudanças cosméticas.

Eles estão fartos dos crimes e brutalidade das forças dos Estados Unidos no Afeganistão ao longo dos últimos 15 anos, porque dezenas de milhares de afegãos foram mortos por suas bombas e tiroteios, e na verdade o terrorismo foi ainda mais alimentado que antes.

Eles estão fartos com o fato de que o Ocidente está contando com as bandas mais brutais e desumanas, e em nome da “Guerra ao Terror”, na verdade, apoia terroristas e usa o terrorismo como uma arma para derrotar seus rivais como Rússia e China.

Edu Montesanti: Quanto os Estados Unidos são sinceros em libertar o Afeganistão? Você acha que os Estados Unidos desejam um Afeganistão instável?

Friba: O clamor dos Estados Unidos e da OTAN de “libertar” o Afeganistão é apenas slogan barato, e na verdade eles são invasores e destruidores da “libertação”. Os Estados Unidos não têm interesse na prosperidade do Afeganistão. Na verdade, a instabilidade, a insegurança, a pobreza, o analfabetismo e outros problemas sociais e econômicos profundamente arraigados ajudam os Estados Unidos e seu governo fantoche a permanecer no poder, sem nenhuma oposição do povo.

Na verdade, o governo dos Estados Unidos tem as mãos sujas de sangue diante dos acontecimentos das últimas quatro décadas no Afeganistão. Eles apoiaram elementos armados, sedentos de sangue em nosso país, e levaram o Afeganistão a essa atual condição desastrosa. Se os Estados Unidos quisessem estabilidade e prosperidade, teriam dado os bilhões de dólares de ajuda para investimentos em infra-estrutura básica e não para encher os bolsos dos senhores da guerra e ONGs corruptas, que prosperaram sob a ocupação norte-americana. Esta corrida do ouro levou o Afeganistão a se tornar o país mais corrupto do mundo.

Os Estados Unidos e a OTAN tentam transformar não só o Afeganistão, mas toda a Ásia em uma região instável. Enquanto a economia mundial se volta para a Ásia com grandes potências, como Rússia, China, Índia, etc, os Estados Unidos contam com o terrorismo como arma para bloquear o progresso especialmente de Rússia e China, e causam problemas para estes países.

O Afeganistão tornou-se centro deste jogo de poder entre as grandes potências, mais uma vez. Igualmente, temos relatos de que a Rússia também arma o Taliban e os senhores da guerra no Afeganistão, para combater o plano dos Estados Unidos de exportar o terrorismo para repúblicas da Ásia Central e à própria Rússia. Neste jogo, em que ambos os lados usam o terrorismo como arma, os afegãos estão enfrentando um banho de sangue e as coisas estão progredindo rapidamente em direção a novas guerras, e mais derramamento de sangue.

Edu Montesanti: E por que, exatamente, os Estados Unidos estão tão interessados no Afeganistão, a seu ver?

Friba: Neste ponto, depois de mais de uma década de agressão dos Estados Unidos em vários países da região, achamos que não resta nenhuma dúvida na mente de ninguém de que os Estados Unidos estão presentes em nosso país, e em outros países, por seus próprios interesses.

A posição geopolítica do Afeganistão oferece aos Estados Unidos vantagem única na região: acesso aos seus maiores rivais em todo o mundo, Rússia, China, Índia e Irã. Os Estados Unidos construíram [no Afeganistão] bases militares gigantescas e sua segunda maior Embaixada no mundo, e tem milhares de militares e empreiteiros privados estacionados em diferentes partes do Afeganistão.

Essas bases militares oferecem pontos à tentativa dos Estados Unidos de manter seus adversários sob seus domínios, e de continuar perseguindo seus principais objetivos na região. Além disso, e talvez mais importante, o governo traiçoeiro e fundamentalista do Afeganistão, junto de uma população desgastada com a guerra que tem sido executada por quatro décadas, muito cansada de lutar novamente, proporciona as condições ideais para as operações dos Estados Unidos aqui.

Os traidores do Estado afegão não apenas venderam o Afeganistão, mas têm mantido silêncio sobre os crimes brutais das forças dos Estados Unidos, e defendido todos os seus atos de agressão no país.

Os afegãos sabem agora que os Estados Unidos, simplesmente, usam o Afeganistão como frente na Ásia para avançar sua agenda regional, que é promover terrorismo para transformar a Ásia em ponto efervescente na terra com o intuito de deter o avanço das emergentes potências militares e econômicas no continente.

Se você acompanhar cada mudança significativa na situação do Afeganistão – como a transferência do Taliban e da guerra, a insegurança, o terror e a agitação que automaticamente vem em seguida – para as regiões do norte, tudo isso eles serve a um certo interesse de os Estados Unidos. Neste caso, estaria gerando instabilidade nas proximidades da Rússia, e até mesmo a instigando.

É importante salientar aqui que, ao contrário do geralmente propagado sobre os talibans como lacaios do Paquistão e, em menor medida, do Irã, a verdade é que em última análise são os Estados Unidos quem estão segurando a coleira desses indivíduos violentos.

Os talibans são a força de reserva dos Estados Unidos, que irão utilizá-los sempre que virem necessidade para isso. Não é segredo que o regime sanguinário taliban foi criado e alimentado pelos Estados Unidos, e será usado sempre que for necessário.

O Taliban serve a um duplo propósito para os Estados Unidos hoje: eles justificam a continuação da “Guerra ao terror”, e serve como seus procuradores em partes do Afeganistão que não estão sob o controle do propalado governo [nacional].

Hoje, nada no Afeganistão pode ocorrer ou ser alterado sem autorização do Estados Unidos, e seria muito ingênuo pensar de outra forma. Esta situação também expõe a mentira que o governo dos Estados Unidos disse ao mundo em 2014 sobre o término de sua guerra no Afeganistão, retirando as tropas e acabando com a guerra no Afeganistão. Os Estados Unidos continuam tendo uma forte presença no Afeganistão para fins geoestratégicos.

Edu Montesanti: Se eu bem compreendi, Friba, você quer dizer que o Afeganistão está pior agora que antes da invasão liderada pelos Estados Unidos.

Friba: Sim, absolutamente. Para além do que mencionei anteriormente, se considerarmos apenas a deterioração da situação de segurança, vital às pessoas mais que comida e água, podemos entender o quanto a situação está pior do que antes em todo o Afeganistão.

O ópio é outro vírus mortal que infecta nossa nova geração, e é ainda mais perigoso do Taliban e da Al-Qaeda. O número de civis mortos em ataques suicidas por talibans, os ataques noturnos e os ataques aéreos das forças dos Estados Unidos, e os crimes das milícias dos senhores da guerra locais em diferentes partes do Afeganistão aumentam a cada ano.

A economia do país está em ruínas, controlada pela máfia que traça o apoio de poderosos funcionários do governo afegão. Os Estados Unidos e a OTAN invadiram o Afeganistão com importantes alegações de “reconstrução do Afeganistão”, mas não vemos nenhum crescimento em nenhum setor fundamental do Afeganistão.

Apenas a máfia e as ONGs têm crescido em número e tamanho. Os afegãos são o segundo maior grupo de migrantes do mundo, enquanto os jovens se engajam em viagens perigosas a fim de escapar da miséria em suas casas. Muitos jovens hoje são viciados em drogas.

Nas áreas mais isoladas, a pobreza e o desemprego têm levado os jovens a se juntar ao Taliban e ao ISIS [Estado Islamita] já que estes fornecem necessidades básicas, e às vezes até pagam salários. As mulheres afegãs são tão reprimidas e estão sob constante ataque quanto estavam sob a regra medieval do Taliban.

Governos vizinhos como Irã e Paquistão nunca tiveram mãos tão manchadas de sangue diante dos assuntos do Afeganistão, como atualmente.

Este é apenas um breve resumo da situação desastrosa do país, mas é o suficiente para mostrar a devastação que os EUA trouxe sobre o nosso país e as pessoas.

Edu Montesanti: Como você disse, a história e os acontecimentos atuais mostram que ocupação nunca é bem-sucedida. Que alternativas a RAWA defende a fim de mudar definitivamente a catastrófica realidade do Afeganistão? Você vê ajuda externa como produtiva para efetivamente libertar o povo afegão dos personagens e dos grupos altamente violentos, mencionados por você? Se assim for, quem e como poderia ser prestada uma ajuda eficaz ao Afeganistão?

Friba: Sempre dissemos que a independência de um país é a primeira condição para democracia, liberdade e justiça. Há poucos, ou nenhum exemplo na história em que a intervenção estrangeira libertou ou ajudou uma nação, e nos últimos 14 anos da ocupação norte-americana do Afeganistão é uma prova disso.

Os Estados Unidos não apenas não libertaram o Afeganistão, mas impuseram ao nosso povo os maiores inimigos, os criminosos fundamentalistas. Os Estados Unidos são o criador e educador desses violentos grupos. É uma política consciente do governo dos Estados Unidos formar parceria com fundamentalistas islamitas onde quer que ele entra em cena. Vimos isso na Líbia e na Síria também. Os Estados Unidos afirmam estar combatendo o terror, mas os maiores terroristas, os criminosos da Aliança do Norte foram levados ao poder pelos próprios Estados Unidos. Contudo, isso não causou nenhuma surpresa. Logo no início da invasão norte-americana ao Afeganistão, a RAWA declarou que o propósito desta agressão era servir aos objetivos imperialistas dos Estados Unidos, e que naquela tragédia faria parceria com os piores inimigos do nosso país. O que menos importa aos Estados Unidos é o bem-estar do Afeganistão e do seu povo. A situação atual do nosso país, é prova disso.

A chave para a liberdade e para a democracia está em uma luta unida, organizada do nosso povo. Uma luta árdua que seja, mas não há outra maneira de sair deste atoleiro. Apenas as pessoas de um país podem decidir seu destino, e construir um sistema que lhes serve.

A solidariedade das pessoas libertárias e amantes da paz em todo o mundo é muito importante no fortalecimento da luta do nosso povo, também. Este será um processo longo e difícil, mas os afegãos não têm outra alternativa senão unir-se e lutar por liberdade, democracia, justiça e libertação.

Edu Montesanti: A RAWA defende um Afeganistão laico ou islamita, fundamentado na sharia?

Friba: Secularismo tem sido o slogan da RAWA desde sua fundação. Acreditamos que a democracia não tem sentido sem o secularismo. A religião tem sido historicamente utilizada como meio para manter o poder daqueles que governam, e em uma sociedade onde as pessoas são profundamente religiosas, a combinação entre Estado e religião é particularmente perigosa.

Hoje no Afeganistão, a maior ferramenta de fundamentalistas atuais na utilização da força para defender seus atos e se proteger, é o Islã. Todos os criminosos fundamentalistas no poder encobrem seus crimes usando o Islã. Este tem sido utilizado para anular a indignação das pessoas, e o desejo delas de se levantar e de lutar por seus direitos.

O Taliban tem sido capaz de transformar jovens inocentes em mortais atacantes suicidas, através da lavagem cerebral baseada em ideias religiosas. Infelizmente, esse mau uso da religião tem servido muito bem.

Por essa razão, o secularismo é vital ao nosso país hoje, para extirpar o fundamentalismo e construir uma sociedade livre desse vírus mortal. Só assim o Afeganistão pode dar um passo em direção ao progresso e à prosperidade.

Edu Montesanti: A misoginia é senso-comum no Afeganistão, ou reduzida aos senhores da guerra e ao Taliban?

Friba: Não há dúvida de que o Afeganistão é atormentado pelo atraso, cultural e economicamente. Durante séculos, os monarcas reacionários injetaram e utilizaram ideias reacionárias para manter-se no poder. No entanto, nas últimas três décadas, quando os fundamentalistas islamitas dominaram o Afeganistão, o atraso do país tornou-se mais comum e extremo que nunca.

Um dos aspectos do Islã amplamente propagado por radicais islâmicos, é a degradação e a opressão das mulheres, vistas mais como animais que como seres humanos. As mulheres vivem apenas para serem vistas como servas que trabalham em casa, dar à luz a filhos e satisfazer as necessidades sexuais dos homens.

A violência familiar é um dos mais desgastantes e dolorosos problemas das mulheres no Afeganistão, assim como na maioria dos outros países muçulmanos, e é principalmente apoiada pelos governos de linha dura. Este problema, em parte alimentado com os ensinamentos islamitas que são dados aos homens… e mulheres desde a infância.

Há versos do Alcorão a este respeito, que dizem que:

“Suas mulheres são uma lavoura para você (cultivar); assim, vá à sua lavoura como quiser” (2: 223)

“Os homens estão a cargo das mulheres… Quanto àquelas a quem vocês temem rebelião, as admoestem e as isolem em camas separadas” (04:34)

Há um monte de versos deste tipo no Alcorão. Homens justifica sua superioridade e o tratamento desumano e relação às mulheres com base e, tais versos. E, é claro, em uma série de declarações do profeta Maomé ou de outras fontes religiosas, e sobre uma grande quantidade de poemas e histórias; aliás, poetas populares reforçam estes versos e, todos juntos, afetam homens de maneira tão maléfica que se eles tratam as mulheres com ligeira humanidade e bondade, sentem-se como se estivessem cometendo o maior pecado de suas vidas! Nos livros e fontes mencionadas, existem algumas palavras de compaixão e bondade para com as mulheres, mas fracassaram em proteger as mulheres do sofrimento contra elas.

Nos países muçulmanos onde os princípios seculares têm encontrado algum espaço dentro da sociedade, a profundidade desta violência não é tão ruim quanto naqueles infestados pelo fundamentalismo.

Edu Montesanti: As ativistas da RAWA acreditam no Alcorão? Qual a religião das mulheres da RAWA?

Friba: Acreditamos que a religião é um assunto completamente pessoal, e que não importa para nós se alguém na RAWA é religiosa ou não. O que é importante para nós é que elas sejam livres do aspecto reacionário da religião que impede qualquer luta, especialmente a luta revolucionária.

Os versos mencionados são amplamente utilizados por clérigos fundamentalistas para justificar seu tratamento desumano contra as mulheres, e para encorajar este tratamento entre as pessoas. Enquanto nossa luta não tem como objetivo a própria religião, em vez daqueles elementos que abusam de religião, esses versos têm de ser mencionados como eles são os mais comumente usados.

Nós acreditamos em secularismo, o qual simplesmente separa Estado e religião e que tem o maior respeito por quaisquer crenças pessoais, de qualquer um. Toda a nação do Afeganistão, salvo uma minoria muito pequena, é muçulmana, mas ela seguem apenas as boas ações estabelecidas pelo Islã e nunca o usa para justificar maus tratos contra mulheres, contra os não-muçulmanos, etc. Esta versão do Islã é respeitada por nós, mesmo que não seja aceita como parte de nossas crenças.

Sua página sobre cultura afegã parece ótima [Cultura & Arte Afegã, em www.edumontesanti.skyrock.com]. No entanto, existem algumas práticas culturais importantes do Afeganistão que são completamente ignoradas. O evento que você descreveu, o Eid, é uma celebração religiosa. Os fundamentalistas afegãos acabaram propagando o Eid como a celebração mais popular do Afeganistão devido ao seu aspecto islamita.

No entanto, isso não é verdade. Os afegãos seguem o calendário solar e comemorar seu ano novo em 20 ou 21 de março de cada ano. Isso é chamado de ‘Nowroz’ – Novo Dia. As pessoas usam roupas novas, vão a piqueniques com suas famílias e comemoram com música e dança. Eles fazem um prato de doce de sete frutas secas embebidas em calda doce, e cozinham o prato tradicional de arroz branco com espinafre. Esta tradição vem de antepassados afegãos não-islamitas, os Zardosht – ou aqueles que adoravam o fogo. É o acontecimento mais amplamente comemorado no Afeganistão.

Mesmo décadas de guerra e de dominação fundamentalista não foram capazes de apagar essa tradição. Por favor, dê uma olhada nisto: Why Afghanistan’s Nowruz has been interrupted. Este acontecimento é particularmente importante, uma vez que remete aos nossos primeiros ancestrais quando o Islã não era nem nascido ainda. Mais importante, apesar da propaganda generalizada e dos esforços por parte do clérigo, tanto do Taliban quanto do governo, as pessoas comemoraram amplamente o evento deste ano, e continuarão a fazê-lo.

Edu Montesanti: Como vivem as ativistas da RAWA, especialmente com seus cônjuges em uma sociedade altamente misógina como esta? Como seus maridos aceitam e o quanto apoiam seus pontos de vista revolucionários?

Friba: As ativistas da RAWA são mulheres de excepcional sorte em uma sociedade devastada. Nossos maridos e outros familiares do sexo masculino são muito favoráveis, apesar de não desempenharem nenhum papel na organização, propriamente. Na verdade, temos um grupo muito grande de apoiantes do sexo masculino.

Há outros grupos revolucionários e de esquerda no Afeganistão que são predominantemente comandados por homens – ao contrário de nossa organização, somente feminina – que nos apoiam também. Nosso próprio líder, o marido de Meena, Faiz Ahmad, o líder da Organização de Libertação Afeganistão, organização de esquerda radical que existe até hoje e única organização de esquerda que sobreviveu à opressão de quatro décadas de guerra.

Faiz Ahmad foi assassinado alguns meses antes de Meena, pelo mesmo criminoso Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, quem também matou Meena. As atividades de Meena e de Faiz tinham se tornado um espinho nos olhos dos fundamentalistas islâmicos no Paquistão e da inteligência secreta do Afeganistão, por isso foram mortos.

Edu Montesanti: Como você avalia a cobertura do Afeganistão por parte da mídia predominante? Como a RAWA avalia as organizações internacionais de “direitos humanos”, e a posição da chamada comunidade internacional relativos à Questão Afegã?

Friba: Não é mais segredo que a grande mídia é utilizada como uma arma nas guerras modernas. A grande mídia mundial, em especial a dos Estados Unidos, tem servido aos propósitos imperialistas dentro de seus países melhor que qualquer outra ferramenta.

Os povos desses países não têm a verdadeira imagem das guerras dos Estados Unidos para tomar decisões adequadas e bem-informadas sobre elas. O Afeganistão raramente faz parte de alguma cobertura e quando vira notícia, é sistematicamente noticiado de acordo com a política geral dos Estados Unidos.

Os crimes das forças dos Estados Unidos tais como assassinatos, torturas e ataques noturnos nunca serão mostrados, assim como a insegurança e a instabilidade do nosso país, e da situação devastadora das mulheres e das pessoas não recebe nenhuma atenção. São mostrados os horrores dos crimes do Taliban para justificar a guerra dos Estados Unidos, ou isoladas “histórias de sucesso” para pintar um quadro cor-de-rosa da situação do Afeganistão.

Com que frequência as pessoas são incentivadas a discutir o envolvimento dos Estados Unidos em guerras pelo mundo, fornecendo-lhes fatos verdadeiros? O mesmo vale para outros países onde os crimes de ditadores como Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi e Bashar Assad são enviados continuamente, mas a completa devastação do Iraque e da Líbia pelas forças dos Estados Unidos e de seus governos fantoches, e o apoio incondicional dos Estados Unidos aos elementos do Estado Islamita (renomeado de Al-Nusra e Al-Qaeda, por exemplo) na Síria nunca são mostrados. Na verdade, eles encontram formas cobrir com cal tais ações dos Estados Unidos.

Enquanto algumas organizações internacionais de direitos humanos têm desempenhado importante papel no Afeganistão em quatro décadas de guerra documentando crimes, publicando relatórios e chamando a atenção do mundo para estas questões, o mesmo não pode se dizer em relação a toda a comunidade internacional. A comunidade internacional e seus parceiros no Afeganistão têm sido envolvidas apenas em questões superficiais que não têm nenhuma relevância ao povo afegão, tais como projetos de curto prazo e a instituição de ONGs inúteis. Eles não têm lançado luz sobre o conjunto de questões fundamentais do Afeganistão como a ocupação norte-americana, a presença de fundamentalistas no poder e seus crimes. De fato, eles dão uma mão amiga aos principais meios de comunicação do mundo para retratar a situação no Afeganistão como “melhor” do que era há 15 anos.

Mas é claro que a mídia alternativa como Democracy Now!, etc, reflete a realidade, mas suas reportagens são enterradas sob as peças de propaganda veiculadas pelos grandes meios de comunicação, tais como CNN, BBC, AP, Fox News, etc, que têm grande cobertura e recursos para fazer as pessoas de bobas.

Edu Montesanti: Quem são os maiores inimigos dos afegãos?

Friba: Os afegãos são esmagados entre quatro inimigos atualmente: as forças dos EUA e da OTAN, os criminosos e senhores da guerra da Aliança do Norte no governo, o Taliban e um Estado Islamita emergente.

Os Estados Unidos têm gerado todos esses elementos fundamentalistas criminosos, e ainda têm licença para cumprir seus propósitos na região. Isso significa que os criminosos da Aliança do Norte apreciam a maior parte do apoio ocidental, tanto financeira quanto politicamente, o que os torna mais perigoso que outros bandos. A crueldade do Taliban e do Estados Islamita é bem conhecida do mundo, e recebem apoio militar e financeiro dos Estados Unidos, do Paquistão e até mesmo do Irã.

Todos esses inimigos são poderosos e controlam diferentes partes do país. Nas batalhas entre essas forças, nos terríveis ataques aéreos, suicidas e de foguetes levados a cabo por eles, apenas nosso povo sofre.

Edu Montesanti: Quais as perspectivas da RAWA para o Afeganistão diante do atual cenário? O que você gostaria de dizer ao mundo e, em especial, para o Ocidente, para os norte-americanos e ao governo deles?

Friba: Se a situação política do Afeganistão permanece inalterada, a situação atual apenas vai se tornar mais sombria. O povo do Afeganistão continuará sofrendo com insegurança, pobreza, corrupção, desemprego e outros problemas devastadores. Nosso povo vai continuar sendo vítima dos crimes das forças dos Estados Unidos, dos senhores da guerra, do Taliban e dos jihadistas. Há apenas um caminho para a atual situação poder mudar: através das próprias pessoas que lutam por seus direitos e por um país melhor, contra seus principais inimigos, os senhores da guerra dos EUA, o Taliban, jihadistas).

Não temos nada a dizer aos governos ocidentais que têm o sangue de nossos pessoas inocentes manchados em suas mãos. Nossa mensagem às pessoas amantes da paz destes países é que eles têm que enxergar a realidade do Afeganistão, e de todos os outros países que os Estados Unidos invadiram. O que eles veem como raras notícias da situação catastrófica nesses países, é a realidade cotidiana do povo.

Eles precisam pressionar seus governos para que mudem esta política de invasões e de ocupação, e serem solidários às pessoas que são vítimas dessas guerras. Esta solidariedade internacional fortalecerá a luta pela liberdade e pela democracia nesses países.

Eles devem saber que o imposto que pagam é usado por seus governos para tornar o Afeganistão e outros países em guerra em um Inferno, que irá impactar diretamente suas vidas e tornar os países ocidentais inseguro, como o que testemunhamos hoje nas cidades europeias.

 

Artigo original em inglês :

rawa

US War Crimes against Women: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA): Interview, 17 de Maio de 2016

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Eis como a Presidência de Trump se irá desenrolar

January 23rd, 2017 by Pepe Escobar

A era de Trump começa agora – com uma série de episódios plenos de suspense, ligados à geopolítica e à geoeconomia, iminentes e imprevisíveis.

Eu defendi que a estratégia de oposição do guru de Trump para a política externa, Henry Kissinger, ao poderoso trio de integração da Eurásia – Rússia, China e Irão – é uma mistura de dividir para reinar; seduzir a Rússia, afastando-a da sua parceria estratégica com a China, e acossar o elo mais fraco, o Irão.

Na verdade, é isso que está a acontecer – como se vê pelas ofensivas dos membros escolhidos para o gabinete de Trump durante suas audiências no Senado dos EUA. As fações dos EUA próximas do Think Tankland, defensores da política de Nixon para a China projetada por Kissinger, estão animadas com as possibilidades de contenção em relação a pelo menos um desses poderes “potencialmente virado contra a América.” Kissinger e o Dr. Zbig “Grande Xadrez” Brzezinski são as duas principais autonomeadas sumidades ocidentais – mestres fantoches – que se disputam na área da geopolítica. Em oposição a Kissinger, o mentor da política externa de Obama, Brzezinski, fiel à sua russofobia, propôs uma lógica de dividir para reinar, apostada na sedução da China.

No entanto, um influente homem de negócios de Nova Iorque, muito próximo dos reais e discretos Mestres do Universo, que previu corretamente a vitória de Trump semanas antes do fato, depois de examinar o meu argumento ofereceu-me não só uma avaliação mordaz dessas queridas sumidades; ele dispôs-se a detalhar-me como a nova normalidade será estabelecida, tendo sido negociada pelos Mestres diretamente com Trump. Vamos designá-lo por “X”.

A China em observação ininterrupta

“X” começa por dizer algo que aqueles que regularmente mantém ligações ao Deep State e que reverenciam os seus ídolos, nunca ousam dizer, pelo menos em público: “É importante não atribuir muita importância a Kissinger ou Brzezinski, pois eles são apenas fachadas para aqueles que tomam as decisões e o seu trabalho é recobrir e justificar as decisões com um refinamento de intelectualidade. O seu contributo não vale nada. Eu uso os nomes deles de vez em quando pois não posso usar os nomes daqueles que realmente tomam as decisões “. Está então aberto o caminho para” X ” detalhar a nova normalidade:

“Trump foi eleito com o apoio dos Mestres para se inclinar para a Rússia. Os Mestres têm os seus instrumentos nos media e no Congresso mantendo uma campanha de difamação contra a Rússia, e têm o seu boneco Brzezinski também a pregar contra a Rússia, afirmando que ‘a influência global da América depende da cooperação com a China’. O objetivo é pressionar a Rússia para ela cooperar, colocando essas fichas negociais na mesa de Trump. Em termos de uma abordagem tradicional de polícia-bom, polícia-mau, Donald é retratado como o polícia bom querendo boas relações com a Rússia, sendo o Congresso, os media e Brzezinski os policias maus. Trata-se de ajudar Trump nas negociações com a Rússia supondo que Putin, à medida que for vendo o seu amigo numa posição mais ´precária´, estará disposto a fazer maiores concessões.”

E isso leva a explicar como é que Taiwan – e o Japão – entram em cena:

“Donald mostrou a sua inclinação para a Rússia conversando com os taiwaneses, de forma a demonstrar que a mudança é a sério. Mas foi decidido fazer entrar o Japão na peça como sendo um predador contra a indústria dos EUA, através de um ataque à Toyota, bem merecido. Isso moderou a nossa posição já que os Mestres recearam que a perceção de que estávamos a apoiar o Japão contra a China seria considerada uma provocação excessiva “.

Por isso, espera-se que a China – que “não tem demasiada importância”, como afirmou Kissinger – seja mantida sob controlo ininterrupto:

“Os Mestres decidiram reindustrializar os Estados Unidos e querem trazer de volta os postos de trabalho da China. Isso é aconselhável do ponto de vista chinês; por que razões devem eles vender seu trabalho aos EUA por um dólar que não tem valor intrínseco, não recebendo realmente nada pelo seu trabalho. Cada trabalhador chinês deve ter um carro na sua garagem e a China deve tornar-se num produtor de carros maior do que a UE, EUA e Japão combinados, mantendo a sua riqueza no seu próprio país “.

E porquê a China e não a Rússia?

“A Rússia, no que toca a este tema, é um país com muitos recursos naturais, com um gigantesco complexo industrial militar (sendo este o único motivo pelo qual é secretamente respeitada), mas está fora destas difíceis negociações, pois quase não exporta nada além de recursos naturais e equipamentos militares. Os Mestres querem os empregos de volta do México e da Ásia, incluindo do Japão, de Taiwan, etc., e isso é já visível no ataque de Trump também ao Japão. A principal razão subjacente a esta estratégia é que os EUA perderam o controlo dos mares e não podem defender os seus destacamentos militares durante uma grande guerra. Esta é a realidade que interessa ter em conta no momento presente e esta é a verdadeira história que se desenrola nos bastidores. ”

Em poucas palavras, “X” resume o conteúdo da reversão de um ciclo econômico:

“Os Mestres ganharam dinheiro com a transferência da indústria para a Ásia (A Bain Capital especializou-se nisso) e Wall Street ganhou dinheiro com taxas de juro mais baixas sobre os dólares reciclados dos défices comerciais. Mas agora, a questão é estratégica; eles ganharão dinheiro de novo com o regresso das indústrias que reduzirão os seus investimentos na Ásia devolvendo-os aos Estados Unidos, à medida que reconstruímos a produção aqui “.

” X ” continua a ser um grande admirador da estratégia de negócios de Henry Ford, e esse é o ponto que ele vai usar para trazer à baila um tema crucial: a defesa nacional. De acordo com “X”:

“Ford dobrou os salários que pagou e ganhou mais dinheiro do que qualquer outro fabricante. A razão é que um salário mínimo mais elevado que permitiu à mulher ter muitos filhos, dependendo só do salário do marido, foi psicologicamente bom para o aumento da produtividade nas suas fábricas de automóveis, além de que permitiu aos próprios trabalhadores comprar-lhe os seus carros. Desse modo ele reconheceu que numa sociedade deve haver uma mais justa distribuição da riqueza, coisa que o seu admirador, Steve Jobs, não pode fazer.

A produção em série e a produtividade de Henry foi a maravilha que fez os Estados Unidos ganharem a Segunda Guerra Mundial. A Amazon não contribui em nada para a defesa nacional, sendo apenas um serviço de marketing na Internet baseado em programas de computador, nem o Google que simplesmente organiza e fornece melhor os dados. Nada disso constrói um míssil ou um submarino melhor, exceto de modo marginal. ”

É o Pentágono, estúpido

Pois sim; tudo isto tem a ver com a reorganização do poder militar dos EUA. “X” fez questão de se referir a um relatório do CNAS (Centro para uma Nova Segurança Americana), que citei na minha coluna inicial:

“É muito importante o que se depreende do relatório. E é por isso que estamos em grande dificuldade por estarmos tecnologicamente atrás da Rússia em várias gerações de armamento, o que vem na sequência da afirmação de Brzezinski, que diz que já não somos uma potência global”.

Esta é uma análise completa e abrangente de como a Rússia conseguiu organizar as melhores forças armadas do mundo. E o relatório nem sequer leva ainda em conta o sistema de defesa de mísseis S-500, que agora está sendo ultimado e que, sem dúvida, vai fechar por completo a totalidade do espaço aéreo russo. E a próxima geração – S-600? – Será ainda mais poderosa. “X” aventura-se mesmo no território tabu do Deep State, referindo a forma como a Rússia, ao longo da última década, conseguiu posicionar-se muito à frente dos EUA, “eclipsando-o como o poder militar mais forte”. Mas a vantagem deles no jogo deve estar perto do fim – seja isso desejo auto- realizável ou seja lá o que for:

“Esperamos que o Secretário de Defesa James Mattis entenda isso e que o Secretário Adjunto de Defesa tenha as competências técnicas, a capacidade organizacional e de previsão para entender que as armas da III Guerra Mundial são mísseis ofensivos e defensivos, e submarinos, e não poder aéreo, tanques e porta-aviões. ”

Um realista, “X” admite que o status quo neoconservador / neoliberal – representado pela maioria das fações do Deep State dos EUA – nunca abandonará a postura padrão de hostilidade incessante em relação à Rússia. Mas ele prefere concentrar-se na mudança:

“Deixe Tillerson reorganizar o Departamento de Estado de acordo com a eficiência da Exxon. Ele pode ser válido nessa tarefa. Ele e Mattis podem parecer falhos de coragem mas se você disser a verdade ao Senado você nunca vai poder ser confirmado. Por isso, o que eles lá dizem não significa nada. Mas veja o que se passou no caso da Líbia. A CIA tinha um objetivo de empurrar a China para fora da África e por isso criou o AFRICOM (Comando dos EUA para a África). Esse foi um dos segredos da nossa intervenção na Líbia.”

Não que tal tenha tido sucesso; A NATO / AFRICOM transformou a Líbia num terreno baldio dirigido por milícias, e a China ainda não foi afastada do resto da África.

“X” também admite: “A Síria e o Irão são linhas vermelhas para a Rússia. Assim como o é o leste da Ucrânia a partir do Dnieper. ”

Está também plenamente consciente de que Moscovo não permitirá qualquer ameaça de mudança de regime em Teerão. E está também ciente de que “os investimentos da China no petróleo e no gás iraniano implicam que a China também não permitirá o derrube por Washington do governo iraniano”.

As coisas vão tornar-se complicadas no que toca à NATO; “X” está convencido de que a Rússia: “invadirá a Roménia e a Polónia se os mísseis não forem retirados da Roménia e se o compromisso de aceitação de mísseis pela Polónia não for rescindido. A questão não são os mísseis defensivos não perigosos dos Estados Unidos, mas a possibilidade de os substituir por mísseis nucleares ofensivos nesses silos. A Rússia não tolerará esse risco. Esses mísseis não estarão sujeitos qualquer negociação. ”

Em contraste com a “perpétua ameaça”, contínua propaganda do Partido da Guerra dos Estados Unidos, Moscovo dá é atenção aos factos reais que ocorrem no terreno desde a década de 1990; a rutura do histórico aliado eslavo, a Sérvia; a anexação pela NATO das nações do Pacto de Varsóvia e até mesmo de ex-repúblicas da URSS, para não mencionar as tentativas de incluir também a Geórgia e a Ucrânia; o apoio e a organização, pelos EUA, de revoluções coloridas; o fiasco “Assad deve ir”, na tentativa de mudança forçada do regime da Síria, incluindo inclusive o armamento de Salafi-jihadis; as sanções económicas, a guerra de preços do petróleo e os ataques ao rublo; o continuado assédio da NATO. “X”, plenamente consciente destes factos, acrescenta:

“A Rússia sempre quis a paz. Mas eles não vão jogar um jogo com os Mestres do Universo que apresentam Trump como o tipo bom e o Congresso, CIA, etc., como o tipo mau, usando tal cenário como um estratagema de negociação. É assim que eles veem a situação. Eles não acham que este circo seja real. ”

O circo pode ser apenas uma ilusão. Ou uma wayang – uma espécie de teatro de fantoches indonésio – como eu já sugeri. “X” avança uma interpretação nítida deste jogo de sombras do ponto de vista de Moscovo, admitindo que “vão ser necessários vários meses para ver se Putin pode aceitar negociar um desanuviamento com Trump que essencialmente passará por uma Ucrânia oriental autónoma, um tratado de paz na Síria com Assad no lugar, e uma retirada das forças da NATO, regressando esta à linha de defesa que existia no tempo de Ronald Reagan. ”

Quem prevalecerá; Os Mestres, ou o Deep State? Prepare-se para a colisão.

Pepe Escobar

Artigo em inglês aqui :

 

Tradução : Júlio Gomes (Docente na Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, atualmente reformado.) para Global Research.

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We bring to the attention of our readers excerpts of an important article by Asra Q  Nomani published by Women in the World in association with the New York Times under the title: “Billionaire George Soros Has Ties to More than 50 ‘Partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington”.  January 20, 2017 

The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights this week, studying the funding, politics and talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a partisan march.”

Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”?

By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment.

To read the complete article in the NYT click here

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter.

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The new U.S. administration of Donald Trump has made it public that it will seek a regime change policy in Venezuela disguised in “transition to democracy” rhetoric, the country’s potential new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview this week.

“If confirmed, I would urge close cooperation with our friends in the hemisphere, particularly Venezuela’s neighbors Brazil and Colombia, as well as multilateral bodies such as the OAS, to seek a negotiated transition to democratic rule in Venezuela,” the former executive in ExxonMobil told Latin America Goes Global.

He further claimed that the economic crisis in the oil-rich South American country was “largely a product of its incompetent and dysfunctional government, first under Hugo Chavez, and now under his designated successor, Nicolas Maduro.”

The government of President Maduro has, however, blamed the recent crisis on an economic war by right-wing politicians as well as corporations who are hoarding products and halting production to put pressure on the socialist administration.

Meanwhile, Tillerson struck a less aggressive tone when pressed about how he would deal with the standoff between the government and the opposition-led national assembly in Venezuela.

 

“The U.S. should continue to support legitimate dialogue to resolve the political crisis between the Maduro government and the opposition that now controls the National Assembly.”

But then he called for sanctions against what he called “human rights violators” when asked about political prisoners while also slamming Maduro’s government for “undemocratic practices.”

The right-wing website also asked the nominee for U.S. top diplomat post “about the controversial and misguided decision to normalize relations with Cuba” to which he did not suggest a full rollback from Barack Obama’s steps on Cuba.

“I will engage with Cuba but continue to press for reform of its oppressive regime. I will support human rights defenders and democracy activists in Cuba, empower civil society, defend freedom of expression, and promote improved internet access and I will ask our allies to do the same,” he said.

He added that he would engage in bilateral and multilateral talks with Havana in order to “press Cuba to meet its pledge to become more democratic and consider placing conditions on trade or travel policies to motivate the release of political prisoners.”

However, when the interviewer pressed further Tillerson said he would stand by statements made by Vice President Mike Pence stating that the Trump administration would reverse Obama’s Cuba rapprochement policy.

“Yes. There will be a comprehensive review of current policies and executive orders regarding Cuba to determine how best to pressure Cuba to respect human rights and promote democratic changes.”

Tillerson and Venezuela, in fact, have a bitter history and some say he might pursue personal revenge against the socialist government as he takes the international diplomatic stage in Washington.

In 2007, late President Hugo Chavez ordered the nationalization of 22 major multinational corporations operating in the country including ExxonMobil, then headed by Tillerson.

He rejected the compensation deal offered by the government of US$1 billion and took Venezuela to the international arbitration court demanding instead US$10 billion. But the rarely defeated CEO lost and his company settled for US$1.6 billion.

“(Tillerson) took it very personal with Chavez,” said Ghassan Dagher, a Venezuelan oil industry consultant to the New York Times in December.

 

 

 

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Last weekend, Syrian government forces, led by the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces and backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, continued to make gains in the eastern countryside of Aleppo city, moving closer to the ISIS stronghold of al-Bab.

Government troops liberated Suran, Sarjah Kabirah, Sarjah Saghirah, Maran, and reached the villages of Madyunah and Sarbas. If government forces keep up with such rapid advances along the Aleppo-al-Bab road, they will reach Turkish forces storming the ISIS stronghold of al-Bab in northern Syria within few days.

Meanwhile, reports are circulating that Moscow, Damascus, and Ankara have made a deal to unite efforts in combating terrorists in al-Bab and to involve the army in cutting off ISIS units deployed there from the southern direction.

The situation will likely become more clear after the start of the Astana talks.

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Trump is barely two days in office, and already a lawsuit is set to be filed against the newly inaugurated president. According to press reports, a group of lawyers, including former White House ethics attorneys will file a lawsuit on Monday accusing the President of allowing his businesses to accept payments from foreign governments in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) announced Sunday night it is bringing a suit “to stop President Trump from violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments.” The group said the suit will be filed in the Southern District of New York at 9 a.m. on Monday.

Piggybacking on popular displeasure with the Clinton Foundation likewise accepting hundreds of millions in foreign payments, Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator working on the case, said the lawsuit will allege that the Constitution’s emoluments clause forbids payments to Trump’s businesses and will seek a court order forbidding Trump from accepting such payments. The case is part of a wave of litigation expected to be filed against Trump by liberal advocacy groups. It will be filed in a Manhattan federal court, Gupta said, and plaintiffs will include Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in Republican President George W. Bush’s White House.

“We did not want to get to this point. It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the Constitution before he took office,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.”

“President Trump has made his slogan ‘America First,’” Bookbinder added. “So you would think he would want to strictly follow the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, since it was written to ensure our government officials are thinking of Americans first, and not foreign governments.”

The litigation will focus on Trump’s refusal to divest from his business or place his assets into a blind trust, which would separate him entirely from his business empire. He has said his adult sons will run his business while he is in office, that they will not conduct any foreign deals and will subject any domestic deals to an ethics review.

The group says that because Trump has not divested from his businesses, he is “now getting cash and favors from foreign governments, through guests and events at his hotels, leases in his buildings, and valuable real estate deals abroad.”

Meanwhile, Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon recently said that under the business plan, Trump will not be in violation of the Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause.” “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and has nothing to do with an office,” she said. “It is not an emolument. The Constitution does not require President-elect Trump to do anything here.”

But, as The Hill notes, CREW charges that because Trump does business with such countries as China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, “now that he is President, his company’s acceptance of any benefits from the governments of those countries violates the Constitution.” It also warns that, “When Trump the president sits down to negotiate trade deals with these countries, the American people will have no way of knowing whether he will also be thinking about the profits of Trump the businessman.”

The lawyers behind action include constitutional law professors Laurence Tribe and Erwin Chemerinsky, as well as former White House ethics lawyers and CREW board members Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, as well as Bookbinder, Zephyr Teachout and Deepak Gupta.

Trump’s son Eric responded, telling the Times on Sunday that the company had taken more steps than required by law to avoid any possible legal exposure, such as agreeing to donate any profits collected at Trump-owned hotels that come from foreign government guests to the U.S. Treasury. “This is purely harassment for political gain,” Trump told the newspaper.

It may be, but it will also be yet another major distraction for Trump as he prepares to unveil his various stimulus packages. Furthermore, should a adversarial judge be appointedon the case, it is possible that the case will drag out extensively, leading to even more damage for the administration, and even more confusion and chaos for markets, which may be why

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EE.UU.-México: ¡Cuidado! con el juego del gato y el ratón

January 23rd, 2017 by Mouris Salloum George

No hay más cera, que la que arde. A contrapelo de la atmósfera de sicosis desencadenada especialmente en México, una vez rendida su protesta constitucional, Donald Trump empieza a recibir el aval de las cúpulas financieras y políticas que ejercen el poder universal real.

Desde Davos, Suiza, donde se congregan los socios del Foro Económico Mundial, la directora gerente del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), Christine Lagarde ha saludado con beneplácito al Presidente número 45 de los Estados Unidos.

Ha anunciado la economista francesa que, quien se ha abanderado con el spot Volver a ser grandes, tendrá en 2017 uno de sus mejores años de recuperación. Se consolidará este año el crecimiento económico.

Si en Dios confiamos, como reza la leyenda impresa en el dólar, a Trump le favorecen los astros. Pero el asunto no es acreditable a la providencia. Es resultado de la gestión económica de Barack Obama, quien rescató la economía del profundo bache en la que la hundió la crisis financiera 2007-2009.

Los rapaces usufructuarios del 1 por ciento de la riqueza estadunidense, no se andan con remilgos por las calidades morales o políticas del nuevo Presidente norteamericano. Si se han logrado apoderarse de la colosal renta nacional, lo han hecho con independencia de quién despache en el Salón Oval de la Casa Blanca.

La lectura del anuncio del FMI, tiene una implicación mayor. Si 2017 es de bonanza para los Estados Unidos, Trump tiene una preocupación menos en el año inaugural de su mandato.

Atrincherado en esa fortaleza, su prioridad entonces es otra y su primera víctima será la propia sociedad estadunidense.

Nos explicamos. Aun durante los dos periodos presidenciales del demócrata Obama, calificados intelectuales estadunidenses, algunos de ellos, dicho sea de paso, de nuestras ediciones de Voces del Periodista, han denunciado la tendencia hacia la institucionalización el Estado policiaco en la Unión Americana.

Esos pensadores norteamericanos, no pasan por alto que un Estado policiaco en el interior del territorio estadunidense, tendrá su inevitable y nefasta repercusión en las democracias latinoamericanas.

La ostensible orientación del discurso de Trump, ha dejado de lado todo signo liberal del que blasonaba el poder político desde  Washington. Ese discurso tiene todos los tufos a fascismo.

En la nueva era que hoy se abre desde la Casa Blanca, México se encuentra entre la sartén y el fuego. Desde hace al menos dos décadas, México fue puesto de espaldas a América Latina, de la que antes fue considerado líder.

Por el lado septentrional, Canadá ha pintado su raya en la perspectiva de renegociación o suspensión del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte.

Es hora de dejarse de ver el ombligo

Frente a esa galopante realidad, el gobierno mexicano se ha plegado a una reacción casuística. En términos deportivos parece dispuesto a jugar con el score.

Hace unas horas, el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto declaró que  estará atento a fijar sus posiciones conforme actúe Donald Trump. Esto es, reaccionará a la defensiva. No puede exponerse a México al juego del gato y el ratón.

Se requiere, primordialmente, tomar la iniciativa, fundada en una diplomacia activa y soberana, cuyo soporte no puede ser otro que el del apoyo de todos los sectores internos actuantes, sin exclusiones ni arreglos unilaterales o cupulares concebidos para favorecer a los privilegiados de siempre.

Es cierto, que el Presidente parece haber perdido el capital político que acumuló en los primeros tres años. No obstante, no resulta ilusorio imaginar una nueva generación del Pacto por México, a condición de que se inserte en un esquema democráticamente incluyente, que remonte el exclusivismo que marcó su primera edición, que ha exacerbado la polarización socioeconómica.

En estos momentos de destino, cabe la disyuntiva de los hombres del campo: O cabresteas, o te ahorcas. Hacerlo, antes de que se suelten los demonios de la sucesión de 2018.

El tiempo se agota. Hay que dejar de verse el ombligo.

Mouris Salloum George

Mouris Salloum George: Director general del Club de Periodistas de México A.C.

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It’s kinda sneaking up on us like an East Texas copperhead pit viper. It began to get some wide attention in 2016, with prominent economists and financial media suddenly talking about the wonderful benefits of a “cashless society.” Then the government of Narenda Modi completely surprised his citizens by suddenly announcing withdrawal of larger denomination currency notes from circulation, forcing Indians to put their cash into banks or lose it. Now, everywhere we turn, it seems, someone is arguing the Nirvana benefits of a cashless, “digital” money world. It reminds me in an eerie way of a statement attributed to then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in the 1970’s. He reportedly stated, “If you control oil, you control entire nations; if you control food, you control the people; if you control money, you control the entire world.” Consider the following in this regard.

Modi and a USAID ‘Catalyst’

On November 8, 2016 in a surprise televised address, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi announced that, within a deadline of days, all Indian currency notes of 500 and 1,000 Rupees must be put in a bank account and exchanged for smaller denomination notes. At today’s exchange rate 1,000 Rs is roughly equal to $15. This would perhaps be equivalent to the US Treasury outlawing all cash notes larger than a $10 bill.

Overnight, Modi’s government de facto outlawed an estimated 86 percent of all cash in circulation by value. People had 50 days to hand in the notes or they become worthless. Yet the government, despite stating it would issue new, more secure 500Rs and 1000Rs bills, had nowhere near the equivalent value of new notes ready for replacement. They say it may take up to a year to print enough, which means confiscation, de facto. Faked opinion polls with slanted questions done only via smart phone apps of which only 17% of the population has access, claimed that “90% of Indians approve” the demonetization.

Yet it’s far worse. India is an underdeveloped country, the largest in the world in population terms with more than 1.3 billion people. By demanding Indians turn in all 500Rs and 1,000Rs bills to banks, Modi is forcing major change in how Indians control their money in a country high on the corruption scale where few trust government let alone private banks, and prefer to deal strictly in cash or hoard gold for value. Nearly half the population, some 600 million Indians, do not hold a bank account and half of those, some 300 million Indians, lack a government identification, necessary to open an account.

When he presented his shock announcement, Modi pitched it in terms of going after India’s black economy. Soon he shifted gears and was praising the benefits of a “cash-less society” to enable Indians to enter the digital age, appealing to younger Indians, savvy in smart phones and digital networks, to convince the older of the benefits of online banking and consuming. The drastic demonetization declaration was planned by Modi and five other inner-circle ministers in complete secrecy. Not even the banks were told before. The question is what is behind, or rather who is behind this drastic form of monetary shock therapy?

Beyond Cash

The answer is as sinister as it is suggestive of a larger global agenda by what I call in one of my books the Wall Street “Gods of Money.” The Modi cash-less India operation is a project of the US National Security Council, US State Department and Office of the President administered through its US Agency for International Development (USAID). Little surprise, then, that the US State Department spokesman, Mark Toner in a December 1, 2016 press briefing praised the Modi demonetization move stating, “…this was, we believe, an important and necessary step to crack down on illegal actions…a necessary one to address the corruption.”

Keep in mind that USAID today has little to do with aiding poorer countries. By law it must follow the foreign policy agenda of the President’s National Security Council and State Department. It’s widely known as a conduit for CIA money to execute their dirty agendas abroad in places such as Georgia. Notably, the present head of the USAID, Gayle Smith, came to head USAID from her post as Senior Director at the US National Security Council.

German economist and blogger, Norbert Haering, in an extensive, well-documented investigation into the background of the bizarre Modi move to a cash-less India, found not only USAID as the key financial source of the project. He also uncovered a snake-pit of organizational vipers being funded by USAID to design and implement the India shock therapy.

USAID negotiated a co-operation with the Modi Indian Ministry of Finance. In October, 2016 in a press release USAID announced it had created and funded something it named Project Catalyst. The title of their report was, “Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership.” Its stated goal it said was to bring about a “quantum leap” in cashless payment in India.

They certainly did that. Maybe two quantum leaps and some.

If we dig a bit deeper we find that in January, 2016, USAID presented the Indian Finance Ministry a report titled, Beyond Cash: Why India loves cash and why that matters for financial inclusion. Financial “inclusion” for them means getting all Indians into the digital banking system where their every payment can be electronically tracked and given to the tax authorities or to whomever the government sees fit.

Astonishingly, the report, prepared for USAID by something called the Global Innovation Exchange, admitted that “97% of retail transactions in India are conducted in cash or check; Few consumers use digital payments. Only 11% used debit cards for payments last year. Only 6% of Indian merchants accept digital payments…Only 29 percent of bank accounts in India have been used in the last three months.” The US and Indian governments knew very well what shock they were detonating in India.

The Global Innovation Exchange includes such dubious member organizations as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major donor to the Modi war on cash initiative of USAID. It also includes USAID itself, several UN agencies including UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR. And it includes the US Department of Commerce and a spooky Maclean, Virginia military contractor called MITRE Corporation whose chairman is former CIA Director, James Rodney Schlesinger, a close associate of Henry Kissinger.

The USAID Project Catalyst in partnership with the Indian Finance Ministry was done, according to the USAID press statement, with a sinister-sounding organization called CashlessCatalyst.org. Among the 35 members of CashlessCatalyst.org are USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, VISA, MasterCard, Omidyar Network of eBay billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar, the World Economic Forum-center of the globalization annual Alpine meetings.

War on Cash

However, a most interesting member of the USAID Project Catalyst together with the Indian Ministry of Finance is something called Better Than Cash Alliance. In point of fact the US-government-finance Project Catalyst grew out of a longer cooperation between USAID, the Washington-based Better Than Cash Alliance and the Indian Ministry of Finance. It appers to be the core public driver pushing the agenda of the global “war on cash.”

India and the reckless (or corrupt) Modi government implementing the USAID-Better Than Cash Alliance agenda is clearly serving as a guinea pig in a mass social experiment about how to push the cash war in other countries. The Better Than Cash Alliance is described by the UNCDF, which is its Secretariat, as “a US $38 million global alliance of governments, private sector and development organizations committed to accelerating the shift from cash to electronic payments.”

The Better Than Cash Alliance website announces that the alliance, created in 2012, is a “partnership of governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to digital payments in order to reduce poverty and drive inclusive growth.” It’s housed at the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in New York whose major donors, in turn, surprise, surprise, are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MasterCard Foundation. Among the Better Than Cash Alliance’s 50 members are, in addition to the Gates Foundation, Citi Foundation (Citigroup), Ford Foundation, MasterCard, Omidyar Network, United States Agency for International Development, and Visa Inc.

Recently the European Central Bank, which has held negative interest rates for more than a year, allegedly to stimulate growth in the Eurozone amid the long-duration banking and economic crisis of almost nine years, announced that it will stop printing the €500 note. They claim it’s connected with money laundering and terror financing, though it ominously echoes the Modi India war on cash. Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, whose shady role in the 1990’s rape of Russia through his Harvard cronies has been documented elsewhere, is calling for eliminating the US $100 bill. These are first steps to future bolder moves to the desired Cash-less society of Gates, Citigroup, Visa et al.

US Dual Standard: Follow the money…

The move to a purely digital money system would be Big Brother on steroids. It would allow the relevant governments to monitor our every money move with a digital trail, to confiscate deposits in what now are legal bank “bail-ins” as was done in Cyprus in 2013. If central banks move interest rates into negative, something the Bank of Japan and ECB in Frankfurt are already doing, citizens have no choice than to spend the bank money or lose. It is hailed as a way to end tax avoidance but it is far, far more sinister.

As Norbert Haering notes, “the status of the dollar as the world’s currency of reference and the dominance of US companies in international finance provide the US government with tremendous power over all participants in the formal non-cash financial system. It can make everybody conform to American law rather than to their local or international rules.” He adds, referring to the recent US Government demand that Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank pay an astonishing and unprecedented $14 billion fine, “Every internationally active bank can be blackmailed by the US government into following their orders, since revoking their license to do business in the US or in dollar basically amounts to shutting them down.”

We should add to this “benevolent concern” of the US Government to stimulate a War on Cash in India and elsewhere the fact that while Washington has been the most aggressive demanding that banks in other countries enact measures for full disclosure of details of Swiss or Panama or other “offshore” secret account holders or US nationals holding money in foreign banks, the USA itself has scrupulously avoided demanding the same of its domestic banks. The result, as Bloomberg noted following the suspiciously-timed Panama Papers offshore “leaks” of May, 2016, is that the United States is rapidly becoming the world’s leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners.

Perversely enough, in 2010 the US passed a law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FACTA, that requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by US citizens and report them to the US IRS tax office or the foreign banks face steep penalties. The EU signed on to the intrusive FACTA despite strong resistance. Then, using FACTA as the model, the Paris-based OECD drafted an even tougher version of FACTA in 2014 to allegedly go after tax avoiders. To date 97 countries have agreed to the tough OECD bank disclosure rules. Very few have refused. The refusers include Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatu—and…the United States.

World’s Biggest Tax Haven

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, a financial wizard or a Meyer Lansky to see a pattern. Washington forces disclosure of secret bank accounts of its citizens or companies abroad, while at the same time lifting control or disclosure inside the United States of private banking accounts. No surprise that such experienced private bankers as London’s Rothschild & Co. have opened offices in Reno Nevada a stone’s throw from Harrah’s and other casinos, and according to Bloomberg, is doing a booming business moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, or Switzerland which are subject to the new OECD international disclosure requirements, into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt from those disclosure rules.

Rothschild & Co. Director, Andrew Penney noted that as a result, the United States today, “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” Today Nevada, Meyer Lansky’s money laundering project of the 1930’s with established legalized gambling, is becoming the “new Switzerland.” Wyoming and South Dakota are close on the heels.

One area where America’s institutions are still world class is in devising complex instruments of financial control, asset theft and cyber warfare. The US War on Cash, combined with the US Treasury and IRS war on offshore banking is their latest model. As Washington’s War on Terror had a sinister, hidden agenda, so too does Washington’s War on Cash. It’s something to be avoided at all costs if we human beings are to retain any vestige of sovereignty or autonomy. It will be interesting to see how vigorously Casino mogul Trump moves to close the US tax haven status. What do you bet he doesn’t?

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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El presidente Evo Morales demostró hoy con cifras irrefutables el avance de Bolivia en 11 años del proceso de cambio que dirige, y que supera en todos los órdenes lo hecho en 180 años de anteriores gobiernos republicanos.

El informe anual de Morales -que duró cuatro horas y 20 minutos- mostró un Estado Plurinacional sólido, soberano, y cuyos beneficios sociales y económicos fundamentan la demanda de organizaciones sociales para continuar el mandato del primer presidente indígena del país hasta el 2025.

Tal vez uno de los indicadores que mejor refleja la obra de esta Revolución Democrática y Cultural es la pobreza extrema en Bolivia, que se redujo a menos de la mitad entre 2005 y 2015 del 38,2 al 16,8 por ciento de la población.

En su informe, Morales precisó que en 2005 la extrema pobreza en el área urbana era de 24,3 y en la rural de 62,9 por ciento, pero en 2015 esas cifras bajaron a 9,3 y 33,3 por ciento, respectivamente, en tanto la pobreza moderada descendió del 60,6 por ciento en 2005 al 38,6 por ciento en 2016

Al mismo tiempo, el incremento de ingresos del sector poblacional que lo ubican como clase media aumentó del 13 al 32 por ciento, mientras la desigualdad de ingresos entre el 10 por ciento más rico frente al 10 por ciento más pobre, se redujo en los últimos 11 años de 128 a 37 veces.

Esto se explica, en palabras del propio Morales, por la recuperación y defensa de la soberanía política y económica, y muy en especial la nacionalización de los recursos naturales y de las empresas estratégicas, cuya política ha impulsado el desarrollo económico del país.

Tan cierta es esa afirmación que, según estimaciones preliminares de organismos internacionales, Bolivia liderará el mayor crecimiento económico de Suramérica en 2016 con 4,3 por ciento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB), conjuntamente con Paraguay, y ocupará el cuarto lugar en América Latina.

Este liderazgo regional en los últimos años ha sido posible gracias a nuestro modelo, la nacionalización y recuperación de recursos naturales y empresas estratégicas, la diversificación de los productos bolivianos y su exportación a 97 países, afirmó Morales.

De acuerdo con el informe del mandatario, el PIB de esta nación andina creció en promedio 2,8 por ciento en casi 55 años de era republicana (1951-2005), frente al cinco por ciento logrado como promedio durante su gestión entre 2006 y 2016.

Ante el pleno de la Asamblea Legislativa, en este Día del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Morales subrayó que más del 50 por ciento de sus 166 legisladores titulares son mujeres, 41 curules están ocupados por representantes de los pueblos indígenas y 29 por jóvenes.

Ratificó a la salud y educación como derechos ciudadanos y pilares de la Revolución boliviana, agradeció el apoyo de Cuba en la Operación Milagro que ha devuelto la vista a más de 676 mil bolivianos en 10 años y destacó la labor integral de unos 700 integrantes de la Brigada Médica Cubana en todo el país.

La reducción de las tasas de mortalidad infantil y desnutrición crónica son importantes logros en esta nueva Bolivia, dijo, donde se construyen 47 nuevos hospitales y más de tres mil puestos de salud, se vacuna contra 19 enfermedades y entregan medicamentos sin costo a los de escasos recursos.

Recordó Morales que en 2001 el índice de analfabetismo en el país rebasaba el 13 por ciento de la población, mientras en la actualidad es solo de 2,8 por ciento, y su gobierno ha invertido más de tres mil millones de dólares para la calidad de la enseñanza en todos los niveles.

Después de Cuba, Bolivia es el país que más invierte para mejorar la educación, aseguró, y destacó la creación de 128 nuevos institutos tecnológicos durante los 11 años de su gobierno, hasta en los lugares más aislados del país y acondicionados con moderna tecnología.

En este sentido, expuso datos que corroboran el avance en áreas como salud, educación, deporte, economía y finanzas, infraestructura, hidrocarburos y energía, empoderamiento social, autonomía y reducción de la pobreza, entre otros indicadores.

A su juicio, Bolivia se ha convertido en un país modelo en la lucha de los movimientos sociales y el aumento de la consciencia social y política del pueblo, encabezado por el Movimiento al Socialismo y el Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos. En más de 100 tablas demostró los avances logrados en 11 años tras ganar las elecciones el 2006 con casi un 54 por ciento de los votos, en todos los sectores de la economía, en especial hidrocarburos y generación de energía, en lo cual proyectan convertirse en líderes regionales.

La integración vial, en un país de más de un millón de kilómetros cuadrados, fue otro de los grandes sueños realizados, tanto en la construcción de carreteras y puentes como en aeropuertos nacionales e internacionales que hay proyectado el incremento del turismo.

Podemos equivocarnos, tener dificultades, somos seres humanos, no es sencillo administrar un país. Es derecho de todos observarnos, criticarnos, corregirnos, pero lo más importante es que todos pensemos en Bolivia y en cómo acabar con la pobreza, recalcó finalmente Morales ante su pueblo.

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Venezuela tiende la mano de la paz a Estados Unidos

January 23rd, 2017 by Luis Beaton

Venezuela tendió su mano de paz a Estados Unidos en momentos en que una nueva administración guiará los destinos de la nación norteña en medio de serios desafíos en el orden interno y externo.

El presidente Nicolás Maduro, fue claro cuando dijo el 18 de enero: ‘Yo quiero unas relaciones de respeto, de altura, de cooperación con el gobierno de Estados Unidos. Ojalá lo podamos lograr, ojalá’.

Miraflores espera que la Casa Blanca le de un giro al timón y se imponga una política pragmática de buena vecindad, respeto e intercambio entre dos economías que en cierta medida se complementan, una por ser productor de muchas manufacturas, por ejemplo, y la otra por tener las mayores reservas mundiales del llamado ‘oro negro’.

En referencia a Donald Trump, el mandatario venezolano dijo: ‘Pido a Dios que cambie su política hacia Venezuela y América Latina y mientras tanto nosotros estaremos aquí, firmes, libres, independientes y soberanos’.

En su breve discurso cuando asumió el mando, el 45 presidente estadounidense dejó la duda sobre cuál será su proyección hacia afuera, sus palabras estuvieron dirigidas más a los oídos de los millones de sus compatriotas inconformes con el llamado establishment que le dieron su voto para una nunca imaginada victoria.

En días recientes un diputado afín al gobierno nos preguntaba que pensábamos de Trump con respecto a Venezuela.

Brevemente le recordábamos palabras del ex presidente demócrata Jimmy Carter quien lo calificaba como una persona ‘pragmática’, ‘moldeable’, un empresario que verá las relaciones, presumiblemente desde esa óptica.

En ese tono las declaraciones del gobierno de Maduro se mantienen en un ambiente de respeto cauteloso, sin ceder posiciones y dispuesto a una mejora en las relaciones que alcanzaron un punto crítico cuando la administración del presidente Barack Obama vio a Venezuela como un peligro para Estados Unidos.

Muchos factores flotan en este ambiente, entre ellos el aparente acercamiento entre Moscú y Washington, para iniciar una nueva época de convivencia, lo que sin dudas tiene un peso en Venezuela.

Si bien es prematuro hablar de lo que hará Trump en el caso de América Latina, llama la atención que ratificó a varios altos funcionarios del Departamento de Estado, entre ellos a Thomas Shannon, el facilitador para Venezuela, quien ya estuvo por aquí en octubre cuando se inició el dialogo del gobierno con sectores opositores.

Según el académico y escritor Atilio Boron, ‘de ningún presidente estadounidense podemos esperar nada bueno. No porque sean malvados sino porque su condición de jefes del imperio les impone ciertas decisiones que en la soledad de su escritorio probablemente no tomarían’.

Ahora, hay que ver, y por supuesto, esperar, si el gobierno en la sombra, que Boron describe como el entramado de agencias federales, comisiones del Congreso, lobbies multimillonarios que por años y años han financiado a políticos, jueces y periodistas, el complejo militar-industrial-financiero, las dieciséis agencias que conforman la ‘comunidad de inteligencia’, entre otros, lo dejan hacer las cosas a su forma.

En términos generales, el equilibrio geopolítico mundial es mucho menos favorable para Washington, por lo que no se espera un avance de posiciones de fuerza cuando a lo interno la situación pudiera ser caótica.

Además, a lo externo, muchos países como el Grupo de los 77 más China llaman al nuevo gobierno de Estados Unidos a evaluar e implementar alternativas para entablar el dialogo con la Venezuela Bolivariana, en consonancia con el principio de respeto a la soberanía y autodeterminación de los pueblos.

Muchos analistas no descartan que se imponga la cordura, y al menos, en estos inicios Washington y Miraflores tomen el ramo de olivo de la paz.

Luis Beaton

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El ingreso de Colombia a la OTAN

January 23rd, 2017 by Carolina Jiménez

El pasado 23 de Diciembre el presidente Juan Manuel Santos anunció que la OTAN aceptó la solicitud del Estado Colombiano para establecer un Acuerdo de Cooperación Estratégica y Militar. Este anuncio tiene como antecedente el Acuerdo de Intercambio  y Seguridad de Información firmado en Bélgica el 6 de Junio de 2013, ratificado por el Congreso de la República en 2014 y declaro inexequible por la Corte Constitucional al año siguiente. Al decir del Ministro de Defensa de la época a través de este acuerdo se buscaba, 

“tener acceso a conocimiento, experiencia, buenas prácticas en materia de misiones de paz, misiones humanitarias, derechos humanos, justicia militar, procesos de transformación y mejoramiento del sector de defensa y seguridad, además de ayudar en la lucha contra el narcotráfico”.

Así las cosas, se trataría desde la perspectiva gubernamental, de una cualificación de las FFMM colombianas en asuntos de operaciones humanitarias y de paz.

El acuerdo Colombia-OTAN de 2013 tenía como uno de sus objetivos estratégicos que el país sudamericano se constituyera en un aliado para combatir “la delincuencia trasnacional y otras amenazas” a la seguridad hemisférica.

Esto es, un territorio para el control geo-estratégico de un continente que durante la última década había puesto en cuestión la capacidad hegemónica de los EEUU.  De ahí, el amplio rechazo que generó el acuerdo en los gobiernos boliviano, venezolano, ecuatoriano y brasileño.

En su momento, estos gobiernos señalaron que este acuerdo ponía en cuestión la integración regional y los acuerdos establecidos en el marco de la CELAC y UNASUR  a través de los cuales se reconoció a América Latina y el Caribe como zona de paz. Así, la condición de “aliado extra-OTAN” fue catalogada como una amenaza a los equilibrios geopolíticos alcanzados en la región,  para Atilio Boron esta iniciativa tenía unas graves implicaciones en tanto conducía a,

tensar la cuerda de las relaciones colombo-venezolanas; amenazar a sus vecinos y precipitar el aumento del gasto militar en la región; debilitar a la UNASUR y la  CELAC; alinearse con Gran Bretaña en el diferendo con la Argentina por Las Malvinas, dado que esa es la postura oficial de la OTAN. Y quien menciona esta organización no puede sino recordar que, como concuerdan todos los especialistas, el nervio y músculo de la OTAN los aporta Estados Unidos y no los otros estados miembros, reducidos al triste papel de simples peones del mandamás imperial. En suma: una nueva vuelta de tuerca de la contraofensiva imperialista en Nuestra América.

Este nuevo anuncio del presidente Santos revive algunos de los temores señalados tres años atrás, aunque en un contexto regional menos favorable para frenar los embates imperialistas de esta fuerza político-militar.

Esto a razón del giro a la derecha en Argentina y Brasil y  su firme propósito de debilitar los procesos de integración regional, el caso de Venezuela ante el MERCOSUR es ilustrativo de esta cuestión.  También, debe leerse este acuerdo como un intento por frenar los espacios ganados en los últimos años por Rusia en la región.

Por eso, es importante el comunicado del gobierno venezolano manifestando su rechazo a dicho anuncio,

El Gobierno venezolano se opone firmemente ante el intento de introducir factores externos con capacidad nuclear en nuestra Región, cuyas actuaciones pasadas y recientes reivindican la política de la guerra (…) Este anuncio desvirtúa los principios de Bandung que dieron origen al Movimiento de Países No Alineados (Mnoal), que prohíbe expresamente a sus Estados Miembros formar parte de alianzas militares.

Ahora bien, es importante señalar que aunque este anuncio va en contravía de los anhelos de paz del pueblo colombiano y de Nuestra América y de los importantes espacios que abren los acuerdos de paz con las insurgencias, no implica, en si mismo, un freno a lo allí acordado.

Los Acuerdos alcanzados con las FARC-EP son de una gran envergadura política ya que generan condiciones de posibilidad para que se desate la lucha popular en unas condiciones más favorables.

Por esa razón, es fundamental que el movimiento popular y la sociedad civil en general exijan la implementación de todo lo acordado. De igual modo, el gobierno de Juan Manuel Santos debe asumir con férreo compromiso la defensa de la vida de nuestros líderes y lideresas sociales que están siendo sistemáticamente asesinados y amenazados por grupos paramilitares y un sector de la clase dominante enemiga de la paz. Son muchos retos y desafíos a los que nos enfrentamos, por eso saludamos el esfuerzo que hacen los ciudadanos y ciudadanas del Movimiento Político “Voces de Paz y Reconciliación” en procura de la construcción de una paz estable y duradera.

 Carolina Jiménez

Carolina Jiménez: Politóloga de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, doctora en Estudios latinoamericanos de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

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Parece que hemos entrado en el Imperio del Caos, entendido como lo que resulta de la negativa a aceptar el propio declive hegemónico. Parece que Obama lidió con la decadencia de Estados Unidos, como Gorbachov en la ex URSS. Con la paliza que recibieron los Demócratas en EE.UU., los perdedores principales son los globalistas, con los banqueros de Wall Street (City Bank, los Rothschild, etc.) y sus empresas transnacionales que operan en los países emergentes así como los principales medios masivos bajo su control (CNN, etc.). Con la pretensión de California, Hawai y Puerto Rico de separarse de la Unión de Estados parece anunciarse incluso la Perestroika en Occidente.

Las tendencias nacionalistas amenazan también la desintegración de la Unión Europea y se vislumbra un retorno al proteccionismo y nacionalismo. Al no prosperar los tratados de libre comercio empujados por Obama (ATP, el TTIP y TISA) un proceso de des-globalización se pone en marcha a menos que se lo impongan a la fuerza.

Es preciso saber que en Estados Unidos existe un Estado profundo o gobierno de sombra. Así como Clinton sufrió un ataque del Estado Profundo en la recta final de las elecciones cuando el FBI presentó nuevos correos electrónicos relacionados con el mal manejo de información clasificada, también Trump puede ser comido por el omnipotente ´Deep State´.

Todo sucede en un paisaje económico con alto riesgo de otra crisis financiera mundial. Al asumir Trump la presidencia las tasas de interés subirán porque necesita dinero rápido para su proyecto de invertir un millón de millones de dólares en infraestructura. Es un proyecto que constituye un genuino neo-keynesianismo anti-neoliberal que conllevaría a la des-globalización.

Con aumento en las tasas de interés, en el entorno de una inmensa pirámide invertido de crédito y deudas, otra gran crisis financiera global se pondrá en marcha. La nueva política económica no podrá evitarla, pero los globalistas sí podrían hacerle responsable a la administración Trump por el caos que resulte de ello.

En semejante coyuntura el capital financiero globalista (el verdadero responsable de la especulación financiera) se presentará como los salvadores del caos global. Ante la tesis que los nacionalismos solo generan caos, racismo, xenofobia y hasta fascismo, trabajan para poner nuevo orden en el mundo, con un proyecto del Estado Global que estaría por encima de las naciones e incluso por encima de los EE.UU. Para lograr su cometida no se puede descartar en este contexto un golpe, la ley marcial para no mencionar la eliminación física del nuevo presidente.

Lo prioritario en este contexto es lograr que se conserve la paz. No se olvide que ahora, si algo se rompe, estamos en pie de guerra, todos contra todos. No está nada claro que exista una red de seguridad internacional. Y ni Trump ni nadie puede estar seguro de que no la necesitará. La salida más sensata en el momento parece ser ir por un nuevo orden multipolar con diferentes regiones en el mundo sin guerra. La paz mundial tiene también su precio cuando China y Rusia, deberían ser solidarios y ayudar incluso a Estados Unidos a salir de su marasmo civilizatorio y económico.

En un mundo multipolar más proteccionista se erosiona el comercio internacional. La suma de las cuentas nacionales daría negativa, o sea, habrá decrecimiento económico a escala mundial y sin mayor perspectiva que lo habrá en el futuro. Tal vez se anuncia una nueva era  de decrecimiento estructural sin otra salida que la lucha social por otra civilización donde la re-producción de la vida colectiva está en el centro de nuestros valores y para lograrlo hemos de dar vida colectiva a las cosas que producimos. Solo así también podamos devolver la vida a la naturaleza y saber ser parte de ella.

Wim Dierckxsens

Wim Dierckxsens: Doctor en Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de Nimega, Holanda. Tiene postgrado en demografía por la Sorbonne. Fue funcionario de las Naciones Unidas; Investigador del Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo, Universidad Tilburg, Holanda. Fue director del Postgrado en Economía de la UNAH en Honduras y fundador de la Maestría en Política Económica, UNA, Costa Rica.

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Norte de Mali: Sangre y uranio

January 23rd, 2017 by Guadi Calvo

El norte de Mali, Kidal, Tombuctú y Gao, tiende a convertirse en una de las regiones más inestables del planeta, extraordinariamente rica en uranio padece el accionar de los diferentes grupos con intereses propios y obviamente contrapuestos.

Fundamentalistas vinculados a al-Qaeda para el Magreb Islámico (AQMI); El Movimiento Nacional para la Liberación del Azawad (MNLA), de origen imazaghen que reclama la independencia del ancestral territorio tuareg, divididas en Alto Consejo para la Unidad del Azawad (HCUA) y el Movimiento Árabe del Azawad (MAA), el ejército del presidente malí Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, y la organización pro Bamako Gatia, (Grupos de Auto-Defensa tuareg  imghad y aliados) liderada por Fahad Ag Almahmoud que se opone a la independencia de Azawad; militares franceses de las operaciones Serval y Barkhane, que desde 2013, se encuentran en la región con una dotación de 14 mil hombres a los que hay que sumar un pequeño contingente de 700 hombres del ejército alemán; numerosas bandas que trafican: armas, tabaco, combustible, drogas y personas y la agrupación Ansar al-Din, (Defensores de la Fe) liderada por Iyad Ag Ghaly, que bajo la cobertura de organización salafista, opera para los intereses de Argelia.

Este extraordinario mosaico de intereses, a la que habría que sumarles la fuerte rivalidad tribal tuareg entre imghad e imazaghen, convierte a esta región, más extensa que Francia, el tercer país más pobre de África, en una bomba de tiempo, que al parecer ha comenzado su cuenta regresiva.

Cuando todavía no se había disipado la estela del dulce y pegajoso perfume del presidente François “Flanby” Hollande, en el aeropuerto de Bamako, capital de Mali, tras su corta visita para participar en la cumbre XXVII África-Francia, última para Flanby, entre los días 13 y 14 de enero, a la que asistieron 35 mandatarios del continente, para discutir con la antigua metrópoli, temas de seguridad y económica; en la ciudad de Gao, a 1130 kilómetros, al noroeste de la capital el miércoles 18, en el interior de una base militar conjunta Francia-ONU para la Estabilización de Malí (Minusma), Abdul Hadi al-Fulani, un miliciano de la organización al-Mourabitoun, (los que firman con sangre), subsidiaria de AQMI, hizo estallar el camión que conducía, matando cerca de ochenta soldados e hiriendo a otros 120, del ejército malí y brigadistas de las auto-defensa de imghad.

Según los testimonios la explosión, produjo una nube de polvo que alcanzó a cubrir  gran parte de la  ciudad Gao, de cerca 90 mil habitantes, provocando la lógica conmoción. De inmediato comercios y escuelas, fueron cerrados y toda la actividad en la ciudad se detuvo.

Gao, capital del estado de mismo nombre, ubicada a orillas del río Níger, vive desde abril de 2012, tras la última sublevación tuareg, en permanente estado de alerta. La ciudad tras lo que fue la tercera sublevación tuareg desde la independencia de Mali en 1960, estuvo bajo control de AQMI, durante diez tremendos meses en que la sharia, se aplicó con todo rigor.

Como consecuencia del ataque del miércoles último, el sábado 21, se produjo un choque entre bandos antagónicos que operan junto al ejército malí. Un puesto en la localidad de Tinassako, en la región de Kidal, fue cercado por un grupo de  tuareg  independentistas de la Coordinadora de Movimientos del Azawad (CMA), produciendo catorce bajas a los  milicianos pro-Bamako de las auto defensas imghad.

El reinicio de las hostilidades entre estos grupos tuaregs, tras los acuerdos de paz de 2015, no del todo vigente, pone literalmente al norte de Mali, en estado de guerra civil. De la que sin duda intentará sacar ventaja al-Mourabitoun, esta organización creada en agosto de 2013 con la fusión al-Moulathamoun, el Movimiento por la Unicidad y la Yihad de África Occidental  (MUJAO) y el ya mencionado Ansar al-Din, está liderado por el mítico Mokhtar Belmokhtar, veterano de la guerra afgana contra los soviéticos, quien a lo largo de casi cuarenta años en el extremismo musulmán ha tenido sus idas y vueltas con AQMI.

La organización al-Mourabitoun, ha sido protagonista de los ataques  al hotel Radisson Blu en  Bamako, en noviembre de 2015 y al Hotel Splendid en Ouagadougou capital de Burkina Faso, en enero de 2016 y al mes siguiente en el balneario Grand Bassam, en Costa de Marfil,  que dejaron un total de 63 muertos, aunque en el caso de Costa de Marfil, pudo haber sido un ajuste de cuentas entre al-Mourabitoun y los nigerianos de Boko Haram y algún cartel narcotraficante que mantiene negocios con ambas organizaciones.

Un país demasiado central

Son varios los países de la región, que se verían muy afectados por la profundización y extensión de la crisis en Mali. Senegal, Costa de Marfil, Burkina Faso y hasta el sur de Níger podían quedar gravemente implicados de seguir en aumento la actividad salafista.

Habría que tener en cuenta dos factores determinantes para que esto suceda, la presencia de Boko Haram quien está recibiendo fuertes golpes en su país de origen Nigeria y podría buscar una alianza regional con al-Mourabitoun-AQMI y el posible retorno de veteranos de la guerra en Siria, a quienes tampoco les está yendo mejor en su teatro de operaciones.

De producirse una ecuación similar a la expuesta, el caos en el oeste africano podría adquirir, todavía formas más virulentas, lo que para contenerla se verían obligados a participar fuerza extracontinental, involucrándose en extenuante intervención. Entiéndase solo la OTAN, podría hacer frente a una situación semejante, claro si es que Donald Trump, estuviera dispuesto a intervenir.

La centralidad de Mali, en el noroeste africano, la hace clave al momento de los desplazamientos regionales, cercana al conflictivo golfo de Guinea, ubicada parte en el Sahara y el Sahel, sumado a la crónica porosidad de las fronteras, cualquier tipo de organización delincuencial o terrorista convierte a Mali, en un excepcional corredor por el que se pueden desplazarse a su antojo.

Según el informe de la Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos, durante 2016, en el norte y centro del país, se registraron al menos 385 ataques terroristas, en el que se produjeron 332 muertes de ella 207 civiles. Lo que demuestra claramente que a pesar de la intervención militar francesa la región sigue siendo convulsa.

En julio del 2016, un ataque  contra una base militar en la ciudad Nampala en la región central de Segú, cerca de la frontera con Mauritania, dejó una veintena de soldados muertos y otros treinta heridos, sin que las fuerza malienses pudieran repelerlo, hasta que los atacantes se retiraron.

En el sur negro, que practica de manera mayoritaria el animismo, con algún sincretismo musulmán, y que ha dado como resultado un sufismo sui-generis, acumulado una gran cantidad de adeptos, al rigorismo wahabita practicado por al-Qaeda, no le procura ninguna simpatía, por lo que se podría esperar allí, grandes matanzas takfiristas, de asentarse al-Mourabitoun-AQMI.

Dos cuestiones más restan por analizar de afianzarse el salafismo en el norte de Mali, el peligro más concreto es la permeable, larga, y descontrolada frontera con Mauritania, de poco menos de 2300 kilómetros, un país con más del 99% musulmán de mayoría sunita en su versión sufí, absolutamente inerme para enfrentar una invasión fundamentalista.

Y la última y fundamental tiene que ver con los ricos yacimientos de uranio que explota la empresa estatal francesa Areva, en las minas de Arlit y Akouta, en la región tuareg de Agadez, en la frontera entre Malí y Níger, aunque sería prácticamente imposible que los hombres de AQMI, pudieran hacer algo con ese uranio, de acceder a él. Aunque  tecnológicamente, les sería mucho más factible utilizar las toneladas de desechos nucleares como uranio, cadmio, plomo y mercurio que Francia sin ningún control, ni cuidado abandona desde hace décadas en el desierto de Mali y zonas aledañas.

Quizás  Francia, que han hecho del expolió y  el latrocino de los territorios conquistados a sangre, engaño y fuego, su más genuino modo de vida, alguna vez, pueda comprender que cuándo sus ciudadanos son ametrallados, destrozados por una bomba o aplastados por un camión, existen razones que se esconden en lo más recóndito de los desiertos y las selvas, sumergidas en mares de la sangre de otros pueblos.

Guadi Calvo

Guadi Calvo: Escritor y periodista argentino, analista Internacional especializado en África, Medio Oriente y Asia Central. 

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La Celac en los tiempos de Donald Trump

January 23rd, 2017 by Lilliam Oviedo

Los acontecimientos posteriores a la toma de posesión de Donald Trump, lejos de restar importancia a la V Cumbre de la Celac y al encuentro de movimientos sociales y fuerzas políticas “Por la Paz, la Unidad y la Integración de Nuestra América”, contribuyen a poner en evidencia la necesidad de dar seguimiento a ambos eventos y, más importante aún, dejan claro que es urgente fortalecer la Celac como mecanismo de integración regional.

En el discurso y en la práctica

En el discurso de toma de posesión, Donald Trump no mencionó a América Latina, pero la carga contra los inmigrantes y el énfasis en el objetivo de recuperar el orgullo yanqui y validar la visión panestadounidense en la política, anuncian que la nueva administración dará continuidad a la lucha contra el avance político en la región y rediseñará, con el propósito de lograr mayor efectividad, la conspiración contra los gobiernos progresistas.

En cuando a las relaciones con Cuba, es preciso recordar que Mike Pence y Donald Trump, en sus respectivas cuentas de Twitter celebraron la muerte de Fidel Castro. Trump dijo en ese momento que desde el gobierno haría “todo lo posible para asegurar que el pueblo cubano pueda iniciar finalmente su camino hacia la prosperidad y libertad”.

En el plano comercial, las relaciones con Cuba son del interés de varios grupos empresariales estadounidenses, pero el mantenimiento de las embajadas no implica el cese de la conspiración ni evita su recrudecimiento.

Sobre Venezuela, Trump ha sido explícito al demandar el excarcelamiento de los opositores que han ido a prisión por acciones deleznables, como es el caso de Leopoldo López. Rodeado de enemigos de Venezuela (el general John Kelly, por ejemplo, es el nuevo secretario de Seguridad Nacional), es obvio que Trump tiene en carpeta fortalecer la agresión.

La existencia del proyecto queda confirmada con la reciente declaración del embajador de Colombia en Estados Unidos, Juan Carlos Pinzón, quien asegura que Trump ve a Colombia como la puerta de entrada hacia América Latina. ¿Se puede poner en duda después del avance de las negociaciones entre el gobierno dirigido por el ultraderechista Juan Manuel Santos y la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte, OTAN? ¿No es evidente la amenaza para todo proyecto de avance político en América Latina?

La Celac

La Celac es el mecanismo de integración idóneo para dar respuesta a la nueva situación.

Los jefes de Estado que asistieron a la Cumbre de la Unidad (Méxixo 2010), se manifestaron “Decididos a construir un espacio común con el propósito de profundizar la integración política, económica, social y cultural de nuestra región y establecer compromisos efectivos de acción conjunta para la promoción del desarrollo sostenible de América Latina y el Caribe en un marco de unidad, democracia, respeto irrestricto a los derechos humanos, solidaridad, cooperación, complementariedad y concertación política; y convencidos de que la región de América Latina y el Caribe debe seguir reafirmando su presencia en los foros de los que forma parte y pronunciarse sobre los grandes temas y acontecimientos de la agenda global”

En diciembre del año 2011, en la Cumbre Fundacional de ese espacio común, que es la Celac, Hugo Chávez expresó: “¿Hasta cuándo vamos a ser nosotros la periferia atrasada, explotada y mancillada? Estamos poniendo aquí la piedra fundamental de la unidad, la independencia y el desarrollo Sudamericano. Vacilar sería perdernos”.

Estas palabras conservan vigencia. El 20 de enero del año 2017 será recordado como el día en que esa periferia fue vilipendiada por un presidente yanqui que proclama que los capitales de su país han enriquecido a otros países y los militares de su país los han protegido.

Donald Trump, igual que sus antecesores, llama ayuda al saqueo capitalista y protección a la grosera injerencia militar yanqui. Su proclama es ofensiva para el resto del mundo y en particular para América Latina.

Como candidato, dijo que levantaría un nuevo muro en la frontera como México y habló de deportaciones. Como presidente, ¿qué se puede esperar de él?

La Organización de Estados Americanos, OEA, históricamente ha coincidido con Estados Unidos en los aspectos políticos esenciales.

En la Celac no participan Estados Unidos y Canadá, y esto la define como organismo regional latinoamericano.

Desde el 2013, las cumbres anuales se han realizado en el país con la presidencia pro tempore: Chile, Cuba, Costa Rica y Ecuador.

El 25 de noviembre, iniciará la V Cumbre, en Punta Cana, República Dominicana. Ese día, los mandatarios recibirán el documento emanado de la reunión de movimientos sociales y fuerzas políticas “Por la Paz, la Unidad y la Integración de Nuestra América”, una manifestación organizada de apoyo a la Celac y un llamado de atención sobre la necesidad de fortalecerla.

El bloqueo contra Cuba, las políticas anticubanas que Estados Unidos realiza desde sus agencias gubernamentales, así como la conspiración contra Venezuela, deberán constituir temas de primer orden.

Toda América Latina debe exigir que cese la conspiración desde el Norte.

La ultraderecha en acción

El tiempo de Trump es la continuidad del tiempo de la ultraderecha.

El saliente gobierno de Estados Unidos legalizó golpes de Estado y fomentó la política de golpe blando en América Latina, y ahora la ultraderecha se propone utilizar la figura del rancio magnate (misógino, homófobo, xenófobo y racista) para aplicar los métodos que considere más efectivos sin compromiso con la continuidad y sin necesidad de guardar las formas.

La efectiva preparación para dar respuesta a la situación creada a partir de esa decisión, incluye el fortalecimiento de la Celac y la creciente capacidad de la región para actuar como bloque.

Por eso, la V Cumbre merece la atención de todos los hombres y mujeres conscientes en la región y el reconocimiento de que los temas a discutir son de interés para América Latina y para el resto del mundo.

Los estrategas imperialistas han apadrinado a la derecha en la región para favorecer la actuación particular de cada país. Barack Obama dio un espaldarazo a Mauricio Macri en Argentina y lo mismo han hecho los miembros del equipo de Trump. Sobre Colombia, nada hay que decir.

Entre los asesores de Donald Trump sobre América Latina está Freddy Balsera, de origen cubano y nacido en Miami, quien asesoró durante más de cuatro años a Obama, y Julio Ligorría, ex embajador de Guatemala en Washington y ligado a varios casos de corrupción.

No hay duda de que, en materia de agresión, se ligan la continuidad y el recrudecimiento de la conspiración.

La unidad es necesaria en el presente, y lo es también de cara al futuro. No se equivocó en esto Hugo Chávez y tampoco Fidel Castro, quien siempre reconoció como urgente dar pasos hacia la integración continental.

En 1998, en la Cumbre Iberoamericana realizada en Portugal, Fidel dijo: “Les confieso sinceramente que es difícil resignarse a la idea de la integración circunscrita solo al MERCOSUR. Y digo aquí lo que pienso sinceramente y creo, y a muchos visitantes europeos y a muchos amigos y dirigentes políticos que visitan a Cuba, muchas veces calladamente, siempre les planteo el principio de que hay que ayudar a América Latina a unirse, que hay que ayudar a Suramérica a unirse. No me canso de predicar esa idea. Para tener más fuerza, hay que unir fuerzas”.

Ciertamente, de unir fuerzas se trata. En este momento, para unir fuerzas, es preciso dar impulso a la Celac.

Lilliam Oviedo

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Trump o el fin del neoliberalismo progresista

January 23rd, 2017 by Nancy Fraser

La elección de Donald Trump es una más de una serie de insubordinaciones políticas espectaculares que, en conjunto, apuntan a un colapso de la hegemonía neoliberal. Entre esas insubordinaciones, podemos mencionar entre otras, el voto del Brexit en el Reino Unido, el rechazo de las reformas de Renzi en Italia, la campaña de Bernie Sanders para la nominación Demócrata en los EEUU y el apoyo creciente cosechado por el Frente Nacional en Francia.

Aun cuando difieren en ideología y objetivos, esos motines electorales comparten un blanco común: rechazan la globalización de las grandes corporaciones, el neoliberalismo y el establishment político que los respalda. En todos los casos, los votantes dicen “¡No!” a la combinación letal de austeridad, libre comercio, deuda predatoria y trabajo precario y mal pagado que caracteriza al actual capitalismo financiarizado. Sus votos son una respuesta a la crisis estructural de esta forma de capitalismo, crisis que quedó expuesta por primera vez con el casi colapso del orden financiero global en 2008.

Sin embargo, hasta hace poco, la repuesta más común a esta crisis era la protesta social: espectacular y vívida, desde luego, pero de carácter harto efímero. Los sistemas políticos, en cambio, parecían relativamente inmunes, todavía controlados por funcionarios de partido y elites del establishment, al menos en los estados capitalistas poderosos como los EEUU, el Reino Unido y Alemania. Pero ahora las ondas de choque de las elecciones reverberan por todo el planeta, incluidas las ciudadelas de las finanzas globales.

Quienes votaron por Trump, como quienes votaron por el Brexit o contra las reformas italianas, se han levantado contra sus amos políticos. Burlándose de las direcciones de los partidos, han repudiado el sistema que ha erosionado sus condiciones de vida en los últimos treinta años. Los sorprendente no es que lo hayan hecho, sino que hayan tardado tanto.

No obstante, la victoria de Trump no es solamente una revuelta contra las finanzas globales. Lo que sus votantes rechazaron no fue el neoliberalismo sin más, sino el neoliberalismo progresista. Esto puede sonar como un oxímoron, pero se trata de un alineamiento, aunque perverso, muy real: es la clave para entender los resultados electorales en los EEUU y acaso también para comprender la evolución de los acontecimientos en otras partes.

En la forma que ha cobrado en los EEUU, el neoliberalismo progresista es una alianza de las corrientes dominantes de los nuevos movimientos sociales (feminismo, antirracismo, multiculturalismo y derechos LGBTQ) por un lado y, por el otro, el más alto nivel de sectores de negocios “simbólicos” y de servicios (Wall Street, Silicon Valley y Hollywood). En esta alianza, las fuerzas progresistas se han unido efectivamente con las fuerzas del capitalismo cognitivo, especialmente la financiarización. Aun sin quererlo, lo cierto es que las primeras le han aportado su carisma a las últimas. Ideales como la diversidad y el “empoderamiento”, que en principio podrían servir a diferentes propósitos, ahora dan lustre a políticas que han resultado devastadoras para la industria manufacturera y y para lo que antes era la clase media.

El neoliberalismo progresista se desarrolló en los EEUU durante estas tres últimas décadas y fue ratificado por el triunfo electoral de Bill Clinton en 1992. Clinton fue el principal organizador y abanderado de los “Nuevos Demócratas”, el equivalente estadounidense del “Nuevo Laborismo” de Tony Blair.

En vez de la coalición del New Deal entre obreros industriales sindicalizados, afroamericanos y clases medias urbanas, Clinton forjó una nueva alianza de empresarios, residentes de los suburbios*, nuevos movimientos sociales y juventud: todos proclamando orgullosos la honestidad de sus intenciones modernas y progresistas, a favor de la diversidad, el multiculturalismo y los derechos de las mujeres.

Aun cuando el gobierno de Clinton respaldó esas ideas progresistas, también cortejó a Wall Street. Pasando el mando de la economía a Goldman Sachs, desreguló el sistema bancario y negoció tratados de libre comercio que aceleraron la desindustrialización. Lo que se perdió por el camino fue el Rust Belt (Cinturón del Óxido), otrora bastión de la democracia social del New Deal y ahora la región que ha entregado el Colegio Electoral a Donald Trump. Esa región, junto con nuevos centros industriales en el Sur, recibió un duro revés con el despliegue de la financiarización más desenfrenada durante las últimas dos décadas. Las políticas de Clinton -que fueron continuadas por sus sucesores, incluido Barak Obama- degradaron las condiciones de vida de todo el pueblo trabajador, pero especialmente de los trabajadores industriales.

Para decirlo sumariamente: Clinton tiene una pesada responsabilidad en el debilitamiento de las uniones sindicales, en el declive de los salarios reales, en el aumento de la precariedad laboral y en el auge de las familias con dos ingresos que vino a substituir al difunto salario familiar.

Como sugiere esto último, cubrieron el asalto a la seguridad social con un barniz de carisma emancipatorio, tomado prestado de los nuevos movimientos sociales. Durante todos estos años en los que se devastaba la industria manufacturera, el país estaba animado y entretenido por una faramalla de “diversidad”, “empoderamiento” y “no-discriminación”. Al identificar “progreso” con meritocracia -en lugar de igualdad-, se equiparaba la “emancipación” con el ascenso de una pequeña elite de mujeres, minorías y gays “con talento” en la jerarquía empresarial basada en la noción de “quien-gana-se-queda-con-todo” (validando la jerarquía en lugar de abolirla).

Esa noción liberal e individualista del “progreso” fue reemplazando gradualmente a la noción emancipadora, anticapitalista, abarcadora, antijerárquica, igualitaria y sensible al concepto de clase social que había florecido en los años 60 y 70. Con la decadencia de la Nueva Izquierda, su crítica estructural de la sociedad capitalista se debilitó, y el esquema mental liberal-individualista tradicional del país se reafirmó a sí mismo al tiempo que se contraían las aspiraciones de los “progresistas” y de los autodenominados “izquierdistas”. Pero lo que selló el acuerdo fue la coincidencia de esta evolución con el auge del neoliberalismo. Un partido inclinado a liberalizar la economía capitalista encontró a su compañero perfecto en un feminismo empresarial centrado en la “voluntad de dirigir” del “leaning in”** o en “romper el techo de cristal”.

El resultado fue un “neoliberalismo progresista”, amalgama de truncados ideales de emancipación y formas letales de financiarización. Esa amalgama fue desechada en su totalidad por los votantes de Trump. Entre los marginados por este bravo mundo cosmopolita tienen un lugar prominente los obreros industriales, sin duda, pero también hay ejecutivos, pequeños empresarios y todos quienes dependían de la industria en el Rust Belt (Cinturón Oxidado) y en el Sur, así como las poblaciones rurales devastadas por el desempleo y la droga. Para esas poblaciones, al daño de la desindustrialización se añadió el insulto del moralismo progresista, que estaba acostumbrado a considerarlos culturalmente atrasados. Los votantes de Trump no solo rechazaron la globalización sino también el liberalismo cosmopolita identificado con ella. Algunos –no, desde luego, todos, ni mucho menos— quedaron a un paso muy corto de culpar del empeoramiento de sus condiciones de vida a la corrección política, a las gentes de color, a los inmigrantes y los musulmanes. Ante sus ojos, las feministas y Wall Street eran aves de un mismo plumaje, perfectamente unidas en la persona de Hillary Clinton.

Esa combinación de ideas fue posible debido a la ausencia de una izquierda genuina. A pesar de estallidos como Occupy Wall Street, que fue efímero, no ha habido una presencia sostenida de la izquierda en los EEUU desde hace varias décadas. Ni se ha dado aquí una narrativa abarcadora de izquierda que pudiera vincular los legítimos agravios de los votantes de Trump con una crítica efectiva de la financiarización, por un lado, y con una visión emancipadora antirracista, antisexista y antijerárquica, por el otro. Igualmente devastador resultó que se dejaran languidecer los potenciales vínculos entre el mundo del trabajo y los nuevos movimientos sociales. Separados el uno del otro, estos polos indispensables para cualquier izquierda viable se alejaron indefinidamente hasta llegar a parecer antitéticos.

Al menos hasta la notable campaña de Bernie Sanders en las primarias, que bregó por unirlos después de recibir algunas críticas del movimiento Black Lives Matter (Las vidas negras importan). Haciendo estallar el sentido común neoliberal reinante, la revuelta de Sanders fue, en el lado Demócrata, el paralelo de Trump. Así como Trump logró dar el vuelco al establishment Republicano, Sanders estuvo a un pelo de derrotar a la sucesora ungida por Obama, cuyos apparatchiks controlaban todos y cada uno de los resortes del poder en el Partido Demócrata. Entre ambos, Sanders y Trump, galvanizaron una enorme mayoría del voto norteamericano.

Pero sólo el populismo reaccionario de Trump sobrevivió. Mientras que él consiguió deshacerse fácilmente de sus rivales Republicanos, incluidos los predilectos de los grandes donantes de campaña y de los jefes del Partido, la insurrección de Sanders fue frenada eficazmente por un Partido Demócrata, mucho menos democrático. En el momento de la elección general, la alternativa de izquierda ya había sido suprimida. Lo único que quedaba era la elección de Hobson (“tómalo o déjalo”): elegir entre el populismo reaccionario y el neoliberalismo progresista. Cuando la autodenominada izquierda cerró filas con Hillary, la suerte quedó echada.

Sin embargo, y de ahora en más, este es un dilema que la izquierda debería rechazar. En vez de aceptar los términos en que las clases políticas nos presentan el dilema que opone emancipación a protección social, lo que deberíamos hacer es trabajar para redefinir esos términos partiendo del vasto y creciente fondo de rechazo social contra el presente orden. En vez de ponernos del lado de la financiarización-cum-emancipación contra la protección social, lo que deberíamos hacer es construir una nueva alianza de emancipación y protección social contra la finaciarización. En ese proyecto, que se desarrollaría sobre el terreno preparado por Sanders, emancipación no significa diversificar la jerarquía empresarial, sino abolirla. Y prosperidad no significa incrementar el valor de las acciones o los beneficios empresariales, sino mejorar los requisitos materiales de una buena vida para todos. Esa combinación sigue siendo la única respuesta victoriosa y de principios para la presente coyuntura.

A nivel personal, no derramé ninguna lágrima por la derrota del neoliberalismo progresista. Es verdad: hay mucho que temer de una administración Trump racista, antiinmigrante y antiecológica. Pero no deberíamos lamentar ni la implosión de la hegemonía neoliberal ni la demolición del clintonismo y su tenaza de hierro sobre el Partido Demócrata. La victoria de Trump significa una derrota de la alianza entre emancipación y financiarización. Pero esta presidencia no ofrece solución alguna a la presente crisis, no trae consigo la promesa de un nuevo régimen ni de una hegemonía segura. A lo que nos enfrentamos más bien es a un interregno, a una situación abierta e inestable en la que los corazones y las mentes están en juego. En esta situación, no sólo hay peligros, también hay oportunidades: la posibilidad de construir una nueva Nueva Izquierda.

De que ello suceda dependerá en parte de que los progresistas que apoyaron la campaña de Hillary sean capaces de hacer un serio examen de conciencia. Necesitarán librarse del mito, confortable pero falso, de que perdieron contra una “banda de deplorables” (racistas, misóginos, islamófobos y homófobos) ayudados por Vladimir Putin y el FBI. Necesitarán reconocer su propia parte de culpa al sacrificar la protección social, el bienestar material y la dignidad de la clase obrera a una falsa interpretación de la emancipación entendida en términos de meritocracia, diversidad y empoderamiento. Necesitarán pensar a fondo en cómo podemos transformar la economía política del capitalismo financiarizado reviviendo el lema de campaña de Sanders –“socialismo democrático”— e imaginando qué podría  significar ese lema en el siglo XXI. Necesitarán, sobre todo, llegar a la masa de votantes de Trump que no son racistas ni próximos a la ultraderecha, sino víctimas de un “sistema fraudulento” que pueden y deben ser reclutadas para el proyecto antineoliberal de una izquierda rejuvenecida.

Eso no quiere decir olvidarse de preocupaciones acuciantes sobre el racismo y el sexismo. Quiere decir demostrar de qué modo esas antiguas opresiones históricas hallan nuevas expresiones y nuevos fundamentos en el capitalismo financiarizado de nuestros días. Se debe rechazar la idea falsa, de suma cero, que dominó la campaña electoral, y vincular los daños sufridos por las mujeres y las gentes de color con los experimentados por los muchos que votaron a Trump. Por esa senda, una izquierda revitalizada podría sentar los fundamentos de una nueva y potente coalición comprometida a luchar por todos.

Artículo original en inglés:

The End of Progressive Neoliberalism, publicado el 2 de enero de 2017

Traducido por María Julia Bertomeu

Nancy Fraser

Nancy Fraser: Profesora de filosofía y política en la New School for Social Research de Nueva York. Su último libro se titula Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Londres, Verso, 2013).

Notas de la editora de Socialismo21:

* En el original “suburbanite”; se refiere a los habitantes de los suburbios de Estados Unidos, que son áreas residenciales en las que vive mayoritariamente gente blanca, con niveles de ingreso medios o altos.

** La frase “leaning in” procede del léxico empresarial y significa literalmente “inclinarse”; se refiere al gesto de enfatizar lo que se dice inclinando el cuerpo hacia adelante, al dirigirse a las personas sentadas alrededor de una mesa en una reunión de negocios. Surgió en 2013 y proviene del título de un libro de consejos para mujeres de negocios: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, escrito por Sheryl Sandberg, Jefa de Operaciones de Facebook, en colaboración con Nell Scovell.

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The Trump transition team is developing a federal budget based on a blueprint drawn up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that will slash $10.5 trillion from government spending over the next decade, according to a report Thursday in the Hill.

The main budget priorities of the Trump administration are to be published within 45 days of the inauguration and the full budget proposal is expected sometime in April.

According to the Hill, the Trump administration’s budget proposal is being drawn up by Russ Vought and John Gray, former Heritage Foundation employees and one-time aides to Vice President Mike Pence. Vought was also the executive direction of the Republican Study Group, which has proposed similar cuts in recent years, while Gray served as an aide to Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan when he led the House Budget Committee.

The implementation of the reported budget cuts would mark a massive escalation in the social counterrevolution and attack on the living standards of the working class carried out by the Democrats and the Obama administration over the last eight years.

Among the “dramatic” reductions that are being prepared are significant cuts to funding for the Commerce Department and the Department of Energy, with programs currently under their jurisdiction either eliminated entirely or transferred to other departments.

Other federal departments that will reportedly be significantly impacted by cuts and program elimination include the Department of Transportation, Justice Department and State Department.

Under the Heritage Foundation plan, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which oversees the operations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), would be entirely privatized. While the CPB still relies on the federal government for a portion of its funding, it has increasingly relied on donations from large corporate sponsors and from the wealthy.

The Heritage Foundation’s budget blueprint is a litany of attacks on benefits and social programs which benefit the poor, as well as an assault on scientific research.

Under the guise of “reducing fraud,” the foundation calls for new restrictions on the Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefits millions of single mothers and low-wage workers. Other reactionary measures under consideration are new work requirements for adult Food Stamp recipients and eliminating Social Security payments for disabled children.

Federal funding for the arts and humanities research would be totally phased out with the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Scientific research carried out across multiple departments, including in the Department of Energy, will be completely or partially defunded.

The savagery of the reported budget proposals is yet another expression of the fundamental class character of the incoming Trump administration, in which billionaire oligarchs are taking direct control of the federal government, rather than pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Reports of the incoming administration’s budget plans came as the Senate held cabinet hearings Thursday for multimillionaire corporate raider and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin, nominated to serve as the Treasury Secretary, and former Texas governor Rick Perry for head of the Department of Energy, an agency which Perry called to eliminate in 2012.

Mnuchin, if confirmed, would join a cabinet comprised of billionaires, multimillionaires and former generals. While Mnuchin has an estimated net worth of $400 million, that puts him well behind Trump’s picks for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos ($5.1 billion), Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross ($2.5 billion), and the Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon ($1.35 billion).

During his testimony Thursday, Mnuchin defended his time as the head of California-based IndyMac Bank, renamed OneWest, where he made massive profits aggressively pursuing foreclosures against homeowners during the height of the foreclosure crisis.

Mnuchin sought in his remarks to present himself as a savior moved by the plight of homeowners who was hindered in his efforts to help by too many government regulations. “If we had not bought IndyMac,” he said, “the bank would likely have been broken up and sold in pieces to private investors, where the outcome for consumers could have been much bleaker.” (And Mnuchin just happened to make millions in the process!)

He promised that if confirmed as Treasury Secretary, he would work to eliminate financial regulations that had kept him from becoming even wealthier. Mnuchin will also be taking the lead in formulating Trump’s tax plan, which is to include cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to only 15 percent.

Demonstrating the practically nonexistent character of the vetting process for Trump’s ultra-wealthy nominees, the Washington Post reported Thursday that Mnuchin had failed to report his corporate interests in the Cayman Islands as well as more than $100 million in real estate and art holdings in an initial submission to the Senate panel reviewing his nomination. Though this lapse drew some flak from committee Democrats, it did little to hurt the former Goldman Sachs executive’s chances of confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate.

While some of Trump’s nominees may take their time to get through the confirmation process, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday that a deal had been reached to approve retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Pentagon chief and retired Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly as head of the Department of Homeland Security shortly after Trump’s inauguration today.

“I looked at their records…and I think they’d be very good,” Schumer noted approvingly. He also indicated that Republican Representative Mike Pompeo would be confirmed as CIA director either today or on Monday.

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One day after US President Donald Trump delivered an ultranationalist speech at his inaguration, and even as millions in the US and hundreds of thousands more around the world were protesting his inauguration, Trump went to the Langley, Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency to pledge his “love” and “1,000 percent” support.

The bulk of his rambling remarks, however, consisted of an attack on the media. Trump first accused the press of fabricating a feud between his transition team and the intelligence agencies and then charged it with deliberately underreporting the turnout for his inauguration the previous day. The new administration’s open feud with the corporate-controlled media underscores the degree of conflict and tension within the state as Trump takes office.

“And the reason you’re my first stop,” Trump told the audience of some 400 CIA employees, “is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth… they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.”

Just ten days before, Trump had used his first postelection press conference to accuse the CIA of leaking a report claiming that the Kremlin had a dossier of compromising information on him. He compared the CIA’s alleged leak to the tactics of Nazi Germany.

This was a high point in a months-long public conflict between Trump and the bulk of the intelligence establishment over official claims of Russian government intervention in the 2016 election, allegedly aimed at undermining Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and tipping the vote to Trump.

Spearheaded politically by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, and promoted by most of the corporate media, the McCarthyite-style campaign portrayed Trump as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin because he talked of seeking improved relations with the Kremlin. This warmongering agitation, carried out without any factual substantiation of Russian meddling in the election, was initially aimed at attacking Trump from the right and creating the conditions for a Clinton administration to sharply escalate US military preparations against Russia. After Trump’s unexpected election victory, the campaign was revived in an attempt to block any rapprochement by the incoming government with Moscow.

Despite the complicity of the media in this reactionary campaign, Trump’s attempt to portray his feud with the CIA as a media invention is a patent lie. In Langley, he followed up this charge with a harangue against the press for allegedly underestimating the turnout for the inauguration in order to discredit his administration.

He estimated the attendance at “a million, a million and a half people,” an absurdly inflated figure refuted by aerial photographs showing a far smaller crowd than for Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and by Washington Metro statistics pointing to a crowd of about 250,000.

Saying “we caught them in a beauty” of a lie, he declared ominously, “And I think they’re going to pay a big price.”

He then made much of an inaccurate report published Friday by Timemagazine, and quickly retracted, that Trump had moved a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the Oval Office.

Several hours later, the new White House held an, if anything, even more bizarre event. Trump press secretary Sean Spicer called a news conference in the White House briefing room at which he angrily attacked the press corps for lying about the inauguration turnout and all but accused it of sedition. After lashing out for some ten minutes, spouting a series of falsehoods about the attendance at the previous day’s event, he turned on his heels and walked out, refusing to take questions from the stunned reporters.

At neither appearance was any acknowledgment made of the unprecedented character and massive scale of the anti-Trump demonstration taking place a few blocks away and the hundreds of others taking place across the country and internationally.

Declaring Friday’s turnout to be “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,”—a complete fabrication—Spicer added, “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

He then accused the media of “sowing division” with “deliberately false reporting” in an effort to undermine the new president, whose address was about “unifying the country.”

“There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable,” he warned, “and I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways. We are going to hold the press accountable as well.”

This was followed up by further threats against the press by Trump spokespeople who appeared on the Sunday morning news interview programs.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told “Fox News Sunday” that “The media, from day one, has been talking about delegitimizing the election, talking about the Russians, talking about everything you can imagine, except the fact that we need to move this country forward.”

He continued: “I’m saying there’s an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen. We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day, and twice on Sunday.”

Top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway reinforced the attack in an appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” Speaking of Trump, she declared, “He has just absorbed an unprecedented…deluge of negative criticism and coverage that’s frankly unfair and a little bit dangerous to our democracy.”

In relation to press accounts of Spicer’s performance, she said, “It is completely irresponsible, if not worse, for members of the media to be calling our press secretary a liar or worse…” She called Spicer’s lies “alternative facts” and followed with a direct threat: “If we are going to keep referring to our press secretary in those type of terms, I think we are going to have to rethink our relationship here.”

Trump’s anger is directed in the first instance against an utterly corrupt and subservient corporate-controlled press, which is rightly held in contempt by broad sections of the population because of its role as a purveyor of government lies and propaganda.

The new government, a direct instrument of the financial oligarchy, is nevertheless out to further muzzle the media in order to carry through a violent attack on the democratic rights and social conditions of the working class and prepare bigger and bloodier wars internationally.

Cowardly to its core and thoroughly bribed by the corporate elite, the establishment press is incapable of offering a principled defense of freedom of the press and speech.

Nor will the Democrats oppose Trump’s assault on democratic rights. This has already been demonstrated by the attempts of leading Democrats to attack Trump’s appearance at CIA headquarters from the right.

The New York Times, which functions as the unofficial house organ of the Democratic Party, managed to incorporate an attack on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in its coverage of Trump’s appearance, writing: “He did not mention his apparent willingness to believe Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who is widely detested at the CIA, over his own intelligence agencies.”

Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and Charles Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, both attacked Trump for showing insufficient deference to the CIA. Neither of them even raised the threat to press freedom and democratic rights posed by the administration’s broadsides.

Schiff said: “While standing in front of the stairs representing CIA personnel who lost their lives in the service of their country—hallowed ground—Trump gave little more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of their service and sacrifice.”

Schumer, appearing on ABC News’ “This Week” program, denounced Trump for raising the possibility of reducing sanctions against Russia. He touted legislation he is cosponsoring with Republican war hawks John McCain and Lindsey Graham to block the executive branch from easing the sanctions.

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En 1985, miembros del temible escuadrón del Ejército discutieron cómo implementar la “próxima campaña antisubversiva”. Los datos surgen de la desclasificación de Obama.

A fines de marzo de 1985, un año y medio después de la asunción presidencial de Raúl Alfonsín, miembros del Batallón 601 de Inteligencia del Ejército se reunieron para discutir cómo mantener activa la “lucha contra la subversión” en plena democracia. El que tomó la voz cantante fue el coronel Luis Faustino Adolfo Suárez, identificado como jefe de Contrainteligencia del Batallón, quien afirmó que era indispensable establecer canales informales y discretos de comunicación con agentes de la Policía Federal Argentina para involucrar a dicha fuerza en la “próxima campaña antisubversiva”.

El dato surge de uno de los archivos secretos de los Estados Unidos que fueron desclasificados esta semana por el gobierno de Barack Obama, según lo que el mandatario le había prometido a Mauricio Macri durante su visita en marzo a la Argentina. El documento es  otra prueba de que, durante los primeros años del regreso a la democracia, las estructuras represivas de la dictadura militar se mantuvieron activas. De hecho, el Batallón 601 fue disuelto recién en 1985.

El despacho de inteligencia remitido desde Buenos Aires al Consejo de Seguridad Nacional de la Casa Blanca, entonces encabezado por el presidente Ronald Reagan, señalaba que en la reunión se había conversado sobre supuestos “preparativos militares de gran escala por parte del PRT-ERP y de un amplio tráfico clandestino de armas en la Argentina” que podían ser tomados como “indicios de que actividades subversivas podrían volver a tener lugar en la Argentina”. Suárez también le dijo al puñado de agentes presentes del Batallón –entre los que también estaba el mayor Rodolfo Dellatorre, vicejefe de Contrainteligencia– que él veía críticamente el modo en que la represión política había sido llevada a cabo durante los años setenta debido a una extendida “falta de experiencia, coordinación entre fuerzas y conducción clara y decidida”.

Suárez señaló que la “próxima campaña antisubversiva” debía realizarse en base a un programa “bien supervisado y centralizado”, que tuviera como elemento clave la coordinación con la Policía. Manifestó que “el Batallón debía proceder cuidadosamente en el establecimiento de contactos con la PFA y asegurarse de que los policías elegidos para cooperar fueran discretos y confiables”. Y dijo contar con una lista de altos jerarcas policiales a los que podrían consultarles qué oficiales eran recomendables para lo que buscaba el Batallón 601.

Al igual que muchos otros documentos incluidos en esta segunda tanda de desclasificaciones –la primera se difundió en agosto–, el archivo en cuestión tiene tachaduras que posiblemente buscan preservar la identidad de las fuentes.

Jugosos. Carlos Osorio, director del Proyecto Cono Sur del Archivo de Seguridad Nacional (NSA), una institución no gubernamental con sede en la Universidad George Washington que se dedica a sacar a la luz papeles confidenciales acumulados durante décadas por los distintos gobiernos estadounidenses, se ocupó de relevar y difundir esta nueva desclasificación. “Esta segunda tanda de archivos tiene la mitad de tamaño que la anterior, pero es mucho más jugosa –dijo Osorio a PERFIL–. Han sido muy abiertos con esta desclasificación, hay archivos marco que incluso podrían citarse en causas judiciales”.

Los documentos también aportan información sobre la Operación Cóndor y, en particular, sobre los tempranos planes que tenían las dictaduras de Argentina, Uruguay y Chile para exportar la coordinación represiva y la persecusión a disidentes hacia Europa. “Sabíamos que eso había existido, pero no conocíamos que con ese nivel de osadía y descaro –agregó Osorio–. Incluso hay pruebas de que planearon asesinar a miembros de Amnesty International”. El conocimiento histórico sobre la Operación  Cóndor ha sido siempre fragmentario, producto del trabajo de rompecabezas de investigadores. En esta desclasificación aparecen informes detallados de la CIA donde el cuadro de la represión extraterritorial empieza a verse más completo.

Facundo F. Barrio

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Life Without Bees: The Effects on Food

January 23rd, 2017 by Jennifer Forbes

Due to climate change, the increased use of pesticides and a range of other causal factors, bee populations have decreased steadily over the past years. This could result in a huge impact on our food supply and indeed, our health.

As a matter of fact, one in every three bites of food consumed around the world depends on pollinators, bees in particular, for a successful crop, and without these hard-working insects most of our favorite foods would sadly not exist.

Furthermore, bees are responsible for the reproduction of alfalfa and clover, which feed cattle and other grazing animals, so without them we would lose a significant portion of our milk, cheese, butter, yogurt and ice creams.

There is no doubt that without these delicious foods, our lives would become duller. Yet, there is an even more frightening reality. With the decline of bees, not only would the foods we love disappear, but also the food we need. Some of the most vitamin and mineral-rich foods are dependent on insect pollination. Deficiencies in these nutrients can have devastating effects on human health, with an increased risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease, as well as malnutrition and mortality in less-developed regions.

Below we have taken a look at foods that are under direct threat if we do not save the bees, and it is not just honey.

Breakfast

How your Breakfast is affected

Almonds (granola)

Almond blossoms rely entirely on pollination by bees, and it is not just the almonds that need the bees for survival; the bees need almonds. The blossoms provide the first good pollen in California (where 80% of the world’s almonds are harvested), and this source is hugely important for the bees as it gives them valuable strength at the start of the season.

Blueberries

90 percent of all blueberry crops are pollinated by bumble bees and blueberry bees, which means that scarcity would drive skyrocketing prices for these antioxidant-packed super berries.

Coffee

The coffee plant is self-pollinating but still needs cross-pollination from bees to develop healthy yields. The flower of the coffee tree is only open for pollination for three or four days, and if it does not get pollinated in that short window, the crop will become weaker and more prone to disease. Although coffee would be likely to exist without bees, it would become very expensive and rare.

Orange juice

90 percent of orange trees depend on pollination by bees. There are, however, some varieties that are self-pollinating types, such as the Navel Orange.

Pumpkin seeds (granola)

Pumpkin seeds contain high levels of magnesium, which is beneficial for your blood pressure and can help prevent sudden cardiac arrest, heart attack and stroke. These nutritional power seeds are heavily dependent on squash bees and it is estimated that 90 percent of crops would disappear without them.

Rapeseed (oil) spread

Both rapeseed (including canola) oil and spread are at risk from the decline of bees. The furry pollinators benefit vastly from the nutrition of these bright yellow flowers, but sadly the crops are often heavily treated with pesticides.

Raspberries

Raspberries require insects to insure pollination as the crops otherwise would be misshapen, smaller and fewer. These powerful berries can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.

Strawberries

Bee pollination is not essential, but many farmers use bees to complement wind pollination as insect pollination can help produce berries of higher quantity and quality.

Sunflower spread (oil) and seeds

The heavy and sticky character of sunflower pollen requires it to be carried by bees and other pollinators rather than wind. If you are using sunflower spread on your sandwich or eat granola with sunflower seeds, you might need to switch to an alternative if bees die out.

Lunch / Dinner

How your Lunch / Dinner is affected

Cucumbers

Without bees, the majority of cucumber crops would not exist (so no more pickles on your burger). It has been reported that cucumber farmers have already seen a significant decrease in their crop yields.

Mustard

One third of all mustard plants require bee pollination, meaning a significantly smaller dash of mustard to go with your meal. Mustard is not solely used as a condiment; the seeds can help treat inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.

Onions

Onions are harvested before blooming and only require pollination when grown to produce seeds. Fewer bees would make it difficult and expensive for farmers to acquire seeds, which would result in a diminished supply and increased prices.

Peppers

Bees are not entirely necessary to pollinate peppers as wind tends to circulate the pollen, but the quality and quantity is significantly improved when pollinated by insects. Today, bees are often used to pollinate peppers growing in sheltered locations or greenhouses, which means we are able enjoy locally-sourced peppers, even out of season. That would change without bees.

Potatoes

Although the potato plant does not require bee pollination to produce, it needs to be pollinated in order to breed, which means supply would most likely decrease significantly.

Sesame seeds

More than 80% of all pollination is performed by insects, and bees comprise nearly 80% of the total insect population. Due to their rich nutritional value, sesame seeds play an important role in many people’s diets. A decline in bees would not only result in seed-free bread for your burger, it could, more importantly, lead to increased malnutrition in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Tomatoes

While most tomato types are self-pollinating, bees can help increase fruit production and quality significantly. Hence, without bees, the supply of one of our best-loved vegetables would sadly diminish.

Dessert

How your Dessert is affected

Apples

Apples are heavily reliant on cross-pollination and are one of the foods that would suffer most if bees disappeared. An absence of bees would result in a drastic price increase as well as a lower quality of crop, taste and nutrient profile.

Blackberries

These delicious summer berries are dependent upon bees for pollination. If bees died out, the effectiveness of pollination would drop and plants would produce significantly fewer seeds.

Kiwi

Bumblebees are especially effective pollinators of kiwifruits as their large and furry bodies carry a great amount of pollen. Without bees, these vitamin C rich fruits are at risk.

Pumpkins

Massively dependent on pollinators, it is estimated that 90% of pumpkin, squash and gourd crops would disappear with the bees. That means no pumpkin carving or pumpkin pies.

Conclusion

In a world without bees, our food would not be as tasty, nutritious or plentiful. Some of our favorite foods would disappear completely whilst others would be scarce and expensive. Here we have highlighted the vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds that are dependent on bees, but even meat and dairy products would be at risk as many cows’ diets consist mainly of pollinator-dependent alfalfa and clover.

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It seemed an unnecessarily grand gesture, but the English Premier league discovered last week that Manchester United had appointed its own counterterrorism manager.  The person is said to be a former inspector from Greater Manchester Police’s specialist research unit.  As with everything else in matters of security, such a move will stir and spark discussion: if they have one, why not us? Club boards are bound to be meeting over the subject.

This has happened despite the Football Association’s keen confidence that the standards of security at English football venues are second to none.  “Irrespective of league position, stadium size or attendance; the way in which the grounds of our football clubs are operated ensures that crowd safety, accessibility and enjoyment are world class as standard.”[1]

The UK Government has its own Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds, which was commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In its fifth edition, it has come to be known as The Green Guide, the salient benchmark.

The Green Guide acknowledges the need for counter-terrorist approaches, including the necessity of searching “spectators more thoroughly prior to entry.  This may require extra temporary arrangements and the deployment of additional resources on the approaches to the turnstiles or entry points, which in turn may reduce the rate at which spectators can enter.”[2]

The authors of the report also note the Counter Terrorism Protective Security Advice for Stadia and Arenas produced by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office.  With such an array of advising documents, the spectator can be either assured or irritated that appropriate measures are going to be in place against attack.

Despite supposedly exemplary state of stadium security, breaches do take place.  Manchester United’s appointment came in the wake of two incidents designated by The Guardian as blunders. May’s Premier League match with Bournemouthwas a disruptive affair: a questionable package had been discovered in a toilet.  A moment of panic ensued, then evacuation.

As things transpired, the suspected item proved harmless enough. The package had been, of all things, actually placed there by a security firm, a costly oversight that meant the match had to be rescheduled.

The lavatories were again the site of another breach, this time featuring two United fans who wished to capitalise on their tour of Old Trafford by icing the cake.  Their method proved childishly simple: conceal themselves in the good old water closet long enough to sneak in to see the match against Arsenal. The ploy failed, and the police duly tidied up.

As with much in the world of counter-terrorism speak, inconsistencies reign.  A counter-terrorism system can be lauded, yet breached in the twinkling of an eye.  This can happen despite the fact that Old Trafford remains heavily policed.  Turning up at a match entails searches of cars of owners wishing to avail themselves of the car park; spectators are searched at the turnstiles.  A perfect detection system, should it ever exist, would be intolerably intrusive.

Sporting officials have every reason to fear vulnerability of their sports venues, though football’s, at times pugilistic history, suggests that some of the greatest threats have been the fans themselves.  As is the fashion these days, fearing the next Islamic State attack or inspired attack, governs discussion and deliberation.

However an attacker is inspired (the lone-wolf term remains all too convenient and problematic), the danger in any such attack remains inherent and genuine.  As with everything else in the business of inflicting terror, theatrics and horror are ingredients to the pudding of mayhem.  The problem, as ever, remains detection, an imperfect science at best.

Manchester United’s appointment shines a light on the securitisation of the very pleasure of attending sporting venues, a process that has, in truth, been going on for some years.  Baroness Ruth Henig has even insisted on law changes to make entertainment venues through the UK undergo counter-terror training.[3]

The clubs, it would seem, have decided to buy into the rhetoric of counter-terrorism paradoxically making football seem lesssafe.  Counter-terrorist czars are being sought.  Clubs, as always, wish to be seen to be doing something. But nothing will ever eliminate the element of chance.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at SelwynCollege, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/more/stadium-safety

[2] http://www.safetyatsportsgrounds.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/green-guide.pdf

[3] http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/38661302

 

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