Global Research

With New Year celebrations barely in the rear view mirror, foreboding storm clouds are once again forming along the horizon.  The blackening skies are casting a dour mood over 2016, which in its mere infancy seems all but assured to see deepening global tumult, conflict, and crisis.

At the root of this palpable disquiet lies the still fragile state of the global economy, coming up on eight years after the financial collapse of 2008.

Writing in the German newspaper Handelsblatt last week, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pointed to “rising interest rates in the United States and an economic slowdown in China,” coupled with slowing growth in global trade and “a decline in raw material prices,” to warn that, “global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016.”

Back in October, the IMF projected a lackluster 2016 global growth rate of 3.6%, a 0.2% reduction from its previous forecast.  As IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld commented at the time, “Six years after the world economy emerged from its broadest and deepest postwar recession, a return to robust and synchronized global expansion remains elusive.”

On Monday, stoked by fears of slowing growth in China, evidenced by a report from the market data firm Markit showing a contraction in Chinese manufacturing, global stock indexes tumbled as they rang in 2016.  But as HSBC strategist Devendra Joshi noted of the plunge to the New York Times, “This will be the theme for the year.  There will be more volatility.”

It’s worth remembering that not long ago China was heralded by mainstream economic commentators to be the engine that was to drive global economic growth.  But such elite optimism has since all but dissolved into air.

Indicative of the growing recognition of the realities of elusive growth in the wake of the 2007-08 financial collapse has been the steady emergence of “secular stagnation” in the lexicon of orthodox economists, most pointedly Larry Summers.  In fact, since Summers first mused back in 2013 on secular stagnation having “relevance to the American experience” post financial collapse, the concept has gained a degree of notable currency in conventional economic circles.

Of course, the concept of secular stagnation is nothing particularly new, as any follower of the monopoly capitalism analysis championed most prominently by the journal Monthly Review would know.

Indeed, in their 2012 book, The Endless Crisis, current Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster and former editor Robert McChesney not only argue that global monopoly capitalism is defined by sustained low growth, but a far more dangerous “stagnation-financialization trap,” which leaves ever greater financialization as the only available means of sustaining the system.

“Yet,” Foster and McChesney write, “rather than overcoming the stagnation problem, this renewed financialization will only serve at best to put off the problem, while piling on further contradictions, setting the stage for even bigger shocks in the future.”

With Federal Reserve’s December interest rate rise, curtailing to some extent the unprecedented free money gifted to financial speculators, further systemic contradictions indeed appear to be lurking in wait to trigger bigger future shocks.

Tremors have been felt most recently in the high-yield, high-risk “junk bond” market.  With corporations and banks pursuing further parasitism in the wake of the 2008 collapse, a flood of money via junk bonds rushed into the oil and commodities industries, spurred on in the U.S. by the fracking boom.  But as oil and commodities prices collapsed, so too, largely, has the junk bond market.  As the Wall Street Journal reported in mid-December, a report by the “U.S. Office of Financial Research found ‘elevated and rising credit risks’ among nonfinancial businesses and emerging-market borrowers, and it said a significant shock that further impairs credit quality ‘could potentially threaten U.S. financial stability.'”

The outstanding debt in the U.S. junk bond market is estimated to exceed $1 trillion.

With such contradictions piling up as the stubborn specter of Marxist analysis haunts even the most celebrated of conventional economists, neoliberal ideologues have been forced once again into the rather unenviable position of having to deny reality itself.

Enter former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who bravely penned an April op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he dismissed secular stagnation as “just another in a long line of excuses” for slow growth.  Gramm instead opted to finger fading “American exceptionalism” as the cause of recessed growth, which Gramm claimed has “[taken] economic growth with it.”  A variation of such delusions can now heard in nearly every 2016 presidential candidate’s campaign stump speech.

But no matter the ruling elite’s refusal to actually see the economic crisis in full, let alone undertake to resolve it, elite angst over its ramifications, particularly widening economic inequality, mount nonetheless. Tellingly, the year’s first issue of the influential Foreign Affairs journal, published by the quasi-official Council on Foreign Relations, is devoted to tackling the whats and whys of economic inequality.  As editor Gideon Rose writes, the trends of deepening inequality “are starting to define our era.”

To be clear, our era, to channel Lenin, is one of renewed political reaction all down the line.  In concrete terms, it’s an era in which 50 million Americans are food insecure and a staggering 50% live at or near poverty; it’s a time in which rents and health care cost soar well beyond languishing wages; and it’s a moment in which all the worn political elite can manage to muster in response is the tired chant of austerity.

But austerity, lest it ever be forgotten, is a dietary remedy exclusively prescribed to the rabble.  No matter the calls for “fiscal responsibility,” there is always money to be found for the elite’s preferred crisis resolution of war abroad, repression at home.

Even so, it’s rather remarkable with American “boots on the ground” in both Iraq and Syria that the leading contenders from both political parties–from the neo-fascist reality TV star to that once “dead broke” vagrant–have actually pledged to escalate U.S. military intervention in the region by seeking to impose a “no-fly zone” in Syria.

Such proposals, spoken in the ease with which politicians mindlessly call upon God to bless America, are nothing short of deranged calls for war.  We need look no further than Robert Gates (hardly what one could consider a peacemaker) to understand what the loose calls for a “no-fly zone” truly connote.  As Gates warned prior to NATO’s disastrous 2011 adventure in Libya: “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses.”  The air defenses in Syria today include the sophisticated Russian manned S-400 system.

Indicative of the insanity of the political present, some 2016 presidential candidates have gone so far as to not only call for a “no-fly zone,” but to actually verbalize the logical conclusion of such reckless rhetoric by proudly touting the fact that they would shoot down Russian planes over Syria.  Such threats are revealing not only of the politicians willing to make them, but also of the segment of the American electorate soothed by such apocalyptic visions.

Meanwhile, left unfulfilled even by the thoughts of burning Russian warplanes falling from the sky, Washington is once again revving up a renewed sanctions push against Iran.  This, despite Tehran’s continued compliance with the nuclear accord struck last year.  Think of this latest poke in Tehran’s eye, then, as an early 2016 gift from Washington to its favorite regional clients: the head-choppers in the House of Saud and the apartheidists in Tel Aviv.

Of course, Washington’s gifts are widely spread, with the American arms bazaar exporting nearly $40 billion worth of hardware in 2014–capturing over 50% of the global market.  All of which obviously serves only to further fan the flames of the simmering tinderboxes now found dotting the globe from the South China Sea to Ukraine to the Middle East.

American military adventurism, though, cannot be untangled from the economic and social crises ravaging the “homeland.”  Opening the spigot of military spending is part of what Ismael Hossein-zadeh writes in The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism to be the “cynical policy of simultaneously raising military spending and cutting taxes on the wealthy in order to force cuts in nonmilitary government spending.”  In other words, it’s class war waged from on high against the hapless souls below.

And so as we embark on a year with an already ominously stormy start, the American political class appears once again set on confronting all looming crises with the only thing it is now capable of producing: barbarism.

Ben Schreiner is the author of A People’s Dictionary to the ‘Exceptional Nation’.

Ever since the first rumors began to circulate about an impending Russian military intervention in Syria the Internet and the media have been flooded with all sorts of silly rumors, myths and outright lies about what could/would happen. These rumors, myths and outright lies are still being spread today, and not only by pro-US interest groups, but even by supposedly pro-Russian “analysts”.

All this nonsense completely obfuscates the reality of the Russian intervention in Syria (but maybe that was the goal all along?) and tries to paint the Russian operation as a failure. After three months of Russian air and missile strikes in Syria, it is a good time to ask the question of whether the Russians have achieved some tangible results or whether, as some are suggesting, this has basically been a big PR operation.

The key issue here is what criteria to use to measure “success”. And that, in turns, begs the question of what the Russians had hoped to achieve with their intervention in the first place. It turns out that Putin clearly and officially spelled out what the purpose of the Russian intervention was. On October 11th, he declared the following in an interview with Vladimir Soloviev on the TV channel Russia 1:

Our objective is to stabilize the legitimate authority and create conditions for a political compromise

That’s it. He did not say that Russia would single-handedly change the course of the war, much less so win the war. And while some saw the Russian intervention as a total “game changer” which would mark the end of Daesh, I never believed that. Here is what I wrote exactly one day before Putin made the statement above:

Make no mistake here, the Russian force in Syria is a small one, at least for the time being, and it does not even remotely resemble what the rumors had predicted (…) There is no way that the very limited Russian intervention can really change the tide of the war, at least not by itself. Yes, I do insist that the Russian intervention is a very limited one. 12 SU-24M, 12 SU-25SM, 6 SU-34 and 4 SU-30SM are not a big force, not even backed by helicopters and cruise missiles. Yes, the Russian force has been very effective to relieve the pressure on the northwestern front and to allow for a Syrian Army counter-offensive, but that will not, by itself, end the war.

I was harshly criticized at that time for “minimizing” the scope and potential of the Russian operation, but I chose to ignore these criticisms since I knew that time would prove me right.

What happened then was a typical exercise in hyperbole: many putatively pro-Russian commentators took turns writing euphoric “analyses” which day after day spiked the public’s hopes only to then later come crushing down in disappointment. Predictably, the more the gap between expectations and reality on the ground grew, the more the critiques Putin and Assad could gloat about the Russian “failure to win”. That kind of pseudo-analysis is built on a typical “straw man” fallacy: the ridiculous notion that the Russian intended to single-handedly defeat Daesh. Sadly, “pro-Russian” commentators greatly contributed to the construction of that “straw man” by their (and not the Russian military’s) completely unrealistic expectations and predictions.

Following the second week of the Russian intervention in Syria I wrote:

The Russian force is small and vulnerable. Of course, one option for the Russians would be to expand the airfield near Latakia, but that would take time and more resources and my understanding is that they want to consolidate their current airfield first. However, as a stop-gap measure, the Russians could use Russian-based bombers. If Iran allows Russia to conduct in-air refueling in Iranian airspace or if Iran allows Russia to use Iranian airbases, then many more SU-34/SU-35SM or SU-34/SU-30SM “air force packages” could be engaged in Syria. In theory, Russia could even provide her Tu-22M3 to deliver gravity bombs, her Tu-95MS to deliver cruise missiles and her Tu-160 to deliver either one or both. I don’t think that there is any military necessity to use these strategic bombers right now, but it might be a good idea to do so for political reasons – just to flex some more ‘military muscle’ and show the Neocons that Russia is not to be messed with. Submarine launched cruise missiles would also work, especially if launched by a Russian sub in the Mediterranean which the USN did not detect.

And this is exactly what happened next: Russia began to use her strategic aviation to augment her capabilities and to show the West that the Kremlin meant business. I then concluded by saying:

So far, the Kremlin has done a superb PR job explaining that Daesh is a direct threat to Russia and that it was better for Russia to “fight them over there than over here”. This logic, however, is predicated on the idea that a very limited Russian intervention can tip the balance. There is a very fine conceptual line between tipping the balance and fighting someone else’s war and that is something the Kremlin is acutely aware of. Hopefully, this line will never be crossed.

To be fair to the Kremlin, saying that it is better to “fight them over there than over here” is in no way a promise the tip any balance. But there were many Russian commentators who did say that the Russian intervention would, indeed, tip the balance and the Kremlin did not directly refute these claims. So I suggest the following goal setting by the Kremlin:

• Primary objective: stabilize the legitimate authority and create conditions for a political compromise
• Secondary objective : tip the balance of the war in favor of the Syrian armed forces.

Having discarded the silly strawman arguments and we have established the real Russian goals we can now evaluate whether Russia has been successful or not.

Following only three weeks of Russian air and missile operations, Assad came to Moscow and the first multilateral negotiations, which brought together the foreign ministers of Russia, the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, took place in Vienna. All the countries which had unleashed their aggression against Syria under the “Assad must go” slogan now had to accept that Assad was not going anywhere. This was a complete diplomatic triumph for Russia. This first triumph was followed by another series of triumphs at the UNSC. In the meantime, on the ground in Syria, the Syrian military, for the first time in months, actually began a series of counter-offensive which slowly, but systematically, began to push back Daesh in most sectors of the front. So if the criteria is “stabilizing the legitimate authority and creating conditions for a political compromise”, then the Russian operation is nothing short of a total victory, a true diplomatic triumph achieved in a very short time. In less than one month, the Russians succeeded in making Assad’s presence at the head of a legitimate government in Damascus an indisputable reality which all Assad-haters had to accept, and the conditions for a political compromise were created, at least in diplomatic terms.

Now let’s take a closer look at what has actually happened in military terms. But before we do that, let me repeat once again that tipping the military balance has never been the primary Russian objective, only a secondary one which could be achieved, or so the Russians hope, in the process of achieving the first, main, one. To prove my point, I will have to repeat again and again something I have been mantrically repeating for the past three months: the “operational-tactical group of the Russian AirSpace Force(RASF) in Syria” (that is its official name) is roughly equivalent to just one aviation regiment. Without going into many details, you need to know that Russian military theory has developed a very strict set of norms which outline in great detail the kind of forces needed to successfully execute any specific task. What is absolutely clear to anybody with even a basic understanding of warfare and, especially, air operations, is that one single aviation regiment cannot be used to defeat a force with well over 100,000 combatants deployed across a territory of roughly 150,000 km2 (just in Syria) supported by a network of bases and training camps in Turkey and other countries of the region and which gets a quasi infinite supply of weapons, combatants and money from numerous wealthy state sponsors. Ask anybody with even a superficial knowledge of Russian military theory and he/she will tell you that this is not the kind of task an given to an aviation regiment. Those who say otherwise simply don’t know what they are talking about.

What is truly remarkable is that the range of missions accomplished by this aviation regiment equivalent size force has been one which normally have been given to an aviation division (a force roughly 3 to 5 times larger). Let me repeat that: this regimental size force has, for three months nonstop, successfully executed the amount of airstrikes normally given to a force 3 to 5 times bigger. Now I don’t know about you, but for me this sure is the sign of a fantastically successful operation. Ask any military commander how he would feel if the force he commands could accomplish not just the full set of tasks it is supposed to accomplish, but 3 to 5 times more, and this in real combat operation. I assure you that this commander would be elated. The fact that some are still capable of speaking of a Russian military failure is a sign of either dishonesty or ignorance (or both).

Some pseudo-analysts have tried to justify their negative evaluation of the Russian operation by counting the percentage change in the territory controlled by the government forces as opposed to Daesh and its allies. Again, this is a case of either dishonesty or professional incompetence. The fact that Daesh controls roughly 80% of the Syrian territory is meaningless nonsense. Not only because this 80% of land only includes 20% of the population of Syria, but because the very notion of “control” means nothing in the context of this war.

What is really happening is this: most of the combat operation are centered around major urban areas (cities) and specific lines of communications (roads). In terms of small towns or the rest of the countryside, it is not really “controlled” by anybody. Typically, when the government forces take village “A”, the Daesh forces go to “B” and when the government takes “B”, Daesh goes back to “A”. (Those interested in these tactical issues should read this interview of a Russian military specialist with a great deal of experience of Syria translated by my friend Tatzhit Mihailovich). The government forces are already overstretched and are barely capable of mounting an offensive without having to move their forces allocated to the defense of key cities. This is also why the Syrian counter-offensive has been so slow: a dire lack of manpower.

Furthermore, since the real fighting centers around urban areas and key axes of communications, the very use of percentages of territory are meaningless in measuring the success of failure of these operations. Take the example of Aleppo: if/when the Syrians finally fully liberate the city from Daesh, which would be a major success, the percentage shift in controlled territory will be absolutely insignificant. Yet it would be a major success for the government forces.

None of the above, however, really answers the question of whether the Russian military intervention in Syria has tipped the balance in favor of the Syrian government or not. Some say that it has, others deny that. My strictly personal opinion is that no, it has not or, I should say, not yet. But there are some signs that it might in the near future. What are these signs?

First, the pressure on Turkey to stop acting like a rogue-state led by an irresponsible megalomaniac has been increasing ever since the downing of the Russian SU-24 and the subsequent Russian revelations about the Turkish regime and, specifically, the Erdogan family’s involvement in the illegal purchase of Daesh oil. So far the regime is holding fast, but it is clearly hurting politically and the tensions are now flaring up inside and all around Turkey. While I don’t expect Erdogan to cave in to external pressures, I do think that the tensions in Turkey will end up hurting Daesh, probably in a minor way unless the conflict with the Kurds truly blows up, at which point Daesh will be affected in a much more significant manner.

Second, there are some signs that Daesh is running into military difficulties in Iraq and political difficulties in the rest of the Arab world. The fact that the Saudis have now felt the need to create what is basically a Sunni anti-Shia terrorist force (aka officially as “Islamic anti-terrorist force”) is a clear sign that Daesh is not living up to their expectations.

Third, the Russians are now providing heavy artillery systems and training to the Syrians who are now slowly but surely acquiring the kind of firepower which the Russians have used with devastating effectiveness against the Wahabis in Chechnia.

Fourth, while the Russian air operations are, by definition, incapable of defeating a well-dug in and dispersed guerrilla force, it can place a great deal of stress on its logistics and supply lines. It also severely restricts the mobility of Daesh forces, especially by night.

Fifth, with the direct support of the RASF, the Syrians, backed by Hezbollah, have begun retaking control of some segments of the Syrian border with Lebanon and Turkey. That is, by the way, one of the most difficult yet crucial tasks for the government forces: to take as much of the Syrian border with Turkey under control (the Iranians will do that with the Iraqi border). This has not happened so far, and it will not happen in the near future, but the events are moving in the right direction.

But what will really decide of the outcome of this war is not firepower but logistics. Currently, the Syrians are at a huge disadvantage: not only are the short on ammunition and, especially, spares, but their entire armament is outdated and way past its theoretical service life. The Syrian government forces have also suffered terrible losses in manpower but the Syrians cannot afford a full mobilization as this would greatly hurt an already suffering economy. Keep in mind that the Syrians have been fighting this war for longer (4 years and 9 months) than the Soviet Union fought WWII (3 years and 10 months). The fact that cracks are showing everywhere are normal. In fact, the only thing which the Syrians seem to have an infinite supply of is courage.

Daesh (and when I speak of Daesh I mean all of them, the “good terrorists” and the “bad ones”) is, so far, enjoying a quasi limitless supply of combatants, equipment, supplies and, most importantly, money. With the full backing of the USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and many European countries, this is hardly surprising. Daesh also enjoys a huge geographical advantage because it can use Turkey, Jordan and Iraq as a rear base and safe heaven.

Make no mistake here, the Syrians are the underdog here and there is nothing the Russians can do to change that, at least not alone. The key issue here is what Iran is capable and willing to do in this situation. Iran has already done a lot and I believe that the Iranians will do more but only if there is no other way. It is not that the Iranians lack courage or means, but the fact that they are already taking a huge risk in being so deeply involved in this war. I am personally surprised by the fact that the USA, especially, Israel have not already started to denounce an “Iranian invasion of Syria”, especially since the USA did not have any qualms about denouncing a totally fictional “Russian invasion” of the Donbass. But if the number of Iranian boots on the ground goes up this kind of propaganda will be used (even if the Iranians are legally present at the request of the legitimate Syrian government).

Sadly, the AngloZionists have succeeded in created an immense and truly toxic mess with their interventions in the Maghreb and the Middle-East. Just as in the Ukraine, there is no simple solution to stop the conflict and return to peace. In the Ukraine, the Empire unleashed a nauseous mix of Nazis and Jews, while the Middle-East is now threatened by a massive Takfiri infestation. Neither Russia nor Iran will ever be able to solve this conflict by “winning” it. Things have gone way too far and just as peace will return to the Ukraine only after a full-denazification, peace will only return to the Middle-East after a full de-Takfirization of the region, including in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. To those who will accuse me of being naïve about the realistic prospects of ridding the Ukraine of Nazis and the Middle-East of Wahabis, I will reply with a few simple and basic questions: do you really and sincerely believe that peace can be made with Nazis and Takfiris? Do you think that either group will simple “give up” their delusional insanity and become a “normal” political force? Or do you really believe that only liberating the Donbass and Syria of these shaitans and leave them in control of the rest of the Ukraine/Middle-East will really bring peace to the Donbass or Syria?

The truth is that the war in the Ukraine will only end when all of the Ukraine is liberated, just as the war in the Middle-East will only end when all of the Middle-East is liberated. You might not like this notion – I sure don’t – but reality has never been dependent on our likes or dislikes. This will be a long war.

President Obama seems so scared of offending the Saudis and their Israeli allies that he will tolerate almost any outrage, including Saudi Arabia’s mass beheadings and/or shootings of the regime’s enemies including a Shiite political leader who dared criticize the monarchy, writes Robert Parry.*

As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington’s storylines – on Syria, Russia and elsewhere – even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization.

The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi Arabia’s repressive Sunni monarchy executed prominent Shiite political leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for criticizing the nation’s kings and princes. Before the killing, the Obama administration held its tongue in public so as not to antagonize the Saudi royals. (Nimr’s nephew awaits Saudi “crucifixion” for his role as a teenager in Arab Spring protests.)

After the Nimr execution, the State Department issued a mild protest toward the Saudis while blurring the guilt by twinning it with criticism of Iran where outraged protesters damaged the Saudi embassy, which led to Saudi Arabia’s retaliatory breaking of relations with Iran.

“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said meekly on Sunday, while some senior U.S. officials reportedly seethed in private over the latest Saudi provocation.

“This is a dangerous game they are playing,” one official told The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung while insisting on anonymity to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations.

But the fact that the Obama administration could not voice its revulsion over the Saudi mass head-chopping (along with some firing squads) for 47 men, including Nimr, over the weekend speaks volumes. President Barack Obama and other insiders continue to tip-toe around the unsavory U.S. “alliances” in the Mideast.

Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia sealed its impervious protection from U.S. government criticism by forming an undeclared alliance with Israel around their mutual hatred of Shiite-ruled Iran and its Shiite allies, a cause picked up by American neocons and shared by the career-oriented liberal interventionists.

Some more “realist-oriented” U.S. officials, reportedly including Obama and some national security aides, recognize the havoc that neocon/liberal-hawk strategies continue to wreak across the region and now spreading into Europe, but they act powerless to do anything bold to stop it.

With Israel’s lobby siding with the Sunni states in their bloody rivalry with Shiite states, most U.S. politicians and pundits have scrambled to defend each recurring outrage by the Saudis, Qataris and Turks by trying to flip the script and somehow put the blame on Iran, Syria and Russia.

Getting a Pass

Thus, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks get mostly a pass for arming and enabling radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Israel also provides assistance to Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front along the Golan Heights and bombs allies of the Syrian government and, of course, faces no official U.S. criticism.

In 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden blurted out the truth about Saudi support for Islamic terrorism inside Syria, he was the one who had to apologize. [Quote at 53:20 of clip.] In 2015, when Saudi Arabia invaded and bombed Yemen after hyping Iran’s support for Houthi rebels, the Obama administration sided with the Saudis even as their wanton attacks on poverty-stricken Yemen killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis.

For more than a year after President Obama announced his air war against the Islamic State in summer 2014, Turkey continued to let the terror group run an industrial-style oil smuggling operation from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. Only when Russia entered the conflict last fall was the U.S. government shamed into joining in bombing raids to destroy the truck convoys. Yet, Obama still defended Turkey and bought its promises about finally trying to seal a 100-kilometer gap in its border.

Then, when Turkey retaliated against the Russian anti-terrorist bombing raids inside Syria by willfully shooting down a Russian Su-24 plane whose pilot was murdered after bailing out, Obama again sided with the Turks even though their claim that the Russian plane had violated Turkish air space was dubious at best. By their account, the plane had intruded over a sliver of Turkish territory for 17 seconds.

In other words, whatever these U.S. “allies” do – no matter how brutal and reckless – the Obama administration at least publicly rushes to their defense. Otherwise, the neocon/liberal-hawk “group think” would be offended – and many angry editorials and columns would follow.

While this strange reality may make sense inside Official Washington – where careerism is intense and offending the Israel Lobby is a sure career killer – this pusillanimous approach to these grave problems is endangering U.S. national interests as well as the world’s future.

Not only has the neocon/liberal-interventionist obsession with “regime change” turned the Middle East into a vast killing field but it has now spread instability into Europe, where the fabric of the European Union is being shredded by dissension over how to handle millions of Syrian refugees.

The United Kingdom may vote to leave the E.U., removing one of the original anchors of the European project which — for all its faults — has deservedly gotten credit for replacing a history of European blood-soaked conflicts with peaceful cooperation.

The spreading disorder has had political repercussions in the United States, too, where panic over terrorism is reshaping the presidential race.

Yet, instead of practical solutions such as pressuring all rational sides in the Syrian conflict to engage in peace talks and hold free elections that give the Syrian people the power to decide who their future leaders will be, Official Washington instead generates “talking points,” such as calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a “magnet for terrorism” who “must go” – although his forces have done the most to stop an outright victory by Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

If one buys this “magnet” theory, then you’d also have to seek “regime change” in every country that’s been attacked by terrorists, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Spain, etc. In the case of Syria, what’s remarkable is that the sponsorship of terrorism by U.S. “allies” and indeed by the U.S. government itself has been so blatant. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda.”]

However, as far as Official Washington is concerned, it doesn’t really matter what Assad has or hasn’t done. What’s important is that “regime change” in Syria has been on the neocons’ to-do list since at least the mid-1990s – along with the brilliant idea of “regime change” in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents.”].

The Infallible Neocons

And since the neocons are infallible – as far as they’re concerned – the goal can’t be changed. The only option is to escalate the “regime change” planning to include other countries that get in the way, including Iran and now nuclear-armed Russia.

Yes, that’s the ultimate neocon idea – make the Russian economy scream, overthrow the calculating Vladimir Putin and risk having him replaced by some extreme and unstable nationalist with his or her hand on the nuclear button. That may be how life on the planet ends – but there will be evermore “group thinks” and “talking points” right up to the moment of Armageddon. The neocons can never stop generating false narratives.

Meanwhile, the “liberal interventionists” can boast of their own “regime change” – in Libya, a policy promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who delighted at the gruesome torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi – “we came, we saw, he died,” she laughed – after having ignored his warnings that the overthrow of his secular government would open the oil-rich country to chaos from radical jihadists, a prediction that has been fulfilled.

Yet, despite this record of spreading chaos and death around the world, the grip that the neocons and liberal hawks have on Official Washington remains almost absolute. They control most of the think tanks – from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute – as well as the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times and pretty much the rest of the mainstream media.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Times’ “news” coverage of the Middle East and Russia has been consistently slanted to favor neocon/liberal-hawk positions. Just as the Times eagerly joined President George W. Bush’s bogus case for invading Iraq in 2003, “the newspaper of record” has peddled false and misleading articles about the crises in Syria and Ukraine as well as promoting anti-Russian propaganda.

In this climate of manufactured “reality,” any old-fashioned foreign policy “realist” – especially one who has criticized Israel – cannot expect to win Senate confirmation to any senior position, establishing what amounts to a blacklist against “realists,” such as happened to ex-U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman whose intelligence appointment was dropped by Obama in his early days out of fear of offending the Israel Lobby and its many neocon backers.

As the rise of those neocons has played out since their emergence during the Reagan administration, the “realists” who were known for cold-hearted foreign policy calculations to protect American interests have aged, died out or otherwise disappeared. They have been largely replaced by ideologues, either neocons with their intense devotion to right-wing Israeli interests or liberal interventionists who almost invariably side with the neocons but cite “humanitarian” concerns to justify “regime change” wars.

Blocking Obama

No matter how foolhardy and deadly these policy prescriptions have been, there is almost no way to dislodge the neocons and liberal hawks inside Official Washington, since they monopolize almost all levers of political and media power.

Even when President Obama tried to collaborate under the table with President Putin to reduce tensions in Syria and Iran in 2013, Obama was quickly outmaneuvered by neocons and liberal hawks inside the State Department who pushed for the putsch in Ukraine in 2014 that effectively destroyed the Obama-Putin cooperation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

I have long argued that the only way to begin to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk “group thinks” is to release facts about pivotal events, such as the 2013 Syria-sarin case, the 2014 sniper attacks at Kiev’s Maidan square, and the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. The neocons/liberal hawks currently control all those narratives, using them as clubs to advance ideological agendas just as they did with the false claims about Iraq’s WMD. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Power of False Narrative.”]

But other evidence suggests very different scenarios. Obama and his national security team could either release evidence to confirm the accuracy of the “group thinks” or puncture that self-certainty. Instead Obama has chosen to withhold what the U.S. intelligence community knows about these events, all the better to protect the dominant propaganda narratives.

So, the Obama administration continues down a road of tolerating or condoning outrages by its Mideast “allies” as the President and his timid intelligence bureaucrats do nothing to empower the American people with the truth. It is a recipe for worldwide catastrophe.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

En un país de paradojas extremas, los cambios van deprisa. Más allá del símbolo que supone que se derribe una estatua de Lenin en Odessa en el marco de las leyes de “desovietización” para reemplazarla por otra… del héroe de Star Wars, Darth Vader (!), merece la pena sumergirse en el laboratorio de un capitalismo desenfrenadoque nos ofrece Ucrania.

Siguiendo la famosa conversación telefónica pirateada entre Olivia Nuland, subsecretaria de Estado estadounidense para Europa y Eurasia de Obama, y el embajador estadounidense en Ucrania, Geoffrey Pyatt, el nuevo presidente ucraniano Petro Poroshenko, en relación estrecha con George Soros, prosigue su acercamiento a EE UU y sectores empresariales, a expensas del pueblo ucraniano, que se hunde en la miseria bajo políticas de austeridad asesinas.

La estatua de Lenin en Odessa fue reemplazada por una de Darth Vader.

El millonario Poroshenko toma el poder

El 25 de mayo de 2014 tuvieron finalmente lugar las elecciones presidenciales, marcadas por una abstención de más del 40%, que llevaron al poder al millonario y hombre de negocios Petro Poroshenko. Él es uno de los más importantes sponsors y organizadores de la revolución naranja y habría también apoyado financieramente el movimiento EuroMaidán. El nuevo hombre de Estado ha construido su fortuna aprovechándose de la ola de privatizaciones entre 1996 y 1998, durante la cual compró numerosas empresas públicas de pastelería, que fusionó con el grupo Roshen, en referencia a su nombre de familia.

Poroshenko, el nuevo hombre de Estado ha construido su fortuna aprovechándose de la ola de privatizaciones

Exdirector del banco central ucraniano (2007-2012), después ministro de Economía del gobierno Azarov en 2012, Petro Poroshenko aplica una política ultraliberal.

El acuerdo de librecomercio, firmado por Kiev con la UE, debería entrar en vigor en enero de 2016 y otro con Canadá está a punto de cerrarse. En 2014, según la revista Forbes, su fortuna estaba estimada en 1.600 millones de dólares (cerca de 1.500 millones de euros), lo que le coloca entre los hombres más ricos del país. Poroshenko encabeza un imperio que comprende el astillero naval y de armamento Leninska Kuznya, compañías de taxis, empresas constructoras de automóviles, así como medios de comunicación, sobre todo con la cadena de televisión Canal 5 (5 Kanal).

Un nuevo gobierno de oligarcas y financieros

Bajo el gobierno Poroshenko se ha constituido un Ministerio de la Política de Información. El día de su aprobación, el 2 de diciembre de 2014, unos 40 periodistas desplegaron pancartas que decían “Hola, Gran Hermano” delante del Parlamento, haciendo así referencia a la agencia del Ministerio de la Verdad en la novela 1984, de George Orwell. Este ministerio de la propaganda que, para colmo, recuerda también algunos aspectos del antiguo régimen comunista tan criticado por el gobierno ucraniano, está dirigido por Yuriy Stets, el productor del Canal 5, propiedad del presidente Poroshenko.

La creación de este ministerio se produce poco tiempo después de la publicación de informes por parte de numerosos periodistas ucranianos y grupos de defensa de los derechos humanos, sobre eventuales crímenes de guerra cometidos en el este de Ucrania por las milicias nacionalistas fascistas, así como por las fuerzas separatistas apoyadas por Rusia.

El presidente Poroshenko aprobó la ciudadanía ucraniana por decreto a tres personalidades extranjeras inmediatamente convertidas en ministros.

El lituano Aivaras Abromavicius, ministro de Economía ucraniano, asegura no comprender más que el 85% de lo que se dice en el Parlamento

Tras haber trabajado para Hansabank en Estonia, en el fondo de inversión sueco East Capital en 2002, haber sido miembro del Consejo de Administración de OAO Federal Hydrogeneration Company, Aivaras Abromavicius tuvo que abandonar la nacionalidad lituana para ser ministro de Economía y Comercio en Ucrania. Mientras que habla con fluidez ruso, lituano, estonio e inglés, asegura no comprender más que el 85% de lo que se dice en ucraniano en el Parlamento.

Después de haber hecho su carrera en el departamento de Estado de EEUU en Washington, trabajado en la embajada estadounidense en Ucrania de 1992 a 1995, fundado la sociedad de inversión Horizon Capital, Natalie Jaresko se convirtió en ministra de Finanzas de Ucrania. Sin dejar de mantener la nacionalidad estadounidense, recibió la nacionalidad ucraniana el día de su nombramiento, el 2 de diciembre de 2014. El 16 de septiembre de 2015, firmó un acuerdo de préstamo de 500 millones de dólares con el Banco Mundial.

Demostrando que un ministro puede ejercer sucesivamente en varios países, Alexander Kvitashvili fue nombrado nuevo ministro de Sanidad, puesto que ocupó en su país, Georgia, durante dos años (2008-2010).

Pero eso no es todo. Señalado por diferentes procedimientos judiciales, especialmente por abuso de poder y malversación de dinero público (ha sido acusado de haber malversado cerca de cinco millones de dólares del presupuesto), el amigo de George W. Bush (incluso la carretera que conecta el aeropuerto con la capital Tbilisi fue renombrada “George Bush Street” en 2005, tras la visita del presidente estadounidense a Georgia), patrocinador del movimiento EuroMaiden y expresidente de Georgia, Mijeíl Saakashvili, se convirtió en el gobernador de la región de Odessa en mayo de 2015, tras haber rechazado ser viceprimer ministro.

Respondiendo a una petición de Poroshenko de unirse a su equipo en el verano de 2014, Mijeíl Saakashvili vivía entonces en Nueva York, inmune a las diligencias judiciales mientras era objeto de una investigación penal en su país. Para obtener ese cargo, tuvo que abandonar la ciudadanía georgiana para obtener la nacionalidad ucraniana. No se había dado el caso hasta entonces que un expresidente abandone su propio país para ejercer un cargo político en el extranjero. Él mismo declaró estar en Ucrania para hacer la guerra contra Putin: “Detesto a Vladimir Putin. Estoy en Ucrania porque es la guerra, el destino de mi vida se decide aquí”.

El nuevo gobierno del oligarca Poroshenko, fuertemente ligado a la extrema derecha y a la OTAN

El puesto clave del ministro de Energía lo ostenta Volodymyr Demchyschyn. Antes de ocupar su puesto de ministro, era director del fondo de inversión Investment Capital Ukraine. Ha ejercido como vicepresidente de ING Bank Ukraine y fue economista jefe de la sociedad Ernst & Young en Kiev (2003-2006). Es el perfil perfecto para llevar a cabo el aumento de tarifas y la privatización del sector energético.

Arsen Avakov, incluido en 2012 en la lista de la Interpol por haber transferido ilegalmente 55 hectáreas de terreno cerca de Pisochyn en la región de Kharkiv, donde ejercía como gobernador (entre 2005 y 2010), sigue a la cabeza del Ministerio del Interior. Dmytro Iaroch, líder nazi del movimiento Sector de Derecha (Pravy Sektor), fue nombrado consejero en el Ministerio de Defensa en abril, encargado sobre todo de facilitar la integración de los batallones de voluntarios del Sector Derecho en el seno del ejército.

El nuevo gobierno del oligarca Poroshenko, fuertemente ligado a la extrema derecha y a la OTAN, no parece querer tomar el camino del apaciguamiento de la región. A la vista de sus nombramientos, la injerencia de los sectores empresariales en las decisiones políticas y económicas parece evidente y el fenómeno de las puertas giratorias entre el mundo financiero y los puestos claves del poder, flagrante.

Jérôme Duval

Traducción del francés: Fátima Fafatale

En estos días festivos, la prensa reportó de manera insistente de gestiones entre las autoridades de Japón y de Corea del Sur para lograr que Japón reconozca públicamente su responsabilidad y proceda a indemnizar a las víctimas de prostitución forzada (denominadas de manera eufemística “mujeres de confort”) reclutadas por el Ejército nipón durante la II Guerra Mundial para servir de esclavas sexuales (ver  nota  del Japan Times). El último Lunes del año 2015, cables internacionales confirmaron tempranamente un “acuerdo” alcanzado entre ambos Estados, anunciado por ambos cancilleres en Seúl (ver  nota  de DW): este anuncio fue seguido unas horas más tarde de una conversación telefónica entre los mandatarios de ambos Estados (ver  nota  de Asia Times). El “acuerdo” fue saludado por el vocero del mismo Secretario General de Naciones Unidas (ver  comunicado  de prensa) así como por Estados Unidos (ver  nota  de prensa) en un comunicado hecho público minutos después del anuncio en Seúl, al que siguieron los de Alemania, Canadá, Francia y Reino Unido (Nota 1). De los cinco comunicados, sólo uno refiere a la expresión correcta (y no eufemística) de “víctimas de la prostitución forzada”. El 31 de diciembre la Representante del Secretario General de Naciones Unidas sobre violencia sexual en situación de conflicto (ver  comunicado  oficial cuyo título no refiere a “agreement”, sino a “accord”) enfatizó en la necesidad de implementar el “accord/agreement” sin mayores preludios: “Therefore, I urge the respective authorities to implement this agreement as quickly as possible, in its letter and spirit”.

Por parte del jefe de la diplomacia japonesa, se había indicado en días pasados que: “We have been trying to realise the agreement … to accelerate talks and seek an early settlement. This is part of this effort“, según reportó una  nota  del Times of India. En otra  nota  de Europa Press, se había señalado que Japón estaba dispuesto a hacer su “máximo esfuerzo” para lograr un acuerdo con Corea del Sur. Un miembro del equipo negociador coreano citado por la prensa de su país había dejado a entender que las negociaciones estaban por llegar a un feliz término (ver  nota  de The Telegraph): “In a diplomatic negotiation, there can never be a 100-0 win,” a South Korean government official told the Joonang Daily newspaper. “The goal is keeping the score 51-49, but making each side think it has won 51”. En un artículo publicado en Corea del Sur (ver  nota  del Korean Joongang Daily), se había leído que: “A historical record of a Japanese state leader’s apology is needed,” said a Foreign Ministry official. “If Japan agrees to this, we can negotiate on the format and specific wordings”.

El detalle del “wording” antes indicado por el negociador coreano, así como el contenido exacto del “acuerdo” alcanzado en sí, al momento de redactar estas líneas, no se conoce aún. Es la razón por la cual en líneas anteriores hemos optado por usar comillas al referirnos a este “acuerdo”, un término formal para designar un texto debidamente consensuado entre dos Estados.

En un comunicado de prensa con fecha del 28 de diciembre del 2015, circulado por Corea del Sur, ambos cancilleres refieren al proceso de negociación de doce intensas rondas, y al significado “histórico” del denominado “acuerdo” (ver texto del comunicado conjunto que reproducimos al final de esta misma nota). Para el jefe de la diplomacia surcoreana,  “It is also my sincere desire that, with the conclusion of the negotiations on the “comfort women” issue, the most challenging and difficult issue over history between Korea and Japan, we will be able to open a new chapter in the Korea-Japan relations in the new year with a new spirit of cooperation”.

Pese a las distintas declaraciones oficiales que han saludado este “acuerdo” entre Japón y Corea del Sur, las víctimas se han mostrado extremadamente reservadas en cuanto a su alcance y han reaccionado de manera airada, señalando que ahora se sienten doblemente humilladas (ver nota de prensa de Financial Times y este artículo del Huffington Post que refiere además a las reservas de Taiwán y de China). Dos días después de suscrito el “acuerdo”, una concurrida manifestación frente a la Embajada de Japón en Seúl (ver video disponible en esta  nota  de Le Monde) evidenció el profundo malestar causado por este anuncio. Un académico en Tokio indicó recientemente (ver  nota  de The Telegraph) que este “acuerdo” adolece de un aspecto fundamental cuando se trata de lograr un acuerdo sobre reparaciones a víctimas: “The former ‘comfort women’ needed to be heard, but they weren’t, and to assume that they will acquiesce if a bigger sum of money is thrown at them is to utterly miss what is at the heart of the problem”. Según este comentario, que consideramos acertado, el objetivo principal del acuerdo consiste en contentar a dos Estados con el fin de mejorar sus futuras relaciones diplomáticas, dejando por fuera el parecer de las víctimas y el de sus familiares. Ello explicaría en gran parte el “ballet diplomático” y la orquestación mediática a los que hemos asistido en la última semana del año 2015.

Notemos que muchos cables noticiosos mencionaron que Japón reconoció oficialmente su responsabilidad, algo que no se adecua del todo a las declaraciones oficiales de Japón hechas públicas el pasado 28 de diciembre (y disponibles al final de esta nota) . No es la primera vez que un Estado busca una manera de formular sus disculpas sin reconocer públicamente su responsabilidad (y mucho menos asumir las consecuencias jurídicas de sus actos): un ejemplo reciente es ofrecido por parte de Estados Unidos en sus disculpas a las víctimas indígenas guatemaltecas (objeto de una campaña de vacunación realizada en los años 40 por funcionarios de salud norteamericanos). Se leyó por parte de la entonces Secretaria de Estados Hillary Clinton que: “We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices,” the joint statement said. “The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala”: ver al respecto esta  nota  de prensa de CNN y el texto integral del comunicado conjunto oficial leído el 1 de octubre del 2010 en Washington (Nota 2).

Breves antecedentes

En julio de 1992, Japón oficialmente reconoció haber procedido a establecer una amplia red conformada por mujeres asiáticas para satisfacer las necesidades sexuales de los miembros de su Ejército durante la II Guerra Mundial: en aquel momento indicó no obstante no contar con elementos que permitieran probar que este reclutamiento fuese forzado, y refirió a un rango indeterminado de entre 150 y 200.000 mujeres. Más de 20 años después, estudios más recientes del año 2013 (ver  nota  introductoria al libro Chinese Comfort Women editado en Canadá) sitúan la cifra a unas 400.000 víctimas (página 6 de la introducción).

En esta  nota  de El País (España) del año 1992 se leía que: “Japón reconoció ayer oficialmente que el Gobierno establecido durante la II Guerra Mundial participó en la organización de una amplia red de prostitución con mujeres asiáticas, pero que no se han encontrado pruebas de que en el reclutamiento se hubiera empleado la fuerza. Koichi Kato, jefe de gabinete del primer ministro Kiichi Miyazawa, declaró que ésta es la conclusión fundamental de las investigaciones hechas por varios departamentos sobre un episodio histórico, que dificulta la normalización en las relaciones con Corea, China y otros países del continente“.

En agosto de 1993, en un  documento oficial,  Japón se manifestó sobre el tema en los siguientes términos: ”Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women. The Government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women. It is incumbent upon us, the Government of Japan, to continue to consider seriously, while listening to the views of learned circles, how best we can express this sentiment. We shall face squarely the historical facts as described above instead of evading them, and take them to heart as lessons of history. We hereby reiterate our firm determination never to repeat the same mistake by forever engraving such issues in our memories through the study and teaching of history. As actions have been brought to court in Japan and interests have been shown in this issue outside Japan, the Government of Japan shall continue to pay full attention to this matter, including private researched related thereto”. Una carta enviada al Primer Ministro de los Países Bajos en julio de 1998 contenía las mismas muestras de “deep remorse” por parte de las autoridades niponas (ver texto), al indicar que: ” By the Statement of Prime Minister in 1995, the Government of Japan renewed the feelings of deep remorse and the heartfelt apology for tremendous damage and suffering caused by Japan to the people of many countries including the Netherlands during a certain period in the past. My cabinet has not modified this position at all, and I myself laid a wreath to the Indisch Monument with these feelings on the occasion of my visit to the Netherlands in June last year. In view of further promoting mutual understanding between our two countries, the Government of Japan is extending, support for historical research, and expanding exchanges, as two pillars, under the Peace, Friendship and Exchange Initiative which has a purpose to build a relationship toward the future between Japan and neighboring countries. We must not evade the weight of the past, nor should we evade our responsibilities for the future. Japan, facing up squarely to its past history and accurately conveying it to future generations, is determined to do its utmost to further promote the friendly relationship with the Netherlands which will celebrate the 400th anniversary in the year 2000”.

El impulso a la causa de los derechos de las mujeres en la Conferencia Mundial de Beijing celebrada en 1995 posiblemente permitió que distintas asociaciones de víctimas de la región asiática iniciaran un proceso conjunto para lograr que más mujeres salieran de su silencio, recabar sus testimonios y exigir justicia.

En diciembre del año 2001, un tribunal internacional ficticio compuesto por juristas y expertos de renombre mundial dictaminó en una sentencia de 265 páginas (ver  texto ) que Japón debía no solamente pedir disculpas, sino también indemnizar a cada una de las víctimas pertenecientes a la red de “mujeres de confort” (ver  nota  de prensa del New York Times): el tribunal ficticio estuvo conformado por  reconocidas juristas como Carmen Argibay (Argentina), Christine Chinkin (Reino Unido), Gabrielle Kirk MacDonald (Estados Unidos, Presidenta) y Willy Mutunga (Kenia). Para la jueza argentina Carmen Argibay (ver su artículo) se trató de uno de los momentos más emotivos en su larga trayectoria como jueza: “Cuando Gabrielle leyó el párrafo en el que declaramos responsable al emperador por el sistema de esclavitud sexual instituido, la reacción de las sobrevivientes y del público en general fue casi como una ovación. Evidentemente, era lo que estaban esperando y los jueces les habíamos dado esa satisfacción. Fue algo impactante. Dos horas y media tomó la lectura de la resolución. Cuando terminamos, todas las sobrevivientes presentes subieron al escenario agitando pañuelos blancos, tomadas de la mano, cantando juntas, Corea del Norte con Corea del Sur, Taiwan con China, Indonesia con Holanda y Timor Oriental, Filipinas con Japón, Malasia con todas las demás. No es posible describir en palabras el alto grado de emoción que se sentía en ese momento” (Nota 3). Los integrantes de este tribunal se situaron desde la perspectiva moderna del derecho internacional humanitario y del derecho penal internacional para llegar a conclusiones: al respecto, merece mención uno de los primeros artículos publicados en español sobre la violencia sexual en los conflictos armados como crimen de guerra, obra de la jurista costarricense Elizabeth Odio Benito, electa en el 2015 jueza de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Nota 4).

En marzo del 2014, la alocución del jefe de la diplomacia surcoreana ante el Consejo de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas fue inusualmente incisiva: “Hace 20 años, una coreana víctima de la esclavitud sexual militar japonesa tuvo el coraje de romper el silencio y relatar su propio e indescriptible calvario. Su valiente acción inspiró a muchas otras víctimas a hacer lo mismo, convirtiendo a las hasta entonces desconocidas mujeres de confort en una cuestión viviente de derechos humanos. Hoy me gustaría recordar a este Consejo el valiente testimonio de la señora Ruff-O’Hearn, una señora holandesa-australiana, ex mujer de confort. En 2007 ella compareció ante la Cámara de Representantes de EEUU. Cito sus palabras: “durante cincuenta años las mujeres de confort permanecieron calladas… Yo rompí el silencio y revelé uno de los peores abusos contra los derechos humanos en la II Guerra Mundial, el holocausto olvidado”. Fin de la cita. Ella llegó a la conclusión, cito de nuevo, de que “Japón debe reconciliarse con su historia… ellos deben enseñar correctamente la historia de sus errores cometidos en el pasado”. Fin de la cita. En los últimos tiempos los líderes políticos de Japón están ignorando descaradamente este crudo episodio e intentan revisar el contexto de la declaración oficial del portavoz del gabinete en la que el Gobierno de Tokio reconoció la implicación y la coerción por parte de las Fuerzas Armadas Imperiales japonesas y expresó sinceras disculpas y remordimiento. Además, hace solo dos días un funcionario de alto rango del Gobierno japonés responsable de la educación de las próximas generaciones calificó como una historia inventada el episodio de las mujeres de confort. Esto es un insulto más a la honra y la dignidad de las víctimas que han soportado en su aciaga memoria durante toda la vida los dolores físicos y psicológicos” (ver  texto completo  de su intervención)

Un mes después de este discurso pronunciado en Ginebra, en abril del 2014, se anunció un primer acercamiento entre los mandatarios de ambos Estados para negociar un acuerdo sobre este preciso tema (ver  nota  del Wall Street Journal). En junio del 2014, China tomó la iniciativa de solicitar a la UNESCO la inclusión de varios documentos históricos en su programa Memoria del Mundo: la vocera oficial de la diplomacia china indicó que: “By applying for the inclusion of precious historical documents related to the Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s forced recruitment of the “comfort women” in the register, China is to memorize the history, treasure the peace, uphold the dignity of mankind and prevent behaviors against humanity, human rights and human being from happening again” (ver  comunicado  de conferencia de prensa realizada el 10/06/2014).

En agosto del 2014, un grupo de “mujeres de confort” se reunió en Seúl con el Papa Francisco en visita oficial a Corea del Sur (ver  nota  de El Economista). En  mayo del 2015, la vocera del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de China indicó en una rueda de prensa (ver comunicado oficial) que:  “China constantly calls on the Japanese government and leaders to take a responsible view on history, strictly follow the Murayama Statement and other statements and commitment on facing squarely and reflecting upon the history of aggression made by the successive cabinets of Japan, and make concrete efforts to properly handle the history issues. This is the only way for Japan to win the trust of the international community, and develop friendly relationship for the future together with its Asian neighbors”. En agosto del 2015, con ocasión de las conmemoraciones del 70 aniversario del final de la II Guerra Mundial, China respondió a las omisiones de las autoridades japonesas poniendo en línea nuevos documentos desclasificados que demuestran la responsabilidad directa del Ejército nipón (ver  nota  de El Mundo).  En octubre del 2015, China propuso que todos los documentos y archivos militares existentes sobre las víctimas de la prostitución forzada (o “mujeres de confort”) de los distintos Estados afectados sean parte del Programa de Memoria del Mundo de la UNESCO (ver  nota  de prensa).

Un total de 11 rondas previas de negociaciones entre los equipos diplomáticos de Japón y de Corea del Sur (según la nota del Korean Joongang Daily precitada) culminaron finalmente con el anuncio del denominado “acuerdo” el 28 de diciembre pasado, del cual, como indicado, se desconoce el texto exacto. A no ser, que el anuncio del “acuerdo” constituya el “acuerdo” en sí, con lo cual, muchos juristas y especialistas en materia de derechos humanos se podrían sentir un tanto defraudados. El reconocimiento de la responsabilidad de Japón debiera, en nuestra opinión, plasmarse en lo que se denomina un acuerdo (documento formal), y no en un intercambio bilateral de impresiones entre dos cancilleres deseosos de mejorar las relaciones entre sus dos Estados.

En el 2011, el juez constitucional surcoreano había indicado en una sentencia histórica para las víctimas y sus familiares que: “the South Korean government’s failure to seek a solution with Japan on compensating the former comfort women “constitutes infringement on the basic human rights of the victims and a violation of the Constitution” (ver  nota  de prensa).

Recientes episodios ante jueces surcoreanos y norteamericanos

El anuncio reciente sobre el relanzamiento de las gestiones entre ambos Estados se dio unos días después que la Corte de Constitucionalidad de Corea del Sur rechazara examinar, el pasado 23 de diciembre, la constitucionalidad del acuerdo suscrito entre Japón y Corea del Sur en el año 1965 sobre reclamos entre ciudadanos de ambos Estados (ver  nota  del Japan Times). Coincidente (o no tan coincidente…), el 15 de diciembre un juez federal norteamericano desestimó acciones presentadas bajo la figura de “class actions” contra las empresas japonesas  Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota, entre otras, por su presunta colaboración con las autoridades niponas en el trasiego de estas niñas y adolescentes durante la II Guerra Mundial (ver nota de Law360).

Sobre la decisión del juez constitucional  surcoreano del pasado 23 de diciembre del 2015, se dejó entrever cierta reserva por parte de Japón: durante una conferencia de prensa en la que participó el jefe de su diplomacia, realizada el 22 de diciembre (ver  texto ) se precisó lo siguiente: “Fukai, TBS: Tomorrow the constitutional court of the ROK will issue its verdict in a trial challenging the constitutionality of the Japan-ROK Claims Settlement Agreement. Could you once again explain the Government of Japan’s position, and what your views are on the impact this will have on the Japan-ROK relationship in the future? Mr. Fumio Kishida, Minister for Foreign Affairs: Firstly, I am aware of the matter that you raise, and since it involves a ruling by the court, I intend to keep a close eye on the judgment. In any event, issues of property and claim rights between Japan and the ROK have been settled completely and finally by the Claims Settlement and Economic Co-operation Agreement between Japan and the ROK. That is the Government of Japan’s position“.  Esta posición recuerda la externada por Japón ante el Consejo de Derechos Humanos al afirmar en el 2013 que “The issue of reparations, property and claims concerning the Second World War has been legally settled with the countries that are parties to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, bilateral treaties, agreements and instruments” (ver respuesta  de Japón a la recomendación 147.145 contenida en el  Addendum  al Universal Periodic Review).

Como se recordará, el acuerdo sobre las relaciones entre Corea del Sur y Japón suscrito en 1965 cumplió 50 años, siendo objeto de varios actos protocolarios, reseñados con mucha precisión por parte de Corea del Sur en un reciente  comunicado de prensa  de su Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores. Este acuerdo de 1965 (ver  texto ) no incluye ninguna disposición sobre el tema de las víctimas o de las reparaciones de guerra. En cuanto al acuerdo bilateral más específico sobre bienes, reclamaciones y cooperación económica, firmado en junio de 1965 (ver  texto ), fue objeto de una acción ante el juez constitucional coreano. No obstante, no incluye ninguna disposición relativa a las víctimas de la guerra. Su artículo II considera todo reclamo pendiente resuelto con las compensaciones de Japón, y se lee como sigue: “Article II. 1) The High Contracting Parties confirm that the problems concerning property, rights, and interests of the two High Contracting Parties and their peoples (including juridical persons) and the claims between the High Contracting Parties and between their peoples, including those stipulated in Article IV(a) of the Peace Treaty with Japan signed at the city of San Francisco on September 8, 1951, have been settled completely and finally”.

Breves datos sobre las “mujeres de confort” o “mujeres de solaz”

Corea del Sur no es el único Estado concernido por esta red de mujeres asiáticas forzadas por el Ejército japonés a servir como esclavas sexuales, y en realidad, son varios Estados los afectados por esta práctica. En una investigación del año 2007 (ver  tésis  titulada: Comfort Women: Human Rights of Women from Then to Present” se precisa cuáles son las características de esta peculiar práctica del Ejército imperial, en términos que nos ha parecido oportuno reproducir textualmente: “From 1931 to 1945, comfort stations were established in many places where the Japanese army combated or occupied, including China, Taiwan, Borneo, the Philippines, the pacific islands, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia as well as Japan. Due to the concealment of the relevant documents by the Japanese government and a long lapse of time after World War II, it is impossible to estimate the exact number of the comfort women. In accordance with “the Japanese military plan devised in July 1941, 20,000 comfort women were required for every 700,000 Japanese soldiers, or 1 woman for every 35 soldiers.” As approximately 3.5 million soldiers were mainly sent to the pacific islands, the estimated number of the comfort women becomes 100,000. Nearly 80% of these women were the Korean women, and others were taken from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Most of the comfort women were also young. According to interviews of surviving women, many of the women were teenagers, even including an 11-year-old child. Regrettably, it seemed that the younger women were preferred“.

En un  informe  de 1998 de una Relatora Especial de Naciones Unidas titulado “La violación sistemática, la esclavitud sexual y las prácticas análogas a la esclavitud en tiempo de conflicto armado” (Documento E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13 de junio de 1998), se precisa una cifra de 200.000 mujeres (Apéndice 1, p. 44) al señalarse que: “1. Entre 1932 y el final de la segunda guerra mundial, el Gobierno del Japón y el ejército imperial del Japón forzaron a más de 200.000 mujeres a someterse a la esclavitud sexual en centros de violación en buena parte de Asia. A estos centros de violación se ha solido aludir con el eufemismo inaceptable de “centros de solaz”. La mayoría de esas “mujeres de solaz” procedían de Corea, pero también las hubo de China, Indonesia, Filipinas y otros países de Asia dominados por el Japón. A lo largo del último decenio, cada vez más mujeres supervivientes de esas atrocidades se han manifestado en público, tratando de obtener la reparación de esos delitos. El presente apéndice se ha redactado a partir exclusivamente de los hechos comprobados en el examen realizado por el propio Gobierno del Japón de la participación de oficiales del ejército japonés en el establecimiento, la supervisión y el mantenimiento de centros de violación durante la segunda guerra mundial. Sobre la base de lo admitido por el Gobierno del Japón, en el apéndice se trata de evaluar la responsabilidad jurídica de dicho Gobierno por la esclavitud y violación de las mujeres en los “centros de solaz” durante la segunda guerra mundial. Aunque las responsabilidades pueden ser de muy diversa índole, en el presente informe se trata específicamente de la responsabilidad por los crímenes internacionales más notorios de esclavitud, crímenes de lesa humanidad y crímenes de guerra“.

En el 2010, la Corte Suprema de Filipinas desestimó una petición de más de 70 mujeres filipinas que exigían a su  gobierno apoyar su demanda en procura de obtener disculpas oficiales por parte del gobierno japonés (ver  nota  de Exordio).

Remitimos al lector a  esta exposición  de fotografías puesta en línea por El País (España) en agosto del 2014 que describe el sufrimiento de estas mujeres, muchas de ellas nonagenarias, sobre las que se sabe muy poco, recogiendo parcelas de sus vivencias cotidianas en China, en Corea del Sur, en Filipinas, con la intención de mantener viva la memoria de este drama.  En una  entrevista  publicada en diciembre del 2013 en La Vanguardia (España) a Mee Hyang-yoon, Directora del Consejo Coreano de Mujeres Esclavas Sexuales por Militares Japoneses , se lee que: “Las abuelas siguen envejeciendo, tienen un promedio de 88 a 90 años. Muchas de ellas están muy enfermas, son pobres, otras han muerto con la tristeza de haber vivido sus últimos años sin justicia. La mayoría de ellas están solas, no pudieron jamás casarse, ni tener hijos”. El historiador  Su Zhiliang de la Universidad de Shanghai estableció hace unos años un centro de investigación para rescatar los testimonios de estas mujeres en China (ver  nota ).

En el precitado artículo de El País de julio de 1992, se indicaba que Corea del Sur había logrado identificar a 390 sobrevivientes surcoreanas. El 13 de noviembre del 2015, falleció a sus 89 años de edad, Zhang Xiantu, una de las últimas sobrevivientes de nacionalidad china (ver  nota  de El Universal).

La posición de Japón a la luz del derecho internacional

El precitado informe de Naciones Unidas de 1998, en las conclusiones del apéndice 1, indica (página 64) que: “En el presente informe se llega a la conclusión de que el Gobierno del Japón sigue siendo responsable por graves violaciones de los derechos humanos y del derecho humanitario, que en conjunto constituyen crímenes de lesa humanidad. Los argumentos de descargo del Gobierno del Japón, incluidos los argumentos contra el fundamento jurídico, la norma del derecho humanitario que prohíbe la esclavitud y la violación, siguen siendo tan poco convincentes hoy en día como lo fueron cuando se invocaron por primera vez ante el tribunal de los crímenes de guerra de Nüremberg, hace más de 50 años. Tampoco es convincente el argumento del Gobierno japonés de que el Japón ya ha liquidado todas las reclamaciones por la segunda guerra mundial mediante los tratados de paz y acuerdos de reparaciones posteriores a la guerra“.
El monto exacto del fondo de indemnización acordado entre los negociadores de Japón y de Corea del Sur quedó fijado en una suma simbólica de 1 billión de yenes japoneses (unos 8,3 millones de US$) según informó el cable precitado de DW.  En una  nota  de la BBC sobre el acuerdo alcanzado entre Japón y Corea del Sur este 28 de diciembre, se precisa que, en lo que concierne a mujeres de nacionalidad surcoreana, “only 46 former “comfort women” are still alive in South Korea”.

Aún quedan muchas dudas por dilucidar sobre este “acuerdo” cuyo texto se desconoce. Una de ellas consiste en conocer con exactitud las modalidades de atención a las sobrevivientes y a sus familiares (ver nota del South China Morning Post). En septiembre del 2013, nuevos documentos liberados provenientes de los archivos de Tokio señalaron que 35 niñas y adolescentes holandesas encarceladas en Indonesia fueron enviadas a formar parte de esta red implementada por el Ejército Imperial (ver  nota  de prensa de The Hankyoreh).

Pese al tiempo transcurrido y a la renuencia de Japón de abrir sus archivos militares de forma completa, el ejercicio al que se han librado los equipos negociadores de Corea del Sur y de Japón en estos últimos días del año 2015 constituye un primer paso. No obstante, según todo pareciera indicar, queda bastante lejos de un verdadero acuerdo formal que hubiese podido constituirse en un primer precedente para muchas víctimas de violaciones graves a los derechos humanos ocurridas en el pasado, y que se mantienen impunes. Son muchas las interrogantes que dejó lo escuchado este 28 de diciembre en Seúl, y las dudas provocadas por la afirmación del canciller surcoreano según la cual, Corea del Sur: “confirms that through today’s statement, this issue will be finally and irreversibly resolved on the condition that the above-mentioned measures stated by the Government of Japan are faithfully implemented”.

Es necesario que este primer ejercicio diplomático entre ambos Estados sea retomado y complementado con la adopción de un verdadero acuerdo formal, y que este sea acordado tomando en consideración las necesidades de organizaciones de la sociedad civil, en particular las asociaciones de víctimas y de familiares de estas. Un primer acuerdo de esta naturaleza podría ser incluso replicado con los demás Estados asiáticos afectados por este drama de la II Guerra Mundial, que afecta gravemente las relaciones de Japón en la región. A pocos días del anuncio hecho en Seúl, se ha informado de contactos previstos en el primer mes del 2016 entre Taiwán y Japón para proceder a examinar este tema (ver  nota  de prensa).

Desde el punto de vista de la doctrina de los derechos humanos, estos esfuerzos adicionales podrían inspirarse en las herramientas modernas desarrolladas en materia de violaciones de derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado. La recepción entre dos Estados de Asia de conceptos tales como “derecho a la verdad”, “reconocimiento público”, “garantía de no repetición”, “verdad histórica”, “violación continua”, “monto indemnizatorio por limitaciones a proyecto de vida”, “satisfacción”, constituiría sin lugar a dudas un valioso precedente. La resolución  60/147 adoptada en diciembre del 2005 por la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas (ver  texto ) sobre “Principios y directrices básicos sobre el derecho de las víctimas de violaciones manifiestas de las normas internacionales de derechos humanos y de violaciones graves del derecho internacional humanitario a interponer recursos y obtener reparaciones” establece por su parte una útil guía que debería también servir de base. Si bien estas herramientas fueron previstas para aplicarse en las relaciones entre un Estado y las víctimas de violaciones graves cometidas en el pasado, podrían extenderse algunas de ellas a las relaciones entre un Estado responsable de estas violaciones y los Estados cuyos nacionales son víctimas de las mismas.

Como bien se sabe, estas y otras figuras jurídicas fueron desarrolladas por órganos en materia de derechos humanos al conocer de casos sobre violaciones graves a los derechos humanos cometidas en el pasado, en particular a partir de la experiencia vivida en América Latina y puesta a conocimiento del juez interamericano (Nota 5). En muchos casos, la implementación de estas herramientas legales está tardando en implementarse, como en el caso de las víctimas de la guerra civil en España: en un   informe  del 2012 publicado en el Pais Vasco por la ONG Ararteko se lee que: “el debido reconocimiento y ejercicio de la verdad, la justicia y la reparación para las víctimas de la dictadura franquista son también el camino para la reconciliación social, entendida sobre todo como la aspiración de una sociedad que se articula como comunidad política basada en unos valores y principios compartidos centrados en los derechos humanos” (Nota 6).

En el 2014, la diplomacia de Japón sorprendió a algunos observadores, al solicitar que un informe de una relatora de las Naciones Unidas sobre Derechos Humanos de 1996 fuera objeto de una revisión por parte de su autora (ver  nota  del New York Times). Rechazada esta petición, Corea del Sur manifestó que: “However hard the Japanese government tries to distort the true nature of the comfort women issue and play down or hide the past wrongdoings, it will never be able to whitewash history”  (ver  nota  publicada en The Diplomat).

Este tipo de solicitudes, además de ser usualmente desestimadas, constituyen una clara evidencia del temor de un Estado ante cuestionamientos hechos por expertos internacionales en materia de derechos humanos. Los recientes informes de Naciones Unidas sobre la base militar de Guantánamo o sobre la últimas ofensivas israelíes en la franja de Gaza del 2009 y del 2014 (Nota 7) han dado pié para solicitudes similares, que buscan desacreditar parte de su contenido (cuando no obtienen desacreditar a los mismos autores de estos informes).

Varias ONG han hecho ver, desde el punto de vista jurídico, la inconsistencia de la posición de Japón en años recientes con relación a las obligaciones internacionales contenidas en un sin número de tratados de derechos humanos ratificados por Japón (ver  nota  titulada “Japan The “Comfort Women” Issue” del 2009). Para tener una idea de algunas de las obligaciones  que Japón desconoce (y según todo pareciera indicar, quisiera seguir desconociendo), en su sesión de agosto del 2009, el Comité para la Eliminación de todas las Formas de Discriminación contra la Mujer (más conocido por sus siglas en inglés de Comité de la CEDAW) indicaba (ver  observaciones  al informe japonés) que los manuales escolares japoneses deben también formar parte de las medidas de reparación a tomar: “37. The Committee notes that some steps were taken by the State party to address the situation of “comfort women” but regrets the State party’s failure to find a lasting solution for the situation of “comfort women” victimized during the Second World War and expresses concern at the deletion of references to this issue in school textbooks”.

Un reconocimiento público anhelado por las víctimas y sus familiares

En el 2012, una exposición fotográfica a realizarse en Tokio fue sorpresivamente suspendida por la empresa patrocinadora Nikon: en los últimos días del 2015, el fotógrafo surcoreano obtuvo una sentencia a su favor en los tribunales de Japón, condenando al fabricante Nikon (ver  nota  de Japan Today). Estas y muchas otras vejaciones son las que han tenido que enfrentar las víctimas, sus familiares y las organizaciones que las apoyan desde muchos años. En una entrevista a una de las sobrevivientes, Lee Hok-sun, de 88 años de edad, publicada en La Tercera de Chile (ver  nota ), se lee que: “Los soldados insisten en que las mujeres lo hicieron voluntariamente para ganar dinero. Si fuera por ello no pediríamos que Japón pida perdón”, explica. Pero Lee aclara el foco de su lucha. “No pienso que todo el pueblo japonés es culpable, sólo el gobierno”, señala“. En otra  entrevista  realizada en Francia por Radio France International (RFI) en el 2013 a otra sobreviviente, de 87 años de edad, Kim Bok-dong pone el acento en la importancia que reviste para ella (y para todas las víctimas) el hecho que Japón ofrezca sus disculpas públicas, proceda a indemnizar a las víctimas y salde su deuda con las víctimas: “C’est très simple : il faut que le gouvernement japonais présente ses excuses officielles, mais aussi accorde des indemnisations juridiques. Les Japonais doivent reconnaître leurs crimes historiques. Je ne ressens aucune haine envers les Japonais, je veux juste cette reconnaissance de la vérité historique“. El reconocimiento formal de la responsabilidad de Japón conlleva consecuencias jurídicas. La maniobra diplomática consistiendo en proceder a un reconocimiento parcial mediante un comunicado de prensa entre dos cancilleres evidencia que Japón no está (todavía) dispuesto a asumir plenamente sus responsabilidades desde el punto de vista jurídico.

Conclusión

Desde el 14 de diciembre del 2011, una estatua de bronce de una niña coreana, con su vestido tradicional, colocada frente a la Embajada de Japón en Seúl espera pacientemente sentada en una silla (ver  nota  con foto de la misma publicada en EuroWon). Los insistentes esfuerzos de las autoridades de Japón para obtener que se retire no han tenido ningún éxito hasta la fecha (ver  nota  del Time sobre últimos intentos). El “acuerdo” logrado entre Corea del Sur y Japón está peligrando debido a la exigencia japonesa de que esta estatua sea retirada (ver  nota  del The Telegraph del 31/12/2015).

Los ojos de esta niña de bronce interpelan cada mañana a los funcionarios japoneses de la Embajada, y los acompañan cuando se retiran de la Embajada japonesa en Corea del Sur.

La mirada de la niña es determinada e imperturbable. Es a menudo acompañada por otras niñas de su edad, mujeres adultas y de avanzada edad, que la vienen a consolar en su soledad, sentándose en la silla vacía que está ubicada a su lado. Este 28 de diciembre del 2015, es probable que esa mirada silenciosa se haya mantenido tan fija como impasible.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nota 1: El  texto official  disponible en el sitio del Departamento de Estado del “Joint Statement by Secretaries Clinton and Sebelius on a 1946-1948 Study” se lee como sigue – : “Media Note – Office of the Spokesman – Washington, DC – October 1, 2010 . Following is a joint statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius on the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948: The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical. Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices. The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala. The study is a sad reminder that adequate human subject safeguards did not exist a half-century ago. Today, the regulations that govern U.S.-funded human medical research prohibit these kinds of appalling violations. The United States is unwavering in our commitment to ensure that all human medical studies conducted today meet exacting U.S. and international legal and ethical standards. In the spirit of this commitment to ethical research, we are launching a thorough investigation into the specifics of this case from 1946. In addition, through the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues we are also convening a body of international experts to review and report on the most effective methods to ensure that all human medical research conducted around the globe today meets rigorous ethical standards. The people of Guatemala are our close friends and neighbors in the Americas. Our countries partner together on a range of issues, and our people are bound together by shared values, commerce, and by the many Guatemalan Americans who enrich our country. As we move forward to better understand this appalling event, we reaffirm the importance of our relationship with Guatemala, and our respect for the Guatemalan people, as well as our commitment to the highest standards of ethics in medical research.

Nota 2: Se lee en el sitio del Departamento de Estado, que en la fecha del 28 de diciembre del 2015 (ver  enlace ) el vocero inició su rueda de prensa con  lo siguiente:”  Mark C. Toner Deputy Spokesperson Daily Press Briefing Washington, DC , December 28, 2015 TRANSCRIPT: 2:11 p.m. EST. MR TONER: Hi guys. Welcome to the State Department. Hope everyone had a somewhat restful and calm holiday weekend. A few things, actually, at the top, and then I’ll get to your questions. First of all, many of you saw the Secretary’s statement out earlier today as well as a background call that we did, but I just wanted to reiterate that we welcome today’s announcement by the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea that they have a reached an agreement regarding the very sensitive historical legacy issue of so-called comfort women. The two governments made clear that by implementing this agreement they will, quote, “finally and irreversibly,” end quote, resolve this issue between the two governments. And we believe this agreement will promote healing and help improve relations between two of the United States’s most important allies. We applaud the leaders of Japan and the Republic of Korea for having the courage and vision to reach this agreement, and we call on the international community to support it”. Alemania por su parte se felicitó del acuerdo en los siguientes términos, en un comunicado de prensa: “The German Government welcomes the agreement between the Governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea on the victims of forced prostitution during the Second World War. Both sides have agreed on a compromise that will help to heal the suffering and wounds of the mainly Korean victims of forced prostitution by the Japanese military. At the same time, this compromise can pave the way to a new era in Japanese-Korean relations”. Canadá por su parte externó el 29 de diciembre que : “Canada welcomes the agreement reached yesterday in Seoul between the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea on the issue of ‘comfort women,’ who were subject to terrible experiences during WWII. The leaders of both governments have shown a laudable commitment to arriving at a historic resolution to this sensitive problem through negotiation and reconciliation. Canada shares this commitment to resolve complex historical matters through dialogue and negotiation. Canada congratulates both parties on this agreement and the opening of a new chapter in Japan-Korea relations”(ver  comunicado ). Francia por su parte publicó el siguiente  comunicado  de prensa el mismo 28 : « La France salue l’accord historique trouvé entre la Corée et le Japon sur la question des “femmes de réconfort”. Comme elle a eu l’occasion de le rappeler à plusieurs reprises en ce 70ème anniversaire de la fin de la Seconde guerre mondiale, la France est attachée à ce que les différends régionaux, y compris sur les questions mémorielles, soient résolus par le dialogue et dans un esprit de respect mutuel. Cet accord consolide les relations entre les deux pays en les tournant résolument vers l’avenir ». Reino Unido, mediante su Ministro para Asia, externó (ver  comunicado ) que : «I welcome the news that Japan and the Republic of Korea have reached this agreement which recognises the deep pain and suffering these women have endured. Both countries are important partners for the UK. I look forward to today’s agreement paving the way for deeper cooperation between them and for increased stability in the region”. 

Nota 3: Uno de los pocos estudios que analiza desde la perspectiva del derecho penal internacional el caso de las « mujeres de confort » fue precisamente escrito por esta jurista argentina: véase ARGIBAY C.M., “Sexual Slavery and the Comfort Women of World War II”, Vol. 21, Berkeley Journal of International Law (2003), pp. 375-389. Artículo disponible  aquí. Sobre la jurisprudencia internacional de la Corte Penal Internacional, de los Tribunales Penales Internacionales para la Ex Yugoslavia, para Ruanda y otras jurisdicciones en materia de violencia sexual, véase un análisis más reciente: FRANCH V.B. “Los crímenes sexuales en la jurisprudencia internacional”,  Número 24, Revista Electrónica de Estudios Internacionales (2012). Artículo disponible aquí. Sobre la violencia sexual y la CPI específicamente, véase ZORILLA M., La Corte Penal Internacional ante el crimen de violencia sexual, Universidad de Deusto, Instituto de Derechos Humanos, 2005. Texto disponible aquí.

Nota 4: Véase BENITO ODIO E., “De la violación y otras graves agresiones a la integridad sexual como crímenes sancionados por el derecho internacional humanitario (crímenes de guerra). Aportes del Tribunal Penal para la Antigua Yugoslavia” in Presente y futuro de los Derechos Humanos, Ensayos en honor a Fernando Volio Jiménez, IIDH, 1998, pp. 261-296.

Nota 5: Desde sus primeros fallos en 1988 contra Honduras, la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos ha desarrollado una extensa jurisprudencia sobre la obligación de investigar y sancionar a responsables de graves violaciones a los derechos humanos. En abril del año 2005, Argentina presentó ante la Comisión de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas una iniciativa que culminó con la adopción de la Resolución sobre Derecho a la Verdad (Resolución 2005/66), cuyos considerandos se leen como sigue: “Destacando la necesidad imperativa de que la sociedad en general reconozca el derecho que asiste a las víctimas de violaciones manifiestas de los derechos humanos y violaciones graves de las normas internacionales de derechos humanos, así como a sus familias, en el marco del sistema jurídico interno de cada Estado, de conocer la verdad sobre esas violaciones, en particular la identidad de los autores y las causas, los hechos y las circunstancias relacionados con las violaciones, ./. Convencida de que los Estados deberían preservar los archivos y otras pruebas relativos a violaciones manifiestas de los derechos humanos y violaciones graves del derecho internacional humanitario para facilitar el conocimiento de tales violaciones, investigar las denuncias y proporcionar a las víctimas acceso a un recurso efectivo de conformidad con el derecho internacional”. El derecho a la verdad constituye desde entonces, en el seno de las Naciones Unidas, un derecho humano. Con relación a los Estados del hemisferio americano pesan estas y muchas más obligaciones, tal y como lo señaló la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en un  informe  del 2014 titulado “Derecho a la verdad en América” (sus conclusiones en páginas 115-117 precisan los desafíos existentes en la región en cuanto a su debida implementación). En un reciente artículo en el que se analiza el caso de las negociaciones de paz en Colombia, se concluye por parte del autor que: ”El caso colombiano es ilustrativo de la posición prudente que asume la Corte Interamericana frente a contextos de justicia transicional. Sin embargo, es en el marco de ese caso particular donde serán desarrollados los futuros debates sobre la compatibilidad de las medidas y mecanismos implementados para la terminación negociada de un conflicto armado interno con las obligaciones estatales emanadas del derecho internacional”: véase GUTIÉRREZ RAMÍREZ L.M., “La obligación internacional de investigar, juzgar y sancionar graves violaciones a los derechos humanos en contextos de justicia transicional”, Vol. 16, Estudios Socio-Jurídicos (2014), pp.23-60, en  pp.53-54. Artículo disponible aquí.

Nota 6: En su informe sobre España del año 2014 (ver documento A/HRC/27/3/Add.1, disponible  aquí ), el Relator Especial de Naciones Unidas sobre la promoción de la verdad, la justicia, la reparación y las garantías de no repetición, considera en sus conclusiones (punto 102) que: “El Relator Especial nota que varios representantes del Gobierno en las reuniones que mantuvieron enmarcaron las discusiones en el siguiente esquema: “o todos concluimos que ya estamos totalmente reconciliados o la única alternativa es el resurgir de odios subyacentes, lo cual implicaría un riesgo demasiado alto”. En opinión del Relator Especial, esta posición no le hace justicia a los avances logrados durante el proceso de democratización en España. Recalca que, considerando la fortaleza de las instituciones y la ausencia de riesgos para la estabilidad del orden democrático, resulta especialmente sorprendente observar que no se haya hecho más en favor de los derechos de tantas víctimas”. En el párrafo 99 de su informe se lee que: “El Relator Especial alienta al Estado a retomar cuanto antes este análisis y reitera su disposición para acompañar este proceso en el marco de su mandato. Recalca que estudios comparados de otras experiencias de países que han enfrentado retos similares, incluyendo en el contexto europeo, como Alemania, pueden resultar sumamente provechosos”.

Nota 7: Sobre este último episodio, nos permitimos remitir al lector a las conclusiones de una breve nota publicada en la que indicábamos: “El informe de la Comisión de Investigación sobre la ofensiva israelí del 2014 que cumplió en estos días un año, fue presentado el pasado 22 de junio del 2015 en Ginebra por los integrantes de dicha Comisión, provocando las habituales gesticulaciones del aparato estatal israelí: estas últimas tendieron, como ya viene siendo costumbre, a desacreditar el contenido de este informe, a restarle validez, antecediendo incluso su publicación con la de un voluminoso informe oficial con una semana de antelación el pasado 14 de junio”. Véase BOEGLIN N., “A un año del inicio de la operación “Margen Protector”: breves apuntes desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional“, Reportes del Centro de Estudios de Medio Oriente y África del Norte / CEMOAN, Número 21 (agosto del 2015), (Universidad Nacional). Artículo disponible aquí.

Documento: Texto oficial de comunicado distribuido por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Corea, 28 de diciembre del 2015 

Remarks at the Joint Press Availability December 28, 2015

Minister Yun:

Good afternoon. Today, I had in-depth consultations with Minister Kishida on matters of mutual interest, including the “comfort women” issue.

First of all, I would like to thank Minister Kishida for taking the time out of his busy schedule to attend this meeting today. As you are well aware, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between Korea and Japan. My government has been sparing no efforts to work out an early resolution of the “comfort women” issue, the most crucial history-related issue between Korea and Japan, in this historic year.

In particular, thanks to the political decision made by President Park and Prime Minister Abe at the November 2nd summit to “accelerate consultations to settle the ‘comfort women’ issue at the earliest possible date, bearing in mind that this year marks a turning point in the relations between the two countries as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties,” bilateral consultations have been further expedited centering around the Director-General level meetings as a major channel.

Minister Kishida and I held an intensive round of consultations today, based on the results of the consultations held through various channels, including yesterday’s 12th Director-General level meeting.

As a result, we have been able to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides. So, here today, we would like to announce the results of our meeting today.

First, Minister Kishida will state the position of the Government of Japan on today’s agreement on behalf of the Government of Japan, and then, I will share with you the position of the Government of the Republic of Korea.

Minister Kishida:

The issue of “comfort women” has been intensively discussed so far between Japan and Korea, including through the Director-General level meetings. Based on those outcomes, the Government of Japan states the following.

The issue of “comfort women” was a matter which, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, severely injured the honor and dignity of many women. In this regard, the Government of Japan painfully acknowledges its responsibility. Prime Minister Abe, in his capacity as Prime Minister of Japan, expresses anew sincere apologies and remorse from the bottom of his heart to all those who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as “comfort women.” The Government of Japan has been seriously dealing with this issue, and on the basis of such experience, will take measures with its own budget to heal the psychological wounds of all the former “comfort women.”

More specifically, the Government of the Republic of Korea will establish a foundation for the purpose of providing assistance to the former “comfort women.” The Government of Japan will contribute from its budget a lump sum funding to this foundation. The Governments of Korea and Japan will cooperate to implement programs to restore the honor and dignity and to heal the psychological wounds of all the former “comfort women.” Along with what was stated above, the Government of Japan confirms that through today’s statement, this issue will be finally and irreversibly resolved on the condition that the above-mentioned measures are faithfully implemented. Also, the Government of Japan, along with the Government of the Republic of Korea, will refrain from mutual reprobation and criticism in international forums, including at the United Nations in the future.

Regarding the above-mentioned budgetary measure, the expected amount will be around 1 billion Yen. What I have stated is the outcome of consultations held under the instruction of the leaders of both countries, and I am confident that Japan-Korea relations will thereby enter a new era.

Minister Yun:

Now, I would like to state the position of the Government of the Republic of Korea on today’s agreement. The issue of “comfort women” has been intensively discussed so far between Korea and Japan, including through the Director-General level meetings. Based on those outcomes, the Government of Korea states the following.

The Government of the Republic of Korea takes note of the statement by the Government of Japan and the measures leading up to the statement, and, along with the Government of Japan, confirms that through today’s statement, this issue will be finally and irreversibly resolved on the condition that the above-mentioned measures stated by the Government of Japan are faithfully implemented. The Government of the Republic of Korea will cooperate in the measures to be taken by the Government of Japan.

The Government of the Republic of Korea is aware of the concern of the Government of Japan over the memorial statue placed in front of the Embassy of Japan in Seoul with respect to the maintenance of the peacefulness and respectability of its mission, and will make efforts to appropriately address the concern, including through consultations with relevant groups on possible responses.

The Government of the Republic of Korea, along with the Government of Japan, will refrain from mutual reprobation and criticism in international forums, including at the United Nations in the future, on the condition that the measures stated by the Government of Japan are faithfully implemented.

This concludes the position of the Government of the Republic of Korea.

I am very pleased to announce here today that, working together, Minister Kishida and I have finally wound up the long and difficult negotiations on this issue before the end of this year, the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between Korea and Japan.

I sincerely hope that the measures to follow up on today’s agreement will be faithfully implemented and thereby restore the honor and dignity and heal the psychological wounds of the victims who have had to endure so many years of agony.

It is also my sincere desire that, with the conclusion of the negotiations on the “comfort women” issue, the most challenging and difficult issue over history between Korea and Japan, we will be able to open a new chapter in the Korea-Japan relations in the new year with a new spirit of cooperation.

Nicolas Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR)

US Threatens New Sanctions on Iran

By Peter Symonds, January 04 2016

The Iranian regime has reacted angrily to threats by the Obama administration last week to impose new sanctions targeting individuals and companies connected to its ballistic missile program.

The Iranian regime has reacted angrily to threats by the Obama administration last week to impose new sanctions targeting individuals and companies connected to its ballistic missile program. The US is accusing Iran of carrying out two ballistic missile tests—in October and November—in breach of a UN Security Council resolution banning Iran’s development of such weapons systems.

Washington’s threat is particularly provocative as it came just days after Tehran fulfilled a key aspect of the nuclear agreement reached last July between Iran and the P5+1 group that includes the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany. A Russian ship left Iran last Monday carrying virtually all country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium and thus greatly lengthening the time that would be needed to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to build a nuclear weapon.

In return for the shipment, Iran will receive an equivalent amount of natural uranium from Kazakhstan that has not been enriched. However, Iran’s main payoff for giving up its enriched uranium is meant be the first steps to lifting the punitive sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy, possibly this month. These would include the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets, limitations on the sale of Iranian oil and allowing Iran to operate freely in the world financial system.

Last Wednesday, the Obama administration circulated a draft of proposed new sanctions targeting companies and individuals in Iran as well as Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. The sanctions would ban US or foreign nationals from conducting business with the blacklisted firms and American banks would be compelled to freeze the assets of the companies and individuals.

The following day Iranian President Hassan Rouhani denounced the Obama administration’s “illegal intervention in Tehran’s right to boost its defensive power” and directed the defence ministry to “quickly and firmly continue with its plans to produce different missiles needed by the country’s armed forces.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari warned the US against taking actions that were “unilateral, arbitrary and illegal.”

Rouhani won the Iranian presidency in 2013 and was given the green light by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to negotiate an end to the devastating sanctions regime. The agreement reached last year after months of talks and relentless pressure on Tehran, above all with Washington, involved a major winding back of Iran’s nuclear programs, including its uranium stockpiles and its capacity to enrich uranium, and the reconfiguration of the heavy water research reactor being built at Arak.

Rouhani is now coming under pressure from hard-line sections of the regime, particularly in the military, that have heavily criticised him for conceding too much in reaching the nuclear deal. While he is not facing an election in the near future, Rouhani is concerned that his allies will lose ground in two crucial elections next month—for the parliament and for the smaller Council of Experts that selects the country’s supreme leader.

Tehran had already expressed its opposition to a new US “anti-terror” law prohibiting citizens from 38 countries, mainly European, from travelling to the United States if they have visited Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan in the previous five years. A senior parliamentary official Alaedin Boroujerdi wrote to European, Chinese and Russian counterparts criticising the legislation which he described as a “destructive blow” against the nuclear agreement.

The Obama administration’s determination to maintain pressure on Tehran underscores the fact that the nuclear issue has always been a pretext for advancing the economic and strategic agenda of US imperialism in the Middle East. The threat of new sanctions, and to potentially drag out the lifting of existing measures, is aimed at extracting concessions from the Iranian regime on other issues.

The US, for instance, would like to weaken Iranian support for the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which Tehran has backed politically and militarily. A UN Security Council resolution passed last month sets the stage for a ceasefire and negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition to establish a transitional government. Washington is adamant that Assad must go but is opposed by Russia, and at this stage, Iran.

Moreover, if the nuclear agreement enables the lifting of sanctions, possibly within weeks, the major beneficiaries are likely to be Washington’s rivals in Europe and Asia. Since the accord was reached last July, a stream of diplomats and corporations has headed to Tehran to sound out opportunities in preparation for the ending of key bans.

An article in Saturday’s Guardian entitled “Foreign firms dash to get in on Iran ‘gold rush’—but US companies left out in cold” pointed out that companies from Asia and Europe were flocking to Tehran to take advantage of what is being mooted as “the world’s last great emerging economy.” American companies, however, have been more wary. Not only are there significant US sanctions, in addition to international ones, to deal with, but Republican candidates in this year’s presidential election are pledging to scrap the nuclear agreement if they win office.

Obama is already under fire for failing to immediately implement last Wednesday’s threat to impose new sanctions over Iran’s missile program. A Wall Street Journal editorial last Friday entitled “The Mullahs thank Mr Obama” again lambasted the US administration over the nuclear agreement and its delay in responding to Iran’s missile tests. It also claimed that the firing of rockets from Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels last week in the Gulf of Hormuz was “a hostile act that could have resulted in American casualties.” In reality, the Iranian vessels issued a warning in advance and the rockets landed over a kilometre away from US navy ships in the narrow strait.

The editorial concluded by denouncing the Obama administration and anyone else who put any faith in the nuclear agreement or so-called “moderates” like Rouhani in Tehran. “When will this crowd figure out that Iran’s rulers don’t want better relations with the US? They want to become the dominant power in the Middle East while driving the US out of the region,” it declared.

In enunciating the opposition of right-wing layers of the political establishment—Republican and Democrat, the Wall Street Journal is standing reality on its head. US imperialism has no intention of being driven out of the energy-rich region and is determined to remove all obstacles to its regional dominance by any means. While not spelt out, the logic of the editorial in rejecting Obama’s tactic for ensuring American hegemony is a further expansion of the US-led war already underway in Iraq and Syria to also target Iran.

Mrs. Hillary Clinton presidential democratic candidate proclaimed in the last Democratic debate on December 19, 2015 (less than two weeks ago) that presidential Republican candidate Donald Trump by inciting hatred against Muslims was becoming the best recruiter for ISIS, and that ISIS is using his video clips to incite hatred.

Ironically, the oracle of Delphi, Mrs. Clinton has fulfilled her prophecy. CBS evening news reported tonight on 01-02-16, that Al Shabab, a Somalia based Al Qaeda affiliate has circulated on the internet a video using Donald Trump’s statements as a recruitment tool for their alleged cause of an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The keen observer can’t help but laugh and wonder if this was a coincidence or an orchestrated and well-choreographed political move by the Clinton campaign and the intelligence apparatus which seeks to further legitimize the terror networks.

Moreover, this move will anger and mobilize the ignorant masses that will always follow and worship their leaders, and beseech them to think for them and keep them safe.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton will move a step closer to the White House as her best stooge Mr. Trump will continue to allegedly play his blunt card to win the hearts and the minds of the mindless masses. The louder he shouts, the louder the masses will shout with him, “hate” hate” “hate” to the chief !

Surprisingly, there was no record of this Al-Shabab video when Mrs. Clinton made her allegations against Mr. Trump on the December 19, 2015 democratic debate. The sudden release and the timing of this video appear to be perfect, because it solidifies Mrs. Clinton as an expert in international matters, terror, and future prediction better than Nostradamus.

At the same time Mr. Trump will continue his orchestrated path of vocal tics that aim to insult, scare, outrage, and belittle people as he temporarily acts out the anger of the frustrated and inept masses.

The message of hate and terror always serves a strong political purpose, but you have to ask yourself, who benefits from this charade? Cui Bono?

It appears that the money masters who pick and elect presidents have reconsidered Mrs. Clinton to become the future occupant of the White House as they resuscitated her after shafting and destroying her in 2008.

Unfortunately, the public has a short memory, and the majority of the people will not be able put this simple puzzle together.

Finally, I find it comical that Mrs. Clinton predicted what the Islamists will do with Trump’s statements prior to its happening.

Or, maybe she gave ISIS a good idea to use Mr. Trump as a recruitment tool and as a payback; she will finally gain the house of whites.

A captured Islamic State militant who spoke to Sputnik news agency has bolstered claims that Turkey is involved in illegal oil deals with the jihadist group up to the hilt.

Damascus – The total amounts of money which the Syrian government has spent for the Palestinian refugees in Syria last year reached more than SYP 33 billions, Director General of the General Authority for Palestinian Arab Refugees (GAPAR) Ali Mustafa said Friday.

The GAPAR said in a report, sent to the United Nations Relief and Workers Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl, that the Syrian government has spent last year about SYP 10,942 billion for meeting the educational services of the Palestinian refugees.

The services included establishing and managing kindergartens in the camps and offering aids for the children in all stages of education, according to the report.

Mustafa pointed out that the social services reached SYP 3,964 billion including the institutions affiliated to the GAPAR and assistances to the needy, damaged, the poor, People with special needs and others.

Meanwhile, he stressed that the costs of the health services provided by the Syrian government reached SYP 985 million, including hospitals, dispensaries, free clinics, while it estimated at SYP 2 billions and 328 million on the services of make-shifts.

He added that the costs of the security and provisioning support, relief, some administrational services of other services reached more than SYP 15 billion.

This just in: Iran doesn’t trust the West. What an outrage!  At least that’s what Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says. But why would Iran not trust the US?

Could they have bitter memories of all of the innocent civilians and soldiers killed by the chemical weapons the US gave Saddam Hussein, specifically, for the purpose? And the fact that the US facilitated the killings by keeping the Iraqis informed of Iranian troop movements, as seen on satellite. Could that make them a bit wary?

Or what about the time the US blew up an Iranian passenger plane — and then tried to cover it up?

Or do they remember when the US replaced Iran’s last democratic ruler with someone more to its liking, the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi?

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979. He is shown here with eight American Presidents.  Photo credit: FDR LIbrary, National Archives / Wikimedia, Unknown / Wikimedia, Unknown / Wikimedia, LBJ Library, National Archives / Wikimedia, Gerald R. Ford Library, Unknown / Wikimedia

Could this history explain why Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei describes the US as a “deceitful, crafty, skillful, fraudulent and devilish enemy”?

But back to our Post columnist, a predictable voice of US orthodoxy. He claims that Iran’s hard liners are deliberately conducting economic “sabotage” —  in contravention of claims that nuclear cooperation would foster an opening between the country and the West.

Ignatius cites various detentions of Americans in Iran, but his central example is the arrest of one man, Siamak Namazi, associated with elite Western organizations:

According to Iranian press accounts, Namazi is being held by the intelligence service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in a special section of Evin Prison. News organizations close to the IRGC have published conspiracy stories that appear to be drawn from his interrogation and from information on his laptop ….[Snip]

The allegations center, bizarrely, on Namazi’s status as a “Young Global Leader” under a program organized by the World Economic Forum….[Snip]

The Namazi incident is a reality check for those who hoped that the nuclear agreement would be the prelude to a broader opening. Since the agreement was reached in July, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has repeatedly said that Iran won’t allow economic “infiltration” by a United States he described last month as a “deceitful, crafty, skillful, fraudulent and devilish enemy.”……[Snip]

The message from the hard-liners, whose IRGC-linked businesses have prospered since the revolution, is that they won’t give up economic or political power to the old elite, as sanctions are lifted and foreign investment grows in Iran.

What you need to know is that, in fact, there actually is a long history of the United States, Britain, and other Western countries going into the developing world under the auspices of “trade” and “diplomacy” and then doing absolutely everything they can to pillage the resources of those countries, including constant, major, catastrophic meddling in politics and fostering plots.

So, while some of the other arrests, detentions, etc that Ignatius mentions certainly can and should be questioned — and that of Namazi as well — a fair and accurate analysis would tell readers about the whole long history behind this mistrust.

Instead, Ignatius uses loaded terms like “conspiracy” and “bizarrely” to dispense with Iranian concerns — and suggests that the Iranian hardliners only motivation is to keep power for themselves.

Honest journalism that respects the American public would bring in the background and context.

It would also openly admit that the institutions sending some of these people to Iran, such as the World Economic Forum and the National Endowment for Democracy, are not purely altruistic enterprises, but openly seek to benefit corporations in search of financial gains abroad — corporations that historically have not been shy about throwing their weight around.

Since we’re talking about a struggle over whether to isolate Iran or to try to ease an opening into that important country, the choice should not be between no relations and another imperial feeding frenzy.

Places like The Post would do its readers a service by putting a little label on the people who tell us what to think. In Ignatius’s case, he is the son of Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of the Navy. Ignatius Sr. left the administration and became president of The Post in time to hire Bob Woodward, who sank Richard Nixon and his policies.

Nixon, though the establishment media will not tell you this, was, in some surprising respects, like Kennedy before him, pursuing a fairly independent path. Like JFK, he was angering the very core of the establishment, including the Pentagon and its patrons in the corporate world, notably those with major operations abroad. (For more on this, see Chapter 10 of my book, Family of Secrets.)

What does this have to do with Iran and the Washington Post? This all might make it easier to understand why certain people are given platforms to influence public perceptions and foreign policy.

Now, how’s that for “bizarre” and “conspiratorial”?

This week marks the start of a new project to drill below Earth’s crust into the planet’s mantle – that rocky shell a couple of thousand kilometres thick. Geologists have been trying for almost 60 years to reach this depth, but no one has yet succeeded: the latest mission might just have the technology and the funding to make it happen.

The drill ship JOIDES Resolution will shortly be setting off from Sri Lanka to a point in the southwestern Indian Ocean known as Atlantis Bank. Once it reaches its destination, the ship will lower a drill bit and tunnel through some 1.5 kilometres (almost a mile) of solid rock, taking core samples as it goes. That’s as far as the plan stretches – if the JOIDES Resolution is successful in its mission, future projects will have to take over in the drive to the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle.

Why Atlantis Bank? Scientists believe the crust-mantle division is marked by a feature known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or ‘Moho’ for short. Moho is believed to be particularly near the surface at Atlantis Bank, which should make it easier to reach. There are also fewer hard-to-crack crustal rocks in the region.

Making it down to this unexplored frontier is “one of the great scientific endeavours of the century”, according to expedition co-leader Henry Dick. Dick and his colleagues hope to make it further than the first team to attempt the drill did – oceanographer Walter Munk and a group of fellow geologists got down to 183 metres in 1960 before costs spiralled out of control and the initiative was cancelled.

Reaching the Earth’s mantle is the ultimate goal, but there are plenty of other aims for the mission along the way. The scientists involved want to study more about the behaviour of molten rock and the way it forms fresh ocean crust as it rises from the interior of our planet. Rock cores will be examined for microorganisms too, so it’s possible that a series of biological discoveries are going to be made along the way as well.

“We live on this Earth and we ought to know something about what happens beneath us,” says original pioneer Walter Munk, who is keeping a close eye on the new project.

Henry Dick has actually drilled down to 1.5 km at the Atlantis Bank before – on that occasion, in 1997, the drilling pipe broke in high winds and plugged up the hole that had been created. Munk is insistent that the new mission won’t meet the same fate, and if the team reaches its target, they’ll be looking for more funding to continue the work.

The first phase of the project is scheduled to run until 30 January.

(Featured image: Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr)

Mass executions at home, war abroad – Saudi Arabia tries to kill its way out of adversity. As the new year rolled in around the world, Saudi Arabia was already getting off to a bad start. The Western media published muted reports of a mass execution of some 47 prisoners alleged to be “terrorists,” though the most prominent among them was clearly a political leader, not a militant.

The US State Department’s Voice of America service, sourcing AP, AFP, and Reuters reports, would claim in its article, “Saudi Arabia Executes 47, Including Prominent Shi’ite Cleric,” that:

Saudi Arabia has carried out its largest mass execution in more than three decades, putting to death 47 people convicted of terrorism, including a prominent Shi’ite cleric.

Most of those put to death were alleged Sunni militants, and some had ties to al-Qaida, according to media outlets. All but two were Saudi; one was Chadian and the other Egyptian.

The cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was a key figure in Shi’ite protests that erupted during the 2011 Arab Spring. He had also criticized the government’s treatment of Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite minority.

Missing from VOA and the rest of the Western media’s coverage of the mass executions was any of the indignation that usually accompanies articles on Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels’ enemies when they carry out acts of perceived reprisals against mostly Western-backed political opponents – reprisals that usually include sentences much less severe than execution, for crimes usually much more severe than political activism.

Also missing from Western reports was any attempt to analyze or question reports coming out of Saudi Arabia – such as claims that most of those executed were “Sunni militants” or “had ties to Al Qaeda,” a terrorist organization whose affiliates were just invited to Riyadh to consort with the Saudi government regarding ongoing militant operations Riyadh is underwriting in Syria, Iraq, and beyond – Al Qaeda itself being a gestation of joint US-Saudi conspiring beginning as early as the 1980s. 

Executing Political Opponents 

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr may or may not have been receiving foreign backing to help undermine the Saudi regime. He clearly represented regional aspirations to check and balance US hegemony and the regimes the US has used to maintain, expand, or claw back that hegemony – including Saudi Arabia.

However, his execution, had it been a prominent political leader in Syria, or Russia, would have resulted in widespread, coordinated condemnation across the West among political circles, throughout the media, and among alleged “human rights advocacy” groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Instead, for Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, there was only complicit silence. And while Western “human rights advocacy” groups like Amnesty International did indeed point out that Saudi Arabia was putting to death a political prisoner, such reports were selectively glossed over, rendered as minor footnotes in Western reports, or ignored altogether, and the usual threats, sanctions, and direct action wielded by Western politicians against nations like Syria, Russia, Iran, or China, utterly absent before and after Saudi Arabia’s mass executions.

Amnesty International’s report, “Saudi Arabia: Appalling death sentence against Shi’a cleric must be quashed,” would claim:

Evidence for all the other charges he was convicted of came from religious sermons and interviews attributed to the cleric. Amnesty International’s review of these texts confirms that he was exercising his right to free expression and was not inciting violence. Some of the charges, such as disobeying the ruler, should not be offences as they criminalize the right to freedom of expression. Other charges are vague and have been used simply to punish him for his peaceful activities.

Yet despite this, it appears the Western media is attempting to justify the mass executions in the minds of unwitting readers.

That the Western political establishment and the media monopolies that serve as its voice, selectively report on and exploit perceived human rights abuses in some nations, while intentionally muting, spinning, or otherwise covering up very real abuses by other nations, illustrates perfectly the West’s selective enforcement of what it claims are its central organizing principles – democracy, freedom, and the defense of human rights.

Mass Executions at Home, War Upon its Neighbors 

 It should be noted that the West – and the United States in particular – used military force to topple the government in Libya in 2011 on “humanitarian” grounds and that the West’s involvement in Syria has been predicated on similar grounds. Why then, has the West not moved against Saudi Arabia, who is openly declaring war on not only its own people, but on its neighbors, including most notably Yemen?

Indeed, the West’s hypocrisy goes far beyond this more recent mass execution. This same complicit silence accompanies Saudi Arabia’s US-European-backed war waged against neighboring Yemen. It is a war that has laid waste to many of Yemen’s largest and most important cities, destroying its infrastructure, and cutting off the Yemeni people from economic and humanitarian resources beyond their borders through the seizure of their ports and a coordinated naval blockade.

It is a war fought using Western weapons. The US recently sold over a billion dollars worth of ordnance to Saudi Arabia to help it continue with its operations in Yemen. The BBC in its article, “US State Department approves Saudi Arabia arms sale,” would report:

The US State Department has approved the sale of $1.29 billion (£848.6m) worth of bombs to Saudi Arabia, as its military carries out air strikes in neighbouring Yemen.

It is American tanks, both M-60 Pattons and M1 Abrams, as well as French Leclerc main battle tanks leading armored charges into Yemen from across the Saudi-Yemeni border in the north, and from the port city of Aden in the south. And it is American aircraft Saudi Arabia is flying above Yemen, raining destruction down upon populated areas, killing thousands, injuring tens of thousands, and displacing or otherwise effecting many more.

In other words, between brutal, armed crackdowns and mass executions at home, and a war of aggression abroad, Saudi Arabia is in every sense as real a threat to human rights, freedom, and democracy as the US claimed the government in Libya was in 2011 before intervening and toppling the government there, and as much so a threat as the US claims the Syrian government currently is amid an increasingly convoluted attempt to topple the government there.

Yet, instead of confronting Saudi Arabia – one of the West’s oldest and most stalwart allies in the region for decades – the US has continued propping it up, defending it, and covering up for its numerous and ever-multiplying crimes against humanity.

Signs of Weakness

However, it should be clear by now that the US and its allies are failing in Syria and Iraq, while struggling in Yemen. Saudi Arabia’s growing body count indicates a regime clinging to power amid increasing adversity. But as the body count grows, adversity grows with it. Should the US fail in Syria, Iraq, and should its proxy war waged in Yemen with Saudi and other Persian Gulf forces also fail, it will not be long before the conflict finds itself pushed from the Levant and the southern most tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and onto Saudi soil itself.

While the West is gladly playing its hegemonic games from the safety of Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels, it will be its proxies in the region – in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar that face a very real existential struggle and the prospect of falling victim to their own brand of “regime change” turned finally back against them.

If and when that day comes, the despots of the Persian Gulf and those tarnishing Turkey’s reputation and global standings in Ankara will have wished they chose a multipolar world order to lend their backing to. While that is a world order they would not have been as wealthy and influential in, it would have been one in which they would at least still be alive.

Russian surveillance footage, independent investigative journalists and others exposed Erdogan’s oil smuggling racket, complicit with ISIS, refining and selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil on the black market – Israel a key beneficiary.

Captured ISIS militant Mahmud Ghazi Tatar provided more evidence of illegal Turkish oil operations. His “commander told us that the group sells fuel to Turkey,” he explained.

Income funds ISIS terrorist activities. “(O)il trucks crossing into Turkey every day carry crude oil, as well as petrol,” Tatar said. Militants have “enough oil to last them a long time” – generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually along with other lucrative illicit operations supplying more, up to an estimated billion dollars annually.

Oil is sold through intermediary businessmen and traders, names not revealed. It’s well known Erdogan, his son, and high-level Turkish officials are involved, profiting hugely from smuggling operations.

ISIS gets “lots of supplies from Turkey and Arab countries,” Tatar explained. Ankara’s denials ring hollow. It supplies training, weapons, munitions, toxic agents and safe haven areas for ISIS and other takfiri terrorists to move freely cross-border to and from Syria and Iraq.

Former Iraqi national security advisor Mowaffak Al-Rubaie said Turkey is heavily involved in smuggling and selling stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil.

A Norwegian daily Klassekampen report prepared at the request of Norway’s Foreign Ministry with Rystad Energy, an independent oil and gas consulting firm, revealed large amounts of oil smuggled from ISIS-controlled Syrian and Iraqi areas into Turkey – for black market resale at low prices.

The whole world knows what’s going on despite Western officials and complicit media turning a blind eye to high crime.

ISIS’ strength and ability to flourish depends on foreign support – from Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and other complicit nations.

As long as it continues, efforts to combat its scourge will continue longterm – including in new areas where it establishes footholds.

Putin explained ISIS gets direct aid from around 40 countries, including G20 ones.

His main concern is preventing its spread to Russia – why he intervened in Syria at the request of its government, making a major difference on the ground, ready to aid other regional nations if asked, urging world unity against a common scourge.

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has called for the UK government to condemn the recent execution of 47 people in Saudi Arabia in the strongest terms and end all arms sales to the regime.

Since taking office in May 2010, David Cameron’s governments have overseen over £5.6 billion of military licences to Saudi Arabia. It is by far the largest buyer of UK arms. These licences included fighter jets, tear gas military vehicles and targeting equipment.

The mass execution, which took place on 2 January, was met with widespread protest across the region. It coincided with a breakdown to the ceasefire in Yemen, with the Saudi led coalition restarting its bombing campaign. UK made fighter jets and bombs have been used in the bombardment.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

“The Saudi regime has a history of locking up bloggers, executing critics and cracking down on dissent. Despite this they can always rely on getting almost uncritical support from countries like the UK that prioritise arms company profits over human rights.”

In December 2015 CAAT announced that it is working with lawyers at Leigh Day to explore legal action against the UK government in relation to arms export licences to Saudi Arabia. This followed widespread reports of UK arms being used in violation of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

Andrew continued:

“UK bombs and fighter jets have been central to the destruction of Yemen. As long as Saudi enjoys the political and military support of the most powerful Western nations, then it will continue oppressing its own population and those of neighbouring states.”

A recent study by Opinium LLP for CAAT found that 62% of UK adults oppose arms sales to Saudi Arabia, with only 16% supporting them.

Andrew Smith is a spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade

Wither human rights – especially when it comes to strategic partnerships.  The UK-Saudi Arabia relationship has been one of a seedier sort, filled with military deals, mooted criticism and hedging.  When given the John Snow treatment as to what Britain’s role behind securing Saudi Arabia its position on the UN Human Rights Council was, Prime Minister David Cameron fenced furiously before embellishing Riyadh’s value in its relations with the West.[1]

The paper trail in such matters is always useful, and given that Britain remains one of the most secretive states in the western world, those things are not always easy to come by.  Light, however, was already shed by cables released through WikiLeaks suggesting that a degree of haggling had taken place between the states over the subject of compromising human rights.

The Saudi cable trove, made available to WikiLeaks last June, has spurred various groups to comb through the foreign ministry collection with an eye to decoding the Kingdom’s sometimes inscrutable positions.[2]

The relevant documentation in this case touches on talks between Saudi and British officials ahead of the November 2013 vote on membership of the 47 member body.  Cables from January and February 2013, separately translated by UN Watch and The Australian, discloses proposed positions of support.

One cable posits how:

“The [Saudi] delegation is honoured to send to the ministry the enclosed memorandum, which the delegation has received from the permanent mission of the United Kingdom asking it for the support and backing of their country to the membership of the human rights council (HRC) for the period 2014-2016, in the elections that will take place in 2013 in the city of New York.”

It goes on to say how:

“The ministry might find it an opportunity to exchange support with the United Kingdom, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would support the candidacy of the United Kingdom to the membership of the council for the period 2014-2015 in exchange for the support of the United Kingdom to the candidacy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”[3]

The cables also reveal how money was expended for the campaign to gain the seat, noting a transfer of $100,000 for “expenditures resulting from the campaign to nominate the Kingdom for membership of the human rights council for the period 2014-2016.”  While the itemisation of that item is not available, the Kingdom’s record on sugaring and softening its counterparts to improve its image is well known.

A spokesman from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office attempted to nip any suspicions in the bud in rather unconvincing fashion.  “Saudi Arabia took part in an uncontested election for a seat as one of the Asian Group members in the UN’s Human Rights Council.”[4]

Besides, the UK’s position, so went the argument, was of no consequence, whatever might have been said behind closed doors. The UK might not publicise “how it votes” but as “this was not a contested election within the Asian Group… the UK’s vote was immaterial.”

The situation has also been further excited by the mass execution on Saturday of 47 individuals, including the outspoken Shia cleric Sheik Nimr al-Nimr.  It was the largest show of death put on by the Kingdom since 1980.

Neither the Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett or Tim Farron of the Liberal Democrats, could let that one pass.  “In light of the weekend’s events,” claimed Bennett, “the government should be launching an inquiry to establish who made the decision to so abuse the UN process and the principle of universal human rights.” The perennial problem here is that any government inquiry tends to be an exercise of exculpation rather than revelation.

The response from the British FCO to the spectacular bloodletting on Saturday was of the tepid, pedestrian variety, taken straight out of its precedent book of tepid, pedestrian responses.

“The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and in every country.  The death penalty undermines human dignity and there is no evidence that it works as a deterrent.”

The statement goes on to suggest that the foreign secretary is doing his job, regularly raising “human rights issues with his counterparts in countries of concern, including Saudi Arabia.  We seek to build strong and mature relationships so that we can be candid with each other about these areas on which we do not agree, including on human rights.”

So candid were these exchanges, they led to a compromise regarding Britain’s own stance on human rights abuses. If anything, it induced a cynical caricature, one of positioning and sponsorship for an image distinctly at odds with the reality. For Riyadh, this could not be seen as anything other than a coup in international diplomacy.  The Kingdom had found its own useful, complicit fool.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

The Turkish government is not acting alone in Syria and Iraq. The corrupt leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Britain, Israel, and the United States are also involved. They have all played direct or indirect roles in the theft of oil too. After the role of Turkey in stealing oil from Syria and Iraq was revealed, the US government began work to mask and conceal the oil smuggling operations.  

US and NATO Culpability

On December 1, Alexander Grushko, the Russian permanent representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Headquarters, pointed out that the US and NATO gave «political cover» to Turkey for its attack on Russia’s Sukhoi Su-24M bomber jet in Syria. On the same day, Russian parliamentarian Irina Yarovaya pointed out that the military alliance is also involved in protecting the ISIL and theft of Iraqi and Syrian oil. NATO’s response to the Turkish incursion into Iraq was also muted, even after Iraq’ Prime Minister Al-Abadi called the NATO Secretariate on December 8 asking it to get NATO member Turkey to withdraw its forces.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the US was even given the Su-24M’s flight plans. Two days after Turkey shot down the Russian bomber, on November 26, Putin said that it appeared that Washington had given the Su-24’s operational plans to Ankara ahead of the incident and that it was «precisely» when the flight plans were passed to the US that the Turkish military attacked the Russian jet. To deny culpability and avoid verification, US officials would anonymously reject this.

The US government is fully aware of all the oil smuggling and has deliberately pretended not to know. Both the US and Turkey have violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199 as Vitaly Churkin, the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, pointed out when he told RIA Novosti in an interview that the US and Turkey are legally obliged to give any information they had collected on how the ISIL was being financed.

Holding a press conference on December 2 out of the National Defense Control Centre in Moscow, the Russian military presented detailed evidence showing how Turkey was involved in stealing oil and trading with the ISIL through three major smuggling routes. The response from Washington was to whitewash this by saying that the photographs provided by Russia were authentic, but that there was no evidence to show that Turkish checkpoints were being crossed. «What I have not seen is imagery of the border crossing with trucks crossing the border, and that’s because I don’t believe that exists,» an unnamed senior US Department of State official commented to Reuters on December 4 under the condition of anonymity.

The Russian military released an important statement in English on its social media page. It explained that if the US was not satisfied with Moscow’s evidence, then it should watch the video footage collective by Washington’s own drones that Russia had observed becoming increasingly active over Syrian-Turkish border and Syria’s oil fields.

The Evidence Falls into Place with Turkey’s Weapons Smuggling Pattern

Aside from photographs and satellite data, video evidence was presented by Russia where ISIL oil tankers could be seen being allowed to freely cross the Syrian-Turkish border by guards at Turkish checkpoints without being stopped like other vehicles. This is part of a pattern that corresponds to incidents in 2014 where trucks owned by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), which were disguised as humanitarian convoys, were caught sending weapons across the Syrian-Turkish border to the insurgents in Syria. Reports began to widely circulate that the head of the MIT, Hakan Fidan, was even reported by Turkey’s own state media, the Anadolu Agency, to have said in October 2015 that the ISIL is a political reality that needs to be accepted and protected from Russia. The Anadolu Agency would respond by taking legal measures to erase the story and releasing a statement saying that the reports were a fabrication on October 20, 2015.

On the same day that the Russian Sukhoi Su-24M was attacked by Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan indirectly acknowledged the MIT’s activities. He rhetorically asked his government’s domestic critics what was their problem with the MIT sending weapon shipments across the border to Syria. «I believe that our people will not forgive those who sabotaged this support,» he even told a room full of Turkish teachers in criticism of those who revealed that the MIT was sending weapons to the insurgent inside Syria.

The Turkish government’s ties to the ISIL are unambiguous. Due to the lack of communication between local authorities and the MIT, arms shipments were discovered in January 2014 by Colonel Ozkan Cokay, the commander of the Adana Provincial Gendarmerie Regiment, and his men. Despite the Turkish government’s attempts to hide the facts and persecute the security officials who uncovered the MIT’s links to the death squads in Syria, a report authored by the Gendarmerie General Command candidly stated that the MIT trucks were carrying weapons and supplies to Al-Qaeda.

Dividing and Conquering Eurasia

A Machiavellian game is at hand. While the US has been behind a disinformation campaign saying that the Russian Federation has not been targeting the ISIL in Syria, the truth is that Russia and its partners have heavily downgraded the ISIL and its oil smuggling operations. This provoked the ire of Turkish officials, which, as Moscow believes, motivated the attack on its Su-24M bomber jet. The US facilitated the attack by giving the coordinates of the Russian jet to Ankara.

After the December 2 press conference at the National Defense Control Centre in Moscow, a defiant Erdogan accused Russia itself of being behind the ISIL’s illegal oil trade. On the other hand, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on December 9 began accusing Russia of being behind a campaign to «ethnically cleans» the Turkoman in Syria, which Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova would dismiss as «groundless.» The irony is that it is Turkey that supports the sectarian death squads that are deliberately trying to fragment Syria.

While Erdogan’s greed and pettiness have helped fuel the Russo-Turkish tensions, the clash between Turkey and Russia serves Washington’s interests of fueling the political and economical destabilization of Eurasia by using its own allies as cannon fodder against its rivals. Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, has even warned that the Middle East has become a powder keg that could ignite a world war.

Despite the differences between Iran and the Turkish government and the reduction of Iranian winter gas supplies to Turkey, Tehran has publicly offered to mediate between Ankara and Moscow. Iranian First Vice-President Jahangiri even held a meeting with Erdogan on December 12 at the sidelines of an international conference in Turkmenistan. After speaking to Jahangiri and the Iranian delegation in Turkmenistan, Erdogan’s tune mellowed down. Possibly looking for a way out, he returned from Ashgabat to Turkey blaming the dead Russian Su-24M pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Peshkov, for Russo-Turkish tensions by saying that bilateral relations between Ankara and Moscow must not be affected by a «mistake of a pilot.»

Click here to read part one of this article.

Click here to read part two of this article.

Click here to read part three of this article.

This article was originally published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on December 20, 2015.

The leader of the extremist anti-assimilation group, Lehava, recently renewed his calls to torch churches in occupied Jerusalem, Israeli media sources revealed.

Lehava’s leader, Bentzi Gopstein (pictured left), told the Israeli TV Channel II that Israeli Jews practically prevent Christians from entering Jerusalem, saying that Christian presence in Jerusalem was not welcome.

He also called for “making obstacles towards the expansion of Christianity and Islam in the Palestinian occupied city of Jerusalem,” said the Days of Palestine on its website.

Gopstein has previously “called for a ban on Christmas celebrations in the country and the banishment of Christians, who he referred to as ‘blood-sucking vampires’, from the land,” reported the International Business Times.

Gopstein is the head of the notorious extremist Israeli Jewish group of Lehava, which is responsible for insulting and harassing monks and nuns in the occupied Palestinian holy city.

“Several Israeli groups are active in the occupied holy city regarding Judaization activities, including confiscating Islamic and Christian properties,” said Days of Palestine.

In 2014, a group of mostly Jewish youth attacked the Church of the Multiplication’s outdoor prayer area along the Sea of Galilee, pelting worshippers with stones, destroying a cross and throwing benches into the lake.

WAFA further reports that Israeli settlers, late Saturday night, torched eight Palestinian-owned cars in al-Thawri neighborhood in Jerusalem, according to media sources.

The Israeli radio said that settlers set a car on fire in al-Thawri neighborhood, before the fire extended to seven other cars parked nearby.

It said that Israeli police registered the attack against an “unknown” suspect, although surveillance cameras in the area prove that it was carried out by settlers.

According to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), there were 369 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians from January 2015 to July 27, averaging more than 12 each week.

According to an October 2013 UN report:

“[…] Since 2009 the number of settler-related incidents resulting in casualties has more than doubled, and the number of casualties caused by settlers has increased by 30 percent; while the number of settler-related incidents resulting in property damage has more than tripled, and the number of trees destroyed or damaged has increased almost four-fold.”

The report added:

“From January to August 2013, compared to the same period in 2012, the number of casualties caused by Israeli security forces increased more than four-fold, as security forces intervene in settler attacks or resulting clashes between settlers and Palestinians to disperse Palestinians, rather than to protect them from attacks by settlers.”

A senior Israeli official called on Saturday night for the occupation of the Syrian capital Damascus based on the teachings of the Jewish holy book the Torah, Felesteen newspaper reported.

During a TV show on the Israel’s Channel 2, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Bezalel Smotrich (pictured left) said that Israeli borders are beyond the current borders and Jerusalem’s borders reach Damascus based on the Torah.

Smotrich, member of the extremist Israeli party Jewish Home, suggested that Israel temporarily accept the current borders, which include the Golan Heights and the occupied West Bank, stressing that it has to work to achieve what was dictated by the Torah.

Meanwhile, the MK reiterated that the extremist Israeli settlers who burnt the home of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family were not terrorists. He said such acts are only considered a kind of terror when they are carried out by the “enemies of the Jewish people who are Arabs”.

He also called for the settlers’ leaders to control all the lands of the occupied West Bank, considering it Israeli land.

In addition, he stressed that anyone who does not accept Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank “must be expelled from this land,” adding that there are 20 Arab countries which can be their destination.

He went on to stress on the importance of building a Jewish temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The execution of 47 people by the Saudi authorities on the 2^nd of January 2016 reinforces my deeply held conviction that the death penalty should be abolished. No State should have the power to impose the death penalty on anyone. It is a right that can be abused and misused so easily.

As of now, 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the number of people put to death by the State has seen a big increase, from 90 in 2014 to 157 in 2015. Another country in West Asia which had also executed a huge number of people in 2015 is the Islamic Republic of Iran: 694 between 1 January and 15 July. The death penalty has not been able to deter Iranians from committing many of the crimes for which the law has been enacted.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, we are told that the 47 men executed were associated with “terrorist organizations” or groups espousing the “takfiri” ideology which condemns Muslims who do not subscribe to their bigoted, dogmatic thinking as “apostates” or with “criminal plots” that endangered national security. In many instances, little evidence was offered to substantiate these allegations. The trials that were held fell far below accepted international standards. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch raised serious doubts about the manner in which the most famous of the 47 executed persons, the well-known Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, was sentenced to death in October 2014.

Nimr was a consistent advocate of peaceful reform. He urged the Saudi authorities to hold free and fair elections. He was of course critical of the Saudi ruling class but there is no record of his involvement in any act of terrorism.

It is in a sense ironical that the Saudi authorities should execute people for involvement in “terrorism” when there is overwhelming evidence to show that individuals and groups from the elite stratum of Saudi society have been sponsoring and providing financial support to terrorist outfits in Iraq and Syria. It appears that terrorism has become a convenient excuse to target non-violent dissent directed against Saudi elites. In the guise of combating terrorism, both Sunni and Shia critics committed to peaceful, democratic change have been eliminated.

What would be the consequences of the mass executions of 2 January? Dissent which has existed in Saudi Arabia for decades but which has become more pronounced in recent years will become less conspicuous for a while at least. But there will be eruptions from time to time especially in Shia areas such as Qatif.

At the regional level, Saudi Arabia has already severed diplomatic ties with Iran in the wake of the firebombing of its Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in Mashhad. In this regard, destroying the Saudi Embassy and Consulate was a clear violation of diplomatic norms. Knowing how volatile the situation was in the aftermath of Nimr’s execution, the Iranian government should have done much more to protect those Saudi entities on Iranian soil. It is commendable that President Hassan Rouhani has condemned the firebombing episodes.

Saudi-Iran relations which have been deteriorating for a number of years now, will worsen further. The power struggle between these two regional actors will become even more bitter — and bloodier. It will be felt not only in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which are all caught in the throes of actual armed conflicts but also in Lebanon with its perennial inter-community tensions and Bahrain which may erupt yet again.

Underlying this power struggle between two states are sentiments related to the Sunni –Shia schism at the forefront of which is Sunni Saudi Arabia poised against Shia Iran. The Sunni-Shia population mix in all the above states — some are Sunni majority others are Shia majority — can lead to sectarian conflagrations that are capable of tearing asunder their social fabric. They may well have repercussions in countries outside the region proper such as Afghanistan and Pakistan which have a significant Shia minority. Even in societies in which the Shia element is miniscule — Indonesia and Malaysia being two examples — the manipulation of majority Sunni sentiment against the Shia can generate unnecessary tension and friction.

All in all, Sunni-Shia conflicts, actual or potential, will weaken the Muslim Ummah (community) to such an extent that the solidarity and cohesiveness that the community yearns for will become an even more distant mirage. In such a situation, it will be vulnerable to all sorts of manipulations and machinations by external forces abetted by internal elements.  The Ummah would be at its nadir, much to the delight of its enemies.

While all this may manifest itself in the medium and long-term, the immediate consequence of the execution of the 47 could be a more determined push by the Saudi rulers, in collusion with the Israeli elite, to thwart the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Since both the Saudis and the Israelis realize that the nuclear deal could change the power balance in the region, their aim would be to exploit the deterioration in ties with Iran to keep Iran in perpetual isolation. There may even be lobbies in Washington working with the Saudis and Israelis to achieve this, given some recent US moves against Tehran.

This is why the situation that is unfolding from the execution of the 47 may generate much more upheaval in the most conflict prone region of the world that is already drenched in the blood of millions of innocent human beings.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

One of the key sectors of Russian military modernization is its tank fleet, which still includes many unmodernized T-72B and T-80U tanks. In order to close the tank quality gap with NATO, Russia opted to upgrade the T-72B to the T-72B3 standard, a modernization that yielded a modern tank comparable to the T-90 at a fraction of the cost of buying a new T-90. The T-72B3 tank, which entered service in 2011 at the rate of about 200 a year and which became widely known thanks to the annual Tank Biathlon competitions, was intended to be a stop-gap measure until the T-14 of the Armata family became operational. According to the statements by the Uralvagonzavod, Russian procurement plans entailed the purchase of 2,000 T-14 MBTs.

These plans appear to have been modified due to several factors which appeared in the last two years.

The first was the crisis in Ukraine and the heightened state of conflict with NATO. The crisis raised the need for a truly modern MBT comparable to NATO’s tanks to become operational as quickly as possible. While the T-72B3 can be fairly described as a modern tank, it is still inferior in some respects to the latest NATO Leopard 2A6 and M1A2 Abrams tanks.

Secondly, the basic T-90 design was also rapidly becoming dated which reduced its international competitiveness, as evidenced by the success of Ukraine’s Oplot tank in the 2011 competition in Thailand, where it won over the T-90. While the T-90 has enjoyed considerable export success, including major contracts with India and Algeria, it is now facing the prospect of being eclipsed by more recent designs from China and even Ukraine.

Third, even though Ukraine proved unable to fulfill the Thailand contract in a timely manner, producing only 5 tanks a year in 2014 and 2015, the Russian leadership has to consider the worst-case scenario of Ukraine ramping up Oplot production for domestic use with NATO’s assistance.

Fourth, Russia’s economic crisis caused mainly by the rapid drop of oil prices means that the ambitious military modernization plans face the need of being as cost-effective as possible.

Fifth, the T-14 is a radical design featuring many revolutionary technologies. It is a technologically risky project featuring many as yet unproven technologies with the possibility of developmental delays. Since its design is very different from earlier Russian tank designs, its introduction would also require considerable changes to the training doctrine as tank crews trained to use Russia’s current tanks would be ill-prepared to use the T-14. As a result, it would be unlikely that Russia could field a sizable and fully operational T-14 force before 2020 at the earliest.

The change to Russian procurement plans induced by these factors became apparent in the summer of 2015, when the Russian MOD announced its T-90 fleet would be modernized to the T-90AM variant. This version of the T-90 known by its export designation of T-90SM was developed in recent years apparently in response to the T-90’s aging and the emergence of viable Chinese and Ukrainian competitors and was not intended for adoption by the Russian military.

However, the need for a quicker and less expensive alternative that would fill the gap until the T-14 became available compelled the Russian MOD to take a second look at the T-90AM which has the advantage of using already existing T-90 hulls, is a mature project with few developmental risks, and whose familiar layout means Russian tank crews can readily transition to the new design. At least one T-90AM with the 2A82 125mm tank gun developed for the T-14 is undergoing tests at Nizhniy Tagil, and upgraded vehicles could be delivered to Russian units as early as 2016 if the Russian MOD desires it.

Therefore by 2025 Russia’s tank fleet is likely to consist of about 1,000 T-72B3 tanks, 400 or so T-90AM, and about 500 T-14s, with their number steadily increasing. This force would have both qualitative and numerical superiority over any conceivable combination of Russia’s opponents at that time.

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United States President Obama has long had a strained relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the two nations being historically close allies. Obama’s reasoning has been straightforward: Netanyahu is a corrupt warmonger. He has intentionally made his region unstable for his own political gain. Republicans have fired back by accusing Obama of simply being anti-Israel. But wiretaps now show that at least some republicans in congress had an entirely different reason for siding with Netanyahu: he was bribing them to change their votes on key issues.

In an explosive revelation, wiretaps uncovered by the Wall Street Journal reveal that Benjamin Netanyahu reached out to republican congressmen who had been considering voting in favor of the Iran peace deal, asking what they wanted in return for voting against the deal. In the end, not a single republican voted for the deal, meaning that Netanyahu’s bribes succeeded in swaying the ones who had been on the fence. That means that not only is Netanyahu actively working to undermine the sanctity of the United States government, the republican congressmen involved may have committed treason under the Espionage Act.

Screenshot from WSJ

While it’s not uncommon for members of congress to offer each other political favors in exchange for votes on various bills, it’s an entirely different legal matter when those offers come from a foreign head of state. Not only were they caught accepting favors from Netanyahu in exchange for votes on the Iran deal, they also received confidential details of the Iran negotiations directly from Netanyahu himself. Republicans have long criticized the Obama administration for its wiretapping of Netanyahu, but now we know why: they didn’t want the details of their own wrongdoing to be discovered in the process. The Wall Street Journal has more on the story.

David Miliband earns far more than the US$209,000 he reaped as foreign minister.

A refugee charity is paying the former British foreign secretary the immense sum of 425,000 pounds (US$600,000) a year to be its CEO, it has emerged recently.

Nongovernmental organization International Rescue Committee, which is headed up by former Foreign Minister David Miliband, says its mission is to respond to the “world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster.”

The right-wing Mail Online relished the irony of recent high-profile donations to the charity when compared Tony Blair’s former foreign secretary:

When Ali G star Sacha Baron Cohen and his actress wife Isla Fisher donated $500,000 to the International Rescue Committee this week, they wanted to help desperate refugees fleeing conflict in Syria. But what the generous couple may not have known is that their donation will not even have been enough to pay the salary of the American charity’s boss, David Miliband.

The revelation was made after the IRC’s 2014 filing was published online via the Charities Bureau, which shows Miliband gets US$600,000 annual compensation, of which US$332,778 is “reportable compensation” for the organization based in the United States.

Miliband is bagging almost US$200,000 more than former CEO George Rupp, last on the list above, who was compensated US$413,000 a year, according to the Mail Online.

The IRC website gives ideas for donation gifts. For US$54, you can “buy” a kit that can provide four families with the materials they need to construct a temporary shelter that will help protect them from harsh weather. Miliband’s salary would cover over 11,000 of these.

The former politician moved to New York three years ago and joined the IRC after he was beaten by his brother, Ed, to follow in the footsteps of his former mentor Blair in leading Britain’s Labour Party. Ed stepped down as leader after the party failed to win the 2015 general election, which paved the way for socialist Jeremy Corbyn, who was always vocally critical of Blair’s centrist stance and warmongering politics.

The International Business Times reports that of the charity’s income over US$650 million, which it says means nearly 1.5 dollars in every 1,200 spent by the charity goes to Miliband. The charity itself says just 5 percent of its income goes on management and general expenses, with 93 percent going directly to those in need, the IBT reports.

On January 2nd, America’s NBC News bannered “Arab Spring Cleric Nimr al-Nimr Among 47 Executed by Saudi Arabia,” and, one-third of the way into their report, showed this tweet:

Saudi execution of Nimr al-Nimr along w/ al Qaeda members is straight from Assad’s playbook – lumping nonviolent activists with terrorists.

— DavidKenner (@DavidKenner) January 2, 2016

Even when Sunni-Islamic extremists, the Sauds, perpetrate mass-murder, in Saudi Arabia and not only in Yemen and in Syria, the U.S. ‘news’ media find some way to smear their audience’s minds with the demon, “Bashar al-Assad,” as if Assad actually had anything to do with it, and the King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, had nothing to do with it. Salman, who owns Saudi Arabia and everyone in it (and who even allows outright slavery there), wasn’t so much as mentioned by the NBC ‘News’ ‘reporter’ or propagandist. (Assad was mentioned in that ‘news’ report only because Assad allies with the U.S. aristocracy’s super-demon, Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, who refuses to do the U.S. aristocracy’s bidding, such as his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, much praised by the U.S. aristocracy, had done.)

America’s main ally, and the largest customer for American-made weapons, the royal family that owns and runs Saudi Arabia, had just started out a new year of mass-executions, after their near-record year of 2015: the AP headlined only the day before, on New Year’s Day, “Saudi Beheadings Soar in 2015,” and reported that, “Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide.” (King Salman wasn’t mentioned in that one, either.)

So, the Sauds, America’s most important ally, and equally passionate enemies of Russia (and their clerics had recently issued fatwas against Russia for coming to Assad’s defense) — the royal Saud family, who recently organized their own 34-nation Sunni-Islamic version of America’s 28-nation European NATO alliance against Russia — are as determined to lead ‘The Free World’ as is the American aristocracy. And, they’re as capable of providing such democratic leadership, after the U.S. assassinated pro-Russian leaders Saddam Hussein in 2003, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and tried to kill Bashar al-Assad starting in 2011. ‘The West’ are such passionate supporters of ‘democracy.’ And, after U.S. President Barack Obama took over Ukraine in February 2014, it’s more corruptand poorer than ever.

Hypocrisy of the American government and its ‘free press’ seems to know no limits. The Saud family don’t even try to compete with their U.S. counterparts in the hypocrisy-category.

And it’s not a partisan issue within the United States, either: both the ‘liberal’ and the outright conservative wings of the U.S. aristocracy are riddled with corruption, and suck the financial blood of not only their own nation, but of the foreign ones they entice into their grip, by bringing foreign aristocracies into their corrupt operation, to share in the looting and mass-emiseration of publics everywhere. The Saud family are part of that elite club, but they don’t pretend to be ‘democratic.’ They are corrupt as they live and breathe: they ‘earned’ their billions in The Lord’s way: they were born with it. America’s government have to pretend to be democratic.

The essence of aristocracy is corruption. These beheadings are just little decorations of it, by some of America’s fellow-champions of ‘The Free World.’

Corruption isn’t composed merely of things that are illegal, but includes also much that doesn’t violate any laws, because the aristocrats basically write the laws (or their hired agent, called “lobbyists,” do). On top of that immunity which they enjoy from the laws, whenever the international aristocracy don’t like an international agreement that has somehow come into effect but that turns out not to suit them, they simply ignore it; they are above not only their own nation’s laws, but unreachable by all laws, even international ones. (That’s what makes them international aristocrats.) Everyone beneath them can be emiserated or even killed on the spot, but only a revolution could kill the aristocrats — they’re surrounded by bodyguards.

For example, on 22 December 2015, the United Nations headlined, “UN expert calls for fundamental rethink of global trading system,” and reported:

The Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, deplores that developed countries evaded their Doha development commitments at the World Trade Organization’s 10th ministerial conference, held in Nairobi from 15 to 19 December 2015. Although a majority of States meeting in Nairobi wanted to have a clear reaffirmation of the Doha Framework, the opposition of some developed countries prevented the adoption of a consensus on this important point. Instead, he says, developed countries tried to pressure the developing world into agreements that undermine the promotion of the right to development and many provisions of human rights treaties.

Murdering labor union organizers in underdeveloped countries enables the aristocrats in developed ones to sell to their own nation’s public the goods that would otherwise be made at a far higher wage-rate in their own countries, and that therefore compete-away those jobs abroad, and so hollow-out the domestic economy, while enabling the developed-world’s aristocracies to extract from their home market the profits that can be derived by so impoverishing the workers both domestically and abroad. The lower the wages the aristocrats must pay, the higher their profits are. And the United States, and its ‘liberal’ “Democratic’ President Barack Obama and his Administration, is the global leader in imposing and making even harsher than it already is, this barbaric international system of exploitation of the public by aristocrats.

And here is an example of how it works at the merely national level:

One of Mr. Obama’s ‘liberal’ supporters and financial backers, Warren Buffett, famously said, on 26 November 2006, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” As a first-class hypocrite himself, who takes advantage of sophisticated opportunities to transfer his tax-obligations quietly onto others while urging publicly that his nation’s tax-laws should demand more of billionaires and less of the general public, Buffett was there verbally attacking, not publicly championing, the Robin-Hood-in-reverse that he sees in his country, and that he here affirmed to be the real “class warfare” in it.

But, more recently, on 26 December 2015, Daniel Wagner of buzzfeed headlined a major investigation, “Warren Buffett’s Company Wants to Sell You a Mobile Home,” and he described a systematic operation by Buffett’s Clayton Homes, and its associated Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance company, to lure new immigrants, and uneducated poor people, and especially poor Blacks, into borrowing to buy mobile homes, with finance charges far higher than were promised by the sales people, so that many of those trailer-homes become repossessed and then resold to other trusting suckers. And the U.S. Federal Housing Administration actually assists this corrupt operation, by saying such things as:

“Many people don’t realize that FHA loans can help people with bad credit. Need a home mortgage, but concerned about bad credit? You’ve come to the right place! An FHA mortgage can get you into a new home — even if you have bad credit — because the loans are insured by the federal government.”

The FHA thus actually encourages suckers into this system, to become fleeced by operators such as Clayton Homes. While FHA, despite saying that it accepts “bad credit,” turns down loan-applicants who actually have bad credit, the gull has thus already become lured into the tiger’s clutches by the time he or she finds out that the only financial option (other than backing out) is Vanderbilt. And, only much later do they recognize that while they’ve been paying all they could for the few years they lived in the trailer, they’re thrown out onto the street, after those few years of having paid more per month than they’d have paid if they had merely rented (as the system should have guided them to do —instead of having guided them to become ripped off). Typical for America’s ‘news’ ‘reporting,’ no mention at all was made by Mr. Wagner, in his lengthy article, of the Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, as presenting a lure, or bait-and-switch come-on, in this way, helping to feed victims to the aristocracy; and, so, the legal framework that empowers and advances the rip-offs that Wagner was describing, was actually ignored. Instead of such an informative aricle, the sales people for Clayton and for Vanderbilt were described, luring victims in, for their fleecing. However, Wagner’s article was merciless against Buffett personally:

Through a spokesperson earlier this month, Buffett declined to discuss racial issues at Clayton Homes, and a reporter who attempted to contact him at his home was turned away by security. Clayton and Berkshire Hathaway did not respond to numerous requests for interviews with executives, delivered by phone and email, as well as in person at Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters in Omaha. The companies did not answer any of 34 detailed questions about Clayton and its practices. Nor did they respond to an extensive summary of this article’s findings, provided along with an invitation to comment.

Meanwhile, of course, there are numerous instances, on both the political right and the political ‘left,’ of international scams, such as the LIBOR interest-rate rigging, and the manipulations of the commodity markets, and the hiring of nazis to overthrow, via ‘the Maidan revolution’ coup d’etat, the democratically elected Russia-friendly President of Ukraine, and replace him with fascists. And, of course, Obama practically masterminded the sarin gas attack in Syria that he set up to blame on Assad as an excuse to bomb to produce“regime change in Syria” like George W. Bush’s “regime change in Iraq” had been.

Any member of the public who thinks that these things were done by and for the public, instead of by and for the aristocracy, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell: please contact me in the reader-comments here. (But, I won’t answer. Plenty of other people will be happy to sell it to you.)

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

Experts warn if the siege of Gaza continues, normal life would not be viable in the territory in 2016 

Days of Palestine, Gaza Strip –It has been ten years for the strict, harsh and inhumane Israeli, Egyptian and internationally backed blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The blockade started in the wake of the 2006 Palestinian elections, which the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, won with an overwhelming majority.

Local and international monitoring organisations described the Palestinian poll as one of the most transparent ever recorded. However, Palestinians remember it with sadness as the elections marked the internal political split and the start of the siege of Gaza.

The Israeli occupation closed all crossings into the territory, keeping only the Erez Crossing open for occasional pedestrian traffic and Kerem Shalom for a few classified and highly-regulated goods. Erez has been used a trap for people trying to cross.

Egypt has been keeping the Rafah Crossing closed for most of the time. In 2015, the crossing was only open for 21 days; just 10,000 Palestinians were allowed through, among them pilgrims, patients and students.

The Israeli authorities imposed severe restrictions on patients and their companions travelling through Erez. Human rights groups have recorded the arrest of several patients or their companions while using the crossing into the occupied Palestine.

Attempts are made by the Israeli occupation intelligence agents to blackmail people into becoming informers in exchange for being allowed to cross.

Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza has since been reporting chronic shortages of medicines and hospital disposables. “Shelves are empty due to the restrictions imposed by the Israelis on people and goods going in and out of the coastal enclave,” MOH spokesman says.

Attempt to break the siege

The plight of the Palestinians in Gaza has aroused widespread popular support across the world and many attempts have been made to break the siege by sea.

Although a few small boats made the trip in the first few years, later and more ambitious attempts were stopped in international waters by the Israeli navy, often violently.

In May, 2010, for example, the Israeli commandos intercepted the Freedom Flotilla. Nine Turkish citizens were killed in the assault and a number of others were wounded; one died in 2014 as a direct result of his wounds. The ships were towed into and Israeli port and everyone on board was arrested.

During the siege, the Israeli occupation has launched four major military offensives against the people of Gaza, in 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014; the latter was the most destructive. It lasted for 51 days and whole areas of Gaza were flattened by Israeli bombs; tens of thousands of people were displaced.

The strict siege and wars have shattered the Palestinian economy in Gaza, economic commentator Maher al-Tabaa told Quds Press. “The unemployment rate in Gaza stands at 42 per cent, with the blockade deepening the economic crisis,” he explained.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the unemployment rate in Gaza is the highest in the world and there are more than 200,000 unemployed people in Gaza.

Al-Tabaa warned that if the siege of Gaza continues, normal life would not be viable in the territory in 2016.

Many international organisations have issued similar warnings due to the effects of the oppressive Israeli measures, which are regarded as collective punishment and are illegal in international law.

Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.

The legal and conceptual framework for the fast-tracking provision on pipeline permitting arose during the fight over TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. President Barack Obama initially codified that concept via Executive Order 13604 — signed the same day as he signed an Executive Order to fast-track construction of Keystone XL‘s southern leg — and this provision “builds on the permit streamlining project launched by” Obama according to corporate law firm Holland & Knight.

That 60-page streamlining provision falls on page 1,141 of the broader 1,301-page FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act (H.R. 22 and S. 1647), known in policy wonk circles as the highway bill. The provision is located in a section titled, “Federal Permitting Improvement.”

Explaining what types of projects the provision cover, the bill reads,

…any activity in the United States that requires authorization or environmental review by a Federal agency involving construction of infrastructure for renewable or conventional energy production, electricity transmission, surface transportation, aviation, ports and waterways, water resource projects, broadband, pipelines, manufacturing, or any other sector as determined by a majority vote of the Council that is subject to [the National Environmental Policy Act] NEPA [and] is likely to require a total investment of more than $200,000,000.

The provision also sets a specific timeline as to how long environmental reviews should take, setting the limit to just under half a year.

It dictates that “any decision by an agency on an environmental review or authorization must be issued not later than 180 days after the date on which all information needed to complete the review or authorization (including any hearing that an agency holds on the matter) is in the possession of the agency.”

Further, the bill vastly shortens the number of years of the statute of limitations under which legal teams can bring NEPAlawsuits in Section 41003.

“The new legislation also includes litigation reforms that reduce the NEPA statute of limitations from six years to two years generally – and 150 days for transportation projects – and requires courts to consider the effects on jobs,” explains Holland & Knight in a blog post.

Legal scholars refer to NEPA as the “Magna Carta of environmental law,” somewhat akin to the First Amendment as it relates to free speech.

NEPA allows for a robust public commenting and public hearings period and environmental groups have argued on numerous instances in federal courts in recent years that the Obama Administration has usurped the conventional NEPA process in order to green-light numerous tar sands pipelines built in the years since the Keystone XL debate began five years ago.

The bill further mandates that the Permitting Dashboard, which tracks streamlined projects’ progress under the legal auspices of Executive Order 13604, continue to exist on the website permits.performance.gov. It also creates a Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, which will have an executive director appointed by the president and consist of those working for executive agencies who deal with infrastructure project permitting as part of their day-to-day duties.

Exxon, Koch Lobbying

ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), American Petroleum Institute (API), Koch Industries, U.S.Chamber of Commerce and many others lobbied for the FAST Act’s passage.

The highway bill subsection formerly sat as a stand-alone bill, the Federal Permitting Improvement Act of 2015 (S.280), sponsored by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). A review of the list of those who lobbied for that piece of legislation by DeSmog reveals that ExxonMobil, Shell, Anerican Association of Oil Pipelines (AAOP), the Gas Processors Association and others all pushed for its passage.

Campaign finance data reviewed by DeSmog shows that Portman, up for re-election in 2016, has received $483,900 from the oil, gas and utility industry sectors (individuals and PACs, combined) so far in the campaign cycle. Portman’s campaign donors overlap with those who lobbied for the bill such as ExxonMobil, API, ANGA, Koch Industries and Shell.

Chamber of Commerce Runs Show

When the highway bill provision passed, Portman issued a press release featuring quotes from high-ranking building trades union officials, the National Association of Manufacturers — and probably most importantly in this case, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“The U.S. business community also applauds the permit streamlining provisions included in the FAST Act to coordinate and speed up the review and approval of permitting for significant infrastructure and manufacturing projects,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue stated in the Portman press release. “Improving the permitting process to make our system swift but safe – one of the Chamber’s longstanding regulatory and legislative priorities – is essential for investment, development, and growth of the American economy.”

Portman has received more than any other candidate so far, to the tune of $10,000 so far during the election cycle, from theU.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber lobbied for H.R. 22. His office did not respond to repeated requests for comment sent by DeSmog.

It also appears that the Chamber of Commerce spearheaded the submission of a multi-industry letter of support sent to U.S.Senate members on May 4. The May 4 letter has much of the same language, verbatim, as a March 3 letter submitted to the Senate by the Chamber.

Including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 169 Chamber groups signed the May 4 letter, out of the 300 groups and companies signing on in total.

Metadata from the May 4 letter shows that Marc Freedman, executive director of Labor Law Policy and registered lobbyistfor the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, authored it. Before coming to work at the Chamber, Freedman served as legal regulatory counsel for the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee.

The Chamber has played the long game on this legislation, beginning its push back in 2009 by creating the website “Project No Project,” which documents energy infrastructure projects held up by “NIMBY” (not in my backyard) activists on a state-by-state basis.

“These ‘Not In My Back Yard’ folks, or NIMBYs as they are called, block energy projects by organizing local opposition, changing zoning laws, opposing permits, filing lawsuits, and bleeding projects dry of their financing,” reads a website description from 2009. “Through Project No Project, the U.S. Chamber seeks to provide the cold, hard truth about NIMBY and radical environmental activism, and make our leaders finally pay attention to this growing problem.”

In March 2011, the Chamber followed up on the creation of the “Project No Project” website by releasing a report titled, “Progress Denied: A Study on the Potential Economic Impact of Permitting Challenges Facing Proposed Energy Projects.”

Years later, it appears, the Chamber has landed what it asked for: streamlining of domestic pipelines and energy infrastructure projects, enshrined by both congressional legislation and a presidential executive order.

GE, Obama Jobs Council

In his press release announcing the provision’s passage in the highway bill, Portman pointed out that the recommendation to streamline permitting for pipelines and other related energy infrastructure came not only from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s report, but also from President Obama’s 2011 Year-End Report published by his Jobs Council.

That report concluded that the U.S. government should go “all in” to expedite building pipelines and other fossil fuel-related projects:

The Council recognizes that providing access to more areas for drilling, mining and renewable energy development is controversial, but, given the current economic situation, we believe it’s necessary to tap America’s assets in a safe and responsible manner. Additionally, policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects are necessary to facilitate the delivery of America’s fuel and electricity and maintain the reliability of our nation’s energy system. Over the long term, we expect that innovation and technological advancements will greatly reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels. Until then, however, we need to be all in.

That section of the report then ends on a thankful note:

Image Credit: White House Jobs Council

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE), heads up the Jobs Council and in turn, GE has donated $6,000 so far to Portman’s U.S. Senate race run for office. GE also paid a legion of lobbyists to advocate for H.R. 22.

“Keystone-ization” Nullified?

Speaking to USA Today in May 2015, Martin Durbin — nephew of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and head lobbyist for thehydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) industry lobbying group ANGA — expressed his concern that gas pipeline projects could experience a Keystone XL redux.

“These are things that pipeline developers have had to deal with for a long time,” Durbin told USA Today. “But we’ve seen a change in the debate. I hesitate to put it this way, but call it the Keystone-ization of every pipeline project that’s out there, that if you can stop one permit, you can stop the development of fossil fuels. That’s changing the way we have to manage these projects.”

In the months that followed, ANGA, API (the two groups have since merged into a single entity) and several other oil and gas companies lobbied for and succeeded in making such a regulatory change, culminating in the passage of the FAST Act.

So is the age of “Keystone-ization” a done deal? Not everyone thinks so.

“Industry may get many things on its short-term wish list this political season, but the destruction of petrochemical NIMBY-ism as a whole is a pipe dream,” Ramsey Sprague, president of the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition told DeSmog.

Blockadia is rising. We are seeing more and more examples of frontline communities rising to exercise their agency over their collective futures in pursuit of environmental justice, and the season of decentralized environmental solidarity is only just beginning.

This article was first published by GR in February 2015

On September 23, 2014, an Italian court in Milan awarded compensation to a boy for vaccine-induced autism. (See the Italian document here.) A childhood vaccine against six childhood diseases caused the boy’s permanent autism and brain damage.

While the Italian press has devoted considerable attention to this decision and its public health implications, the U.S. press has been silent.

Italy’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Like the U.S., Italy has a national vaccine injury compensation program to give some financial support to those people who are injured by compulsory and recommended vaccinations. The Italian infant plaintiff received three doses of GlaxoSmithKline’s Infanrix Hexa, a hexavalent vaccine administered in the first year of life. These doses occurred from March to October 2006. The vaccine is to protect children from polio, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B, pertussis and Haemophilus influenza type B. In addition to these antigens, however, the vaccine then contained thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative, aluminum, an adjuvant, as well as other toxic ingredients. The child regressed into autism shortly after receiving the three doses.

When the parents presented their claim for compensation first to the Ministry of Health, as they were required to do, the Ministry rejected it. Therefore, the family sued the Ministry in a court of general jurisdiction, an option which does not exist in the same form in the U.S.

Court Decision: Mercury and Aluminum in Vaccine Caused Autism

Based on expert medical testimony, the court concluded that the child more likely than not suffered autism and brain damage because of the neurotoxic mercury, aluminum and his particular susceptibility from a genetic mutation. The Court also noted that Infanrix Hexa contained thimerosal, now banned in Italy because of its neurotoxicity, “in concentrations greatly exceeding the maximum recommended levels for infants weighing only a few kilograms.”

Presiding Judge Nicola Di Leo considered another piece of damning evidence: a 1271-page confidential GlaxoSmithKline report (now available on the Internet). This industry document provided ample evidence of adverse events from the vaccine, including five known cases of autism resulting from the vaccine’s administration during its clinical trials (see table at page 626, excerpt below).

Italian Government, Not Vaccine Maker, Pays for Vaccine Damages

As in many other developed countries, government, not industry, compensates families in the event of vaccine injury. Thus GSK’s apparent lack of concern for the vaccine’s adverse effects is notable and perhaps not surprising.

In the final assessment, the report states that:

“[t]he benefit/risk profile of Infanrix hexa continues to be favourable,” despite GSK’s acknowledgement that the vaccine causes side effects including “anaemia haemolytic autoimmune,thrombocytopenia, thrombocytopenic purpura, autoimmune thrombocytopenia, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, haemolytic anemia, cyanosis, injection site nodule, abcess and injection site abscess, Kawasaki’s disease, important neurological events (including encephalitis and encephalopathy), Henoch-Schonlein purpura, petechiae, purpura, haematochezia, allergic reactions (including anaphylactic and anaphylactoid reactions),” and death (see page 9).

The Milan decision is sober, informed and well-reasoned. The Ministry of Health has stated that it has appealed the Court’s decision, but that appeal will likely take several years, and its outcome is uncertain.

Rimini: 2012 – Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism

Two years earlier, on May 23, 2012, Judge Lucio Ardigo of an Italian court in Rimini presided over a similar judgment, finding that a different vaccine, the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine (MMR), had caused a child’s autism. As in the Milan case, the Ministry of Health’s compensation program had denied compensation to the family, yet after a presentation of medical evidence, a court granted compensation. There, too, the Italian press covered the story; the U.S. press did not.

In that case, a 15-month old boy received his MMR vaccine on March 26, 2004. He then immediately developed bowel and eating problems and received an autism diagnosis with cognitive delay within a year. The court found that the boy had “been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (with trivalent MMR).” The decision flew in the face of the conventional mainstream medical wisdom that an MMR-autism link has been “debunked.”

Italian Court Decisions Break New Ground in Debate Over Vaccines and Autism

Both these Italian court decisions break new ground in the roiling debate over vaccines and autism. These courts, like all courts, are intended to function as impartial, unbiased decision makers.

The courts’ decisions are striking because they not only find a vaccine-autism causal link, but they also overrule the decisions of Italy’s Ministry of Health. And taken together, the court decisions found that both the MMR and a hexavalent thimerosal- and aluminum-containing vaccine can trigger autism.

Italian Court Rulings Contradict Special U.S. Vaccine Court

These court decisions flatly contradict the decisions from the so-called U.S. vaccine court, the Court of Federal Claim’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. There, from 2007 to 2010, in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, three decision makers, called Special Masters, found that vaccines did not cause autism in any of the six test cases, and one Special Master even went so far as to compare the theory of vaccine-induced autism to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The Italian court decisions contrast starkly with these U.S. cases based on similar claims.

Read the full story at Age of Autism.

About the Author

Mary Holland is Research Scholar and Director of the Graduate Legal Skills Program at NYU Law School. She has published articles on vaccine law and policy, and is the co-editor of Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health and Our Children (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012).

The Vaccine Controversy, The Movie; a film by Richard P. Milner, Public Affairs Media, Inc.

This virtual debate presents two opposing views of the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The film is a pilot for a larger project to educate the public about the vaccine controversy.

Biochemist and pharmacy professor Dr. Boyd Haley disputes the claims of vaccine inventor/spokesperson Dr. Paul Offit point by point.

Dr. Offit says vaccines are safe and effective.

Dr. Haley says they are not.

DR. OFFIT ARGUES THAT VACCINES ARE ALL THAT STAND BETWEEN US AND A PLAGUE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES; THAT WHILE ADMITTEDLY, A FEW OF US ARE INJURED BY VACCINES; THE VAST MAJORITY ARE PROTECTED BY THEM.

DR. HALEY ARGUES THAT VACCINES ARE NOT VERY EFFECTIVE AT ALL.  AND THAT OUR CHILDHOOD VACCINE PROGRAM HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR DISABLING AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF CHILDREN.

A VIRTUAL DEBATE ABOUT THE GREATEST MEDICAL CONTROVERSY OF OUR TIME

Dr. Paul Offit, MD, a vaccine inventor, is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, a chair funded by Merck. He serves on the CDC committee that recommends vaccines for the US Mandatory Childhood Vaccination Schedule.  

For detailed biography, go to www.publicaffairsmediainc.blogspot.com.

Dr. Boyd Haley, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor and Chair of the Chemistry/ Biochemistry Department at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center.  His testimony before Congressional and government committees and the Institute of Medicine has resulted in legislation in several states to remove Thimerosal and mercury from dental and vaccine products. 

For detailed biography, go to www.publicaffairsmediainc.blogspot.com.

A film by Richard P. Milner

Produced and directed by Richard P. Milner

Public Affairs Media, Inc., a nonprofit corporation

Copyright 2014 – 2015

All rights reserved

Dr. Offit and Dr. Haley were interviewed separately and edited together.

The total project will include a series of virtual debates among experts, culminating in a full-length film airing all sides of the vaccine controversy.

To donate to Public Affairs Media, Inc., for the continuation of this project, go to www.publicaffairsmediainc.blogspot.com or FACEBOOK PAGE.   To contact the producer for more information, go to Facebook: Unsettled: The Vaccine Question, The Movie.

Transcript

MILNER: So as a paediatrician, you wouldn’t deepen your knowledge of molecular biology or the brain or other things like that.  That would be referred out to another specialist.  For example, if you saw a child with a concussion or you saw a child with some kind of brain injury, you wouldn’t treat that, would you?

OFFIT: No, it’s—in other words, what I am director of treatment of infectious diseases here at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia and so what we do here at—in the Infectious Disease division is we see children who are inpatients, who have severe or chronic or persistent or unknown infectious diseases, or we see children as outpatients who generally are referred by pediatricians in the community with an infectious disease that they’re having difficulty handling.

HALEY:  You know, the real problem with uh–people like Dr. Offit, they have no training in toxicology at all.  // Medical doctors do not receive training in toxicology to the extent that would qualify them to comment on whether or not an injection of a certain amount of a toxic chemical like Thimerosal or mercury in the body would be toxic.  They’re just not trained to evaluate that.

OFFIT: Vaccines are the best of two worlds.  What they do is they induce roughly the same immune response that are induced by natural infection without having to pay the price of natural infection.

HALEY:  That’s just totally not true.  // There’s a big difference in the immune response between a natural infection and getting an injection.  For example, if you get injected with the measles vaccine, you can get the measles.  People do.  If you get the measles, if you get it naturally, you’ll never get the measles a second time.

OFFIT: So best of both worlds.  You get the immune response that will protect you against a subsequent measles challenge, but you don’t have to pay the price of Measles infection, which can be a high price.

HALEY:  Most Americans want to believe that that’s the case.  But the bottom line is, uh, in the United States, we vaccinate earlier and more, uh, often and for more diseases than any other country in the world.  Yet we have the highest infant death rate of the 43 most modern countries.  We’re–we’re the–at the bottom of the heap with regard to being able to protect our children.  And I think a legitimate question to ask is:  If our vaccines are preventing infectious diseases and deaths from infectious diseases, what are American children dying of that make them have one of the highest infant death rates in the world? [SIDS and Asthma]

OFFIT: It’s certainly true, actually, that I you look at diseases like Whooping Cough or even to a lesser extent Diphtheria, you started to see some decline as we got, you know, more san—better sanitation, better hygiene in our country.  But you didn’t start to see a dramatic decline and virtual elimination of those diseases until we introduced vaccines.

HALEY:  I think he’s totally wrong and the–the data shows that he’s not correct in that assumption.  We saw the major drops in, uh, death from the many infectious diseases, say starting at 1900 when they start keeping records–1900, 1910–until about 1940, 1950.  Those rates of those diseases dropped dramatically before the vaccines were ever introduced, they dropped over 90%.  And so the bigger drops were before the vaccines were produced.

[CHARTS]

THIS CHART OF NEW YOUR CITY MORTALITY RATES TRACKS INFECTIOUS DISEASE FROM 1880 TO 1911.  IT SHOWS THAT DEATHS FROM DIPHTHERIA, THE BLUE LINE, FELL PRECIPITOUSLY FROM A HIGH OF A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE DEATHS PER HUNDRED THOUSAND TO LESS THAN TWENTY-FIVE BY 1911.

IT ALSO SHOWS A SIMILAR DROP IN DIPHTHERIA AND CROUP, THE RED LINE, FROM A HIGH OF 260 DEATHS PER HUNDRED THOUSAND TO LESS THAN TWENTY-FIVE BY 1911 WITH A VACCINE FOR EITHER ONE.

THIS CHART OF DEATHS FROM PERTUSSIS OR WHOOPING COUGH IS FROM VITAL AND HISTORICAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES FROM 1900 TO 1968.  IT SHOWS A DRAMATIC DECLINE IN DEATHS FROM PERTUSSIS WELL BEFORE THE PERTUSSIS VACCINE CAME INTO WIDESPREAD USE IN THE NINETEEN FORTIES.

THE DEATH RATE FALLS FROM AS MANY AS SEVENTEEN PER HUNDRED THOUSAND TO LESS THAN TWO BEFORE THE VACCINE CAME INTO WIDESPREAD USE.

THIS CHART OF UNITED STATES MORTALITY RATES SHOWS THAT CONTINUED DEATHS FROM DIPHTHERIA HAD FALLEN BELOW FIFTEEN PER HUNDRED THOUSAND BEFORE THE VACCINE WAS INTRODUCED IN 1920.

PERTUSSIS FELL FROM AS MANY AS 16 PER HUNDRED THOUSAND IN 1907 AND AGAIN IN 1919 TO LESS THAN ONE BY 1951.  THE VACCINE WAS IN USE FROM THE 1940’S, BUT SIZEABLE DROPS OCCURRED WELL BEFORE IT WAS INTRODUCED.

MEASLES, THE GREEN LINE, FELL TO LESS THAN TWO PER HUNDRED THOUSAND IN 1940, A FULL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE 1963 WHEN THE VACCINE WAS FIRST INTRODUCED.

TYPHOID, THE DARK BLUE LINE AND SCARLET FEVER, THE RED LINE ALSO DECLINED DRAMATICALLY OVER THE SAME PERIOD.  WITHOUT A VACCINE.

THIS CHART SHOWS THE DECLINE OF ALL FIVE DISEASES EITHER BEFORE A VACCINE OR WITHOUT A VACCINE.

HALEY:  Well, you know, when you talk about how much money the–the vaccine program costs–costs the American public, we’re spending, uh, billions of dollars on vaccines.  And maybe we would better–be better served if we took that billions of dollars and spent it on hygiene.  And good food.  And maybe the–the availability of antibiotics in certain areas because I think antibiotics and hygiene have done a lot more to, uh, reduce the amount of infectious diseases in this country than have the vaccine program.

OFFIT: and so I live in Philadelphia and therefore feel compelled to, you know, to quote Ben Franklin whenever possible.  But you know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  That’s always true.  You’d much rather prevent something than to try and have to treat it.

HALEY:  Well, I agree with that and I’m trying to prevent infant, uh, deaths and sicknesses caused by in–uh–injection of mercury into their bodies.

OFFIT: what I would argue, though, is that we can be very proud of vaccines because the kind of catchment systems, safety catchment systems for vaccines like so-called VAERS or Vaccine Safety Data Link, frankly don’t exist for drugs.

HALEY:  Well, I’m not so sure they, uh, exist effectively, from what I’ve heard, for vaccines either.  Less–less than one out of 10 adverse effects are reported.  And I would say that if you think the vaccines are, uh, so safe, then explain to me why this country that has the highest vaccine and the earliest vaccine, uh, rate in the world has such a high level of infant mortality.  Much higher than those who give much less vaccines and they give them a lot later in the child’s life.

OFFIT: I think vaccines are very safe.  You know, ultimately use the sort of dichotomy of safe/unsafe.  I think more fairly one should say “very safe”.  Because vaccines, like anything that induces an effect in the body, can induce a side effect.  And certainly vaccines do have side effects.  But I think one can argue that their benefits clearly outweigh the risks, and unfortunately the risks are often misunderstood by the public.

HALEY:  Vaccines should be totally safe.  You shouldn’t be injecting anything into a baby that is toxic and known to be toxic, that increases the health risk to that baby.  And that’s what we’ve been doing.  We’re injecting aluminum and, uh, mercury, ethyl mercury, into these children.  And put–and then some of the vaccines, we’ve seen that they have component parts of DNA from pigs and bovine and chickens, etcetera, that are also being injected.  That’s not safe to do that.

MILNER: Do vaccines cause autism?

OFFIT: No.  Vaccines don’t cause autism.

MILNER: Absolutely sure.

OFFIT: Absolutely sure.

MILNER: Okay.

OFFIT: It doesn’t make sense that they would.  Biologically it never made sense that they would.  And now we have a wealth of epidemiological studies proving that they didn’t.

HALEY:  There is–a lot of logic as to why we think Thimerosal or mercury exposure to children caused the autism epidemic.  Number one, autism didn’t exist before we started using organic mercury in vaccines and other biological systems.  The first cases reported were in 1941 and we started using mercury in vaccines and biologicals in 1933 or approximately there. When the autism epidemic kicked out in the United States, it started in 1988, it went up in every state in the Union:  Alaska, Hawaii, California, Florida, Maine, and everything in between.  What–there has to been an environmental toxin because we have established there is no genetic cause of autism.  It didn’t exist and you don’t have genetics-caused epidemics.

You can have a genetic susceptibility to a toxin, introduce a new toxin, and you can cause an epidemic and I think that’s where the autism, uh, thing is.  These are genetically susceptible people being exposed to a new toxin.  The fact that we think that Thimerosal did that is it went up in all 50 states at the same time, at the same time we started the–CDC-mandated vaccine program.  That’s–that’s issue number one.  Number two, what would be this toxin if it can’t be, uh, uh, coal-fired power plants or something as unequally distributed around the country, then it has to be something that the child is, uh, exposed to before two years of age.  ‘Cause the average age of diagnosis is four and a half years of age.  So they have to be exposed quite early in life.  The vaccine program fits that.  Then you have to say–it has to be something that affects boys more than girls.

Well, Thimerosal, there’s no doubt about it.  Mercury affects the male species much more than it does the female species.  And then number four, you have to look at all the biological effects.  Dr. Offit is ignorant of the biochemistry involved in autism if he says mercury or Thimerosal exposure can’t cause that because what we’ve seen and what other people have done in researches as far away as Poland, Germany, Japan, Korea, etcetera. // They have shown that Thimerosal will induce the same biochemical abnormalities as you see in autism.

OFFIT: you can’t claim that vaccines are in any way a contributor, a real contributor to autism, and then not find it in epidemiological studies.  The reason that you don’t find it is it’s not there to be found. // The truth is vaccines don’t cause autism.

MILNER: Then why do all these parents say we got a vaccine, then my child got autism right after?

OFFIT: They are perfectly reasonable. I mean, I think, you know, from a parent’s standpoint they—their child was fine, they got a vaccine and then they weren’t fine any more.  The question is:  Did the vaccine cause it?  I mean, just because one event follows another, it doesn’t mean that it’s causally associated with the other. And hence you do the kinds of studies that allow you to answer that question.

HALEY:  There is nothing but solid proof that Thimerosal is incredibly toxic at the very lowest level added to any cells in culture, injected into any animal, or in any setting where we’ve looked at that exposure.  Even applying it to the skin of a baby caused them to–to get so toxic that they died.

MILNER:  but wouldn’t you be able to say, okay, let’s look at this.  Is there a population in Chicago that went through this health care system that did not get autism and did not get vaccines?  Can we determine that that would be true or false?

OFFIT: I think what you would have to do, if you were going to look, for example, at an unvaccinated population in Chicago, a home schooled population in Chicago, and try and compare them then to the surrounding community where say vaccine rates are where they should be, is you would have to prospectively do that study, which is to say you would—because you would have to control for the fact that the healthcare seeking behavior is different.

OFFIT: I mean, you could do that study but it would not be an ethical study. First of all, it’s not ethical not to give vaccines to children because children can die of vaccine-preventable diseases.  And when you do that, who’s responsible for that?

HALEY:  You know, this is something that all the people in the immunology or vaccine program fight totally against, and that’s to look at the effect of, um, at the rate of autism in the non-vaccinated population, the non-Thimerosal-exposed population versus that of an exposed population.  They will do anything to avoid doing that, make any excuse.  What he’s saying is absurd.  It’s easy to go through and get a large general population of people that have not been vaccinated and look at them and look at the autism rate in that group.  Our government has that data.  They can definitely obtain it.  //  But the vaccine manufacturers and the people who live–make money off of giving vaccines do not want this looked at because what it does and will show and has shown is that the people who do not get vaccinated or do not get exposed to Thimerosal do not have nearly the rate of autism as do those that do.

OFFIT: It’s has frankly been done in the Amish community and now one knows that in the Amish community the rates of autism probably are exactly identical to that in the surrounding community.  In fact, there are clinics for children who are Amish that have autism. So if that original hypothesis was wrong,

HALEY:  Dan Olmsted was a reporter for–for UPI who went to, uh, Lancaster, Pennsylvania // went to the clinics there and tried to find Amish that were autistic. // I know they don’t vaccinate nearly as much.  They–they don’t have their babies–babies in hospitals like most people do.”  So they do–definitely aren’t getting the–a vaccine on the day of birth.  Most of them. // Let’s see what the Amish autism rate is.  And he couldn’t find very many.  And the ones he found had been vaccinated.  So I would say that, um, uh, this is still a viable option.  And I would tell you that since then I have read a study // where they looked at homeschooled children.  An epidemiological study where they sent out a–a form asking them to look at if their children were vaccinated and if any of them had any medical problems such as autism, pneumonia, etcetera.  And the take-home lesson from that study was that the unvaccinated children were much more healthy than the vaccinated children.  And they had a much lower rate of autism and asthma, etcetera.  And, uh, the, uh, they were–and that the vaccinated children were much more likely to get sick later on in life with pneumonia.  They had more, uh, hospital calls, etcetera.

MILNER: Have we really taken thimerosal out of vaccines entirely?

OFFIT: Yeah.  //  There are multi-dose preparations of influenza vaccine which are given to greater than two years old, which may contain thimerosol at preservative levels.  And I think there’s a preparation of diphtheria/tetanus containing vaccine which contains thimerosol at preservative levels, but that’s it. // now that we essentially have removed ethyl mercury from vaccines, certainly to any vaccine that’s given to a less than two-year-old, they don’t receive preservative levels of mercury, the incidence of autism, if anything, has only increased.

HALEY:  Well, you know, they say it’s not there.  That’s–first of all, that’s not true.  Thimerosal is still used in the vaccine manufacturing process.  They just don’t add it as a preservative anymore.  But you still have a certain level–about one-tenth the level that used to be there is still there.  And–and all the vaccines that are used in, um, multiple dose vials like the flu vaccine that they recommend for six months old children?  Still contains, uh, Thimerosal.  They’re getting a bolus dose of mercury.  When you in–when you inject your baby, uh, with the flu vaccine at the–at the local clinics. // it’s the same as it was in 1985 when that–we started the man–CDC-mandated program.  It’s quite a high level.  It’s 12.5 micrograms per dose of mercury.  That means it would be safe for a baby to take, uh, according to EPA standards, eating fish if the baby weighed 275 lbs. // it’s not against the law to give Thimerosal-containing vaccines. // And an HMO can go to the vaccine manufacturer or state health agency and say, “We want to buy vaccines and we want the cheapest because we don’t have a big budget.  Is–can I buy this Thimerosal-containing vaccine for our children?  For the children that are being vaccinated in our state, our location, our HMO?”  And, yes, they can.  It’s not against the law.  And so you’re trusting whether these people will buy the vacs–the Thimerosal-free vaccines.  And I know that they don’t do it all the time because I’ve had mothers call me up and say, “Doctor Haley, I have to vac–you know, my child vaccinated.  What should I do?”  I tell ’em, “Tell ’em you want to see the insert to show that the vaccine that they’re giving is Thimerosal-free and you look at a preservative and see if it says there’s Thimerosal.”  And so many times they’ve called me back over the last few years, saying, “No, the vaccine they want to give my child contained Thimerosal.”  So there is no proof that the Thimerosal has been removed from the exposure to American children.  They like saying that so people calm down.   People like me.

MILNER:  One thing that I don’t know whether it’s Boyd Haley or the guys in Calgary.  No it was the guys Calgary.  But I think Boyd Haley also did this.  They took brain neurons, snail brain neurons and put a solution of different heavy metals on the neurons and they show at least on camera is the neuron being torn apart when they put a solution of mercury on there.  As I understand it it’s elemental mercury, but you can correct me on it.  And then they also say when they add aluminum to that mix, it catalyzes the reaction.  Are you familiar with that? Have a response to that?  Explain that in a different way?

OFFIT:  No, I think that historically in medicine that studies in laboratory cells or studies in experimental animals are not always predictive of events in children.

HALEY:  Well, you know, he–he’s, uh, uh, saying, “Let’s don’t look at any of the science.”  And it’s–it’s not always.  No, it isn’t always. //  But primarily you can usually explain if there’s a toxic effect of some material, you can biologically explain it by doing laboratory-type studies like I did.  I mean, that study in Calgary came off of the studies I worked with those guys early on, showing that mercury added to human–normal human brain tissue would induce the same, uh, biochemical abnormalities found in Alzheimer’s diseases brain. // “This means that it’s first exposure to mercury can, uh, have a dramatic effect on somebody who’s very prone to getting Alzheimer’s Disease, uh, whatever the cause.  // The people at Calgary and I did a study together.  We took rats and put them in a mercury vapor chamber and had them breathe mercury vapor for various periods of time, and then sacrificed them at various periods of time, looked at the mercury in their brain, and the quality of the tubulin, the protein that’s being affected in AD brain most dramatically.  And we got the same result.  Exposure–exposing rats to mercury vapor caused the tubulin in their brain to dissipate.  Not become functional // Then later at Calgary, they did this study on the neurons in culture.  I–I wasn’t involved in that but it’s a very good study.  And they showed that mercury and only mercury, which is what I had found, that only mercury would cause these biochemical abnormalities when added to normal brain–human brain homogenates.  Uh, they found the same thing in the neurons in culture, that mercury and only mercury at those very, very low levels would cause the tubulin to disintegrate or fall apart.  And form neurofibular tangles, which is the pathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s Disease.  And I would say since, uh, then, just recently, people in, uh, Korea have published a paper, a very good paper, showing that mercury also, uh, when added to cells in culture, neuronal cells in culture, will cause the build-up of beta amyloid plaques.  In other words, mercury now can be shown to increase neurofibulary tangles, beta amyloid plaques, tau hyperphosphorylation, which are the three pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease.  And yet our government refuses to take the lead on this and look at the science done all over the United–all over the world, uh, including the United States, and say–which makes reasonable, uh, assumption, to decrease the rate of Alzheimer’s Disease in this country.  And that’s to prevent it by removing exposure to mercury [from vaccines and from dental amalgam and from, uh, toxic, uh, uh, uh, plants that are releasing mercury into the environment.]

MILNER: Let’s get back to the same point:  The Burbacher study.   What Burbacher appears to be saying is that ethylmercury is not eliminated from the body.  It just clears the blood.  It goes to the organs.  Is that new information or is that disputed information?

OFFIT: No.  What Burbacher found is that it is possible for mercury, either as ethyl mercury or methyl mercury, to exist in the brain as essentially inorganic mercury, that the methyl or ethyl mercury molecule gets cleaved off.  Is that toxic?  Is that dangerous?  There’s no evidence that that’s true.  His study in experimental monkeys showed something that is interesting but has, to my knowledge, no correlate in harm.  I mean, it’s certainly, it’s certainly known that organic mercury in the form of methyl mercury can be harmful or logarithmically higher quantities of ethyl mercury than logarithmically higher than one is getting vaccines is harmful, but the important thing is the proof is in the pudding.  If it was harmful, then it should be shown in a study to be harmful.  And the most sensitive way to answer that question is with an epidemiological study, not with an animal model study, not with a cell study of cells in the laboratory.

If you want to know whether or not something is harmful in children, test it in children.  And that’s been done redundantly.

MILNER: So you’re saying elemental mercury in the brain is not a problem.

OFFIT: I don’t know.

MILNER: That you know of.

OFFIT: I don’t know.  I mean, it’s an interesting finding.

HALEY:  I mean, I’m just taken aback by that comment.  I mean, the studies with rats and–and they did this with rabbits.  They injected rabbits with radioactive Thimerosal and they cleared the blo–blood 75% within six hours.  But while it was clearing the blood, it was going up in all the other organs of the body dramatically.  It wasn’t leaving the rabbit.  The rabbit didn’t urinate all that mercury.  It doesn’t leave the body that fast. // that’s documented, scientific studies.  Thimerosal does not leave the body within a short period of time.  Leaving the blood is just the first step of it getting into the other tissues where it has its toxic effects.  And it may be, uh, uh, the first step in–in a long and prolonged,  uh, aspect of getting mercury out of the body totally.  But it does not prevent it from being toxic.  It’s in the body plenty long enough to cause major toxic effects.  That’s well-established.  And why he, uh, wants to say that this indicates that the–Thimerosal is removed when we vaccinated into children.  It’s gone in six hours or a certain number of hours, he’s totally wrong.  None of the science that’s been published would support that,

OFFIT: So you can’t claim that vaccines are in any way a contributor, a real contributor to autism, and then not find it in epidemiological studies.  The reason that you don’t find it is it’s not there to be found.

HALEY:  With regard to his epidemiological studies, those were mainly funded by the CDC.  // none of them were done by Americans.  They were done primarily in Denmark by a guy who’s now on, uh, the Most Wanted list by the Department of Justice for embezzling money from that same program. // they were loaded with, uh, statistical, uh, manipulations to reverse what would be considered, uh, a logical find.  For example, in the study by Madsen, which is one of them he talks about, they said that removal of a toxic material, Thimerosal, which is a neuro-toxin, exposure–removing that exposure from infants caused the autism rate to increase twenty-fold.  That’s in their- // or Figure 1 of their thing.  That’s a ridiculous find.  Totally ridiculous find.  Instead of looking at that, and we have since looked at that in detail and found out that they, uh, they did a–a–a very, very selective and very poor data collection job // And we have now published a paper where we talk about six publications funded by the CDC or involved with, uh, CDC people, as well.  Most of them done in, uh, Europe.  That, uh, flagrantly ignore the rules of statistics to get the answers they want.  It’s that old line of–from Mark Twain, “liars, damn liars, and statisticians”.  They were paid to get the results showing that Thimerosal was safe and was not causing a toxic effect.  And doing that, they broke all the rules of statistical analysis.  And we have detailed that in a publication that’s currently out.

MERCURY IN MEDICINE REPORT

HON. DAN BURTON OF INDIANA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

US Congressional Record – Tuesday, May 20, 2003

ALL BUT ONE OF THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL OR STATISTICAL STUDIES THAT DR. OFFIT REFERS TO WERE CARRIED OUT BEFORE 2003.  THEY WERE REVIEWED AS PART OF A THREE-YEAR CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION AND HEARING ENDING IN THAT YEAR.  ACCORDING TO THE REPORT OF THE INVESTIGATION,

“TO DATE, STUDIES CONDUCTED OR FUNDED BY THE CDC THAT PURPORTEDLY DISPUTE ANY CORRELATION BETWEEN AUTISM AND VACCINES INJURY HAVE BEEN OF POOR DESIGN, UNDER-FUNDED, AND FATALLY FLAWED.

THE CDC’S RUSH TO SUPPORT AND PROMOTE SUCH RESEARCH IS REFLECTIVE OF A PHILOSOPHICAL CONFLICT IN LOOKING FAIRLY AT EMERGING THEORIES AND CLINICAL DATA RELATED TO ADVERSE REACTIONS FROM VACCINATIONS.”

OFFIT: mercury certainly is a toxin.  There’s no doubt about it.  But as Paracelsus said, you know, in the 16^th century, the dose makes the poison.  I mean, that’s always true.

HALEY:  He talks about Paracelsus.  And, you know, there is a–a bit of logic to that.  Of course everybody knows if you drink one beer, you’re not gonna get as drunk as if you drink ten.  So there is, uh, uh, a tie-in with that.  But then when you compare it–when you look at Thimerosal, and you say, ‘what’s the volume–what–what level of // Thimerosal is toxic in a baby that starts causing toxic issues and how much–how close to that level do you get when you give a vaccine?’  You realize that the dose is quite toxic, that you’re injecting into these children.  I mean, his–his mind was about this.  Plus we also know that in the case of mercury, there have been studies done showing the synergistic effect with lead, cadmium, and certain other things like such as aluminum, and which we showed in the–the neuron study with aluminum.  If you put in Thimerosal and then add either lead, cadmium, or aluminum, you dramatically increase the toxicity of that level of alum–of, uh, mercury.  Mercury is synergistically enhanced by the presence of most other metals. // in the one study that’s been published, when they took a non-toxic level of mercury and a non-toxic level of lead, 1/20th of that, mixed the two together, they developed a ma–material or a solution that was 100% effective at killing rats.  It killed 100% of the rats, when it should, if it were additive, the two together, it should have killed none of them. // in the one study that’s been published, when they took a non-toxic level of mercury and a non-toxic level of lead, 1/20th of that, mixed the two together, they developed a ma–material or a solution that was 100% effective at killing rats.  It killed 100% of the rats, when it should, if it were additive, the two together, it should have killed none of them.

OFFIT: But Aluminum, you know, is certainly not as well studied, I think, as has been Thimerosal.  You don’t have that, you know, got Aluminum, didn’t get Aluminum study because you really can’t have it.  I mean, the vaccines require, some vaccines require adjuvants

[CHARTS]

THIS CHART FROM DR. DAVID AYOUB, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE COMPARES THE MERCURY AND ALUMINUM CONTENT IN VACCINES GIVEN TO CHILDREN BY EIGHTEEN MONTHS.

FROM 1970 TO 1985 THESE CHILDREN RECEIVED FOUR SHOTS WITH BOTH MERCURY AND ALUMINUM.  THAT WENT TO FIVE IN 1986, TEN IN 1994 AND ELEVEN IN 2000.

THEN IN 2001, MERCURY WAS NOT LONGER ADDED AS A PRESERVATIVE, BUT WAS STILL PRESENT AT TEN PERCENT OF PREVIOUS LEVELS, WHILE SHOTS CONTAINING ALUMINUM WENT TO 15.

BY 2004 THREE SHOTS WITH MERCURY AS A PRESERVATIVE WERE ADDED BACK IN WHILE ALUMINUM-CONTAINING SHOTS REMAINED THE SAME.

BY 2007, CHILDREN UNDER 18 MONTHS RECEIVED THREE SHOTS CONTAINING MERCURY AND SEVENTEEN CONTAINING ALUMINUM.

AS OF 2015, THERE ARE 10 SHOTS WITH MERCURY ADDED AS A PRESERVATIVE AND SIX SHOTS WITH ALUMINUM ADDED AS AN ADJUVANT.

Source: Catherine Frompovich

Reference: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

MILNER: Can our immune response hurt us?  Can that be the problem with vaccines?  What our immune system does as a result of seeing the foreign protein?

OFFIT: Yeah.  It’s certainly true that some infectious diseases can cause your body to react against itself. // Campylobacter, for example, is an intestinal bacterial infection that can itself cause something called Guillain Barre Syndrome, which is this semi-paralysis.  And Lyme bacteria, you know, so called Borrelia Burgdorferi can cause you to respond, to react not only to the bacteria but also at the same time to these cells that sort of line your joints causing a chronic arthritis.  But there’s no evidence that vaccines do that.

HALEY:  What has been shown in a lot of research is that mercury increases the susceptibility to, uh, immunological problems.  And also infection from bacteria.  For example, if you take brown Norway rats that are susceptible to, uh, getting arthritis from a certain bacterial injection, they will do it much quicker and much easier if they’re given a dose of mercury before you give them the–the bacteria.  In other words, mercury enhances the ability of the bacteria to penetrate the joints and start the arthritic, uh, condition.  And we have done studies and these are now published in some of the best toxicological journals in the world. // Looking at membranes that make up the cardiovascular system, as well as membranes that line the intestine, and what we have found is that mercury and methyl mercury and ethyl mercury and Thimerosal all cause those membranes to become very leaky.  When those membranes become leaky, then the immune system loses its compartmentalization.  Uh, in other words, the immune system is meant to be compartmentalized into your blood system.  It’s not meant to get into your intestine.  Nor are intestinal particles, um, meant to get into the bloodstream in–intact.  And when you are exposed to certain levels of mercury, you can open up these membrane, make them leaky, as you would see in leaky gut syndrome or in colitis and certain things.  When you start getting this leakiness, then your immune system can go wild–wild, attacking places where it shouldn’t be attacking.  And producing antibodies that it normally would never ever produce.  This is the reason why a lot of people have antibodies to certain food products in their bloodstream that should never ever have gotten into the bloodstream.  And the only way you can make those antibodies is to get that entire food particle into the bloodstream.  And you do that by having a leaky membrane, either in the arteries or in the, uh, uh, intestinal tract.

OFFIT: But I think there’s been now excellent data looking at children sort of who, you know, who receive vaccines compared to those who didn’t.  To answer the question:  Are you at greater risk of asthma?  Are you at greater risk of allergies?  And I think the answer has been very clearly that you’re not.

HALEY:  there’s a study from Canada where they looked at the rate of, uh, asthma induced in children that got the vaccine at two months versus four months.  And the asthma rate was much higher in those who got it at four months.  He–he clearly selects the papers he wants to believe and ignores those that don’t fit into his–want–what he wants to believe, uh, uh, set.

MILNER: The critics of the genetic thing would say, well, there’s no such thing as a genetic epidemic.  Would you agree with that statement?

OFFIT: I don’t think there’s an epidemic of Autism. // I think if we went into a time machine and went back thirty or forty years and used the same diagnostic criteria that we currently use to diagnose Autism, and introduce it into the community so that everybody is aware as they were—as they are now, and also make it very clear in that community now thirty years in the past that you will qualify for services if you have this diagnosis, I think you would find that the incidence of Autism would be the same thirty years ago as it is now.

HALEY:  I think his idea that autism is at the same rate as it was 30 years ago indicates to me that this man does not read the literature and the science at all.  Doesn’t even–I mean, even from the Department of Education.  They have put out, you know, scores of information saying, “We have a boy problem.  Our boys are becoming less scholastically capable.  And they’re not going to college.  They’re not–they’re not even graduating from high school at the rate that they used to.”  And the amount of money that we have been spending on children with neurological illnesses, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, I mean, I can’t believe he says that.  I mean, it tells me he does not read the literature and I–I certainly hope he is much more, uh, critical when he reads the literature about making a vaccine which he’s supposed to be an expert in than he is when he’s reading other things on autism.  He should not, with his, uh, comments, be considered at all, any type of an expert about autism.

There were no reported cases of Autism prior to its discovery in 1943 by Leo Kanner.

It continued to be rare for decades, but gradually increased.

Now, according to the CDC, it affects 1 in 68 children.

It is over 4 times more common in boys (1 in 42) than girls (1 in 189).

US Prevalence figures for mercury-related diseases:

Autism Spectrum Disorders – 4.9 million (mainly children).

Alzheimer’s Disease – 5.4 million.

Cancer – 14.48 million.

Autoimmune Diseases:

Allergies, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Lou Gehrig’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis – 15-25 million.

Asthma – 43 million.

Cardiovascular Disease – 88.6 million.

Obesity – 97.4 million.

Annual Mercury-related Sudden Deaths:

Anaphylactic Shock – 1,500

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – 2,300

Asthma – 3,300

Sudden Cardiac Arrest – 381,600

Percentage of US Children with a Chronic Adverse Health Conditions – 54.1

Unsettled: The Vaccine Question

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“Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.” Tony Blair, CNN, 15th January 2015. (GR Editor: “In your face”, Tony Blair)

A little over three months short of the thirteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq (20^th March 2003) now widely accepted as unlawful even by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it has emerged that the Unit in the British Ministry of Defence established to investigate “allegations of torture and unlawful killings” by members of the 46,000 UK armed forces originally deployed has been “overwhelmed” with cases.

The Independent reports (1) that:

“British soldiers who have served in Iraq may face prosecution for crimes, including murder”, according to Mark Warwick, the former police detective heading the Unit, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. (IHAT.)

In his first major interview, Mr. Warwick told The Independent he “believed there would be sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges.”

The “serious allegations” which “include homicide”, could lead to “significant evidence” being laid before “the Service Prosecuting Authority to prosecute and charge.”

Allegations of torture, rape and unlawful killing by British armed services personnel between 2003 and 2009 – after which they slunk out of Iraq under cover of darkness – has increased tenfold, since the Unit was established, in November 2010:

“In 2010 (there were) cases involving 152 victims.” There are now: “more than 1,500 victims”, according to recent update. “Of these, 280 are victims of alleged unlawful killing by British forces in Iraq, but more than 200 of these cases have yet to be investigated, with just 25 under investigation.”

Further:

“Of 1,235 alleged cases of ill-treatment, including accusations of rape and torture, only 45 are under investigation.”

Cases are to be reviewed over the coming twelve to eighteen months with “significant cases” being studied with “the war crimes threshold” in mind. Five years after IHAT’s establishment there have been no prosecutions.

To the cynic IHAT seems to have all the hallmarks of a typical British sweeping under the straw operation with the fox in charge of the henhouse brooms.

The organization was set up by the Ministry of Defence to investigate the armed services’, employees of the Ministry of Defence, alleged misconduct. Though it was established under Mark Warwick, a civilian detective, he was originally assisted by the Royal Military Police (RMP) until a ruling in the UK Court of Appeal in November 2011that their involvement “substantially compromised” proceeding since they had been involved in detentions in Iraq – which were what were being scrutinised.

Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey responded by replacing the RMP with the Royal Navy Police. Birmingham, UK’s Public Interest Lawyers who represent many who claim to have been tortured, challenged the new den of advocate foxes, since the Naval Police had also taken part in interrogations, alleging: “that abuses were so systemic and widespread that only a public inquiry will satisfy the UK’s human rights obligations.”

The judgement handed down on 24^th May 2013 was that: “IHAT has now been structured in such a way that it can independently carry out its investigative and prosecutorial functions.” (2) RIP independent British judiciary.

The Ministry of Defence has one last, well, defence – and defiance. The funds it gave to the “Inquiry” were due to be cut off in 2016. They have been extended to 2019. Were there any will hidden somewhere in those handpicked from the ranks of those which includes alleged perpetrators to deliver justice, in such a time scale, given such a massive, meticulous legal task, it would be between Herculean to impossible to achieve.

Incidentally the Royal Navy still had a contingency in Iraq until May 2011, even after the Inquiry had been established into the horrors of Britain’s £9.24 Billion lawless onslaught (2010 figure.)

The savagery will surely haunt the UK and “allies” for countless decades to come. What an age since Tony Blair’s Christmas visit to Iraq on 23^rd December 2005 when he crept in to the country, his visit kept a secret until he appeared, helicoptered in from Kuwait.

He told the troops:

 “The importance of this is probably greater today than it has ever been” and that Iraq would now mean that: “ … the region is more safe, our own country is more safe, because international terrorism will have been dealt a huge blow.

“If we manage to defeat the terrorism here, we will have dealt it a blow worldwide.”

Of course before the invasion there was no terrorism, car bombs, suicide bombers in Iraq, Syria or widely elsewhere, they manifested and multiplied with the arrival of the invaders.

Tony Blair is pursued globally by those aiming to try him for war crimes, crimes against the peace, or crimes of aggression. Events have displayed his delusional mendacity not alone in his hand in the unimaginable horrors of the destruction of Iraq and that inflicted on the people, country and poisoning of the region by the chemically toxic and radioactive weapons used – but the totally predictable blowback it has wrought in terror alerts and acts in the West and against Western interests.

The least that is owed, minimal as it is, given the enormity of Iraq’s victims, is independent, honest investigations and justice from Britain’s IHAT. It is very little, very late. It will not quell the grief, the rage, home the dispossessed, the orphans, widows, or bring back the dead, but it would be a start.

Charles Antony Lynton Blair, QC, in the Dock with his cohorts in this  tragedy, which will be recorded amongst history’s great crimes, would also serve as a warning that Nuremberg’s great Principles still apply, as expressed then by Chief American Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson:

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Notes 

1.    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-soldiers-could-face-prosecution-for-crimes-committed-during-iraq-conflict-investigators-a6793271.html

2.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Historic_Allegations_Team#cite_note-7

3.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Historic_Allegations_Team

4.    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4551650.stm

(image) author F. William Engdahl

 There is a very positive news coming out of Paris, a city with more than her share of bad news lately. It’s a major legal victory for the voices of science and reason against the GMO Monsanto-led cabal. Its implications will be felt worldwide. If our world ever gets the will to rid the 21st Century Black Death plague masquerading under the name of Genetic Manipulation of Organisms or GMO, it will owe a huge debt of gratitude to the courageous work of Prof. Gilles-Eric Séralini and his extraordinary team of dedicated scientists at CRIIGEN, the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering, in France.

Before Iraqi forces retook Ramadi last week, Washington was accused of evacuating around 2,000 ISIS terrorists from the city.

Iraqi People’s Mobilization Shiite militia umbrella group commander Hashd al-Shaabi said America delayed the liberation of Ramadi and Fallujah to enable “evacuat(ion) of (ISIS) ringleaders (and fighters) secretly to unknown places” by helicopter.

Fort Russ reported an unnamed high-ranking Iraqi official, saying “(o)ur signals and human intelligence informed the Americans…about ISIS movement(s).”

“We were not allowed to engage against these, and no one in the government can contradict the Americans…The US ordered Baghdad to (permit) free passage (for) ISIS and to reduce the Iranian influence…”

Washington ordered Baghdad to replace heads of antiterrorism, intelligence, military security services and the interior ministry. It wants a US-friendly team serving its interests on the ground.

So far, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hasn’t requested Russian air support, caving to US demands, even though he knows it’s supporting ISIS and wants Iraq balkanized into a Kurdish north, Shia south and Sunni center.

Washington supports the illegal presence of Turkish forces in northern Iraq. A French intelligence official said “(t)he Middle East will never be the same as before.”

“What is becoming more clear now is that ISIS is a (tool) used by (powerful) players for their agenda and plans to” redraw the regional map.

Death, destruction and human misery haunt millions of Iraqis. Washington’s imperial agenda bears full responsibility.

A UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) reported 7,500 Iraqis killed and another 15,000 injured in 2015 – a likely gross undercount given raging conflict in much of the country.

Casualties are likely multiples greater than special UN representative for the Secretary-General (SRSG) Jan kubis indicated, saying:

“The year 2015 has seen thousands of Iraqis killed and injured as a result of conflict and terrorism. This is unacceptable. The Iraqi people have every right to live in peace and tranquility. The United Nations continues to deplore this continuing loss of life.”

Ban Ki-moon is a US-appointed imperial tool, failing his sworn mandate “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” oppose force and uphold fundamental human rights.

He’s an instrument of US foreign policy, notably its endless imperial wars. The long-suffering people of Iraq and other troubled countries have no ally in the Secretary-General. He’s done nothing to serve their interests.

Scores die or suffer severe injuries daily in Iraq from violence alone, at times hundreds, civilians mostly affected.

UNAMI admits it’s impossible to verify the precise casualty count, much higher than official reports. No count is kept on numbers perishing from lack of food, water, necessary medical care or overall deprivation.

Nothing in prospect suggests relief, not as long as Washington continues pursuing its imperial agenda, ruthlessly disregarding human lives and welfare.

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

GR Editor’s Note

Evacuating US sponsored terrorists is routine. See Seymour Hersh’s coverage of the evacuation of Al Qaeda “enemy combatants” in Afghanistan in November 2001.

by Elijah J. Magnier, Edited by Ollie Richardson

Shortly before Christmas I wrote the following letter to Mr. Sergej Glaziev, one of Russia’s top economists and economic advisor to President Putin. Sergej is also a member of the Greek Delphi Initiative.

As Professor Michel Chossudovsky so aptly writes, western corporatism is waging an economic war against the world accompanied by increased militarism carried out mainly by the Pentagon and its minion European allies, NATO.

Stopping this criminal western imposed economic supremacy, all based on dollar fiat money, controlled by FED, Wall Street and the Basle (Switzerland) based BIS (Bank for International Settlements), also called the central bank of the world’s central banks, must be the world’s Priority Number One. The BIS was created in 1930 with the objective to help with the settlements of loans related to the reparation payments by Germany after WWI. It later took over the role of coordinating and gradually controlling central banks around the world and the flow of funds between them. The Rothschild – Rockefeller families were instrumental in setting up the institution and are still today among the major shareholders of an entirely privately owned international monetary institution.  

The BIS is one of the most secretive and obscure institutions in the world that helped the FED finance Hitler’s war against Russia during WWII. Yes, for those who don’t know, Washington had already then talked and walked with a forked tongue, playing both sides, as they do now with ISIS. But despite this satanical act – which the failing empire is repeating at nauseatum around the globe, killing millions – the Soviet Army defeated the Nazis, as my friend Andre Vltchek so eloquently says in his latest piece comparing Syria with Stalingrad, no matter how cowardly Washington’s deceit, Russia will not be defeated, nor will Syria, nor will China – nor will the world that loves freedom. People who love cannot be defeated. 

The western immoral, nefarious monetary system forces starving people to death by sanctions, by IMF strangulations, by creating unemployment through corporate privatization of public and social services, by greed – is bound to provoke revolutions, perhaps slowly, but surely. That’s why militarization has to go hand in hand with economic warfare, so that any potential public upheaval can be oppressed by bloody military and police violence before it can rise.

Economy through the prevailing monetary system is used as a deadly weapon, as deadly as bombs and canons. Beating the economy of war with an economy of peace, may be one way of conquering and subduing Humanity’s Enemy Number One – the Anglo-Zionist Empire with seat in Washington – and its spineless lackeys in Europe – who seamlessly after self-provoked and instigated terror attacks in France, Lebanon, Egypt, Mali – to name just a few – and fabricated terror warnings throughout Europe, now also in Munich, are terrorizing the European people into literally asking for a military clamp-down – ‘please protect us – we gladly give up all our civil liberties’. This has already happened in the US, where the American people have lost 90% of their civil rights since 9/11 through the Patriot Act and varies subsequent iterations of it. The US today is nothing but a militarized police state. In no time Europe will be the same. 

These thoughts have prompted me to write to Sergej Glaziev, a brilliant economist and fellow-member of the Greek Delphi Initiative. The Delphi Initiative is an inspirational and internationalized movement of thoughts launched in June 2015 by a group of Greek intellectuals to seek alternatives to the troika (ECB, EC, IMF) caused Greek breakdown, to the US-NATO sponsored Ukrainian civil war and to seek an independent Europe of solidarity.

*        *        *

19 December 2015

Public perception about the so-called “Global War on Terror” is manipulated in various ways by a trail of misinformation and disinformation.

This article is a case study on the October 22, 2014 lone gunman rampage of Parliament Hill in Ottawa that was used by the  government of Steven Harper to justify the Canadian entry into the US war in Iraq and, later, the US-led war on Syria. Despite being proven otherwise, the attack by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was reported as being linked to the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/DAESH/ISIS/IS).  

How and Why Facts Get Lost or are Ignored

On the day that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau went on his rampage, a tangled web of information was erected. In all the reporting by the media, the sources were lost. What resulted from this was the perception that Canada was under a foreign-planned attack led by the ISIL/DAESH.

One important source, @ArmedResearch, a US-based Twitter account that presents itself as a microblog for military studies, claimed that the Ottawa attack on October 22 was connected to an attack which took place two days earlier at Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec (October 20).

According to @Armed Research, Martin Couture-Rouleau (who called himself Ahmad LeConverti, which means “Ahmed the convert” in French), who was behind the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu car ramming attack, and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau were in some way connected. Couture-Rouleau had killed a Canadian soldier two days before Zehaf-Bibeau went on his rampage on October 22.

Presented subsequently in various media reports, the two incidents were said to be interconnected. They were portrayed as a coordinated and orchestrated attack. Additionally, the same Twitter account which posted a picture of Zehaf-Bibeau at the Canadian National War Monument starting his rampage within hours of the attack in Ottawa, namely @ArmedResearch, claimed that the photographs came from an ISIL/DAESH source. These were the first pictures of Zehaf-Bibeau and were widely reproduced by the Canadian and international media.

@ArmedResearch, which was instrumental in disseminating the photograph, claimed that the source of the photograph was an ISIL/DAESH or ISIS linked Twitter account named @Breaking3zero. In league with the webpage Heavy.com, @ArmedResearch implied that “Martin Couture-Rouleau followed the same Canadian-based pro-ISIS Twitter account.”

Complicating the matter is the existence of another Twitter account, @V_IMS. @V_IMS which was reported to be an ISIL/DAESH account. Ottawa Citizen journalist Shaamini Yogaretnam reported on October 23 that @V_IMS was suspended within an hour after it began circulating the same pictures.

Maybe it was because most of the entries and posts on @Breaking3zero were in French and @ArmedResearch could not understand, but what Heavy.com  claimed was categorically false. The person behind the post was French-Canadian writer William Reymond.

On October 25, Reymond even sent a Tweet message to Fox News about its faulty reporting in a Fox News article misleadingly titled “Citizen Jihadists: ISIS uses ‘lone wolves’ to mount cheap, effective attacks on US soil” by Pierre Chiareamonte.

Fox News not only misleadingly insinuated that the ISIL/DAESH was behind the Ottawa attack, but also claimed that the picture of Zehaf-Bibeau was posted by the ISIL/DAESH, meaning that @Breaking3zero was an ISIL/DAESH Twitter account. Likewise, @Breaking3zero sent a message to Suzanne Wilton’s account stating: “We ARE NOT a pro ISIS account ! That’s outrageous ! [sic.]”

William Reymond even wrote an article about it on his personal blog in both French and English on October 22, 2014. To set the record straight, on November 1, 2014 he reproduced the same text on Huffington Post.  He starts his text by saying:

Take a good look at this photo. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re bound to come across it in the next couple of hours. This picture is going around the world right now. It shows Michael Zehaf-Bibeau during his attack in Ottawa.

This photo was first published and identified on my 100% news twitter feed @Breaking3zero several hours before the traditional media got ahold [sic.] of it.

I want to tell you the story behind this picture. How it landed on my computer screen and how I was able to identify it before sharing it.

The following day, the RCMP told the public they did not know who could have taken the picture of the incident. This kept Canadians in suspense and made them wonder if the ISIL/DAESH had really been behind the attack. It was later revealed that the source for the photograph was the local Ottawa Police Services.

Reymond disclosed this about the originally source being the local police in Ottawa:

Around 2pm, one of my followers informs me of its existence, asking me if this really is the shooter. At this point in time, information on the Ottawa attack is still very vague and contradictory.

My first reflex is to ask him about the source. He points to the responses to a tweet posted by the Ottawa police.

Not just any tweet. But a tweet asking the witnesses of the attack to share with the police any information allowing to identify the shooter. And there, among the first responses, is the photo of a man holding a rifle.

Don’t bother looking, this tweet doesn’t exist anymore. It was deleted almost instantly. Posted from an anonymous account and for just a few short moments, this picture found itself in the huge virtual haystack  called Twitter.

I don’t know who deleted it. The rate at which it was taken off makes me think that it was probably the author himself. Maybe he thought he was sending a private message. Maybe it took it down after talking to the police, following their advice

Whatever the reason, thanks to a screenshot, I find myself with a copy in hands in the early afternoon.

The media and news agencies have failed to even correct their mistakes. Instead they have just moved on, leaving many Canadians in a blanket of ignorance and misconception. Many Canadians still believe that the photograph of  Zehaf-Bibeau was released by the ISIL/DAESH when in reality it was a photograph taken by an Ottawa police constable using their Blackberry cellular telephone to replicate an earlier photographer taken on the same day by the camera of a tourist at the National War Monument.

Screen shots from Ottawa Citizen, October 23, 2014

At its worst, the failure of the mainstream media to report the facts is intentional. At its best, it is the negligence of sloppy journalists and media outlets. Whatever the case, it  is malfeasance and a form of misconduct that has misinformed the public about the reach of the ISIL/DAESH and the danger that the public faces.

The RCMP also misrepresented the facts, because it reported that Zehaf-Bibeau was planning on going to fight in Syria. He was never planning on going to fight in Syria. The RCMP made this claim, saying that its source was his mother. She, however, angrily spoke out and said that she had even asked the RCMP to correct their mistake after they made the claim.

The Echo Chamber and the Misleading of the Public

There is an echo chamber of misinformation and disinformation where misinformed reports and conjecture feed other reports, leading to the construction of a distorted picture of the news and world. After a Globe and Mail article on the day of the attack speculated that Zehaf-Bibeau’s adopted father appeared “to have fought in 2011 in Libya,” it was reported as a fact in other media, including the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation.

Zehaf-Bibeau was never even on the national terrorist watch list in Canada. Based on what an unnamed US law enforcement official told the reporter Susan Candiotti, CNN wrongly reported that Zehaf-Bibeau’s “passport had been confiscated by Canadian authorities when they learned he planned to go fight overseas.”

US law enforcement officials also released information about Zehaf-Bibeau before Canadian law enforcement officials did. This includes the release of his widely circulated picture from the day of his rampage on Parliament Hill. “The working Ottawa police theory is that the photo, regardless of where it first appeared on Twitter, was shared not just internally but with other law enforcement agencies and may have been leaked by police outside the country,” according to Yogaretnam. 

Governments and a cross-section of the mainstream media are societal actors that have what can be described as “role setting agendas.” In other words, both governments and their affiliates and allies in the mass media are involved in branding campaigns that manage societal perceptions. This includes the deliberate creation of hysteria and panic, which is why there was a fixation on the Saint-Denis and Bataclan attacks (November 13, 2015) in France while the terrorist attacks on Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh area (November 12, 2015) that took place a day earlier were virtually ignored.

These branding campaigns have been at work to sell specific perspectives aimed at framing or re-framing the views of the public and the way that audiences understand or perceive the policy shifts in national security and foreign policy that justify war and the looting of national resources. It is within this context that it should be noted that the Canadian media has decided to focus on the case of an underage boy from the Lachine area of Montréal being found guilty in 2015 of committing terrorist-related crimes (for robbing a store when he was fifteen in October 2014 and trying to use the credit card of his parents to fly to Turkey to join the ISIL/DAESH in February 2014) while the Canadian government sells massive amounts of weapons to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The focus and gaze of the public is being misdirected towards a misguided schoolboy through an illusion that ignores the real backers of terrorism. Aside from being an oppressive dictatorship, major violator of human rights, and committing war crimes against the people of Yemen in an aggressive bombing campaign, the Saudi regime  is undeniably supporting the ISIL/DAESH and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

Here lies the irony. While an adolescent Canadian schoolboy is being jailed as a terrorist threat for foolishly wanting to join the ISIL/DAESH or other terrorist organizations fighting in Syria and Iraq, the Canadian government is actually supporting and arming Saudi Arabia, one of the widely recognized backers of the terrorists that Ottawa itself claims to be fighting inside Iraq and Syria.

Click here to read a detailed analysis of how the Canadian government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper misled Canadians in 2014 about the attack on Parliament Hill while it was being blamed itself for supporting the terrorists inside Iraq and Syria. 

A few months ago, entrepreneur Charles Devenish contacted me to tell me about his plans to develop various mining enterprises across India. He spoke about the massive amounts of untapped mineral resources lying beneath India that is just lying there and has been for a long time. What he thought I might find appealing were his plans for how small-scale mining could dovetail with a model of agriculture aimed at restoring Indian soils, which have been seriously degraded by decades of ‘green revolution’ chemical poisoning, and a rolling back of the increasing and harmful corporate control of farming. 

Devenish wants to set up co-operative mining enterprises in rural areas that would involve local farmers, who would then have a say and a stake in these local mines (see this report). The farmers would also benefit from the profits that would supplement their farming income and also be funnelled into investment in research and knowledge, which would enable them to restore their soils and move towards organic agriculture that would be in harmony with the local ecology.

Taken at face value, the plan sounds reasonable, especially given the current push to make farming financially non-viable, displace farmers from their lands and then implement a petro-chemical intensive system of agriculture based on the industrialised model of farming that the West has adopted. This model has led to de-nutrified food, degraded soils, contaminated water, serious health issues and various other problems. Although there are calls to help farmers by, for example, providing them with a proper living income and stopping wrongful land acquisition, waiting for policy makers in central government to address the plight of farmers could be a very long wait indeed, particularly as much of officialdom is facilitating the corporate takeover of farming.

But what caught my attention was Charles Devenish’s commitment to a Gandhian model of rural development. The model of mining he is proposing seems a long way from those stories we hear about people being driven from their lands as big corporations move in to destroy the landscape and ecology courtesy of corrupt back-room deals done with officials. The aim is to keep farmers on their lands and provide them with additional sources of income, not least from mining.

Devenish’s ‘Gandhian model of development’ appears to have nothing to do with Gates-Zuckerberg models of ‘philanthro-capitalism’ that we currently hear about. What Gates is attempting to do with agriculture in Africa is very much tied to a corporate model as envisaged by Monsanto. And what Zuckerberg seems to want is to roll out a ‘free’ and basic version of the internet which is again tied to corporate interests.

But mention Gandhi in certain circles and the response is one of cynicism: many would say his ideas are outdated and irrelevant in today’s world. Such a response could not be further from the truth. Gandhi could see the future impact of large-scale industrialisation in terms of the devastation of the environment, the destruction of ecology and the unsustainable plunder of natural resources.

Gandhi was ahead of his time. Although he might not have used today’s terms, ideas pertaining to environmentalism, agroecology, sustainable living, fair trade, local self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and so on were all present in his writings. He was committed to inflicting minimal damage on the environment and was concerned that humans should use only those resources they require and not amass wealth beyond their requirements. People have the right to attain certain comforts but a perceived right to unbridled luxuries would result in damaging the environment and impinge on the species that we share the planet with. His own lifestyle was a highly sustainable one, focusing on simplicity, austerity and need rather than want.

For Gandhi, indigenous capability and local self-reliance (swadeshi) were key to producing a model of sustainable development. This is in stark contrast to what is currently taking place. For example, Chennai (Madras) has just experienced its worst flooding in over 100 years. This article in the Hindustan Times outlines how uncontrolled urban sprawl and planning across India has ignored watershed management and proper environmental planning and has placed cities at the peril of major flooding. In Delhi, the authorities are building on flood plains. Across India, cities are “sitting ducks for all sorts of natural disasters.”

Another example is agriculture, whereby the ‘green revolution’ brushed aside indigenous agriculture and replaced it with water- and chemical-intensive farming that relies on external inputs from corporations and results in massive external costs, including huge damn construction projects, soil degradation, ecological devastation, population displacement and a poisoned environment. It has also exposed farmers to the vagaries of rigged global trade and markets, commodity speculation and the geopolitics of food. They are also often encouraged to grow cash crops for export rather than supply local people. The result for many of them has been debt, suicide and financial crisis. Farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save outlines what the green revolution did for Indiahere.

Rather than a push towards urbanisation, Gandhi felt that the village economy should be central to development and India should not follow the West by aping an urban-industrial system. He noted that it took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity and asked how many planets would a country like India require? Gandhi added that the economic imperialism of a tiny island kingdom was keeping the world in chains, and if an entire nation of 300 million (India’s population at the time) took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.

India is now 1.2 billion plus and China, 1.3 billion. The US with 300 million has already stripped much of the planet. US citizens as a whole constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians

Gandhi argued that the type of industrialised development adopted by Britain was based on a mind-set that encourages humans to regard man as conqueror and owner of the Earth. Apart from uncontrolled urban sprawl that tramples over the environment, this arrogance also manifests itself in geo-engineering, genetic engineering and the appropriation of all facets of life from water and land to forests, seeds and food by powerful corporations.

The view of development envisaged by Gandhi was fundamentally different. Although there was a role for industrialisation that was not resource- or energy-intensive and which involved for example shipbuilding, iron works and machine making, this would exist alongside village handicrafts. This type of industrialisation would not make villages and village crafts subservient to it: nothing would be produced by the cities that could be equally well produced by the villages and the function of cities would be to serve as clearing houses for village products. He argued that with new technology even energy could be produced in villages by using sunlight and local materials. And, of course, people would live within the limits imposed by the environment and work in harmony with the natural ecology rather than by forcing it to bend to the will of profiteering industries.

In  his book ‘Mahatma Gandhi: An Apostle of Applied Human Ecology‘, the late environmental scientist T N Khoshoo writes:

“… Gandhiji called the so-called modern society a nine-day wonder. Poverty has been aggravated due to cumulative environmental degradation on account of resource depletion, increasing disparities, rural migration to urban areas resulting in deforestation, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, desertification, biological impoverishment, pollution of air, water and land on account of lack of sanitation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and their biomagnification, and a whole range of other problems.”

Consider that prior to the British, India was among the richest countries in the world and had controlled a third of global wealth until the 17th century. It was an exporter of spices, food grains, handicrafts, handloom products, wootz steel, musk, camphor, sandalwood and ivory items, among other things. The village was the centre of a rural economy, which was the centre of entrepreneurship. The British dismantled much of this system by introducing mono crop activities and mill-made products, and post independent India failed to repair the economic fabric. As a result, successive administrations have ended up preparing relief packages from time to time and rural India is thus too often depicted a basket case.

Officials now seem to be preoccupied with a fetish for GDP growth and an unsustainable model of ‘development’. Part of this process involves destroying the environment and moving hundreds of millions from the land and into what are already overburdened mega-cities. Depriving people of their livelihoods in rural India (and deliberately running down agriculture) means mass migration to cities that are failing to produce anywhere near the volumeof jobs required to soak up new arrivals.

If a forest can be chopped down and the land and timber sold, this increases GDP and thus constitutes ‘growth’. The wildlife has gone and the forest which had been managed for centuries by local people who had used its resources sustainably for their needs has disappeared. And the people who lived on the land migrate to cities to live in slums and search for work that does not exist. This is regarded as ‘development’.

It is, according to Vandana Shiva, a model of development underpinned by a certain ideology:

“People are perceived as ‘poor’ if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics.”

And the result of this mind set is that the ‘poor’ must therefore be helped out of their awful ‘backwardness’ by the West and its powerful corporations.

What some might regard as ‘backward’ stems from an ethnocentric ideology, which is used to legitimize the destruction of communities and economies under the banner of ‘globalisation’ (ie neoliberalism and imperialism) that were once locally based and self- sufficient.

Reflecting Gandhi’s views, Sudhansu R Das argues that reweaving the Indian village economy lies in the ability of the leadership to revert the change in societal behaviour that lets villagers prefer unnecessary consumer items to real economic assets. Das argues that the young generation in villages today prefers fast food to homemade nutritious food. Similarly, many biodegradable, handcrafted, daily use items have given way to plastic and synthetic products. People give up many climate friendly traditional dresses, footwear and a wide range of homemade eatables for no convincing reason but for the influence of ‘the market’ and advertising. People are persuaded to borrow and live beyond their means. The mad craze for status symbol has indebted millions of people. Das calls for reinvigorating entrepreneurship in villages.

However, government after government aggravates the problems by creating an impression that the villagers are a backward, inefficient and unproductive lot who can survive only on relief. With proper investment and appropriate policies, India’s rural economy could once again thrive.

T N Khoshoo argued that Gandhi’s advocacy of an ‘non-interventionist lifestyle’ provides the answer to the present day problems. The phrase ‘health of the environment’ is not just a literary coinage, he argues. It makes real biological sense because, as Gandhi argued, our planet is like a living organism. Without the innumerable and varied forms of life that the earth inhabits, without respecting the species we share this place with, our world will become lifeless.

Alternatively, before that happens, humans will become extinct and the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. But, in the meantime, how much damage will have done by then and how much suffering will we have caused by a system that thrives on turning people into slaves to their desires and allowing imperialism to reign free?

Gandhi was “an apostle of applied human ecology,” according to T N Khoshoo. He offered a vision for a world without meaningless consumption which depleted its finite resources and destroyed habitats and the environment. Given the problems facing humanity, his ideas should serve as an inspiration to us all, whether we live in India or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, his message seems to have been lost on many of today’s leaders who have capitulated to an out-of-control ‘capitalism’ that is driving the world towards resource-driven conflicts with the ultimate spectre of nuclear war hanging over humanity’s head.

Riyadh has stoked the sectarian fires at the start of 2016 with its decision, and carrying out, of the executions of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and various members of the Shiite community.  All in all, 47 were dispatched in a Saudi orgy of state-sanctioned violence. 

Since his 2012 arrest in the Saudi Arabian eastern province of Qatif, al-Nimr had become something of a talismanic figure, having openly supported mass anti-government demonstrations in the region in 2011 and expressing open sympathy with fellow Shiites.  The lot of the Shiite community in that part has been a disgruntled one, giving the cleric ample room to insist on elections and criticism of the ruling al-Saud family.

The Saudi authorities have been left in a pickle as to how to respond.  Arrest him for the charges of sedition was considered acceptable but executing him would be another matter.  There had been various warnings issued by Tehran about the consequences of doing so, making the issue more incendiary than usual.

Furthermore, executing him alongside various al-Qaeda figures such as Faris al-Shuwail, and those involved in a series of lethal attacks between 2003 and 2006, betrayed a rather distorted perspective.  This is not to say that members of al-Saud had no reason to fear him.

For one, the Sheikh was on public record against any violent resolution, which is precisely what made him terrifying to a regime positively addicted to it. Prior to his arrest, Sheikh al-Nimr had told the BBC in a 2011 interview that he called for “the roar of the word against authorities rather than weapons… the weapon of the word is stronger than bullets, because authorities will profit from a battle with weapons.”

He was also suggesting an alternative structure of religious governance.  Such views will have undoubtedly been influenced by ten years of religious studies in Tehran and a few in Syria.  For al-Nimr, governance should be conducted through a process somewhere between that of a single religious leader (“wilayet al-faqih”) and consultation, a philosophy of “shura al-fuqaha” in which a council of religious leaders hold sway.[1]

Pigeonholing the cleric as firebrand revolutionary or moderate democrat is tempting, though it is very obvious that al-Nimr was far more complex, a creature of religious politics rather than liberal awakening.  A sense of his worldview can be gathered in a US cable via WikiLeaks from August 2008. It speaks of his opposition to the “authoritarianism of the reactionary al-Saud regime” and support for “the people” in any conflict with the authorities.[2]

It is also hard to go by his open advocacy for “the right of the Saudi Shi’a community to seek external assistance if it were to become embroiled in a conflict.” This, accompanied by his open encouragement of the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions, was always going to niggle the Saudi authorities.

The trial that followed the grandest traditions of display over legal substance, an attempt less to redress strict matters of law as those of political expediency.  Eyewitnesses, for one, were not called to testify.  The authorities were determined to pot al-Nimr, finding that he had been responsible for “foreign meddling”.

Whatever the supposedly peaceful views of the Sheikh, such historical reactions tend to be of the violent sort.  The battles against Riyadh are unlikely to be resolved with a mighty pen over weaker sword.  Fearing this exact point, the kingdom deployed hundreds of armoured vehicles to Qatif to quell protests in the aftermath of Saturday’s executions.

The international dimension has also seen similar reactions.  The Bahraini village of Abu Saiba witnessed tear gassing from security forces. The result of this bloody venture has been to enrage the Shiite community in the country while antagonising those outside it as well.

Warnings and unfavourable predictions regarding the al-Saud regime have come in a flurry.  Former Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, not necessarily the paragon of accurate crystal ball gazing, has suggested that the move will see the regime in Riyadh collapse.

In a released statement, al-Maliki insisted that his countrymen “strongly condemn these detestable sectarian practices that affirm that the crime of executing Sheikh al-Nimr will topple the Saudi regime as the crime of executing the martyr [Muhammad Baqir] al-Sadr did to Saddam.”[3]

The words of the ever active, some might say iconic figure of the Shi’a cleric politician Muqtada al-Sadr, was bound to carry even more weight. Having resisted US forces during its Iraqi occupation, al-Sadr’s words of condemnation will have purchase in Shiite communities beyond Iraq, including Saudi Arabia itself.

The domino effect continued in other countries with large Shiite representation.  Yemen’s Houthi movement have deemed al-Nimr a “holy warrior”. Hezbollah in Lebanon have insisted that the move amounted to an assassination.  The Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked on Saturday with Molotov cocktails, with some of the offices being ransacked.

Politically sharpened eyes were invariably trained on the official Iranian response.  They did not have to wait long.  The tinderbox had been lit.  The Iranian Revolutionary Guards issued an unmistakable response to the execution via a statement carried by the Mehr news agency.  “A harsh revenge will strike at the Al Saud in the near future and cause the fall of its pro-terrorist, anti-Islamic regime.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei took to Twitter to suggest that, “Doubtlessly, unfairly-spilled blood of oppressed martyr #SheikhNimr will affect rapidly & Divine revenge will seize Saudi politicians.”  The religious figure has also gone so far as to suggest that any instrumental difference between the ISIS executioner and his Saudi counterpart is minimal. One is merely “black” as against the other’s “white”.

Teheran summoned the Saudi ambassador to express its condemnation of the execution, a favour which was returned to Riyadh’s Iranian ambassador more or less telling the Iranians to mind their own business.

The response from pro-Saudi governments, notably that of the United States, has been true to form. Since they have been as responsible for stoking sectarian violence in the region as any, public condemnations have been modest.

For them, the concern is less about victims in a mercenary power tussle than strategic balance.  “We are particularly concerned that the execution of (al-Nimr) risks,” claimed a meek John Kirby of the US State Department, “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.”[4]

The move on the part of Riyadh has been one of indifference to consequences.  In that sense, the kingdom has shown itself immune to the external world which it has sought to control, with limited success.   That said, it has been allowed a degree of impunity – oil, the usual venality of strategic calculations, and the blind eye – have all served to exempt the kingdom from closer inspection.

This execution has proven to be a jolt, but it is unlikely to see the iron rule of the Saudi regime loosened. The most likely scenario here is an intensification of existing proxy confrontations, with more deaths.  Reform will be distinctly off the agenda.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected] 

Notes 

Jaysh al-Islam is a stalwart ally of US State Department-listed terrorist organization al-Nusra, though one would never suspect as much reading weepy Western eulogies over the terrorist organization leader’s death. 

The commander of terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam), “Sheikh” Zahran Alloush, was killed in a Syrian airstrike this week in the suburbs of Damascus.

 

In a surreal, coordinated propaganda campaign, the Western media sidestepped Alloush’s praise of and coordination with US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra, previously known as Al Qaeda in Iraq – and indeed, the very terrorist organization that the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) itself sprung up from.

The West itself has for years now, reported on Jaysh al-Islam’s collaboration with Al Qaeda. A March 2013 Institute for the Study of War report authored by now disgraced “expert” Elizabeth O’Bagy – a paid lobbyist who in fact attempted to lie about the presence of “moderate Syrian opposition,” titled, “The Free Syrian Army” (.pdf) would note regarding the terrorist organization that:

Liwa al-Islam [now known as Jaysh al-Islam] is a driving force behind actions in Damascus, and is part of the current multilateral effort, codenamed “Operation Epic in the Capital of the Omayyads,” to gain ground and prepare for later sustained efforts against regime forces in the city. Liwa al-Islam is known to cooperate with Jabhat Nusra and conduct joint operations.

Image: The corporate sponsors of the Institute of the Study of War, a think-tank tasked with portraying terrorists fighting in Syria as “moderates.” It incidentally revealed in one of its own reports that Jaysh al-Islam closely coordinated operations with US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization, al-Nusra.

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Ironically, despite knowing the various affiliations “rebel groups” in Syria have with Al Qaeda, O’Bagy herself, along with the so-called Institute for the Study of War – an arms industry-funded think tank – have attempted to perpetuate Western support of these “rebel groups,” which in turn have perpetuated the deadly conflict raging in Syria. The profitable war, and the US dominated MENA region that would form as a result of its successful execution, helps explain why the West is so interested in portraying terrorists as “moderates,” and going as far as mourning the death of a terrorist leader who openly worked with and praised Al Qaeda.

Terrorist Leader Zahran Alloush Praised Al QaedaOne doesn’t need a paid lobbyist in Washington to expose Alloush and his Jaysh al-Islam’s links to Al Qaeda. Alloush himself would praise and support Al Qaeda openly. In a video titled, “Islam Army Sheikh Zahran Alloush || Jabhat al-Nusra are our Brothers.” Alloush himself would claim:

 The summary of this issue is that we in Jaysh al-Islam praise our brothers of the Nusra Front, and we don’t consider them Khawarij as is propagated against us. We fight alongside them and they fight alongside us. Regarding the fact that there are some states that are not pleased with the Nusra Front, this is the business of these states. We praise those who fight alongside us and raise the banner of Allah. The anger of these states doesn’t matter to us, not from nearby or faraway.

Together with admissions from the very states that were arming, funding, training, and supporting Alloush and his terrorist organization, and from Alloush himself, he and Jaysh al-Islam are undeniably allies of Al Qaeda in Syria – the al Nusra Front.

The US State Department’s own official statement announcing al-Nusra’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization would claim (emphasis added):

The Department of State has amended the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Executive Order (E.O.) 13224 designations of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) to include the following new aliases: al-Nusrah Front, Jabhat al-Nusrah, Jabhet al-Nusra, The Victory Front, and Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant. The Department of State previously designated AQI as an FTO under the Immigration and Nationality Act and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under E.O. 13224 on October 15, 2004. The consequences of adding al-Nusrah Front as a new alias for AQI include a prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, al-Nusrah Front, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons. 

Clearly, Jaysh al-Islam’s praise of and coordination with al-Nusra constitutes, “knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, al-Nusrah Front.”

Image: The “moderate” terrorists of US-Saudi backed Jaysh al-Islam uses women as human shields to protect themselves from Syrian and Russian air operations – a fact even the Western media noted, albeit deeply buried in their eulogies for Alloush.

That none of this is mentioned in the weepy eulogies of Alloush in the wake of a Syrian airstrike should trouble the millions of Americans and Europeans who have been convinced for over a decade that Al Qaeda is their enemy and that the constant state of war imposed upon them to battle Al Qaeda and those that would aid and abet it, is an existential necessity.

The West Mourns Dead Terrorist
Deceitful articles published by some of the West’s most prominent newspapers and services would attempt to portray Alloush and the terrorist organization he headed as “moderates.” The New York Times in its article, “Powerful Syrian Rebel Leader Reported Killed in Airstrike,” would claim:

Analysts said the strikes were in keeping with longstanding efforts by the Syrian government and its allies to eliminate groups claiming to occupy a middle ground between Mr. Assad and the Islamic State. The efforts are part of a broader objective to improve Mr. Assad’s standing among Western governments, which despise him but also see the Islamic State as an increasing menace.

In reality, Jaysh al-Islam does not occupy a “middle ground” between the Islamic State and the Syrian government. Regardless of alleged tensions between Jaysh al-Islam and the Islamic State, they pursue the same goals, backed by the same foreign interests, using the same tactics.

Image: A member of Alloush’s Al Qaeda-affiliate Jaysh al-Islam fires a US-made anti-tank TOW missile system likely laundered through Saudi suppliers. The US has documented Jaysh al-Islam’s ties with Al Qaeda, but continues to provide it with cash, training, weapons, and political support nonetheless.

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The Washington Post would report in their article, “Syrian rebel commander reportedly killed in Russian airstrike,” that:

Alloush’s forces receive backing from Saudi Arabia, which has supported Syrian rebels but has thrown its weight behind the renewed diplomatic push to end the conflict. Intensified Russian strikes on rebel forces, including Saudi allies such as Alloush, however, may shake the oil-rich kingdom’s support for renewed peace efforts.

This indicates that among the many groups the US and its Saudi allies seek to put into power should they succeed in “regime change” in Syria, includes Al Qaeda-affiliate Jaysh al-Islam. That Saudi Arabia’s role in the conflict – often portrayed as supporting “moderate opposition forces” – is revealed instead to be supporting Al Qaeda affiliates, further justifies both Damascus and Moscow’s claims that there are indeed no moderates fighting the Syrian government, and that the only way the conflict can be ended is by eliminating these terrorists and restoring order within Syria’s borders.The West’s Decade-Long “War on Terror” 

Al Qaeda stands accused of carrying out terrorism globally, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States that left nearly 3,000 dead in a single day. Its alleged role in the September 11 attacks triggered over a decade of global war, including the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the chaos and bloodshed that continues to this very day in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

It is global war, waged by the United States and its partners, in which over a million have died, including thousands of dead Western troops, and tens of thousands more maimed, and tens of millions of Middle Easterners, North Africans, and Central Asians maimed, displaced, or otherwise affected.

Considering this, one would expect the loss of one of Al Qaeda’s allies to be a milestone in this global war. When the West finds itself instead mourning the loss of one of Al Qaeda’s allies, attempting to cover up or spin its ties with the terrorist organization, the truth behind this global war begins to shine through over a decade of lies and propaganda.

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Image: Joint Russian-Syrian military operations are clearly, demonstrably undermining and destroying the fighting capacity of terrorist organizations fighting in Syria. Just because the West refuses to label the organizations being destroyed as “terrorists,” does not change that fact, nor the fact that US operations in Syria have been exposed as disingenuous in intention, bolstering terrorists, not fighting them.

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Disgracefully, while the West claims the government in Damascus is the cause of both the rise of terrorism in Syria and its perpetuation, it was Damascus, not the West that eradicated Alloush – head of an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Worse still, it is the United States and its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, who have propped up Jaysh al-Islam and Alloush.It is clear that regime change in Syria will not help end terrorism or undermine terrorist organizations like the Islamic State or Jaysh al-Islam, but only help them. Damascus and its allies in Moscow and Tehran, demonstrably prove they are the only forces consistently fighting and defeating terrorism in Syria. The only other conceivable way to interpret the West’s continued insistence that only through regime change will terrorism end in Syria is to understand the West itself is sponsoring this very terrorism as a pretext for regime change. Such sponsorship, and thus the terrorism resulting, will only “end” once the West achieves its goals.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

The new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual is essentially a guidebook for violating international and domestic law and committing war crimes. The 1,165-page document, dated June 2015 and recently made available online, is not a statement of existing law as much as a compendium of what the Pentagon wishes the law to be.

The manual authorizes the killing of civilians during armed conflict and establishes a framework for mass military detentions. Journalists, according to the manual, can be censored and punished as spies on the say-so of military officials. The manual freely discusses the use of nuclear weapons, and it does not prohibit napalm, depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs or other indiscriminate weapons.

The manual might have more properly been titled A Manifesto for Total War and Military Dictatorship.

The manual is an expression of the incompatibility of imperialist militarism and democracy. In the 25 years since the liquidation of the USSR, and especially over the 14 years since the launching of the so-called “war on terror,” the United States has been almost perpetually at war, seeking to offset its economic decline by threats and military violence around the world.

The same government that orchestrated a coup led by fascists in the Ukraine, that backs a military dictatorship and repression in Egypt, and that supports mass killings and destruction in Gaza can hardly be expected to remain true to the rule of law and democratic principles at home.

Through both the Bush and Obama administrations, the “war on terror” has been accompanied by a steady abrogation of democratic rights within the United States, including a barrage of police state legislation such as the Patriot Act, unrestricted spying on the population by the National Security Agency and other agencies, the militarization of the police, and the establishment of precedents for the detention and assassination of US citizens without charges or trial.

In this context, the Pentagon manual is a significant milestone in the drive to establish the framework of a police state.

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned about the dangers posed by the “military-industrial complex.” But America’s current military-corporate-intelligence establishment has metastasized far beyond anything Eisenhower could have imagined. Bloated with unlimited cash, dripping with blood from wars of aggression, it boldly announces its independence, its hostility to democracy and the rule of law, and its readiness to carry out war crimes and other atrocities at home and abroad.

The Pentagon manual reflects international imperialist tendencies. Its authors state that it “benefited from the participation of officers from the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and the Australian Royal Air Force on exchange assignments with the US Air Force.” They continue: “In addition, military lawyers from Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia reviewed and commented on a draft of the manual in 2009 as part of a review that also included comments from distinguished scholars.” (P. v)

The manual, which “reflects many years of labor and expertise,” applies to the entire Department of Defense, which includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, four national intelligence agencies including the NSA, and numerous other subordinate departments and agencies, totaling 2.13 million active duty personnel and 1.1 million reservists. The manual notes, “Promulgating a DoD-wide manual on the law of war has been a long-standing goal of DoD lawyers.” (P. v) The new document supersedes various policy documents that had accumulated piecemeal within different sections of the military and intelligence agencies.

It is the outcome of a continuous effort through both Democratic and Republican administrations over a long period, including the Bush and Obama administrations. It was issued at the highest levels of the state, having been prepared by a “Law of War Working Group” that “is chaired by a representative of the DoD General Counsel and includes representatives of the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the Marine Corps; the offices of the General Counsels of the Military Departments; and the Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” (Pp. v-vi)

The Pentagon general counsel is Stephen W. Preston. Preston was general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2009 to 2012, during which time the CIA covered up its own war crimes and obstructed efforts to investigate its illegal torture program. It is unclear to what extent the manual has been reviewed or approved by any civilian authority.

The significance of Nuremberg

The Law of War Manual is replete with references to the Nuremberg proceedings, a complex and significant event in the history of the post-World War II period and the history of international law. The manual opens with this tribute:

Nuremberg tribunal

After World War II, US military lawyers, trying thousands of defendants before military commissions, did, in the words of Justice Robert Jackson, ‘stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of law’ in ‘one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.’ Reflecting on this distinctive history, one chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff observed that ‘[T]he laws of war have a peculiarly American cast.’ And it is also true that the laws of war have shaped the US Armed Forces as much as they have shaped any other armed force in the world. (P. ii)

The Pentagon of 2015 paying tribute to the Nuremberg precedent is like the world’s top-polluting corporation expressing appreciation for efforts to protect the environment. If the precedent of Nuremberg were applied impartially today, it would be necessary to arrest and prosecute all of the top officials in the Pentagon, the world’s leading perpetrator of illegal aggression. After the triumph of the Allies over Germany and Japan in the Second World War, the victorious powers convened international tribunals to prosecute major war criminals of the defeated powers. The most famous trial took place from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany and featured the prosecution of Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and other leading Nazis.

There was an undeniable component of “victors’ justice” in the proceedings. The same week in August 1945 that the United States, the USSR, Britain and France forged an agreement to establish the International Military Tribunal, the United States committed some of the most heinous crimes of the war: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nonetheless, the democratic legal positions espoused at Nuremberg stand in sharp contrast to the corrupt and lawless American political establishment of today, which asserts the right to abduct or assassinate any person without charges or trial anywhere on earth, attack any country “preventively,” and spy on the entire world’s population.

At the time of the Nuremberg tribunals, a majority view emerged among the major Allied governments rejecting calls to execute leading Nazis summarily on the basis of a “political decision.” Instead, the defendants were offered a full and fair trial, during which they were permitted to call witnesses, present evidence and argue in their own defense.

The most important principle that emerged from the Nuremberg proceedings was the concept that the decision to launch a war of aggression is the fundamental crime from which all other war crimes flow. While the Nuremberg prosecutors exposed some of the greatest crimes in human history, they maintained that the primary crime was the decision by Hitler and his close associates to launch the war in the first place.

The chief US prosecutor was Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. His assistant, Telford Taylor, emphasized in a memorandum to Jackson that the underlying motivations and aims of the Nazis were not the decisive legal questions: “The question of causation is important and will be discussed for many years, but it has no place in this trial, which must rather stick rigorously to the doctrine that planning and launching an aggressive war is illegal, whatever may be the factors that caused the defendants to plan and to launch.”

In other words, launching a war of aggression is a criminal act—a crime against peace—no matter what arguments or policies are invoked to justify it.

Similarly, the Nuremberg prosecutors rejected the argument that those who committed crimes were justifiably “following” or “relaying” orders. Nuremberg Principle IV reads, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility…provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

These were powerful democratic conceptions that reverberated long after the trials. During the Vietnam War, as Taylor himself noted in his memoir, “thousands of young men contended…that under the Nuremberg principles they were legally bound not to participate in what they regarded as the United States’ aggressive war.”

More recently, on July 12, 2013, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden invoked the Nuremberg principles to justify his refusal to conceal evidence of illegal spying. “I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945,” he said. “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore, individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

The Nuremberg precedent expressed the confidence of the United States as the dominant imperialist power emerging out of the Second World War. The American ruling class felt that it could afford, under the circumstances, not only to assert democratic principles, but to declare that these principles were universal, applying to all countries, including the United States itself.

Thus, on July 23, 1945, Jackson told the International Conference on Military Tribunals, the inter-allied body that prepared the trials, “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” [1]

Seventy years later, America’s leaders have much less in common with jurists like Jackson and Taylor than they do with Nuremberg’s defendants. While the Pentagon pays tribute to the Nuremberg precedent, a partial list of the countries subjected to US military violence since the liquidation of the USSR includes Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Nigeria and Yemen.

If launching a war of aggression is illegal, arrest warrants should be forthcoming for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, James Clapper, John Ashcroft, Joe Biden, John Kerry and their criminal co-conspirators. All of these individuals should be in the dock, right where Göring and company sat, on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.

Ample evidence exists for indictments. One powerful exhibit in such a trial, for example, would be a November 27, 2001 memorandum by Donald Rumsfeld that contemplates various phony justifications for a war of aggression against Iraq. Under the profoundly incriminating headline “How start?” Rumsfeld ponders the possibilities: “Saddam moves against Kurds in north? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks? Dispute over WMD inspections? Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

Rumsfeld’s memorandum is one of many proofs that there was a conspiracy to launch the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of lies and pretexts. As a result of this illegal aggression, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, if not more, and millions have been turned into refugees. An entire society has been devastated, leading to the rise of movements such as ISIS, and trillions of dollars worth of property have been destroyed or wasted.

The Nuremberg trials featured similar exposures of the criminal Nazi conspiracy to invade Poland based on false pretenses. To provide a casus belli for the war they had already decided to launch, the Nazis staged a provocation known as the Gleiwitz incident. During the Nuremberg proceedings, this incident was exposed as a staged attack on a German radio station by German forces posing as Poles. Hitler had boasted to his generals: “Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”

Do as I say, not as I do

Notwithstanding its repeated invocations of the Nuremberg precedent, the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual features a strong element of “do as I say, not as I do.”

For example, on the subject of aggressive war, the document declares, “Aggression is the most serious and dangerous form of the illegal use of force… Initiating a war of aggression is a serious international crime.” (P. 44) This is a plain statement of the Nuremberg precedent.

However, as one reads further, it emerges that this principle applies only to countries other than the United States. The manual notes that the US has refused to recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC), under which the US could be prosecuted for crimes of aggression.

The document states, “The United States has expressed the view that the definition of the act of aggression in the Kampala amendments to the Rome Statute does not reflect customary international law.” (P. 45) The US also expressed “concerns regarding the possibility of the ICC exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression without a prior determination by the Security Council that a State has committed an act of aggression.” (P. 1,112) Such a Security Council determination, of course, would be subject to a US veto.

The refusal of the United States to recognize the authority of the ICC has deep historical significance. The United States played a leading role in establishing the Nuremberg precedent, but now refuses to submit to its enforcement. This amounts to an admission that if the United States were subject to an impartial application of the Nuremberg precedent today, virtually all of official Washington would have to be transported to jail. It exposes as fraudulent all of America’s posturing as a kind of self-appointed “world policeman” with the authority to sanction and attack other states that allegedly violate international law.

Similarly, the Pentagon manual declares that torture is illegal: “For example, it would be unlawful, of course, to use torture or abuse to interrogate detainees for purposes of gathering information.” (P. 309) But the document fails to explain how the CIA came to implement a systematic and sadistic torture program with the integral participation of high-level officials in the White House, for which nobody has ever been held accountable.

The manual is full of caveats, disclaimers and weasel words. For example: “This manual is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.” (P.1) In other words, the law of war does not apply to us, only to you. Passages like this reveal that the “law of war” manual does not represent “law” as such, but policies determined unilaterally by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon’s hypocrisy (and sometimes plain incoherence) on the subjects of torture and aggression is an expression of the crisis of bourgeois rule in the United States and the contradictions of American foreign policy. On the one hand, the US constantly seeks to dress up its imperialist projects in the costume of international legality. To justify the first Gulf war (1991), America denounced Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as illegal “aggression.”

Just last year, American political leaders were denouncing Russian “aggression” in Ukraine. After the United States orchestrated a coup in Ukraine, and while American commandos and dollars were pouring in, John Kerry accused Russia of violating Ukraine’s “national sovereignty” and “territorial integrity.” Obama declared, “There is a strong belief that Russia’s action is violating international law.”

On the other hand, notwithstanding all the talk about international law, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity, America invades and bombs anywhere it sees fit, without any regard for such considerations. Where the United States can obtain international legal approval for its aggression, it does so, but otherwise the aggression takes place anyway.

The manual states,

“[T]he authority to take actions under the law of war would be viewed as emanating from the State’s rights as a sovereign entity rather than from any particular instrument of international law.”

In other words, the United States can freely ignore treaties and conventions and other “instruments of international law”—such as the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States announced in 2002 that it would not follow—while still claiming to adhere to its own version of international law.

At the Nuremberg trials, Jackson characterized the Nazi regime as essentially a monstrous criminal enterprise, a giant illegal conspiracy that invoked “law” only in the most tendentious, cynical and self-serving manner. The defendants, Jackson declared, “are surprised that there is any such thing as law. These defendants did not rely on any law at all. Their program ignored and defied all law… International Law, natural law, German law, any law at all, was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do.” These words apply with full force to the Pentagon and its manual.

The manual explicitly gives the Pentagon a green light at any future time to repudiate the principles it ostensibly lays down. Its authors write that the document does not “preclude the Department from subsequently changing its interpretation of the law.” (P. 1)

Notes

[1]: See http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/jack44.asp.

One of our pet peeves is when erroneous groupthink persists even in the face of contradictory evidence.

Iraq’s readiness to take military action against Turkey if Ankara fails to withdraw its troops from Iraqi territory has increased the possibility of NATO involvement on the side of Turkey and its territorial ambitions, reported the German press on Thursday.

Even though Iraq is aiming for a diplomatic solution to its dispute with Turkey, its government hasn’t ruled out using military force in order to remove Turkish troops from Iraqi territory, thus raising the possibility of NATO involvement, German Economic News (DWN) reported on Thursday.

“If it comes to war, NATO must be on the side of Turkey in Iraq,” the newspaper pointed out.

‘Iraq doesn’t want any Turkish troops in its country, and threatens war against a NATO country,’ reported DWN.The Federal Republic of Germany has been a NATO member since 1955. In December the German government announced that its forces were joining the US-led anti-Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) coalition in a non-combat, support role. On Wednesday, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said that although Iraq wants to use diplomatic means to resolve the conflict, it does not exclude the use of force if “fighting is imposed on us.” “We will consider it (the use of military force) to protect our sovereignty, people and resources,” said al-Jaafari.

© AP PHOTO/ BURHAN OZBILICI,

Tanks of the Turkish army at the Turkey-Iraq border . (File)

In early December, the Turkish government sent a battalion of 25 tanks and about 150 troops into northern Iraq without the permission of the Iraqi government. Ankara said its forces were there with the assent of the Iraqi government, and were sent in response to security concerns in northern Iraq, where its forces help to train Iraqi militia battling Daesh in northern Iraq. The Iraqi government in Baghdad called the incursion a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, and demanded the troops withdraw in 48 hours.

© FLICKR/ U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

US-Led Coalition Conducts 24 Airstrikes Against Daesh in Syria, Iraq

At first Turkey refused to withdraw troops from the Bashiqa military base, which is close to Mosul in northern Iraq, but later agreed to withdraw some of the forces after Iraq complained to the UN Security Council. On Wednesday the Iraqi government again complained, that Turkey has so far failed to honour the agreement to withdraw all its troops from Iraqi territory.Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952, and according to the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty, the principle of collective defence commits its members to defend each other in the event of an armed attack against another member. However, Article 5 of the Treaty makes no reference to the alliance’s responsibilities to intervene in the case of an act of aggression by a NATO country.

The National Assembly of Venezuela, in its final session before a neoliberal dominated opposition takes the helm of legislative power on January 5, passed one of the most progressive seed laws in the world on December 23, 2015; it was promptly signed into law by President Nicolas Maduro. On December 29, during his television show, “In Contact with Maduro, number 52,” Maduro said that the new seed law provides the conditions to produce food “under an agro-ecological model that respects the pacha mama (mother earth) and the right of our children to grow up healthy, eating healthy.” The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization. The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy –the people as legislator– in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions. This essay provides an overview of the phenomenon of people as legislator, a summary of the new Seed Law, and an appendix with an unofficial translation of some of the articles of the law.

The People as Legislator of Seed Policy

The Legal Basis

The Seed Law is a glowing example of the legal personality of popular power (poder popular) at work in Venezuela, the people as legislator. As Article 5 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela indicates, “Sovereignty resides intransferable in the people, who exercise it directly as provided for in this Constitution and in the law, and indirectly, through suffrage . . . .” An example of the direct legislative powers of citizens is found in Article 204, no. 7 of the Constitution which specifically names citizens as potential legislators, should they organize a petition of at least one percent of the registered voters (see also Article 205). There are also numerous references to the legislative power of communal structures in the organic Laws of Popular Power (Poder Popular) passed in 2009 and 2010.

Farmer, Cooperativa Aracal in the State of Yaracuy.
Credit: Fred Mills

Venezuela’s seed policy had been based on an earlier 2002 Seed Law that was passed in a highly polarized political environment, just months after a short-lived coup against then President Hugo Chavez and just weeks prior to an opposition-led strike and sabotage of the oil industry. That law was superseded in April of 2004, when after halting a project to plant Monsanto’s transgenic soybeans on 500,000 acres of land, then President Hugo Chavez declared, “The people of the United States, of Latin America, and the world, need to follow the example of Venezuela free of transgenics.” This declaration constituted a virtual ban of transgenics. It was also consistent with the government’s emphasis on endogenous development. Endogenous development, asChristina Schiavoni and William Camacaro describe it, means development from within:

[Endogenous development] implies first looking inside, not outside, to meet the country’s needs, building upon Venezuela’s own unique assets. This means valuing the agricultural knowledge and experience of women, Indigenous, Afro-descendants, and other typically marginalized campesino (peasant farming) populations as fundamental to Venezuela’s food sovereignty. This also means preserving Venezuela’s native seeds, traditional farming methods, and culinary practices.

Such endogenous development received further support when in June 2012, Chavez made the Country Plan (2013 – 2019) his presidential campaign platform. The Plan, which is now the law of the land, includes among its five major objectives, “the construction of an eco-socialist economic model of production based on a harmonic relationship between humans and nature that guarantees the rational and optimal use of natural resources, respecting the processes and cycles of nature.” The Plan also prioritizes the expansion of agricultural production, but only in a way that advances the goal of food sovereignty (1.4) and accelerates democratic access to the necessary resources for sustainable agricultural production (1.4.2).

Chronology of the People as Legislator of Seed Policy

The blog of Eco-Socialist Space of Popular Power (CDR-SUR) provides a detailed chronology of the popular struggle for input and impact on the new Seed Law. In “The Process of the Collective Construction of the New Seed Law in Venezuela,” CDR-SUR indicates that the people as legislator of seed policy first emerged in response to a notice by the legislative branch of government in mid-2012 that the National Assembly would be considering a substantial revision of the 2002 Seed Law. Since a transgenic and big agribusiness lobby had been at work trying to influence seed policy, it was also time for eco-socialists and other ecological movements to weigh in on the issue.

In response to the Assembly’s notice, several hundred social and ecological organizations organized the “International Meeting of Guardians of Seeds” in Monte Carmelo (October 26 – 29, 2012), in the State of Lara, in order to draft measures for consideration by the National Assembly that would unequivocally ban transgenic seed and protect Indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant seed from privatization. More than 1000 persons, 116 organizations, and 162 institutions participated in the grassroots (popular) deliberations (CDR-SUR).

While the idea of the people as legislator is grounded in the Constitution and the organic laws of popular power, it took some public pressure on the National Assembly and government ministries (called Ministries of Popular Power!) for this legislative voice to be heard and taken into account. In March of 2013, while the relevant legislative committees and government ministries were holding hearings on the Seed Law Project, the “Venezuela Free of Transgenics Campaign” (VFTC) lobbied unsuccessfully for inclusion in the initial phase of debate. The ecological movement, undeterred, organized the Venezuela Free of Transgenics Open Seminar at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela in March of 2013 which sponsored periodic forums on the debate over seed policy.

On May 25, 2013, the VFTC collected signatures at a national mobilization held in the Plaza de Los Museos in Caracas, to petition the National Assembly to include the coalition’s voice as a legislative partner in the Seed Law deliberations (CDR-SUR). The next day, according to CDR-SUR, Alfredo Ureña, a deputy of the National Assembly and president of the Permanent Subcommission on Agro-Food Development, formulated an action plan to ensure that the Seed Law would be anti-transgenic.

In June of 2013, the VFTC stepped up its organizing and education efforts. These efforts included, as part of the Fourth Venezuelan Congress on Biological Diversity (June 28), a workshop on the “collective construction of a Seed Law proposal” (CDR-SUR). This collective effort produced documents directly relevant to the legislative deliberations on the Seed Law.

On October 21, 2013, as documented by William Camacaro and Frederick B. Mills in Venezuela and the Battle against Transgenic Seeds (December 6, 2013), the VFTC mobilized in front of the National Assembly to prevent the advance of a Seed Law proposal because it contained stealth provisions that would have opened the door to transgenic seed and possibly allow the privatization of locally shared “free” seeds. This was a critical turning point in the eco-socialist struggle to influence the nation’s seed policy. As CDR-SUR points out, on October 22, in a meeting between the VFTC and legislators involved in drafting the Seed Law, it was agreed that there would be popular participation in the construction of the Seed Law, referred to as the Popular Constituent Debate on the New Seed Law.

According to CDR-SUR, “The Popular Constituent Debate convened on the 28 and 29 of October in Monte Carmelo, Sanare in the State of Lara on the occasion of the Day of Peasant Seed (Semilla Campesina).” It was here that a consensus was hammered out by a large variety of agroecological organizations on the basic objectives of the Seed Law.

As a follow up to this conference in Monte Carmelo, “the second round of discussion [by 135 peasant collectives and educators] took place in the City of Naguanagua in the State of Carabobo from November 1 to 3, 2013” (CDR-SUR). The focus of this round was in large part to determine the procedures of popular debate to ensure that the final product was indeed a result of collective deliberation in concert with key legislators of the National Assembly. These procedures were to ensure the practice of inclusion, public dissemination of information, and the constitutionally grounded praxis of the people as legislator.

The third round of discussion was held at the Latin American Institute of Agroecology Paulo Freire (IALA) in Barinas state on November 22, 2013. During this round the Popular Constituent Debate constructed a proposed preamble, objectives, and structure for the proposed law. It was agreed that the Popular Constituent Debate would meet two more times in the states of Aragua and Merida.

After the last round of Popular Constituent Debate on the New Seed Law, the members of the Popular Movement for the New Seed Law and the National Assembly set up a work group to construct the consensus draft of the law and it is this version that entered into the first of the two required discussions by the National Assembly. On October 14, 2014 the proposed Seed Law was approved by the first discussion, one of two discussions normally required prior to the passage of a proposed bill.

During 2015, workshops were set up to review the proposed seed law before the final discussion; these workshops included members of the National Assembly, the Venezuela Free of Transgenics Campaign, and several government ministries. Through the workshops, several additional mechanisms were built into the law. These included a means for popular control over seeds by means of the recognition of the Popular Council for the Storage and Protection of Local, Peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant Seed, as well as a recognition of the government’s role in licensing free seed and thereby protecting it from patents or other forms of privatization.

In “Venezuela to Consider Ban on Transgenic Seed” (June 8, 2015), Camacaro and Mills discuss the consensus reached by the collective efforts of the agroecological movement with regard to seed policy. In short, the popular version of the Seed Law proposal (June 2015) was constructed over a two year period of collective deliberation by a broad coalition of agroecological oriented organizations and movements. On December 26, 2015, The Popular Movement for the New Seed Law issued a celebratory statement declaring:

This 22 of December, with the approval of the new Seed Law by the National Assembly, we close the legislative cycle of popular constituent debate and collective deliberation that we initiated more than two years ago. The product of our struggle is a law that has no precedent anywhere in the world in terms of both its emancipatory content and the way it has been made possible by the protagonistic participation of the People as Legislator.

The Seed Law was also endorsed, “after ample discussion,” by the Presidential Council of Communes. A statement issued by the Council on June 3 reads:

“From the diverse voices of the Presidential Council of Popular Government of the Communes, the comuneros (members of communes) of the country solicit the prompt approval, in the second discussion [by the National Assembly], of the Seed Law . . . The Seed Law, constructed collectively from the grassroots, is anti-transgenic and makes us advance significantly towards the recovery and consolidation of local, peasant, Indigenous and Afro-descendant seeds. Moreover we are speaking about a proposed Seed Law, profoundly anti-imperialist and ecosocialist, that incarnates the legacy of the Leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chavez, at a moment in which the transnationals of agribusiness aim at privatizing seed and life.”The people as legislator, then, consisting of both the nationwide agroecological movements as well as the highest level of communal representation, made full use of their constitutionally grounded constituent power to partner with the liberal democratic state to forge the nation’s seed policy.

Summary of the Seed Law

The new Seed Law is inspired by the eco-socialist movement in Venezuela and the worldwide peasant movement La Via Campesinaand is informed by the Indigenous philosophy of vivir bien (living well). As President of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma explains:

Vivir Bien well is to live in equality and justice. It is where there is no exploited and no exploiters, where there are no excluded and no persons who exclude others, where there are no marginalized persons and no persons who marginalize others. Vivir Bien is to live in community, in collectivity, in reciprocity, in solidarity, and, most important, in complementarity.  (note 2)

The Seed Law contributes to vivir bien and advances eco-socialist principles by promoting small- and medium-scale farming using agroecological methods rather than monoculture that depends heavily on environmentally harmful chemical interventions. Moreover, it prioritizes the collective interest in the farming community’s control of the means of production, distribution and consumption of food. This law bans transgenic seeds and thereby avoids the political capture of seed policy by the corporate interests of transnational big agriculture while promoting and protecting the heirloom seeds and farming methods of Venezuela’s Indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant communities. Traditional seeds (semillas campesinas) will be immune to patents and privatization and come under the control of the communities that share them. The seed is considered a living thing, and as such is not only an object at hand for use in agriculture, but a subject that is entitled to certain rights and protections. These rights, combined with the philosophy of vivir bien and eco-socialist principles, form the ethical and legal basis for the development of food sovereignty and food security and of resistance to transnational corporate capture of the nation’s agricultural policy.

The law is consistent with Article 127 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: “The genome of living things cannot be patented, and the law that refers to bio-ethical principles regulates the matter.” It is also consistent with the Country Plan 2013 -2019 that declares one of the “great historic objectives” to “construct an eco-socialist economic model of production, based on the harmonious relation between man and nature, that guarantees the use and rational and optimal utilization of vital natural resources.” (p. 19-20).

In closing, with the passage of the Seed Law, history is being made in Venezuela. Not only is the law extraordinary in and of itself, both for its content and the for the highly participatory way in which it was developed, but the fact that it was passed at this very moment, in the face of adverse circumstances both globally and nationally, is all the more extraordinary. Globally, national seed legislation is increasingly being co-opted by corporate agribusiness interests, with many governments turning a blind eye, or worse, actively colluding in the process, as has been powerfully documented by GRAIN and La Via Campesina. Nationally, Venezuela’s food system has been under attack by, among other things, an “economic war” being waged by some elements of the opposition, resulting in food shortages that played a definitive role in influencing the recent elections. The economic war has shown that, despite important advancements made toward food sovereignty, i.e., toward greater national and local popular control over the food system, since the inception of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, much work remains to be done to achieve a food system that is truly equitable, sustainable, and under the firm control of the people, in partnership with the government. The people, however, are clearly determined, and they are not going to sit back passively and wait for this to happen, as we have seen with the major popular organizing and mobilizing efforts that ultimately led to the successful passage of the Seed Law.

The passage of the Seed Law thus marks a major step forward for food sovereignty in Venezuela, as well as a victory for the global food sovereignty movement, and a warning sign to corporate agribusiness. However, as they say in Venezuela, “la lucha sigue” – the struggle continues – and indeed the passage of the Seed Law is one step, albeit an important step, in a much longer process. As the popular movements who worked on the Law’s passage are already emphasizing, now is the time to disseminate it, defend it against likely backlash, and push forward its full implementation. While the Venezuelan people will remain the protagonists in this process, they are calling for international solidarity to defend what might arguably be the world’s most revolutionary seed law.

APPENDIX: Highlights of Several Articles of the Seed Law (unofficial translations)

Article 1 of the law summarizes its main features:

The present Law has as its objective to preserve, protect, and guarantee the production, propagation, conservation, and free circulation and use of seed, as well as the promotion, research, distribution, and commercialization of the same, based on a socialist agroecological vision, with the aim of consolidating our food security and sovereignty, prohibiting the release, the use, the propagation, and the entrance into the country and the national production of transgenic seeds as well as the patents and right of the breeder over the seed, in a manner that is sovereign, democratic, participatory, co-responsible and in solidarity, making special emphasis on the valorization of the Indigenous, afro-descendent, peasant and local seed, that benefits biodiversity and helps to preserve life on the planet in conformity with what is established in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Article 2 lays out the goals of the law:

1. Promote the transition from conventional systems of production based on monoculture and the use of agrochemicals with agro-industrial and/or corporate seed for conventional use, to an agroecological system and the preservation of the environment in the short, medium and long term, based on agro-biodiversity.

2. Promote the production of seeds that are necessary to guarantee national production, with the goal of avoiding importation and achieving national sovereignty.

3. Promote the transition to communal and eco-socialist agriculture, in order to protect agro-biodiversity by means of the production of local, peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant seed.

4. Revalorize and re-legitimize the local, traditional, and ancestral knowledge wisdom, beliefs and practices of the peasant, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other communities.

5. Prohibit the privatization of seed.

6. Orient the organization and planning of public policy in function of the different scales of production, distinguishing the policies intended for family agriculture or polyculture in small-scale production from the policies intended for big producers.

Article 3. Seed is recognized as a living thing and a constituent part of Mother Earth and for this reason it is considered an object as well as the subject of right and the application of norms pertaining to the preservation of life on the Planet and the conservation of biological diversity.

Article 4. The local peasant, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant seed is declared a common good of public, cultural as well as natural material and immaterial interest of the peoples; this seed is considered a contribution of our communities to the improvement of vegetable varieties and their propagation and preservation for a sustainable form of agriculture that constitutes the basis of our food and our culture.

Article 5. The production, importation, commercialization, distribution, release, use, propagation and entrance into the country of transgenic seed is prohibited. The National System of Seeds will develop and guarantee the technical, organizational, and institutional capacity to prevent, identify, detect, correct, return, and to sanction the violations of this prohibition.

One of the principle values of the law, expressed in Article 8, is that it “promotes, in a spirit of solidarity, the free exchange of seed and opposes the conversion of seed into intellectual or patented property or any other form of privatization.”

With regard to popular power (grassroots democracy), Article 9 provides that a Popular Council will be responsible for the storage, protection and regulation of Indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant seed “with an emphasis on the exchange and local distribution of seed to guarantee our food sovereignty and the construction of an eco-socialist model of economic production.

Article 11 of the law also creates a National Seed Commission constituted by officials from several ministries related to agriculture, as well as representatives from both the Presidential Councils that deal with seed policy and the Popular Council for the storage and protection of local, Indigenous, peasant and Afro-descendant seed. This Commission will be responsible for planning and promoting seed policy as well as facilitating research, development, production and commercialization of seed.

Article 14 creates the National Institute for Seed (INASEM) which will be responsible for providing the material resources and administration necessary for implementing much of the policy developed by the Seed Plan, such as operating labs, offering technical assistance and issuing licenses for the disposition of certain categories of seed. This institute will also include spokespersons from the Presidential Council concerned with seed policy, but is largely a governmental body.

Notes:
1. In the section on chronology, the authors are indebted to the content of a chronology of the struggle produced by the CDR-SUR(Espacio Ecosocialista Del Poder Popular, Nov. 6, 2015). We have translated parts of that document into English. All shortcomings are, of course, our own.

2. Entrevista al President Evo Morales Ayma, con motivo de la aprobacion en la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas de la Declaracion de las Naciones Unidas sobre los derechos de los pueblos indigenas, La Paz, 24 septiembre, 2007 in Vivir Bien: Mensajes y documentos sobre el Vivir Bien, 1995-2010, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia.)

3. All translations of government documents are unofficial.

State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby’s year in review  “Official Blog” comments focus on reinventing history.

He turned truth on its head, claiming:

 “the United States helped change the world for the better” in 2015 – “across a range of issues…vital to ensur(e) the safety, security and prosperity of the American people.”

It’s hard taking rubbish he wrote seriously, substituting fiction for facts,  ignoring America’s endless war on humanity at home and abroad, etc 

Claiming America reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba, Kirby failed to explain its imperial objectives – to return the island state to colonial status, exploit its people and resources under officials it controls, the same dirty scheme it has in mind for all independent nations.

Positive steps were achieved in the war on terrorism, Kirby claimed. The so-called “war” is the greatest hoax in modern times.

ISIS and other major terrorist groups are US creations – armed, funded, trained and deployed as imperial foot soldiers, doing America’s killing and dying for it.

Claiming America took important steps to protect the environment and climate is polar opposite official US policy. Ecological destruction is unrestrained.

Fossil fuel use continues unabated. Dangerous nuclear power is expanding. A Fukushima-type incident on US soil is just a matter of time.

Foods and ingredients permitted to be sold are hazardous to human health – GMOs and others saturated with dangerous chemicals.

Many rushed to market with inadequate testing prescription drugs cause more harm than good – drug industry bandits allowed to push them the way illicit traffickers sell their wars – often at unaffordable prices.

Kirby credited Washington with consummating the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA) – without explaining current US intentions to undermine it by irresponsibly imposing new sanctions Tehran won’t tolerate, perhaps not most other countries.

Nor did Kirby explain Iran’s peaceful program with no military component or intention to have one. So why was Tehran forced to make major concessions demanded of no other nations?

Official US policy toward the Islamic Republic remains regime change by war or other means – removing its independent government, replacing it with one Washington controls, stealing its vast energy reserves, exploiting its people, eliminating Israel’s main regional rival. Thirty-six years of US hostility toward Iran remain unchanged.

Kirby gave Washington’s “robust response” full credit for stemming the Ebola outbreak, Obama calling it one of America’s greatest threats along with Russia (threatening no one) and ISIS, its own creation.

US-led General Assembly members “adopt(ed) an ambitious set of global goals…to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all,” Kirby blustered. Reality is polar opposite. Poverty rages out-of-control, including in America and other Western countries. Ecological destruction is unrestrained.

Corporate coup d’etat Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks were concluded. Kirby ignored the measure’s predatory provisions, putting profits above public safety and other major concerns.

Kirby claimed America’s commitment to preserve global oceans, ignoring their unrestrained ravaging for profit. He called the sham Paris climate agreement a success.

Perhaps his most outrageous claim was saying America is

“bringing peace (and) security to Syria – aid(ing) the Syrian people during their time of need.”

Obama bears full responsibility for one of history’s great crimes – launching war in March 2011, continuing it unabated without mercy, using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists as imperial foot soldiers, bombing Syrian infrastructure and government targets, wanting Assad replaced by a US-controlled puppet.

There’s nothing civil about war in Syria. It’s US-led naked aggression using imported terrorists against a sovereign independent country threatening no others.

America’s war is responsible for ravaging the country, slaughtering many tens of thousands, displacing half the population, and creating unspeakable human misery, one of many high crimes on Obama’s rap sheet – a record of unaccountable horrors, ruthlessness and shame.

Preventing “peace and security” are central to Washington achieving its aims. Allowing them defeat its agenda.

Admiral John Kirby is Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Public Affairs, serving as the department’s spokesman.

His job involves disseminating propaganda and other misinformation, suppressing vital truths.

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

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

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

Day and night, for years, an overwhelming force has been battering this quiet nation, one of the cradles of human civilization.

Looking forward into the New Year, here are a few predictions and some emerging trends to be on the look out for in 2016.

Le récent article de Seymour Hersh qui a été publié sur le site du très sérieux London Review of Books [1] n’a pas fait les choux gras des médias français.

Comme toujours, Seymour Hersh met en avant des informations de première importance.  Il s’agit ici de divergences d’analyses entre la DIA, l’agence de renseignements du Pentagone, et les conseillers de Barack Obama.

Une autre information a bien retenu l’attention de ces médias.  La mort de Zahran Allouche, l’autoritaire commandant de Jaish Al-Islam (l’Armée de l’islam).

Il a été ciblé par un bombardier, sans doute russe, alors qu’il tenait une réunion secrète dans la Ghouta Est avec une brochette de commandants locaux.

Zahran Allouche était le fils d’un prédicateur salafiste et il était originaire de la Ghouta.   Il avait le plein soutien de l’Arabie saoudite, un pays qui le lui fournissait les fonds et les armes pour payer ses hommes et pour lutter contre l’armée loyaliste.  Il se rendait fréquemment en Arabie saoudite pour discuter des besoins de ses troupes et pour définir les objectifs militaires avec les services de sécurité saoudiens.

Les récentes avancées de l’armée loyaliste ont coupé la plupart des voies d’approvisionnement de la Ghouta et la population y est affamée.  Un vaste réseau de tunnels permet encore à cette région de maintenir le contact avec l’extérieur mais la situation y devient de plus en plus précaire.

L’armée qu’il commandait est composée de plusieurs dizaines de milliers d’hommes (de vingt à quarante mille) et il était un farouche adversaire de l’État islamique qu’il avait chassé de la région.

Il n’y a évidemment aucun lien entre ces deux informations sauf peut-être l’attaque chimique qui a eu lieu le 21 août 2013.

La première partie de l’article de Seymour Hersh est un recueil de confidences d’un ex-conseiller de l’État-major interarmes.

À l’été 2013, toutes les analyses de la DIA confirmaient que si Bachar al Assad était militairement battu, une prise de pouvoir par les islamistes s’ensuivrait immanquablement.

Jaish Al-Islam, une rébellion takfiriste soutenue par l’Arabie saoudite et commandée par Zahran Allouche, aurait pris Damas.   Jabhat al-Nosra (le front de la victoire), un groupe djihadiste affilié à Al-Qaïda, aurait pris les villes du centre de la Syrie et Alep tomberait sous la coupe d’islamistes proches des Frères musulmans soutenus par la Turquie et le Qatar.

L’État islamique (DAECH) n’existait pas encore en Syrie mais l’État islamique en Irak et au Levant venait d’apparaitre en Syrie et se battait aux côtés de Jabhat al-Nosra pour prendre Raqqa aux troupes loyalistes.

À cette époque, la CIA complotait depuis plus d’un an avec le Royaume Uni, l’Arabie Saoudite, le Qatar et avec l’aval du président des États-Unis pour expédier des armes et des marchandises dans le but de renverser Bachar al Assad.  Les armes partaient de Libye jusqu’en Syrie via la Turquie.

Ce qui avait débuté comme une opération secrète pour armer et soutenir les rebelles modérés s’était transformée en un programme technique, militaire et logistique à cheval sur la frontière turque pour toutes les forces d’opposition, y compris Jabhat al-Nosra et les autres groupes islamistes radicaux.

Les soi-disant rebelles modérés s’étaient évaporés et l’Armée syrienne libre n’était qu’un mirage stationné sur une base aérienne en Turquie. Le constat était peu réjouissant : il n’y avait aucune opposition modérée viable face à Bachar al Assad et les USA armaient des extrémistes.

Le directeur de la DIA, le Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, continuait à envoyer des rapports alarmistes au président mais il semblait que l’administration ne voulait pas entendre la vérité.

Les commandants du JCS (État-major interarmes) partagèrent alors les informations avec leurs collègues allemands, israéliens et russes en se disant que leurs analyses seraient soufflées à Bachar al Assad.

En été 2013, l’AAS (l’armée loyaliste) tenait les villes et les groupes rebelles n’arrivaient plus à avancer.  Ces groupes rebelles, renforcés par des djihadistes et des mercenaires étrangers payés par les États du Golfe ou de riches donateurs continuaient à publier des vidéos d’exécutions et de tortures sur des prisonniers et des civils syriens.

Les médias commencèrent à parler d’intervention militaire pour mettre fin à cette effusion de sang.  Une zone d’exclusion aérienne était envisagée mais il fallait pour cela l’aval de Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU.

En juin 2013, au G8 de Dublin, Vladimir Poutine tint bon contre les sept autres membres et refusa jusqu’au bout de donner l’accord de la Russie pour une telle opération.

Sauf à violer la Charte des Nations Unies, la situation était bloquée.

Barack Obama commis alors une bourde qui aurait pu avoir de lourdes conséquences.

Il répondit à la question d’un journaliste en disant que l’utilisation d’armes chimiques par Bachar al Assad autoriserait les États-Unis à lancer des frappes sur la Syrie sans l’aval de CS de l’ONU.

Les journalistes, qu’on aurait dits avides d’encore plus de sauvagerie, se mirent alors à scruter les bulletins d’informations à la recherche de l’acte qui obligerait Barack Obama à tenir sa parole.

L’occasion se présenta ce fameux 21 août 2013.  Un bombardement chimique sur la Ghouta orientale fit entre 350 et 1700 morts (suivant les sources) parmi la population civile.

Pour les médias, pour les dirigeants politiques et pour l’opinion publique, il ne faisait aucun doute que Bachar al Assad était le responsable du massacre.

Barack Obama était sous la pression des médias qui le poussait à faire intervenir ses bombardiers.  Il savait que les rebelles étaient prêts à se lancer à l’assaut des grandes villes syriennes.  Les bombardements franco-étasuniens auraient mis l’armée régulière en déroute comme en Irak.

Bien sûr, il connaissait les rapports de la DIA et il avait lu que la chute de Bachar al Assad signifiait l’arrivée des Islamistes partout en Syrie mais ce n’était pas du tout le scénario prévu au départ par les États-Unis.

Nous savons que ce qui était privilégié, c’est un départ de Bachar al Assad et son remplacement par un président pro-occidental.  L’armée et l’administration syrienne devant assurer la continuité de gestion de l’État jusqu’à son éventuel démembrement suivant le bien connu projet de remodelage du Moyen-Orient.

Ma conviction personnelle est que ce n’est pas qu’un changement de régime qui était envisagé pour la Syrie, c’était surtout un changement d’alliance avec une rupture avec l’Iran, avec la Russie et avec le Hezbollah.

Mais Barack Obama était prisonnier de sa parole.  Que vaudrait encore la parole d’un président des États-Unis s’il se défaussait de sa promesse dans un cas pareil.

Il pouvait lancer quelques frappes symboliques mais il se serait quand-même déjugé.

Il y a un autre élément dont il faut tenir compte pour comprendre la valse-hésitation de Barack Obama.  Le budget de la Défense venait de subir une forte coupe budgétaire et le JCS (État-major interarmes) était réticent à se lancer dans une action militaire aux contours mal définis pouvant entrainer les États-Unis dans un bourbier comme en Irak.

Le sauvetage est alors venu en deux temps.

John Kerry a dit en répondant à un journaliste qu’il n’y avait pas de possibilité d’éviter l’intervention aérienne excepté si une chose tout-à-fait improbable arrivait comme par exemple si Bachar al Assad se débarrassait de ses armes chimiques.

Vladimir Poutine a répondu dans les 48 heures que Bachar al Assad est d’accord de se débarrasser de ses armes chimiques.  On se demande parfois si ce n’était préparé à l’avance tellement que c’était bien coordonné.

Nous connaissons la suite.  Barack Obama a d’abord invoqué l’accord du Congrès.  Ensuite il a accepté l’offre russe et Bachar al Assad a donné ses armes chimiques pour qu’on les détruise.

Bien sûr, tout le monde n’a pas été dupe de cette fameuse attaque chimique de la Ghouta qui était tombée à point nommé.

Deux éminents experts du prestigieux MIT ont démontré quelques mois plus tard que ces obus chimiques ne pouvaient avoir été tirés d’une zone gouvernementale.  [2]

Seymour Hersh, déjà lui, fut un des premiers à publier et à commenter ce rapport à la fin 2013.

Il reste quelques détails à prouver mais il est clair qu’on avait presque commencé une guerre avec un « false flag » comme motif.  Si ce ne sont les troupes loyalistes, c’est alors forcément les rebelles islamistes de Jaish Al-Islam qui sont responsables du massacre pour un motif bien simple : ils savaient que cela provoquerait l’intervention aérienne franco-étasunienne qui leur permettrait de reprendre l’offensive sur Damas.

Depuis ces deux dernières années, nous avons pu nous apercevoir tous les jours que les islamistes n’accordent aucune considération à la vie humaine et il n’y a aucune raison de croire qu’il en était autrement en août 2013.

Si on continue dans les déductions, on constate que c’était bien Zahran Allouche qui était le commandant des rebelles de cette zone.  Il devait certainement en savoir des choses sur cette attaque chimique.  Il ne parlera plus maintenant et c’est dommage.

Il reste encore à savoir qui a trahi pour indiquer le lieu où le groupe se réunissait.

L’article de Seymour Hersh parle aussi d’un rapport de l’ambassadeur étasunien en Syrie, William Roebuck de décembre 2006,  qui analysait les failles du gouvernement Assad et proposait une liste des méthodes « susceptibles d’augmenter la probabilité » d’opportunités de déstabilisation. Il recommandait que Washington travaille avec l’Arabie Saoudite et l’Égypte pour développer les tensions sectaires.  L’ambassade se chargeait aussi de donner de l’argent à des dissidents politiques locaux.

Cette partie de l’article prouve que la contestation en Syrie n’avait rien de spontané.  Elle était bien préparée de longue date.  Cela indique aussi que les États-Unis utilisent des méthodes tout-à-fait illégales pour renverser des gouvernements.  Il n’y a aucune raison de croire que ce genre de méthodes se limitait uniquement à la Syrie, bien au contraire.  Cela confirme bien que toutes les soi-disant révolutions de couleurs spontanées sont le résultat d’une manipulation de petits groupes par les ambassades étasuniennes.  Tous les lecteurs assidus de sites sérieux le savent depuis longtemps.

L’histoire des prisonniers d’Al Qaïda livrés par la CIA à la Syrie pour y être torturés est déjà connue depuis longtemps.  La Syrie n’est d’ailleurs pas le seul pays concerné.  Il est maintenant mal venu pour les journalistes et pour les ONG d’accuser la Syrie de violation des droits de l’homme sans lancer en parallèle les mêmes accusations contre la CIA.

Un autre point intéressant relevé par l’article est que le Pentagone avait réussi à faire parvenir aux rebelles des armes obsolètes provenant de stocks de l’armée turque en 2013.  Cela expliquerait les avancées de l’ASS en été de la même année.  Malheureusement, l’Arabie saoudite, le Qatar et la Turquie décidèrent d’augmenter le financement des groupes islamistes y compris l’État islamique qui avait fait son apparition en Syrie en cette fin 2013.  Ces groupes prirent alors le contrôle d’énormes territoires dans l’est du pays.

À la fin de 2013, la CIA continuait à former des combattants qui rejoignaient les groupes islamistes dès leur passage en Syrie.

Une accusation qui revient souvent dans les confidences du conseiller de l’État-major concerne la Turquie et le rôle négatif de son président,  Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, dans la crise syrienne.  Il était évident que pour la DIA, le président turc ne concentrait pas ses efforts sur le remplacement de Bachar al Assad par une personnalité pro-occidentale.  Son ambition est d’avoir une zone d’influence sur les zones nord de l’Irak et la Syrie qui étaient des parties de l’Empire ottoman il y a un siècle et de peut-être régler son problème kurde en coupant le PKK de ses bases arrière.

La deuxième partie de l’article analyse la situation actuelle en Syrie et les rapports conflictuels entre les présidents Obama et Poutine.  Cela reste intéressant mais ce sont des informations qui n’apportent pas d’éléments nouveaux.

La conclusion de l’article est un appel à travailler ensemble, donc avec les Russes, pour venir à bout de l’État islamique et de stabiliser la Syrie en gardant pour cela Bachar al Assad à la tête du pays jusqu’à ce que la situation soit stabilisée.  Des élections pourront avoir lieu ensuite.

C’est l’avis de nombreux experts ne faisant pas partie du cercle néo-conservateur ainsi que de nombreux anciens diplomates.

Cet avis n’est pas majoritaire au Congrès mais en privé, de plus en plus de députés approuvent cette idée.

En septembre dernier, le général Dempsey a pris sa retraite et a été remplacé par le général Joseph Dunfort à la tête de l’État-major interarmes.  Lors de son audition devant la Commission sénatoriale des  forces armées, il avait déclaré que la Russie est une menace existentielle pour les États-Unis et que la Turquie est un des alliés les plus importants.

Barack Obama a maintenant un général beaucoup plus en accord avec son entourage idéaliste (idéaliste dans le sens « uniquement idéal pour les intérêts des États-Unis)  à la tête de l’État-major.  Il n’y aura plus de contestation indirecte.

Le lieutenant général Michail T. Flynn avait été remplacé à la tête de la DIA en août 2014.

Revenu à la vie civile, il continue à clamer lors de nombreuses interviews que les décisions de Barack Obama sont incompréhensibles. (lien)

Conclusion.

Cette contestation de la Politique du Président par le Pentagone est assez étonnante et même rare dans l’histoire des États-Unis.

On peut dire qu’il y d’un côté des analyses réalistes basées sur des informations récoltées sur place ainsi que sur des photos aériennes et de l’autre, une approche idéologique tout-à fait déconnecté de la réalité qui tend vers la recherche de la suprématie des États-Unis.  Les décisions sont dans ce cas toujours prises en veillant à ce qu’elles n’avantagent pas un concurrent géopolitique.

En 2013, les tenants de l’école réaliste étaient John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, des généraux du Pentagone dont Martin Dempsey et Michail T. Flynn.

Il ne reste que John Kerry en fonction.  On constate de plus en plus souvent que ses déclarations sont contredites par Susan Rice, une proche conseillère de Barack Obama.

Cela ne donne pas plus de cohérence à la diplomatie actuelle des États-Unis.

En Syrie, la Russie s’est placée au centre du jeu.  Presque cinq ans de guerre a été le temps nécessaire qui a permis à Vladimir Poutine de préparer son armée pour intervenir intelligemment en Syrie.

Les experts du Pentagone estiment dans leurs calculs que le coût de l’intervention pour la Russie est de 1 à 2 milliards de dollars par an entièrement prélevés sur le budget de l’armée.

Ce coût serait supportable pour 4 à 5 ans sans problème.

Cela change complétement la donne.  La Russie est maintenant incontournable et quelle que soit la solution qui sera négociée en Syrie, il faudra tenir compte de ses intérêts.

Barack Obama est discrédité sur le dossier syrien et, sauf grande surprise, il le laissera à son successeur.

C’est le prix à payer pour avoir eu une politique étrangère confuse et incompréhensible pendant son dernier mandat.

Ceci est une constatation réaliste qui se base sur la détermination de Vladimir Poutine à défendre les intérêts existentiels de la Russie qu’il estime fondamentalement menacés.  Cela ne concerne aucunement une considération préférentielle pour la Russie.

L’alternative est une guerre contre la Russie dont on devine les conséquences désastreuses pour tous les belligérants.

Traduction intégrale de l’article de Seymour Hersh en français sur le site “Les Crises”.  [3]

Pierre Van Grunderbeek

[1] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military

[2]http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/international/article/la-syrie-et-le-rapport-du-mit-147902

[3]http://www.les-crises.fr/echanges-entre-militaires-par-seymour-hersh/

Philosopher John McMurtry was asked to “co-operate with Ayatollah Khamenei in the Supreme Leader’s letter to the Youth in Europe and North America”. 

The questions posed by  a designated US enemy opened a new world standpoint on the US-led world disorder and the taboo depths of  shared crises as we enter 2016. 

What in general do the Western media hide and not let people know?

In general, the mass media across cultures are propaganda systems for those who own or control them. But the Western media lead the world in silencing one ultimate issue confronting  all peoples on Earth – the despoliation of the world’s life support systems by transnational  corporate globalization. They talk only of climate warming’, not destabilization of planetary life cycles at every level. They promote only market-growth solutions which are known not to work.

No-one talks of US-led ‘globalization’ itself as the underlying disorder. No science or story defines the common cause of the spasmic extinctions everywhere, the oceanic pollutions, the fish stock collapses across all waters, and the ever larger-scale looting of resources across borders. It is a deeper causal mechanism than even US empire. Transnational money tides increasingly devour and poison all that exists with even Communist-Party China destroying its own air to breathe and grounds of a human life.

Western media are the lead PR vehicles for this limitlessly life destructive invasion and growth – the nature of fascism in all forms. Financial fascism is never named in the media, and so its world floods of private money sequences, commodities and public waste grow and multiply beneath detection. Throughout the corporate media present only isolated problems, competitive spectacles and ads for the system. Humanity`s common life ground and universal needs are screened out. ‘Reforms’ are only more corporate marketizations and bank-driven dispossessions.

The underlying law of corporate globalization its media presentation is undeniable, but taboo to name. Whatever stands against the transnational corporate market as the cosmic engine of humanity’s well-being is anathematized and annihilated in one nation after another. The methods range from bombing social infrastructures in Slavic and Arab societies to silencing and reversing undeniable facts exposing the lies of the system.  No alternative to feeding resources into the life-blind growth juggernaut has arisen at a productive level.  The media repel any real economic reform as unthinkable.

In this borderless chaos of corporate globalization which now strips even the social infrastructures of the European Union to pay big banks and dispossess workers, the mass media select out whatever joins the dots of the cumulative catastrophe unfolding on both social and ecological planes.  No real threat to collective life security computes except constructed enemies who mutate from one Orwellian hate object to the next. The collective life capital on which everyone’s continued breathing, water, nutrition, biodiverse surroundings, social security and knowledge depend are not even conceived.

Are the politics of European and US governments contrary to the national interests of even their own nations?

The meaning of ‘the national interest’ is the prior question. It is the common life interest of citizens through generational time. Yet you will never find this principle in the mass media, official declarations, or even academic journals. Typically the meaning is reversed– for example the US orchestrating society-destroying wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, and Syria. All are claimed to be for the ‘US national interest’ and ‘global security’ at once, but these very big lies are only incantations of unaccountable power.

In fact, all societies involved keep being destroyed all the way back to the lead invading state. Social life fabrics are divided, bombed and torn apart in the Islamic world, and hollowed out at home at the same time.  One dark truth persists underneath all the lies – an endless eco-genocide of poorer peoples and their life conditions across continents that profit the transnational money party alone.  Is there exception?

This is the world-defining fact that no corporate state or media report. They divert instead to “the terrorists threatening the civilized world”. In fact this is merely the US and allies projecting the terror onto the victims that fight back or on their own jihadi constructions  sowing civil wars to divide and rule from without.  Thus endless US-led bombing from one country to the next somehow avoids the very oil-supply lines sustaining ISIL, the designated Evil One which has in fact been financed, armed and directed by the CIA and allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. That the ‘terrorists’ are a creation of the system warring upon them is another Orwellian absurdity. But it is the reigning pretext for  armed lockdown and dispossession of US-EU societies too for transnational corporate exploitation – the ultimate global terrorism at work across cultures and borders.

Consider the bizarre turns on the ground of the master big lie of ‘protecting the Free World and its allies’. Turkey’s despotic state under Erdogan, whose son is making millions out of running ISIL stolen oil, shoots down a Russian plane tracking the Turkey-protected ISIL oil-truck columns, and bombs only Kurds, the sole indigenous fighting force in the US-led Syria-Iraq wars. It is all so confusing until one recognizes that it is the same underlying pattern throughout. Names, cultures, even rulers make little difference. The corporate rich always get richer while peoples and their environments are ever more predated and looted in the name of their ‘security’ and ‘freedom’.

At the same time, the connection between the Western rule of armed force and financial terror – essentially NATO and big banks following Wall Street – is never named however much it dispossesses and ruins the citizens of the lead Western societies themselves.

Robotic despots called “technocrats” spread the terror of money-control extortion, and liquidate all liveable social programs to force the payments.  NATO armed forces stand ready to be called as back-up enforcers. Resistance is bombed within Europe itself, as in Yugoslavia and Ukraine. War criminal facts disappear into blaming the designated enemy, usually a former ally.  The simultaneous hollowing out of US and EU majorities by the same military-financial axis funded by the public treasury is anathema to recognize.

But the systemic financial extortion, corporate treaty rights as absolute over nations, and NATO armed terror cannot succeed by themselves. Pervasive toxic propaganda against resistance across borders, special agents and forces on site at pleasure, and floods of US dollars to pay local fascisti to scream abuse and threats all participate in enforcing the final unseen objective –to transform all public wealth into transnational financial control and multiplication of instruments of dispossession. This is the nature of the global financial fascism advancing beneath the public radar. Even the food and water futures of the world’s peoples are bought up by Wall Street and company using US Federal Reserve cash. There is no end to the carcinomic invasions of the public realm and people’s lives unless forced back from without and risen  up against from within.

Is the West divided against itself? 

No matter what country you live in, perpetual war is built into this system’s exponential money-sequence demands across all cultures and borders. The staggering wastes of lives and public resources never end but always rise in demands. They have ever since the Reagan-Thatcher turn which is still absurdly masked as ‘neoliberal’ by the Left – a sign of the categorical confusion that allows it to go on destroying across the world. This is the division not yet comprehended.

As with the Mafia in microcosm, financial fascism commands citizens everywhere to pay up or suffer the consequences of life ruin. In fact, there is no other way to keep a system of armed extortion at every level going, even if you spin it as “globalization”. The key is to proclaim the opposite of ‘freedom’ and ‘prosperity’ all the way. This is the mass public relations function at which this system surpasses all others. This masking by advanced public relations techniques is the only way it can keep on going.

The deprivation, invasion, and looting of sovereign nations for more transnational private  profits without limit is called ‘growth’. It devours the developing and developed world at the same time. Every wage, tax, access to life means is now at risk and the demands for more private corporate rights never stop. This is the ultimate division within the West and now the East – the life of societies against their transnational financial predation.

How can it be believed in as ‘the free world’ by anyone with a working mind? It is totalitarian in its reach – for example, the US Executive, Legislature and Supreme Court all now directly or indirectly controlled by the money party across parties. In functional terms, The US-led military is joined at the hip to transnational bank-corporate rule along with the mass media – the unseen global financial fascism operating across state and private divisions. But the new PR twist of this global fascism is to condemn violence not glorify it, while showing and using terror and violence more pervasively all the while.  ‘Neoliberal’ fits this public relations mask like a glove. It conceals the absolute conflict between the people’s lives and future and the system’s demands for continuous destruction to grow private money demand and sequences without limit as a form of ‘liberalism’ – in fact, the original philosophy of John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, both mild socialists. Thus the most absolute conflict between society’s common life interests and borderless financial-fascist rule is erased by an equivocal slogan.

For example, it is certainly not remotely liberal or in the interests of US taxpayers to pay out $2,000,000,000 dollars a day for the US corporate war and terror machine, a peerlessly profitable quasi-monopolist global business in its own right and enforcer of the limitlessly life-destructive  system across borders . Yet even dispossessed Greece pays billions of public money to the transnational NATO enforcer standing over it behind the foreign banks to annihilate any embodied social resistance to the concealed invasion.

With endless cuts to social spending “to reduce government costs”, ever more people within Western borders have been pushed into inhuman conditions at the same time as refugees flee in millions from the bombed states and engineered civil wars. Together they overstress social life support systems beyond any built capacity to manage by  systematically defunded social states. Again the absolute division between peoples’ common life interests and the system’s DNA of consuming life organization and conditions at every level cannot be denied. But no category yet recognizes it.

What do you see as the importance of youth in the future of the West and the failure of policy-makers to provide for them?

Perhaps the worst problem of this system has been the way in which the lives of the younger generations have been sacrificed beneath notice. There is no private profit in enabling the young to understand and flourish as human beings. But there is ever more profit in exploiting the young’s increasing market demand as well as cheap labor. The vast and growing global businesses of junk foods, violence entertainment, and selfie-chatter have one thing in common. They depend on the young as unthinking spenders.  In this way the next generations are made pervasively addictive consumers degrading human life capacities the more corporate commodities are consumed by them. Maximizing corporate sales and ‘investor’ profits is the sole value criterion. Even infants in the crib are consciously conditioned into this expanding addictive-junk cycle as “job-creating growth”.

Alarm arises in informed citizens with the latest epidemic disorder like obesity, bullying, unfitness, and failing attention spans. But the overall pattern is blocked out. Youth are conditioned to a totalizing market of appetites and future insecurity without human meaning left.  Life-serving vocations are everywhere chopped to ‘save money’. Students in higher education are treated as consumers of course packages by corporate university managements who multiply themselves as students are forced into debt slavery. With human livelihoods ever scarcer, youth depression becomes epidemic. Long-term demoralization sets in beneath understanding of its system cause.

But banning Western ideas, clothing or music won’t solve the problem. The disorder is far deeper and invades every level of life organization. The only truth is what sells. The only competition is to lower costs on life and increase money-value outputs faster. The Creation itself is destroyed by the lock-stepping money sequences to more. Over 90% of resource extractions become waste within weeks.

Youth everywhere are threatened by this global disorder. But prohibition of ‘Western ways’  is symptomatic. Yes, prohibit the selling of what is scientifically known to attack life capacities from junk food to extreme violence entertainment. But ethnic appearances are not the issue. They are diversions. The need is to re-set to the lost life ground – the universal life needs of humanity and its ecological host through generational time.

It is on this common life-ground that science and religion meet, and East and West join across differences. The young long for it.

Why is there Islamophobia in the West?

Cultural differences provoke ignorance – the first level of the problem. But false  propaganda  cultivates hate. Long before Islamaphobia, US-led ‘anti-communism’ murdered millions in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Latin America. Before that, European Nazism was assisted by US transnational corporations against the ‘communist threat’ – which meant, decoded, whatever stood in the way of the transnational corporate fascism already building the perpetual war system on which it still thrives and grows today. After fascist Germany and Japan were defeated, the now militarily supreme US, led by corporate Nazi partners in the US never named or prosecuted, carried on the global pogroms to holocaust proportions. So-called ‘communists’ were everywhere slandered, persecuted and warred upon even where they did not exist – a global holocaust that killed tens of millions of people and ruined as many lives.

In short, the cornerstone of US ideology is its designated Enemy – whatever opposes private corporate globalization. The genocide of first peoples was its original stage.  Islamaphobia is one more variation on the theme. Ironically, ‘Islam’ as armed jihad –the main hate object now – has been a creation and instrument of covert-state US policy. It has been for decades an admitted US asset in advancing the bi-partisan project of ‘full spectrum dominance’ of the world. Back in the 1980’s, jihadi mass murder and mayhem were orchestrated and funded by the US to destroy a secular Afghan state led by equality for women and social guarantees.

It was destroyed to bleed the USSR coming to its defense through the ‘Afghanistan War’. A fanatically sectarian Islam was led by foreign Saudi corp-man and Wahabi Osama bin Laden, with US National Security Adviser Pole Brzezinski cheer-leading the annihilation of secular socialism as the means to destroy Russia, his instituted fixation. So from al Qaeda to D’aesh, the terrorist monsters have been a Saudi-and-Sunni-based fanaticism led by the US special-forces state – lately with ample support from Turkey’s Erdogan and Gulf kings hating Shia Iran as well. But such distinctions are smeared out in the Islamaophobia of today.

Yes, imperial colonization and destruction of the Islamic world has bled its civilization dry on a far longer and larger scale. The main modern driver has been money-oil exploitation, the fuel of world capitalism until Wall Street sold its futures. The Greater Israel project has been the permanent enforcer in situ. Through all this evil – meaning limitlessly life-destructive self maximization – Islamic civilization has retreated into an obscurantist and punitively authoritarian clerical rule without productive base. An inward-looking mullah Islam has become the dominant line of collective belief through the chaos.

It has resulted in what is not recognizable in Islam’s golden years as the world’s leading civilization. In Moorish Spain over centuries, for example, Islamic order demonstrated peerless architecture, arts and science that still capture the wonder of those who look today. None of the violent in-looking practices sustaining Islamophobia in the Western mind are evident. Life-and limb-destroying punishments for theft, heresy, consensual sex and the face-elimination of women that provoke the anger of so many in the West seem foreign to this earlier civilisation. Certainly the death-to-non-believers fanaticism was alien to the Islamic civilisation that saved the classical secular works of Plato and Aristotle from the dark ages of the ‘Christian’ West.

Today Islamophobia finds its rational kernel in the dispossession, maiming, lashing torture and legal murder of individuals for no violent offence. Persons found guilty of heresy, sexual non-conformity, criticism of the theocracy, completely personal and peaceful offenses can be legally tortured, maimed and murdered. All of this is anathema to the reasonably caring mind.

It does not matter who commits this inhuman violence – whether the Spanish Inquisition, secular despots, US torturers, the Israeli occupation, or a mullah hierarchy. It is hideous in principle. For evolved humanity, life-enabling institutions and advancing knowledge form the pathway of true civilisation. An end to paralyzing fear and extreme violence to non-violent persons is a dividing line of human history.

Why the delay of awakening collective consciousness in the West?

‘Awakening collective consciousness’ can have opposite meanings. The US-EU today claim binding Western values for every invasion of another society.  So we need a criterion to rule out group-mind aggression and destruction in any form.

A deep core of our problem is that the US has in fact no collective life interest or consciousness in its constitution, its dominant social sciences, its actionable laws, or its white fundamentalist religions. Western market and political doctrine repudiate collective consciousness in principle. Only self-maximizing atomic individuals with no binding life community alone exist to this ruling mind-set. Self-serving corporations and consumers compete for survival according to market rules whose algebra is life-blind. Endless “trade agreements” override any society’s collective laws if they reduce expected profits to private transnational money sequences. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the latest extension of this sociopath metaphysics built into the ruling market paradigm.

“Delay of collective consciousness” is thus locked into what is called ‘globalization’, East and West. Permanent war is waged to enforce and extend it. The academy itself apes the atomic market model. Hidden in a technocratic code few know, its transnational dogmas and corporate form have claimed all our countries by secretly minted treaties whose defining principle is the absolute right of borderless corporations over all rights of sovereign nations, workers and environments that may conflict with foreign ‘investor’ demands. The predictable result is that an increasing majority of the world’s people is without sufficient livelihoods or ecological security. Only market solutions are allowed. Only self-maximizing greed counts as rational in the model.

The only security that matters is of this ruling system itself.  “Who’s security gets protected by any means necessary? Whose security is casually sacrificed in the process?” Naomi Klein aptly asks before the long-planned mass meetings and demonstrations for climate justice in Paris when a jihadist mass-murder stopped them all overnight.  It conveniently justified the state decision to ban all peaceful protests, marches and other outdoor activities during the all-nations negotiations for a new global regime. In such ways the perpetual war system and creeping police state continue rolling over opposition by all means. The greatest irony is that all this happens in the name of ‘collective security’ when, in fact, the collective security of the living world is what is continuously destroyed by this a-priori life-blind disorder.

Collective life interests and decisions are already ruled out by the punitive regulations of transnational corporate-market treaties overriding the laws of once sovereign nations. Every one of these secretive treaties is controlled and minted outside of any people’s vote, participation or knowledge of proceedings, and is enforced by public dispossession decided by closed lawyer tribunals without public records or any right of appeal. Collective consciousness is precisely prohibited from any social formation, policy or legislation limiting private corporate profit opportunities across borders.

How could Western peoples allow it?

The macro pattern is unnamed. Global financial fascism advances by ignorance of it. Few recognize that humanity’s social evolution has in fact been reversed by a life-blind global mechanism that rules beneath knowledge of its meaning. Its slow-motion coup d’etat across nations and cultures has silently reversed post-1945 history which had developed collective life standards of human life and flourishing. Look, for example, at the UN Declaration of Universal Rights, or the binding International Covenant of Social, Economic and Cultural Rights. They remind us how far human rights were being built into the order of the post-War world. Every article is a collective requirement for the protection and enablement of human life across classes and nations.  Beneath these international ideals, various forms of socialism and social democracy were the choice of virtually every society and population.  Racism, sexism, child abuse, ecocide –the great evils were becoming consciously repudiated by a new reign of international law. Collective institutions of education, health, pensions and worker rights and unions were all advancing.  There was even a competition between superpowers to achieve them across the lines of the Cold War.

Then it was all reversed from 1980 on led by the corporate-fascist regimes of Reagan and Thatcher.  From then on via global currency and interest control, borderless corporate rights and armed-force empire, the US-led private money party declared war on all collective consciousness and institutions that did not serve the corporate market. Working from the US’s advantageous post-War position of its nuclear bombs, sea-lane and aerial military control across oceans, and private corporate rights in technology and knowledge production, the US corporate class – fresh from collaboration with the Nazis even during the War – imposed a long march backwards to private money-party control as “freedom”.

Social consciousness became a taboo within the academy itself. Beneath all the delusionary propaganda of “the free market and democracy”, ever more uncontrolled private money sequences propelled mass-murderous pogroms and wars against collectives of all kinds. Worker and social-base strippings under ever more parroted euphemisms of “austerity”, “deficit reduction”, “market reforms”, “technocratic government”, and “efficiencies” became mechanical slogans mouthed by media and politicians. Their common meaning became undeniable, but never named – reductions of life means to citizens everywhere. Long-evolved regulations and institutions for the common life interest continue today to be dismantled, defunded and warred upon on every plane, almost in feeding frenzy.

Yet people increasingly know the only collective awakening that works is awakening to our shared life-ground through every moment, our evolved natural and social life bases without which our next breaths cannot be drawn. This is the demystified core of the world’s wisdom traditions. In the lost bonds of meaning, the ultimate cause is to serve life’s more inclusively compossible flourishing through time – our true human becoming finding its way through the massacre and stupefaction of the global financial fascism not yet named or bound.

John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his last book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure

GR Editor’s Note

America’s quest for military hegemony includes the use of nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis against both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.

Russia has responded to US threats through a major modernization of its strategic nuclear weapons arsenal.

A new nuclear arms race has been launched.  All the safeguards of the Cold War era have been scrapped. The US is openly threatening Russia with nuclear weapons. 

Should we be concerned. Public opinion is largely unaware of the dangers of a nuclear holocaust which threatens life on planet earth. 

The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. 

The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness. And so is Russia.

Russia is heralded as the “Aggressor”. U.S.-NATO military confrontation with Russia is contemplated.

Michel Chossudovsky,  January 1, 2016

*       *      *

Recent days and weeks have seen several news items pertaining to the future state of the Russian nuclear triad. The scope of  modernization plans suggests the role Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are to play as of Russia’s security foreign policy.

The scale of Russian strategic nuclear modernization is impressive. President Putin recently attended the laying down of Aleksandr III, the seventh Borey-class ballistic missile submarine out of eight planned which carry 16 multi-warhead Bulava SLBMs each. Three of these ships are already in service, the whole series is to become operational by 2020.

Text by J.Hawk

It was also announced that the first PAK-DA heavy bomber flight is to take place in 2020, with the aircraft becoming operational by 2025. In the interim, Russia’s Long-Range Aviation will receive several squadrons of Tu-160M2 bombers, whose production is expected to resume in the upcoming years. The Sarmat heavy ICBM research and development has been recently declared complete, and the missile will begin launch testing in 2016 or 2017. The missile’s unique capabilities include the ability to strike any target on the planet using multiple possible trajectories, for example, it could be used to strike North America not only by flying over the North Pole, but also using an alternative trajectory over the South Pole which would render US ABM systems irrelevant. The construction of Voronezh-DM over-the-horizon ballistic missile attack early warning radars is continuing. Finally, the Russian General Staff announced the development of a system allowing strategic ballistic missiles to be retargeted following launch, which thus far was impossible to do because once the target selection was completed prior to launch there was no way to alter it once the missile was in flight.

This brief outline of current developments shows that Russia is pursuing a sophisticated strategy of deterrence. The comparatively small and uniform French, Russian, and Chinese nuclear arsenals are capable of deterring only one threat, namely a nuclear attack on their national territory. The variety of capabilities inherent in Russia’s triad means that its national leadership has a range of responses at its disposal and can use its capabilities to deter not only nuclear attacks against its territory but also conventional attacks against its military targets, including outside of Russia’s borders.

Syria is an example of what these capabilities mean for Russia. It is no accident that Putin’s request to raise the strategic nuclear force readiness level to 95% came when he instructed the General Staff to destroy any potential threat to Russian aircraft or ground facilities in Syria. The Russian military presence in Syria is not large enough to guarantee survival against a concerted NATO attack. Fifty aircraft located at a single airbase, even one protected by the S-400, are still vulnerable due to their exposed location and lack of strategic depth. Russian conventional forces could not easily come to Hmeimim’s aid in the event of it being attacked by NATO forces. What makes Hmeimim secure from attack is the credible and flexible deterrence posture.

What makes that deterrence both credible and flexible is the variety and modernity of Russia’s delivery vehicle force which is not limited to having to launch a multi-warhead ICBM or SLBM, and which can penetrate all current or planned defenses. The credibility of Russia’s nuclear deterrent is strengthened by the existence of a powerful conventional deterrent in the form of Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles.

The use of these missiles against ISIS targets was likely motivated to dissuade any countries hostile to Russia’s presence in Syria because it demonstrated Russia could use these weapons to retaliate against any attack on Hmeimim. The target state would then have to choose between backing down or escalating, thus risking a nuclear exchange with Russia. If Russia simply had an ICBM and SLBM force, Hmeimim would be a much more tempting target because an ICBM launch would be disproportionate response to the attack. Russia’s strategic force modernization plans indicate that its leadership anticipates Syria-like scenarios in the years to come.

Acting by decree, an updated national security strategy, has been implemented which fundamentally redefines US-Russia relations. 

It addresses significant threats Russia faces – notably US-led NATO encroaching on its borders, stating:

“The buildup of the military potential of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and vesting it with global functions implemented in violations of norms of international law, boosting military activity of the bloc’s countries, further expansion of the alliance, the approach of its military infrastructure to Russian borders create a threat to the national security.”

It accused Washington and it allies of “seeking to keep up their domination in global affairs,” risking greater conflicts than already.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement, saying

“(t)he course NATO has assumed towards ‘deterring’ Russia, materialized as a buildup of military presence in countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, increase in the number and intensity of exercises close to the Russian border, necessitated measures to counter the threats that NATO creates for Russia’s national security.”

“The remaining channels of a political dialogue with NATO and bilateral contacts with the leadership of the key member countries of the organization have been used for the explanation of negative consequences and potential risks from changes to the existing configuration of forces in Europe.”

The Ministry noted the “confrontational nature of the Alliance’s decision to invite Montenegro to the start of talks on its accession to NATO, leading to a further fragmentation of the European security space, creation of new demarcation lines on the continent.”

Are plans to incorporate Ukraine next not yet revealed? Will US-led NATO divisions be deployed along Russia’s borders more than already? Pentagon tactical and strategic nuclear weapons target its heartland.

Are things heading recklessly toward direct confrontation? Russia’s warning against deploying nuclear weapons in Europe to avoid “dangerous consequences” went unheeded.

Former German Defense Ministry Parliamentary State Secretary Willy Wimmer called “new attack options against Russia a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbor.”

Despite Bundestag members overwhelmingly ruling for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany earlier, new ones are being deployed, sparking outrage in Russia.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it “an infringement of Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”

Putin responded to Washington’s provocative Eastern European expansion, saying Russia “will be forced to aim our armed forces…at those territories from where the  threat comes.”

“It is (US-led nuclear armed and dangerous) NATO that is moving towards our border, and we aren’t moving anywhere.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Washington of “inciting tensions and carefully nurturing (its) European allies’ anti-Russian phobias (as a pretext for) expanding its military presence and influence in Europe” – threatening world peace.

Key US NATO allies Britain, France, Germany, Turkey and others march in lockstep with its aggressive anti-Russian policy. Its officials have just cause for concern.

Russian lower house State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin called NATO a “cancer tumor” in Europe. World peace depends on its “disband(ment).”

“This could be done in several stages,” he said. First “expel” America. Disbandment could “painlessly” follow – a vital step toward “strengthening security and stability on the European continent,” he stressed.

Russia’s updated national security strategy cited other significant threats – including internally or externally instigated color revolutions, a US specialty, threatening its sovereignty by undermining and destabilizing its political integrity.

US bioweapons threaten its security, the document saying its “network of…biological military labs is expanding on the territories of countries bordering Russia.”

Its “independent foreign and domestic policy has been met with counteraction by the US and its allies, seeking to maintain” unchallenged global dominance, including by marginalizing, containing, weakening and isolating Russia, a high-risk confrontational policy assuring no winners.

US-installed fascists in Ukraine pose a direct threat to Russia’s security. Their regime represents a “long-term source of instability in Europe and directly at the Russian border” – an intolerable situation forcing Putin to respond appropriately, at the same time fostering peace and stability.

Moscow wants nuclear proliferation constrained, urging “the creation of appropriate conditions that will enable a reduction of nuclear weapons without damaging international security and strategic stability” – perhaps a first step toward eliminating these hugely destructive weapons once and for all.

Its document explained “(a)n entire spectrum of political, financial, economic and information instruments has been brought into struggle for influence in the international arena.” America’s agenda threatens world peace.

Russia only intends using force when other options to “protect the national interests” fail, a possibility it hopes won’t be necessary.

It’s concerned about its resource-dependent economy, noting a need to become more diversified and competitive.

It cites “a lag in the development of advanced technologies, the vulnerability of the financial system, the imbalance of the budgetary system, the economy going offshore, the exhaustion of the raw materials base, the strength of the shadow economy, conditions leading to corruption and criminal activities, and uneven development of regions.”

It intends initiatives designed to deal with these and other significant issues – planning social and economic policies to strengthen its financial system, as well as “ensur(e) its sovereignty and the stability of the national currency.”

It understands the threats and challenges it faces – intending to address them effectively, permitting no outside forces from compromising its sovereignty, especially US-led Western ones.

Whether its efforts will be enough to avoid potentially catastrophic global war is the most pressing issue of our time.

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: 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. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

The power-brokers who influenced congress to support nuclear Israel’s illegal settlements in 2015 and war with non-nuclear Iran in 2016

In 1933, a baby was born into a low-income family and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. His family was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry whose father drove a taxi, and his mother ran a knitting shop. Currently he is the owner of an Israeli daily newspaper as well as being boss of an LA gambling casino group and is the major founder of the Republican Party.

It is, of course, a matter of global bemusement that the government of the most powerful Western democracy, the United States of America, is elected not on the basis of political acumen, education or intelligence but on the amount of money that specific individuals have either amassed or inherited. Barack Obama, of course, being the one exception.

This political aberration has, in the recent past, given us such incompetent nonentities as George Bush who personified the ultimate in inept leadership,  and which currently showcases a television host and hotel owner, a certain Mr Trump.

Whilst this aberrant behaviour on the part of the American public may seem to the outside world to be a rehearsal for another TV show, in fact it is a tragedy of global proportions whereby casino bosses and the like use their gambling or other profits to ensure that they control or heavily influence the supposedly democratically elected US congress. The result is, that wherever we live in the world – in Europe, Asia or North America – our lives are circumscribed by the antics of such American nonentities who have managed to obtain huge political influence by the power of money alone.

One of the consequences of such a flawed system is that foreign states such as Israel are able to send politicians such as Binyamin Netanyahu to demand of congress $6 billion a year as an involuntary gift from the American electorate to support his own government and to keep him in power. That huge sum includes vast amounts of arms and military equipment to support the Israeli government’s policy of illegal settlement on Palestinian land.  A policy for which Mr Adelson uses the considerable clout of his (unelected) power to support.

Such corrupted methods of allegedly democratic government are of immense disadvantage to global peace and prosperity and should be banned by the UN in the interests of the international community of nations.

(C) [email protected]  London.
1st Jan 2016

Records of events are very important. They serve as not only historical documents but a guide for the future. The book, Revolutionary Pen has done it properly as it chronicles events of struggles of the working people, youth and the poor, that emanated in almost all facets of the encounters of the working masses and the society at large; at every serially and not seemingly ending periods of attacks by the state on  them. It does not stop at reporting these events, but goes further to analyse the way forward the working masses and the society in general can take to end these state attacks and also to realise their own inherent political power, which can and only give them the panacea, to rebutting the system of oppression, and take charge of their patrimony.

It should be put rightly on record that events happen almost every second but many are missing in history. This is the main reason the book, Revolutionary Pen, which is a compilation of many articles on the field of struggle of the working people, epitomizes and accurately gives proper records of how these events happened, and also the way out of the problems associated, which makes it a resort for researchers and activists alike.

Far from a conventional write up, the book touches on the much awaited and “hoped for” 2015 Elections, which majority of the Nigerian masses reposed their belief for “Change” from the rotten and corrupt past Jonathan/PDP-led government in. It also x-rayed the similarities, nexus and the profit-oriented coloration of both Jonathan and nascent Buhari governments.

We are now in the aftermath of the elections, and the new ‘Change’ government and agenda are unfolding in the eyes of Nigerians. But before mentioning the tumultuous struggles of workers and pensioners for a living wage and pensions, it is necessary to say a few words on the current and unabated Boko Haram terror camapign in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. The book actually explains in clear terms, the roots of militancy and insurgency in the Nigerian society, the creators of this menace, the reasons behind their rise and how these terror groups and terrorism can be subdued, through the mass actions of working people, youth, labour movement and community movements. I believe that if the solutions proffered in this book can be put to practice by those affected and involved, our society, Nigeria in particular, would have less to bother about rightwing militancy and terrorism.

According to the book, the region where the menace of Boko Haram terrorism is rampant (the North East Nigeria) is the most underdeveloped part of the country where an average youth hardly knows the wonders or the efficacy of science and techniques. The book put forward that the reason is not far-fetched. It explains how these north-eastern youth could not get access to quality education, while the bulk of their endowments and patrimonies are being shared as take-home by rich few in corridors of power. Furthermore, these rich few utilize divisive instrument of religion and ethnicity to subjugate the mass of people, as expressed in the use of Sharia by northern ruling elites when they lost control of political power. The monster of religious division and radicalization thrown to the society is now confronting the country through the Boko Haram terrorism.

Anyone could try to denounce the plight of workers and their senior brothers, the pensioners, especially when one enjoys a juicy contract sum from government or when one is not so ‘lucky’ to be in the employment of capitalist class – either in the state establishment or private sector. The reality of mass suffering of workers and pensioners was clearly expressed in the struggle for implementation of N18, 000 minimum wage and the continuous battle of pensioners for their pittance called pensions, after they have committed their adult lives to the public and private establishments.

The fact that the fate of the working class and those of other oppressed and exploited class is interwoven was recently expressed in Osun State where, as a result of the non-payment of salaries for several months, other oppressed strata, including market women and artisans, find it difficult to sustain a decent living and regular income. This underscores the essence of the book’s serious and detailed analysis of the struggle of workers and pensions, and linking it with the general economic straitjacket the capitalist system, nay its neo-colonial type in Nigeria, has pushed the working and poor people into.

It also explores the role of labour leaders and labour movement in the struggle for living wage and pension payment; drawing out the lessons and errors of the leadership. The leadership of labour had earlier requested a N52, 200 minimum wage in 2010 only to settle for N18, 000 minimum wage in early 2011. Interestingly, when most of the state governments, federal government and private sector employers refused to implement or properly implement the meagre wage law, the labour movement could not defend the wage effectively.

The same story could be said of pension of retirees where the labour movement, instead of defending living pension based on cost of living and other economic and social indices, supported the fraudulent contributory pension scheme that deduct from workers’ salary in order to pay them pension. The recent attack on pensioners by state-sponsored gangsters in June 2015 in Osogbo, Osun State, who protested non-payment of their pensions for up to a year, and stories retirees dying on the queues in the process to collect their meagre pensions, reflect serious suffering pensioners are undergoing. On the other hand, very few in control of retirees pensions are looting en mass billions from these funds.

Today, there is serious attack on N18, 000 minimum wage as many state governments are planning to cut the workers’ salaries while some like the Osun State government have resorted to paying half salaries for workers. There are also plan to sack several thousands of workers by public and private sector. This section of Revolutionary Pen, under the title Workers’ and Pensioners’ Struggle, is a vital material for working people and activists searching for tactics and methods of defending a better living wage for workers and pensioners. More importantly, it underscores the need for labour movement to build a new mass party of working people, youths and the oppressed as a way of permanently ending the misery and sufferings of workers and pensioners. The writer, Kola Ibrahim, has since 2012 written a book on Minimum Wage struggle where all issues pertaining to minimum wage were clearly explained.

The mass misery and squalor ravaging workers and the entire peasantry at large is not limited to Nigeria or Africa alone; it spreads across the entire globe. This itself the working masses must realize that it is a virile tool in the hands of the state. Examples are not far-fetched. We have cases in the northern part of Africa and Middle East where youths and working people, fed up with the failure of global capitalism and their sit tight rulers to improve their lots, took the road of mass revolts and revolutions against their ruling classes. This saw the defeat of decades-old regimes such as those of Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali in Egypt and Tunisia respectively.

Aside spreading like wildfire, the revolts and revolutions also show the limit of terrorism as a tool of fighting the ruling class. Regimes that used terrorism as a tool to drive through anti-poor policies and sustain their rule were overthrown by mass revolts and revolutions. Of course, most of these revolutions have been derailed with counterrevolution taking deep root. This is a product of failure of these revolutions to end the rule of capital and establish a government of workers, youths and poor. This book underscores the fact that concessions are not won on a platter of gold, but fought for and won by mass of people organized in their common struggle to break the stranglehold of ruling class and improve their conditions.

This book under the section, International Issues, addresses the rise of revolutionary movements in Egypt, Senegal and Burkina Faso, and the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It draws on various international issues and the struggles of the working people globally to underscore the uniformity of struggle of the working people and the need for international mass movement of working and oppressed people. It also exposes the hypocrisy and the failure of global capitalism and imperialism to solve political, social and economic crises facing humanity.

The book also put in proper perspective how the economy has been bastardized by selling off public properties to private individuals at a give-away prices all in the name of obnoxious privatization. Example is when Prof. Barth Nnaji who owns a private electricity firm was made a Minister of Power by the Goodluck Jonathan government. The resultant effect is that the public power sector was sold off to private firms close to corridor of power but with no serious plan to undertake massive long-term investments in the power sector. The same power sector today has not been performing better than before it was handed over to private shylocks. The case has been a sorry one with poor people paying the price with skyrocketing and estimated bill for unavailable electricity. The country after committing over $20 billion to the sector since the civil rule began in 1999 can only boost of about 4,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of over 170 million. Meanwhile, South Africa with around a quarter of Nigeria’s population generates more than 40, 000 megawatts. Even at that, millions of working class South Africans do not have access to electricity.

Revolutionary Pen submits that only when our economy is nationalized under democratic public control and management can we have serious plan of massive development of the power sector as part of the holistic plan to develop the economy and the society. The book explores various capitalist options propounded by bourgeois strategists and clearly shows how Nigeria cannot get out of its underdevelopment under this system.

Addressing the educational crisis in the country, the book provides analysis on how governments at various levels and at different times have neglected the education sector through under funding and capitalist policies of commercialization, rationalization and privatization. The chapter on education titled Education Sector, addresses various issues ranging from analysis of the education sector especially in view of the 2013 six-month strike of the university lecturers’ union, ASUU, to attempt of the Fashola government to totally price education out of the reach of the poor by hiking fees in Lagos State University (LASU), the only state owned university by over one thousand percent. It also addresses the issue of private university education that is becoming a significant feature of education system in Nigeria; while the book also addresses the problem of non-functioning library system in Nigeria, which as the author noted, mirrors the crisis in the education sector as a whole. The author was himself a proven student leader and activist during his days as a student; therefore, his proposals and analyses clearly expressed those of an insider, who has been part and parcel of the struggle and debate about proper funding and management of education sector.

The economic analysis ranging from the global economic meltdown that started in 2008 to the banking crisis in Nigeria in 2009 and the fraudulent bailout system under Jonathan administration, give vivid view of the future of Nigeria, nay the world under the current capitalist system. Not to be forgotten also is the analysis on the health sector vis-à-vis the Ebola virus disease and the attack on doctors in Lagos State by the Fashola government. The health sector analysis clearly delves into the root of the crisis facing the health sector such as inadequate funding and mismanagement of health institutions by government appointed managers. In the analysis on Ebola, the book also dwells on the role of global political economy and especially the pharmaceutical companies in the health crisis especially in Africa and third world countries. The author, just as he did in the education sector, challenged the in-house unions in the health sector to rise to the occasion by building a united platform of struggle to seek improvement in the health sector. The book conclusively links this with the ultimate political challenge before the working and poor people, by linking the health sector crisis with the political economy of Nigeria, nay Africa.

Finally, the book is a library material for students and academics seeking historical analyses and alternative narrative on the political, social and economic issues in Nigeria, Africa and the world. The ending chapter on politics, which includes an essay on the politics and personality of the late pro-democracy activist, Gani Fawehinmi, a discourse on the undemocratic nature of Nigeria’s electoral system, and the debate on the political crisis generated by the health problem and eventual death of the late president Umar Yar’Adua, is also worth reading.

It is an honour to write a review of such an important historical book as Revolutionary Pen. The book is both revolutionary in its analyses and alternative approach to documenting political, social, economic and historical issues. Of course, I hope the publisher will improve on the quality of the book in terms of its production including its cover and graphics. However, the content and the historical value of the book far outweigh in manifolds, the shortcoming of the production. I therefore recommend the book to activists and civil society community; students of politics, history and economics; researchers and academics; labour leaders, journalists/media practitioners, and all those interested in alternative and leftwing understanding of Nigeria’s and global political economic issues.

Revolutionary Pen: Collected Essays on Nigeria, and Global Political-Economic Issues, through the eye of a socialist, by Kola Ibrahim, 2015

Abiodun S. Falodun is Coordinator, Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State Chapter

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent comment made during an interview with the BBC that the Islamist terror group Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” has unsurprisingly brought a high level of criticism – not least in the light of the massacre of 80 people shortly after.

Some have been quick to draw analogies with US President George W. Bush’s now infamous victoriam declarationem aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1^st, 2003 that brought an end to what he said would be “major combat operations” in Iraq. His televised address, dubbed the “Mission Accomplished” speech was of course followed by a Sunni insurgency which claimed many civilian and military lives. Twelve years later with the rise of several Islamist insurgent groups including al-Qaeda in Iraq and the so-called Islamic State, that country has defied attempts at being militarily pacified.

Buhari was referring to the re-conquest of Nigerian territory acquired by Boko Haram. The distinction is a subtle one and affords little comfort to the relatives of those who have lost their lives in the recent terror outrages.

It is instructive to remember that given the inherent dynamic related to asymmetric warfare, many insurgencies, including those which were successful in destroying the will of a national army or an army of occupation, have not had the goal of territorial conquest. The goal is often to sap the will of the opponent -politically, militarily and morally- in order to extract the relevant concessions among which ultimately would be the ceding of power. Thus Britain withdrew from Palestine in the face of unceasing attacks from the main Zionist terror groups: the Irgun and the Stern Gang.

Buhari may need reminding that the damage capable of being inflicted by a determined guerrilla movement which does not acquire territory is no less of a challenge than one attempting to challenge a national army for territory.

‘Strong ideologies’ such as those which are religiously motivated cannot be defeated without a coherent plan aimed at counter-acting the ideology and merely by the re-conquest of land or the disruption of the activities of the group’s cells.

There needs to be something more tangible in terms of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the population in the north east of Nigeria, especially among the disenchanted youth who form the recruiting fodder for Boko Haram.

The Nigerian military may have recaptured land ceded to the insurgents and may have muted, to use Buhari’s words, their ability as an “organised fighting force” in the battlefield, but it is only when there is demonstrable progress in the civic, psychological and economic spheres of counter-insurgency that Buhari should mention the word “defeat” albeit that it is presently qualified by the term “technically.”

From Burundi to Ghana and beyond the intervention of western states continues as an impediment to genuine development

One of the major issues gaining international attention during 2015 was the political crisis in the Central African state of Burundi stemming from a dispute over whether incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza could pursue a third term in office. Mass demonstrations took place in the capital demanding that the president reverse his decision to run for a third term.

Nkurunziza was appointed as the head-of-state over Burundi in the aftermath of a negotiated transition process aimed at ending a twelve year civil war during 1993-2005. The president said that the first term resulted from an appointment by the parliament and the second election was the first one where he had to stand before the electorate. A Burundi Constitutional Court decision on May 5 upheld the position of Nkurunziza in the disagreement.

The National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) ruling party won the elections held on July 21 guaranteeing Nkurunziza another five year term of office. Burundi is considered a lesser developed state with an economy based on agricultural production and exports.

Nonetheless, the unrest inside the country has continued. A disaffected military officer, Gen. Godefroid Niyombara, attempted to stage a coup on May 13 which did not succeed in part due to the condemnation of the effort by the African Union (AU) and East African Community (EAC) regional organizations. It has been estimated that 280,000 people have fled Burundi to neighboring states in response to the growing extra-judicial killings in the capital of Bujumbura and other areas.

In recent weeks there have also been clashes between rebels opposed to the Nkurunziza and Burundian security forces in the southwestern Rumonge district of the landlocked state. Similar attacks were launched near the capital of Bujumbura on Dec. 11.

According to UPI.com,

“Rebels in Burundi attacked military installations surrounding the capital of Bujumbura on Friday (Dec. 11), a sign from the opposition to the president that the conflict is becoming a rebellion. The coordinated assaults at dawn by heavily armed insurgents on military sites, security encampments and a prison left 12 rebels dead and 20 under arrest, an army spokesman said.”

Many Burundian refugees have re-located in neighboring Rwanda where claims indicate that armed opposition forces are being recruited. The government in Kigali has denied these suggestions and says that it is neutral in the conflict.

Rwanda and Burundi have a near-matching ethnic composition with Hutu majorities and Tutsi minority groups. However, in Burundi the head-of-state Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader during the 1993-2005 civil war, is from the Hutu majority whereas in Kigali, President Paul Kgame is Tutsi and the former leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the guerilla army that took control of Rwanda amid the genocide of 1994 that killed an estimated 800,000 people.

Burundian Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe spoke during a press conference on December 19 in Bujumbura saying “There have been reports that some Burundian refugees have been recruited and went for military training to attack the country. We call on these illegal activities to stop. We needed the truth to be brought to the table as to whether the allegations are false or true.” (The East African)

Refuting these assertions, Rwandan Minister for Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs, Seraphine Mukantabana, stressed “These are the same baseless accusations that different people keep on trading. There is no proof to it, like the names, pictures or other details of refugees they allege were recruited so that we can go and check if they ever lived in the camp and left as a result of recruitments. I don’t see anything factual except just hearsay, and idle word of mouth.” (East African, Dec. 19)

Meanwhile, amid the failure of the Nkurunziza government and the opposition to reach a political agreement, the AU, which is seeking the support of the United Nations Security Council, has pledged to deploy 5,000 peacekeeping troops into Burundi. The Burundian leaders in Bujumbura are in complete opposition to this proposal.

Despite efforts by AU Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to reassure the Burundi government that it is only concerned with preventing the full eruption of a civil war and has no hidden agenda as it relates to regime-change, Nkurunziza refuses to entertain any foreign occupation of the country and is blaming the former colonial power of Belgium in conjunction with Rwanda for the rising instability. Dlamini-Zuma in a statement on the Burundi crisis  “expressed the AU’s readiness to rapidly initiate discussions with the government of Burundi to devise the best ways and means of facilitating the deployment of the mission, in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation”.

The AU Commission Chair encouraged the Burundi government to participate fully in peace talks that were scheduled to take place on December 28 in Uganda. However, the political character of the proposed intervention by the AU in Burundi remains to be determined.

Such an intervention would undoubtedly be reliant upon assistance from western imperialist states based in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels. With this type of deployment the potential for a conflict framed within the context of national sovereignty and the role of western states could prove problematic and protracted.

West Africa 50 Years After the Coup Against Nkrumah: Economic Dependency and the Ebola Crisis

Nearly five decades ago on February 24, 1966, a right-wing police and military coup guided and coordinated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and State Department was staged against the Convention People’s Party (CPP) of the First Republic of Ghana. Nkrumah had studied for a decade in the U.S. and two years in England where he attended Lincoln University, the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics.

During his tenure oversees in the years of 1935-1947, Nkrumah was associated with the Marxist left and African nationalist movements in the U.S. and Britain. He was an organizer among African students, reading and learning from the work and personal association with luminaries such as W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James along with being a reputed member of the Garveyite Universal Negro Improvement Association, African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) while he lived in Pennsylvania.

After completing his studies in the U.S. during 1945, he traveled to Britain where he participated in the organization of the Fifth Pan-African Congress held that October, working with Du Bois, veteran communist and Pan-Africanist George Padmore, among others. By the end of 1947, Nkrumah had returned to the Gold Coast (colonial name for Ghana) becoming an organizing secretary for the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a moderate organization which hired Nkrumah to develop a mass base for the group.

By mid-1949, Nkrumah had broken with the UGCC taking its Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) which he founded and the Accra Evening News publication conceived by him as well. The CPP was initiated on June 12, 1949 at a rally attended by tens of thousands of Ghanaians.

The Positive Action campaign of January 1950 landed him in prison for a year when he was released after the CPP won governmental elections established by the British colonialists to reform the system of imperialism. After his release from prison, Nkrumah was named Leader of Government Business by the British Governor General Sir Arden-Clark.

During the years of 1951-1957, Nkrumah described this period as moving from Positive Action to Tactical Action. The independence years of 1957-1966, witnessed tremendous strides in the areas of national development, support for other independence struggles through the CPP press and the foreign ministry and efforts designed to bring about the realization of a United States of Africa.

Socialism under an All-African union government was the strategic objective of the CPP. Nkrumah argued that in a 20^th century international context of large-scale economic production within both the socialist world and the decaying imperialist system, Africa, in order to develop rapidly, required the consolidation of its nation-states, integrating small-scale neo-colonial dominated micro-national structures into a large continental political construct that could engage in centralized planning and development.

The Congo crisis of 1960, resulting in the imperialist-backed coup against national liberation leader and first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, leading to him being kidnapped and assassinated in January 1961, illustrated even more starkly to Nkrumah and other anti-imperialist governments in Africa, that an independent military force was needed to safeguard the sovereignty of the post-colonial states. These progressive governments led by revolutionary parties and organizations such as in Guinea, Algeria, Mali, Egypt along with Ghana, took a different line than the majority of the moderate and conservative post-colonial states which were divided into two blocs known as the Monrovia and Brazzaville groups.

Of course in Ghana, it was the military and the police that were utilized against the socialist-oriented state led by the CPP. Nonetheless, it was the economic dependency of the state in relationship to neo-colonialism, which Nkrumah described in his seminal 1965 book, as being “The Last Stage of Imperialism” that provided the ideological underpinning of the regime-change tactics utilized by Washington under the administration of the-then President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The citadel of neo-colonialism is the U.S. and its multi-national corporations and banks. Nkrumah writes in the introduction of “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism”, that “Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.”

Nkrumah goes on to ask “Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ‘defecting’ from U.S. monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his ‘experiments’ in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America? Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services.”

Ghana’s first attempt at securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was during the last several months of the Nkrumah administration in 1965. The Ghana government was severely impacted by the decline in cocoa prices on the global market. In addition, petty-bourgeois class interests within Ghana, allied with neo-colonialism and imperialism, worked incessantly to undermine Socialism and Pan-Africanism.

After the coup and the installation of a puppet regime composed of a group of lower-level military officers and police, the IMF granted a series of loans to Ghana under terms that proved quite disadvantageous to the interests of the workers, farmers and youth of the country. Consequently, Ghana has never regained its political and social status attained during the Nkrumah government of the 1950s and 1960s.

Today under the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) ruling party headed by President John Dramani Mahama, Ghana faces the continuation of the post-colonial crisis. The IMF is preparing to extend further credit to the government despite the hardships the people have suffered since 1966.

The economic dependency and military subordination of Africa could not be more clearly revealed than when the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic erupted during 2014-2015. These developments represented the largest outbreak of this virulent form of a Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) on the continent of Africa in 40 years, when it was first identified in the former Zaire, now-known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were the most severely impacted by the EVD outbreak. It has been reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) that over 11,000 people died, most of which were in the above-mentioned states. Small incidences were reported in other states including Nigeria, Senegal and Mali but were rapidly contained and eradicated.

All three of these states, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia maintain close economic, political and military links with imperialism. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) engages in military operations alongside these West African governments whose people are among the poorest on the continent and the world.

Absent of a firm Pan-African system of healthcare, economic production and communication, the devastation of this EVD outbreak could not be properly tackled. Even if Pentagon-based bioweapons research centers were the cause of this pandemic, the failure of Africa to squelch the spread in its infancy is a reflection of the current status of neo-colonialism well into the second decade of the 21^st century.

Then it was the military apparatuses of Washington, London and Paris which were given permission by the neo-colonial dominated regimes to intervene. Cuba also deployed but solely with medical personnel and played a significant role in stemming the spread of EVD, even prompting recognition by imperialism through its corporate and state-controlled media.

Revolutionary Cuba has been subjected to biological warfare by the CIA and the Pentagon for decades. Nonetheless, the socialist state has been able to overcome these assaults and emerge even stronger as an anti-imperialist country.

The only medium and long-term solution to the healthcare crisis in Africa lies within a Pan-African planning framework. There must be an integration of the medical and scientific infrastructure to facilitate the sharing of investigative and research methodologies.

The need for an All-African military high command is as necessary in 2015 as it was during the early and mid-1960s during the times of Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Modibo Keita (Mali), Ben Bella (Algeria), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and the other anti-imperialist leaders of the period. Nonetheless, this continental command must be independent of imperialism, distinguishing it from the current collaborative efforts led by AFRICOM and NATO which characterize the operations now in effect in Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Aden and other geo-political regions on the continent.

Neo-Colonialism: 1965-2015

Over the period of fifty years, Africa has experienced numerous crises involving food deficits, unsustainable national debt, periodic and consistent proliferations of infectious disease epidemics, ongoing series of military interventions both domestic and western in orientation as well as political efforts aimed at exerting continental influence upon the UN Security Council and other multi-lateral structures controlled by the imperialist industrialized states. In 2015 yet another African debt crisis is developing due to the precipitous decline in commodity prices including oil and strategic minerals.

This crisis comes in the almost immediate aftermath of AU member-states being hailed for their phenomenal economic growth. Events in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, the Republics of Sudan and South Sudan and other countries illustrates how precarious these assessments of the financial status of neo-colonial dominated states are in actuality.

These challenges on the economic front are not limited to Africa. Many of the so-called “emerging countries” are facing the same problems such as Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Russia and China. Beijing with its social constructs utilizing the commanding role of the Communist Party and its planned economy under socialism with Chinese characteristics has proven to be in a better position to address the current crisis.

Xi Jinping’s recent state visits to the Republic of Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa, along with the second full summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), noted that the desire for closer ties between Beijing and AU member-states was cognizant of the new situation within the global economy still dominated by imperialism. Africa needs infrastructural development in order to secure genuine growth and development in the short, medium and long-term political and economic trajectories.

The fact that prices for oil have ranged from $34-38 per barrel in December 2015, down by over two-thirds in the last year-and-a-half, provides a glimpse into the current situation involving the international division of labor and economic power. The U.S. under the administration of President Barack Obama has strongly emphasized domestic oil production and along with ally Saudi Arabia, has over-produced petroleum resulting in a glut in the market and a rapidly declining economic situation in the other producer-states including Russia.

Other prices for commodities have also gone down significantly. For example platinum, in which the Southern African states of South Africa and Zimbabwe constitute approximately 75 percent of the world’s production, has also declined in price impacting foreign exchange earnings and the labor market.

Bloomberg in an article published on September 29, stated that “Platinum extended its slump to the lowest in more than six years amid concerns demand from automakers will slow as investigations into the Volkswagen AG scandal deepen. Volkswagen cars with diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests are being pulled from markets in Spain, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, while prosecutors in Sweden consider opening an investigation on potential corruption. About 42 percent of platinum demand comes from its use in pollution-control devices in diesel engines, according to Morgan Stanley.”

This same article continues saying “Platinum futures for January delivery fell 0.5 percent to settle at $918.10 an ounce at 1:23 p.m. (Sept. 29) on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after touching $899.60, the lowest for a most-active contract since December 2008. Palladium advanced. Gold futures for December delivery slipped 0.4 percent to $1,126.80 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Prices are set for a fifth straight quarterly loss, the longest losing streak since 1997. Silver gained. Platinum is trading at a discount of about $210.50 to gold, the biggest since August 2012. Some investors who had been betting on platinum outperforming gold are now exiting that trade, David Govett, head of precious metals at broker Marex Spectron Group in London, said by telephone.”

As Nkrumah pointed out in his book “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” some five decades ago, “On the economic front, a strong factor favoring Western monopolies and acting against the developing world is international capital’s control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports decreased.”

Consequently, the cycle of dependency in Africa upon the imperialist states must be overturned in order for real growth and development to occur and maintain its sustainability over a period of decades. This cannot be realized under the current system of global capitalism, also referred to as international finance capital and imperialism.

The realization of the aims and objectives of the African Revolution requires socialist construction. Until the character of development is viewed and analyzed within an anti-capitalist framework, the actual solutions to these crises will remain elusive.

Part 3 of 3. Read part 1 and part 2.

Documents released by Edward Snowden brought fresh questions about GCHQ involvement in US drone strikes outside conflict zones.  MPs took the unusual step of writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, suggesting  it was time “to consider and issue clear guidance on the law, policy and procedure concerning the investigation of complicity into extraterritorial targeted killing.”  Qatar continues to be an important hub for US and UK drone operations with the Al Udeid base hosting the Combined Air Operation Center (CAOC).  British military operations against ISIS are also run from ‘RAF Al Udeid’ in Qatar.

Military officials from the US, UK, France and Italy began to meet as the Reaper Users Group during 2015.  The group is aimed, we are told, at enhancing interoperability and reducing costs.   More details emerged during the year of the role of the US air base at Ramstein in Germany in the on-going drone wars.  The base is a key communications hub linking the US with its armed drones around the globe. Hundreds marched on the base in September in response to the revelations. The debate over whether the use of drones for targeting killing is effective at reducing terrorism or a recruitment tool for terrorist groups continues. This year, former military officers have been most vocal in arguing the latter.

Around forty alleged militants were killed in a single reported US drone strike in Somalia at the end of January.  Although the Pentagon publicly denied carrying out that particular strike, they were happy to confirm that US drones had struck Somalia on the very same day, targeting a senior leader of al-shabab.  There seems to have been a real change of tactics and an increase in drone strikes in Somalia as Jack Serle of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted early in the year.  Perhaps inevitably the increasing use of drones has been followed by the rise in numbers of military drones being shot down.  US, Russian, Israeli and Saudi Arabian drones have all reported been downed during the year although it is impossible to confirm all these reports.  The safety and security threat from small civil drones began to be recognized during the year. As sales of these small cheap drones takes off, the threat will simply grow.

The normalisation of drone targeted killing took a step forward in 2015 as the UK wholeheartedly embraced the tactic.  Parliamentarians, US Senators, the United Nations and civil society groups continue to struggle to, at the very least, limit such activity and gain some oversight of the process.  Transparency, however, is in short supply and government contempt for proper public oversight, never mind curbing the practice, is obvious. Meanwhile BAE Systems’ Taranis combat drone continued its test programme with a third (and reportedly final) set of flight tests in November. The drone, or a derivative of it, is likely to be a contender for the UK’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS) likely to see some funding decision in 2016.

British-based Israeli-owned UAV Engines attempts to curb protests at its factory in Staffordshire were botched during the year when the company failed to abide by court rules. In February the CPS dropped a case against nine protesters when the company refused to co-operate with court mandated disclosures.  In July protesters successfully overturned in the courts a ‘forbidden zone’ around the factory, and then in October the High Court threw out an injunction as the company had in effect misled the court. This led to the collapse of the caseagainst a further 19 people arrested for breach of the injunction at a protest in July. Maybe UAV Engines should join US drone manufacturer General Atomics in setting up shop in theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE).

The UK MoD has suddenly developed a taste for releasing videos of British drone strikes. Since March 2015 there have been nine videos of such strikes published online as opposed to just six released over the past seven years.  While the Vatican has long opposed the use of armed drones and the development of autonomous weapons, drones have this year been banned from flying over Vatican City due to security fears.

Whistleblowers helped us have a better understanding of the drone wars during 2015 with the release of a set of documents that have become labelled ‘The Drone Papers‘.   Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations also revealed GCHQ links to US drone strikes and that personnel from project Widowmaker were based at Menwith Hill. Finally, former US drone pilots went on the record to detail the horrific consequences of the US drone targeted killing programme.   The information released by whistleblowers is crucial to the public’s understanding of drone warfare – thank you.

The manifest failings of the UK’s Watchkeeper drone were laid bare this year.  After spending almost £1bn on its development, the UK got barely six days use out of the (ahem) state of the art drone in Afghanistan.  Army training with the ‘all weather’ drone is now being conducted in the Ascension Islandsas the weather in the UK is not, er, suitable. Wimbledon was not immune to the intrusion of rogue drones, something that occurred at numerous sporting events during the year.

While Northrop Grumman was happy to feature the X-47b drone in its Super Bowl ad, the much more mysterious X-37b drone took off on another classified mission into space in May 2015.  Don’t expect it back any time soon – the previous secret mission lasted almost two years.  Despite the chaos and horror of the on-going war in Yemen – in which more than 90% of the casualties are civilians – the US continues to launch drone strikes, with the Bureau reporting around 20 confirmed and an additional 10 possible strikes. The extremely high-altitude Zephyr drone was purchased by the UK for use by its Special Forces. Airbus executives, mistakenly, let the cat out of the bag ahead of the SDSR in September. After a rushed Airbus retraction the deal was discretely confirmed as part of the SDSR in November.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde offered a bleak economic forecast for 2016 and beyond in a guest column published Wednesday in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt .

The IMF head wrote that global economic growth next year would be “disappointing” and the outlook for the medium term had also deteriorated. Lagarde pointed to the continuing slowdown in China and the prospect of rising interest rates in the US as major factors leading to a continued slowdown in world growth rates and the potential for financial shocks.

Lagarde also noted the substantial decline in the growth of world trade, the ongoing fall in oil and other commodity prices, and the worsening economic and financial crisis in so-called “emerging market” and “developing” countries whose economies are heavily dependent on commodity exports and expanding trade.

“All of that means global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016,” Lagarde said. She warned, in particular, of “spillover effects” resulting from the decision of the US Federal Reserve Board earlier this month to begin raising its benchmark interest rate from near zero, the first Fed rate increase in over nine years.

Lagarde and the IMF had lobbied against the Fed move, warning that it could spark a panic outflow of capital from emerging market countries with high levels of dollar-denominated corporate debt such as Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

In the Handelsblatt article, Lagarde said that she was concerned about the ability of such countries to absorb “shocks,” citing in particular an increase in financing costs for corporations that sold large volumes of dollar-denominated bonds during the emerging market and oil boom that followed the financial crisis of 2008. The rise in the dollar means the real cost of debt repayment for these companies, whose revenues are in sinking local currencies, increases.

Lagarde hinted that the crisis could spread more broadly across the financial system, suggesting that emerging market and energy sector companies defaulting on their payments could “infect” banks and state treasuries.

On Wednesday, oil prices resumed their slide to their lowest levels in eleven years after the Saudi oil minister said the kingdom had no intention of scaling back petroleum production in 2016. Since the middle of 2014, oil prices have plummeted by two-thirds. In 2015 alone they have dropped by 35 percent.

But the oil price fall is only part of a broader collapse in industrial commodity prices. Nickel has dropped by more than 40 percent. Zinc, which was widely expected to rise in price this year because of the signaled closure of large mines in Australia and Ireland, has fallen 28 percent. Iron ore has also plummeted.

The new drop in oil prices and Lagarde’s pessimistic forecast combined to push down global stock prices Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 117 points (0.66 percent), in line with other major indexes in the US and Europe.

The continuing decline in commodity prices is a sharp expression of a deepening crisis in the real economy internationally. The slowdown in China is the most prominent factor in the fall in these prices, as its previously voracious appetite for industrial commodities propped up global demand.

But China’s slowdown is itself an expression of more fundamental processes and contradictions in the world capitalist economy. An indication of the systemic nature of the current malaise is the forecast released this week by OPEC that petroleum prices will not return to the $100-per-barrel levels of 2013 and early 2014 until 2040 at the earliest.

In October, the IMF released a report predicting world economic growth of 3.5 percent for 2016, the slowest rate since the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 financial meltdown. Last April, it warned that the global economy would remain locked in a pattern of slow growth, high unemployment and high debt for a prolonged period, acknowledging that there was little prospect of a return to the growth rates that prevailed prior to the 2008 crash.

In the April report, the IMF focused on a sharp decline in business investment during the so-called “recovery” that officially began in June of 2009. It noted that business investment in North America and Europe had declined by 20 percent, twice the fall that followed previous recessions.

While the IMF chose not to make the connection, this figure points to a basic feature of the global capitalist crisis—the enormous growth of speculation and parasitism. The same tendencies that triggered the 2008 crash—the reckless and largely criminal speculative activities of the financial elite that have come to dominate economic life—have only intensified in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Far from reining in the banks and hedge funds, the IMF, the major central banks and governments in the US, Europe and Japan have bailed them out to the tune of trillions of dollars and subsidized a further orgy of speculation. By means of ultra-low interest rates and central bank money-printing operations, known as “quantitative easing,” finance capital has been encouraged to inflate new financial bubbles—from the stock market to the oil sector, junk bonds and emerging market economies—which have further enriched the wealthy and the super-wealthy while diverting resources from the productive forces and impoverishing the working class.

While the real economy has remained depressed, stock prices have soared. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the US has risen by more than 200 percent since 2009.

Corporations and banks have starved the real economy of productive investment, instead seeking higher profits from risky investments that are entirely parasitic. These include speculation in high-yield, high-risk “junk bonds” linked to the oil and commodities industries. After the implosion of the subprime mortgage market in 2007-2008, money has flooded into this area of speculation. High-yield assets at US mutual funds hit $305 billion in June 2014, triple their level in 2009. Outstanding debt in the US junk bond market has soared to more than $1.2 trillion from less than $700 billion in 2007—an increase of 71 percent.

Now, under the impact of the collapse in industrial commodity prices, the ratings agencies are warning that 50 percent of energy junk bonds could default, along with 72 percent of bonds in the metals, mining and steel industries.

The mounting crisis of the emerging market economies is similarly bound up with massive inflows of hot money seeking high rates of return during the oil boom and China’s post-Wall Street crisis rapid economic expansion. Between 2004 and 2014, emerging market corporate debt increased from $4 trillion to $18 trillion, with much of the increase taking place since 2008.

One figure highlights the further growth of economic parasitism since the 2008 crisis: global debt has increased by 40 percent to $200 trillion, almost three times the size of the world economy.

To pay for this exercise in recklessness and greed, the working class all over the world has been hammered with austerity programs, mass layoffs and cuts in wages, pensions and health benefits. This has only deepened the stagnation and decline in the real economy. But these attacks will continue and intensify in 2016 and beyond, in tandem with the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system.

Perhaps the sharpest expression of the explosive growth of parasitism is the record increase registered in 2015 in mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks. US corporations that amassed trillions from cost cutting, wage cuts and the benevolence of the Obama administration and the Fed, rather than invest their cash hoards in job-creating, productive areas, have instead plowed it into stock buybacks to increase the payouts to big investors, and in mergers, which result in downsizing and job cutting. This past year, $4.7 trillion worth of mergers and acquisitions were announced in the US, a record.

One day prior to Lagarde’s column in Handelsblatt, the initial fruits of one of the biggest mergers of the year, the $130 billion deal involving the chemical giants DuPont and Dow, were announced. DuPont said Tuesday it would cut 1,700 jobs in its home area around Wilmington, Delaware. This is part of a $700 million cost-cutting plan that will reduce the firm’s 6,100-strong work force by 10 percent.

In  Dara’a province, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) with the Russian Air Forces’ support are advancing in the town of Sheikh Miskeen clashing with the Free Syrian Army’s “Southern Front Brigades”. The pro-government sources report that the SAA took control of the Battalion 82 base and the hilltop of Tal Al-Hish overlooking the northern flank of the town. The clashes are continuing.

Sheikh Miskeen is located along the Quneitra-Sweida Highway and overlooks a way on the Al-Quneitra Governorate and the city of Nawa.

According to the field reports, the SAA liberated the town of Maheen, 25 kilometers from the vital M5 highway, and the town of Huwwarin after the heavy clashes with ISIS. The towns were taken by the terrorist group in late November. It is expected that the SAA will continue their offensive onto the town of Quryatayn.

The Syrian government has essentially avoided clashing with the Syrian Kurds which are a major part of the SDF.

However, as the Kurdish forces and the Russian-backed government forces meet up, the question of developing joint strategy arises. Moreover, Ankara already concerned by the growing Kurdish clout on the border and definitely is preparing actions to stop the Kurds in their offensive actions. Such an action would also push the Syrian government and the SDF to coordinate their actions in fight against foreign-backed terrorists.