Global Research

Oprah Winfrey in her powerful speech at the 2018 Golden Globes awards said that ‘Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have’.

And the truth for America today is that our legislative assembly, the Congress of the United States of America and the US Presidency, have both been corrupted by the pro-Israel lobby to an extent that it impacts not only the life of every ordinary American citizen but also that of hundreds of thousands in states around the world.

The millions of dollars that are expended in ensuring that only those who profess allegiance to the Israel lobby will succeed in election to Congress is the defining practice that has corrupted American politics and successive White Houses ever since President Harry S Truman was persuaded by Bnai Brith to go against his natural instincts and to support a Zionist state in Palestine.

Now, however, it has reached a peak with millions of dollars from casino profits having been used to swing the last presidential election for Trump in exchange for a promise from him to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, in defiance of the will of the United Nations which has declared the Holy City to be an international metropolis with free access to all faiths, in perpetuity.

A lot of water, guns, planes, bombs, missiles and American money has flowed under the bridge since then, totalling well over 100 billion dollars – enough to build and operate a new hospital for every city in every one of the fifty states of the Union!

Image on the right is Oprah Winfrey at the 2018 Golden Globes Awards 

The Israel lobby has a far-reaching influence on foreign policy concerning countries throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas – notwithstanding that it is an unelected political pressure group that operates through agents in major capital cities worldwide, from London through Paris, Berlin, Nairobi, Lagos, Dubai and Toronto to Buenos Aires, Beijing, Delhi and Melbourne who infiltrate national governments in order to promote its own political agenda.

The impact on global affairs is enormous – but no one person is ever held to account. It is political corruption on an epidemic scale, perpetrated by powerful figures from the worlds of gambling, share dealing and international banking: all conducted without any official or public scrutiny or inquiry.

The first political act of any US President in recent times is not to appear before their electorate but to address a meeting of AIPAC,  a powerful, pro-Israel, unelected political pressure group. That one fact speaks volumes and says everything on how democracy in America has been subverted for the benefit of a single political entity acting for a foreign state.

When Theodor Herzl envisaged a Jewish Homeland to end centuries of antisemitism, it was an altruistic vision. Today’s reality of the Likud/US Zionist Movement is a sombre indictment of personal greed and ambition that has the reverse effect.

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Russia intervened in Syria at the request of its government – to combat US-supported terrorists.

They continue pouring into the country cross-border, replacing others eliminated by Syrian and allied forces, greatly aided by Russian airpower, considerably reduced from its earlier strength.

Last October, Syria’s Defense Ministry reported seizure of large amounts of weapons and munitions made in America and US allied countries.

They included rockets, rifles, machine-guns, surface-to-air missiles, man-portable air-defense system MANPADS, TOW anti-tank missiles, tanks and other heavy weapons.

Washington and its allies continue supplying these and other weapons to ISIS and other anti-government terrorists.

The Trump administration intends indefinite occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory it controls illegally, operating from bases it constructed.

Moscow and Damascus demand US presence in the country ends, ignored by Washington, putting the Trump administration sharply at odds with Russia.

Sophisticated drones used in the thwarted terrorist attack on its Syrian bases almost certainly were supplied by the Pentagon or CIA.

Putin states that he knows when and where these UAVs were supplied to terrorists, indicating knowledge of the supplier.

Who gains by supporting ISIS and other terrorists wage war in Syria for regime change? Washington and Israel most of all. Along with their allies, they’re partnered against Assad.

Separately on Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry commented on humanitarian aid needed for the Rukban refugee camp in southern Syria – largely blocked by US occupying forces, the ministry saying:

“No Syrian army units or representatives of the legitimate authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic are allowed” in a US illegally occupied 55 km zone around At Tanf near the Iraq border.

The Pentagon uses this territory to train anti-government terrorists. Around 60,000 Syrian refugees face dire conditions, prevented from receiving vital food, medical supplies and other essentials to life and well-being.

“We regard as unacceptable attempts by Washington to justify the use of military force against the sovereignty and territorial inviolability of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, adding:

“Assurances by the United States that its military are allegedly staying on Syrian soil for the purpose of fighting terrorists are unconvincing and open to criticism.”

“We demand that all restrictions on access for convoys of food and medicines be lifted and that humanitarian operations in the area be more transparent.”

Demands aren’t good enough. Nor is saying Washington must “respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Syria…”

The Trump administration ignores these comments, doing what it pleases, at war with Syria. It’s hostility toward Russia is unrelenting.

 

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Medicaid is a jointly administered federal/state program, providing medical care for poor and low-income people.

The Health Insurance Association of America calls Medicaid a “government insurance program for persons of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care.”

Around 75 million Americans qualify. States have broad leeway in determining who’s eligible. They may participate or opt out of the program. None chose to go this route so far.

Under Obamacare, all US citizens and permanent residents with incomes up to $133% of the poverty line qualify for Medicaid – defined as $24,250 for a family of four in the continental US, somewhat higher for Alaska and Hawaii.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right. Most nations have some form of universal care, America the only developed one without it.

The world’s richest country denies all its citizens a right millions can’t afford, most others way underinsured.

Medicaid is barebones healthcare at best, woefully inadequate in cases of serious diseases, illnesses or disability.

On Thursday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS) released new guidelines, letting states deny Medicaid to eligible able-bodied residents without jobs, participation in work-related activities or “community engagement” – including job training or enrollment in school.

This represents a major disturbing change in the program since begun in 1965 – the federal government providing matching funds to states for medical care to eligible residents.

CMMS administrator Seema Verma issued a statement, saying

“Medicaid needs to be more flexible so that states can best address the needs of this population.”

“Our fundamental goal is to make a positive and lasting difference in the health and wellness of our beneficiaries, and today’s announcement is a step in that direction.”

It’s a step in the wrong direction, assuring fewer needy people are covered, eroding a vital program, one of various steps to eventually eliminate it.

The federal government intends reneging on its responsibility to help pay for the great GOP tax cut heist – at the expense of social justice. Large cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs are planned.

Republicans never wanted these programs in the first place. With executive branch and congressional control, they intending taking full advantage – prioritizing militarism, warmaking, corporate handouts and tax cuts for the rich, at the expense of eroding the nation’s vital safety net for its poor and least advantaged.

Verma is a right-wing extremist, a longtime advocate of requiring Medicaid recipients to work, uncaring about millions of Americans struggling daily to get by, many having to choose between paying rent or medical expenses, unable to afford both.

Reasons why Medicaid recipients don’t work are as follows, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation:

— 36% are ill or disabled;

— 30% are taking care of their home or family, including single mothers;

— 15% are in school, 9% retired, 6% seeking work, and 3% for other reasons.

Many Medicaid recipients have physical or emotional health problems short of meeting federal disability criteria. Some can’t meet their state’s work verification requirements.

According to Kaiser’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured associate director MaryBeth Musumeci, “(e)ligible people could end up losing coverage because the right documentation does not get sent to the right place.”

Ten states (Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin) already intend imposing work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, others likely to follow, perhaps all or most eventually.

Responsible health policy experts regard Medicare and Medicaid as essential programs not to be based on compliance with rules unrelated to them.

CMMS deputy administrator/director Brian Neale, saying “(p)roductive work and community engagement may improve health outcomes” sounds disturbingly like the Nazi concentration camp slogan: “Arbeit macht frei” – Work sets you free.

In the camps, it was free from their lives. Maybe GOP extremists have something similar in mind for the nation’s poor and disadvantaged.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

GR Editor’s Note

Mini-nukes (B61-11 bunker buster bombs with a nuclear warhead) have been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the 1990s, for use in the conventional war theater was put forth in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review.

More advanced versions of the B61 tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-12 are now contemplated.

M.Ch. GR editor

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The US military/security complex has taken another step toward Armageddon. The Pentagon is preparing a nuclear posture review (NPR) that gives the OK to development of smaller “usable” nuclear weapons and permits their use in response to a non-nuclear attack.

As Reagan and Gorbachev understood, but the warmongers who have taken over America do not, there are far too many nuclear weapons already. Some scientists have concluded that even the use of 10 percent of either the US or Russian arsenal would suffice to destroy life on earth.

It is reckless and irresponsible for Washington to make such a decision in the wake of years of aggressive actions taken against Russia. The Clinton criminal regime broke Washington’s promise that NATO would not move one each to the East. The George W. Bush criminal regime pulled out of the ABM Treaty and changed US war doctrine to elevate the use of nuclear weapons from retaliation to first strike. The Obama criminal regime launched a frontal propaganda attack on Russia with crazed Hillary’s denunciation of President Putin as “the new Hitler.” In an effort to evict Russia from its naval base in Crimea, the criminal Obama regime overthrew the Ukrainian government during the Sochi Olympics and installed a Washington puppet. US missile bases have been established on Russia’s border, and NATO conducts war games against Russia on Russian borders.

This is insanity. These and other gratuitous provocations have convinced the Russian military’s Operation Command that Washington is planning a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. The Russian government has replied to these provocations with the statement that Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory.

Those such as myself and Stephen Cohen, who point out that Washington’s reckless and irresponsible behavior has created an enemy out of a country that very much wanted to be friends, do not get much attention from the presstitute media. The US military/security complex needs an enemy sufficient to justify its vast budget and power, and the Western media has accommodated that selfish and dangerous need.

Russia today is far stronger and better armed than the Soviet Union ever was. Russia also has an alliance with China, an economic and military power. This alliance was created by Washington’s threats against both countries.

Europe and Japan need to understand that they have responsibility for the resurrection of the Cold War in a far more dangerous form than existed in the 20th century. Europe and Japan, whose political leaders are owned by Washington, have taken money from Washington and sold out their peoples along with the rest of humanity.

The entirety of the Western World is devoid of intelligent political leadership. This leaves countries such as Russia, China and Iran with the challenge of preserving life on earth as the Western World pushes humanity toward Armageddon.

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This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

On January 10th, Gallup listed their “Top Well-Being Findings of 2017”, and three findings pertained to the entire U.S. (the others pertained only to sub-populations):

Americans’ well-being declines in 2017

U.S. uninsured rate rises

Exchange purchasers rate their health coverage less positively

In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, there was “a reversal of the three-year upward trend” of Americans’ well-being. This time, it went down, instead of continued flat or else went up again.

Of course, nothing affects well-being or happiness as much as health does, and the U.S. is perhaps the sickest of all advanced industrialized countries. On 21 February 2017, the Washington Post had bannered “U.S. life expectancy will soon be on par with Mexico’s and the Czech Republic’s” and reported that

“Life expectancy at birth will continue to climb substantially for residents of industrialized nations — but not in the United States, where minimal gains will soon put life spans on par with those in Mexico and the Czech Republic, according to an extensive analysis. … ‘Notable among poor-performing countries is the USA,’ the researchers wrote, ‘whose life expectancy at birth is already lower than most other high-income countries, and is projected to fall further behind, such that its 2030 life expectancy at birth might be similar to the Czech Republic for men, and Croatia and Mexico for women.’ … It is the only one without universal health insurance coverage and has the ‘largest share of unmet health-care needs due to financial costs,’ the researchers wrote.”

The U.S. has by far the world’s highest-cost healthcare, both on an absolute basis and also as a percentage of GDP. It also has extremely unequal distribution of wealth. So: a great many Americans simply can’t afford the healthcare they need; they put up with their unattended or under-attended ailments and disabilities. This, in turn, decreases America’s productivity.

On 8 December 2016, that same newspaper had already headlined “U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993” and reported that

“For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year — a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. … Its findings show increases in ‘virtually every cause of death. It’s all ages. … This is unusual, and we don’t know what happened,’ said Jiaquan Xu, an epidemiologist and lead author of the study. ‘So many leading causes of death increased.’”

Age-adjusted death rates for the 10 leading causes of death. (Source: CDC/NCHS/HHS/NVSS)

So: one might consider Gallup’s latest findings — both of declining well-being, and of declining health-insurance coverage — to be in line with what’s to be reasonably expected in America.

The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose to 12.3% in 2017, from the prior year’s 10.9%. At the beginning of Obama’s Presidency, that figure had been 14.6% uninsured. While Obamacare was being drafted-and-debated in Congress; that figure rose to reach 18.0% uninsured by the time the exchanges opened in October 2013, because many Americans were not renewing their insurance policies; they were instead hoping for better deals to become available under Obamacare. Then, the uninsured percentage gradually declined down to the 10.9% who were uninsured by the time when Obama left office. 

Obama’s plan had increased the percentage of Americans with health insurance from 85.4% when he entered office, to 89.1% by the time he left office. He had promised “universal coverage” — everyone would have health insurance under his system (100%, just like in all other developed nations) — but never attained higher than 89.1% who were insured; and this figure was flatlining at that level by the time he left office. (He also had promised, during his campaign, that there would be a “public option” in his plan, but never even tried to include it, once he became elected to the Presidency; only private insurance companies were allowed into his exchanges; his plan was actually drawn-up by insurance company lobbyists and executives, with Obama’s choice of conservative U.S. Senator Max Baucus’s staff, who were working with Obama’s personal agent, Nancy-Ann DeParle, who herself was a former healthcare executive.) 

Now, since he has left office, the uninsured percentage has suddenly started rising again, this time from 10.9% to 12.3%, an increase of 12.3/10.9, or a rise of nearly 13%, since Obama left. Perhaps this indicates Trump’s success toward destroying Obamacare, but the rest of Trump’s destruction of it has already been included in his and the Republican Congress’s tax-overhaul law ending the requirement to purchase health insurance — the “insurance mandate” — because that termination will de-fund the federal subsidies that had enabled the insurance companies to make profits without having to soar their premiums even more than they did. The insurers won’t be receiving these federal government subsidies. Obama showed that he had believed in Government bailing-out and subsidizing Wall Street and insurance companies but not in Government bailing-out or subsidizing their victims; his policy-proposals showed that he believed more in “trickle-down” economics than in “percolate-up” economics. So, now, Obamacare is doomed — the insurers will increase premiums even more, and thus more and more people will refuse to buy insurance. Even the modest improvement that Obama and the Democrats had achieved in American health care is being reversed by the Republicans. 

The only consistent winner in all of this is America’s wealthiest, who — for example — own the insurance companies (which now will be funding especially heavily the Democratic Party’s nominees). America’s needy are being placed under even more pressures than they were under before. Instead of a neoliberal Democratic Government, America now has an even more neoliberal Republican Government. Neoliberalism is trickle-down economics, and Republicans are even more committed to it than are Democrats. (Neoconservatism is the foreign-policy complement to neoliberalism: in the old terminology, it was called “imperialism,” and its domestic-policy complement was called simply “capitalism”; but, now, we have instead “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” — and both parts of conservatism are more now than under Obama.)

This brings us to the last of the three major Gallup findings about Americans’ welfare during 2017: “Exchange purchasers rate their health coverage less positively.” It reports that satisfaction with health insurance was 74% for people who had purchased from an Obamacare exchange, and 81% for all others, and was especially high for the two main socialized portions of America’s health insurance: Veterans’ health care, and Medicare. It was, however, the lowest for Medicaid, the socialized system specifically for the poorest and sickest people — the neediest of all, who are treated as being the worst of all by America’s Government, even though almost all of them were born to poverty and/or genetic diseases, etc. 

Whereas India has its “Dalits”, America has its poor. Regardless whether they’re male, female, white, black, Hispanic, or whatever, they’re despised by America’s Government — and even more so by Trump’s than by Obama’s. In Indian terminology, America now has an even more anti-Dalit Government than it did previously. More clearly than ever, after the period of FDR’s progressivism ended with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the poor have now become America’s “untouchables.” 

Even politically active Blacks, feminists, homosexuals, and other oppressed categories, are more concerned to represent their own ethnicity or other oppressed group, than to represent all of the oppressed — the poor in every group, and the victims of all types of bigotry. 

Progressivism thus has no active constituency in the United States — not even at the grass roots; and it has only enemies at the well-funded organized political level. This is why both of the existing political Parties are conservative (neoliberal and neoconservative), and compete for support only amongst the wealthiest, who are the source of both neoliberalism and neoconservatism. 

Gallup’s latest report documents the direction that America’s Government currently is heading, which is simply conservative (neoconservative+neoliberal). Although only a minority of America’s voters are conservative, a vast majority of America’s wealth is owned by conservatives, if for no other reason than that they were generally born far richer than the poor were (or than any of the professional advocates for the poor are). (And, of course, any of the born-poor who became the exceptions who managed to rise into America’s aristocracy tend to be overwhelmingly conservative because they think they did it by being superior to the many who did not. Wealth produces conservatism. Furthermore, the wealthy are also less compassionate, more psychopathic, than the non-wealthy. Though they are actually among the worst, they think that they are among the best. And they’ve got the money to hire plenty of agents to promote their view.)

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

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It’s Nato that’s Empire-building, not Putin

By Peter Hitchins and True Publica, January 11, 2018

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Trump Administration Prepares More Hawkish Position on Nuclear Arms. The Deployment of Mininukes

By Jason Ditz, January 11, 2018

With the US forever investing more into their nuclear arsenal, ensuring they have the world’s biggest collection of city destroying arms, the fact that none have been used in over 70 years is a silver lining to many, but within the administration, it may be a problem that needs correcting.

US Military Intelligence Has “Weaponized Democracy” Worldwide

By Andrew Korybko, January 11, 2018

It doesn’t matter whether it’s the US’ brand of “democracy” for export or the national-specific model of government that strengthens non-Western states, the theoretical concept behind this system has been weaponized by military intelligence agencies worldwide in a back-and-forth competition to change or retain the “deep state” status quo.

US Needs the Taliban to Justify Its Military Presence in Afghanistan

By Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan and Edu Montesanti, January 11, 2018

It has been forty years since the US started working on its Afghan project, and investing in Afghan youth to make them its cadres was cardinal to its long-term aims in Afghanistan. The CIA educated and trained its lackeys, politically and militarily, creating loyal lackeys who would go on to constitute its future puppet government after it was to take over Afghanistan, and help it achieve its goals comfortably.

China’s Pivot to World Markets, Washington’s Pivot to World Wars…

By Prof. James Petras, January 11, 2018

China and the United States are moving in polar opposite directions: Beijing is rapidly becoming the center of overseas investments in high tech industries, including robotics, nuclear energy and advanced machinery with collaboration from centers of technological excellence, like Germany.

In contrast, Washington is pursuing a predatory military pivot to the least productive regions with collaboration from its most barbaric allies, like Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS): War and More War…

By Christopher Black, January 10, 2018

So one would think that when the President of the United States sits down with his advisors and asks them about these problems and to come up with an American national strategy to resolve them that they would take that task seriously and get together all the best scientists, doctors, sociologists, psychologists, economists, philosophers, poets, and artists, writers and musicians, engineers, trades people, committees of locally chosen working people and, of course military men interested in maintaining a continuum of peace instead of war. But on reading the new Strategy document you find that all these people are missing.

Featured image: The candlelight movement in Seoul, South Korea, mobilized for change of government (Source: Women Cross DMZ)

Public demonstrations and opposition arising once again in Greece, as the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF) demand still more austerity measures (pension cuts, privatizations, tax hikes) as part of the latest maneuvering by the Troika and its Syriza Greek government ally in anticipation of a renewal of yet another ‘debt deal’ later this year in 2018. The old deal–the third established in 2015–is scheduled to end this summer. The Troika-Syriza intend to ‘roll it over’. Thus the new demands for continuing and more austerity raised well before the expiration of the 2015 debt agreement.

Elections for Greece’s parliament, where Syriza has a narrow majority, would have to follow later in 2018, so the Troika-Syriza government seek to wrap up a new agreement on debt before the expiration and new elections.

This sad scenario has been going on since 2010, with no end in sight since there’s no way Greece’s economy can repay the interest and principal on hundreds of billions of dollars of debt imposed on it by pro-Eurozone Greek governments. It is perpetual interest payments for decades to come. 95% of the debt interest payments end up in German and other northern European banks, according to German university institute studies.

As I indicated in my September 2016 book, ‘Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges’, Clarity Press, it amounts to a new kind of imperialism based on financial payments for debt imposed by pan-European political institutions (Troika) on the smaller economies of the Eurozone periphery. (see book reviews and select chapters from the book on this blog’s book roll on the right side of this page. Orders at discount are available by clicking on the book icon–or on Amazon and elsewhere).

Unlike classic imperialism–e.g. 19th century British version–where factories and production were set up in the colonial country to produce goods sold at cost with low wages to British capitalist owners, who then shipped the goods back to the UK, and from there resold them at a higher price in the UK or Europe–the new 21st century financial imperialism exploits the entire economy by requiring debt interest payments to be paid by the colonial government to the banks and investors in the ‘host’ country. The payments are made by imposing fiscal austerity measures on the society being exploited. It’s a new form of ‘colonialism’ where the exploitation is ‘socialised’ and generalized, most of which is ‘paid for’ by pensioners retirement cuts, government workers’ layoffs and wage and benefit cuts, by colonial governments’ privatizing social services and public goods (sold to foreign investors to raise cash to pay the interest), and by tax hikes on households and small businesses to gain revenues with which to pay the interest on the debt.

Watch my most recent interview with Press TV on the latest demonstrations in Greece and popular resistance, which will intensify once again as the current Troika-Syriza government debt agreement expires in 2018.

To watch, go to Youtube at:

See my prior 2016 Youtube interviews on the 2015 prior Troika-Syriza debt deal at:

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A disinformation Senate Foreign Relations Committee report was commissioned and published by Russophobic undemocratic Dem Ben Cardin, supported by other committee Dems, independent of GOP committee members.

It makes claims – based solely on long ago discredited Big Lies, using disreputable Russophobic sources.

The report represents another episode in Washington’s Russia bashing, aimed at Vladimir Putin,

The report says America “remains vulnerable to Russian interference.”

It claims a “nearly two decades-long (Putin) assault on democratic institutions, universal values, and the rule of law across Europe and in his own country. “

 

The report turned truth on its head, claiming

“(n)ever before in American history has so clear a threat to national security been so clearly ignored by a US president, and without a strong US response, institutions and elections here and throughout Europe will remain vulnerable to the Kremlin’s aggressive and sophisticated malign influence operations.”

Ben Cardin and likeminded Russophobes are unfit to serve, disgracing the office they hold, falsely claiming a Russian threat to America and its allies.

No threat exists, not now or earlier, especially under Putin’s leadership.

Cardin:

“…Putin continues to refine his asymmetric arsenal and look for future opportunities to disrupt governance and erode support for the democratic and international institutions that the United States and Europe have built over the last 70 years.”

Instead of  seeking improved bilateral relations, Cardin and likeminded Senate Russophobes urge confrontation, risking unthinkable nuclear war.

The 200-page report was commissioned after the US November 2016 election. Using Russophobic sources and media, it’s pure disinformation and fear-mongering.

It promotes greater defense spending for offense than already, stiffer illegal sanctions, propaganda war to promote America’s worldview, along with escalated efforts to weaken, contain and isolate Russia – a reckless agenda heading toward confrontation between the world’s dominant nuclear powers.

As long as bipartisan neocons infest Washington, the risk remains huge.

The report recommends US-dominated NATO challenge Russia aggressively short of war.

It claims nonexistent Russian malign influence. It calls for lobbying against Russian oil and gas pipelines, notably Nord Stream 2, saying:

It undermines European energy security, “mak(ing) Europe more dependent on Russian energy supplies…”

US/Russia relations are more dismal and dangerous than at any previous time in decades.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. In Britain, the spreading of false information via the mainstream press and national broadcast media is universally accepted on topics such as bringing down the NHS for privatisation purposes, trashing foreign so-called enemy nation states such as Iraq, Libya et al and of course the really big foe of our time – Russia.

Unlike many so-called experts and commentators on Russia, Peter Hitchins was a former foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington and understands the tension strings of the geo-political power plays being made against it.

Peppered with obligatory obeisances to western official narratives about Nato empire-building since 1990, Peter Hitchins – the self confessed reformed Thatcherite, deconstructs official state propaganda and gives clear personal insight into the realities and truth of these power plays.

The article below was originally published in March 2015 and as you will read, nothing for the better has changed but at least you get a sense that what you are being told officially – is a deception.

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It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin

by Peter Hitchins

The Spectator

March 2015

Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding?

There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of the old Cold Warriors, wrote back in 1997,

‘Ukraine… is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’

This diminished Russia feels the spread of the EU and its armed wing, NATO, like a blow on an unhealed bruise. In February 2007, for instance, Vladimir Putin asked sulkily,

“Against whom is this expansion intended?”

I have never heard a clear answer to that question. The USSR, which NATO was founded to fight, expired in August 1991. So what is Nato’s purpose now? Why does it even still exist?

There is no obvious need for an adversarial system in post-Soviet Europe. Even if Russia wanted to reconquer its lost empire, as some believe (a belief for which there is no serious evidence), it is too weak and too poor to do this. So why not invite Russia to join the great western alliances? Alas, it is obvious to everyone, but never stated, that Russia cannot ever join either NATO or the EU, for if it did so it would unbalance them both by its sheer size. There are many possible ways of dealing with this. One would be an adult recognition of the limits of human power, combined with an understanding of Russia’s repeated experience of invasions and its lack of defensible borders.

But we do not do this. Instead we have a noisy pseudo-moral crusade, which would not withstand five minutes of serious consideration. Mr Putin’s state is, beyond doubt, a sinister tyranny. But so is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, which locks up far more journalists than does Russia. Turkey is an officially respectable Nato member, 40 years after seizing northern Cyprus, which it still occupies, in an almost exact precedent for Russia’s seizure of Crimea. If Putin disgusts us so much, then why are we and the USA happy to do business with Erdogan, and also to fawn upon Saudi Arabia and China?

Contrary to myth, the expansion of the EU into the former communist world has not magically brought universal peace, love and prosperity. Croatia’s economy has actually gone backwards since it joined. Corruption still exists in large parts of the EU’s new south-eastern territories, and I am not sure that the rule of law could be said to have been properly established there. So the idea that the recruitment of Ukraine to the ‘West’ will magically turn that troubled nation into a sunny paradise of freedom, probity and wealth is perhaps a little idealistic, not to say mistaken.

It is all so much clearer if we realise that this quarrel is about power and land, not virtue. In truth, much of the eastward expansion of Nato was caused by the EU’s initial unwillingness to take in backward, bankrupt and corrupt refugee states from the old Warsaw Pact. The policy could be summed up as ‘We won’t buy your tomatoes, but if it makes you happy you can shelter under our nuclear umbrella’. The promise was an empty assurance against a nonexistent threat. But an accidental arrangement hardened into a real confrontation. The less supine Russia was, the more its actions were interpreted as aggression in the West. Boris Yeltsin permitted western interests to rape his country, and did little to assert Russian power. So though he bombarded his own parliament, conducted a grisly war in Chechnya, raised corruption to Olympic levels and shamelessly rigged his own re-election, he yet remained a popular guest in western capitals and summits. Vladimir Putin’s similar sins, by contrast, provide a pretext for ostracism and historically illiterate comparisons between him and Hitler.

This is because of his increasing avowal of Russian sovereignty, and of an independent foreign policy. There have been many East-West squabbles and scrimmages, not all of them Russia’s fault. But the New Cold War really began in 2011, after Mr Putin dared to frustrate western — and Saudi — policy in Syria. George Friedman, the noted US intelligence and security expert, thinks Russia badly underestimated the level of American fury this would provoke. As Mr Friedman recently told the Moscow newspaper Kommersant, ‘It was in this situation that the United States took a look at Russia and thought about what it [Russia] wants to see happen least of all: instability in Ukraine.’

Mr Friedman (no Putin stooge) also rather engagingly agrees with Moscow that overthrow last February (2014) of Viktor Yanukovych was ‘the most blatant coup in history’. He is of course correct, as anyone unclouded by passion can see. The test of any action by your own side is to ask what you would think of it if the other side did it.

If Russia didn’t grasp how angry Washington would get over Syria, did the West realise how furiously Russia would respond to the EU Association Agreement and to the fall of Yanukovych? Perhaps not. Fearing above all the irrecoverable loss to NATO of its treasured naval station in Sevastopol, Russia reacted. After 23 years of sullenly appeasing the West, Moscow finally said ‘enough’. Since we’re all supposed to be against appeasement, shouldn’t we find this action understandable in a sovereign nation, even if we cannot actually praise it? And can anyone explain to me precisely why Britain, of all countries, should be siding with the expansion of the European Union and NATO into this dangerous and unstable part of the world?

*

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Two leading African states, Egypt and Sudan, are maintaining their historical claims over sovereignty of the Hala’ib Triangle.

Both nations have argued about whether the area belonged to either of them at least since 1958. On January 8, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry took its complaint to the United Nations.

The appeal to the UN followed the withdrawal of the Sudanese Foreign Minister Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel Halim from Cairo for consultations on January 4. Egypt suggested that the recall was a hostile move designed to escalate tensions.

Egyptian Member of Parliament Mona Mounir seems to have expressed the sentiments of the government saying:

“We respect the Sudanese people and their political leadership. However, this escalation (summoning the ambassador) is unjustified.”(Arab News, Jan. 6)

She continued emphasizing that Egypt was willing:

“to discuss and negotiate everything with neighboring Sudan, except what might affect Egypt’s historic share of the (Nile) water and it’s documented and recognized borders.”

Mounir said the recall of Sudanese Ambassador Abdel Halim “will never deter us from protecting every inch of our territory.”

Cairo in 2016 rejected offers of negotiations by Khartoum which was willing to accept international arbitration to determine which state has legal authority to claim Hala’ib Triangle as its national territory. Sudan considers Egypt’s presence in the area as an occupation.

Egypt has rejected the notion that it is occupying Hala’ib and pledged to send a letter as well to the UN in response to the appeal by Khartoum. Egypt says in this letter it will make a case for sovereignty over the area.

During November 2017 Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Ghandour stressed that Khartoum would never give up Hala’ib. Subsequently the Director of Sudan’s Technical Committee for Border Demarcation (TCBD), Abdullah Al-Sadiq, on January 4 reemphasized that Khartoum would not relinquish its claim to Hala’ib.

Al-Ghandour expressed the desire for a peaceful resolution saying the ongoing “Egyptian infringement” on Sudanese territory could prompt Khartoum to engage in military actions that would be disadvantageous for Cairo. Both Sudan and Egypt have formidable militaries within an Africa context where an outbreak of fighting would have regional and international implications.

Sudan and Turkey Presidents hold meeting

The disagreements between the two governments is also related to the recent visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan where it is reported that an agreement was signed for the construction of a military base on the Red Sea island of Suakin in northeast Sudan. Coinciding with the visit of Erdogan was the presence of Qatari military Chief of Staff Ghanim bin Shaheen al-Ghanim.

Suakin Island was a major port during the Ottoman Empire beginning in the early 16th century when there were intense military conflicts with Portugal over control of the area. Historically it is considered one of the most lucrative territories in the region and the renewed interests by Turkey is perceived as a major impediment by Egypt to its strategic and security interests.

Consequently, Egypt is viewing the presence of these two adversarial leaders as part of a broader plan to fortify Sudanese military positions in opposition to Cairo. Both Turkey and Qatar objected strongly to the military coup against former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood during July 2013. The putsch was led by the current President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.

Morsi remains in prison along with thousands of other members and supporters of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The organization has been outlawed while the country prepares for another election in March 2018. Al-Sisi is expected to stand for re-election after winning office in 2014 when he took off his military uniform and replaced it with civilian clothing.

The Colonial Legacy of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899-1956)

This conflict over the Hala’ib Triangle cannot be separated from the intervention of British imperialism in the region during the late 19th century. In an effort to enhance its colonial ambitions London sought to administer both Sudan and Egypt as one entity ostensibly to protect its investments in the Suez Canal after 1873.

Resistance to British conquest in Sudan followed the seizure of key areas in Egypt by the Royal military forces in 1882. Under the guise of restoring order after an anti-Christian rebellion directed against Europeans, the British army bombarded the city of Alexandria.

Hali’ab Triange map

There was considerable opposition in Sudan to the British-dominated Egyptian regime. A Islamic religious movement surfaced under the leadership of Muhammad Ahmed who later proclaimed himself as the Mahdi, an anointed figure destined to spread the religion aimed at overturning both Turkish and western-oriented secular legal systems.

Initial attempts by the British colonialists to subdue the Mahdi Rebellion were met by successful resistance resulting in the expansion of the rule of the Mahdi and his followers. Later the British sent soldiers into Sudan thinking they would quickly subdue the territory.

Nonetheless, according to the blackpast.org website related to these historical developments:

“By 1882 the Mahdist Army had taken complete control over the area surrounding Khartoum. Then, in 1883, a joint British-Egyptian military expedition under the command of British Colonel William Hicks launched a counterattack against the Mahdists. Hicks was soon killed and the British decided to evacuate the Sudan. Fighting continued however and the British-Egyptian forces which defended Khartoum in a long siege were finally overrun on January 28, 1885. Virtually the entire garrison was killed. General Charles Gordon, the commander of the British-Egyptian forces, was beheaded during the attack.”

This same report continues saying that:

“In June 1885, Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, died. As a result the Mahdist movement quickly dissolved as infighting broke out among rival claimants to leadership. Hoping to capitalize on internal strife, the British returned to the Sudan in 1896 with Horatio Kitchener as commander of another Anglo-Egyptian army. In the final battle of the war on September 2, 1898 at Karari, 11,000 Mahdists were killed and 16,000 were wounded.”

By 1899 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium was established by the British which administratively laid down the framework for the ongoing disagreements over boundaries, access to waterways and islands throughout the region extending into the 20th and 21st centuries. After renewed rebellions, general strikes and political agitation from the early 1900s to the mid-1950s, Sudan was declared independent in 1956.

Unfortunately, Sudan and Egypt have not been able to resolve their differences related to this issue on a diplomatic and legal basis. The situation involving Hala’ib is reflective of the heightening tensions over the Blue Nile where the flow of water throughout the entire basin is raising the potential for military conflict between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project and the Status of Egypt

In addition to the recrudescent conflict surrounding border demarcations between Sudan and Egypt stemming from the historic Ottoman and British domination during the 16th to the early 20th centuries, there is the opposition by Cairo to the construction of the Ethiopian Great Renaissance Dam Project. There appears to be an alliance by Khartoum with the other eight Nile Basin states which are supportive of the building of the dam and the vision that the endeavor will benefit the entire North and East Africa regions.

Through the de facto domination of Britain, France and eventually the United States over the domestic and foreign affairs of Egypt since the late 1800s, the waters of the Nile River have been the channeled for the benefit of Cairo and to a lesser extent Khartoum. Nevertheless, in the recent period the nations of the Nile Basin have sought to exert their voice on the future of these regions of the continent. A Nile Basin Initiative group was formed in 1999 which includes Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, The Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, while Eritrea participates as an observer.

This represent a significant departure from the colonial period when the concerns of countries further south along the Nile took on secondary importance to areas closer to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. A Comprehensive Framework Agreement (CFA) was adopted in 1999 calling for a reconfiguration of economic priorities. Sudan and later Egypt have accepted the ideas behind the CFA, although differences remain particularly between Cairo and the other Nile Basin states.

An article published by The National based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) says that Egypt advanced its own development trajectory through the construction of the Aswan Dam in the south of the country during the 1960s. The damn opened in 1970 having been built through the efforts of the Soviet Union. The-then President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 prompting an unsuccessful invasion by Britain, France and the State of Israel.

The National emphasized that:

“The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is still under construction, may not have such dramatic consequences, but it has triggered intense controversy throughout the Nile basin. When completed, it will be the biggest hydroelectric plant in Africa with 6,450 megawatts of generating capacity. Despite a booming economy and a population of 102 million, the second-largest in the continent, Ethiopia has just 4,290MW installed today. Egypt’s slightly smaller population has 38,000MW. Under the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, Egypt and Sudan agreed [to] their shares of the Nile’s flow at 55.5 billion cubic metres and 18.5bn m3, respectively. This treaty was reached without reference to the other riparian states, a situation resented by Ethiopia, which supplies 80 per cent of the river’s flow.”

These post-colonial difficulties should be resolved within the framework of the Africa Union (AU), other regional organizations or the UN. Within the context of a continuing economic crisis in both Egypt and Sudan, the potential for military conflict is quite real.

Such a decline in diplomatic relations sets the stage for a situation where millions of people in Egypt and Sudan can be grossly impacted in a negative fashion. The level of population dislocation, injuries, deaths, economic collapse, along with the possible interventions of governmental entities based outside of Africa which would stem from a full-blown war between Cairo and Khartoum, warrants that both states enter into some effective methods designed to reach a permanent resolution to the dispute.

*

All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.

Recently the Indian Cabinet approved key changes in India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) policy by allowing 100 percent FDI (from current 49%) under automatic route for single brand retail trading and construction development paving the way for global players. During April-September, 2017-18, FDI inflows grew 17 percent on year at USD 25.35 billion. In the financial year 2016-17, total FDI inflows hit an all-time high of USD 60.08 billion, as compared with USD 55.46 billion a year ago.

While India is opening up its markets to be developed by borrowed foreign investment there is a fundamental question that remains to be answered or rather even asked by experts. While the Western European countries are themselves still reeling under the pressure of the 2008 financial crisis that shook not just their economic but societal and even security foundations and brought them to the verge of bankruptcies; where would all these FDI investment monies come from? This simple question if answered would lay bare the entire charade of Foreign Direct Investment in India as well as the American Dream. It is really amusing that none from the entire 1.3 billion population of India has been able to ask this humble question.

Retail Apocalypse

Gullible Indians must be thinking the foreign retail markets must be doing really well and the companies making a lot of profit so much so that now they are expanding their base of operations in India as well. They sure are coming to India but not because they‘re expanding their business but because they are shifting their base of operations. Why? Because the 2008 crisis sent the American retail sector (along with others) crashing to its doom now known as the Retail Apocalypse.

The Retail Apocalypse refers to the closing of a large number of American retail stores since the crisis and is expected to peak in 2018. The Atlantic describes the phenomenon as “The Great Retail Apocalypse of 2017.” Of the 1,200 shopping malls across the US, 50% are expected to close by 2023. More than 12,000 stores are expected to close in 2018. Now these same bankrupt companies would be opening up shop in India via non-existent FDI.

Infographic by Visual Capitalist

As the Forbes contributor Blake Morgan puts it,

“An apocalypse is the final destruction before the end of the world, so the popular phrase “retail apocalypse” would be the end of retail as we know it.”

Although she is partly correct in her assessment that this “isn’t the end of the world but start of something exciting,” how that change would come about is a billion dollar FDI question.

American Nightmare

While Indians were fighting over should or should not they celebrate the New Year this is what Christmas Day looked like for thousands of homeless people in the dark and dingy underbelly of Downtown Los Angeles in United States of America. The shocking footage – captured using a car dash camera – shows the brutal reality of life on the street in the notorious Skid Row district where nine toilets are shared by some 2,000 people, according to a June report titled ‘No Place to Go‘. The three-minute clip was originally published on Instagram by LA street artist Plastic Jesus then on LiveLeak by Nick Stern in the ‘Citizen Journalism’ video category.

In a 2015 book titled $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, the sociologist Kathryn J. Edin and her colleague H. Luke Shaefer estimated that there are nearly 1.5 million American households who are living on fewer than $2 a day. Nobel Prize-winning economist, Angus Deaton in a recent interview to the Atlantic goes on to compare the poverty in Mississippi to that in India. In a memorable quote Deaton says,

“If you had to choose between living in a poor village in India and living in the Mississippi Delta or in a suburb of Milwaukee in a trailer park, I’m not sure who would have the better life.”

Paul Theroux author of Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads has compared some American towns with those in Zimbabwe –

“It is possible to impoverish an American community to the point where it is indistinguishable from a hard-up town in the dusty heartland of a third world country.”

Though ranked as one of the wealthiest nations, the US is home to some of the poorest communities in the world. The wealthiest one per cent of American households own 40 percent of the country’s wealth, according to a November report by economist Edward N. Wolff. That same one per cent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent combined, the Washington Post reported.

Same is the story with the European nations (now falling like dominos) who unknowingly absorbed monstrous proportions of toxic US debt thinking it was a genuine investment. Only in 2008 when the German banks wanted to offload some of their US real-estate investment it was a revelation for the US regulator about the extent of fraud committed by the US banks, insurance companies and Wall Street brokerage firms; leading to what we know now as US Meltdown of 2008 and Eurozone Crisis of 2012 and if not prudent will be called the Indian Crisis of 2020.

Western-European economies are still reeling under the pressure of this financial crisis and the Chinese together with the Russians are pushing them further into recession. As recently as in January last year the global elite met at the World Economic Forum in Davos expressing their fears about the global liquidity crunch and the implications it may have on their economies. What they fear is that the meltdown may spell the end of the supremacy of the banking houses of London and New York as financial centers. It is here that India comes into picture. That this announcement to open up Indian markets has come right before another meeting in Davos on Jan 22^nd is also very telling.

What is at stake here is the western way of life itself branded and marketed as the American Dream. It is to protect this American Dream from turning into a Nightmare that India is being drawn into this spiral of debt economics.

Evolution of FDI

In 2008 this economic tumor ripped through the US and by 2011 it had spread to most parts of Western Europe. It resulted in large scale unemployment and inflation leading to several protests and had left behind a trail of crippled and near bankrupt economies. Even today, western economies are coping with the after effects of this economic crisis and few are still in recession. To squeeze every dollar they could into their economies, most nations resorted to wage-cuts, reduction in public spending, mass layoffs, austerity measures etc.

With no end to their woes in sight, the Americans along with their European partners resorted to strategies which are reminiscent of the colonial era. The coalition entered into war with Libya with the noble objectives of spreading democracy, rule of law and human rights and ultimately fleeced the country of $ 2 trillion which prevented the collapse of these economies and gave them some breathing room. The western governments realized that the economic crisis was intrinsically linked to the standard of living of their people which if not protected could lead to the political radicalization of the entire west and could wind the clock back to the time when they were struggling to counter spread of soviet ideology in their countries.

While most countries were still reeling under the shock of recession, Dubai, which was afflicted by what was famously known as the Dubai Flu of 2009, came out of its effects relatively quickly. How that came about is worth looking at. Little known to many, UAE is a conglomerate of either 12-14 sheikdoms of which Ras-al-Khima, Abudabi, Dubai and Sharjah are well known. They miraculously came out of depression by virtue of a financial experiment that most western countries were skeptical of, but its eventual success led these nations to quickly adopt it. The experiment was a carefully drafted strategy which was devised by political pundits, banking and economic wizards and its script began to unfold in India since mid 2011.

India’s Biggest Scam – Round-Tripping Black Money as FDI

We were told that demonetization would combat the black economy and also crack a whip on the funding sources of terrorist outfits by curbing the circulation of Fake Indian Currency Notes. Far from it we are again in the midst of mindless terror acts across the Red Corridor and the Kashmir region and our currency notes itself printed by foreign companies blacklisted for being a threat to India’s security. What we were not told about the black money however, was that while Indian govt. was cracking a whip on the informal economy the actual black money was already being routed back into India legally via FDI (now rubber stamped by foreign corporations).

While the government is busy waging war on black money, international watchdog Global Financial Integrity has estimated that black money worth as much as USD 21 billion was taken out of India illegally in 2014. In its latest report, GFI also threw some light upon illegal inflow of funds, with India being identified as the parking spot for around USD 101 billion, 11 percent more than in the corresponding period a year ago.

Titled ‘Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries: 2005-2014’, the report said that between USD 620 billion and USD 970 billion was drained out across all emerging market countries, primarily through the trade fraud route. In all, illegal inflows and outflows were estimated to constitute 14-24 percent of total developing country trade between 2005 and 2014. This is called Round Tripping. One of the leading puzzles related to cross border flow of investment is the phenomenon of ‘Round Tripping FDI’. Just ask yourself this – why the biggest sources of FDI are tax havens?

This bizarre Saga of bankrupt western economies and their multinational business houses’ incredulous economic plan to Develop India with non-existing FDI is the subject matter and is explained in detail in GreatGameIndia’s FDI Series – Foreign countries Dictating India Series.

Infographic from GreatGameIndia’s FDI – Foreign countries Dictating India Series

Slowly and steadily but surely, India is being integrated into the Anglo-American architecture and this parasitic relationship is being normalized symbolically through single-handed policies and high-profile events repeatedly where every Indian protocol or institution is being blatantly disregarded or bypassed.

While this is the current state of the Western European economies, it is a tragedy that Indian policy makers are blissfully ignorant or purposefully conniving to download this now defunct American Dream into India either by tricking the populace through outright bluff and bluster of sloganeering or in many cases oppressively against the will of its own people. But than, why should there be an Indian Apocalypse to save the American Dream turning into a Nightmare?

“FDI in retail will bring back East India Company regime” said the current Indian government few years ago when it was in opposition. It is worthwhile to note that patriot Americans themselves are fighting these multinational corporations and banks that collapsed their economy. It is through this mandate of wresting back power from these forces of globalization that Donald Trump won the election. But then, why should America be Great Again at the expense of India being a Slave Again?

 

Shelley Kasli is the Co-founder and Editor at GreatGameIndia, a quarterly journal on geopolitics and international affairs. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from UK India Business Council.

Recently the Indian Cabinet approved key changes in India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) policy by allowing 100 percent FDI (from current 49%) under automatic route for single brand retail trading and construction development paving the way for global players. During April-September, 2017-18, FDI inflows grew 17 percent on year at USD 25.35 billion. In the financial year 2016-17, total FDI inflows hit an all-time high of USD 60.08 billion, as compared with USD 55.46 billion a year ago.

While India is opening up its markets to be developed by borrowed foreign investment there is a fundamental question that remains to be answered or rather even asked by experts. While the Western European countries are themselves still reeling under the pressure of the 2008 financial crisis that shook not just their economic but societal and even security foundations and brought them to the verge of bankruptcies; where would all these FDI investment monies come from? This simple question if answered would lay bare the entire charade of Foreign Direct Investment in India as well as the American Dream. It is really amusing that none from the entire 1.3 billion population of India has been able to ask this humble question.

Retail Apocalypse

Gullible Indians must be thinking the foreign retail markets must be doing really well and the companies making a lot of profit so much so that now they are expanding their base of operations in India as well. They sure are coming to India but not because they‘re expanding their business but because they are shifting their base of operations. Why? Because the 2008 crisis sent the American retail sector (along with others) crashing to its doom now known as the Retail Apocalypse.

The Retail Apocalypse refers to the closing of a large number of American retail stores since the crisis and is expected to peak in 2018. The Atlantic describes the phenomenon as “The Great Retail Apocalypse of 2017.” Of the 1,200 shopping malls across the US, 50% are expected to close by 2023. More than 12,000 stores are expected to close in 2018. Now these same bankrupt companies would be opening up shop in India via non-existent FDI.

Infographic by Visual Capitalist

As the Forbes contributor Blake Morgan puts it,

“An apocalypse is the final destruction before the end of the world, so the popular phrase “retail apocalypse” would be the end of retail as we know it.”

Although she is partly correct in her assessment that this “isn’t the end of the world but start of something exciting,” how that change would come about is a billion dollar FDI question.

American Nightmare

While Indians were fighting over should or should not they celebrate the New Year this is what Christmas Day looked like for thousands of homeless people in the dark and dingy underbelly of Downtown Los Angeles in United States of America. The shocking footage – captured using a car dash camera – shows the brutal reality of life on the street in the notorious Skid Row district where nine toilets are shared by some 2,000 people, according to a June report titled ‘No Place to Go‘. The three-minute clip was originally published on Instagram by LA street artist Plastic Jesus then on LiveLeak by Nick Stern in the ‘Citizen Journalism’ video category.

In a 2015 book titled $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, the sociologist Kathryn J. Edin and her colleague H. Luke Shaefer estimated that there are nearly 1.5 million American households who are living on fewer than $2 a day. Nobel Prize-winning economist, Angus Deaton in a recent interview to the Atlantic goes on to compare the poverty in Mississippi to that in India. In a memorable quote Deaton says,

“If you had to choose between living in a poor village in India and living in the Mississippi Delta or in a suburb of Milwaukee in a trailer park, I’m not sure who would have the better life.”

Paul Theroux author of Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads has compared some American towns with those in Zimbabwe –

“It is possible to impoverish an American community to the point where it is indistinguishable from a hard-up town in the dusty heartland of a third world country.”

Though ranked as one of the wealthiest nations, the US is home to some of the poorest communities in the world. The wealthiest one per cent of American households own 40 percent of the country’s wealth, according to a November report by economist Edward N. Wolff. That same one per cent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent combined, the Washington Post reported.

Same is the story with the European nations (now falling like dominos) who unknowingly absorbed monstrous proportions of toxic US debt thinking it was a genuine investment. Only in 2008 when the German banks wanted to offload some of their US real-estate investment it was a revelation for the US regulator about the extent of fraud committed by the US banks, insurance companies and Wall Street brokerage firms; leading to what we know now as US Meltdown of 2008 and Eurozone Crisis of 2012 and if not prudent will be called the Indian Crisis of 2020.

Western-European economies are still reeling under the pressure of this financial crisis and the Chinese together with the Russians are pushing them further into recession. As recently as in January last year the global elite met at the World Economic Forum in Davos expressing their fears about the global liquidity crunch and the implications it may have on their economies. What they fear is that the meltdown may spell the end of the supremacy of the banking houses of London and New York as financial centers. It is here that India comes into picture. That this announcement to open up Indian markets has come right before another meeting in Davos on Jan 22^nd is also very telling.

What is at stake here is the western way of life itself branded and marketed as the American Dream. It is to protect this American Dream from turning into a Nightmare that India is being drawn into this spiral of debt economics.

Evolution of FDI

In 2008 this economic tumor ripped through the US and by 2011 it had spread to most parts of Western Europe. It resulted in large scale unemployment and inflation leading to several protests and had left behind a trail of crippled and near bankrupt economies. Even today, western economies are coping with the after effects of this economic crisis and few are still in recession. To squeeze every dollar they could into their economies, most nations resorted to wage-cuts, reduction in public spending, mass layoffs, austerity measures etc.

With no end to their woes in sight, the Americans along with their European partners resorted to strategies which are reminiscent of the colonial era. The coalition entered into war with Libya with the noble objectives of spreading democracy, rule of law and human rights and ultimately fleeced the country of $ 2 trillion which prevented the collapse of these economies and gave them some breathing room. The western governments realized that the economic crisis was intrinsically linked to the standard of living of their people which if not protected could lead to the political radicalization of the entire west and could wind the clock back to the time when they were struggling to counter spread of soviet ideology in their countries.

While most countries were still reeling under the shock of recession, Dubai, which was afflicted by what was famously known as the Dubai Flu of 2009, came out of its effects relatively quickly. How that came about is worth looking at. Little known to many, UAE is a conglomerate of either 12-14 sheikdoms of which Ras-al-Khima, Abudabi, Dubai and Sharjah are well known. They miraculously came out of depression by virtue of a financial experiment that most western countries were skeptical of, but its eventual success led these nations to quickly adopt it. The experiment was a carefully drafted strategy which was devised by political pundits, banking and economic wizards and its script began to unfold in India since mid 2011.

India’s Biggest Scam – Round-Tripping Black Money as FDI

We were told that demonetization would combat the black economy and also crack a whip on the funding sources of terrorist outfits by curbing the circulation of Fake Indian Currency Notes. Far from it we are again in the midst of mindless terror acts across the Red Corridor and the Kashmir region and our currency notes itself printed by foreign companies blacklisted for being a threat to India’s security. What we were not told about the black money however, was that while Indian govt. was cracking a whip on the informal economy the actual black money was already being routed back into India legally via FDI (now rubber stamped by foreign corporations).

While the government is busy waging war on black money, international watchdog Global Financial Integrity has estimated that black money worth as much as USD 21 billion was taken out of India illegally in 2014. In its latest report, GFI also threw some light upon illegal inflow of funds, with India being identified as the parking spot for around USD 101 billion, 11 percent more than in the corresponding period a year ago.

Titled ‘Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries: 2005-2014’, the report said that between USD 620 billion and USD 970 billion was drained out across all emerging market countries, primarily through the trade fraud route. In all, illegal inflows and outflows were estimated to constitute 14-24 percent of total developing country trade between 2005 and 2014. This is called Round Tripping. One of the leading puzzles related to cross border flow of investment is the phenomenon of ‘Round Tripping FDI’. Just ask yourself this – why the biggest sources of FDI are tax havens?

This bizarre Saga of bankrupt western economies and their multinational business houses’ incredulous economic plan to Develop India with non-existing FDI is the subject matter and is explained in detail in GreatGameIndia’s FDI Series – Foreign countries Dictating India Series.

Infographic from GreatGameIndia’s FDI – Foreign countries Dictating India Series

Slowly and steadily but surely, India is being integrated into the Anglo-American architecture and this parasitic relationship is being normalized symbolically through single-handed policies and high-profile events repeatedly where every Indian protocol or institution is being blatantly disregarded or bypassed.

While this is the current state of the Western European economies, it is a tragedy that Indian policy makers are blissfully ignorant or purposefully conniving to download this now defunct American Dream into India either by tricking the populace through outright bluff and bluster of sloganeering or in many cases oppressively against the will of its own people. But than, why should there be an Indian Apocalypse to save the American Dream turning into a Nightmare?

“FDI in retail will bring back East India Company regime” said the current Indian government few years ago when it was in opposition. It is worthwhile to note that patriot Americans themselves are fighting these multinational corporations and banks that collapsed their economy. It is through this mandate of wresting back power from these forces of globalization that Donald Trump won the election. But then, why should America be Great Again at the expense of India being a Slave Again?

 

Shelley Kasli is the Co-founder and Editor at GreatGameIndia, a quarterly journal on geopolitics and international affairs. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from UK India Business Council.

As the mid-term political campaigns begin, perhaps we should pause and think where this country is headed under the leadership of Trump, with the House and Senate in control of the Republican party—a party that has lost its soul and its way, failing to safeguard America’s national interest. This is a party that strives to cling to power—which is not itself unusual—but seeks it at all costs with no scruples and no moral compass. It seems that the Republican establishment will do whatever it takes to promote their narrow conservative agenda, which caters to the rich and powerful, while supporting a president who has nothing to offer the country but disgrace.

The Republicans, who are deeply engrossed in partisan politics, have enabled Trump in order to further their own political objectives, while ignoring that they were elected to protect America’s global and national security interests, and the wellbeing of the American people. The Republican party will be held responsible for what may well be irreparable damage to America’s global leadership and moral standing.

It appears as though Trump and the Republican leadership are dancing to each other’s tune. Occasionally some Republican Senators, including Corker and Flake, have criticized Trump for his repeated false statements and lack of political savvy and instability. Generally, however, the party members revel in the fact that they now have a president who will sign anything they put on his desk.

The Republican establishment is determined to shove down the throats of the American people what they failed to do during Obama’s tenure, enacting policies that are harmful to the majority of the American public.

Known for their hunger to cut taxes, the Republican House and Senate raced to pass major legislation overhauling the tax code with the slimmest majority in Congress. They consider the tax bill a major triumph, when in fact it is nothing but a travesty. The bill will certainly make the rich richer, while the poor and the unemployed, particularly unskilled workers, will have to wait for handouts with little or no prospect for a dignified existence.

The Republicans are bent on dismantling everything that President Obama was able to achieve, particularly the Iran deal, which could potentially plunge the Middle East into nuclear proliferation if nullified.

They doggedly worked to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which would deprive millions of people of health care.

They applauded the US’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords to the dismay of the entire international community, defying all scientific evidence that climate change is in fact already upon us. Beyond that, they rolled back countless environmental protections, effectively dismantling the EPA.

No, this is not what the vast majority of the American people aspire for. We envision:

America that shares the world’s concerns about climate change and leads other nations by example to combat global warming and save the planet from the dire consequences that it will inevitably pose.

America that protects its national security interests and achieves that not by dismissing the genuine national security concerns of other nations, but by working to reduce tensions and build mutual trust.

America that does not tolerate the gross violation of human rights by ruthless despots simply because our national interest assumes precedence over such abuses. On the contrary, our national interest is best served when we stand fast in protecting human rights everywhere.

America that embraces other cultures, thereby enriching our own, and fosters greater affinity and closer relationships with other nations, including our adversaries, through continuing cultural exchanges.

America that projects moral leadership and stands ready to act to avert hunger and disease, especially among children in conflict-ridden countries, by providing aid while assuming a leading role in resolving such conflicts.

America that maintains an open-door policy—the tradition of being a nation of immigrants—by welcoming those, regardless of their creed, race, or color, to our shores; those who want to realize the American dream and do their share to contribute to America’s economic, cultural, and scientific riches.

America that mitigates conflict with its adversaries and deepens its ties with allies and friends, respects international treaties, and lives up to any commitment made, not only to maintain our credibility but also to make the world a safer and more peaceful place.

Yes, America can be all of that and more, because these values are embedded in our cultural and moral fabric. Only the American people can make America what it is destined to be. Any political party or president that does not lead the country in this direction is not fit to be in power.

Republican congressmembers must now demonstrate where their loyalty lies—to the country, or to a corrupt party establishment and a president who has never been able to articulate any coherent policy, and leaves it to the party leadership to spoon-feed him whatever rubbish they deem necessary to serve their corrupt political agenda.

If the Republicans continue on their current path and keep swallowing everything that Trump spits out, come November they will pay the price—and deservedly so—for selling their souls while riding on the backs of the poor and the despairing.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

On January 11, “moderate opposition” groups of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) released an official statement announcing a large counter-offensive against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies in the Abu al-Duhur area in southern Idlib where the “regime forces” were battling their allied terrorist group – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda).

According to available information, Faylaq al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Jaish al-Nasr, Jaish al-Nukhba, Ahrar al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party, the FSA’s 2nd Army declared their readiness to assist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and some of them already joined the battle.

Clashes between militants and government troops were reported in Tell Salmo, Atshan, Jaish al-Ahrar, Khuwayn al-Kabir, Zarzour, Umm al-Khalakhi and near the Abu al-Duhur Airbase. Pro-opposition sources also claimed that militants had already killed at least 15 SAA troops and destroyed a BMP vehicle.

Furthermore, Faylaq al-Sham uses vehicles supplied to it by Turkey:

The Idlib de-escalation zone was agreed within the Astana talks on Syria by Turkey, Iran, Russia. Under the agreement, a ceasefire should be established in the area between the SAA and “moderate opposition” groups. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other internationally-recongized terrorist groups are excluded from the ceasefire.

A large-scale operation launched by the so-called “moderate opposition” in support of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham shows that the de-escalation zone de-facto collapsed.

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All images in this article are from South Front.

A Bayer marketing professional recently stated on Twitter that critics of GMOs deny choice to farmers. It’s a common accusation by the pro-GMO lobby. In a previous article, I noted the idea that GMOs offer increased choice is erroneous and that, by implication, corporations like Bayer or Monsanto restrict options. Much evidence suggests that GMOs provide a false choice.

However, to get drawn into endless debates about the whys and wherefores of GMOs tends to overlook the fact that GMOs belong to a particular model of agriculture which is increasingly being challenged. To quote Charles Eisenstein from a recent piece, what we should be talking about is the “choice between two very different systems of food production, two visions of society, and two fundamentally different ways to relate to plants, animals, and soil” (the table featured here provides concise insight into these visions).

The fact that someone chooses to market for a giant transnational company says much about a person’s allegiance to and belief in corporate power, let alone the prevailing economic system that company benefits from and the model of agriculture it promotes. Corporate-inspired visions of the world tend to define choice – and indeed how the world should be – within strict parameters.

Choice, development and the future of agriculture in India 

If current trends in India continue, it could mean dozens of mega-cities with up to 40 million inhabitants and just 15-20% of the population (as opposed to around the current 60% or more) left in an emptied-out countryside. It could also mean hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work.

Thanks to the model of agriculture being supported and advocated under the banner of ‘growth’, the trajectory the country seems to be on may entail a future comprising vast swathes of chemically-drenched monocrop fields containing genetically modified plants and soils turning into a chemical cocktail of proprietary biocides, dirt and dust.

Monsanto, Bayer, Cargill and other large corporations will decide on what is to be eaten and how it is to be produced and processed. From seed to field to plate, the corporate take-over of the food and agriculture chain will be complete.

Eisenstein notes the consequences of the model of agriculture being rolled out by these corporations:

“… an endless succession of new chemicals and GMOs to compensate for the consequences of mechanized chemical agriculture, which include depletion of the soil, herbicide-resistant weeds, and pesticide-resistant insects.”

In other words, as farmers become trapped on a high-tech, agrochemical-drenched treadmill, the ‘choice’ will be restricted options from an endless stream of proprietary inputs, which are churned out under the banner of ‘innovation’ in an attempt to address the issues and failures resulting from the previous roll-out of ‘cutting edge’ company technology.

In India, the existing productive system based on livelihood-sustaining smallholder agriculture and small-scale food processing will be all but a memory, while those remaining in the sector will be squeezed, working on contracts for market-dominating global seed and agrochemical suppliers, distributors and retail concerns.

Independent agricultural producers and village level processors will have long been forced out of the system and industrial agriculture will be the norm, with all the social, environmental and health devastation and externalised costs that the models entails.

The model of agriculture currently being promoted serves to further embed India into a US-dominated global political system which has played a significant role in creating food-rich and food-deficit regions. Throughout much of the world, a globalised system of ‘capitalism’, facilitated by the WTO, IMF and World Bank, has led to structural inequality and poverty; the privatisation of seed, knowledge, land and water; unfair international trade policies which have devastated indigenous agriculture; the marginalisation of smallholders, the backbone of global food production; commodity speculation, resulting in food shortages; and debt and export-oriented agriculture, which has undermined rural economies.

Challenging the neoliberal agenda

It hasn’t helped that, since the 1990s, India has increasingly tied itself to a system of neoliberal globalisation, an unsustainable, crisis-ridden system that fuels national debt and relies on hand-outs (demonetisation) for banks and corporations. A system based on a credit/debt-based consumer economy, financial speculation, derivatives and bubbles, with nations no longer able to carry out their own policies, tied down by undemocratic trade deals, beholden to rigged World Trade Organization rules and following a path prescribed by the World Bank, regardless of any democratic will of the people. A system whereby governments are paralysed to act as both eyes are firmly fixed on ‘market confidence’ and fearful of capital flight.

It raises the question about what could be done to prevent a future full-fledged neoliberal dystopia taking hold in India.

The authors of this piece argue that long-term measures could include land reforms and correcting rigged trade that is against the cultivating class:

“Far-sighted and sustained policy initiatives to provide farmers dignified livelihoods are required. In an economy driven by jobless growth, compulsive migration to cities is often a case of distress transhumance. These migrants then become the new “serfs” of the informal services and construction sector, while the existing rural and agrarian problems remain unresolved.”

Such policy initiatives may well be based on agroecological solutions that could be developed and scaled up to move beyond the dynamics of the farm itself and become part of a wider agenda, which addresses the broader political and economic issues that impact farmers and agriculture.

Various official reports have argued that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies (see this report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and this (IAASTD) report).

Olivier De Schutter, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food:

“Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live, especially in unfavorable environments.”

The success stories of agroecology indicate what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. A decentralised system of domestic food production with access to local rural markets supported by proper roads, storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of exploitative international markets and supply chains dominated and designed to serve the needs of global agribusiness.

If policy makers were to prioritise and promote agroecology to the extent ‘Green Revolution’ practices and technology have been pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment, rising population and urban migration could be solved. With that in mind, readers may wish to read some important things that farmer/campaigner Bhaskar Save had to say on the matter.

As long as agroecology and a commitment to localisation and local/regional self-sufficiency continue to be marginalised, however, we need look no further than Mexico to see what may be in store for India. Aside from destroying the nation’s health and home-grown food supply chain, ‘free’ trade under NAFTA allowed subsidised US corn to be dumped in the country, fuelled unemployment and transformed a former productive peasantry into a problematic group.

Instead of proscribing a neoliberal death warrant for many of those currently involved in agriculture, India must try to delink from capitalist globalisation, manage foreign trade to suit its own interests and expand domestic production, which can be achieved by protecting and encouraging indigenous small producers, not least smallholder farmers.

By encouraging localisation, self-sufficiency and support for these types of producers, meaningful work can be generated for the majority. The exact opposite of the globalisation agenda (tens of millions of livelihoods are in danger as foreign corporations move in).

The real choice

Charles Eisenstein argues that if we believe society’s main institutions are basically sound, it is irrational to oppose the (GMO-)high-tech, chemical-intensive model of agriculture. By implication, it is also irrational to question the notions of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ currently being fuelled by the neoliberal globalisation agenda. And if we take for granted the narrative that justifies the continued depopulation or the countryside in places like India, there is little alternative to the current unsustainable, livelihood-destroying system.

Thereafter, once you have indicated an allegiance to corporate power and neoliberal capitalism (and all it entails), everything falls into place. Any choices offered will occur within the narrow parameters set by the global food and agribusiness conglomerates. While spouting rhetoric about providing a choice of approaches, any genuine alternatives will be (and are being) marginalised.

However, once you acknowledge that society’s institutions are anything but sound, that scientific institutions and government bodies have been steadily corrupted by corporate money, funding and influence and that the neoliberal agenda has been little more than a recipe for corporate plunder – then you are in the position to appreciate that the real choice is between a dystopian future of deregulated capital and unaccountable corporate conglomerates and a wholly different way of viewing the world and the role of agriculture in shaping it for the better.

In a recent Guardian article titled “Why NATO Must Defend Women’s Rights,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie assert that “NATO has the responsibility and opportunity to be a leading protector of women’s rights.” NATO, moreover, “can become the global military leader in how to prevent and respond to sexual violence in conflict.” The two vowed to identify “ways in which NATO can strengthen its contribution to women’s protection and participation in all aspects of conflict-prevention and resolution.”

The pairing of a NATO bureaucrat and a famous movie actress may at first glance appear odd. However, this partnership has been long in the making. Some years ago, NATO, always on the lookout for a reason to justify its continued existence, not to mention its perpetual expansion, came up with a new raison d’être: It would be the global champion of women.

“Achieving gender equality is our collective task. And NATO is doing its part,” said Mari Skåre, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, in 2013.

In March 2016, on International Women’s Day, NATO held a so-called “Barbershop Conference” on gender equality. Stoltenberg took the opportunity to declare that gender equality was a frightfully important issue for NATO because “NATO is a values-based organization and none of the Alliance’s fundamental values—individual liberties, democracy, human rights and the rule of law—work without equality.” Diversity was a source of strength.

“We learned in Afghanistan and in the Balkans that by integrating gender within our operations, we make a tangible difference to the lives of women and children,” Stoltenberg explained.

He stressed that NATO is proud of its record in embedding gender perspectives within its work. Last November, Stoltenberg was at it again:

“Empowering women is not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do: it makes countries safer and more stable. NATO is determined to make a difference.”

NATO has indeed made a difference but not through empowering women. When it isn’t bombing, killing, blowing up bridges and buildings, destroying wedding receptions, empowering jihadis, triggering refugee flows and ruining the lives of countless women, NATO holds unctuous press briefings, organizes self-congratulatory conferences and publishes articles such as the one by Stoltenberg/Jolie seeking to present a gargantuan 29-state military coalition as a do-gooder charity helping out the needy.

This is where Angelina Jolie comes in. Jolie is a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and, in that capacity, wanders around the world berating the “international community” for not doing enough to address humanitarian crises. Her take on these crises is invariably the same as that of NATO.

“It is important that we intervene in a timely fashion,” she once explained, “diplomatically if we can, with force if we must.”

In October 2011, following seven months of relentless NATO bombing, Jolie rushed to Libya and excitedly hailed the Libyan “revolution”:

I’m…here on behalf of the Libyan people to show them solidarity. I think this revolution on behalf of human rights, which is what I feel these people really have been doing and what they have pushed for, and to help them to implement these new laws and help them with the future of their country.

Sometimes it’s breathless enthusiasm for “revolution,” sometimes it’s tearful pleading for plain, old-fashioned “humanitarian intervention”—Angelina Jolie is nothing if not consistent in her advocacy for Western use of force. When it comes to Syria, Jolie has declared that “some form of intervention is absolutely necessary.” She sneered at the U.N. Security Council permanent members that stood in the way of intervention.

“I feel very strongly that the use of a veto when you have financial interests in the country should be questioned and the use of a veto against humanitarian intervention should be questioned,” she said in an interview.

Jolie was of course simply echoing the blustery words of the Obama administration. Recall Susan Rice’s tirade following Russia’s and China’s veto of a February 2012 Security Council resolution calling for Bashar al Assad to step aside and for the Syrian army to return to its barracks. Rice, then U.S. permanent representative at the U.N., called the vetoes “disgusting and shameful.” The countries “that have blocked potentially the last effort to resolve this peacefully…will have any future blood spill on their hands.”

This kind of attack on the veto-wielding Security Council members has become a staple of the humanitarian intervention crowd. For example, former French President François Hollande told the U.N. General Assembly in September 2013 that when mass atrocities were taking place, U.N. Security Council permanent members must give up their veto powers:

The U.N. has a responsibility to take action. And whenever our organization proves to be powerless, it’s peace that pays the price. That’s why I am proposing that a code of good conduct be defined by the permanent members of the Security Council, and that in the event of a mass crime they can decide to collectively renounce their veto powers.

Taking action, of course, means taking military action. It never means, say, the lifting of sanctions so that food, oil, medical supplies could get through. To the contrary, if military action is ruled out, the humanitarians immediately resort to demanding the tightening of sanctions. Interventionists such as Hollande, Rice, et al., never explain why it is necessary for U.N. permanent members to give up their veto if the right course of action is so self-evident. The unstated assumption obviously is that any reluctance to sanction the use of force must be motivated by moral failings such as greed, selfishness, political ambition or lack of compassion.

The heartlessness of the so-called international community was the message of the 2011 film she wrote and directed about the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, In the Land of Blood and Honey. The film, she said, points a “finger at the international community, which should have intervened in the Bosnian war was much sooner.” She proudly boasted that among the experts she consulted in making the film were Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark, two figures who played prominent roles in the devastation of Bosnia and Kosovo. The film, predictably, features villainous Serbs persecuting innocent Muslims. Asked whether her film should have been a little more balanced, Jolie replied

“The fact is that the war was not balanced. I could not make a film where it’s 50-50. It’s inaccurate to what happened.”

This is standard NATO stuff, particularly the part about NATO’s military intervention as having finally brought peace to Bosnia.

Jolie is useful to NATO not only because she can be relied on to echo the military alliance’s self-justifying rationales for its favored solution to any problem, namely, the threat to use force. Jolie’s is the glamorous face of NATO’s revamped PR campaign. NATO would have us believe that it’s not only bringing enlightenment to backward societies but also to us, NATO member-state citizens, by informing us about something of which we had hitherto been apparently unaware: sexual violence occurs during wartime. The obvious remedy—doing everything possible to avoid war—is not one that either NATO or Jolie favors. NATO can’t very well be expected to advocate itself out of existence. In NATOspeak you threaten and defend military action even as you bemoan in lachrymose terms its predictable consequences, namely, war crimes, including sexual crimes.

Image below is Angelina Jolie in Bosnia (Source: Rex via Marie Claire)

In April 2014, Jolie traipsed around the Balkans with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, visiting the Srebrenica memorial center in Potocari, Bosnia. During the visit, Jolie stated,

“The use of rape as a weapon of war is one of the most harrowing and savage of these crimes against civilians. This is rape so brutal, with such extreme violence, that it is even hard to talk about it.”

Hague and Jolie jointly launched a campaign called Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, the goal of which was “to address the culture of impunity, ensure more perpetrators are brought to justice and ensure better support for survivors. We’re campaigning to raise awareness, rally global action, promote international coherence and increase the political will and capacity of states to do more.”

Hague earnestly explained,

“I started this campaign with Angelina Jolie because foreign policy has got to be about more than just dealing with urgent crises—it has to be about improving the condition of humanity.”

Then Hague warmed to his theme:

“Tens of thousands of women, girls and men were raped during the war in Bosnia. We are visiting to draw the world’s attention to their search for justice, and to call for global action to end the use of rape as a weapon of war once and for all.”

In a BBC interview Hague claimed that sexual violence in conflict was “one of the great mass crimes of the 20th century and the 21st century….If anything, this is getting worse—war zone rape as a weapon of war, used systematically and deliberately against civilian populations.”

Hague was of course British foreign secretary during NATO’s 2011 Libyan bombing campaign. It hardly needs to be said that NATO did nothing to help Libya’s women. To the contrary: Thousands of women lost their lives as a direct result of NATO and Hague’s humanitarian bombs. NATO destroyed government, law and public order, institutions that before its intervention had protected the women of Libya from sexual crimes. Most striking of all, NATO helped deliver perhaps millions of women into the hands of ISIS. Here is an account of the record of ISIS rule in Libya from Human Rights Watch (a reliably pro-interventionist outfit) in its 2017 country report on Libya:

“In the first half of 2016, fighters loyal to ISIS controlled the central coastal town of Sirte and subjected residents to a rigid interpretation of Sharia law that included public floggings, amputation of limbs, and public lynchings, often leaving the victims’ corpses on display.”

Not to worry: In June 2014, Hague and Jolie co-hosted in London a grand three-day Global Summit to End Sexual Violence. Participants included Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. According to one report, the summit cost £5.2 million to host. The food bill alone was more than £299,000, while total expenditure on taxis, hotels and transport reached £576,000. Jolie declared:

We need to shatter that culture of impunity and make justice the norm, not the exception, for these crimes. We need political will, replicated across the world, and we need to treat this subject as a priority. We need to see real commitment and go after the worst perpetrators, to fund proper protection for vulnerable people, and to step in to help the worst-affected countries. We need all armies, peacekeeping troops and police forces to have prevention of sexual violence in conflict as part of their training.

Punishing the perpetrators of sexual violence sounds laudable enough. The trouble is that NATO’s record of making incendiary charges and then failing to back them up with serious evidence is not one that inspires confidence. During the Bosnian war, for example, the media reported obsessively on the use of rape as an instrument of war. In 1992, Dame Ann Warburton’s European parliamentary delegation estimated that 20,000 rapes had already taken place in Bosnia. In January 1993, Newsweek carried a lengthy cover-story charging Serbs with the rape of as many as 50,000 women, mostly Muslim, as part of “deliberate programs to impregnate Muslim women with unwanted Serb babies.”

Systematic research on the subject however resulted in findings that were insufficiently dramatic to make it into the papers. On Jan. 29, 1994, the U.N. secretary-general issued a report on rapes in the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia and Croatia, based on a study by the U.N. Commission of Experts. The report found “126 victims, 113 incidents, 252 alleged perpetrators, 73 witnesses.” The report also stated “some of the rape cases” were “clearly the result of individual or small-group conduct without evidence of command responsibility. Others may be part of an overall pattern. Because of a variety of factors, such a pattern may lead to a conclusion that a systematic rape policy existed, but this remains to be proved.”

Allegations of mass rape were a key component of NATO’s propaganda campaign during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook regaled the public with lurid tales of Serbs forcing women “to endure ‘systematic rape’ at an army camp at Djakovica.” Clare Short, Britain’s international development secretary, added that the rapes were “deliberately performed in front of children, fathers and brothers.” The British Foreign Office followed up with claims of having discovered three more rape camps: “Refugees reported orchestrated rapes at Globocica, Urosevac and an unidentified point on the Kosovo-Albania border.” Subsequently, when it was too late to matter, the media sheepishly admitted that the rape-camp stories, like most of NATO’s allegations, were a fabrication. The Washington Post reported that

“Western accusations that there were Serb-run rape camps in the cities of Djakovica and Pec, and poorly sourced allegations in some publications that the Serbs were engaging in the mutilation of the living and the dead—including castration and decapitation—all proved to be false.”

Even Human Rights Watch’s Fred Abrahams, who had worked as an investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, admitted in testimony that he had found no evidence to support the incendiary rape-camp allegations.

Still, NATO remained undeterred. During NATO’s next campaign, the one directed against Libya, rape stories made their appearance within days of the launch of the first bombs. Susan Rice, the U.S. Permanent Representative at the U.N., informed the Security Council that Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, was supplying his troops with Viagra in order to help them commit mass rape. Though Rice offered no evidence to support her claims, her charge was sufficient for the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to announce that he had “information to confirm that it was a policy in Libya to rape those who were against the Government. Rape is a new aspect of the repression.” Moreno-Ocampo even accepted as confirmed Rice’s Viagra story:

“We are finding some elements confirming this issue of acquisition of Viagra-type of medicaments to show a policy. They were buying containers with products to enhance the possibility to rape, and we are getting the information in detail confirming the policy.”

In the end, predictably enough, NATO’s rape allegations turned out to have been made up out of whole cloth. Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, reported that the organization had “not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.” Rovera also dismissed the Viagra story. She said that

“rebels dealing with the foreign media in Benghazi started showing journalists packets of Viagra, claiming they came from burned-out tanks, though it is unclear why the packets were not charred.”

Though one allegation after another has proved to be false, NATO will continue to make them, seizing on whatever is the hot-button issue of the moment. NATO does nothing for women and does nothing to stop sexual crimes, whether in NATO member-states or anywhere else in the world. What NATO does do well, thanks to its multimillion dollar sophisticated PR machinery, is seizing on highly emotional issues such as rape and turning them into justifications for bigger budgets, more weaponry, more expansion, more deployments in more countries and, in the end, military action.

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Dr. George Szamuely, author of Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia, is Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute of London Metropolitan University.

This article was originally published by Counterpunch

Featured image is from Bill Smith | CC BY 2.0.

Donald Trump’s decision to ring in the New Year by simultaneously demonizing both Iran and Pakistan on Twitter has already backfired tremendously. Following threats that the U.S. would withhold aid to Pakistan, the U.S. confirmed it would withhold $255 million in aid (which has now become $900 million) and is now reportedly threatening a roughly $2 billion more, as well.

“We’re hoping that Pakistan will see this as an incentive, not a punishment,” a State Department official told reporters.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this recent animosity towards Pakistan has not gone over well. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in an interview that the U.S. has failed to behave as an ally, and as a result, Pakistan no longer views it as one.

If anything, Washington’s recent behavior has only pushed Pakistan into the open arms of America’s traditional rivals, China and Iran. China has long been providing financial and economic assistance of its own to Pakistan with plans to expand an economic partnership in the years to come.

China has already pledged to invest $57 billion in Pakistani infrastructure as part of the so-called “Belt and Road” initiative. Just last month, Pakistan announced it was considering a proposal to replace the U.S. dollar with the Chinese yuan for bilateral trade between Pakistan and China.

Following the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Pakistan, Pakistan confirmed that dropping the dollar was no arbitrary threat and immediately replaced the dollar with the Chinese yuan.

“Chinese investment in Pakistan is expected to reach over $46 billion by 2030 with the creation of a [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] connecting Balochistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea with Kashgar, in Western China,” Harrison Akins, a researcher at the Howard Baker Center who focuses on Pakistan and China, told Newsweek.

In the middle of last year, it was reported that China was considering establishing its own naval bases in Pakistan. These reports began to immediately resurface again in the past week, though Pakistan has vehemently denied that any such naval base will be built (even though Chinese military officials were the ones to expose the plan to build a naval base at Gwadar Port, in Balochistan).

Whether or not the reports are true, what is becoming apparent is that Pakistan will look to cooperate with China both economically and militarily while giving up its reliance on Washington.

“The history of Pakistan’s relationships with China and the United States also shows that Pakistan’s policy does not respond to strong-handedness, but to loyalty, and to being treated with dignity,” Madiha Afzal, a nonresident fellow at Brookings, said as reported by CNBC.

Further, according to the Times of Islamabad, Iranian and Pakistani defense ministers have held talks on Washington’s role in the region and have indicated a growing defense cooperation strategy between Tehran and Islamabad. Even before Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally try to isolate the two countries, the expanding relationship was already well underway – most likely the more truthful reason the Trump administration has targeted both of them.

Much to Washington’s dismay, this is only the beginning of the end of America’s role as an unchallenged global superpower. The Asia Times reports that Iran, China, and Pakistan are set to launch a “trilateral nexus” that would support economic development for as many as 3 billion people. The biggest obstacle to implementing such an economically viable nexus would actually lie in the growing economic power India, not the United States, which seems to be able to do little but taunt, threaten, and bully the ever-growing list of defiant states.

Without hesitation, Turkey, another country that is forging stronger ties with Russia, China, and Iran, also came to Iran and Pakistan’s aid. Turkey is a NATO ally.

“We cannot accept that some countries — foremost the US, Israel — to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran and Pakistan,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters before heading on a scheduled trip to France.

Turkey and Iran also famously came to the aid of Qatar last year, further complicating the restructuring of traditional Washington-led alliances.

At this stage, both Turkey and Iran could end up joining the Chinese and Russian-led (de facto) military alliance known as the “Shanghai Bloc” (Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SCO) , with Iran recently strengthening its military ties with China. Given China has both economic and military interests worth protecting in Pakistan, this Eastern alliance is spreading ever further by the day to the detriment of Washington. (Currently, Pakistan and India are full members of the SCO, Iran is an Observer Member of the SCO, Turkey is an SCO Dialogue Partner)

It’s no wonder the European Union is practically building its own army given the number of countries that feel safe to rely on the United States’ so-called global leadership under Donald Trump are growing smaller by the day. And given the serious implications of Pakistan’s shift into China’s sphere of influence, it’s curious this story isn’t making the headlines.

Michael Wolff is laughing, if not gloating, all his way to the bank. Money bags are singing; bank accounts are being filled.  Doubts about the free publicity his work on the Trump White House would receive would have abated with the tweeting complex that is the current and singular US president, one Donald J. Trump.  Call something fake, and it’s bound to sell.  “Wolff’s brand of journalism might be ugly,” observe Nausicaa Renner and Pete Vernon, “prioritizing access over accountability – but it’s the perfect match for the Trump era.”

It began with an excerpt in the New York magazine from Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Wolff’s picture was not flattering, but hardly surprising. Trump did not expect to win, nor did his team.  Losing, in fact, was the order of the day, and losing would be a springboard for eternal celebrity.

“Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be.”

Strategist Steve Bannon naturally comes across as the bomb throwing desperado, cynical but determined.  Special attention is given to his views of a meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and various members of the Trump campaign with a Russian lawyer possessing electoral gold on Hillary Clinton.  This, according to Bannon, was “treasonous and unpatriotic”.

The link with Russia and the conduct of Don Jr. piqued Bannon’s interest as relevant to possible money laundering.  All bets were off on the Trump family, and Bannon went in for the kill.

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

Wolff’s portrait prompted Trump to take to the pitchforks.

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency.  When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

Bannon has to be distanced, isolated, estranged.  Contributions were to be minimised, his legacy, obliterated.

“Now that he is no his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

Watchers of Bannon would have known that the president is deemed a historical weapon and accessory, less a person of his own mind and vision than an object of necessity.  In the motor of history, actors are not, nor can they be, aware in terms of the disruption they cause, or the consequences that arise from it.  The verbose German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel took one look at Napoleon and realised that before the world bestrode a World Historical Individual, a somewhat bombastic variant of the hero in history. 

Bannon barely sports this view of Trump, though he regards him as a vessel of some use, an assassin of historical worth, the great destabilising figure who just might throw out everything, rot and all. Bannon sees the president as a “blunt instrument for us”.  Whether he “gets it or not”, a view he outlined in Vanity Fair in August 2016, was less an issue for Bannon.

Since the miasmic effects of the Wolff’s revelations, Bannon has taken a few backward steps.  On this prickly road, he as adopted a position of contrition, buttering and even ingratiating the family he has, at points, regarded with scorn.  (Blunt instruments can only rise so far.)

“President Trump,” he explains to Axios, “was the only candidate that could have taken on and defeated theClinton apparatus.  I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of Trump and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breach for this president’s efforts to make America great again.”

Bannon is hardly differing in his current approach, his meandering apologetics smoothing their way towards his sponsor.  So he had a brain freeze, or, perhaps better, something of an ultra-patriotic meltdown.   He issues a salient reminder that the Trump agenda is there to be embraced, and that he has been rather good in doing so, spreading it like an enthusiastic foot soldier through “national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama.”

And what about those comments about Donald Trump, Jr. and the ever cloying Russian connection?

“My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines, to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of ‘the evil empire’ and to making films about Reagan’s war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in selling uranium to them.”

His ire was not against the younger Trump of green folly but against Paul Manafort, devil incarnate, “a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate.  He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends.”

Whether this papering over is of any effect is beside the point.  Bannon and Trump are linked, bound by an insurgency that rocked, and continues to unsettle the furniture from the White House to the Pentagon. Washington continues being rattled and shaken.  It is an unsettling event that is bound to continue beyond the relationship, Trump always an echo of the man who proved indispensable in jimmying the safe to the White House open.

*

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

Featured image is from TooFab.

The year 2018 has opened with an international campaign to censor the Internet. It should be of little wonder that this was going to happen. The writing was on the wall. All over the world, the tech giants are now giving in to the political demands of governments by cracking down on freedom of speech. The European Convention on Human Rights, like so many agreements in the US, UK are swept aside. There is a full scale attempt to muzzle social media and it’s working.

Britain is by no means a paragon a virtue. Last September Theresa May threatened the social media giants that they must take down material the government does not approve of. It starts with listing terrorism as the main driver of these demands of course, but it won’t end there. David Cameron wanted to ban material that might be involved in rioting. Then criminal activity. Mission creep is what it is all about.

Bloomberg, the financial news service, published “Welcome to 2018, the Year of Censored Social Media,” which began with the simple observation,

“This year, don’t count on the social networks to provide its core service: an uncensored platform for every imaginable view. The censorship has already begun, and it’ll only get heavier.”

Developments over the past week include:

• On January 1, the German government began implementation of its “Network Enforcement Law,” which threatens social media companies with fines of up to €50 million if they do not immediately remove content deemed objectionable. Both German trade groups and the United Nations have warned that the law will incentivize technology companies to ban protected speech.
• On January 3, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to introduce a ban during election cycles on what he called “fake news” in a further crackdown on free speech on top of the draconian measures implemented under the state of emergency. The moves by France and Germany have led to renewed calls for a censorship law applying to the entire European Union.
• On December 28, the New York Times reported that Facebook had deleted the account of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, nominally because he had been added to a US sanctions list. As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, this creates a precedent for giving the US government essentially free rein to block freedom of expression all over the world simply by putting individuals on an economic sanctions list.
• This week, Iranian authorities blocked social media networks, including Instagram, which were being used to organize demonstrations against inequality and unemployment.
• Facebook has continued its crackdown on Palestinian Facebook accounts, removing over 100 accounts at the request of Israeli officials.

These moves come in the wake of the decision by the Trump administration to abolish net neutrality, giving technology companies license to censor and block access to websites and services.

In August, the World Socialist Web Site first reported that the world’s biggest search engine (Clue – it begins with G) was censoring left-wing, anti-war, and progressive websites. When it implemented changes to its search algorithms, the company claimed they were politically neutral, aimed only at elevating “more authoritative content” and demoting “blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information.”

Countless other websites continue to report significantly depressed levels of search traffic throughout last year with little sign that this will change. Eventually, these tactics will force more and more independent outlets out of business.

Bloomberg went on to say

“There’s a growing body of research that shows the internet platforms’ business models are conducive to the spread of fake news, as well as hate speech. Regulators should resist the urge to waste time on individual cases in Germany and elsewhere and instead of strike at the fundamentals of the problem: anonymity. Without it, the Facebooks of the world would have a far more difficult time inflating user numbers, avoiding legal responsibility for published content, and continuing to make money off content they don’t help create. The limitations of selective censorship and the ability of paid trolls and dedicated activists to bypass it will become obvious this year — and so will the need for better ways to make sure the social media companies join the ranks of responsible media.”

wsws.org says:

“Now, no one can claim that the major technology giants are not carrying out a widespread and systematic campaign of online censorship, in close and active coordination with powerful states and intelligence agencies.”

The ruling elites all over the world are meeting this technological pressure with an attempt to stifle and suppress freedom of expression on the Internet, under the false pretence of fighting “fake news” and “foreign propaganda.” The trouble is – they are winning.

The effort to muzzle social media and free speech should be resisted, but that resistance shows no sign of rising to the challenge.

*

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Award winning journalist James Risen has recently described in some detail his sometimes painful relationship with The New York Times. His lengthy account is well worth reading as it demonstrates how successive editors of the paper frequently cooperated with the government to suppress stories on torture and illegal activity while also self-censoring to make sure that nothing outside the framework provided by the “war on terror” should be seriously discussed. It became a faithful lap dog for an American role as global hegemon, promoting government half-truths and suppressing information that it knew to be true but which would embarrass the administration in power, be they Democrats or Republicans.

If one were to obtain a similar insider account of goings-on at the other national “newspaper of record” The Washington Post it is quite likely that comparable trimming of the narrative also took place. To be sure, the Post is worse than the Times, characterized by heavily editorializing in its news coverage without necessarily tipping off the reader when “facts” end and speculation begins. In both publications, stories about Iran or Russia routinely begin with an assertion that Moscow interfered in the 2016 U.S. election and that Iran is the aggressor in the Middle East, contentions that have not been demonstrated and can easily be challenged. Both publications also have endorsed every American war since 2001, including Iraq, Libya and the current mess in Syria, one indication of the quality of their reporting and analysis.

A recent op-ed in the Times by Bret Stephens is a perfect example of warmongering mischief wrapped in faux expert testimony to make it palatable. Stephens is the resident neocon at the Times. He was brought over from the Wall Street Journal when it was determined that his neocon colleague David Brooks had become overly squishy, while the resident “conservative” Russ Douthat had proven to be a bit too cautious and even rational to please the increasingly hawkish senior editors.

Stephens’ article, entitled Finding the Way Forward on Iran sparkles with throwaway gems like “Tehran’s hyperaggressive foreign policy in the wake of the 2015 nuclear deal” and “Real democracies don’t live in fear of their own people” and even “it’s not too soon to start rethinking the way we think about Iran.” Or try “A better way of describing Iran’s dictatorship is as a kleptotheocracy, driven by impulses that are by turns doctrinal and venal.”

Bret has been a hardliner on Iran for years. Early on in this op-ed he makes very clear that he wants it to be dealt with forcibly because it has “centrifuges, ballistic missiles, enriched uranium [and] fund[s] Hezbollah, assist Bashar al-Assad, arm[s] the Houthis, [and] imprison[s] the occasional British or American citizen.” He describes how Iran is a very corrupt place run by religious leaders and Revolutionary Guards and proposes that their corruption be exposed so that the Iranian people can take note and rise up in anger. And if exposure doesn’t work, they should be hammered with sanctions. He does not explain why sanctions, which disproportionately hurt the people he expects to rise up, will bring about any real change.

Stephens cites two of his buddies Ken Weinstein of the Hudson Institute and Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), who are apparently experts on how to squeeze Iran. Weinstein prefers exposing the misdeeds of the Mullahs to anger the Iranian people while Dubowitz prefers punitive sanctions “for corruption.”

The article does not reveal that Weinstein and Dubowitz are long time critics of Iran, are part of the Israel Lobby and just happen to be Jewish, as is Stephens. The Hudson Institute and the FDD are leading neocon and pro-Israel fronts. So my question becomes, “Why Iran?” The often-heard Israeli complaint about its being unfairly picked on could reasonably be turned on its head in asking the same about Iran. In fact, Iran compares favorably with Israel. It has no nuclear weapons, it does not support any of the Sunni terrorist groups that are chopping heads, and it has not disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of people that it rules over. The fact is that Iran is being targeted because Israel sees it as its prime enemy in the region and has corrupted many “opinion makers” in the U.S., to include Stephens, to hammer home that point. To be sure, Iran is a very corrupt place run by people who should not be running a hot dog stand, but the same applies to the United States and Israel. And there are lots of places that are not being targeted like Iran that are far worse, including good friend and ally of both Jerusalem and Washington, Saudi Arabia.

Oddly enough Stephens, Weinstein and Dubowitz do not get into any of that back story, presumably because it would be unseemly. And, of course and unfortunately, the New York Times opinion page is not unique. An interesting recent podcast interview by Politico‘s Chief International Affairs correspondent Susan Glasser with leading neoconservatives Eliot Cohen and Max Boot, is typical of how the media selectively shapes a narrative to suit its own biases. Glasser, Cohen and Boot are all part of the establishment foreign policy consensus in the U.S. and therefore both hate and fail to understand the Trump phenomenon. Both Cohen and Booth were vociferous founding members of the #NeverTrump foreign policy resistance movement.

Boot describes the new regime’s foreign policy as “kowtow[ing] to dictators and undermin[ing] American support for freedom and democracy around the world,” typical neocon leitmotifs. Glasser appears to be in love with her interviewees and hurls softball after softball. She describes Boot as “fantastic” and Cohen receives the epithet “The Great.” The interview itself is remarkably devoid of any serious discussion of foreign policy and is essentially a sustained assault on Trump while also implicitly supporting hardline national security positions. Cohen fulminates about “a very serious Russian attack on the core of our political system. I mean, I don’t know how you get more reckless and dangerous than that,” while Boot asks what “has to be done” about Iran.

Pompous ass Cohen, who interjected in the interview that “and you know, Max and I are both intellectuals,” notably very publicly refused to have any part in a Trump foreign policy team during the campaign but later when The Donald was actually elected suggested that the new regime might approach him with humility to offer a senior position and he just might condescend to join them. They did not do so, and he wrote an angry commentary on their refusal.

Hating Trump is one thing, but I would bet that if the question of a hardline policy vis-à-vis Russia or the Jerusalem Embassy move had come up Cohen and Boot would have expressed delight. The irony is that Trump is in fact pursuing a basically neocon foreign policy which the two men would normally support, but they appear to be making room for Trump haters in the policy formulation process to push the national security consensus even farther to the right. Indeed, in another article by Boot at Foreign Policy he writes

“I applaud Trump’s decisions to provide Ukraine with arms to defend itself from Russian aggression, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and to accelerate former President Barack Obama’s strategy for fighting the Islamic State.”

Cohen meanwhile applauds the embassy move, though he warns that Trump’s success in so doing might embolden him to do something reckless over North Korea.

Perhaps one should not be astonished that leading neocons appearing in the mainstream media will continue to have their eyes on the ball and seek for more aggressive engagement in places like Iran and Russia. The media should be faulted because it rarely publishes any contrary viewpoint and it also consistently fails to give any space to the considerable downside to the agitprop. It must be reassuring for many Americans to know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is preparing itself to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear attack on the United States and it will be sharing information on the appropriate preparations with the American people. There will be a public session on how to prepare for a nuclear explosion on January 16^th.

CDC experts will consider “planning and preparation efforts” for such a strike.

“While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps,” the Center elaborated in its press release on the event.

That the United States should be preparing for a possible nuclear future can in part be attributed to recent commentary by the “like, really smart” and “very stable genius” who is the nation’s chief executive, but the fuel being poured on the fire for war is the very same neocons who are featured in the mainstream media as all-purpose experts and have succeeded in selling the snake oil about America’s proper role as aggressor-in-chief for the entire world. It would be an unparalleled delight to be able to open a newspaper and not see Bret Stephens, Eliot Cohen, Max Boot or even the redoubtable Bill Kristol grinning back from the editorial page, but I suppose I am only dreaming.

*

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

Featured image is from the author.

Two-hundred and thirty years after the US system of government was created in Philadelphia, it is slowly unraveling. A recent sign is the growing talk about invoking the 25th Amendment, a “constitutional coup” provision for replacing the president in cases of death, resignation or incapacity. But even removal won’t counter the long-term drift toward executive supremacy. The country may need another Constitutional Convention.

With the US forever investing more into their nuclear arsenal, ensuring they have the world’s biggest collection of city destroying arms, the fact that none have been used in over 70 years is a silver lining to many, but within the administration, it may be a problem that needs correcting.

Administration officials are now said to both be hard at work acquiring smaller, more “usable” nuclear weapons, and radically changing the rules of engagement with respect to a US nuclear first strike, so that such attacks are more possible in the future.

While some nuclear powers have ruled out ever launching a first strike, the US has long refused to make such a position, with President Obama’s brief consideration of such a pledge quickly panned as making the US “look weak.”

Even without the pledge, the current crop of arms are for all intents and purposes unusable except in an extinction-level nuclear exchange. Such a strike would simply be too big, and too much of a humanitarian disaster to seriously contemplate.

Which is where these smaller nuclear arms come in. Pentagon officials see the introduction of more tactical nuclear arms as a way to build arms that are usable at a much lower threshold, and seem to be shrugging off concerns that this will effectively normalize nuclear warfare.

*

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Israeli double standard justice needs no elaboration. Major media ignore cold-blooded killings of Palestinians by soldiers and other security forces.

Israeli acts of aggression, go unpunished, the world community largely silent about atrocities too grave to ignore.

Following the killing of an Israeli settler, collective punishment was imposed on countless numbers of uninvolved Palestinians.

On Tuesday, settler Raziel Shevah, a resident of the illegal Havat Gilad outpost on stolen Palestinian land, was lethally shot multiple times by unknown assailant(s) while driving near Nablus.

Military checkpoints cordoned off the area, efforts to find the attacker(s) underway.

When Palestinians are gunned down in cold blood, Netanyahu blames them for criminality committed against Israeli Security Forces.

In response to Shevah’s killing, he called his assailant “a despicable terrorist,” adding:

“Security forces will do everything possible to reach the contemptible murderer and the State of Israel will bring him to justice.”

Other extremist Israeli officials made similar comments, an entire nation in an uproar over the death of a Jewish citizen.

The US ambassador to Israel David Friedman tweeted a scathing attack on Palestinians and their leadership, uninvolved in what happened, saying:

“An Israeli father of six was killed last night in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists. Hamas praises the killers and PA laws will provide them financial rewards,” adding:

“Look no further to why there is no peace. Praying for the bereaved Shevach family.”

Joint (Arab) List MK Ahmad Tibi blasted Friedman, saying

“I didn’t hear him when an Israeli sniper killed double amputee Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh or when the kid Muhammad Tamimi was shot in the head and wounded” – nor when 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, her mother Nariman, and cousin Nour were arrested for supporting the right of Palestinians to be free from oppressive occupation.

“Because of this hypocrisy and double standard, and because of the Trump administration’s positions, the conflict is going on and blood is being shed. And when these are the representatives of the administration, don’t ask why there is no peace,” Tibi added.

When Israeli forces murder Palestinians in cold blood, when they terrorize them daily, brutalizing them, Netanyahu, Friedman et al say nothing – their silence deafening, condoning state terrorism. Israeli killer soldiers, police and other security forces are free to assault and murder Palestinians with impunity.

Two weeks ago Friedman asked the State Department to stop calling the West Bank occupied – requesting the term “West Bank territory” be used instead.

His request so far was denied, the issue to be reviewed again at a later time.

On Wednesday, dozens of extremist Israeli settlers carried out revenge attacks on Palestinian villages in retaliation for Shevah’s killing – security forces in the area doing nothing to stop them.

Soldiers stormed a number of towns and villages near Nablus, terrorizing residents, searching for Shevah’s assailant(s).

A wide area is on lockdown, residents prevented from leaving their homes, house-to-house searches underway, entrances to Nablus blocked, entry and exit from the city denied.

Workers, students and others trying to go home had to remain elsewhere with their city and surrounding areas under siege – illegal collective punishment imposed on countless numbers of Palestinians.

According to Israeli media, a large-scale military operation was ordered to locate and arrest Shevah’s killer(s).

Numerous arrests, detentions and brutal interrogations are likely – commonplace persecution tactics used against Palestinians.

Since last October, Israeli security forces killed 32 Palestinians, 16 since Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

Shevah is the first Israeli casualty, his death treated like a Palestinian declaration of war – the whole nation in an uproar.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s the US’ brand of “democracy” for export or the national-specific model of government that strengthens non-Western states, the theoretical concept behind this system has been weaponized by military intelligence agencies worldwide in a back-and-forth competition to change or retain the “deep state” status quo.

Most people are familiar with US’ clandestine and militant export of “democracy” across the globe in order to remove uncompliant leaders and promote its enduring geostrategic interest to retain its own unipolar hegemony, but comparatively fewer have ever thought about how this very same system is actually a method of control no matter what iteration it ultimately takes. This isn’t a judgement but a fact – democracy is really a tool that’s expertly wielded by its “deep state” practitioners in order to retain the status quo in their states.

Whether this is “good” or “bad” depends on one’s perspective – most people in the Alternative-Media Community would argue that it’s the former so long as the country in question is protecting their independent policies from outside (US/Western/Gulf) interference and striving to construct the Multipolar World Order, while the Mainstream Media would of course see this as the latter by derogatorily framing it as a “managed democracy” or at worst a “dictatorship’. Along the same token, the Alternative-Media Community believes that the US is a fake democracy and practices an insincere iteration of this ideology, while the Mainstream Media extols it as the best model in the world.

Nevertheless, this article isn’t about arguing whether democracy is a good or bad system, or even rendering judgement on the variation that certain countries have chosen to implement, but to describe how the ideology itself has come to constitute the core of military intelligence operations across the world in carrying out long-term offensive and defensive missions.

The Four-Step Strategy

Military intelligence is almost always directed against foreign targets and there are multiple ways to describe the practice of this art, but the most relevant one is to draw attention to a four-step process that interestingly begins and ends with democracy. The first step is to develop concepts that can serve to widen societal divisions (second step) that provoke a crisis (third step) and allow for the implementation of reverse-engineered end game solutions (final step). While there are many theories that can catalyze this sequence and conclude it, regardless of whether they’re the same for fulfilling both roles or are different, democracy is the most effective for ‘killing two birds with one stone’.

Part of the universal appeal for democracy is that people believe that it’s the best way to hold decision makers accountable in ensuring that they fulfill their promises to increase the living standards for the general population and empower individuals to actualize their full potential. Democracy, however, is also the proverbial Pandora’s Box, and there’s no going back once the ideals of this theory have either been introduced or practiced in a society.

The Secret Ingredient Of Hybrid War

By its very nature, democracy is capable of widening societal divisions, especially in the identity-diverse and mostly post-colonial states of the “Global South” that are increasingly occupying a more significant geostrategic position in world affairs due to their location and economic potential, which satisfies the second step of military intelligence operations. Depending on the composition of the targeted country, which the US can become intimately aware of through big data social media analytics and a presumably de-facto covert revival of the brief Cold War-era “Project Camelot”, various Hybrid War scenarios can be hatched for bringing the state to crisis and weaponizing the consequent chaos in order to implement the reverse-engineered “solution” for normalizing the resultant systemic change.

Put plainly and in the context of the US’ militant proselytization of “democracy”, the ideal or some relevant variation thereof becomes appealing to the targeted population and eventually encourages or serves as a front for destabilizing societal divisions that eventually disrupt the status quo by catalyzing a crisis and paving the way for a regime change against the government. To visualize the process in its most naked conceptual terms:

THEORY/CONCEPT ⇒
⇒ SOCIETAL DIVISION/DISRUPTION ⇒
⇒ CRISIS ⇒
⇒ IMPLEMENTATION OF PREDETERMINED ‘SOLUTION’

Democracy is the US’ ideological weapon of choice because it allows for the management of “creative destruction” within the system that periodically allows the public to peacefully vent their frustrations by electorally recycling their civilian elites without interfering with their country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep state”). This is advantageous from an external perspective of hegemony because it allows the US to indirectly retain control over its vassals, or when needed, manipulate the democratic process in order to “legally” install their public placeholder of preference.

Managing Blowback

There are times, however, when democracies fail to prevent the emergence of system-threatening elite, in which case the US instrumentalizes various “deep state” levers of pressure against the elected “revolutionary” in order to offset their planned changes just like it’s presently doing to Moldovan President Dodon. If the newly elected figure can’t be co-opted like Tsipras was or functionally neutralized like US-ally India is attempting to do to the newly elected Chinese-friendly communist government in Nepal prior to its official formation in what should be the next coming months, then it’ll either resort to carrying out a coup or launching a Hybrid War. Should that fail, then the direct military intervention of its “Lead From Behind” partners or even the US itself becomes possible per the Libyan model.

Having explained the external manipulation of democracy for offensive geostrategic and regime change ends by the US, it’s now time to discuss how it’s been used by countries for defensive purposes as well.

The Defensive Weaponization Of Democracy

Democracy is a means, not an end, and it’s become a tool for perpetuating the “deep state” status quo in keeping the permanent bureaucracy in power (and sometimes even the public one as well) while superficially or sincerely giving the citizenry a chance to hold certain decision makers to account in the hopes that they’ll eventually bend to the majority’s political will in carrying out policies that will ultimately benefit the people. As such, democracy becomes nothing more than a pressure valve in the most cynical sense for distracting the masses by indoctrinating them with the belief that this is the most effective means for actualizing real change while staving off any real systemic threat to the “deep state”.

Democracy or some variation thereof almost always remains the first and final step of this process, while the natural divisions that it creates (second step) are handled through the controlled “crisis” of elections (third step).

Like was mentioned at the beginning of the analysis, this could be interpreted as “good” if it prevents a violent and possibly externally supported minority from overthrowing an elected multipolar government or “bad” if it enables an unpopular public leader or “grey cardinal” (“dictator”) to remain in power contrary to the genuine will of the majority of the population, though it must be qualified that the latter state of affairs could be manipulated through foreign infowars in order to manage the masses’ perception to this end. Either way, the “creative destruction” inherent in democratic systems gives the “deep state” the best chance for controlling the citizenry in the most cost-effective manner, controversially limiting the pace of actual change in contravention of democracy’s original conceptual mission to let this process flow freely and according to the public’s will.

Offense vs. Defense

When the US supports groups relying on “democratic” slogans to overthrow the leadership of other democracies (whether Western like in Poland or national-specific such as in Syria), it’s counting on them to introduce another variant of democracy to “justify” their usurpation of power and create a smokescreen for carrying out a “deep state” purge afterwards to replace the prior decision makers with their own. Conversely, the defensive application of democracy is used to cycle out unpopular leaders and “safely” introduce new ideas into the governing apparatus that aren’t “revolutionary” enough to “rock the boat” and threaten the “deep state”, thus giving the public a means through which they can periodically provide constructive feedback and channel their frustrations by pointing the authorities in the direction that they need to go in order to retain the masses’ support.

The above-mentioned two examples represent the conclusion of military intelligence’s weaponization of democracy according to the offensive and defensive manifestations of the four-step sequence because it begins and ends with democracy itself, albeit sometimes “re-normalizing” the concept in the final phase depending on whether there is a visible (electoral) shift in the public elite. Like it was earlier remarked, the controlled nature of “deep state” elites managing “creative destruction” within their systems is contrary to the pure theoretical definition of democracy in allowing this process to freely unfold based on the public’s will. One should be careful to avoid attaching any judgement to this observation, however, because the proliferation of mass & social media, as well as the ease with which foreign forces can manipulate targeted citizenry abroad through these means, suggests that having certain “safeguards” might actually be a responsible move, though provided that it’s not abused.

The Trump Anomaly

With all of this in mind, Trump’s election was a real revolution because the same system-threatening development that occasionally occurs abroad in endangering the “deep state” actually took place within the US itself, and without any external meddling to boot. “The Kraken” is now trying to carry out changes within the same “democracy” that had hitherto assumed that it was immune from anything of the sort ever happening, which is why hostile “liberal-globalist” members of the “deep state” are activating levers of institutional pressure to counteract his changes just like what Trump’s Administration is ironically doing against Moldova’s Dodon. Even so, Trump is pragmatic enough not counterproductively inhibit the democratic execution of his desired vision by Congressional means and has thus worked with certain “deep state” figures when necessary, hence why his former Trotskyite ally Bannon backstabbed him in an unsuccessful bid to break what he truly believe was Trump’s “counterrevolutionary” Presidency.

Concluding Thoughts

There is nothing inherently “good” or “bad” about democracy, as such judgement calls are subjective, but one can objectively argue that the model itself is the most effective one for fulfilling military intelligence’s four-step mission, whether operationalized for offensive use abroad like the US does or defensive reasons at home such as how it’s employed by Iran. This, too, isn’t a “good” or “bad” thing, but is simply a fact of life that few people have become aware of because the existence of some sort of democratic motions is now taken for granted almost all across the world and has, to channel the fourth and final step of the military intelligence process, become “normalized”. This isn’t to say that the “solution” is to dilute democracy, or even that a “solution” is necessary at all, but just to draw attention to a little-known aspect of modern-day life that often eludes the notice of most political analysts and encourage readers to think outside the box in reconceptualizing the world around them.

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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

“Whoever sits in the White House will continue to serve the 1% and spread wars across the world, to maintain the US hegemony. Many corporations, arms manufacturers and corporate-employed mercenaries, benefit from the war itself, or from extravagant reconstruction opportunities the war destruction creates. The increase in the number of US troops is not to secure the country or annihilate the US creations, the Taliban and ISIS, but rather a show of US power to rivals, Russia, China and Iran.

Despite all their differences, the US and Iran’s aim in Afghanistan converge on one point: the promotion of fundamentalist thought, and continued support for the most reactionary, dark-minded and criminal fundamentalist elements. While the US killed hundreds of Afghan revolutionaries and freedom-fighters through its fundamentalist mercenaries in the 1980s and 90s, it used these tactics to prevent the rise of nationalist, freedom-fighting and independent figures and forces that would resist its occupation and bullying,” says Friba, RAWA’s representative.

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Edu Montesanti: Please speak on the protest in Kabul last October: What exactly did hundred of Afghans protest that day?

Friba, spokesperson for RAWA: The protest on October 6^th, was staged by the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (SPA) against the 16^th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. SPA is a democratic, nationalist, progressive party that stands for independence, freedom, democracy, secularism, and equality. This protest is held by the party every year in October. The protestors called for the end of the occupation and intervention of the US and its allies in Afghanistan, as well as other regional powers. They carried placards showing gruesome US crimes in Afghanistan, and called for the end of the occupation with slogans like “No to occupation!”, “No to US and NATO military bases and forces in Afghanistan!”, “With the US, NATO and their stooges, peace and prosperity are nothing but mirages!”, and others. 

The Party also raised slogans in condemnation of the Afghan puppet government composed of fundamentalist criminal Jehadis, and the recent peace deal made with the arch-criminal, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

SPA has also held demonstrations to condemn 28^th April, or 8^th Saur, the day the Jehadi fundamentalist criminals took power in Kabul in 1992 – the same Jehadis who make up the US puppet government today – and in solidarity with international freedom-fighting movements, such as the Kurdish struggle.

EM: You have told me about the Afghan youth being “bought” by the Empire. Please explain that, Friba.

Friba: It has been forty years since the US started working on its Afghan project, and investing in Afghan youth to make them its cadres was cardinal to its long-term aims in Afghanistan. The CIA educated and trained its lackeys, politically and militarily, creating loyal lackeys who would go on to constitute its future puppet government after it was to take over Afghanistan, and help it achieve its goals comfortably.

Some of its first recruits, through programs like the Peace Corp and enrollment in the American University of Beirut, were Zalmai Khalilzad, Hamid Karzai, Ashraf Ghani, Farooq Wardak, Azizullah Ludin, Yousuf Pashtun, and Anwar Ahadi, who have headed the Afghan government and other key positions of power since 2001.

US education period (Source: Edu Montesanti)

2001 saw a fresh wave of programs that trained the youth to serve under the US’s direct occupation. Unfortunately, such US-educated and US-trained agents have increased in Afghanistan and are continuing to increase through programs like the Fulbright Program – Afghanistan is the highest recipient of this scholarship currently -, and Leadership Program International Visitor, which reek of CIA’s training methods.

In addition to the prominent pawns mentioned above, there are fresh cadres like Amrullah Saleh, Hanif Atmar, Nader Naderi, Javed Ludin, Asad Zamir, Wahid Omar, Siddique Siddiqui, Sima Samar, Dadfar Spanta, Saad Mohseni, Javad Tayyab, Azam Dadfar, Daud Muradyan, and others. After decades of investment, today, the US has enough of these civilian bureaucrats to form several generations of traitorous puppet states in Afghanistan.

It is worth mentioning that after the collapse of the so-called communist regime of 1978-1992, Khalqi and Parchami, many Afghan KGB agents and lackeys joined the circle of US lackeys, that is, the Islamic fundamentalist mercenaries as they took power after 1992.

Hanif Atmar, one of the most important figures of the current government, was an infamous torturer and killer of revolutionaries and intellectuals during the Khalq and Parcham period. Farid Mazdak, Noor ul Haq Oloomi, Mohammad Gulabzoy, Dastgeer Panjsheri, Abdullah Shadan, Shahnawaz Tanai, who was the Defense Minister in the Soviet puppet government but joined hands with the infamous fundamentalist warlord, Gulbuddin in a coup attempt, Khalil Zimar, and others. Writers like Latif Pedram, Rahnaward Zaryab, Partaw Naderi, Wasif Bakhtari, and others, also followed the same path and are still serving the US puppet government today.

NGOs in Afghanistan increased dramatically after the US invasion, another tool in the hands of the US to neutralize our youth from political revolutionary struggle against foreign invaders and their local lackeys. These NGOs receive huge sums of money from the US embassy and infamous bodies like USAID also widely involved in criminal anti-people projects in Latin America since its inception, and have created a new, fake class of youth who are earning hefty sums of money in return for forwarding US aims in our country.

The spreading of this “cultural imperialism” has always been the duty of US-supported NGOs around the world. The youth in these NGOs today only see the interest of the US in Afghanistan and propagate for the US, not for their people or their country.

These young boys and girls have been brainwashed with money and power and promises of comfortable lives abroad, distancing them from nationalist, progressive struggle for the independence and freedom of our country. Dark-minded fundamentalist groups such as Jamiate Islahe Afghanistan, a Salafi organization, are also sponsored with US Dollars to spread Ikhwani and ignorant thoughts among youth.

These fresh recruits not only occupy high positions in the state, but are also the creator and donors of the majority of NGOs and so-called “free” media outlets in Afghanistan. These outlets actively work to control the public opinion in favor of the US colonization. USAID is again the main donor of these bodies in Afghanistan.

Universities, both private and government, also follow a syllabus and method of teaching that is pro-imperialism and pro-US, particularly pro-US occupation. Youth are taught to accept the US occupation as a natural and necessary action to save our country, and generally avoid talking about politics, against the government, and especially to avoid discussing progressive, revolutionary topics. When the current president, Ashraf Ghani, became the head of the Kabul University in 2005, he made sure no political discussions or activities were carried out in the university.

All these efforts helped prevent the emergence of an active anti-occupation force from the youth.

Iran has had a great deal of success in Afghanistan in spreading cultural and political influence as well, maybe even more so than the US itself. For the past three decades, the theocratic Iranian regime has also invested and worked on its traitorous Afghan agents, both militants and intellectuals, and created and funded Islamic fundamentalist parties and organizations of its own kind in Afghanistan, like Wahdate Islami party, Ittelaf Milli, and Harkate Sheikh Mohseni.

Today, in addition to aiding the criminal Taliban and buying people in the government (former president, Karzai, admitted that his office received bags of cash from Iran), Iran has a handful of so-called “intellectuals” at its disposal who are the mouthpieces of the fascist Iranian regime and are actively working in Iran-funded television channels and newspapers to spread Iranian-style Vilayat-e Faqih virus in our country, and to educate and train youth for the same purpose.

Among these are Kazim Kazimi, Husseini Mazari, Rizwani Bamyani, Noor Rahman Akhlaqi, Zikria Rahil, Jawad Mohseni, and others. Just like the US, Iran also shrouds its intelligence and cultural activities in our country under popular phrases like “humanitarian aid”, and so-called charity organizations like the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation. These activities mark the more dangerous kind of intervention by the Iranian regime. As one high-ranking official in the government told Wall Street Journal in 2012, “Iran is the real influence here. With one snap of their fingers, they can mobilize 20,000 Afghans. This is much more dangerous than the suicide bombers coming from Pakistan.” Despite all their differences, the US and Iran’s aim in Afghanistan converge on one point: the promotion of fundamentalist thought, and continued support for the most reactionary, dark-minded and criminal fundamentalist elements. This is why the US has not prevented these activities in our country.

The US has never worked in a country for its prosperity, rather for its own interests and aims. While the US killed hundreds of Afghan revolutionaries and freedom-fighters through its fundamentalist mercenaries in the 1980s and 90s, it used these tactics to prevent the rise of nationalist, freedom-fighting and independent figures and forces that would resist its occupation and bullying.

EM: How do you see Afghanistan today since Donald Trump took power in January 2017, in comparison to President Obama’s years? What are your thoughts on President Trump’s new “strategy” to your country?

Friba: Despite differences in their domestic policies, what is absolutely certain is that the US policy abroad does not change under new presidents. Afghanistan’s situation is not and will not be much different under Trump than it was under Obama.  Trump’s wars, like Obama and Bush’s, are wars of conquest.

Whoever sits in the White House will continue to serve the 1% and spread wars across the world, to maintain the US hegemony. US corporations want the oil and other raw materials of occupied countries, to privatize state-owned companies, and to sell U.S. products in the new markets the war opens for them.  Many corporations, arms manufacturers and corporate-employed mercenaries, benefit from the war itself, or from extravagant reconstruction opportunities the war destruction creates.

Trump’s period, more than ever before, shows the cracks in the crumbling, rotting US system. Trump’s own continual failure at constructing his cabinet and staff, allegations of Russian interference in the elections, the conflicts between the White House and the Congress, the lost Syrian war, the Afghan and Iraq war quagmires, and the overall deteriorating situation in the US society itself – increasing inequality, dwindling social facilities, mass shootings, rampant racism against African-Americans and other minorities, and countless other issues -, are just some of the US’s current problems.

In turn, Russia and China’s huge financial and military gains also break the US’s might and arrogance. The US is in denial of its defeat, and is desperately clinging to its last hope for global domination by occupying Afghanistan. The firing of the MOAB [Massive Ordnance Air Blast] and increase of troops are demonstrations of power to its rivals. The US knows that if it leaves Afghanistan, it will be a repetition of the Vietnam War nightmare, and it just cannot afford to do that, not in the face of emerging Russia and China power.

Despite the huge amount of media coverage surrounding the so-called “new strategy” announced by Trump, the strategy really had nothing new. It is the continuation of the warmongering, aggression and bullying policies of the US which will further sink our country in occupation and the bloody rivalries of world powers. The long-term aims of the US in our country and the region remain unchanged – to occupy Afghanistan for its geostrategic purposes of full domination by overcoming its regional rivals, namely Russia and China.

The fluctuation of the number of troops, which has continuously been happening in the past 16 years, does not change, and has not changed this strategy and policy. Only now, the US plans to plunder the minerals in Afghanistan, worth billions of dollars, to try and finance its new war costs. Trump mentioned his interest in the matter in a phone call with Ashraf Ghani and the traitor president accepted the demand immediately.

The increase in the number of US troops is not to secure the country or annihilate the US creations, the Taliban and ISIS, but rather a show of US power to rivals, Russia, China and Iran. The reinforcement of air power under the new strategy, killed tens of civilians in blind bombardments carried out by the criminal US army in several parts of Afghanistan in just a few weeks.

The only people cheering for this “new” strategy are heads of the mafia puppet government of Afghanistan and their intellectual lackeys, because their master has decided to elongate their ominous lives by extending its stay in our country.

We should not be deceived by the US’s “pressure” on Pakistan either. The history of the US and Pakistan go back decades when the filthy government and terrorist-fostering army of Pakistan trained and exported the most bloodthirsty and reactionary groups to our country, in accordance with the orders and dollars of the White House.

The US was also well-informed on the role of Pakistan in empowering the Taliban in the past sixteen years, but still gave billions of dollars in aid and military equipment to the country because next to its puppet government in Kabul, the West needed its Taliban creations to justify its military presence and legalize its war in Afghanistan.

Trump basically attempted to drag Pakistan and India into a war in Afghanistan, and warned Pakistan on its growing closeness with Russia and China, rather than actually pressurizing it to stop supporting the Taliban and other terror groups.

EM: What can you say about the old CIA drug smuggling from your country?

Friba: The CIA has a long history of being involved in the global drug trade in all parts of the world under the control of the US or where it has considerable influence. While a few cases have been investigated and exposed by journalists, the issue continues to remain in the shadows.

The CIA’s history with drug trade began in the 1980s. Drugs were seen as the quickest and easiest way to earn money to fund CIA proxies and paramilitary forces, in different countries. Gary Webb, the brave journalist who exposed the Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking scandal and was eventually driven to suicide by an extensive smear campaign by the mainstream media, described the process like this:

“We [the CIA] need money for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.”

This tactic worked very successfully in Afghanistan during the Cold War, when the Mujahideen forces serving the US were funded through drugs.

Before the US invasion in 2001, the drug production had almost been completely eradicated by the Taliban [See table below]. Right after the US invasion, drug production began increasing drastically, and today Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium, and on the verge of becoming a narco-state. There are reports of US forces admitting that drugs are flown out of Afghanistan in US planes.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, the now dead governor of Kandahar province, was at one time the biggest drug dealer of not just Afghanistan, but the region. The whole time, he was on the payroll of the CIA. There have even been claims by US officers directly involved in drug operations in Afghanistan, about the CIA’s involvement.

Source United Nations, Vienna

A DEA agent, Edwrad Follis, stated that the CIA “turned a blind eye” to the drug trade in Afghanistan. Most recently, John Abbotsford an ex-CIA analyst and war veteran who fought in Afghanistan confessed that CIA had a role in drug smuggling operations.

Even if we exclude these claims and reports, it is hard to believe that a superpower that boasts the most modern technology in surveillance and intelligence-gathering cannot find opium fields and track supply routes within a country it occupies.

The fact that 8 billion dollars have been spent in drug eradication efforts in the past decade but opium production has only soared, is itself an indication that the drug business serves some US interest in Afghanistan, or it would have been finished a long time ago.

Other players in this so-called ‘counter-narcotics’ efforts are private US contractors who earn millions of dollars through counter-narcotic contracts. One of the biggest beneficiaries is the notorious military company, Blackwater, which according to RT earned 569 million dollars from these contracts.

Private contractor companies have a huge share of the profits of the war in Afghanistan, and this failed drug war results in huge profits for them.

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Edu Montesanti is an independent analyst, researcher and journalist whose work has been published by Nolan Chart, Truth Out, Pravda, Global Research, Telesur, Observatório da Imprensa, Caros Amigos magazine, and numerous other publications across the globe.

Featured image: Italian NATO troops entering Serbian town of Stimje, draped with Albanian flags (Source: Fort Russ)

“Now that the global circumstances have changed, and when the United States and NATO are losing their influence, and while the powers that are in favor of preserving Kosovo and Metohija – such as Russia and China – are strengthening, we are nevertheless pursuing a policy of complete surrender.”

The aim of the internal dialogue conducted by the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, should be to distribute responsibilities and to be the cover for the final surrender of Kosovo and Metohija.

The government constantly assures us that it will never recognize Kosovo as an independent State, but here we must point out the following: they are not expected to announce to the public that Kosovo is an independent State and that we recognized it as such. Nobody is asking for such a clear acknowledgment from them. The problem is that they are instigating the independence of Kosovo by implementing their policies, without clearly defining and communicating to the public what they are actually doing.

If we agree that the so-called Kosovo independence depends exclusively on Serbia’s consent, and that without the consent of Serbia, the United States cannot implement a new Balkan map, the responsibility of the authorities in Belgrade becomes even greater.

I recently reviewed the book “WikiLeaks – Belgrade’s dispatches secrets” by author Nikola Vrzić, published in 2011, i.e. before the arrival of the Serbian Progressive Party to power. It analyzes the original confidential letters and reports of foreign diplomats that reveal the plans of the Western powers concerning the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, as well as the attitude of the previous democratic authorities on the issue.

The continuity of the wrong policy

At the very beginning of the book, the author describes the previous president and says that “he couldn’t decide between surrender, treason and fear of his own people, and that he willingly chose surrender and treason.”

If we disregard the fact that these words are dedicated to Boris Tadic, can we identify them today with the current president?

The author further analyzes the American strategy K1, by which they want to convince the Serbs that Kosovo does not matter to them. Is there a more vividly designed way than the one in which the President of the State of Serbia is saying that we should not celebrate and glorify defeats (thinking of the Battle of Kosovo) and praising the hero, the great military leader and strategist Murat, for whom “these people are not good enough to even be his adjutants “.

The WikiLeaks dispatches from 2007 clearly show that the EU officials require from Serbia to recognize Kosovo before joining the EU. The question arises as to whether Aleksandar Vucic discovered this fact only recently when he said in Arandjelovac that we have to make drastic changes in our attitude towards Kosovo in order to become a member of the EU. In his further statement to the press, he calls for a public debate, i.e. an internal dialogue that is being implemented, with already prepared solutions, and for Professor Kutlesic, who presented the idea of ​​a “real union of Serbia and Kosovo” at the first roundtable organized for the internal dialogue on Kosovo.

Finally, we should also be reminded by this book of the model of two Germanys, already mentioned in 2007 by the German diplomacy as a solution that is offered to Serbia and which implies a model of coexisting with an independent Kosovo (something similar to what professor Kutlesic is generously suggesting to us). The author here commented that since 2008 Kosovo’s policy has been reduced to “a softly unconvincing implementation of the perverted Balkan variation of the two Germanys models in which Serbia does not recognize Kosovo by pushing Kosovo Serbs into the grip of Pristina. And only temporarily, until the final Serbian recognition of an independent Kosovo. In the name of endless EU integration”.

Not admitting the recognition

Now the question arises as to why many independent political analysts, as they present themselves, do not analyze the Kosovo policy of Serbia since 2012 in the light of the WikiLeaks dispatches from the previous period? Because they would come to the conclusion that the present government has made much bigger and bold steps towards the establishment of the Kosovo statehood and pushing the Serbs under the auspices of an independent Kosovo than the previous government.

It is completely clear that the policy of the West towards Serbia has not changed, but only the political figures in Serbia that have implemented such a policy have changed, and everything that has been done since 2012 is in line with the plan for fulfilling Kosovo’s independence.

Instead of pledging to cancel the agreements signed by the previous government, the Progressive party (SNS) signed the Brussels agreement, and now we can see that it committed itself to signing a comprehensive agreement on normalizing relations with Pristina, which should define a drastic change towards Kosovo, which means that Serbia should give up Kosovo. By signing such a treaty with Pristina, Serbia will recognize Kosovo.

Concerning the situation of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, it has also changed drastically since 2013 and the signing of the Brussels Agreement, and also since the dismantling of the barricades, setting a border and customs between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, abolishing the institutions of the State of Serbia in the territory of the southern province, the integration of the police and the judiciary in the Kosovo system, the participation of the so-called “Serbian List” in the institutions that function under the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Kosovo, the allocation of the international telephone number to Kosovo and all other steps helping the implementation of the Kosovo independence.

An ethnically cleansed Serbian village in the Kosovo region of Serbia

Serbia turned its back on Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija

The desperate position of the Serbs is reflected in the following fact. The Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija have been facing many dangers threatening them from the Albanian side for years, but they were nevertheless resolved to stay in their homes and fight for the survival of the State of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija. However, when they felt that their home country had turned its back on them, that it had a hostile attitude toward their reluctance to become citizens of the Republic of Kosovo and left them in the struggle for survival, it was only then that they felt completely hopeless. I visited the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo and Metohija about a year after the signing of the Brussels Agreement, and the people of Gracanica, Orahovac and Velika Hoca told me that they had lost hope, and that since the signing of the Brussels Agreement, many Serbs decided to sell their homes.

On the other hand, we are witnessing that the Albanian side did not accomplish anything in the negotiation process that would benefit us, and they are not even ready to allow the establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities that should function as a non-governmental organization within the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Kosovo.

Serbia is now in an absurd situation, bearing in mind the fact that we opposed NATO when that organization was at the peak of its power, as well as the United States, which was the only leading world power at that time.

Now that the global circumstances have changed, and when the United States and NATO are losing their influence, and while the powers that are in favor of preserving Kosovo and Metohija – such as Russia and China – are strengthening, we are nevertheless pursuing a policy of complete surrender.

At a time when the violent separation of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia has triggered a wave of separatism in the EU, we are not questioning Brussels officials about their responsibility. When the aggressive US foreign policy led to historical migrations from the Middle East to Europe, due to the bombing and destruction of countries in the Middle East, we are not asking who is responsible for this? Who is responsible for the rise of terrorism in the world?

NATO occupying forces inspect the ‘work’ of their Albanian terrorist comrades who shelled this Orthodox church in Kosovo

Instead of asking questions, we want to accept the problems of Brussels and share them with them, although as a State, we do not have any responsibility for the problems that have arisen, in fact we are the damaged party ourselves.

The final moment

The only way to preserve Kosovo in Serbia and restore the sovereignty is to drastically examine the policy of European integration, because it is the key to everything. It is necessary to have an open dialogue on European integration in Serbia, and not Kosovo and Metohija, because we must, as a society, look at real facts about what kind of benefits Serbia can get by joining the EU and, on the other hand, what consequences we will suffer. We can see that the support for Serbia’s joining the EU has now increased, and that the United States has been determined to define the situation in the Balkans for its own benefit.

This is useful for them for many reasons: first of all, because of the obligation of Serbia to sign a peace agreement with Pristina, and on the other hand, it is their ideal way to separate Russia from Serbia and the Balkans, since the process of European integration is contrary to the development of relations with Russia. In the coming period, this will be a key task for the West, where the focus will shift to Serbia, because Serbia is a central country in the Balkans, and not a part of the Western Balkans as they represent us. Without interrupting the ties between Serbia and Russia, in the current geopolitical context, all the Western influence in the Balkans has been questioned so far. On the other hand, if Serbia breaks ties with Russia, it will lose every opportunity in the long run to preserve its sovereignty and integrity.

As a society, we must demand from the political leadership to declare the negotiations with Pristina in Brussels as failed, to request the return of the dialogue on Kosovo within the UN, and, with the help of International Law, the UN Resolution 1244 and our allies who also hold on to international law, to return to our negotiating positions and at the same time to establish an internal dialogue on the European integration.

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Dragana Trifkovic is the director of the Centre for Geostrategic Studies (Belgrade, Serbia), and has written numerous articles on the geopolitics of the Balkans.   

Translated by Svetlana Maksovic

All images in this article are from the author.

After nearly a year in office, the outline of President Donald Trump’s policy for Africa has emerged as fundamentally and seriously flawed. In a similar manner to his predecessors, Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, Trump’s African strategy suffers from a conceptual deficiency in its failure to recognize that the most fundamental human right is the right to life. Every human being is morally entitled to live a healthy, productive, meaningful life with the hope that the future will be an improvement over the present.  If one examines the outlines of policy by President Trump and the State Department, such a guiding and indispensable principle is conspicuously absent. For Africa, where the largest number of people endure the greatest hardships of life of any continent, the absence of a full-throttled U.S. commitment to eliminate poverty and hunger as an essential feature of a strategic policy, is damning, and must be remedied.

To ensure a prosperous future for what will be the most populated continent on the planet in 2050, by which time the population is expected to double, from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion people, President Trump should emulate China’s infrastructure-led development program.

The Trump administration is expected to reduce State Department and USAID-funded programs, among others, beneficial to Africa. Not to overlook the potential harmful effects of these cuts, there is a more fundamental shortcoming to Trump’s policy. Like his recent predecessors, he is ignorant of, or ideologically blind, to understanding what is required to accelerate economic growth across the African continent. Africa needs, infrastructure, infrastructure, and more infrastructure, particularly in the vital categories of energy, rail, roads, and water management. Trump has been especially eager to support increased military deployments and kinetic warfare against violent extremists in Somalia, the Sahel, and northeast Nigeria. However, any competent and honest military leader knows an effective counter-terrorism effort must include economic development. If the Sahel, were not a barren, underdeveloped desert, the various terrorist militia would not be able so easily to occupy this region for their base of operations.

Security and Free Trade: Inadequate for Africa

The African continent has the greatest deficit in all categories of infrastructure on the planet. Thus, not surprisingly, Africa has the largest number of people living in poverty; living without the basic necessities of life.  According to a 2016 World Bank report on poverty, Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest percentage of people, 41%, living in extreme poverty. That translates into the largest number of poor at 389 million, just over 50% of 767 million worldwide living below the poverty line of $1.90 per person per day. Yet despite all the hype about Africa’s “rising lions,” referring to African nations with high growth rates of GDP, the number of people living in poverty is Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing.

Look at one critical area: access to energy which is the lifeblood of an economy. Abundant grid energy, accessible to all sectors of society, can transform an entire nation and lift its population out of poverty. Conversely, the lack of energy kills. According to “Energy Access Outlook 2017,” of the 674 million people, globally, expected to be without access electricity in 2030, over 600 million, or 90%, will live in Sub-Saharan Africa. For the developing sector nations in Asia and Latin America, the percentage of the population expected to have access to electricity by 2030 is 99% and 95% respectively, while for Sub-Saharan Africa, it expected to be 50% or less.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of those without electricity is increasing, unlike like all other populations in the world. Africa requires a minimum of 1,600 gigawatts of electrical power to have same the standard of living as advanced nations.

In a related classification, cooking energy, the picture is also abysmal. Almost 80% of the people living in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have gas or electric stoves; instead they cook with solid biomass, i.e., solid waste, animal dung, wood, saw dust, wood chips, etc. This is not only destructive to the environment, but to human labor as well. I have witnessed, on numerous occasions in my travels throughout Nigeria, young girls collecting firewood and then carrying it on their heads for sale in the market. In Mali, young men are destroying trees to be used in the primitive method of charcoaling, aiding the expansion of the desert.

President Trump’s Africa policy of security/counter-terrorism first, followed by trade and investment, fails to address Africa’s underlying depressed conditions of life which allow violent groups to easily recruit. People who can’t feed their families or provide the minimal necessities of life, and see no hope in the future, are led to violence out of manipulation and despair. Trade and investment, as proposed by the Trump administration, are not the solution.

Africa suffered greatly from 500 years of slavery and colonialism, 1450-1960. Following the initial success of the independence movements, the financial predators moved in to loot the continent’s vast wealth in natural resources. Extractive industries provide revenue, but they do not add/create wealth or generate a significant number of jobs. Africa doesn’t need more investors intent on making profits under the guise of applying the distorted “laws” of free trade and the marketplace. African nations require real economic growth that creates added value, increases the total wealth of society, and provides productive jobs to the restless masses of unemployed youth.

In 2014, Africa’s share of value added in global manufacturing is reported to be a pitiful 1.6%.  This sorrowful state of economy can and must be reversed. The manufacturing process is vital for every healthy economy. It adds wealth by transforming natural resources into finished and semi-finished products to be either consumed domestically or exported. This requires technologically advanced capital equipment, and skilled labor, all embedded within an integrated platform of infrastructure. State-directed credit and long-term, low-interest loans invested into critical areas of the economy, such as infrastructure, are indispensable for the growth of a manufacturing sector. Witness previous successful periods of economic growth in the U.S. (and in China today); these were accomplished through public credit, not hedge fund speculators and Wall Street day traders.

The most valuable natural resource of Africa, is not its mineral wealth, which is the target of the financial and mining/commodity predators. Rather, its greatest natural resource is its immense quantities of arable, yet to be cultivated land, along with the abundant water sources in its numerous lakes and river systems.  Africa is capable of feeding its people and eliminating hunger. It can also potentially help feed Asia, if properly developed with a manufacturing sector, and food-processing industries, coupled with a massive expansion of infrastructure.

What Does China Know About Africa That the U.S. Doesn’t

Over the last thirty-five years, China has lifted over one-half billion of its citizens out of poverty. This has been accomplished by massive state-directed investment into essential categories of infrastructure, along with its deep commitment to advance its economy through attaining new levels of science and technology. Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have publicly stated their desire to help African nations eliminate poverty. This universal mission by the leadership of China, expressed concretely in the “Spirit of the New Silk Road,” has led to a revolution in joint infrastructure projects in Africa. New railroads are being built across the continent, replacing colonial locomotives and tracks built over one hundred years ago. On the East Coast, an entry zone for the Maritime Silk Road, new and expanded ports, with connecting rail lines vectored westward into the interior of the continent, are creating the potential for a fundamental transformation of the economies of several African nations including; Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Djibouti.

The “ChinaPower Project” reports that between 2000 and 2014, China funded 2,390 projects across Africa totaling $121.6 billion, just over one-third of China’s total global financing. In Africa, 32% of the financing went for transportation projects and 28.5% for energy.

“Dance of the lions and dragons” a study completed by McKinsey & Company in 2017, analyzed privately owned Chinese companies operating in Africa. They estimated that there are 10,000 such private Chinese businesses that have committed $21 billion to infrastructure, which is more than combined total of the African Development Bank, European Commission, World Bank, International Finance Corporation, and the G-8 nations. And 31% of these companies are involved in manufacturing which accounts for 12% of Africa’s industrial production—valued at $500 billion.

Conclusion

The U.S., along with the other Western powers, virtually abandoned the nations of Africa as soon as they had overthrown their colonial masters. President John F. Kennedy stands out among U.S. presidents, following the death of Franklin Roosevelt, as a champion for the newborn African nations. His collaboration with Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah in the early 1960s to construct the Volta Dam Hydro-electric Aluminum Smelting Complex is a singular moment in U.S.-Africa relations over the last six decades.  America lost its vision for development, resulting in its refusal to build the power plants, dams, railroads, and ports that Africa needs. China has made a commitment to Africa and now is contributing to the most expansive building of new infrastructure the continent has ever seen.

President Trump’s recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) is totally hypocritical: it attacks China for becoming Africa’s largest partner, and accuses China of undermining “Africa’s long-term development.” Trump’s NSS expresses the same old British geopolitical mentality of winners and losers competing in a zero-sum war for global hegemony.

Throughout my travels in Africa, I have found expressions of affection for America and its ideals; even among those nations that the U.S. has abused. That positive attitude is beginning to wane. However, it is not too late for the U.S. to chart a new course, one of cooperation with China and Africa to transform the continent.  Saving Lake Chad from extinction and transforming the Lake Chad Basin, is an urgent task for such a tripartite cooperation.

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Lawrence Freeman is a former member of AFRICOM’s Advisory Committee, Vice Chairman of the Lake Chad Basin Scientific Committee, political-economic analyst specialized in African affairs.

All images, except the featured, are from the author.

At the recent Codex meeting in Berlin, there was an attempt to define genetically engineered (GE) food ingredients as ‘biofortified’ and therefore mislead consumers. This contravened the original Codex mandate for defining biofortification. That definition is based on improving the nutritional quality of food crops through conventional plant breeding (not genetic engineering) with the aim of making the nutrients bioavailable after digestion. The attempt was thwarted thanks to various interventions, not least by the National Health Federation (NHF), a prominent health-freedom international non-governmental organization and the only health-freedom INGO represented at Codex. But the battle is far from over.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission’s Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) convened in Berlin during early December and drafts provisions on nutritional aspects for all foods. It also develops international guidelines and standards for foods for special dietary uses that will be used to facilitate standardized world trade.

Based upon previous meetings, the initial intention of the Committee was to craft a definition for biofortification that could then be used uniformly around the World. Biofortification originally referred to increasing certain vitamin and mineral content of basic food crops by way of cross-breeding, not genetic engineering, for example by increasing the vitamin or iron content of sweet potatoes so that malnourished populations would receive better nutrition.

However, according to president of the NHF, Scott Tips, Monsanto wants to redefine the definition to include GE ‘biofortified’ foods and it has seemingly influenced Codex delegates in that direction. Tips says,

“I am sure that Monsanto would be thrilled to be able to market its synthetic products under a name that began with the word ‘bio’.”

Source: National Health Federation

This year’s CCNFSDU meeting witnessed a lively debate about biofortification. At the 2016 CCNFSDU meeting, chairwoman Pia Noble (married to a former Bayer executive) had opined that the definition should be as broad as possible and that recombinant technology should be included. By the 2017 meeting, the proposed definition had morphed to include GE foods.

Deceptive marketing par excellence

The EU has raised a valid objection that “biofortification” would cause confusion in many European countries due to the widespread use of the word “bio” being synonymous with “organic.” Countries within the EU have been very vocal and support this position, arguing that the definition needs to be restrictive, not broad.

Including GE foods within any definition of biofortification risks consumer confusion as to whether they are purchasing organic products or something else entirely.

“Monsanto seeks to cash in on the organic market with the loaded word ‘bio’,” argues Scott Tips.

At the Codex meeting in Berlin, Tips addressed the 300 delegates in the room.

“Although NHF was an early supporter of biofortification, we have since come to see that the concept is in the process of being hijacked and converted from something good into something bad,” explained Tips.

He added that if Codex is to allow any method of production and any source to be part of the biofortification definition, it would be engaging in marketing deception of the worst sort.

As Steven Druker has shown in his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truths, GE foods should not even be on the commercial market, given the deceptions and bypassing of procedures that put them there in the first place. But now that they are on the market, most consumers want GE foods labelled. In the United States alone, some 90% of consumers want such labelling. The definition being proposed seeks to disguise GE foods under the term “biofortification.”

“That is dishonest. It is disgraceful, and for all of those sincerely concerned with the credibility and transparency of Codex, you should absolutely and positively oppose this definition,” says Tips.

The NHF feels that this is simply a strategy to gain a backdoor entry into countries for GE foods that are unneeded and unwanted. In his address to the assembled delegates, Tips added,

“It is a very sad state of affairs where we have come to the point where we must manipulate our natural foods to provide better nutrition all because we have engaged in very poor agricultural practices that have seen a 50% decline in the vitamins and minerals in our foods over the last 50 years. We will not remedy poor nutrition by engaging in deceptive marketing practices and sleight of hand with this definition.”

The delegates to various Codex committees tend to be national regulatory bureaucrats and representatives from large corporations, including agritech giants like Monsanto. These interests have undue influence within Codex. Over the years, although heavily outnumbered at meetings, Scott Tips and his colleagues at the NHF have been tireless in their efforts to roll back undue corporate influence at Codex. Thanks to NHF and others urging the committee to adopt a clear, non-misleading definition that excluded GE foods, no final decision was taken on the definition of biofortification.

It is now left to the committee to resolve the matter at next year’s meeting or even the one thereafter.

The National Health Federation

The National Health Federation is the only health-freedom organization accredited by the Codex Alimentarius Commission to participate at all Codex meetings. It actively shapes global policies for food, beverages, and nutritional supplements.

Codex

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is run by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization. Its some 27 committees establish uniform food-safety standards and guidelines for its member countries and promote the unhindered international flow of food goods and nutritional supplements.

*

This article was originally published by National Health Federation.

A long-standing French protectorate briefly occupied by Japan during World War II, Cambodia became independent in 1953 as the French finally withdrew from Indochina. Under the leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia remained officially neutral, including during the subsequent US war on Indochina. However, by the mid-1960s, parts of the eastern provinces of Cambodia were bases for North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front (NVA/NLF) forces operating against South Vietnam and this resulted in nearly a decade of bombing by the United States from 4 October 1965. See ‘Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War’.

In 1970 Sihanouk was ousted in a US-supported coup led by General Lon Nol. See ‘A Special Supplement: Cambodia’. The following few years were characterized by an internal power struggle between Cambodian elites and war involving several foreign countries, but particularly including continuation of the recently commenced ‘carpet bombing’ of Cambodia by the US Air Force.

On 17 April 1975 the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia. Following four years of ruthless rule by the Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge, initially under Pol Pot, they were defeated by the Vietnamese army in 1979 and the Vietnamese occupation authorities established the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), installing Heng Samrin and other pro-Vietnamese Communist politicians as leaders of the new government. Heng was succeeded by Chan Sy as Prime Minister in 1981.

Following the death of Chan Sy, Hun Sen became Prime Minister of Cambodia in 1985 and, despite a facade of democracy, he and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have been in power ever since. This period has notably included using the army to purge a feared rival in a bloody coup conducted in 1997. Hun Sen’s co-Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was ousted and fled to Paris while his supporters were arrested, tortured and some were summarily executed.

The current main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was founded in 2012 by merging the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party. Emblematic of Cambodia’s ‘democratic’ status, more than two dozen opposition members and critics have been locked up in the past year alone and the CNRP leader, Kem Sokha, known for his nonviolent, politically tolerant views, is currently imprisoned at a detention centre in Tboung Khmum Province following his arrest on 3 September 2017 under allegations of treason, espionage and for orchestrating anti-government demonstrations in 2013-2014. These demonstrations were triggered by widespread allegations of electoral fraud during the Cambodian general election of 2013. See ‘Sokha arrested for “treason”, is accused of colluding with US to topple the government’.

On 16 November 2017 the CNRP was dissolved by Cambodia’s highest court and 118 of its members, including Sokha and exiled former leader Sam Rainsy, were banned from politics for five years.

Cambodian Society

Socially, Cambodia is primarily Khmer with ethnic populations of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham, Thai and Lao. It has a population of 16 million people. The pre-eminent religion is Buddhism. The adult literacy rate is 75%; few Cambodians speak a European language limiting access to western literature. Most students complete 12 years of (low quality public) school but tertiary enrollment is limited. As in all countries, education (reinforced by state propaganda through the media) serves to intimidate and indoctrinate students into obedience of elites. Discussion of national politics in a school class is taboo and such discussions are rare at tertiary level. This manifests in the narrow range of concerns that mobilize student action: personal outcomes such as employment opportunities. Issues such as those in relation to peace, the environment and refugees do not have a significant profile. In short, the student population generally is neither well informed nor politically engaged.

However, many other issues engage at least some Cambodians, with demonstrations, strikes and street blockades being popular tactics, although the lack of strategy means that outcomes are usually limited and, despite commendable nonviolent discipline in many cases, violent repression is not effectively resisted. Issues of concern to workers, particularly low wages in a country with no minimum wage law, galvanize some response. See, for example, ‘Protests, Strikes Continue in Cambodia: Though their occupations differ, Cambodian workers are united in their push for a living wage’. Garment workers are a significant force because their sector is important to the national economy. Land grabbing and lack of housing mobilize many people but usually fail to attract support beyond those effected. See, for example, ‘Housing Activists Clash With Police in Street Protest’. Environmental issues, such as deforestation and natural resource depletion, fail to mobilize the support they need to be effective.

Protests, strikes continue in Cambodia (Source: @ASCorrespondent/Twitter)

Having noted that, however, Cambodian activists require enormous courage to take nonviolent action as the possibility of violent state repression in response to popular mobilization is a real one, as illustrated above and documented in the Amnesty International report ‘Taking to the streets: Freedom of peaceful assembly in Cambodia’ from 2015.

Perhaps understandably, given their circumstances, international issues, such as events in the Middle East, North Korea and the plight of the Rohingya in neighbouring Myanmar are beyond the concern of most Cambodians.

Economically, Cambodians produce traditional goods for small local households with industrial production remaining low in a country that is still industrializing. Building on agriculture (especially rice), tourism and particularly the garment industry, which provided the basis for the Cambodian export sector in recent decades, the dictatorship has been encouraging light manufacturing, such as of electronics and auto-parts, by establishing ‘special economic zones’ that allow cheap Cambodian labour to be exploited. Most of the manufacturers are Japanese and despite poor infrastructure (such as lack of roads and port facilities), poor production management, poor literacy and numeracy among the workers, corruption and unreliable energy supplies, Cambodian factory production is slowly rising to play a part in Japan’s regional supply chain. In addition, Chinese investment in the construction sector has grown enormously in recent years and Cambodia is experiencing the common problem of development being geared to serve elite commercial interests and tourists rather than the needs (such as affordable housing) of ordinary people or the environment. See ‘China’s construction bubble may leave Cambodia’s next generation without a home’.

Environmentally, Cambodia does little to conserve its natural resources. For example, between 1990 and 2010, Cambodia lost 22% of its forest cover, or nearly 3,000,000 hectares, largely to logging. There is no commitment to gauging environmental impact before construction projects begin and the $US800m Lower Sesan 2 Dam, in the northeast of the country, has been widely accused of being constructed with little thought given to local residents (who will be evicted or lose their livelihood when the dam reservoir fills) or the project’s environmental impact.

Beyond deforestation (through both legal and illegal logging) then, environmental destruction in Cambodia occurs as a result of large scale construction and agricultural projects which destroy important wildlife habitats, but also through massive (legal and illegal) sand mining – see ‘Shifting Sand: How Singapore’s demand for Cambodian sand threatens ecosystems and undermines good governance’ – poaching of endangered and endemic species, with Cambodian businesses and political authorities, as well as foreign criminal syndicates and many transnational corporations from all over the world implicated in the various aspects of this corruptly-approved and executed destruction.

In the words of Cambodian researcher Tay Sovannarun:

‘The government just keeps doing business as usual while the rich cliques keep extracting natural resources and externalizing the cost to the rest of society.’ Moreover, three members of the NGO Mother Nature – Sun Mala, Try Sovikea and Sim Somnang – recently served nearly a year in prison for their efforts to defend the environment and the group was dissolved by the government in September 2017. See ‘Environmental NGO Mother Nature dissolved’.

Cambodian Politics

Politically, Cambodians are largely naïve with most believing that they live in a ‘democracy’ despite the absence of its most obvious hallmarks such as civil and political rights, the separation of powers including an independent judiciary, free and fair elections, the right of assembly and freedom of the press (with the English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily recently closed down along with some radio stations). And this is an accurate assessment of most members of the political leadership of the CNRP as well.

Despite a 30-year record of political manipulation by Hun Sen and the CPP – during which ‘Hun Sen has made it clear that he does not respect the concept of free and fair elections’: see ‘30 Years of Hun Sen: Violence, Repression, and Corruption in Cambodia’ – which has included obvious corruption of elections through vote-rigging but also an outright coup in 1997 and the imprisonment or exile of opposition leaders since then, most Cambodians and their opposition leaders still participate in the charade that they live in a ‘democracy’ which could result in the defeat of Hun Sen and the CPP at a ‘free and fair’ election. Of course, there are exceptions to this naïveté, as a 2014 article written by Mu Sochua, veteran Cambodian politician and former minister of women’s affairs in a Hun Sen government, demonstrates. See ‘Crackdown in Cambodia’.

Moreover, as Sovannarun has noted: most Cambodians ‘still think international pressure is effective in keeping the CPP from disrespecting democratic principles which they have violated up until this day. Right now they wait for US and EU sanctions in the hope that the CPP will step back.’ See, for example, ‘The Birth of a Dictator’. He asks:

‘Even assuming it works, when will Cambodians learn to rely on themselves when the ruling party causes the same troubles again? Are they going to ask for external help like this every time and expect their country to be successfully democratized?’

The problem, Sovannarun argues, is that

‘Cambodians in general do not really understand what democracy is. Their views are very narrow. For them, democracy is just an election. Many news reports refer to people as “voters” but in Khmer, this literally translates as “vote owners” as if people cannot express their rights or power beside voting.’

Fortunately, recent actions by the CPP have led to opposition leaders and some NGOs finally declaring the Hun Sen dictatorship for what it is. See, for example, ‘The Birth of a Dictator’. But for Sovannarun,

‘democratization ended in 1997. The country should be regarded as a dictatorship since then. The party that lost the election in 1993 still controlled the national military, the police and security force, and the public administration, eventually using military force to establish absolute control in 1997. How is Cambodia still a democracy?’

However, recent comprehensive research undertaken by Global Witness goes even further. Their report Hostile Takeover ‘sheds light on a huge network of secret deal-making and corruption that has underpinned Hun Sen’s 30-year dictatorial reign of murder, torture and the imprisonment of his political opponents’. See ‘Hostile Takeover: The corporate empire of Cambodia’s ruling family’ and ‘Probe: Companies Worth $200M Linked to Cambodian PM’s Family’.

So what are the prospects of liberating Cambodia from its dictatorship?

Mu Sochua after her verdict by Court on 4 August 2009. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

To begin, there is little evidence to suggest that leadership for any movement to do so will come from within formal political ranks. Following the court-ordered dissolution of the CNRP on 16 November 2017 – see ‘Cambodia top court dissolves main opposition CNRP party’ – at the behest of Hun Sen, ‘half of their 55 members of parliament fled the country’. And this dissolution was preceded by actions that had effectively neutralized the opposition, with two dozen opposition members (including CNRP leader Kem Sokha) and critics imprisoned in the past year alone, as reported above, and the rapid flight of Opposition Deputy President Mu Sochua on 3 October after allegedly being notified by a senior official that her arrest was imminent. See ‘Breaking: CNRP’s Mu Sochua flees country following “warning” of arrest’. But while Mu Sochua called for a protest gathering after she had fled, understandably, nobody dared to protest: ‘Who dares to protest if their leader runs for their life?’ Sovannarun asks.

Of course, civil society leadership is fraught with danger too. Prominent political commentator and activist Kem Ley, known for his trenchant criticism of the Hun Sen dictatorship, was assassinated on 10 July 2016 in Phnom Penh. See ‘Shooting Death of Popular Activist Roils Cambodia’ and ‘Q&A With Kem Ley: Transparency on Hun Sen Family’s Business Interests is Vital’. Ley was the third notable activist to be killed following the union leader Chea Vichea in 2004 – see ‘Who Killed Chea Vichea?’ – and environmental activist Wutty Chut in 2012. See ‘Cambodian Environmental Activist Is Slain’. But they are not the only activists to suffer this fate.

In addition, plenty of politicians, journalists and activists have been viciously assaulted by the security forces and members of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit – see, for example, ‘Dragged and Beaten: The Cambodian Government’s Role in the October 2015 Attack on Opposition Politicians’ – and/or imprisoned by the dictatorship. See ‘Cambodia: Quash Case Against 11 Opposition Activists: No Legal Basis for Trumped-Up Charges, Convictions, and Long Sentences’. In fact, Radio Free Asia keeps a record of ‘Cambodian Opposition Politicians and Activists Behind Bars’ for activities that the dictatorship does not like, including defending human rights, land rights and the natural environment.

Moreover, in anotherrecent measure of the blatant brutality of the dictatorship, Hun Sen publicly suggested that opposition politicians Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha ‘would already be dead’ had he known they were promising to ‘organise a new government’ in the aftermath of the highly disputed 2013 national election result. See ‘Rainsy and Sokha “would already be dead”: PM’. He also used a government-produced video to link the CNRP with US groups in fomenting a ‘colour revolution’ in Cambodia. See ‘Government ups plot accusations with new video linking CNRP and US groups to “colour revolutions”’.

In one response to Hun Sen’s ‘would already be dead’ statement, British human rights lawyer Richard Rogers, who had filed a complaint asking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Cambodian ruling elite for widespread human rights violations in 2014, commented that it was simply more evidence of the government’s willingness to persecute political dissidents. ‘It shows that he is willing to order the murder of his own people if they challenge his rule’. Moreover: ‘These are not the words of a modern leader who claims to lead a democracy.’ See ‘Rainsy and Sokha “would already be dead”: PM’. Whether Hun Sen is even sane is a question that no-one asks.

So what can Cambodians do? Fortunately, there is a long history of repressive regimes being overthrown by nonviolent grassroots movements. And nonviolent action has proven powerfully effective in Cambodia as the Buddhist monk Maha Gosananda, and his supporters demonstrated on their 19-day peace walk from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh through war ravaged Khmer Rouge territory in Cambodia in May 1993, defying the expectations of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) coordinators at the time that they would be killed by the Khmer Rouge. See ‘Maha Gosananda, a true peace maker’. However, for the Hun Sen dictatorship to be removed, Cambodians will be well served by a thoughtful and comprehensive strategy that takes particular account of their unique circumstances.

A framework to plan and implement a strategy to remove the dictatorship is explained in Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy with Sovannarun’s Khmer translation of this strategy here.

This strategic framework explains what is necessary to remove the dictatorship and, among consideration of many vital issues, elaborates what is necessary to maintain strategic coordination when leaders are at high risk of assassination, minimize the risk of violent repression while also ensuring that the movement is not hijacked by government or foreign provocateurs whose purpose is to subvert the movement by destroying its nonviolent character – see, for example, ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’ – as well as deal with foreign governments (such as those of China, the European Union, Japan and the USA) who (categorically or by inaction) support the dictatorship, sometimes by supplying military weapons suitable for use against the domestic population.

Sovannarun is not optimistic about the short-term prospects for his country: Too many mistakes have been repeated too often. But he is committed to the nonviolent struggle to liberate Cambodia from its dictatorship and recognizes that the corrupt electoral process cannot restore democracy or enable Cambodians to meaningfully address the vast range of social, political, economic and environmental challenges they face.

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

Featured image is from The Cambodia Daily.

A long-standing French protectorate briefly occupied by Japan during World War II, Cambodia became independent in 1953 as the French finally withdrew from Indochina. Under the leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia remained officially neutral, including during the subsequent US war on Indochina. However, by the mid-1960s, parts of the eastern provinces of Cambodia were bases for North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front (NVA/NLF) forces operating against South Vietnam and this resulted in nearly a decade of bombing by the United States from 4 October 1965. See ‘Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War’.

In 1970 Sihanouk was ousted in a US-supported coup led by General Lon Nol. See ‘A Special Supplement: Cambodia’. The following few years were characterized by an internal power struggle between Cambodian elites and war involving several foreign countries, but particularly including continuation of the recently commenced ‘carpet bombing’ of Cambodia by the US Air Force.

On 17 April 1975 the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia. Following four years of ruthless rule by the Chinese-supported Khmer Rouge, initially under Pol Pot, they were defeated by the Vietnamese army in 1979 and the Vietnamese occupation authorities established the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), installing Heng Samrin and other pro-Vietnamese Communist politicians as leaders of the new government. Heng was succeeded by Chan Sy as Prime Minister in 1981.

Following the death of Chan Sy, Hun Sen became Prime Minister of Cambodia in 1985 and, despite a facade of democracy, he and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have been in power ever since. This period has notably included using the army to purge a feared rival in a bloody coup conducted in 1997. Hun Sen’s co-Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was ousted and fled to Paris while his supporters were arrested, tortured and some were summarily executed.

The current main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was founded in 2012 by merging the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party. Emblematic of Cambodia’s ‘democratic’ status, more than two dozen opposition members and critics have been locked up in the past year alone and the CNRP leader, Kem Sokha, known for his nonviolent, politically tolerant views, is currently imprisoned at a detention centre in Tboung Khmum Province following his arrest on 3 September 2017 under allegations of treason, espionage and for orchestrating anti-government demonstrations in 2013-2014. These demonstrations were triggered by widespread allegations of electoral fraud during the Cambodian general election of 2013. See ‘Sokha arrested for “treason”, is accused of colluding with US to topple the government’.

On 16 November 2017 the CNRP was dissolved by Cambodia’s highest court and 118 of its members, including Sokha and exiled former leader Sam Rainsy, were banned from politics for five years.

Cambodian Society

Socially, Cambodia is primarily Khmer with ethnic populations of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham, Thai and Lao. It has a population of 16 million people. The pre-eminent religion is Buddhism. The adult literacy rate is 75%; few Cambodians speak a European language limiting access to western literature. Most students complete 12 years of (low quality public) school but tertiary enrollment is limited. As in all countries, education (reinforced by state propaganda through the media) serves to intimidate and indoctrinate students into obedience of elites. Discussion of national politics in a school class is taboo and such discussions are rare at tertiary level. This manifests in the narrow range of concerns that mobilize student action: personal outcomes such as employment opportunities. Issues such as those in relation to peace, the environment and refugees do not have a significant profile. In short, the student population generally is neither well informed nor politically engaged.

However, many other issues engage at least some Cambodians, with demonstrations, strikes and street blockades being popular tactics, although the lack of strategy means that outcomes are usually limited and, despite commendable nonviolent discipline in many cases, violent repression is not effectively resisted. Issues of concern to workers, particularly low wages in a country with no minimum wage law, galvanize some response. See, for example, ‘Protests, Strikes Continue in Cambodia: Though their occupations differ, Cambodian workers are united in their push for a living wage’. Garment workers are a significant force because their sector is important to the national economy. Land grabbing and lack of housing mobilize many people but usually fail to attract support beyond those effected. See, for example, ‘Housing Activists Clash With Police in Street Protest’. Environmental issues, such as deforestation and natural resource depletion, fail to mobilize the support they need to be effective.

Protests, strikes continue in Cambodia (Source: @ASCorrespondent/Twitter)

Having noted that, however, Cambodian activists require enormous courage to take nonviolent action as the possibility of violent state repression in response to popular mobilization is a real one, as illustrated above and documented in the Amnesty International report ‘Taking to the streets: Freedom of peaceful assembly in Cambodia’ from 2015.

Perhaps understandably, given their circumstances, international issues, such as events in the Middle East, North Korea and the plight of the Rohingya in neighbouring Myanmar are beyond the concern of most Cambodians.

Economically, Cambodians produce traditional goods for small local households with industrial production remaining low in a country that is still industrializing. Building on agriculture (especially rice), tourism and particularly the garment industry, which provided the basis for the Cambodian export sector in recent decades, the dictatorship has been encouraging light manufacturing, such as of electronics and auto-parts, by establishing ‘special economic zones’ that allow cheap Cambodian labour to be exploited. Most of the manufacturers are Japanese and despite poor infrastructure (such as lack of roads and port facilities), poor production management, poor literacy and numeracy among the workers, corruption and unreliable energy supplies, Cambodian factory production is slowly rising to play a part in Japan’s regional supply chain. In addition, Chinese investment in the construction sector has grown enormously in recent years and Cambodia is experiencing the common problem of development being geared to serve elite commercial interests and tourists rather than the needs (such as affordable housing) of ordinary people or the environment. See ‘China’s construction bubble may leave Cambodia’s next generation without a home’.

Environmentally, Cambodia does little to conserve its natural resources. For example, between 1990 and 2010, Cambodia lost 22% of its forest cover, or nearly 3,000,000 hectares, largely to logging. There is no commitment to gauging environmental impact before construction projects begin and the $US800m Lower Sesan 2 Dam, in the northeast of the country, has been widely accused of being constructed with little thought given to local residents (who will be evicted or lose their livelihood when the dam reservoir fills) or the project’s environmental impact.

Beyond deforestation (through both legal and illegal logging) then, environmental destruction in Cambodia occurs as a result of large scale construction and agricultural projects which destroy important wildlife habitats, but also through massive (legal and illegal) sand mining – see ‘Shifting Sand: How Singapore’s demand for Cambodian sand threatens ecosystems and undermines good governance’ – poaching of endangered and endemic species, with Cambodian businesses and political authorities, as well as foreign criminal syndicates and many transnational corporations from all over the world implicated in the various aspects of this corruptly-approved and executed destruction.

In the words of Cambodian researcher Tay Sovannarun:

‘The government just keeps doing business as usual while the rich cliques keep extracting natural resources and externalizing the cost to the rest of society.’ Moreover, three members of the NGO Mother Nature – Sun Mala, Try Sovikea and Sim Somnang – recently served nearly a year in prison for their efforts to defend the environment and the group was dissolved by the government in September 2017. See ‘Environmental NGO Mother Nature dissolved’.

Cambodian Politics

Politically, Cambodians are largely naïve with most believing that they live in a ‘democracy’ despite the absence of its most obvious hallmarks such as civil and political rights, the separation of powers including an independent judiciary, free and fair elections, the right of assembly and freedom of the press (with the English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily recently closed down along with some radio stations). And this is an accurate assessment of most members of the political leadership of the CNRP as well.

Despite a 30-year record of political manipulation by Hun Sen and the CPP – during which ‘Hun Sen has made it clear that he does not respect the concept of free and fair elections’: see ‘30 Years of Hun Sen: Violence, Repression, and Corruption in Cambodia’ – which has included obvious corruption of elections through vote-rigging but also an outright coup in 1997 and the imprisonment or exile of opposition leaders since then, most Cambodians and their opposition leaders still participate in the charade that they live in a ‘democracy’ which could result in the defeat of Hun Sen and the CPP at a ‘free and fair’ election. Of course, there are exceptions to this naïveté, as a 2014 article written by Mu Sochua, veteran Cambodian politician and former minister of women’s affairs in a Hun Sen government, demonstrates. See ‘Crackdown in Cambodia’.

Moreover, as Sovannarun has noted: most Cambodians ‘still think international pressure is effective in keeping the CPP from disrespecting democratic principles which they have violated up until this day. Right now they wait for US and EU sanctions in the hope that the CPP will step back.’ See, for example, ‘The Birth of a Dictator’. He asks:

‘Even assuming it works, when will Cambodians learn to rely on themselves when the ruling party causes the same troubles again? Are they going to ask for external help like this every time and expect their country to be successfully democratized?’

The problem, Sovannarun argues, is that

‘Cambodians in general do not really understand what democracy is. Their views are very narrow. For them, democracy is just an election. Many news reports refer to people as “voters” but in Khmer, this literally translates as “vote owners” as if people cannot express their rights or power beside voting.’

Fortunately, recent actions by the CPP have led to opposition leaders and some NGOs finally declaring the Hun Sen dictatorship for what it is. See, for example, ‘The Birth of a Dictator’. But for Sovannarun,

‘democratization ended in 1997. The country should be regarded as a dictatorship since then. The party that lost the election in 1993 still controlled the national military, the police and security force, and the public administration, eventually using military force to establish absolute control in 1997. How is Cambodia still a democracy?’

However, recent comprehensive research undertaken by Global Witness goes even further. Their report Hostile Takeover ‘sheds light on a huge network of secret deal-making and corruption that has underpinned Hun Sen’s 30-year dictatorial reign of murder, torture and the imprisonment of his political opponents’. See ‘Hostile Takeover: The corporate empire of Cambodia’s ruling family’ and ‘Probe: Companies Worth $200M Linked to Cambodian PM’s Family’.

So what are the prospects of liberating Cambodia from its dictatorship?

Mu Sochua after her verdict by Court on 4 August 2009. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

To begin, there is little evidence to suggest that leadership for any movement to do so will come from within formal political ranks. Following the court-ordered dissolution of the CNRP on 16 November 2017 – see ‘Cambodia top court dissolves main opposition CNRP party’ – at the behest of Hun Sen, ‘half of their 55 members of parliament fled the country’. And this dissolution was preceded by actions that had effectively neutralized the opposition, with two dozen opposition members (including CNRP leader Kem Sokha) and critics imprisoned in the past year alone, as reported above, and the rapid flight of Opposition Deputy President Mu Sochua on 3 October after allegedly being notified by a senior official that her arrest was imminent. See ‘Breaking: CNRP’s Mu Sochua flees country following “warning” of arrest’. But while Mu Sochua called for a protest gathering after she had fled, understandably, nobody dared to protest: ‘Who dares to protest if their leader runs for their life?’ Sovannarun asks.

Of course, civil society leadership is fraught with danger too. Prominent political commentator and activist Kem Ley, known for his trenchant criticism of the Hun Sen dictatorship, was assassinated on 10 July 2016 in Phnom Penh. See ‘Shooting Death of Popular Activist Roils Cambodia’ and ‘Q&A With Kem Ley: Transparency on Hun Sen Family’s Business Interests is Vital’. Ley was the third notable activist to be killed following the union leader Chea Vichea in 2004 – see ‘Who Killed Chea Vichea?’ – and environmental activist Wutty Chut in 2012. See ‘Cambodian Environmental Activist Is Slain’. But they are not the only activists to suffer this fate.

In addition, plenty of politicians, journalists and activists have been viciously assaulted by the security forces and members of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit – see, for example, ‘Dragged and Beaten: The Cambodian Government’s Role in the October 2015 Attack on Opposition Politicians’ – and/or imprisoned by the dictatorship. See ‘Cambodia: Quash Case Against 11 Opposition Activists: No Legal Basis for Trumped-Up Charges, Convictions, and Long Sentences’. In fact, Radio Free Asia keeps a record of ‘Cambodian Opposition Politicians and Activists Behind Bars’ for activities that the dictatorship does not like, including defending human rights, land rights and the natural environment.

Moreover, in anotherrecent measure of the blatant brutality of the dictatorship, Hun Sen publicly suggested that opposition politicians Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha ‘would already be dead’ had he known they were promising to ‘organise a new government’ in the aftermath of the highly disputed 2013 national election result. See ‘Rainsy and Sokha “would already be dead”: PM’. He also used a government-produced video to link the CNRP with US groups in fomenting a ‘colour revolution’ in Cambodia. See ‘Government ups plot accusations with new video linking CNRP and US groups to “colour revolutions”’.

In one response to Hun Sen’s ‘would already be dead’ statement, British human rights lawyer Richard Rogers, who had filed a complaint asking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Cambodian ruling elite for widespread human rights violations in 2014, commented that it was simply more evidence of the government’s willingness to persecute political dissidents. ‘It shows that he is willing to order the murder of his own people if they challenge his rule’. Moreover: ‘These are not the words of a modern leader who claims to lead a democracy.’ See ‘Rainsy and Sokha “would already be dead”: PM’. Whether Hun Sen is even sane is a question that no-one asks.

So what can Cambodians do? Fortunately, there is a long history of repressive regimes being overthrown by nonviolent grassroots movements. And nonviolent action has proven powerfully effective in Cambodia as the Buddhist monk Maha Gosananda, and his supporters demonstrated on their 19-day peace walk from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh through war ravaged Khmer Rouge territory in Cambodia in May 1993, defying the expectations of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) coordinators at the time that they would be killed by the Khmer Rouge. See ‘Maha Gosananda, a true peace maker’. However, for the Hun Sen dictatorship to be removed, Cambodians will be well served by a thoughtful and comprehensive strategy that takes particular account of their unique circumstances.

A framework to plan and implement a strategy to remove the dictatorship is explained in Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy with Sovannarun’s Khmer translation of this strategy here.

This strategic framework explains what is necessary to remove the dictatorship and, among consideration of many vital issues, elaborates what is necessary to maintain strategic coordination when leaders are at high risk of assassination, minimize the risk of violent repression while also ensuring that the movement is not hijacked by government or foreign provocateurs whose purpose is to subvert the movement by destroying its nonviolent character – see, for example, ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’ – as well as deal with foreign governments (such as those of China, the European Union, Japan and the USA) who (categorically or by inaction) support the dictatorship, sometimes by supplying military weapons suitable for use against the domestic population.

Sovannarun is not optimistic about the short-term prospects for his country: Too many mistakes have been repeated too often. But he is committed to the nonviolent struggle to liberate Cambodia from its dictatorship and recognizes that the corrupt electoral process cannot restore democracy or enable Cambodians to meaningfully address the vast range of social, political, economic and environmental challenges they face.

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

Featured image is from The Cambodia Daily.

Featured image: Las Bambas is potentially the second largest mine in the world in terms of copper production. Despite the opposition of communities, the project continues under construction by the MMG company supported by the Peruvian state. (Source: Environmental Justice Atlas)

Mining conflicts are not uncommon in Latin America, but the Andes now resembles a war zone. In Peru – the world’s number-two producer of copper, zinc and silver – many peasant groups are revolting. Mining accounts for 12 percent of Peru’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 57 percent of its exports. As it’s mining export grows, so does it’s number of mining conflicts.

Clashes between demonstrators and the authorities between 2015 and 2016 left four dead following the opening of the Las Bambas mine – owned by Chinese companies – displaced thousands of people.

But Peru is just one hotspot. A recent study ‘did the math’ on the link between growth in mining exports and growth in environmental conflicts across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

So-called externalities

The correlation is almost perfect, thereby debunking the carefully crafted myths around new and better corporate social responsibility and sustainable mining. The study was based on Environmental Justice Atlas data from 244 environmental conflicts.

The El Cerrejon mine in Colombia is also one of them. The Colombian Government left the structure completely in the hands of foreign capital – not only with regards to its administrative, structural and financial aspects, but also including rights on all the territory that such exploitation embraced.

Entire populations of indigenous peoples and farmers were forcibly displaced. Polluting the only available water sources was just part of a strategy to make the remaining communities move away when investors wanted to expand the mine. With billions of dollars at stake, anything goes.

What happens in the Andes is related to what happens elsewhere. The last half century has been marked strongly by what economists call ‘the theory of comparative advantage’. This proposes that local communities specialise is a limited number of commodities which they can then trade globally.

But when this model is taken to extremes, the so-called externalities – costs to society not recorded on the company balance sheet – bite back.  

Defending the environment

Digging in Andean countries went ballistic in the 1970-2012 period: from 336 mega tonnes to 1,145 mega tonnes. Digging is the appropriate name for this frenzy, as the extraction shifted from biotic to abiotic material.

We’re talking about fossil fuels, building materials and metal ores such as copper and gold. To put it in terms of domestic extraction per square kilometre: the numbers went from 72 to 244 tons/km2.

Exports have grown even faster, at an annual average growth of 5.4 percent. Both the shift from living to death material and the rise in absolute numbers increased environmental pressures on the affected territories in unprecedented ways.

The scale of the digging frenzy is such that the traditional productive and cultural dynamics of a fast increasing number of communities was disrupted, thus paving the way for a range of new environmental conflicts to arise.

There is evidence from a range of sources that in the Andean countries the quantity of social conflicts involving civil society groups defending the environment and human rights increased during the last four decades.

Conflicting values

The Environmental Justice Atlas data shows that for the Andean countries, only 28 environmental conflicts started before 1990, 45 started in the 1990s and a distressing 171 started since the turn of the millennium.

When these conflicts are looked at in greater detail, most new conflicts are also related to metal mining and fossil fuel extraction, and also to commodities such as hydropower and oil palm plantations, all of them forms of extraction that grew fast.

The maths behind this study offers non-ideological arguments against the “extractivist” economic model – whether it is fuelled by neoliberal ideologues (as in Colombia and Peru) or nationalist-populist ones (as in Ecuador and Bolivia).

More often than not, the new battle lines or commodity frontiers are in territories with indigenous populations. These populations find themselves on the frontlines of a global resources war. However, there’s also another way to look at this trend.

Some academics now argue that these ecological distribution conflicts have an important role for sustainability, because they relentlessly bring to light conflicting values over the environment.

Environmental justice movements, born out of such conflicts – so goes their argument – become key actors in politicising unsustainable resource uses. As the authors of this study points out: “They can turn from ‘victims’ of environmental injustices into ‘warriors’ for sustainability.”

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Mario Pérez-Rincón is researcher at Universidad del Valle – Instituto CINARA, Cali, Colombia. [email protected]. 

Nick Meynen works for the European Environmental Bureau, Brussels, Belgium.[email protected]

This article is based on two recent papers published in Sustainability Science:“Trends in social metabolism and environmental conflicts in four Andean countries from 1970 to 2013” (With Mario Pérez-Rincón as lead author) and “Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability: an overview and conceptual framework”.

According to Sami Karimi in this timely analysis of Iran’s 1979 Revolution, the US and its European allies favored the creation of an Islamic State headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader, with a view to undermining Iran’s leftist-progressive revolutionary movement.  

According to Karimi: “The US with the support of France, Britain and Germany struck a deal regarding Khomeini at the Guadeloupe Conference [1979]. This three-day summit agreed upon the seating of Khomeini as the leader of Iran.”

Was this a US sponsored “regime change”?

Was Washington intent upon precluding the formation of a secular democratic government in Iran? 

What are the implications regarding the evolution of US-Iran relations? 

Michel Chossudovsky, GR Editor,  January 10, 2018

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The US-Iran’s apparent war of words is making headlines across the world. Iran’s nuclear program, uranium enrichment, oil, economic sanctions and political conflicts with the US that have been amplified by the mainstream media. Moreover, several observers have put Iran in the same category as North Korea when it comes to identifying US’s adversaries. 

Ayatollah Khomeini, the former spiritual leader of Iran who founded the Revolutionary Regime, returned to Tehran from exile in France on 1 February 1979, two weeks after the former US-backed King Mohammad Reza Shah fled the country. According to local reports, the US with the support of France, Britain and Germany struck a deal regarding Khomeini at the Guadeloupe Conference. This three-day summit agreed upon the seating of Khomeini as the leader of Iran.

BBC’s findings quoted by the Guardian in June 2016 suggests that Carter administration paved the way for Khomeini to return to Iran and take the power from former King Reza Shah. Two former White House advisers to Jimmy Carter, speaking to the Guardian, did not question the authenticity of the documents.

Screenshot of Guardian article

As reported by the BBC, Ayatollah Khomeini, in January 1979, secretly sought Carter’s assistance in overcoming opposition from Iran’s military, still loyal to the Shah. Khomeini promised that if he could return to Iran from exile in France, which the United States could facilitate, he would prevent a civil war, and his regime would not be hostile to Washington.

 

Scan of BBC Report, June 3, 2016

Even though Reza Shah remained an ally of the US, the anti-Government uprisings and social mobilizations against the Shah incited  the US to push Khomeini into power. Destitution, unemployment and despotism under the Shah’s regime caused a stir across the nation which took to streets en masse, demanding  regime change. The revolts spearheaded by left wing and progressive movements awakened people throughout Iran with a view to toppling the Shah’s regime.

The US and its allies perceived their interests “in great danger” with the likely ascendance of leftists to power. And there wasn’t any suitable option other than substituting the Government of Shah Reza for a fundamentalist regime headed by Khomeini. The US’s intervention in Iran’s regime change in 1979 was bolstered by some reasons including barring leftists and revolutionaries from capturing power, viability of oil export, combating Soviet advancement and avoiding fragmentation of the Iranian Army.

The shift in power occurred with the Shah being compelled to step down. The West was cognizant that Khomeini as a charismatic religious leader could exploit the feelings of its citizens and turn the public mindset away from the revolutionary process.

Even today, the UDS-NATO warmongers have employed religion as the most sustainable and dominant instrument in arresting and orienting the minds of entire nations.

After it held power, Ayatollah Khomeini delivered anti-Western words in demagoguery speeches to his nation. He didn’t spare any ferocious punishment and shortly ordered the round-up and execution of thousands of revolutionaries and opponents. The US and Khomeini colluded over keeping their relations in dark.

The 1980 a CIA study says that

“in November 1963 Ayatollah Khomeini sent a message to the US Government through [Tehran University professor] Haj Mirza Khalil Kamarei”, in which he explained “that he was not opposed to American interests in Iran” and that “on the contrary, he thought the American presence was necessary as a counterbalance to Soviet and possibly British influence”.

But Iranian leaders have vehemently denied that Khomeini ever sent such a message.

Screenshot of secret document, June 2016 Guardian article

Khomeini’s representative on secret talks with the West, Ibrahim Yazdi wrote about the shadow contacts and discussions in his memoir on the threshold of transition of power from Shah to Khomeini. He noted about his first visit with the US State Department’s representative Warne Zimmerman in January 1979.

The captivity of the Tehran-based US embassy’s staff members was a ploy for Khomeini’s Islamic regime to solidify its apparent anti-Western posture in the eyes of Iranians. But years later, the first president of Khomeini’s regime Abu Al-Hassan Bani Sadr spilled the beans and disclosed that “hostage-taking was designed in the US and implemented in Iran”.

Flash Forward to 2018: Now think twice. If Iran were really  a “nemesis” (longstanding rival) of the West as heralded by the media, then how is it that Tehran’s Islamic Regime could go so far to the brink of becoming a nuclear power under the watchful eyes of the US. It would have encountered the same fire and fury as North Korea. For the US, Iran has become an easy prey to predate just like Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya in early decades.

Iran benefits from a free hand in Afghanistan to capitalize on its cultural, linguistic and intelligence influence which has seen no resistance by the US forces there. Afghanistan recently inked a landmark trilateral transit deal with India and Iran in an unexpectedly brief time that was totally unimaginable without US consent. Yet, a Russian or Chinese deal of this scale and kind with Afghanistan is intolerable for the US.

It is crystal clear that Iran is indirectly entangled in several Middle East wars (Syria, Yemen) and spends a sizable portion of its revenues on it. The citizens of Iran feel restrained and fed up not only with the Islamic Regime’s outpouring of revenues into conflict zones, but also the muzzling of freedom of speech and imprisoning of political activists. Iran’s Revolutionary Regime has planted secret agents in the ranks of resistance movements to cause disarray in their activities.

The claims that the US would stand for Saudi Arabia against Iran’s aggression do not signify that the US would unconditionally protect Riyadh.  This US-Saudi Arabia relationship at its core is based on a simple bargain: Saudi Arabia receives a US security guarantee in exchange for ensuring the stability of global oil prices. In exchange for US protection, Saudi Arabia has reliably exploited its status as the swing producer of oil to stabilize the price of this commodity, which is so critical to the global and the US economy.

Is the US striking a balance in its relations with regional states?

Many observers have pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s share of world oil production is steadily decreasing at the same time as the US is tapping into new energy sources, suggesting that Saudi leverage is declining.

Every US relationship in the region will necessarily be transactional rather than strategic — regardless of the rhetoric that all sides may employ about historic ties and enduring friendship.

to Read Part I of this essay click link below

The US Persistently Seeks to Destabilize Iran. Why is Washington So Deeply Concerned about Tehran’s Regional Influence in the Middle East?

By Farhad Shahabi, November 16, 2017

The United States’ persistent effort to destabilize Iran did not begin with Trump’s presidency in January 2017. Rather, it has begun since the 1979 anti-imperialist Islamic Revolution in Iran. Therefore, in late 1970s and early 1980s, deeply concerned with the developments in Iran and its impact on the US-dominated Islamic region of the Middle East, numerous serious studies, think tanks and projects in the US aimed to derail and crush the Iranian revolution.

These US projects targeted the newly fledged revolution with economic sanctions, incitement to lawlessness, violence and crime, military coups and heavily violent terrorist attacks. They even went to the extent of waging war against Iran and occupying the country, as Saddam Hussein did, in September 1980 and most recently, the US incitement to violence at the peaceful protests in Iran, last week. Prominent amongst these studies and plans, were the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) both conceived by the Neo-Conservatives (Neocons) circles in the US.

Examination of these projects clearly highlights the US’ hegemonic and destabilizing agenda in the Middle East and provides a better appreciation of Iran’s outstanding role in the region, and why the US is so deeply concerned about Iran’s regional influence.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

In the post-Cold War era of 1990s, with the disappearance of the Communist Eastern-bloc as the claimed justification for the huge US military machine operation and expenditures, a new enemy had to be identified.  Russia was substantially weakened militarily and economically after the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), and China did not pose an immediate danger to the US hegemony.

The demise of the Soviet Union unhinged the US’ hegemonic dreams and unbridled aggression.  In this context, in a most sensitive region in the world, the Middle East, the anti-imperialist Iran having demonstrated its ability for almost two decades to defend its rights and independence in the face of continuous US attacks and conspiracies, and enjoying a fair level of regional influence and high potential to effectively challenge the US-Israel’s unlawful and hostile acts in the region, became the obvious choice of a new ‘enemy’.

To that end, PNAC, a think tank, with strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute, was founded in 1997, by William Kristol, the founder of the Neo-Conservative ideology and a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel; and Robert Kagan, a strong advocate of American hegemony and amongst the instigators of the US military action against and regime-change in Iraq.

The Project aimed to promote total American global leadership. PNAC’s policy document openly advocated for American global military domination. The project aimed to establish “Pax Americana” across the globe -a global American empire, through violent and unsurpassable military might. Included among the key points in the PNAC’s defense strategy document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” were the following:

“Need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons” aimed at the “development of safer and more effective nuclear weapons” -in other words, the development of a more usable generation of nuclear weapons; Redirecting the U.S. Air Force to move “toward a global first strike force” -projecting unrestrained and aggressive U.S. power globally; “North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or similar states should not be allowed to undermine American leadership”. “Similar states” clearly meant any state or coalition of states who dare challenge “American leadership”, whether situated in Asia, as in the case of North Korea, Iran and Iraq, or located in Europe, Africa, or Latin America.

In early 2000’s, with George W. Bush Administration in office, the US attempted to push ahead with the implementation of the PNAC. The “rogue states” -also labeled by Bush as the “Axis of Evil”-  comprising Iran, Iraq and North Korea, were to be the main targets. Based on plausible evidence, it is argued that the 9/11, 2001, Saudi-originated, al-Qaeda-executed terrorist attacks, that shook the US by their violent impact, was the Neocons’ crucial opening-measure to trigger the Project for the New American Century into action, in an unrestrained fashion.  In any case, the event certainly provided the Neocons with a historic opportunity to unleash their force against the gathering tide of Islamic anti-imperialist resistance against the Zio-American ruthless hegemonic designs for the Middle East.

Thus, soon after the 9/11 attacks, there followed a surge in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) lobbying for war against Iran and Iraq. To that end, the US president, George W Bush, declared his oft repeated “war on terror” directed mainly at Iran and Iraq -in spite of the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks had Saudi-Arabian nationality, two were from United Arab Emirates, and the other two were from Egypt and Lebanon; all were members of al-Qaeda, a Saudi-originated Wahhabi terrorist group; and none were from Iran, Iraq or North Korea, i.e., none were from President Bush’s designated “Axis of Evil”or “rogue states”.

So, the US choosing not to hunt for the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, -Saudi Arabia and its collaborators- one is bound to conclude that the 9/11 event was indeed a Neocons’ making “to trigger the Project for the New American Century into action, in an unrestrained fashion”, as mentioned above. Thus clearly in that vein, Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the US and a collaborator in the highly criminal 9/11 Neocons conspiracy, should not have been and was not pursued.

In all likelihood, the attacks was planned by the Neocons in the US inner state in collaboration with the Saudis at some level, using Saudi and other nationals as executors of the plans.  That is exactly why they had not allowed the release of some crucial pages of the 9/11 inquiry for 13 years.  The declassified but still redacted 28 pages showed evidence that some of the perpetrators were in contact with Saudi government officials, and it is said that the US did not release the documents not to jeopardize relations with its important ally.

Iran was the number one target on US-Israeli project’s priority list. However, Iran’s defensive capabilities, based on Pentagon’s own war games, acted as the deterrent. It may also be argued that, with the nationally popular and internationally respected government of President Mohammed Khatami –the founder of the Dialogue Among Civilizations- in power in Tehran, an attack by the US, at that time, would have politically backfired on the Bush Administration.  Certainly, however, with an assessment of the arrogant US behavior, Iran’s defensive capabilities have been the primary, and one could say the only factor, mitigating against any military attack.

Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a completely different scenario. Iraq had already been disarmed, by the United Nation, of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass-destruction, illegally provided to it by the West in the (1980-1988) war against Iran. Also, based on the eight years of the war against Iran, and Iraq’s fatal blunder in invading Kuwait (1990) which was followed by the US led military attack in 1991 and subsequent 12 years of UN inspections, draconian sanctions, massive bombardments and near total disarming, the US knew everything about the Iraqi army, its devastated, almost non-existent capabilities and its many weaknesses. Hence, as compared to Iran, Iraq presented itself as a much more feasible/do-able US military target.

Therefore, in March 2003, in grave violation of international law, based purely on AIPAC/Neocons’ fabricated pretexts and lies –i.e., Iraq’s support for Al-Qaeda terrorism and hidden WMD- and in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution, Iraq was militarily attacked and occupied. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis lost their lives as a result of the US/UK led sanctions and continued bombardment of Iraq’s vital infrastructure since 1991, and the US coalition’s subsequent invasion and occupation of the country, in 2003.

Although Iran was not attacked at that stage, the US-dominated Iraq and its long borders with Iran, would have provided the ideal opportunity to carry out terrorist and other destabilizing attacks against Iran to eventually bring it back under the US control. However, mainly as a result of Iran’s deep historical ties and regional influence, the post-Saddam developments in Iraq and in the region as a whole, have not fully gone in accordance with the PNAC plan.

The US-Israel-Saudi attempts at tearing up JCPOA (Iran-P5+1 nuclear agreement) with the aim of isolating Iran internationally has backfired.  The US and Israel are now facing a degree of international isolation they have not faced before, as evident by the international community’s outright stance in support of the firm legal status of the nuclear agreement in international law and the recent outstandingly high voting figures in the UN against the ill-intended US   decision to move its Embassy to Israeli occupied Jerusalem. Their terror plots against Iran, through the most violent Wahhabi-IS terrorist groups, manufactured and supported by the US and its allies, have been foiled and the IS’ fake Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has itself been finally militarily crushed recently, by the region’s Axis of Resistance, led by Commander Soleimani of Iran, in alliance with Russia. Though, as expected, the US is reorganizing the remnants of the IS forces and other extremist groups into new combat units for continued acts of aggression and terrorism in the Middle East and beyond.

These and other important regional set-backs have led to Zio-Neocons’ rage and frustration. Most noticeable is the US-Israel-Saudi’s increasingly frenzied actions all intended, in one way or another, to threaten, destabilize and destroy states and peoples resisting the ever-expanding US domination in the Middle East.  These actions, in line with the PNAC’s agenda, have included:

Strengthening of the illegal and the inhumane blockade of food, medicine and other living essentials to Yemen, apocalyptically –as assessed by the UN- affecting nearly 20 million Yemenis; imposing an economic blockade on Qatar to force it cut off its political and economic ties with Iran and the Palestinian resistance movements in the region; forcing Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon to read a resignation letter on the Saudi TV, with the intention of wreaking sectarian discord and chaos as a prelude to military attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah; unilaterally renouncing the nuclear deal to isolate and threaten Iran militarily; forming and training the New Syria Army, mostly recruited from Al-Nusrah and IS terrorist groups, at the Syrian Hasakah refugee camp, to fight the Syrian government forces and allies in southern Syria; pressuring the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud  Abbas,  to surrender to Israel’s criminal and expansionist demands or to resign; and most recently, the outrageous, irresponsible, illegal and outright foolish announcement by Trump of his decision to transfer the US Embassy in Israel to occupied Jerusalem, a decision overwhelmingly rejected in the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly.

(to be continued …)

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Farhad Shahabi is a senior specialist in international relations and disarmament in Iran.

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Order Directly from Global Research Publishers

I have just read through the new United States National Security Strategy released by President Trump in December 2017. There have been many comments on it most of them focusing on the hostility in the document towards Russia and China but also some question of what the Strategy is. Well, after reading page after page of delusions, bombast, bragging, bullying, lies, fantasies and deep-seated megalomania, you discover that there is no strategy. They don’t have one. The only use that document has is as irrefutable evidence that the government of the United States is what they like to call a Joint Criminal Enterprise intent on seizing control of the world for its sole interests. Fortunately, they have, apparently, no idea how they are going to achieve that goal except through war, war, and more war, and if that doesn’t work some more war until they collapse from exhaustion, like a mad, rabid dog.

But it’s clear who they are afraid of and so show their weakness. China and Russia make them nervous. And, if I were an adviser to the government of Pakistan, I’d say “watch your back, more trouble is coming.” Other nations that still have a backbone, the usual list, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, the defiant ones, are like an itch they can’t scratch, and the written scowls in this document are meant to make them shake in their boots but only make you laugh. And, oh, for the rest of the world, it’s, “Do what you’re told, make us money, don’t get in the way, and keep your mouth shut, but love us, love us, love us, make sure you love us.”

As Milton said, they want us to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee, and deify their power, to bring us low indeed. For to be weak is to be miserable and we’re meant to be miserable. That’s their intent. It’s so bad that it’s easy to feel that nations can act only contrary to their will just to maintain self-respect. But our nations are not controlled by the mass of the people, instead, by factions and cliques of the class with the money who control the machinery of the governments so we see little of that, acting contrary Washington’s will, that is.

There once was a time when working people were on the move, had confidence in themselves, created their own leaders, their own heroes and heroines, their own philosophy, their own ideas of democracy, of society, of their conditions and how to overturn the old brutality of the capitalist system and establish new conditions favourable to us. But failures and betrayals have sapped the energy, weakened the will, created confusions and illusions, turned sister against brother, wounded the solidarity of our class, and pitted people against people in war after war solely to advance the quest for profit. As Milton asked, ‘How can we overcome this dire calamity, what reinforcement can we gain from hope, resolution from despair’ when we are faced with a society that, having brought its own people to ruin, is now committed to bringing ruin and humiliation to the rest of the world?

But all is not lost and rise we will again. The countries and peoples that resist are the proof before us that the omnipotence of the empire is illusory as all empires, based on power and fear, are. The resurgence of working class parties and movements is a fact. Things are happening. If we can find our way out of the maze they have created around us by dividing us into a thousand self interests, special interests, “identity” interests, gender interests, dividing us by religion, skin colour, accent, level of pay, nationality and ethnicity, and all the other things they use to get us opposed to each other, if we can make working people comprehend their own power once united, to see that anyone who works for a living is the brother and sister of all others who must do the same, then the resistance moves to a more concrete level.

But can the people of the world win over a United States that has the power, with its allies, to dominate the world? When we consider the destructive forces they unleash when they don’t get their way it might seem futile to consider it. But the economic power of the USA is in fast decline, its people are increasingly impoverished and increasingly killing each other, the police are murderous, justice corrupted, the government a debacle, the leadership made up of generally right wing criminals, gangsters, and confidence men, their armed forces both corrupted and motivated by immoral, not moral, purposes and their economic system profits a few on the backs of the many the world over. They themselves must know this.

So one would think that when the President of the United States sits down with his advisors and asks them about these problems and to come up with an American national strategy to resolve them that they would take that task seriously and get together all the best scientists, doctors, sociologists, psychologists, economists, philosophers, poets, and artists, writers and musicians, engineers, trades people, committees of locally chosen working people and, of course military men interested in maintaining a continuum of peace instead of war. But on reading the new Strategy document you find that all these people are missing.

It is so bad that even the organ of the Council of Foreign Relations, the journal, Foreign Affairs, stated that,

“The document, an attempt to turn Trump’s “America First” instincts into a foreign policy doctrine, has failed to align ambitious ends with ways and means; to prioritize among objectives; and to convey actual presidential intent. Those criticisms are well founded. But the flaws don’t just stem from the failures of the Trump administration; they also serve as an extreme reminder of what has gone wrong with the entire endeavor of the NSS—problems that predate the Trump era.

The NSS is supposed to map out a strategy, but over time, the project has devolved into a rhetorical exercise, characterized by grandiose ambitions and laundry lists of priorities. Rather than forcing the U.S. government to engage in serious strategic planning, it has become a case study in the failure to do so.”

The problem for one faction of the American elite speaking through that statement is not that the goal of domination of the world by America is wrong but that the goal is not accompanied by any rational means of achieving that domination. But for us in the larger world affected by American ambition and aggression the problem is not the failure to set out the means to achieve the objective but the injustice, immorality, chauvinism, and brutality inherent in the objective. The reason the United States leadership cannot formulate a strategy is not because they are incompetent but because strategy and objective are intertwined so that the objective is the cause of all the terrible consequences that they promise their citizens their objective is meant to deal with. They want to “make America great” but to do that they have to make things worse. It’s inherent in their logic and so long as the driving force behind all of this is not abandoned, the drive for profit, and replaced with the driving force to provide peoples needs, so long will the world continue to suffer war, poverty, injustice and ecological catastrophe.

The creation of a new world order in which the United States is keeper of the keys has been a consistent objective since post-colonial days. The idea is not a new one. With limited power it set a limited objective; expansion of their control across the western hemisphere and so, the invasion of Canada in 1812-14 which gave them a bloody nose, the ethnic cleansing of the first nations peoples from the eastern seaboard and territories east of the Mississippi River in the 1820’s to 50’s, the seizure of Texas by its agents in 1836, the invasion of Mexico in 1846 and seizure of vast territories it still occupies through a treaty forced out of the Mexicans at the point of their bayonets, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny; this was the road to empire and colonial power they took that only slowed when the United States split itself into two countries that then engaged in a savage war at the conclusion of which the United States defeated and occupied the territories of the Confederate States, and to justify the occupation characterised the international war as a civil war, the now accepted view.

But with their rising economic power based to a large extent not only on its own resources but the exploitation of the resources of the western hemisphere, the war with Spain, seizure of The Philippines and Hawaii, and the bankrupting of Britain, France and Germany and the Ottomans in the First World War, the United States saw its way towards global power and has never abandoned its ambitions even though its achievement meant the misery of its people and all those peoples who had to suffer its actions.

To make America great means to reduce every other nation to its vassal. The very idea is a repudiation of the international law. The Charter of the United Nations, in its preamble states, 

“We the peoples of the United Nations” …that’s how it starts off; not “we the nations or governments” but “we the people” and it states that we are determined,

“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our life-time has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

‘to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

‘to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

‘to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that

‘armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”

Articles 1 and 2 repeat that the purpose of the UN is to achieve friendly relations among nations bases on mutual respect achieved through international cooperation in solving problems and the elimination of the use of threats of force against the territory or political independence of any state. That is the law.

The UN Charter is part of the law of the United States, as with all other member states, and so any national strategy that attempts to achieve American dominance over other nations is not only a violation of international law but of US domestic law as well.

Article 5 provides a mechanism whereby a nation that is in persistent violation of the Principles set out in the Charter may be expelled from the UN by the General Assembly. The problem in this case is that this can only be done on recommendation of the Security Council of which the United States is the dominant power. But the legal argument could be made that since the USA has been in persistent violation of the principles of the Charter since 1945 and since it cannot be judge in its own cause it then the other members of the Security Council have the right, without the United States, to make the recommendation to the General Assembly. It would be interesting to see, if it could ever be taken to that level, whether the United States leadership would try to justify its many wars before that body or just give up the game and continue on its way as the truly rogue state it is. But since they do not allow a nation such as North Korea to defend its position before the Security Council in the face of false allegations made against it in the Security Council, nor allow the North Koreans to question them in the Security Council on the reasons for their hypocrisy, but act as prosecutor, judge and executioner at one and the same time, then I don’t see any reason to give the United States the chance to defend itself. But if they want to hire me as counsel, I would consider it, if they were wiling to plead guilty.

So I will end this with the question whether the people of the United States want to see a national strategy that sets out the ways and means of achieving an ambition of world dominance, or rather a different strategy for a different ambition, the one the rest of the world wants them to have; the ambition to be a nation that adheres to and believes in the founding principles of the United Nations Charter and more, the Principles of the Non Aligned Movement, of sovereignty of nations, mutual trust and respect, rejection of war and a commitment to socio-economic justice and international social solidarity for all the peoples of the world. To ask the question of course provides the answer.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Featured image is from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In early December, Putin was way premature claiming ISIS and other (US-supported) terrorists defeated in Syria. He erred in returning most Russian forces home, believing a small remaining contingent enough to help government and allied forces achieve conflict resolution, along with talks in Astana, Geneva and Sochi. Following Russia’s partial withdrawal,  ISIS is resurgent thanks to US support, recruiting and pouring more of its fighters into Syria.

ISIS-Daesh retook three previously lost towns in southwestern parts of the country. Foreign-supplied heavy weapons made it possible. They recaptured Gharanij in Deir Ezzor province on the Euphrates River’s eastern bank.

Its forces may have been responsible for multiple attempted drone attacks on Russia’s Khmeimim and Tartus Syrian bases – foiled by its air defenses, destroying seven drones, putting six others out of service, capturing them, decoding their data, learning where they were launched.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry,

“(t)he fact that extremists use combat drones (supplied by foreign sources) indicates that the militants have obtained technologies enabling them to stage terrorist attacks with the use of such aircraft in any country.”

Ankara remains a major problem. In December, Erdogan called Assad a “terrorist,” eschewing relations with Damascus, wanting northern Syria annexed to Turkey, his forces operating illegally cross-border.

In cahoots with Washington, Netanyahu made an outrageous accusation, claiming Iran intends sending 100,000 Shia fighters to Syria, not Iranians, under Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command, calling it a “conquest and colonization” plot.

He warned of escalating tensions, leading to resurgent terrorism in the country.

It’s happening, elements created and supported by Washington, Israel and their rogue allies, continuing endless war for regime change.

Reportedly, Trump administration officials will hold talks with their counterparts from NATO and other countries on Syria.

They’re aiming for a post-Assad era under pro-Western puppet rule, Washington objective since initiating conflict in the country.

The Trump administration is now challenging Russian and Iranian objectives, respecting Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and right of its people alone to decide who’ll lead them, free from foreign interference.

Is a clash between both sides inevitable? Russia didn’t intervene against US-supported terrorists in Syria to abandon its ally now.

It dealt Washington’s imperial aims in the country a major body blow, not at all a knockout punch.

US forces occupy part of northern Syria, intending to stay once conflict is resolved. The Trump administration supports an autonomous northern Kurdish region in the country.

A resurgent ISIS is a force to be reckoned with. Will Putin again have to increase Russia’s military presence in Syria to defeat a far from defeated terrorist threat?

As long as Washington, Israel and their rogue allies want endless war and regime change, conflict resolution will remain unattainable.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Featured image: Boeing P-8 Poseidon (Source: Zero Hedge)

On Tuesday, we reported  that the Russian military in Syria thwarted a massive drone attack at the Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval point in the city of Tartus on January 6, intercepting 13 heavily armed UAVs launched by terrorists.

Shortly after, the Russian Ministry of Defense  released new information, noting “strange coincidences” surrounding the terrorist attack: these included a US spy plane spotted in the area, namely a US Navy’s Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft on patrol between the Khmeimim airbase and Tartus naval base in Syria during the time of the attack.

#SYRIA: Security system of the Russian #Khmeimim air base and #Russian Naval CSS point in the city of #Tartus successfully warded off a terrorist attack with massive application of #UAVs through the night of 5th – 6th January, 2018 https://t.co/nHiUrEWonL pic.twitter.com/3EgrFhYeHh

— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) January 8, 2018

While the Russian Ministry of Defense consciously didn’t point any fingers when talking about the January 6 attack, it demonstratively pointed out that the technology used in the attack was telling. Advanced training in engineering in “one of the developed countries” would be necessary to program the principal controllers and bomb-release systems of an aircraft-type combat drone, the Russian statement stressed and added that “not everyone is also able to get exact [attack] coordinates from the space surveillance data.”

“This forces us to take a fresh look at the strange coincidence that, during the attack of UAV terrorists on Russian military facilities in Syria, the Navy reconnaissance aircraft Poseidon was on patrol over the Mediterranean Sea for more than 4 hours at an altitude of 7 thousand meters, between Tartus and Hmeimim.“

The Russian Ministry of Defense also declared that this is the “first time that terrorists massively used unmanned combat aerial vehicles of an aircraft type that were launched from a distance of more than 50 kilometers, and operated using GPS satellite navigation coordinates.”

#СИРИЯ Использование боевиками ударных беспилотных летательных аппаратов самолетного типа свидетельствует о том, что боевикам переданы технологии, позволяющие проводить террористические акты с применением подобных БПЛА в любой стране

— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) January 8, 2018

The statement said the drones “carried explosive devices with foreign detonating fuses,” adding that the “usage of strike aircraft-type drones by terrorists is the evidence that militants have received technologies to carry out terrorist attacks.”

#SYRIA: The fact of using such strike aircraft-type drones by terrorists is the evidence that militants have received technologies to carry out terrorist attacks using such UAVs in any country.

— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) January 8, 2018

Which is why the presence of the Navy Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, a high-tech spy plane with electronic warfare components, in the region during the drone attack, does appear rather suspicious.

The Pentagon countered that while the US was “concerned” over the incident, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway, however, claimed that

“those devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.”

He later also told Sputnik that the US already saw what it called “this type of commercial UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] technology” being used in Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) missions.

Russia has repeatedly warned that US military supplies aimed at supporting “moderate” Syrian militants eventually end up in the hands of terrorists.

Meanwhile, as we noted earlier, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial withdraw of troops from Syria back in December, militants have been eager to gain an edge with swarming high-tech drones that have remarkable long-range capabilities. However, in light of these latest development, the one latent question we -and others are asking in this incident – seem even more pressing: who is supplying the militants with these high-tech, long-range drones, and in  – light of the above – who is supervising their proper deployment?

Israel has published a blacklist of 20 organizations worldwide whose members are banned from entering Israel because of the groups’ support for BDS, the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Yousef Munayyer, director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said in response,

“When Israel, which aims to portray itself to the world as liberal and democratic, blacklists activists dedicated to nonviolent organizing and dissent, it only further exposes itself as a fraud.”

Organizations on the blacklist:

US: American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, National Students for Justice in Palestine, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

Europe: The France Association Palestine Solidarity, BDS France, The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, BDS Italy, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, The Palestine Committee of Norway, Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, BDS Kampagne (BDS Germany)

South America: BDS Chile

Africa: BDS South Africa

Palestinian BDS National Committee

Show Your Opposition to the Israeli Ban on 20 Organizations by Supporting the Gaza Flotilla!

We do get into Israel–directly into their prisons–for challenging the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

We’ve been banned for a long time. Help us continue to expose the effects of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Support efforts to send ships to Gaza in the summer of 2018!

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Featured image is from 2018 Sail to Gaza.

Featured image: Catherine Deneuve

Just one day after the #MeToo movement dominated the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, with the full complicity of the Hollywood celebrity audience and corporate-controlled media, its sexual witch-hunt campaign has received a major rebuff.

In a comment published in the French newspaper Le Monde January 9, entitled “We defend the liberty to inconvenience people, which is indispensable to sexual liberty,” 100 French actresses, intellectuals, and professionals expressed their opposition and hostility to the #MeToo movement, its anti-democratic modus operandi and its attempt to intimidate, silence and destroy its male victims and their careers.

The signatories include well-known French actress Catherine Deneuve, veteran German actress Ingrid Caven, art critic and writer Catherine Millet, and writer and journalist Abnousse Shalmani, as well as numerous visual artists, stage and film performers and writers.

Their document follows hard on the heels of the publication of a column by American critic and novelist Daphne Merkin in the New York Times, one of the main platforms for the #MeToo witch-hunt, expressing major misgivings about the campaign, and conceding that, even within its target demographic, including readers of the NYT, there were numbers of opponents.

The French comment counterposes the crime of rape, to “persistently or clumsily hitting on someone,” and correctly insists that the two are simply not the same. It attacks #MeToo for branding as “traitors” and “accomplices” those who make such a distinction, creating a climate of intimidation, where freedom of speech “is today turning into its opposite.”

Importantly, it emphasises the profoundly anti-democratic nature of the #MeToo movement and its total repudiation of due process and natural justice.

The campaign had led, in the press and social media, to “public denunciations and indictments of people who have been denied the right to reply or to defend themselves, and have been put on the same level as sexual aggressors. This summary justice has already claimed victims, men who have been disciplined in their professional life, forced to resign, etc., when their only fault was to have touched a knee, tried to steal a kiss, spoken of ‘intimate’ things at a professional dinner or sent messages with a sexual connotation to a woman for whom the attraction was not mutual.”

Screen grab from CNN

Far from developing women’s independence, the witch-hunt served “the interests of the worst enemies of sexual liberty, religious extremists, the worst reactionaries …” Its victims have been forced to “beat their breasts and to search, looking back in the deepest recesses of their conscience, for ‘inappropriate behavior’ from 10, 20, or 30 years ago for which they must repent. Public confessions, the incursion of self-appointed prosecutors into private lives—all of this sets up a climate like a totalitarian society.”

The comparisons drawn between the conduct of the #MeToo movement and the actions of repressive regimes, are particularly apt. And the implications are dire: censorship throughout the arts, repression of all forms of opposition to the status quo; and immense damage to sexual relations between women and men.

“The purifying wave seems to know no limit,” the authors write, referring to the current censoring of sexually explicit artworks: a nude by Egon Schiele, a Balthus painting, demands to ban a Roman Polanski retrospective, the postponement of another one on director Jean-Claude Brisseau, attacks on the film Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni and writers being instructed to rewrite their works to conform with the demands of #MeToo.

The depths of absurdity being plumbed by the campaign find consummate expression in the fact that “a draft law in Sweden … wants to require explicitly notified consent for all candidates to a sexual encounter!”

And where will this lead?

“A little bit more, and two adults who want to sleep together will have to first check, via an app on their telephone, a document in which the sexual practices they accept and those they refuse will be duly listed.”

The document boldly defends “the liberty to offend as indispensable to artistic creation,” and the “liberty to inconvenience, which is indispensable to sexual liberty,” explaining that the signatories are sufficiently “experienced” and “clear-sighted” to know “not to confuse being hit on clumsily with being sexually assaulted.”

The authors insist on distancing themselves from “this feminism, which… takes the shape of hatred for men and sexuality. We believe the liberty to say no to a sexual proposition goes along with the liberty to inconvenience. And we believe that one should know how to react to this liberty to inconvenience in other ways than shutting oneself up inside the role of the victim.”

Moreover, they emphasize that humans are not monolithic. “[A] woman, in the same day, can run a professional organization and enjoy being the sexual object of a man, without being a ‘whore’ or a filthy accomplice of the patriarchy. She can make sure her salary is equal to that of a man, but not feel traumatized for life by a groper in the subway, even if groping is considered a crime. She can even see this as the expression of great sexual misery, or simply a non-event.”

The decision of the document’s authors and signatories to take a stand against #MeToo and similar reactionary campaigns is a courageous political act. Predictably, it has been denounced by leading #MeToo figures, including Italian actress Asia Argento, who tweeted Tuesday:

“Deneuve and other women tell the world how their interiorised misogyny has lobotomised them to the point of no return.”

The French statement, however, has also been praised and widely shared on social media.

Disqus comments to entertainment industry journal Variety salute the women. One commentator, Ashley M, states:

“I am so, so grateful to Catherine Deneuve and the other wonderful French actresses, writers, doctors and I’m sure women and men of many professions who signed this letter. We are letting the media be the dictator of the Western world. Some of these accusations seem almost hellbent on creating a chasm between men and women; as though they want women to ‘fear’ men. This is extremely demeaning to women.”

Another commentator, Blue Silver, states:

“This whole #MeToo BS is reeking with wealthy snobbish women inciting hateful, sarcastic indirect and direct attacks on men, both guilty and innocent on almost every level… [W]hen you get a Golden Globe (for what it’s worth) awards show and the damn show becomes more of a political showcase than an actual show celebrating the craft of film, then there is a bigger problem that needs to be addressed and remedied….. I really hope the Oscars don’t become a freak propaganda show like the Golden Globes were!”

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Demonizing Iran: Mainstream Media Madness and US-Israeli-Saudi ‘Behavior’ Problems

By Robert Parry, January 10, 2018

There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.

Quaker Group Honored by Yad Vashem for Helping Jews During Holocaust Is Now Banned from Israel

By Philip Weiss, January 09, 2018

One of the special ironies of the weekend’s news that Israel is barring 20 international organizations from entry because they support BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is the appearance on that list of the venerable American Friends Service Committee, or AFSC, which was founded 101 years ago as an antiwar organization.

Operation Blue Flag 2017 Air War Games: Israel’s “Fighter-Jet Diplomacy”. Hooking Up Israeli Forces with NATO

By Manlio Dinucci, January 09, 2018

European Leaders – from the EU’s foreign representative Mogherini to Premier Gentiloni, from President Macron to Chancellor Merkel – have formally stepped back from both the US and Israel on the status of Jerusalem. Is a rift between the allies emerging?

Syrian Army Reports Israeli Missile Attack on Greater Damascus

By Sputnik, January 09, 2018

According to Syria’s state media, the Syrian Army reported that Israel had attacked targets near the war-torn nation’s capital with jets and ground-to-ground missiles early on Tuesday, causing damage.

Iran in 2018

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 06, 2018

In 1953 Washington and Britain overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed a dictator to rule Iran for the benefit of Washington and the British. In declassified documents, the CIA has admitted its role in overthrowing the Iranian government. The overthrow pattern is always the same. Washington hires protesters, then introduces violence, controls the explanation, and unseats the government.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has demanded that Russia and Iran put pressure on the Syrian Army to stop its offensive against terrorist forces in jihadist-held Idlib province claiming that its in violation of the de-escalation deal. 

“Russia and Iran must stop the Syrian regime. They should realize their duties as guarantor countries,” Çavuşoğlu said today.

The call comes as the Syrian Army continues liberating large swathes of the province from Turkish-backed proxy jihadist forces.

The province was overrun by a large scale offensive by a coalition of jihadist forces who mobilized in Turkey and launched their attack in early 2015. The resulting invasion from Turkish-backed proxies was spearheaded by the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front and saw the coalition take the entirety of the province with the exception of the Shi’ite towns of Fua and Kefraya.

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Featured image is from the author.

Despite the mainstream media’s insistence that U.S. President Donald Trump is some sort of compromised Russian lackey, the fact is that at the end of last year, his administration approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. This is a move that clearly infuriates and angers Russia, souring relations between the two countries even more so than they already had been under the Obama administration (and in various stages throughout Trump’s first year in office).

According to The Washington Post, administration officials confirmed that in December the State Department had approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and other associated parts and accessories to Ukraine — a package valued at $41.5 million.

At first, it was reported there had not yet been approval to export the heavier weaponry the Ukrainian government had been asking for, such as anti-tank missiles. However, by the end of December, reports began surfacing that the Trump administration was in fact going to provide 35 FGM-148 Javelin launchers and 210 anti-tank missiles. The Javelin is allegedly one of the most advanced anti-tank systems on the market. The total package is now valued at $47 million, and it wouldn’t be surprising if this figure continues to rise in the weeks to come.

Even under the 2014 Ukraine Freedom Support Act, the Obama administration never authorized large commercial or government arms sales, thereby making the recent announcement the first time that the U.S. will provide “lethal” weapons to the Ukraine military.

One senior congressional official said that he predicted this would be just the beginning, stating that the U.S. had “crossed the Rubicon; this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming,” according to the Post. Foreign Policy’s Michael Carpenter suggested that NATO countries should follow suit and also provide Ukraine with the arms it needs to counter the so-called threat of Russia. Considering that in September 2017 Russia proposed that UN peacekeepers be deployed to Ukraine, it should be clear that the U.S. is more bent on escalating this conflict than on resolving it.

Russia has already responded in kind, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stating that the U.S. has become an accomplice in the war and that these developments make it impossible for Russia to remain “indifferent,” thereby forcing Russia to consider retaliation measures in response.

The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer. The U.S. arms so many countries so much of the time that most of us barely blink. And yet, even taking at face value America’s stated goals of spreading democracy and promoting human rights, the facts on the ground appear to run contrary to those ideals and the U.S. is well aware of these contradictions.

In reality, the United States intervened covertly in Ukraine in 2014 because Russia and Europe were growing far too close to each other for America’s comfort, with Russia supplying at least 30 percent of Europe’s gas supply. This was an issue particularly in relation to Germany’s growing fondness for Russian gas, as Germany is set to become the EU’s major player.

This is a deal-breaker for Washington, which would rather support known neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in order to install a right-wing government capable of opposing Russia as close to the Russian border as one can get.

U.S. installed a puppet government in Ukraine

On February 7, 2014, the BBC published a transcript of a bugged phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In this phone call, the U.S. officials were openly discussing who should form Ukraine’s government even before the president, Viktor Yanukovych, had been successfully ousted from power. In other words, the U.S. was actively doing to Russia’s neighbour what the corporate media and various elements of the intelligence communities have accused Russia of doing to the U.S. during the 2016 elections. As The Nation explained:

“In the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, the two were, as Russian expert Stephen Cohen put it to Democracy Now, ‘plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.’” [emphasis added]

“Good. I don’t think Klitsch [opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko] should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea,”  Nuland said in the call, as transcribed by the BBC.

Pyatt responded:

“Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, an opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.”

Nuland added:

“I think Yats [opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.”

Oleh Tyahnybok, who had met with Senator John McCain one year prior, is the leader of the right-wing nationalist party Svoboda. When Svoboda was founded in 1995, the party had a swastika-like logo. As Business Insider explains, Tyahnybok is also a known anti-Semite:

“Tyahnybok himself was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction in 2004 after giving a speech demanding that Ukrainians fight against a ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’ (he later clarified this by saying that he actually had Jewish friends and was only against to ‘a group of Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine and against Jewish-Bolsheviks [in the past]’). In 2005 he wrote open letters demanding Ukraine do more to halt ‘criminal activities’ of ‘organized Jewry,’ and, even now, Svoboda openly calls for Ukrainian citizens to have their ethnicity printed onto their passports.”

When the protests broke out in Ukraine in 2014, the entire movement was hijacked by these racist elements.

“You’d never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings,” reported Seumas Milne of The Guardian.

Just days ago, thousands marched in Kiev to celebrate the anniversary of far-right nationalist Stepan Bandera’s birthday.

It is revealing that, when the U.S. decided to make a choice between a president they viewed as a Russian ally and the various ultra-right nationalist elements of Ukraine, Washington decided to help oust the former for the benefit of the latter.

The State Department promoting neo-nazism in Ukraine

A photo of the Azov Battalion – a regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine. (Photo: Twitter)

Eventually, it was reported that a man named Petro Poroshenko would be taking up the reins after Yanukovych’s abdication. According to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks, Poroshenko previously worked as a mole for the U.S. State Department. The State Department even referred to Poroshenko as “our Ukrainian insider.”

For those who truly believe the U.S. protects and promotes democracy while challenging tyranny and dictatorships across the globe, the truth about Washington’s support for puppet regimes that fail to garner the support of their own people is even worse than any anti-imperialist commentator could ever have imagined. In March last year, Foreign Affairs reported that Poroshenko had an approval rating as low as 17 percent. In September last year, the Japan Times reported that his approval rating had dropped to a single digit. Some reports say it was as low as 2 percent. October last year saw his approval rating grow to its highest in recent times, reaching a stratospheric 14 percent.

In other words, the Trump administration is actively propping up a failed administration in Europe, which does not have the support of 15 percent of its people. Even the far-right militias in Ukraine seem to have more support than the current government. Meanwhile, the U.S. has done nothing but its utmost to tear apart the respective democratically elected governments in Syria and Iran, both of which have fargreater approval ratings than do Poroshenko and his administration.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Washington’s recent decision to arm Ukraine will only make the conflict more deadly and suggested that Russia could be forced to respond.

“[The U.S. is] not a mediator. It’s an accomplice in fueling the war,” Ryabkov said in a statement.

Clearly, Russia has a vested interest in not seeing another NATO ally on its borders, capable of pointing American missiles in its face on a daily basis.

As The National Interest learned at the end of last year from recently declassified material, the U.S. did indeed break a promise at the end of the Cold War that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.” George Washington University National Security Archives researchers Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton wrote in the National Security Archives:

“The [recently declassified] documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991. That discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion, were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.”

The documents appear to confirm Russia’s assertion that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accepted the proposal for German reunification (which Gorbachev could have vetoed) only in reliance upon these assurances from its American counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. This history is reminiscent of how Russia was further duped out of using its veto power on a U.N. Security Council Resolution in Libya in 2011, after having received assurances that the coalition would not pursue regime change.

“I believe that your thoughts about the role of NATO in the current situation are the result of misunderstanding,” then-British Prime Minister John Major told Gorbachev, according to British Ambassador Rodric Braithwaite’s diary entry of March 5, 1991:

“We are not talking about strengthening of NATO. We are talking about the coordination of efforts that is already happening in Europe between NATO and the West European Union, which, as it is envisioned, would allow all members of the European Community to contribute to enhance [our] security.”

The documents also show that Russia had received these assurances from a number of other high-level officials. These officials included then-Secretary of State James Baker; President George H.W. Bush; West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher; West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; former CIA Director Robert Gates; French leader Francois Mitterrand; Margaret Thatcher; British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd; and NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner.

U.S. Army soldiers representing units participating in the the Anaconda-16 military exercise, attend the opening ceremony, in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, June 6, 2016. Poland and some NATO members launched their biggest ever exercise, involving some 31,000 troops in a show of force to neighboring Russia. (Source: MintPress News)

Since that time, NATO has clearly expanded into Europe to the detriment of Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has grown to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, Albania and Croatia, and Montenegro.

These developments are crucial because, when one is honest about America’s infamous history since World War II, it is clear that NATO exists as an entity only to counter and contain Russian influence. Its sole purpose is to oppose Russia at every corner and this is no secret even in the corporate media.

According to the Telegraph, NATO was formed in “Washington on 4th April, 1949 after the end of the Second World War, largely to block Soviet expansion into Europe.” This can be seen clearly in the complete rejection of the Soviets’ attempt to join NATO itself after Joseph Stalin’s death.

In a 2016 interview with The New Yorker,  Douglas Lute, a former three-star general and then-U.S. Ambassador to NATO also patently admitted that:

“…NATO was founded on the premise of preventing an attack by the Soviet Union in Central Europe, where the U.S. would have to come to the aid of Europe … For the first forty years, nato focussed on its greatest risk—the threat that the Soviet Union posed to Western European security.”

At the time the unrest broke out in 2014, then-NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s comment that the proposed IMF-EU package presented to Ukraine would have been “a major boost for Euro-Atlantic security” suggested that NATO had set its sights on bringing Ukraine into the military alliance. In July of this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Poroshenko in Kiev to further discuss this prospect, already pledging support to Ukraine on some level.

Now Ukraine’s bid to join NATO seems almost irrelevant, as the U.S. is formally involving itself deeper in the Ukrainian conflict and providing arms to a regime that has flirted with an approval rating lower than 10 percent, all the while provoking Russia to take further measures in response.

What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the Russia-obsessed corporate media continues to peddle the narrative that Donald Trump has turned the United States into a client-state of Russia, even while he directly provokes the former Soviet Union by providing lethal assistance to a country on its border. Not only is Trump maintaining an Obama-era policy, he is aggravating and converting Obama’s Ukraine policy into a much more dangerous one — ultimately aimed at provoking an aggressive response from Russia in the weeks or months to come.

This article first appeared on GR in December 2014.

If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it’s very tempting to a scientist.  – Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo

For those who know about the history of geoengineering – aka chemtrails – you might be noticing a spate of admissions from the halls of establishment science and government that the “conspiracy theory” is no longer … it is a fact.

Perhaps the efforts of independent researchers have forced such open disclosure, at least putting us over the hurdle of abject denial. However, the narrative being created for mainstream media consumption is disingenuous at best, and full-throttle manipulation at worst. Case in point is an admission from The Royal Society that geoengineering experiments are being debated for full rollout even in the absence of policy restrictions.

The elite UK think-tank, The Royal Society, has for years openly discussed control over the planet’s weather.  Their 2011 propaganda press release entitled “Who Decides?” is an overtly Orwellian exercise in problem-reaction-solution that, naturally, argues for a cabal of technocratic insiders to implement godlike power over the unwashed masses who are threatened both by their own ignorance as well as “rogue elements” that could hijack weather manipulation technology.

Mainstream outlet The Verge wound up echoing these supposed concerns in their 2013 article,“Weather wars: who should be allowed to engineer our climate?” which has the subtitle, “Geoengineering could be the silver bullet in fighting climate change — or the start of something even worse.”

Let’s bypass for a moment that there still is intense scientific debate about the legitimacy of those who assign climate change to certain man-made activities, and instead look to these attempts to portray a full consensus that leapfrogs us to do-or-die solutions.

Even though the above story appears to have been originally disseminated by the Associated Press, what was not mentioned in any of the establishment outlets is the backstory that indicates a much longer timeline in getting to the conclusion that geoengineering is possibly the only hope that remains for saving the earth.

The Royal Society published a paper further back in 2009, which was based upon a 12-month study; the results were given the title: “Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty.”

If we look at the recommendations from this report, then look at what is being discussed today as something supposedly novel, an agenda emerges. The report recommends:

• Parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – Ed.) should make increased efforts towards mitigating and adapting to climate change and in particular to agreeing to global emissions reductions of at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050 and more thereafter;
• CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal – Ed.) and SRM (Solar Radiation Management – Ed.) geoengineering methods should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change. CDR methods should be regarded as preferable to SRM methods.
• Relevant UK government departments, in association with the UK Research Councils, should together fund a 10 year geoengineering research programme at a level of the order of £10M per annum.
• The Royal Society, in collaboration with international science partners, should develop a code of practice for geoengineering research and provide recommendations to the international scientific community for a voluntary research governance framework.

Citing the slow path of debate and legislation, the panel of “twelve leading academics representing science, economics, law and social science” advocate for climate engineering as a “final hope.”This was 2009, of course; so when we read their latest press release  “Atmospheric particles can brighten cold clouds as well as warm ones” an otherwise innocuous title should trigger an alarm.

Indeed, here we see that what is bullet-pointed above – and discussed within the study – as a non-preferable, potentially dangerous tinkering with global systems is underway.

For the first time, modeling research led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that atmospheric particles can brighten cold clouds in the Arctic. Using simulations, they showed that low clouds over the Arctic may be brightened by deliberately injecting small particles known as aerosols. It’s already well known that injecting aerosols into low clouds over the warm ocean can, in some circumstances, reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface. The concept, untested over the Arctic until now, is called marine cloud brightening, and it can also happen when ships send exhaust into the atmosphere.

The full report consists of 14 articles discussing several climate engineering methods, some openly available here (others are locked). There appears to be a consistent message that the politics of proper governance could impede much-needed field experimentation.

However, there is additional vague language similar to the section above which leaves uncertainty about what exactly has been modeled by computers and what might have already been tested in the open. What cannot be doubted, however, is that the volume of scientific articles now published indicates a real agenda with massive scope, a massive budget and massive consequences.

Also clear is a reinforcement of the meme that climate scientists are proceeding with caution – a notion highlighted recently by Harvard, but which has very little basis in the general history of scientific endeavors that have claimed a do-or-die right to proceed (nuclear, GMO, vaccines, etc.).

As with all things secretive, governmental, and possessing a military component, we only can do our best to independently research cause and effect. Such research by those who have dedicated their energy to uncovering the climate change/geoengineering agenda seem to conclude that engineering the planet’s weather is not a “final hope” … but more likely to be our Finale.

Main source:
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-atmospheric-particles-brighten-cold-clouds.html

Additional Sources:
Geoengineering Watch 
Chemtrails Planet 
Aircrap.org
Obama Takes Bold Step to Geoengineer Climate Change

This article first appeared on GR in July 2015.

There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.

In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.

Israel’s belligerence, including frequently attacking its Arab neighbors and brutally repressing the Palestinians, has roiled the region for almost 70 years. Not to mention that Israel is a rogue nuclear state that has been hiding a sophisticated atomic-bomb arsenal.

An objective observer also would note that Saudi Arabia has been investing its oil wealth for generations to advance the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, which has inspired terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to the Islamic State. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were identified as Saudis and the U.S. government is still concealing those 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry regarding Saudi financing of Al Qaeda terrorists.

The Saudis also have participated directly and indirectly in regional wars, including encouragement of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, support for Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front’s subversion of Syria, and the current Saudi bombardment of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians, touching off a humanitarian crisis and helping Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate expand its territory.

U.S. Meddling

Then there’s the United States, which has been meddling in the Middle East overtly and covertly for a very long time, including one of the CIA’s first covert operations, the overthrow of Iran’s elected government in 1953, and one of U.S. foreign policy’s biggest overt blunders, President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Iran coup engendered a deep-seated hatred and suspicion of the U.S. government among Iranians that extends to the present day. And, the Iraq invasion not only spread death and destruction across Iraq but has spilled over into Syria, where U.S. “allies” – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel – have been seeking another “regime change” that is being spearheaded by Sunni terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State.

The U.S. government has further aided in the destabilization of the region by flooding U.S. “allies” with powerful military equipment, including aircraft that both Israel and Saudi Arabia have used to bomb neighboring countries.

Yet, in the fantasy land that is Official Washington, the politicians and pundits decry “Iranian aggression,” parroting the propaganda theme dictated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke before an adoring audience of senators and congressmen at a joint session of Congress on March 3.

This Iranian “bad behavior” includes helping the Iraqi government withstand brutal attacks by the Islamic State and assisting the Syrian government in blocking a major victory for Islamic terrorism that would follow the fall of Damascus. Iran is also being blamed for the Houthi uprising in Yemen although most informed observers believe the Iranian influence and assistance are minimal.

In other words, the neoconservatives who dominate Official Washington’s “group think” may detest Iran’s regional activities since they are not in line with Israeli (and Saudi) desires, but less ideological analysts might conclude that – on balance – Iran is contributing to the stability of the region or at least helping to avert the worst outcomes.

A Lost Mind

The question becomes: Has Official Washington so lost its collective mind that it actually favors Al Qaeda or the Islamic State raising the black flag of Islamic terrorism over Damascus and even Baghdad? Is Iranian assistance in averting such a calamity such a terrible thing?

Apparently yes. Here’s how The Washington Post’s foreign affairs honcho David Ignatius – in a column entitled “Will Tehran Behave?” – describes the geopolitical situation following Tuesday’s signing of a deal to tightly constrain Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions:

“The problem isn’t the agreement but Iran itself. Its behavior remains defiantly belligerent, even as it signs an accord pledging to be peaceful. Its operatives subvert neighboring regimes, even as their front companies are about to be removed from the sanctions lists. The agreement welcomes Iran to the community of nations, even though its leader proclaims that Iran is a revolutionary cause.

“Obama argues that dealing with a menacing Iran will be easier if the nuclear issue is off the table for the next 10 years. He’s probably right, but the Iran problem won’t vanish with this accord. Iranian behavior in the region becomes the core issue. Having played the dealmaker, Obama must now press Iran to become a more responsible neighbor.”

By the way, I always thought that the United States proclaimed itself “a revolutionary cause.” But here is Ignatius, who is regarded as a “big thinker,” setting the parameters of the acceptable debate about the Iran nuclear deal. It’s all about Iran’s “behavior.”

Ignatius even quotes Netanyahu decrying the danger that, after 10 years, the agreement will give Iran “a sure path to nuclear weapons.” Of course, Ignatius doesn’t bother to note that Israel already has taken its own path to nuclear weapons. That context is almost never mentioned.

Nor does Ignatius admit how he and many of his fellow pundits supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which in a normal, parallel universe would disqualify Ignatius and his friends from lecturing anyone about how to “behave.” But in today’s Official Washington, a pre-war endorsement of the Iraq disaster is not a disqualifier but a prerequisite for being taken seriously.

Similarly, The Washington Post’s editorial page, which in 2002-03 eagerly backed Bush’s invasion and routinely asserted as flat fact that Iraq possessed hidden WMD stockpiles, now says the real risk in the Iran deal is, you guessed it, “Iranian behavior.”

The Post says the deal could unleash “a dangerous threshold nuclear state that poses a major threat to the United States and its allies.” And, the Post warns that Iran’s “leaders will probably use” the money from the sanctions relief “to finance wars and terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Yemen and elsewhere.”

Step into Crazy Land

Again, to appreciate the Post’s thinking, you have to step into crazy land. In the real Iraq and the real Syria, the Iranians are supporting internationally recognized governments battling against terrorist groups, Al Qaeda’s affiliate and the Islamic State.

In Yemen, Iranian involvement is probably minor at most. Plus, the Houthis are not a terrorist group, but rather an indigenous popular movement that has been fighting Al Qaeda’s terrorist affiliate in Yemen.

While it’s not clear what the Post thinks that Iran is doing in the Gaza Strip, which is under a tight Israeli military blockade, only fully committed neocons would think that the long-suffering people of the Gaza Strip don’t deserve some outside help.

Still, the larger issue for the American people is what to do with this insane political-media system that dominates Official Washington. Either these powers-that-be are detached from reality or they are deceitful propagandists who think they can manipulate us with lies and distortions.

Yet, by creating a false reality, whether from madness or cynicism, this system guides the nation into terrible decision-making. And, given the immense military power of the United States, this long national detour into a dark psychosis of delusion must be addressed or the future of humankind will be put into serious jeopardy.

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). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

This article was originally published by GR in April 2015.

Obama’s foreign policy is bound in a thousand knots, all threatening to unwind. At the same time that the U.S. is engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran the two are fighting proxy wars against each other in Yemen and Syria.

Which begs the question: are the nuclear talks with Iran really that meaningful, if war is what’s practiced?  

Yes, Obama has overcome the objections of the Republicans and the Israeli lobby to pursue the negotiations with Iran. But bombs speak louder than treaties.

Now Obama has turned up the Yemeni war-dial by announcing the U.S. Navy is being parked off the coast of Yemen to tighten the naval blockade, itself an act of war. Interestingly, the media was told explicitly that the U.S. Navy’s presence was directed against Iran to prevent weapon shipments from Iran to the Yemeni Houthis that now rule most of the country.

At the same time that Obama is preventing the Houthis from being armed, he is pouring military hardware into Saudi Arabia, who’s using it to bomb Yemen to smithereens, killing hundreds of civilians in the process (the Saudis recently announced an end to their ineffective bombing campaign).

And for what? The stated goal of the Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen is to re-instate the hated Yemeni dictator, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has no political legitimacy or socical support inside of Yemen. The Houthis have much broader support than Hadi ever had.

But attacking the Houthis is “necessary” — from the Saudi-U.S. perspective — because the Houthis receive backing from Iran, not because the Houthis are “terrorists.” In fact, the Houthi’s sworn enemy is al-Qaeda, which the Houthis have battled a thousand times more effectively than Obama’s failed drone assassination program that killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians. But instead of helping the Houthis finish off al-Qaeda, Obama is helping Saudi Arabia attack the Houthis.

It’s a terrible misnomer to label the current Yemeni conflict as a Saudi war. The Saudi’s military is completely funded, trained, and directed by the U.S. military. The Saudi military doesn’t sneeze unless it has U.S. permission. And the Saudis would be unable to wage this war without the key additional U.S. support, including refueling Saudi aircraft and directing the warplanes where to bomb.

In short, Obama could end this war with one public statement demanding Saudi Arabia cease and desist. War over.

But instead, the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen was allowed to deepen into a humanitarian catastrophe. The U.S.-Saudi forces have essentially blockaded the entire country, preventing anything from coming and going in Yemen, meaning that fuel, food, and basic medical supplies are evaporating.

According to an Oxfam spokesperson:

“…land, sea and air routes must be re-opened [in Yemen] to allow basic commodities like food, fuel and medical supplies to reach millions in desperate need.”

Which brings us back to Iran. It’s difficult to predict Obama’s intentions in participating in “historic” nuclear talks with Iran, while the Yemen and Syria wars continue. Many have argued that Obama’s Iran policy is part of a fundamental shift in his Middle East policy, which is an attempt to become less dependent on Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But ultimately — as the war in Yemen proves — the U.S. will continue to prioritize Saudi Arabia and Israel over Iran. The reason is simple: U.S. foreign policy depends on allies willing to do basically whatever the U.S. wants, a kind of alliance that is rare and takes years to foster and maintain. Unlike the stalwart Saudis and other Gulf monarchy dictatorships, no one expects the Iranians to become subservient to U.S. foreign policy.

Furthermore, the current “strong allies” of the U.S. all view Iran as an “existential” enemy, by virtue of historic, religious, and most importantly, economic rivalries. Iran is a regional power in a region of competing regional powers, most notably Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel, and all want Iran destroyed so they can scavenge the carcass.

A key reason why Obama’s allies agreed to the ongoing catastrophic proxy war in Syria was that it was viewed as a first step in crushing Iran.  But the Syrian war blow back has sent millions of refugees across the Middle East and fostered the rise of the so-called Islamic State.

And while the Obama administration has hidden his hand in these regional wars, his administration remains the “decider” of Middle East foreign policy. The U.S. is directing its allies in the region after flooding the world with a historic amount of weapons.

According to William Hartung of the Center for International Policy:

“… the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II.”

The Obama administration has been arming Iran’s enemies while speaking soothing rhetoric to mislead the American public into thinking he’s practicing peace. But when actions and words collide so viciously the truth eventually explodes the lie.

The regional wars in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq are pushing the entire region even closer to an even-broader regional war with incalculable consequences. Any peace in these circumstances will require a much deeper and concrete proposal than what is being discussed in the Iranian negotiations, the success of which remain in doubt.

Even if a nuclear deal is reached with Iran, the wheels have already been set in motion in the Middle East. There will be no sudden shifts in alliances when there are tens of billions of dollars in arms sales in place and countless diplomatic agreements cemented, and there will be no peace when decrepit regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel are armed to the teeth and hungry for war.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected] 

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared in September 2017 that the emerging US-India-Japan-Australia Indo-Pacific “quadrilateral dialogue” would be founded on “respect for international law and the rules-based order.”¹ The reassurance was welcome, but it will mean some big changes, probably on all four sides, most of all for the US, which does not recognize itself as being bound by any rules, remains aloof from the International Criminal Court and commits war crimes including military interventions unauthorized by the UN (therefore acts of aggression), assassination and torture on a daily basis.

As for Japan and Australia, they both appear to rank the US relationship above any principled application of law and to positively embrace the role of “client state” of the violent and lawless United States,² while India as of 2017 seemed to be following a similar path with its quadrilateral partners.³ In July 2017, it banned all trade with North Korea except for food and medicine, and pledged to support steps to further isolate and pressure the country. These were drastic measures since India was North Korea’s third largest trading partner till 2015-16.⁴

“North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be…”⁵

This paper considers the most recent escalation of the “North Korea crisis,” and the various agendas for addressing it, not just the emergent “Indo-Pacific” quadrilateral but specific Japanese and Australian aspects, the United Nations, Russia and China. North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests – in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017 (possibly a hydrogen bomb) – and its missile tests, culminating in several of apparently intercontinental range (ICBM) in July and September 2017, defy UN directives, draw condemnation on all sides and expose the consequences of decades of failure to address the structural problems at the heart of the Northeast Asian region. The Indo-Pacific quadrilateral constitutes a significant new framing of the North Korean problem.

Two main sets of proposals now rest on global tables: that by the US and its allies, notably Japan and Australia, demanding North Korean submission as precondition for any negotiation, and the call for freeze and negotiations, such as proposed by China and Russia and supported by other states such as Germany and France and by prominent US figures such as former Defense Secretary William Perry.⁶

As China’s Foreign Minister put it in May 2017, the latter proposal entails

“that, as a first step, the DPRK suspend its missile and nuclear activities in exchange for a halting of large-scale US-ROK military exercises. This ‘double suspension’ approach can help us break out of the security dilemma and bring the parties back to the table.”⁷

North Korea for at least the past several decades has sought talks on resolving its highly abnormal situation. What it wants, according to Jimmy Carter, ex-president and presidential envoy who negotiated a way through the crisis of 1994, is a peace treaty with the United States and an end to economic sanctions.⁸ It also wants to “normalize” relations with Japan and to reach a formal, very belated reckoning with Japan over its colonial record. Its demands are rarely treated seriously. In January 2015 it called on the US to suspend its planned war games in return for which it would abstain at least provisionally from nuclear testing, but Obama’s Washington gave no response.⁹ A little later, William Perry, who as Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997 had brought North Korea and the US close to a negotiated settlement, looked back on almost two decades of failed US policy and urged the US to deal with “North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be,” to give up for the time being the hope of dismantling its nuclear program (recognizing that it is simply too late) and to concentrate on three No’s: no new weapons, no better weapons, no transfer of nuclear weapons or technology.¹⁰ North Korea took note of this widely publicized “Perry process” formula and its state-run media declared a readiness to suspend all further testing if the US would turn to winding up the Korean War (with a peace treaty and “normalization”).¹¹ Instead of pursuing the Perry path, however, the US set about rehearsing “special operations” designed to “decapitate” the North Korean regime (i.e. to capture and/or assassinate its leader, Kim Jong-un).¹² The scene was thus set for the crisis of 2017.

Following explicit threats (as in March 2017) that the US had exhausted its “strategic patience,” its “sword stands ready” and “all options are on the table” and there was no room for negotiation,¹³ the US began to mobilize massive force around the Korean peninsula, with no less than three nuclear aircraft carrier fleets in Asia-Pacific waters,¹⁴ multiple destroyers and submarines, backed from time to time by Japan’s mini-aircraft carrier, the 19,500-ton Izumo, and its two Aegis-equipped destroyers, Ashiura and Samidare. US Air Force B-1 bombers, known to inflict especially high levels of fear on Koreans because of their nuclear bomb-carrying role, fly in periodically from Guam and criss-cross the peninsula, escorted by fighters of Japan’s Air Self Defence Force and South Korea’s Air Force. There are roughly 50,000 US troops deployed in US bases in Japan and Korea, and Japan’s Yokosuka is the US 7^th Fleet’s home port. March and August are periods of especially high tension, as the US and its allies engage in massive war-rehearsing exercises (Operation Key Resolve in March and Ulchi Freedom Guardian in August), this year (2017) especially ramping up intimidation. These exercises rehearse the invasion and destruction of North Korea.

Yet North Korea refuses to be “compelled.” Simply to “denuclearize” without resolving the problems that led it to “nuclearize” in the first place, would be to present itself naked and defenceless to its enemies. Its goose-stepping soldiers, bizarre mass games and overweight young leader feed into the construction of it as uniquely distorted and “evil.” Its long-continuing existential crisis means that its message to the world is presented in shrill tones that do more to conceal than to communicate its essential legitimacy and reasonableness. As a result, no country in modern history has been so friendless, loathed and contemned. Yet the truly remarkable fact is that North Korea exists at all, having fought the United States and the US–led, UN-authorized, coalition of the willing to a standstill 64 years ago that left the country devastated (with millions dead). Despite unremitting pressure and nuclear threat ever since then, it has refused to submit.

Utterly dwarfed in terms of conventional weapons, and increasingly inferior not only to the United States but also to South Korea (which is about double its size in terms of population and perhaps 10 times greater in terms of GDP), North Korea appears to have concluded that its only plausible defense lies in nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Such a perception can hardly be seen as irrational. North Korea is sometimes described as a “guerrilla state” or “partisan state” (Japanese historian Wada Haruki’s term),¹⁵ in reference to the siege mentality cultivated over many decades confronting powerful enemies intent on crushing it, and sometimes as a “porcupine” (prickly, obsessively defensive) state. Its DNA is strong on defense, and has no place for submission to enemies.

Kim Jong-un, Chairman of the Workers Party and Supreme Leader of North Korea, visits the Kumsusan Palace, where the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il rest, 16 February 2017 (75th birthday of the former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il , The Day of the Shining Star, Kwangmyŏngsŏng-jŏl). (Source: Korean Central News Agency, KCNA)

This is not to say that there are no serious issues of concern over human rights – there obviously are – but to recognize that the conditions under which the state exists – of unresolved war, sanctions, isolation – are such that normalcy cannot be expected, or for that matter demanded, save in the context of a comprehensive resolution.¹⁶ Only in the frame of a process of diplomatic “normalization” is North Korea likely to be brought in from the cold of more than 100 years as colony, divided state, and global outsider and its political practice to move or begin to move from dictatorship to democracy.

In 2013-14, the United Nations commissioned the Australian jurist, Michael Kirby, to survey and report on the state of human rights in the country. The ensuing report singled North Korea out as an essentially criminal regime, in which

“systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed …. In many instances, the violations … constitute crimes against humanity … The gravity, scale, and nature of those violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” ¹⁷

This assessment is used to justify sanctions that punish an entire people. The state that had been for almost the entirety of its existence subject to nuclear intimidation¹⁸ is designated a threat, rogue regime, and ultimate “other.” Revulsion helps justify genocidal threat, revamped regional alliances and stepped-up militarization, new weapons and missile “defence” systems, and war “games” that rehearse resumption of the Korean War.

Hankyoreh21 Cartoon No.1168, by Kwon Beom-cheol, Hankyoreh cartoonist 26 June 2017

As North Korea conducted its 2017 missile tests, in particular two of apparent ICBMs, President Trump emerged briefly from his New Jersey golf resort to threaten it with “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”¹⁹ That elicited an equally pugnacious response from the commander of North Korea’s army, General Kim Ryak Gyom, that “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason”²⁰ and a warning that it was preparing to launch missiles towards the American territory (and major military facilities) of Guam.

In August, the Foreign and Defense Ministers of the US and Japan agreed “to pressure North Korea … to compel [italics added] it to take concrete actions to end its nuclear and ballistic missile program and to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization [CVID] of the Korean peninsula.”²¹ Trump tweeted that the US military was “locked and loaded,” ready for action against North Korea.

Then, on 3 September, came the test explosion of what appeared to be a hydrogen bomb, North Korea’s 6^th and by far most powerful nuclear test,²² followed by the 15 September intermediate range ballistic missile, which soared over Northern Japan on a 3,700 kilometre trajectory out into the Pacific . . . demonstrating the capability to reach not only Okinawa but also Guam.

The US position (as denoted by the CVID formula) is that it will only meet North Korea provided it first surrenders. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe made this same point in his “op-ed” contribution to the New York Times in September 2017,²³ and Australian Foreign Minister Bishop has said the same on multiple occasions.

But nobody who has ever studied North Korea or its history believes that it will submit to pressure or intimidation, or abandon its nuclear and missile programs short of a comprehensive settlement of its security concerns. So the US demands the impossible, and the mobilization of massive forces just offshore to back it up can only be seen as part of a dual design: to induce submission or to provoke North Korea to take some action that would justify mass “retaliation.”

As Trump continued to contemplate the option of war, in August he told Republican Congressman Lindsey Graham that there would indeed be many deaths, but

“they’re going to die over there, they’re not going to die here.”²⁴

On 19 September, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly (in a speech for which it is hard to think of any match in terms of its ferocity), deriding Kim Jong-un by referring to him as “rocket man . . . on a suicide mission,” threatening that North Korea stood to be “wiped out,” and the US would be “forced to totally destroy” it unless it submitted.²⁵ Days later, Kim Jong-un responded in person that

“I will surely and definitively tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” making Trump “pay dearly” for his speech threatening North Korea’s “total destruction.”

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho added days later before the UN General Assembly that Trump was the one “on a suicide mission,” whose “insult to the supreme dignity” of North Korea had made “inevitable” a rocket’s “visit to the US mainland.”

The stance of the US and its allies in threatening, denouncing, and refusing to negotiate is patently illegal and criminal. The clauses from the Charter cited above are unambiguous and, according to the World Court (the ICJ) in its Advisory Opinion (1996) on the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the legality of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as if the threat were carried out.”²⁶ US threats over many decades culminating in Trump’s to “destroy” or “annihilate” North Korea constitute crimes under both the Charter and the 1948 Geneva Convention to which the United States is a party.²⁷

While the quadrilateral to which Australian Minister Bishop referred unite in condemning and punishing North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests, they turn a collective blind eye to India’s development of a weapons program outside the confines of the Non Proliferation regime (NPT) – current estimates put its nuclear arsenal at well over one hundred nuclear weapons – and, of course, to the thousands of tests conducted by the US. Neither Australia nor Japan take serious exception to this. Both tacitly encourage India, the one by providing it with a nuclear power generating plant and the other with uranium. No other country has been subject to anything comparable to North Korea’s 67 years’ exposure to threat of nuclear extermination coupled with economic and political pressures including sustained blockade. Consequently, the one country in today’s world that might have claim to justification for the “threat or use of nuclear weapons” under the ICJ’s 1996 “Advisory Opinion,” on grounds of an “extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake,” would have to be North Korea.²⁸ It may be mistaken, but not necessarily unlawful, while the unlawfulness of all the other nuclear weapon countries, ignoring their obligation under Article 6 of the Non Proliferation Treaty to set about denuclearizing, is plain.²⁹ Bizarrely, the one country that could plead legal justification for possessing nuclear weapons is the one whose possession much of the world unites to denounce.³⁰

US Clients – Japan and Australia

Where much of the world recoiled in horror from such mutual brinksmanship, the Abe and Turnbull governments associated themselves unconditionally with it, encouraging Trump in his obduracy while India moved decisively to align itself with them. Nobody in the Japanese, Australian or Indian governments is on record as protesting against the US threats. Prime Minister Abe had in April 2017 showed strong support for the cruise missiles Trump launched against Syrian targets and made clear his approval for the American threat to North Korea that “all options” were on the table.³¹ His then Defence Minister, Inada Tomomi, reiterated that position. “All options” obviously included war and nuclear weapons. Japanese SDF vessels and planes participated in war rehearsal exercises, escorting US aircraft carriers and B-1 bombers on their missions designed to intimidate and terrorize, i.e. rehearsing attack on North Korea.

There was understandable sense of resentment at the North Korean missiles in 2017 passing “over” Japanese territory, but since they passed “over” Japan at a height of somewhere between 500 and 800 kilometres, well above the so-called Karman Line (at 100 kilometres) that defines the beginning of “Outer Space,” and since outer space is “not subject to claims of national sovereignty,” Japan had no standing to protest.³² Nevertheless, the government spent considerable sums on advertisements designed to feed fear of North Korea.³³ Japanese railway companies, including the Tokyo subway system, suspended their service, cities and towns conducted public drills, and children learned to crawl under their desks in readiness for possible nuclear attack. TV programs were interrupted with “J-Alert” messages announcing launch of missiles. The nuclear shelter construction industry thrives.³⁴ The North Korean “threat” helps Abe justify stepped up military spending (roughly $46 billion in the latest budget), militarization of the frontier islands (Ishigaki, Miyako, and Yonaguni), and the construction of facilities for the US Marine Corps in Northern Okinawa and in Guam and the Marianas. It also helps prepare the ground for revision of the constitution (Abe’s lifelong ambition). Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro was not alone in attributing Abe’s substantial electoral victory of October 2017 to the North Korean threat.³⁵

Despite the aggressive tone of Japanese government comment, and the deep-seated ill-will on both sides, it is just fifteen years since the “Pyongyang Declaration” issued by the Japanese and North Korean leaders on the occasion of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s visit to Pyongyang in September 2002. Then, the two countries came close to a historic settlement.³⁶ Japan apologized in a spirit of “humility,” expressing “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” for the “tremendous damage and suffering to the people of Korea through its colonial rule in the past,” and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il apologized for the abduction of Japanese citizens [in 1977-1983] and promised “appropriate measures so that these regrettable incidents, that took place under the abnormal bilateral relationship, would never happen in the future.”³⁷

Since then, however, the question of abduction of Japanese citizens has defied resolution and preoccupied Japanese attention. North Korea in 2004 returned those it said were the surviving victims, only to have Japan respond by declaring that abduction was the single most important issue (ranking above nuclear weapons or missiles) and that there could be no normalization of relations until all abductees were returned, “all” including those who North Korea said were no longer living. Following a Japan-DPRK agreement in Stockholm in May 2014, North Korea again undertook to investigate, but when it reported once again that there were no survivors the process collapsed. During 2017, President Trump also adopted the Abe cause of the abductees, referring to it both in his UN speech and in his Tokyo speech in November. Yet the only way forward on resolving the hostage issues, as specialists suggest, is likely to be for Japan first to recognize and normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea and then to conduct its own investigation from its embassy in Pyongyang. The US initiative under President Obama in 2016 in opening diplomatic relations with Cuba is cited as an example that Japan might choose to follow.³⁸

UN Security Council, Voting Sanctions on North Korea, September 2017

As for Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared on radio that “In terms of defence we are joined at the hip” and it would promptly join if needed for any resumption of the Korean War. ³⁹ He later added, as if seeking approval in Washington and Tokyo, reference to the government of North Korea as “a criminal organization operating under the guise of a state.”⁴⁰ Even after the adoption of the September package of sanctions and the abusive Trump UN speech, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop opined, that “I believe there is more we can do in exerting political, diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea.”⁴¹ She favoured “autonomous sanctions” that went beyond the UN-ordered ones.⁴² An example soon arose. Australia refused visas to an under-19 North Korean soccer team to compete in the Asian Football Federation championships.

“Hosting the team,” said Foreign Minister Bishop, “would be contrary to the government’s strong opposition to North Korea’s illegal nuclear and missile development programs.”⁴³

It was precisely the sort of collective punishment principle against which, rightly, Australia might take exception when practiced by North Korea. No politician or public figure in Australia had any word to say on behalf of the North Korean under-19s.

Contrary to popular understanding, responsibility for the breakdown of past negotiated agreements has been far from one-sided.⁴⁴ The introduction of nuclear weapons to the peninsula in the first place, the refusal to take seriously obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to “negotiate in good faith to achieve a precise result – nuclear disarmament in all its aspects – and the inclusion of North Korea on the nuclear target list were all breaches of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For its part, from time to time North Korea has engaged in negotiations in which it showed readiness for negotiated solutions, periodically suspending and promising to negotiate away its nuclear weapons and programs, notably between 1994 and 2002 under the so-called “Agreed Framework” and again in 2005-6 under the Beijing Six-Party conference agreement, and again in 2007 at the time of major negotiations between North Korea and the United States in Berlin and Beijing. It was the US then that was described, by Jack Pritchard (formerly the State Department’s top North Korea expert) as “a minority of one … isolated from the mainstream of its four allies and friends”⁴⁵

Strongly backed, or urged on, by Japan, the US was able to sink the agreements hammered out around the various tables and ensure that nothing short of surrender and submission on North Korea’s part would suffice.⁴⁶ C. Kenneth Quinones, a former State Department official with considerable experience of negotiating with North Korea, said that he had been able on no less than three occasions in 2005 to find a basis for agreement between the North Korean and US governments, only to have his efforts sabotaged by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld leadership. He referred to North Korea as being “very precise and consistent in their positions” while by contrast the track record of the then Bush administration was “not one of diplomacy but rather one of vacillation, inconsistency and, ultimately, undercutting the position and the efforts of its own diplomats.”⁴⁷ South Korea’s chief negotiator at the Six Party talks in 2006 and 2007, Chun Young-woo, spoke of his sense that the North Korean participants at those talks felt “besieged, squeezed, strangled, and cornered by hostile powers” and noted the tone of “visceral aversion” or “condescension, self-righteousness or a vindictive approach” on the part of the major parties (by which he plainly meant first and foremost, the United States).⁴⁸ Jeong Se-hyun, Unification Minister in South Korea between 2001 and 2004, has also written recently of the “mistaken” impression that North Korea never honours its international agreements, saying (in respect of the Beijing “Six Party” negotiations of 2003-8) that the United States also bears responsibility.⁴⁹

The UN

According to the UN Charter’s Article 2 (3), disputes between states must be settled by peaceful means and (4) “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state …” [italics added]. Article 33 further specifies the obligation of parties to any dispute likely to endanger international peace and security to “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation inquiry, mediation, conciliation … or other peaceful means of their own choice.” By ruling out negotiations with North Korea and insisting only on submission, the US, Japan and Australia ignore or breach this clear rule (and Japan breaches also the proscription on the “threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” in its own constitution). Going beyond that, President Trump has also not only insulted the North Korean leader from the platform of the UN General Assembly but actually threatened his country with “total destruction,” by “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”⁵⁰ That surely qualifies as threat. It is even genocidal, and therefore criminal behaviour, not only on the part of those (Trump) who utter it but on the part also of those like Abe and Turnbull (to whom perhaps now India’s Modi is to be added) who endorse and encourage it.

The United States and Japan have also played key roles in steering through the UN Security Council the series of sanctions culminating in the eighth set (under Resolution 2371 of 6 August 2017) which forbade, inter alia, the export of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood, and the ninth (under Resolution 2375 of 11 September) which banned North Korean textile exports, froze or capped crude oil and refined petroleum imports and banned new labour export contracts.⁵¹

The impact of these measures, affecting the country’s major exports, imports, and foreign currency earners, would – or should – be expected to bring the country to its knees. It is possible they may not actually work that way as, at least until 2017, despite the then already severe sanctions, visitors reported North Korea to be bustling and even, astonishingly, thriving,⁵² suggesting that, having lived with sanctions for more than half a century, it has cultivated a will to survive that is stronger than that of its enemies to have it collapse, but the intent is plain – to cause collapse and/or surrender – and that intent is criminal. From 2017, as the country suffers both partial failure of the 2017 harvest (due to severe drought), ⁵³ and the unprecedentedly severe sanctions prescribed by Resolutions 2371 and 2375, it may not “thrive” much longer. Even so, however, the likelihood is that stepped up pressure will be counter-productive, reinforcing the regime’s determination not to surrender even if, as Vladimir Putin put it, it means the people having to eat grass.⁵⁴ The indiscriminate and plainly hostile steps mandated by the Security Council, reinforced by the autonomous measures and all supported by the US, Japan, Australia, and India, are not only illegal but help the regime rally internal support and crush dissent.

Beyond the already comprehensive sanctions, hostile governments, notably the US, Australia and Japan, work to cut North Korea off completely from international trade or banking, urging countries around the world “to cut trade links with Pyongyang to increase North Korea’s financial isolation and choke off revenue sources.”⁵⁵ Only a very fine line divides such measures from outright war. Neither side would appreciate the analogy but today’s North Korea in its isolation, desperation and determination to unite around its leader resembles no country so much as Japan in 1941. Knowing that Japan then chose Pearl Harbour rather than submission, the analogy is not reassuring.

As exports are slashed and energy imports squeezed, it will be the ordinary and under-privileged rather than North Korea’s power elites who will suffer. It amounts to collective punishment. That too is strictly forbidden in international law. Only sanctions carefully tailored to apply to those who act in the name of the government and bear responsibility for its offensive actions may be legitimate. There is some dispute over the number of victims, including children, from the sanctions applied by the UN to Iraq from 1990, but US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright was unapologetic years later saying that, although it was a “hard choice,” the price, even if it included deaths of half a million children “was worth it.” The point is clear that that those imposing sanctions bear an obligation to ensure they impact only upon those who are in a position of power, not on innocent civilians. Despite the UN’s targeting of an entire people in North Korea for punishment, opposition is scarcely to be heard. The equation of North Korea with “evil” has turned the country into the ultimate “other.” There is reason to wonder if the United Nations itself, by the ordering of collective punishment of the entire North Korean people for offenses committed by their government, may be acting criminally.

Hayes and von Hippel comment:

“The immediate, primary impacts will be on welfare: people will be forced to walk or not move at all, and to push buses rather instead of riding in them. There will be less light in households due to less kerosene, and less on-site power generation. There will be more deforestation to produce biomass and charcoal used in gasifiers to run trucks, leading to more erosion, floods, less food crops, and more famine, There will be less diesel fuel to pump water to irrigate rice paddies, to process food into foodstuffs, and to transport agricultural products to markets before they spoil.”⁵⁶

Furthermore, the UN as an organization bears a peculiar responsibility, rarely remembered, for the “Korean problem,” first by its dividing the country in 1947, and then by war from 1950, when it intervened against its own charter in the Korean civil war and when multiple, still unassuaged, war crimes were committed. Whoever started the war, it was the forces of the United Nations that devastated the country, and an overwhelming proportion of casualties were civilian. The northern side, whatever its moral qualities or the justice or otherwise of its cause, simply did not have the capacity to mete out comparable indiscriminate death to the civilian population by bombing, strafing, napalming, blasting dams or destroying food crops⁵⁷ The most horrendous incidents of massacre, at places such as Taejeon and Nogunri, then blamed on the “communists,” were revealed much later to have been committed by “our” side. In the most shocking incident, later known as the Taejeon Massacre, between 5,000 and 7,500 civilians were slaughtered in what the US Army described as an event “worthy of being recorded in the annals of history along with the Rape of Nanking, the Warsaw Ghetto, and other similar mass exterminations.” Circulated and given widespread publicity around the world in I953 and later, this horror story helped fix the image of North Koreans as brutal savages. We now know, however, as I wrote in 1983, that this worst atrocity of the war was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations.⁵⁸

Much more detail has been revealed about it by the South Korean government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.⁵⁹ Overall, that Commission, following intensive investigations in the period between 2005 and 2010, confirmed that in the first year of the war alone about 100,000 people were massacred by US, South Korean (and other) forces under the UN flag.⁶⁰

In 2017, following a seven year hiatus in its work under right-wing governments, researchers have resumed their work and concluded that “around 1 million civilians were killed by the government-led massacres during the [Korean] war.”⁶¹ “Government-led,” when referring to the Korean War that began on 25 June 1950, means under the aegis of the United Nations (with not only the United States but also Australia in a prominent role). For UN intervention today to have moral credibility, its responsibility for such war crimes and for almost seven decades-long neglect of (and therefore continuing complicity) in US nuclear intimidation, should be faced. It is an uncomfortable thought that the global community itself, through the UN, even while taking a self-righteous stance towards North Korea, might have been guilty of successive war crimes against it.

Putin, Moon, and the Eurasian Project

Currently “on the table” in regard to the “North Korea problem,” are two contrasting proposals: the US-Japan-Australia (perhaps joined by India) demand for unconditional North Korean submission and the Russian-Chinese proposal (for the most part shared by South Korea), condemning the North Korean missile and nuclear tests but urging “three Nos” to freeze the existing status quo, taking steps to defuse tensions, respect the DPRK’s “justified concerns” and create a peninsular “peace and security mechanism.”⁶² The former has no vision for the region other than to shore up US hegemony but the latter does, and it is a bold and ambitious one.

South Korean President Moon and Russian President Putin, Vladivostok, September 2017 

In a remarkable 6-7 September 2017 meeting that passed almost unnoticed in the Western and Japanese media,⁶³ the two Koreas (South and North), Japan, Russia and China met at Vladivostok under the auspices of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a relatively new (established in 2015) Russian initiative to promote the development of its Eastern zone. The five states (absent only the United States) of the Beijing Six Party Conference proceeded in low key, consensual mode, to endorse (or in the case of North Korea at least “not oppose”) what has been called the Putin plan.⁶⁴ It dealt essentially with economic cooperation, railways and pipelines, but its implications are far from mundane.⁶⁵

The Vladivostok parties looked to open multiple lines of cooperation and communication across North Korea, extending Siberian oil and gas pipelines to the two Koreas and Japan and opening railways and ports linking them across Siberia to China, the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. South Korea’s President Moon projected his understanding of this within the frame of what he called “Northeast Asia-plus,” which involved construction of “nine bridges of cooperation” (gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries),⁶⁶ embedding the Korean peninsula in the frame of the Russian and Chinese-led BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Shanghai Cooperation Organiziation (SCO) organizations, extending and consolidating those vast, China- and Russia-centred geo-political and economic groupings.

Though billed as “economic,” and having no explicit “security” element, the Vladivostok conference was nevertheless one that would go a long way towards meeting North Korea’s security concerns and making redundant its nuclear and missile programs. Under it, the Beijing Six Party Talks formula of 2003-8 would become “Five Plus One,” with the United States reduced to non-participant “observer.” Unstated, but plainly crucial, North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (“freeze”) its existing programs and gain its longed for “normalization” in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this Vladivostok agenda is the participation of the Japanese Prime Minister Abe and his Foreign Minister Kono Taro. The Abe government had till then matched Trump in uncompromising hostility to North Korea, and had just weeks earlier formally agreed with the US that CVID, North Korean submission, was the only way forward. Yet they appear to have responded positively to the Putin plan, which suggested that a diplomatic “Plan B” might be under active consideration in Tokyo, and that Vladivostok might mark a first step towards a comprehensive, long overdue, post-Cold War re-think of regional relationships.

The Moon-Putin Plan held the potential not only for resolving the North Korea problem, sidelining the US, but also for transforming Japan-Russia and Japan-China relations. It could be expected to lead in due course to diplomatic recognition and a resolution of the complaints of the parties, completing the Japan-North Korean reconciliation process that was begun but then suspended under Prime Minister Koizumi (in 2002).

The challenge was greatest for Japan, calling for it to re-negotiate its relationship with the US away from clientelism towards an equal, friendly bilateral relationship, gradually liquidating US military bases and having East China Sea neighbour countries construct their relationships afresh, independently, North (and South) Korea would become points of Japanese engagement with the burgeoning regional development groupings, steps in the path of regional cooperation and community building. It was an unlikely agenda for a Prime Minister as apparently dedicated to Japan’s role as US “client state” as Abe, but Japanese reports suggest that Abe was seriously considering taking an initiative (reversing his stance to date) along the lines of this Putin or Moon-Putin plan),⁶⁷ but that US pressure was being brought to bear to put the kibosh on any such radical shift.⁶⁸

It is a measure of how the world has changed that it should have been left to the Russian and Chinese presidents and Foreign Ministers to articulate moderation, reason, and law, calling for negotiation without pre-conditions, insisting on North Korea’s right to survive, and making a comprehensive (if still lacking in specificity) proposal for integrating North Korea into a community with its neighbours. Russian president Putin, even while accepting the US and Japanese demand for ever stricter sanctions, nevertheless insisted that ramping up pressure by itself was futile and dialogue without pre-conditions the way forward.⁶⁹

“Do you really think that because of the imposition of some sanctions, North Korea will abandon its course towards development of weapons of mass destruction? Under these circumstances, winding up military hysteria will not bring us any good. All of this can lead to a global catastrophe on the planet and huge numbers of human casualties. There is no other way apart from a peaceful and a diplomatic one to resolve the North Korea nuclear problem.”

Germany’s Merkel and France’s Macron share this basic approach and oppose the hard-line US-Japan-Australia coercion formula.⁷⁰ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres too warns that “fiery talk can lead to fatal misunderstandings … the solution must be political — this is a time for statesmanship — we must not sleepwalk our way into war.”⁷¹

The ultimate prospect of a trans-Pacific regional peace and cooperation community to replace the “hub and spokes” US-hegemonic, San Francisco Treaty system would, needless to say, have momentous implications.

Russia-Japan

As for the Japan-Russia relationship, the territorial dispute over the “Northern islands” (the Southern Kuriles) between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s Hokkaido, seized by the then Soviet Union in the final month of World War II) remains unresolved. However, Prime Minister Abe has met more than a dozen times with Putin in the five years of his second term and the two have established a certain rapport. When he hosted a Putin visit in December 2016 to his home prefecture of Yamaguchi, speculation was rife that they might strike an agreement for the return, or partial return, to Japan of the islands. It did not happen but the prospect may have become a little less far-fetched.

Reversion to Japan of the two smaller island groups (7 per cent by area of the territory as a whole), Habomai and Shikotan, had been agreed in principle in 1956, only to have Japan withdraw under pressure from a United States fearful that reconciliation between Japan and the Soviet Union might lead to Japan slipping out of the bi-polar Cold War system into neutralism. The disposition of the two larger islands, Kunashiri (Kunashir) and Etorofu (Iturup), however, presents greater difficulty. These are very large islands indeed, Etorofu even two and a half-times larger than Okinawa Island at the country’s other extremity. A transfer of sovereignty after nearly 70 years would not be easy, but with a positive disposition on both sides an acceptable formula should be conceivable, with a suitable face-saving formula, perhaps postponing their legal disposition to an indeterminate future while focussing in the interim on cooperative development and conservation.

Discussions between the two countries are by no means confined to territory and islands. The two have drawn up their lists, whittled down by 2016 to thirty “priority projects” ranging widely across the development of Eastern Siberia and Northern Russia, especially resources (oil and gas), but also infrastructural projects (pipelines, railroads and ports). There is bound to be some correspondence between the multilateral “Vladivostok” agenda discussed above and the projects on the table in bilateral Russo-Japanese negotiations. Both look to a grand transformation. At their most ambitious, the bilateral Russo-Japanese plans include a railway crossing by tunnel under the Soya [La Perouse] Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin and a bridge across the Mamiya [Tartar] Strait between Sakhalin and Siberia (just 7.3 kilometres at its narrowest point), establishing a through rail link from Japan via the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railway system to China, Russia, and beyond.⁷²

Normalizing relations with either or both of North Korea and Russia would undoubtedly be difficult for Japan to explain to Washington, but it would go a long way towards recasting the region’s diplomatic and security frame and a Japan that could contemplate doing either would no longer be a client state. The Vladivostok conference showed that such mammoth schemes, hitherto little more than pipe dreams, were back on drawing boards in Moscow and Tokyo as well as Beijing, Seoul, and Pyongyang. On all sides the agenda of bridges and tunnels of communication replacing confrontation and military build-up and linking Japan and Korea with the Eurasian continent is “on the table.” It is certainly a more attractive prospect than what is on the Trump-Abe-Turnbull table.

*

Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor of the Australian National University and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal. His works on Korea include Cold War Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War, (Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1983), and Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, (New York, Nation Books, and Sydney, Random House Australia, 2004). 

Notes

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared in September 2017 that the emerging US-India-Japan-Australia Indo-Pacific “quadrilateral dialogue” would be founded on “respect for international law and the rules-based order.”¹ The reassurance was welcome, but it will mean some big changes, probably on all four sides, most of all for the US, which does not recognize itself as being bound by any rules, remains aloof from the International Criminal Court and commits war crimes including military interventions unauthorized by the UN (therefore acts of aggression), assassination and torture on a daily basis.

As for Japan and Australia, they both appear to rank the US relationship above any principled application of law and to positively embrace the role of “client state” of the violent and lawless United States,² while India as of 2017 seemed to be following a similar path with its quadrilateral partners.³ In July 2017, it banned all trade with North Korea except for food and medicine, and pledged to support steps to further isolate and pressure the country. These were drastic measures since India was North Korea’s third largest trading partner till 2015-16.⁴

“North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be…”⁵

This paper considers the most recent escalation of the “North Korea crisis,” and the various agendas for addressing it, not just the emergent “Indo-Pacific” quadrilateral but specific Japanese and Australian aspects, the United Nations, Russia and China. North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests – in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017 (possibly a hydrogen bomb) – and its missile tests, culminating in several of apparently intercontinental range (ICBM) in July and September 2017, defy UN directives, draw condemnation on all sides and expose the consequences of decades of failure to address the structural problems at the heart of the Northeast Asian region. The Indo-Pacific quadrilateral constitutes a significant new framing of the North Korean problem.

Two main sets of proposals now rest on global tables: that by the US and its allies, notably Japan and Australia, demanding North Korean submission as precondition for any negotiation, and the call for freeze and negotiations, such as proposed by China and Russia and supported by other states such as Germany and France and by prominent US figures such as former Defense Secretary William Perry.⁶

As China’s Foreign Minister put it in May 2017, the latter proposal entails

“that, as a first step, the DPRK suspend its missile and nuclear activities in exchange for a halting of large-scale US-ROK military exercises. This ‘double suspension’ approach can help us break out of the security dilemma and bring the parties back to the table.”⁷

North Korea for at least the past several decades has sought talks on resolving its highly abnormal situation. What it wants, according to Jimmy Carter, ex-president and presidential envoy who negotiated a way through the crisis of 1994, is a peace treaty with the United States and an end to economic sanctions.⁸ It also wants to “normalize” relations with Japan and to reach a formal, very belated reckoning with Japan over its colonial record. Its demands are rarely treated seriously. In January 2015 it called on the US to suspend its planned war games in return for which it would abstain at least provisionally from nuclear testing, but Obama’s Washington gave no response.⁹ A little later, William Perry, who as Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997 had brought North Korea and the US close to a negotiated settlement, looked back on almost two decades of failed US policy and urged the US to deal with “North Korea as it is, not as we wish it to be,” to give up for the time being the hope of dismantling its nuclear program (recognizing that it is simply too late) and to concentrate on three No’s: no new weapons, no better weapons, no transfer of nuclear weapons or technology.¹⁰ North Korea took note of this widely publicized “Perry process” formula and its state-run media declared a readiness to suspend all further testing if the US would turn to winding up the Korean War (with a peace treaty and “normalization”).¹¹ Instead of pursuing the Perry path, however, the US set about rehearsing “special operations” designed to “decapitate” the North Korean regime (i.e. to capture and/or assassinate its leader, Kim Jong-un).¹² The scene was thus set for the crisis of 2017.

Following explicit threats (as in March 2017) that the US had exhausted its “strategic patience,” its “sword stands ready” and “all options are on the table” and there was no room for negotiation,¹³ the US began to mobilize massive force around the Korean peninsula, with no less than three nuclear aircraft carrier fleets in Asia-Pacific waters,¹⁴ multiple destroyers and submarines, backed from time to time by Japan’s mini-aircraft carrier, the 19,500-ton Izumo, and its two Aegis-equipped destroyers, Ashiura and Samidare. US Air Force B-1 bombers, known to inflict especially high levels of fear on Koreans because of their nuclear bomb-carrying role, fly in periodically from Guam and criss-cross the peninsula, escorted by fighters of Japan’s Air Self Defence Force and South Korea’s Air Force. There are roughly 50,000 US troops deployed in US bases in Japan and Korea, and Japan’s Yokosuka is the US 7^th Fleet’s home port. March and August are periods of especially high tension, as the US and its allies engage in massive war-rehearsing exercises (Operation Key Resolve in March and Ulchi Freedom Guardian in August), this year (2017) especially ramping up intimidation. These exercises rehearse the invasion and destruction of North Korea.

Yet North Korea refuses to be “compelled.” Simply to “denuclearize” without resolving the problems that led it to “nuclearize” in the first place, would be to present itself naked and defenceless to its enemies. Its goose-stepping soldiers, bizarre mass games and overweight young leader feed into the construction of it as uniquely distorted and “evil.” Its long-continuing existential crisis means that its message to the world is presented in shrill tones that do more to conceal than to communicate its essential legitimacy and reasonableness. As a result, no country in modern history has been so friendless, loathed and contemned. Yet the truly remarkable fact is that North Korea exists at all, having fought the United States and the US–led, UN-authorized, coalition of the willing to a standstill 64 years ago that left the country devastated (with millions dead). Despite unremitting pressure and nuclear threat ever since then, it has refused to submit.

Utterly dwarfed in terms of conventional weapons, and increasingly inferior not only to the United States but also to South Korea (which is about double its size in terms of population and perhaps 10 times greater in terms of GDP), North Korea appears to have concluded that its only plausible defense lies in nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Such a perception can hardly be seen as irrational. North Korea is sometimes described as a “guerrilla state” or “partisan state” (Japanese historian Wada Haruki’s term),¹⁵ in reference to the siege mentality cultivated over many decades confronting powerful enemies intent on crushing it, and sometimes as a “porcupine” (prickly, obsessively defensive) state. Its DNA is strong on defense, and has no place for submission to enemies.

Kim Jong-un, Chairman of the Workers Party and Supreme Leader of North Korea, visits the Kumsusan Palace, where the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il rest, 16 February 2017 (75th birthday of the former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il , The Day of the Shining Star, Kwangmyŏngsŏng-jŏl). (Source: Korean Central News Agency, KCNA)

This is not to say that there are no serious issues of concern over human rights – there obviously are – but to recognize that the conditions under which the state exists – of unresolved war, sanctions, isolation – are such that normalcy cannot be expected, or for that matter demanded, save in the context of a comprehensive resolution.¹⁶ Only in the frame of a process of diplomatic “normalization” is North Korea likely to be brought in from the cold of more than 100 years as colony, divided state, and global outsider and its political practice to move or begin to move from dictatorship to democracy.

In 2013-14, the United Nations commissioned the Australian jurist, Michael Kirby, to survey and report on the state of human rights in the country. The ensuing report singled North Korea out as an essentially criminal regime, in which

“systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed …. In many instances, the violations … constitute crimes against humanity … The gravity, scale, and nature of those violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” ¹⁷

This assessment is used to justify sanctions that punish an entire people. The state that had been for almost the entirety of its existence subject to nuclear intimidation¹⁸ is designated a threat, rogue regime, and ultimate “other.” Revulsion helps justify genocidal threat, revamped regional alliances and stepped-up militarization, new weapons and missile “defence” systems, and war “games” that rehearse resumption of the Korean War.

Hankyoreh21 Cartoon No.1168, by Kwon Beom-cheol, Hankyoreh cartoonist 26 June 2017

As North Korea conducted its 2017 missile tests, in particular two of apparent ICBMs, President Trump emerged briefly from his New Jersey golf resort to threaten it with “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”¹⁹ That elicited an equally pugnacious response from the commander of North Korea’s army, General Kim Ryak Gyom, that “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason”²⁰ and a warning that it was preparing to launch missiles towards the American territory (and major military facilities) of Guam.

In August, the Foreign and Defense Ministers of the US and Japan agreed “to pressure North Korea … to compel [italics added] it to take concrete actions to end its nuclear and ballistic missile program and to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization [CVID] of the Korean peninsula.”²¹ Trump tweeted that the US military was “locked and loaded,” ready for action against North Korea.

Then, on 3 September, came the test explosion of what appeared to be a hydrogen bomb, North Korea’s 6^th and by far most powerful nuclear test,²² followed by the 15 September intermediate range ballistic missile, which soared over Northern Japan on a 3,700 kilometre trajectory out into the Pacific . . . demonstrating the capability to reach not only Okinawa but also Guam.

The US position (as denoted by the CVID formula) is that it will only meet North Korea provided it first surrenders. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe made this same point in his “op-ed” contribution to the New York Times in September 2017,²³ and Australian Foreign Minister Bishop has said the same on multiple occasions.

But nobody who has ever studied North Korea or its history believes that it will submit to pressure or intimidation, or abandon its nuclear and missile programs short of a comprehensive settlement of its security concerns. So the US demands the impossible, and the mobilization of massive forces just offshore to back it up can only be seen as part of a dual design: to induce submission or to provoke North Korea to take some action that would justify mass “retaliation.”

As Trump continued to contemplate the option of war, in August he told Republican Congressman Lindsey Graham that there would indeed be many deaths, but

“they’re going to die over there, they’re not going to die here.”²⁴

On 19 September, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly (in a speech for which it is hard to think of any match in terms of its ferocity), deriding Kim Jong-un by referring to him as “rocket man . . . on a suicide mission,” threatening that North Korea stood to be “wiped out,” and the US would be “forced to totally destroy” it unless it submitted.²⁵ Days later, Kim Jong-un responded in person that

“I will surely and definitively tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” making Trump “pay dearly” for his speech threatening North Korea’s “total destruction.”

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho added days later before the UN General Assembly that Trump was the one “on a suicide mission,” whose “insult to the supreme dignity” of North Korea had made “inevitable” a rocket’s “visit to the US mainland.”

The stance of the US and its allies in threatening, denouncing, and refusing to negotiate is patently illegal and criminal. The clauses from the Charter cited above are unambiguous and, according to the World Court (the ICJ) in its Advisory Opinion (1996) on the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the legality of a threat stands or falls on the same legal grounds as if the threat were carried out.”²⁶ US threats over many decades culminating in Trump’s to “destroy” or “annihilate” North Korea constitute crimes under both the Charter and the 1948 Geneva Convention to which the United States is a party.²⁷

While the quadrilateral to which Australian Minister Bishop referred unite in condemning and punishing North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests, they turn a collective blind eye to India’s development of a weapons program outside the confines of the Non Proliferation regime (NPT) – current estimates put its nuclear arsenal at well over one hundred nuclear weapons – and, of course, to the thousands of tests conducted by the US. Neither Australia nor Japan take serious exception to this. Both tacitly encourage India, the one by providing it with a nuclear power generating plant and the other with uranium. No other country has been subject to anything comparable to North Korea’s 67 years’ exposure to threat of nuclear extermination coupled with economic and political pressures including sustained blockade. Consequently, the one country in today’s world that might have claim to justification for the “threat or use of nuclear weapons” under the ICJ’s 1996 “Advisory Opinion,” on grounds of an “extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake,” would have to be North Korea.²⁸ It may be mistaken, but not necessarily unlawful, while the unlawfulness of all the other nuclear weapon countries, ignoring their obligation under Article 6 of the Non Proliferation Treaty to set about denuclearizing, is plain.²⁹ Bizarrely, the one country that could plead legal justification for possessing nuclear weapons is the one whose possession much of the world unites to denounce.³⁰

US Clients – Japan and Australia

Where much of the world recoiled in horror from such mutual brinksmanship, the Abe and Turnbull governments associated themselves unconditionally with it, encouraging Trump in his obduracy while India moved decisively to align itself with them. Nobody in the Japanese, Australian or Indian governments is on record as protesting against the US threats. Prime Minister Abe had in April 2017 showed strong support for the cruise missiles Trump launched against Syrian targets and made clear his approval for the American threat to North Korea that “all options” were on the table.³¹ His then Defence Minister, Inada Tomomi, reiterated that position. “All options” obviously included war and nuclear weapons. Japanese SDF vessels and planes participated in war rehearsal exercises, escorting US aircraft carriers and B-1 bombers on their missions designed to intimidate and terrorize, i.e. rehearsing attack on North Korea.

There was understandable sense of resentment at the North Korean missiles in 2017 passing “over” Japanese territory, but since they passed “over” Japan at a height of somewhere between 500 and 800 kilometres, well above the so-called Karman Line (at 100 kilometres) that defines the beginning of “Outer Space,” and since outer space is “not subject to claims of national sovereignty,” Japan had no standing to protest.³² Nevertheless, the government spent considerable sums on advertisements designed to feed fear of North Korea.³³ Japanese railway companies, including the Tokyo subway system, suspended their service, cities and towns conducted public drills, and children learned to crawl under their desks in readiness for possible nuclear attack. TV programs were interrupted with “J-Alert” messages announcing launch of missiles. The nuclear shelter construction industry thrives.³⁴ The North Korean “threat” helps Abe justify stepped up military spending (roughly $46 billion in the latest budget), militarization of the frontier islands (Ishigaki, Miyako, and Yonaguni), and the construction of facilities for the US Marine Corps in Northern Okinawa and in Guam and the Marianas. It also helps prepare the ground for revision of the constitution (Abe’s lifelong ambition). Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro was not alone in attributing Abe’s substantial electoral victory of October 2017 to the North Korean threat.³⁵

Despite the aggressive tone of Japanese government comment, and the deep-seated ill-will on both sides, it is just fifteen years since the “Pyongyang Declaration” issued by the Japanese and North Korean leaders on the occasion of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s visit to Pyongyang in September 2002. Then, the two countries came close to a historic settlement.³⁶ Japan apologized in a spirit of “humility,” expressing “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” for the “tremendous damage and suffering to the people of Korea through its colonial rule in the past,” and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il apologized for the abduction of Japanese citizens [in 1977-1983] and promised “appropriate measures so that these regrettable incidents, that took place under the abnormal bilateral relationship, would never happen in the future.”³⁷

Since then, however, the question of abduction of Japanese citizens has defied resolution and preoccupied Japanese attention. North Korea in 2004 returned those it said were the surviving victims, only to have Japan respond by declaring that abduction was the single most important issue (ranking above nuclear weapons or missiles) and that there could be no normalization of relations until all abductees were returned, “all” including those who North Korea said were no longer living. Following a Japan-DPRK agreement in Stockholm in May 2014, North Korea again undertook to investigate, but when it reported once again that there were no survivors the process collapsed. During 2017, President Trump also adopted the Abe cause of the abductees, referring to it both in his UN speech and in his Tokyo speech in November. Yet the only way forward on resolving the hostage issues, as specialists suggest, is likely to be for Japan first to recognize and normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea and then to conduct its own investigation from its embassy in Pyongyang. The US initiative under President Obama in 2016 in opening diplomatic relations with Cuba is cited as an example that Japan might choose to follow.³⁸

UN Security Council, Voting Sanctions on North Korea, September 2017

As for Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared on radio that “In terms of defence we are joined at the hip” and it would promptly join if needed for any resumption of the Korean War. ³⁹ He later added, as if seeking approval in Washington and Tokyo, reference to the government of North Korea as “a criminal organization operating under the guise of a state.”⁴⁰ Even after the adoption of the September package of sanctions and the abusive Trump UN speech, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop opined, that “I believe there is more we can do in exerting political, diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea.”⁴¹ She favoured “autonomous sanctions” that went beyond the UN-ordered ones.⁴² An example soon arose. Australia refused visas to an under-19 North Korean soccer team to compete in the Asian Football Federation championships.

“Hosting the team,” said Foreign Minister Bishop, “would be contrary to the government’s strong opposition to North Korea’s illegal nuclear and missile development programs.”⁴³

It was precisely the sort of collective punishment principle against which, rightly, Australia might take exception when practiced by North Korea. No politician or public figure in Australia had any word to say on behalf of the North Korean under-19s.

Contrary to popular understanding, responsibility for the breakdown of past negotiated agreements has been far from one-sided.⁴⁴ The introduction of nuclear weapons to the peninsula in the first place, the refusal to take seriously obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to “negotiate in good faith to achieve a precise result – nuclear disarmament in all its aspects – and the inclusion of North Korea on the nuclear target list were all breaches of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For its part, from time to time North Korea has engaged in negotiations in which it showed readiness for negotiated solutions, periodically suspending and promising to negotiate away its nuclear weapons and programs, notably between 1994 and 2002 under the so-called “Agreed Framework” and again in 2005-6 under the Beijing Six-Party conference agreement, and again in 2007 at the time of major negotiations between North Korea and the United States in Berlin and Beijing. It was the US then that was described, by Jack Pritchard (formerly the State Department’s top North Korea expert) as “a minority of one … isolated from the mainstream of its four allies and friends”⁴⁵

Strongly backed, or urged on, by Japan, the US was able to sink the agreements hammered out around the various tables and ensure that nothing short of surrender and submission on North Korea’s part would suffice.⁴⁶ C. Kenneth Quinones, a former State Department official with considerable experience of negotiating with North Korea, said that he had been able on no less than three occasions in 2005 to find a basis for agreement between the North Korean and US governments, only to have his efforts sabotaged by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld leadership. He referred to North Korea as being “very precise and consistent in their positions” while by contrast the track record of the then Bush administration was “not one of diplomacy but rather one of vacillation, inconsistency and, ultimately, undercutting the position and the efforts of its own diplomats.”⁴⁷ South Korea’s chief negotiator at the Six Party talks in 2006 and 2007, Chun Young-woo, spoke of his sense that the North Korean participants at those talks felt “besieged, squeezed, strangled, and cornered by hostile powers” and noted the tone of “visceral aversion” or “condescension, self-righteousness or a vindictive approach” on the part of the major parties (by which he plainly meant first and foremost, the United States).⁴⁸ Jeong Se-hyun, Unification Minister in South Korea between 2001 and 2004, has also written recently of the “mistaken” impression that North Korea never honours its international agreements, saying (in respect of the Beijing “Six Party” negotiations of 2003-8) that the United States also bears responsibility.⁴⁹

The UN

According to the UN Charter’s Article 2 (3), disputes between states must be settled by peaceful means and (4) “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state …” [italics added]. Article 33 further specifies the obligation of parties to any dispute likely to endanger international peace and security to “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation inquiry, mediation, conciliation … or other peaceful means of their own choice.” By ruling out negotiations with North Korea and insisting only on submission, the US, Japan and Australia ignore or breach this clear rule (and Japan breaches also the proscription on the “threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” in its own constitution). Going beyond that, President Trump has also not only insulted the North Korean leader from the platform of the UN General Assembly but actually threatened his country with “total destruction,” by “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”⁵⁰ That surely qualifies as threat. It is even genocidal, and therefore criminal behaviour, not only on the part of those (Trump) who utter it but on the part also of those like Abe and Turnbull (to whom perhaps now India’s Modi is to be added) who endorse and encourage it.

The United States and Japan have also played key roles in steering through the UN Security Council the series of sanctions culminating in the eighth set (under Resolution 2371 of 6 August 2017) which forbade, inter alia, the export of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood, and the ninth (under Resolution 2375 of 11 September) which banned North Korean textile exports, froze or capped crude oil and refined petroleum imports and banned new labour export contracts.⁵¹

The impact of these measures, affecting the country’s major exports, imports, and foreign currency earners, would – or should – be expected to bring the country to its knees. It is possible they may not actually work that way as, at least until 2017, despite the then already severe sanctions, visitors reported North Korea to be bustling and even, astonishingly, thriving,⁵² suggesting that, having lived with sanctions for more than half a century, it has cultivated a will to survive that is stronger than that of its enemies to have it collapse, but the intent is plain – to cause collapse and/or surrender – and that intent is criminal. From 2017, as the country suffers both partial failure of the 2017 harvest (due to severe drought), ⁵³ and the unprecedentedly severe sanctions prescribed by Resolutions 2371 and 2375, it may not “thrive” much longer. Even so, however, the likelihood is that stepped up pressure will be counter-productive, reinforcing the regime’s determination not to surrender even if, as Vladimir Putin put it, it means the people having to eat grass.⁵⁴ The indiscriminate and plainly hostile steps mandated by the Security Council, reinforced by the autonomous measures and all supported by the US, Japan, Australia, and India, are not only illegal but help the regime rally internal support and crush dissent.

Beyond the already comprehensive sanctions, hostile governments, notably the US, Australia and Japan, work to cut North Korea off completely from international trade or banking, urging countries around the world “to cut trade links with Pyongyang to increase North Korea’s financial isolation and choke off revenue sources.”⁵⁵ Only a very fine line divides such measures from outright war. Neither side would appreciate the analogy but today’s North Korea in its isolation, desperation and determination to unite around its leader resembles no country so much as Japan in 1941. Knowing that Japan then chose Pearl Harbour rather than submission, the analogy is not reassuring.

As exports are slashed and energy imports squeezed, it will be the ordinary and under-privileged rather than North Korea’s power elites who will suffer. It amounts to collective punishment. That too is strictly forbidden in international law. Only sanctions carefully tailored to apply to those who act in the name of the government and bear responsibility for its offensive actions may be legitimate. There is some dispute over the number of victims, including children, from the sanctions applied by the UN to Iraq from 1990, but US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright was unapologetic years later saying that, although it was a “hard choice,” the price, even if it included deaths of half a million children “was worth it.” The point is clear that that those imposing sanctions bear an obligation to ensure they impact only upon those who are in a position of power, not on innocent civilians. Despite the UN’s targeting of an entire people in North Korea for punishment, opposition is scarcely to be heard. The equation of North Korea with “evil” has turned the country into the ultimate “other.” There is reason to wonder if the United Nations itself, by the ordering of collective punishment of the entire North Korean people for offenses committed by their government, may be acting criminally.

Hayes and von Hippel comment:

“The immediate, primary impacts will be on welfare: people will be forced to walk or not move at all, and to push buses rather instead of riding in them. There will be less light in households due to less kerosene, and less on-site power generation. There will be more deforestation to produce biomass and charcoal used in gasifiers to run trucks, leading to more erosion, floods, less food crops, and more famine, There will be less diesel fuel to pump water to irrigate rice paddies, to process food into foodstuffs, and to transport agricultural products to markets before they spoil.”⁵⁶

Furthermore, the UN as an organization bears a peculiar responsibility, rarely remembered, for the “Korean problem,” first by its dividing the country in 1947, and then by war from 1950, when it intervened against its own charter in the Korean civil war and when multiple, still unassuaged, war crimes were committed. Whoever started the war, it was the forces of the United Nations that devastated the country, and an overwhelming proportion of casualties were civilian. The northern side, whatever its moral qualities or the justice or otherwise of its cause, simply did not have the capacity to mete out comparable indiscriminate death to the civilian population by bombing, strafing, napalming, blasting dams or destroying food crops⁵⁷ The most horrendous incidents of massacre, at places such as Taejeon and Nogunri, then blamed on the “communists,” were revealed much later to have been committed by “our” side. In the most shocking incident, later known as the Taejeon Massacre, between 5,000 and 7,500 civilians were slaughtered in what the US Army described as an event “worthy of being recorded in the annals of history along with the Rape of Nanking, the Warsaw Ghetto, and other similar mass exterminations.” Circulated and given widespread publicity around the world in I953 and later, this horror story helped fix the image of North Koreans as brutal savages. We now know, however, as I wrote in 1983, that this worst atrocity of the war was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations.⁵⁸

Much more detail has been revealed about it by the South Korean government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.⁵⁹ Overall, that Commission, following intensive investigations in the period between 2005 and 2010, confirmed that in the first year of the war alone about 100,000 people were massacred by US, South Korean (and other) forces under the UN flag.⁶⁰

In 2017, following a seven year hiatus in its work under right-wing governments, researchers have resumed their work and concluded that “around 1 million civilians were killed by the government-led massacres during the [Korean] war.”⁶¹ “Government-led,” when referring to the Korean War that began on 25 June 1950, means under the aegis of the United Nations (with not only the United States but also Australia in a prominent role). For UN intervention today to have moral credibility, its responsibility for such war crimes and for almost seven decades-long neglect of (and therefore continuing complicity) in US nuclear intimidation, should be faced. It is an uncomfortable thought that the global community itself, through the UN, even while taking a self-righteous stance towards North Korea, might have been guilty of successive war crimes against it.

Putin, Moon, and the Eurasian Project

Currently “on the table” in regard to the “North Korea problem,” are two contrasting proposals: the US-Japan-Australia (perhaps joined by India) demand for unconditional North Korean submission and the Russian-Chinese proposal (for the most part shared by South Korea), condemning the North Korean missile and nuclear tests but urging “three Nos” to freeze the existing status quo, taking steps to defuse tensions, respect the DPRK’s “justified concerns” and create a peninsular “peace and security mechanism.”⁶² The former has no vision for the region other than to shore up US hegemony but the latter does, and it is a bold and ambitious one.

South Korean President Moon and Russian President Putin, Vladivostok, September 2017 

In a remarkable 6-7 September 2017 meeting that passed almost unnoticed in the Western and Japanese media,⁶³ the two Koreas (South and North), Japan, Russia and China met at Vladivostok under the auspices of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a relatively new (established in 2015) Russian initiative to promote the development of its Eastern zone. The five states (absent only the United States) of the Beijing Six Party Conference proceeded in low key, consensual mode, to endorse (or in the case of North Korea at least “not oppose”) what has been called the Putin plan.⁶⁴ It dealt essentially with economic cooperation, railways and pipelines, but its implications are far from mundane.⁶⁵

The Vladivostok parties looked to open multiple lines of cooperation and communication across North Korea, extending Siberian oil and gas pipelines to the two Koreas and Japan and opening railways and ports linking them across Siberia to China, the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. South Korea’s President Moon projected his understanding of this within the frame of what he called “Northeast Asia-plus,” which involved construction of “nine bridges of cooperation” (gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries),⁶⁶ embedding the Korean peninsula in the frame of the Russian and Chinese-led BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Shanghai Cooperation Organiziation (SCO) organizations, extending and consolidating those vast, China- and Russia-centred geo-political and economic groupings.

Though billed as “economic,” and having no explicit “security” element, the Vladivostok conference was nevertheless one that would go a long way towards meeting North Korea’s security concerns and making redundant its nuclear and missile programs. Under it, the Beijing Six Party Talks formula of 2003-8 would become “Five Plus One,” with the United States reduced to non-participant “observer.” Unstated, but plainly crucial, North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (“freeze”) its existing programs and gain its longed for “normalization” in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this Vladivostok agenda is the participation of the Japanese Prime Minister Abe and his Foreign Minister Kono Taro. The Abe government had till then matched Trump in uncompromising hostility to North Korea, and had just weeks earlier formally agreed with the US that CVID, North Korean submission, was the only way forward. Yet they appear to have responded positively to the Putin plan, which suggested that a diplomatic “Plan B” might be under active consideration in Tokyo, and that Vladivostok might mark a first step towards a comprehensive, long overdue, post-Cold War re-think of regional relationships.

The Moon-Putin Plan held the potential not only for resolving the North Korea problem, sidelining the US, but also for transforming Japan-Russia and Japan-China relations. It could be expected to lead in due course to diplomatic recognition and a resolution of the complaints of the parties, completing the Japan-North Korean reconciliation process that was begun but then suspended under Prime Minister Koizumi (in 2002).

The challenge was greatest for Japan, calling for it to re-negotiate its relationship with the US away from clientelism towards an equal, friendly bilateral relationship, gradually liquidating US military bases and having East China Sea neighbour countries construct their relationships afresh, independently, North (and South) Korea would become points of Japanese engagement with the burgeoning regional development groupings, steps in the path of regional cooperation and community building. It was an unlikely agenda for a Prime Minister as apparently dedicated to Japan’s role as US “client state” as Abe, but Japanese reports suggest that Abe was seriously considering taking an initiative (reversing his stance to date) along the lines of this Putin or Moon-Putin plan),⁶⁷ but that US pressure was being brought to bear to put the kibosh on any such radical shift.⁶⁸

It is a measure of how the world has changed that it should have been left to the Russian and Chinese presidents and Foreign Ministers to articulate moderation, reason, and law, calling for negotiation without pre-conditions, insisting on North Korea’s right to survive, and making a comprehensive (if still lacking in specificity) proposal for integrating North Korea into a community with its neighbours. Russian president Putin, even while accepting the US and Japanese demand for ever stricter sanctions, nevertheless insisted that ramping up pressure by itself was futile and dialogue without pre-conditions the way forward.⁶⁹

“Do you really think that because of the imposition of some sanctions, North Korea will abandon its course towards development of weapons of mass destruction? Under these circumstances, winding up military hysteria will not bring us any good. All of this can lead to a global catastrophe on the planet and huge numbers of human casualties. There is no other way apart from a peaceful and a diplomatic one to resolve the North Korea nuclear problem.”

Germany’s Merkel and France’s Macron share this basic approach and oppose the hard-line US-Japan-Australia coercion formula.⁷⁰ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres too warns that “fiery talk can lead to fatal misunderstandings … the solution must be political — this is a time for statesmanship — we must not sleepwalk our way into war.”⁷¹

The ultimate prospect of a trans-Pacific regional peace and cooperation community to replace the “hub and spokes” US-hegemonic, San Francisco Treaty system would, needless to say, have momentous implications.

Russia-Japan

As for the Japan-Russia relationship, the territorial dispute over the “Northern islands” (the Southern Kuriles) between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s Hokkaido, seized by the then Soviet Union in the final month of World War II) remains unresolved. However, Prime Minister Abe has met more than a dozen times with Putin in the five years of his second term and the two have established a certain rapport. When he hosted a Putin visit in December 2016 to his home prefecture of Yamaguchi, speculation was rife that they might strike an agreement for the return, or partial return, to Japan of the islands. It did not happen but the prospect may have become a little less far-fetched.

Reversion to Japan of the two smaller island groups (7 per cent by area of the territory as a whole), Habomai and Shikotan, had been agreed in principle in 1956, only to have Japan withdraw under pressure from a United States fearful that reconciliation between Japan and the Soviet Union might lead to Japan slipping out of the bi-polar Cold War system into neutralism. The disposition of the two larger islands, Kunashiri (Kunashir) and Etorofu (Iturup), however, presents greater difficulty. These are very large islands indeed, Etorofu even two and a half-times larger than Okinawa Island at the country’s other extremity. A transfer of sovereignty after nearly 70 years would not be easy, but with a positive disposition on both sides an acceptable formula should be conceivable, with a suitable face-saving formula, perhaps postponing their legal disposition to an indeterminate future while focussing in the interim on cooperative development and conservation.

Discussions between the two countries are by no means confined to territory and islands. The two have drawn up their lists, whittled down by 2016 to thirty “priority projects” ranging widely across the development of Eastern Siberia and Northern Russia, especially resources (oil and gas), but also infrastructural projects (pipelines, railroads and ports). There is bound to be some correspondence between the multilateral “Vladivostok” agenda discussed above and the projects on the table in bilateral Russo-Japanese negotiations. Both look to a grand transformation. At their most ambitious, the bilateral Russo-Japanese plans include a railway crossing by tunnel under the Soya [La Perouse] Strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin and a bridge across the Mamiya [Tartar] Strait between Sakhalin and Siberia (just 7.3 kilometres at its narrowest point), establishing a through rail link from Japan via the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur railway system to China, Russia, and beyond.⁷²

Normalizing relations with either or both of North Korea and Russia would undoubtedly be difficult for Japan to explain to Washington, but it would go a long way towards recasting the region’s diplomatic and security frame and a Japan that could contemplate doing either would no longer be a client state. The Vladivostok conference showed that such mammoth schemes, hitherto little more than pipe dreams, were back on drawing boards in Moscow and Tokyo as well as Beijing, Seoul, and Pyongyang. On all sides the agenda of bridges and tunnels of communication replacing confrontation and military build-up and linking Japan and Korea with the Eurasian continent is “on the table.” It is certainly a more attractive prospect than what is on the Trump-Abe-Turnbull table.

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Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor of the Australian National University and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal. His works on Korea include Cold War Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War, (Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1983), and Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, (New York, Nation Books, and Sydney, Random House Australia, 2004). 

Notes

The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NPR will never tell you, but the criminal is Hillary, not Trump.

It has come to light that the FBI edited down FBI Director Comey’s investigation of Hillary in order to make it look like nothing was amiss. Comey’s conclusion that Hillary was “grossly negligent,” a conclusion justifying felony indictment for mishandling of classified information, was replaced with “extremely careless.” You can read about the rewire here.

The Chairman of the US Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee, Ron Johnson (R, Wis) has asked the current FBI director, Chris Wray, if the document was rewritten in order to protect Hillary. Senator Johnson is particular interested in the emails that show that some senior FBI officials were determined to prevent Trump from becoming US President.

Hillary’s misuse of classified documents on her personal server and subsequent effort to destroy the evidence is far more serious than anything done by Paul Manafort and General Flynn, both under threat of prosecution by Special Prosecutor former FBI Director Mueller. The FBI’s effort to protect Hillary and to dismiss her felony as “careless” is now confronted with Attorney General Jeff Sessions reopening of the case. Notice how the FBI first rigs the case and then puts itself in charge of investigating it. An agency this corrupt should be abolished.

It seems that Trump and his Attorney General finally realized that they are in a fight for their lives and have decided to counterbalance Mueller’s investigation of fake crimes with an investigation of Hillary’s and the FBI’s real crimes.

One can only wonder why they waited so long. Intelligence does not seem to be the hallmark of the Trump administration.

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This article was originally published by Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Millions of Europeans in temporary, part-time or bogus self-employed contracts can only find insecure and badly paid jobs, despite the healthy economic climate. That is the price of deregulating labour markets, Investigate Europe reports. This precarious set of labour conditions was created intentionally.

The misery of bad jobs has many faces. It can take the form of work contracts without health or social insurance; it can be part-time jobs, which don’t pay enough to live on. Or those affected are kept dangling from one temporary contract to the next, or they have to eke out a living as bogus self-employed and contract workers (see examples). The methods vary from one country’s national legislation to that of another, but the outcome is always the same: millions of EU citizens have to get by with insecure and badly paid jobs, offering them no perspective – and this is a growing tendency. France’s President Emmanuel Macron wants to enhance the trend still further. In future, his government will permit employers to hire workers for individual projects only – on contracts which can be cancelled at any time. This often coincides with the dismantling of nationally valid collective agreements, which up to now have offered protection against such practices.

And this is at a time when Europe’s economy is in the best shape it has been for 10 years. In the euro zone alone five and a half million people have found new work since the end of 2012. But according to data provided by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, four out of five of these new jobs are only part-time or temporary and mostly they are badly paid. At the same time, two-thirds of those affected would like to have permanent, full-time jobs, the EU Commission confirms in its latest report on the EU labour market. Europe’s supposed boom is “of low quality”, concluded the research department of US bank Merrill Lynch.

It affects young people above all (see graph). Nearly half of employees up to the age of 25 are employed on temporary contracts, in Spain this figure is even more than 70 percent.

“That is very problematic,” says Marianne Thyssen, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs. “It prevents them leaving their parents’ house, they cannot buy a home or make any decisions, and that weakens the entire economy,” warns the conservative EU politician from Belgium. “People in insecure jobs do not invest in their skills nor do their employers,” she explains. “The more precarious jobs there are, the less productive the economy is,” says Ms. Thyssen, and she is in agreement here with eminent economists.

“All these insecure forms of work are extremely expensive – both for those affected and for society as a whole,” says, for example, Olivier Blanchard, the long-standing chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

But why has job insecurity reached such levels? And what has to happen to halt the trend? The team from Investigate Europe has looked into these issues, and the findings are sobering indeed. In their regulation of labour markets:

– European governments and the EU Commission have been following assumptions and theories for years, which have been shown to be wrong and unrealistic;

– Commissioners and finance ministers of the euro group have systematically dismantled or weakened collective bargaining agreements, fought against trade unions and, by doing so, promoted inequality and job insecurity;

– EU countries are now caught up in a race to the bottom with regard to wages and employees’ rights, making national solutions more difficult.

The keyword for this development is “flexibility”, explains the French trade unionist Thibault Weber, an academic business economist who is the expert in such matters on the board of the European Trade Union Confederation. Europe’s economic policymakers are “obsessed with the idea that the labour market is a market like any other and therefore has to be made as flexible as possible”, says Mr. Weber. But that means enabling companies to employ workers at their own discretion according to the market situation and as cheaply as possible – in other words, employees are the losers. Labour market policies are following this maxim all over Europe, according to Mr. Weber, and “precariousness is the logical result.”

There has indeed been a wave of deregulation affecting EU countries’ labour laws over the last two decades or so, and it continues to this day. Just since 2008 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has counted more than 400 changes of national labour market rules. And most of these structural reforms, as they are called in economists’ jargon, follow the same recipe: if workers are sufficiently flexible and cheap, then companies create new jobs, unemployment falls, and the economy grows.

That was also the logic behind the so-called “Agenda 2010”, with which the government of former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder sought to break up what he called “ossified structures” in the labour market.Indeed, Mr. Schröder used the words “flexibility” and “making flexible” no fewer than eight times during his government declaration on the subject in March 2003. And so temporary employment was “freed of bureaucratic restrictions”, and the upper limit for temporary work at start-ups was extended to 4 years. Low-wage and mini jobs were given favourable treatment by the taxman, and the unemployed were forced to accept any job offer, no matter how badly paid. Parallel to this, countless companies opted out of collective wage agreements and used contract workers, part-time and temporary workers to push down their wage bills.

To this day, this is seen all over Europe as a big success. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since reunification. That is why politicians in other European countries like to point to the German model when they want to further deregulate their domestic labour market. Chancellor Merkel also likes to extol the virtues of German “reforms”. It was only after these reforms that Germany “was able to pull away from France,“ Ms. Merkel claimed last May.

But the story of the German jobs miracle is misleading. It is true that the number of people in employment increased by more than 10 percent between 2003 and the end of 2016 from 39 to 43 million. But this was achieved mainly by replacing full-time jobs by part-time and mini jobs. In fact, actual working time did not increase at all up to 2010; the work was just spread over more people.” And also since the economic climate improved in 2011, the volume of work has been growing much more slowly than employment and is still below the levels of the early 1990s. And that is why in 2016, 4.8 million people in Germany were living entirely from mini jobs. A further 1.5 million are working against their will in part-time jobs. And then there are around 1 million contract workers and more than 2 million self-employed without employees, and most of them do not have enough work.

The “industrial reserve army“ of the unemployed, as Karl Marx once called them, “was reduced in size at the price of a growth in the reserve army of the under-employed in part-time work and the over-employed who have to do several jobs to get by.” That is how the economic sociologist Oliver Nachtwey, author of the bestseller “The Decline Society”, describes the result.

The so-called German miracle thus condemned millions to a life on the poverty line. That means they have to get by on less than 60 percent of average income, about €1,070 per month. Despite the high rate of employment this proportion of the population has been growing for 18 years and has now reached 16 percent. And even a large proportion of those in full-time employment have been left behind. After deductions for inflation, the lower 40 percent of wage earners in Germany earned in 2016 less than they did 20 years ago, as the federal government had to concede in a report on poverty and affluence. And that is why the “Financial Times” called the German miracle “just a myth”.

The same conclusion was reached by Christian Odendahl, head economist of the business-related Centre for European Reform, which drew up a thorough clarification for the benefit of the English-speaking world.

However, the real strength of the German model was shown in 2009 during the recession, following the Lehman crash the year before Whereas many millions of people all over the world lost their jobs, German companies switched to short-time work, reduced their employees’ working hours by drawing down their internal work time accounts filled with overtime worked before and with supporting payment by the unemployment insurance, so there were hardly any job losses. When the economic climate improved again, they were easily able to ramp up their production and increase their market share.

“So it was the exact opposite of the external flexibility dogma,” of the Schröder agenda, “which saved the German labour market in the crisis,” concludes the economist Stefan Lehndorf of the Institute for Labour and Qualification at the University of Duisburg.

“Internal flexibility,” negotiated with and not against the workforce, prevented unemployment. In that respect, he says it is a “bitter irony” that Germany to this day is held up as a role model “for the wrong reasons.”

However, the misunderstanding led to an increase in profitability because of reduced wage bills. This is how the concept of the flexible employee became a powerful doctrine. In Spain short-term contracts of a few months became the rule, the Netherlands made their workers more flexible with variable part-time contracts, and in Italy bogus self-employed status became the norm after liberal professions like lawyers and architects were “opened up to competition” in 2006 and tariff regulations were abolished.

Job security became most precarious in Poland. To make the country attractive to international investors after EU entry, the government in Warsaw added a particular attraction to fixed-term contracts in 2004: anyone who was only employed for a fixed period anyway, could be dismissed at any time without any reason being given. At the same time, there was a massive expansion of employment limited to specific projects and anchored in civil law. Those affected are denied not just social and health insurance, but also the legal minimum wage.

Many employers, from global concerns to small businesses, make use of this. That is why today more than a third of all Polish employees work without any security or for poverty wages – more than in any other EU country. Poland’s labour laws are a “throw-back to the 19th century,” is the indignant reaction of Adam Rogalewski, the Europe Secretary of the Polish trade union confederation OPZZ.

Poland is not alone here. As the financial crisis drove many EU countries into recession and caused big increases in debt and unemployment, the deregulation of labour law became the wonder weapon of choice for the EU Commission – at the time under the leadership of the economic liberal José Barroso and the euro zone’s finance ministers. Global economist Olivier Blanchard, research boss of the IMF at the time, thought it was strange. “Structural reforms were no big deal up to 2009,” he remembers. But they suddenly became “a slogan” to be heard at every conference. “There was this view that weaker trade unions and more wage flexibility were the way out of the crisis, and it was expounded like a religious creed,” he remembers. And of course “this was a way for finance ministers and central banks to put the burden on others,” says Mr. Blanchard.

Then Mr. Barroso’s Economics Commissioner, the Finn Oli Rehn, called on crisis-hit countries to pursue “flexible wage determination and offer more incentives for the unemployed to find work.” Parallel to this, Central Bank boss Mario Draghi put the governments of Spain and Italy under pressure. In order to win back their creditworthiness, they should “reform the system for negotiating wage agreements and approve agreements at the level of individual companies in order to adapt wages and working conditions to their specific requirements,” he wrote to Rome. And he required of Spain that it “take measures to reduce wages in the private sector” and to permit employment contracts “which pay very low compensation in the case of dismissal.”

Mr. Rehn’s officials then stipulated in a “report on the development of the labour market“, what exactly constituted “employment-friendly” reforms.  According to the report they were conditions which:

– “loosen the conditions for dismissals,”;

– “increase the maximum duration of fixed-term and temporary contracts and the

maximum number of renewals”;

– “decrease the bargaining coverage or extension of collective agreements” and

– “result in an overall reduction in the wage-setting power of trade unions.”

Just how blatantly Europe’s governing politicians pursued the interests of managers and company owners with this agenda, was particularly apparent in the crisis-hit countries of Portugal, Greece and Romania. The latter countries’ governments were dependent on emergency loans from the other euro states and the IMF. The officials of the appointed “Troika” from the Commission, the IMF and the ECB used this – on behalf of the creditors – to make radical changes to existing labour and collective bargaining laws in order to benefit employers.

Suitable proposals were made in October 2011, for example, by Pierre Deleplanque, boss of the cement manufacturer “Heracles”, the Greek subsidiary of the world’s largest building materials group Lafarge. After a private meeting with the Troika officials the company manager sent his demands to the head of the Athens office of the IMF, as reported by the newspaper “Efimerida ton Syntakton”, the Greek media partner of Investigate Europe. In his demands, marked “Confidential, only for internal use,” the company manager explained that in addition to “suspending industry wage agreements” the validity of old wage agreements with big companies would also have to end, “in order to facilitate individual agreements” – and in this way remove every protection from employees.

And that is exactly what happened. The loan contracts, called “memoranda of understanding” stipulated that, from then on, employees could be dismissed and were only entitled to minimal compensation. At the same time, national or branch wage agreements which had been the norm up to then, were abolished. Negotiations today are nearly all at company level and usually conducted directly with employees. The new laws “gave employers the power to make unilateral decisions,” as the “conversion of full-time contracts to non-standard employment contracts illustrated,” reported social scientists from the University of Manchester in a subsequent study, ironically financed by the EU Commission. According to the study countless permanent contracts have been changed into fixed term, part-time employment contracts since 2011 and in four out of five cases without the agreement of the individuals affected. Making jobs insecure was the programme, and wages fell on average by 23 percent.

The enforced end of wage negotiations contravened the UN Convention on labourrights, according to a finding of the UN labour organization ILO. But this didn’t bother the EU Commission . On the contrary, its officials implemented the same radical reform in Portugal too. There they stopped the expansion of centrally colectively bargained contracts which included all companies of a branch of industry – a practice which had been usual up until then. It was a resounding success. Up to 2008, around 45 percent of all Portuguese employees’ contracts were based on a nationwide applicable branch agreement. Six years later, that figure was just 5 percent.

In Romania EU officials even exceeded their legal mandate in order to implement radical market ideas. When they made it a condition for granting an emergency loan from 2009 to “streamline institutions for wage determination,” they were directly serving the interests of international concerns. “The Council of Foreign Investors and the US Chamber of Commerce were involved in the drafting of new labour laws and very happy (to do so), says the social scientist Aurora Trif of Dublin University, which surveyed the players involved for an EU-financed study. They made no secret of their influence on the legislation, according to Ms. Trif.

What resulted was a labour law which allowed companies to place employees with full-time contracts on part-time, to issue new employment contracts only on a fixed-term basis and to make use of unlimited numbers of contract workers. At the same time, the government  under the aegis of the EU Commission abolished national collective bargaining and the negotiation of new contracts was to be at the discretion of employers.

The collective bargaining system which had been valid up until then, and which applied to 90 percent of all employees, “was practically destroyed,” complains Petru Dandea, general secretary of the trade union confederation Cartel Alfa. Elected trade union representatives also lost their right to protection against dismissal, as did any employees who dare to strike.

As a consequence of the draconian reform wages fell so far that now 40 percent of all employees are paid only the legal minimum wage.

“We are paid as if we were a country of unqualified people,” complains trade unionist Mr. Dandea.

The EU Commission took that into account at the time. When a subsequent administration in Bucharest announced in 2012 that it would again facilitate nationally binding wage agreements, officials of the commissioner responsible at the time, Olli Rehn, vetoed the move together with the IMF.

“ We strongly urge the authorities to ensure that national collective agreements do not contain elements related to wages and/or reverse the progress achieved with the Labor Code adopted in May 2011,” they wrote to the government – in full agreement with the American Chamber of Commerce, which sent a similar letter of protest.

This prompted the government to abandon the plan.

With this intervention however, Mr. Rehn and his officials were usurping a right they did not have.  Article 153 of the EU Contract states explicitly that the EU and its organs have no responsibility “for pay” whatsoever. Today Mr. Rehn sits on the board of the Finnish central bank. He is unwilling to talk about his involvement in the labour law of other countries and declined to give an interview. The former finance minister of the Netherlands, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who as chairman of the euro group supervised the way to precariousness  in Greece and Portugal, also did not wish to be interviewed.

For a good reason perhaps. Because it has long been clear that “structural reforms” which penalise employees achieve no measurable success for the economy. “Labor market regulation is not found to have statistically significant effects on productivity“ as confirmed by the IMF, the world‘s leading institution for economic research in its annual report of 2015.   Even the traditionally market-liberal economists of the OECD, the club of wealthy countries, conceded last year: “Most empirical studies investigating effects of flexibility-enhancing EPL reforms suggest that they have, at worst no, or a limited positive impact on employment levels.”

A study published in May by the “European Trade Union Institute” (ETUI), the think tank of EU trade unions, examined this question on the basis of comprehensive surveys from eight countries, including Spain, Poland and Germany. These data produced “a very clear result,” says Martin Myant, head economist of the ETUI. There was “no empirical proof” that “deregulation” had “increased employment or reduced unemployment for certain groups.” However, the reforms were “accompanied by an increase of precarious employment, particularly in the countries where there had been particularly energetic deregulation,” as proven by Mr. Myant and his colleagues.

Even ECB President Mario Draghi, who once urged Spain and Italy to exercise wage restraint and weaken trade unions, is now plagued by doubt. Because now the economy is growing but not wages. This means that inflation remains so low that Mr. Draghi and his colleagues do not dare to restore interest rates to customary levels.

“Wage and price setting behaviour in the euro area have changed during the crisis”, Draghi said recently. “For example, structural reforms that have increased firm-level wage bargaining may have made wages more flexible downwards but not necessarily upwards”, he complained.

This mechanism has an enormous inherent risk: the unsuccessful reforms have entangled EU countries in a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions. The next round is due to begin in France. There are still fewer people in France than in other EU countries trapped in insecure and badly paid jobs. French employers see this as a disadvantage and are pushing for “decentralization” of wage negotiations and flexible employment contracts. President Emmanuel Macron is now delivering just such a “pro-business” reform, as the Financial Times put it.

Although “there is practically no proof that a liberalisation of the labour market in France will increase employment levels,” warned the Harvard economist  Dani Rodrik.

But that doesn’t bother Mr. Macron and his advisers. In future, employees and managers are to negotiate directly at company level, and the government has decided to abolish the application of national collective agreements which has been legally guaranteed up to now.

“We are giving employees and employers the freedom to organise themselves,” explained the leading official of the Labour Ministry and Mr. Macron’s chief architect of the reform in an interview with Investigate Europe.

He did not wish to be named. Mr. Macron’s technocrat denies that it is all about reducing wage costs, although that was exactly the consequence of such reforms in Spain or Portugal.

At the same time, the Macron government is clearing a further path towards precarious job security: in future, workers can be hired for a “projet des chantiers” (contract work) formally without a time limit, but in effect limited to a project and therefore easily dismiss. .

That is how France is heading for further job insecurity, although the opposite would be necessary. “If we want to deal with growing inequality, then a ‘re-regulation’ of labour laws would be required, to strengthen the negotiating position of employees again, says, for example, Gustav Horn, head of the trade union-linked German Institute for Macroeconomics (IMK). “Precarious jobs must not become the norm,” is also the opinion of Marianne Thyssen, the commissioner for employment and social affairs in Brussels, who wants nothing more to do with the authority’s former deregulation policies.

One possible instrument would be to significantly increase employers’ social security contributions in the case of fixed-term contracts. After all, the people affected have to draw unemployment benefit much more often than others. So it would only be logical for companies to pay the costs of employing workers “flexibly”. “We don’t want any ‘freeriders in the social systems’,” criticises Commissioner Thyssen.

But that would only be a first step. It would also be necessary to reform the basic principle of labour laws, demands Claudio Treves, general secretary for the liberal professions at the Italian trade union confederation CGIL. Instead of regulating the many different contract forms which exist in the EU, the aim should be to create “a European charter of employees’ basic rights”, which guarantees every worker the right to health and pension insurance as well as a minimum living wage, no matter what contract he or she has. This demand has already been signed by 1.3 million people in Italy, reports Mr. Treves.

But the new advocates of job security do not yet have the political power to enforce something like this. Only very  few of the people with precarious jobs   are trade union members. But that could change soon, because digitisation is escalating job insecurity to a new level:  companies of the new platform economy  like Uber, Foodora or Amazon circumvent labour laws on a broad scale, and their employees generally have no social safeguards, no works councils and no protection against dismissal. However, many of those affected are no longer prepared to put up with this state of affairs.

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A version of this article was originally published in German by Berlin daily Tagesspiegel.

Featured image is from Julia Schneider.

European Leaders – from the EU’s foreign representative Mogherini to Premier Gentiloni, from President Macron to Chancellor Merkel – have formally stepped back from both the US and Israel on the status of Jerusalem. Is a rift between the allies emerging?

The facts would indicate quite the contrary. Just before Trump took his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, yet at a time when the dye had already been cast, Operation Blue Flag 2017 was executed. This is the biggest international drill for air war in Israel’s History. In this drill, the following countries participated: the United States, Italy, Greece and Poland and, for the first time in the third edition, France, Germany and India.

For two weeks, pilots from eight countries (six of which are Nato members), have carried out a drill with 70 airplanes in the Israeli base of Ovda in the Negev desert, assisted by 1,000 soldiers providing technical and logistical support. Italy has participated with four Tornado fighter planes (part of the 6th Formation stationed at Ghedi). Two for attack and another two for electronic war. The United States is participating with seven F-16s from the 31st Fighter Wing based at Aviano. Since these planes have been fitted out to transport the US B-61 nuclear bombs, surely Italian and US pilots, along with others, have been drilled to carry out missions for nuclear attack. According to official information, more than 800 flight missions have been carried out, simulating “extreme combat scenarios with flights at the lowest level and electromagnetic countermeasures to neutralize anti-air defense”. In other words, pilots have been trained to penetrate enemy territory, to strike targets with both nuclear and non-nuclear bombs and missiles.

Operation Blue Flag 2017 has improved “cooperation between and operational readiness of the air forces that are participating” and, at the same time, has “strengthened Israel’s international status”. Symbolic – reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in an article on “fighter-jet diplomacy” – is “the sight of a Eurofighter jet, carrying the cross of the German Luftwaffe lining up beside an F-15 with the Israeli Air-Force’s blue Star of David” [Translator’s note 2] taking off for the first time, side by side, for the same mission or the French fighters returning to Israel where they had been secretly stationed in 1956 for the Suez campaign against Nasser’s Egypt.

And so concludes Haaretz:

“Blue Flag is a demonstration by Israel that more countries than ever are ready to engage with it publicly as strategic allies and to put aside political considerations like the Palestinian issue. As the influence of traditional diplomacy is waning, the role played by military commanders in international relations is growing. [1]

The meeting between General Frigerio, Commander of the Italian Fighting Forces, with General Norkin, Commander of the Israeli Air Force confirms this. This meeting falls within Law no. 94 of May 17 2005, which institutionalizes an ever closer cooperation between Italy’s armed forces and military industrials with their Israeli counterparts. Israel is now a de facto Nato member.

By virtue of a “Programme for Individual Cooperation”, Israel maintains a permanent official mission within Nato’s headquarters. This programme was ratified in December 2008 (just before the Israeli operation “Cast Lead” took place at Gaza). One element of this programme is hooking up the Israeli forces (nuclear forces included) to Nato’s electronic system. Immediately after Blue Flag 2017, Israeli pilots (who are training with Italian fighters, M-346), started once again to bomb Palestinians in Gaza while Premier Gentiloni declared that “the future of Jerusalem, that sacred city, unrivalled in the world, is defined in the context of the peace process”.

*

Translation by Anoosha Boralessa, Reseau Voltaire

Manlio Dinucci is a geographer and geopolitical scientist. His latest books are Laboratorio di geografia, Zanichelli 2014 ; Diario di viaggio, Zanichelli 2017 ; L’arte della guerra / Annali della strategia Usa/Nato 1990-2016, Zambon 2016.

Note

[1] Quotation provided by the author.

Tutti parlano del libro esplosivo su Trump, con rivelazioni sensazionali di come Donald si fa il ciuffo, di come lui e la moglie dormono in camere separate, di cosa si dice alle sue spalle nei corridoi della Casa Bianca, di cosa ha fatto suo figlio maggiore che, incontrando una avvocatessa russa alla Trump Tower di New York, ha tradito la patria e sovvertito l’esito delle elezioni presidenziali.

Quasi nessuno, invece, parla di un libro dal contenuto veramente esplosivo, uscito poco prima a firma del presidente Donald Trump: «Strategia della sicurezza nazionale degli Stati uniti».

È un documento periodico redatto dai poteri forti delle diverse amministrazioni, anzitutto da quelli militari. Rispetto al precedente, pubblicato dall’amministrazione Obama nel 2015, quello dell’amministrazione Trump contiene elementi di sostanziale continuità.

Basilare il concetto che, per «mettere l’America al primo posto perché sia sicura, prospera e libera», occorre avere «la forza e la volontà di esercitare la leadership Usa nel mondo». Lo stesso concetto espresso dall’amministrazione Obama (così come dalle precedenti): «Per garantire la sicurezza del suo popolo, l’America deve dirigere da una posizione di forza». Rispetto al documento strategico dell’amministazione Obama, che parlava di «aggressione russa all’Ucraina» e di «allerta per la modernizzazione militare della Cina e per la sua crescente presenza in Asia», quello dell’amministrazione Trump è molto più esplicito: «La Cina e la Russia sfidano la potenza, l’influenza e gli interessi dell’America, tentando di erodere la sua sicurezza e prosperità». In tal modo gli autori del documento strategico scoprono le carte mostrando qual è la vera posta in gioco per gli Stati uniti: il rischio crescente di perdere la supremazia economica di fronte all’emergere di nuovi soggetti statuali e sociali, anzitutto Cina e Russia le quali stanno adottando misure per ridurre il predominio del dollaro che permette agli Usa di mantenere un ruolo dominante, stampando dollari il cui valore si basa non sulla reale capacità economica statunitense ma sul fatto che vengono usati quale valuta globale.

«Cina e Russia  – sottolinea il documento strategico – vogliono formare un mondo antitetico ai valori e agli interessi Usa. La Cina cerca di prendere il posto  degli Stati uniti nella regione del Pacifico, diffondendo il suo modello di economia a conduzione statale. La Russia cerca di riacquistare il suo status di grande potenza e stabilire sfere di influenza vicino ai suoi confini. Mira a indebolire l’influenza statunitense nel mondo e a dividerci dai nostri alleati e partner». Da qui una vera e propria dichiarazione di guerra: «Competeremo con tutti gli strumenti della nostra potenza nazionale per assicurare che le regioni del mondo non siano dominate da una singola potenza», ossia per far sì che siano tutte dominate dagli Stati uniti. Fra «tutti gli strumenti» è compreso ovviamente quello militare, in cui gli Usa sono superiori. Come sottolineava il documento strategico dell’amministrazione Obama, «possediamo una forza militare la cui potenza, tecnologia e portata geostrategica non ha eguali nella storia dell’umanità; abbiamo la Nato, la più forte alleanza del mondo».

La «Strategia della sicurezza nazionale degli Stati uniti», a firma Trump, coinvolge quindi l’Italia e gli altri paesi della Nato, chiamati a rafforzare il fianco orientale contro l’«aggressione russa», e a destinare almeno  il 2% del pil alla spesa militare e il 20% di questa all’acquisizione di nuove forze e armi.

L’Europa va in guerra, ma non se ne parla nei dibattiti televisivi: questo non è un tema elettorale.

Manlio Dinucci

An interesting theme concerning Syria is the involvement of the People’s Republic of China in the conflict. While China’s diplomatic and economic assistance has been constant, its military contribution to Syria is less known. It is important for China and Russia to contain and defeat the terrorist phenomenon in the Middle East, as well as to defang the strategists in the US deep state who are unceasing in their efforts to employ jihadism as a weapon to destabilize Eurasia’s integration projects.

The Jihad International, under the economic and strategic guidance of the United States, has recruited tens of thousands of terrorists over the years and sent them to Syria. Among these, a significant number come from the Uighur ethnic group, situated in the autonomous Chinese province of Xinjiang, particularly from the city of Kashgar, geographically located in the extreme west and close to the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The employment of ethnic and religious minorities to destabilize the majority of a given population has been an ancient artifice repeatedly relied upon by great powers. We thus remember how radical Islam was used in Chechnya to strike the Russian Federation at its “soft underbelly” in the south-west of the country. Two wars and repeated terrorist attacks show the area has yet to be fully pacified. The Wahhabis, a Sunni (anti-) Islamic minority, have shown themselves to be the perfect spark to ignite the tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle Eastern region and beyond. The case of the Uighur Islamist extremists in Xinjiang is no exception, and the Chinese central government is well aware of the potential danger from an internal uprising or targeted sabotage in the region. Not surprisingly, there has been a tightening of security measures in the region, with exercises against terrorist attacks and riots carried out by police and paramilitary groups. Beijing does not underestimate the danger posed by populations susceptible to foreign manipulation.

While the economic support for Uyghur Islamist separatists more likely derives from Turkey than Saudi Arabia (for historical reasons), it is worth highlighting the highly proactive attitude of China in addressing the issue. As well as beefing up internal security and having a policy of zero tolerance towards such extremist ideologies, Beijing has since 2011 been contributing economically and diplomatically to the Syrian war against the jihadists.

Official estimates place about 5,000 Chinese Uyghur terrorists in Syria, and Beijing’s strategy has reflected the one already implemented in the Russian Federation. Rather than waiting for highly trained killers to return home, it is better to confront the danger in a foreign land, thereby gaining a strategic and tactical advantage over those financing and manipulating terror, which is to say the American deep state and its military and security apparatus.

Thus far, there has been a continuous support of the Syrian government coming from Beijing, both economic and diplomatic. However, rumour over the last few weeks has it that Chinese special forces and war veterans will be deployed to Syria to eliminate the Islamist threat breathing down on China’s western border.

As always, when Beijing decides to move, it does so under the radar, with extreme caution, especially militarily. Chinese military strategists intend not only to act pre-emptively against internal destabilization, but to also respond asymmetrically to American involvement in the South China Sea and other areas lying within the China’s sphere of influence. The insertion of Chinese troops into the Middle East (albeit in limited numbers) would signal an epochal change in the region, a change that was instigated by the Saudi-Israeli-American trio in an effort to employ controlled chaos through Islamist terrorism but which is proving to be a chaos that they are incapable of controlling.

Preventing the spread of terrorism in Asia, and more generally in Eurasia, is understandably an important goal for Russia and China, especially in view of ambitious infrastructure projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Much of the success of this project will depend on how well the Chinese government and its partners (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey in particular) will be able to prevent destabilization through the fanning of ethnic and religious tensions along the route of the BRI, such as in Pakistan.

China’s foray into Syria will involve a few special-forces units, namely: the Shenyang Military Region Special Forces Unit, known as the “Siberian Tigers”; and the Lanzhou Military Region Special Forces Unit, known as the “Night Tigers”. These units will have responsibilities for advising, training and conducting reconnaissance. Similar to the Russian engagement in Syria, Chinese involvement will remain as hidden and limited as possible. The Chinese goal, unlike the Russian one, concerns the gaining of urban-warfare experience, in addition to hunting jihadists, and more generally, to test Chinese military readiness in war conditions, experience of which is lacking in Beijing’s recent experience.

China’s involvement in Syria is less obvious than that of the Russian Federation. The strategic objectives of the Chinese vary greatly from that of the Russians, especially vis-a-vis the Russian ability to project forces a long way from home.

The Chinese and Russians are increasing their operational capabilities, both in terms of defending their territorial boundaries as well as in their ability to project their power as a result of increased naval and aerospace capabilities. Syria offers Beijing the perfect opportunity to include itself in the global fight against terrorism, thereby preventing possible terrorist insurgencies at home. Further, it serves to send a clear message to rivals like the United States who might have thoughts of using Islamic terrorists to destabilize China. Beijing is aware of the perverse employment of terrorism to advance geostrategic goals by its Western adversaries and has no intention of succumbing to waves of attacks or chaos coordinated by the Western powers. Prevention is better than cure, and Russia and China seem to have completely embraced this philosophy by deciding, in different ways, to assist allies like Syria, Egypt and Libya to fight terrorism.

In terms of diplomacy and economic aid, the Sino-Russian contribution could prove decisive in linking the Middle East and North Africa to major projects under development, such as the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) and the Eurasian Union. We are still at the preliminary stage for the time being, even as 2018 could end up being the year that major conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region end, with the prospect of economic reconstruction being at the forefront.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Featured image is from the author.

An interesting theme concerning Syria is the involvement of the People’s Republic of China in the conflict. While China’s diplomatic and economic assistance has been constant, its military contribution to Syria is less known. It is important for China and Russia to contain and defeat the terrorist phenomenon in the Middle East, as well as to defang the strategists in the US deep state who are unceasing in their efforts to employ jihadism as a weapon to destabilize Eurasia’s integration projects.

The Jihad International, under the economic and strategic guidance of the United States, has recruited tens of thousands of terrorists over the years and sent them to Syria. Among these, a significant number come from the Uighur ethnic group, situated in the autonomous Chinese province of Xinjiang, particularly from the city of Kashgar, geographically located in the extreme west and close to the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The employment of ethnic and religious minorities to destabilize the majority of a given population has been an ancient artifice repeatedly relied upon by great powers. We thus remember how radical Islam was used in Chechnya to strike the Russian Federation at its “soft underbelly” in the south-west of the country. Two wars and repeated terrorist attacks show the area has yet to be fully pacified. The Wahhabis, a Sunni (anti-) Islamic minority, have shown themselves to be the perfect spark to ignite the tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle Eastern region and beyond. The case of the Uighur Islamist extremists in Xinjiang is no exception, and the Chinese central government is well aware of the potential danger from an internal uprising or targeted sabotage in the region. Not surprisingly, there has been a tightening of security measures in the region, with exercises against terrorist attacks and riots carried out by police and paramilitary groups. Beijing does not underestimate the danger posed by populations susceptible to foreign manipulation.

While the economic support for Uyghur Islamist separatists more likely derives from Turkey than Saudi Arabia (for historical reasons), it is worth highlighting the highly proactive attitude of China in addressing the issue. As well as beefing up internal security and having a policy of zero tolerance towards such extremist ideologies, Beijing has since 2011 been contributing economically and diplomatically to the Syrian war against the jihadists.

Official estimates place about 5,000 Chinese Uyghur terrorists in Syria, and Beijing’s strategy has reflected the one already implemented in the Russian Federation. Rather than waiting for highly trained killers to return home, it is better to confront the danger in a foreign land, thereby gaining a strategic and tactical advantage over those financing and manipulating terror, which is to say the American deep state and its military and security apparatus.

Thus far, there has been a continuous support of the Syrian government coming from Beijing, both economic and diplomatic. However, rumour over the last few weeks has it that Chinese special forces and war veterans will be deployed to Syria to eliminate the Islamist threat breathing down on China’s western border.

As always, when Beijing decides to move, it does so under the radar, with extreme caution, especially militarily. Chinese military strategists intend not only to act pre-emptively against internal destabilization, but to also respond asymmetrically to American involvement in the South China Sea and other areas lying within the China’s sphere of influence. The insertion of Chinese troops into the Middle East (albeit in limited numbers) would signal an epochal change in the region, a change that was instigated by the Saudi-Israeli-American trio in an effort to employ controlled chaos through Islamist terrorism but which is proving to be a chaos that they are incapable of controlling.

Preventing the spread of terrorism in Asia, and more generally in Eurasia, is understandably an important goal for Russia and China, especially in view of ambitious infrastructure projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Much of the success of this project will depend on how well the Chinese government and its partners (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey in particular) will be able to prevent destabilization through the fanning of ethnic and religious tensions along the route of the BRI, such as in Pakistan.

China’s foray into Syria will involve a few special-forces units, namely: the Shenyang Military Region Special Forces Unit, known as the “Siberian Tigers”; and the Lanzhou Military Region Special Forces Unit, known as the “Night Tigers”. These units will have responsibilities for advising, training and conducting reconnaissance. Similar to the Russian engagement in Syria, Chinese involvement will remain as hidden and limited as possible. The Chinese goal, unlike the Russian one, concerns the gaining of urban-warfare experience, in addition to hunting jihadists, and more generally, to test Chinese military readiness in war conditions, experience of which is lacking in Beijing’s recent experience.

China’s involvement in Syria is less obvious than that of the Russian Federation. The strategic objectives of the Chinese vary greatly from that of the Russians, especially vis-a-vis the Russian ability to project forces a long way from home.

The Chinese and Russians are increasing their operational capabilities, both in terms of defending their territorial boundaries as well as in their ability to project their power as a result of increased naval and aerospace capabilities. Syria offers Beijing the perfect opportunity to include itself in the global fight against terrorism, thereby preventing possible terrorist insurgencies at home. Further, it serves to send a clear message to rivals like the United States who might have thoughts of using Islamic terrorists to destabilize China. Beijing is aware of the perverse employment of terrorism to advance geostrategic goals by its Western adversaries and has no intention of succumbing to waves of attacks or chaos coordinated by the Western powers. Prevention is better than cure, and Russia and China seem to have completely embraced this philosophy by deciding, in different ways, to assist allies like Syria, Egypt and Libya to fight terrorism.

In terms of diplomacy and economic aid, the Sino-Russian contribution could prove decisive in linking the Middle East and North Africa to major projects under development, such as the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) and the Eurasian Union. We are still at the preliminary stage for the time being, even as 2018 could end up being the year that major conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region end, with the prospect of economic reconstruction being at the forefront.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Featured image is from the author.

The recent visit of Free Syrian Army commanders to Washington amounts to an exercise in war propaganda.[1]

The visit serves to legitimize the FSA terrorists in the eyes of the broader public by perpetuating the fiction that they are somehow “moderate”, or that they represent organic opposition to the Syrian government. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  The CIA alone spends about one billion per year[2] supporting terrorists in Syria. So the FSA aren’t Free.  They are beholden to their imperial masters and underwriters. Nor are they “Syrian” in terms of being legitimate Syrian opposition. And they are not an “army” either, although they are part of an “army” of foreign-backed Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists infesting Syria and beyond. 

We do know, however, that the FSA were amongst the terrorists who stormed Syria from Turkey and beheaded many of Lilly Martin’s Christian neighbours.[3]

We do know that the terrorists who invaded and desecrated the primarily Christian town of Maaloula, Syria, included FSA terrorists.[4]

We also know that FSA terrorists were amongst those who terrorized people in Aleppo for years.[5]

The FSA, alongside other terrorist factions, including ISIS and al Nusra, have terrorized Syria and Syrians for years.

Naturally the Western media presstitutes and the criminal politicians will mention none of this.  But the truth is there for all who seek peace and justice.  Presumably, Western populations would not support the FSA if they knew the truth.

Notes

[1] “Free Syrian Army Commanders Visit Washington – Reports.” South Front/Global Research. 8 January, 2018.

(https://www.globalresearch.ca/free-syrian-army-commanders-visit-washington-reports/5625267) Accessed 8 January, 2018.

[2] Mark Taliano, “Criminal War Propaganda.” Global Research. 7 November, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/criminal-war-propaganda/5616974) Accessed 8 January, 2018.

[3] Declan Hayes, “The Rape of Kasab.” Op Ed News. 16 September, 2014.(https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Rape-of-Kasab-Syria-by-Declan-Hayes-Ambassador_Attack_Beheadings_Christian-140914-360.html) Accessed 8 January, 2018.

[4] Mark Taliano, “A Christian Christmas? The West Supported Al Qaeda Terrorists Who Killed Christians in Syria.”Global Research, 12 December, 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-christian-christmas-the-west-supported-al-qaeda-terrorists-who-killed-christians-in-syria/5622487) Accessed 8 January, 2018.

[5] Mark Taliano,“Syria: Egregious Lies and Crimes Are The Foundation of Western Foreign Policy.” Global Research.  15 March 2017. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/egregious-lies-and-crimes-are-the-foundation-of-western-foreign-policy/5589955) . Accessed 8 January, 2018.

---

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Donald Trump‘s veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against North Korea is not only horrifying, but also illegal. It warrants his removal from office.

On New Year’s Day, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un asserted, “The entire area of the US mainland is within our nuclear strike range. The United States can never start a war against me and our country,” adding, “The United States should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my table.”

Kim clarified that he would not use those weapons except in response to aggression.

Not to be outdone by Kim, Trump tweeted in response,

“I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The president’s cavalier threat to start a nuclear holocaust cannot be dismissed as the rant of an immature bully. Trump controls a powerful nuclear arsenal. In fact, a few days after Trump’s nuclear button tweet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared it would sponsor a public meeting to cover “planning and preparation efforts” in the event of a nuclear attack.

Trump’s Tweet Is Illegal

Trump’s tweet violates several laws. Threatening to use nuclear weapons runs afoul of the United Nations Charter, which forbids the use of or threat to use military force except in self-defense or when approved by the Security Council. North Korea has not mounted an armed attack on the United States nor is such an attack imminent. And the UN Security Council has not given the US its blessing to attack North Korea. Trump’s tweet also constitutes a threat to commit genocide and a crime against humanity.

The ominous tweet follows Trump’s promise last summer that North Korean threats would be “met with fire and fury,” a phrase that found its way into the title of Michael Wolff’s explosive new book. Trump also told the UN General Assembly he would “totally destroy North Korea.”

“Nuclear war is not a game,” said Derek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, the international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons, in a statement. “We are flirting with unacceptably high risks that carry catastrophic consequences for the country and the world. No one can afford to not take Trump’s threats seriously — least of all the North Koreans, who could be provoked into striking first in order to preempt what they perceive as an imminent attack.”

Lawmakers are echoing the concerns of advocates like Johnson.

“A nuclear conflict on the Korean peninsula would be a catastrophe, leading to the deaths of potentially millions of people, including American service members and families stationed there,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) stated.

Indeed, “even a conventional war between the US and [North Korea] could kill more than 1 million people; a nuclear exchange, therefore might result in tens of millions of casualties,” The Intercept reported.

Jeffrey Lewis, an expert in nuclear policy at Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told HuffPost that after a nuclear strike,

“there would be survivors for days trying to make their way out of the rubble and back home, dying of radiation poisoning.”

Markey said that Trump’s tweet

“borders on presidential malpractice,” adding, “We cannot let this war of words result in an actual war.”

Eliot A. Cohen, assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush administration, was alarmed by Trump’s nuclear button tweet.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Featured image is from CTV News.

The Communist Party Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist UML) won 80 seats under FPTP while their Left Front partner CPN (Maoist Center) won 36 seats. The ruling Nepali Congress (NC) could gain only 23 seats. The Communists won 116 seats out of 165 in total. Two parties based in Madhes, in southern Nepal, the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJPN) and the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum (SSF), combined to secure 21 seats; other fringe parties won the remaining five seats.

In the proportional system for the 110 seats, UML got 33.25 per cent vote while Congress came second with 32.78 per cent. The Maoist Center got 13.66 per cent votes.

In total, out of the 275 seats in the House of Representatives, the left alliance holds 174 (121 for the CPN-UML and 53 for the Maoists), the NC 63, the RJPN 17, and the SSF 16.

The Congress was at the losing end in the FPTP system as the Communists united and put up joint candidates under a 60/40 formula in favor of UML. It was mainly one-against-one race in the elections under the new 2015 constitution that made the difference in favor of Communists unlike the past parliamentarian practices, when three main parties were contesting against each other during the last 2013 and 2008 general elections.

The newly constituted seven provinces also saw a massive victory for UML. Six out of seven provinces were won over by UML and the process of forming new provincial governments is under way.

The two main parties of Nepal, UML and Maoist Center, had decided prior to the elections, not only to form the alliance but also to merge within six months to form one united Communist party. This was approved very well by the people as this brings the two parties into a binding contract to unite and not just an election alliance.

There were celebrations in the street of the Katmandu after this historic victory of the Communists. This was the first time that Communists have an almost two third majority in Nepal, the most poverty stricken country of South Asia. The UML and Maoist Center have been in power several times since 1994 but always for a short time and as part of coalitions.

The appeal of UML for a stable and strong government worked very well among the Nepali masses who were tired of weak coalition government of opposite ideologies. The Nepali Congress was also taught a lesson for their impression of a pro-Indian party.

CPN-UML chairman Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli (left) shakes hands with the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachanda. (Source: The Bullet)

The Indian Blockade

India’s blockade of September 2015 was remembered very well by Nepali masses who had to make kilometers of lines to fetch petrol for vehicles after most supplies from India were stopped.

This was after the Madheshi community protested over the issue of constitutional rights. Madheshis are mainly located in Terai area of Nepal and were unhappy with the rights they had within the first constitution of Nepal. The blockade choked imports of not only petroleum, but also medicines and earthquake relief material. The United front of Madheshi parties could win only one province and around 10 per cent of the total votes during the present elections.

During the election campaign, Nepali Congress leaders said that a victory by the left alliance would bring a totalitarian regime to power; that a one party system and age old communism has failed miserably in the world. These arguments failed to impress the general public. Over the last three decades, the CPN-UML has transformed itself into a democratic force; voters were not convinced that its victory would lead to one-party communist rule. UML at best could be termed as left social democrats. They had adopted multi-party system in their constitution.

Women’s Participation

A total of 41 women candidates contested in the first round of elections to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies, in 32 districts out of 75. Of them, 18 women are contesting in the House of Representatives and the rest in the State Assemblies. Only five women won the elections in the FPTP system on the open seats contest. The Nepal constitution guarantee at least 33 per cent of women’s representation in the parliament – that means 91 women in a parliament of 275. Only five were elected, rest of the 86 women would be elected through the proportional system to qualify the general election in accordance with the constitution.

The UML Leadership

The UML is led by KP Sharma Oli (65) who joined the Communist movement at the age of 13. Inspired by Indian Communist leader Charu Majumdar, known as “father of Naxalbari peasant movement of Bengal” he spent fourteen consecutive years in jail from 1973 to 1987. He was elected Member of Parliament for the first time in 1991 then 1994 and 1999. He lost to Maoists in 2008 general elections but won comfortably in 2013 and 2017. He has served in important ministries during the past 21 years and was also Prime Minister of Nepal from October 2015. He resigned in August 2016 after the Maoists ditched the Left Alliance government to join the Congress. Pushpa Kamal Dhar, known as Prachanda, leader of the Maoists, was elected Prime Minister. However, before the present elections, Prachanda opted to form the Left Alliance and won 36 seats in the FPTP system and around 13 per cent of the votes in PR system.

A Short Note on History of Communists

Nepali Communists are not traditional communists. Realizing the negative effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, CPN UML was formed on January, 1991 through the unification of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist). The party has led four governments before the present landslide victory. The UML surprised many internationally, when they took over power for the first time briefly for nine months through elections in 1994 at the time when there was massive propaganda against socialism. Many brushed aside this victory as “communists governing under a king.”

In this present period of right wing surge, it is very pleasant to see that Nepal is a sizable country where Communist parties of various stripes cumulatively enjoy the support of the majority of the country’s voters – even if it is the only remaining one.

However, this is not an accidental landslide victory of the CPN UML and Maoist Center. It took years of hard work with a Nepali touch unlike the other CPs of the region that they were able to keep, sustain, consolidate and muster this mass support of the working class. The Communist Party Nepal formed in 1949, in India, has gone through various phases of development, from being a party in exile to a party with significant presence in every part of Nepal. It has seen dozens of splits within its ranks and has allied to various international trends within the communist movement. However the urge of unity among various factions and groups which identify as Communist was always at the centre of their strategy.

From Maoism to Left social democratic ideology, from armed struggle to parliamentarianism, from war to peace, the Communists of Nepal in various forms were always known as communists. This identity as Communists has been very strong among their ranks and with good reasons. The term never brought them a negative response. It was always a vote winning term.

The predecessors of UML and Maoist Center have always learned to live and survive in most difficult circumstances and keep their support intact. While all political parties were banned between 1960s – 1980s, they managed to work along with the dictates of the King. They worked through Panchayats established as an alternative to parliament¹ and tried to popularize their ideas. The main debate among them was how to be popular among the masses with their own name.

The decade’s long rift between the Kingdom and the Congress, the main party of the bourgeoisie, was very well maneuvered by various groupings of Communists in their favor. They sided one against the other. However, most of them were never afraid to go to jail. And many spent years behind bars.

The Maoists

The Maoists, during 10 years of armed struggle from 1996 to 2006, used a combination of armed attacks on police and official buildings and personnel while negotiating with the government and the King. The rejection of negotiation was not written in the dictionary of their strategy. So was UML leadership who was always ready to find a way out of the crisis.

It was the Maoist determination to abolish the office of the King that won the day after the 2008 parliamentarian elections when Maoist emerged surprisingly as the second largest party trailing behind Congress. This was a great victory for Nepal to get rid of the King through a combined strategy of mass movement and elections.

After abolishing the office of the King, the main challenge was writing a new constitution that could guarantee all the basic rights of all the communities, no matter how small. The challenge was not met without years of negotiations and sacrifices of various governments.

Maoist splits continued during the 2008/2013 power period through coalition governments along opposite parties and fellow Communists. They were bitterly divided on the issue of the path of the ‘revolution’. One faction of Maoism advocated a boycott of 2013 election, a strategy that failed miserably. However the damage was done as Maoists emerged as third party rather than the second position they had before, losing a significant layer of mass support to the UML.

Maoists under the charismatic leadership of Prachanda made various overnight U-turns in terms of forming coalitions and alliances. However, the cleverest timely move by the Maoist Center was to form an election alliance with UML prior to the 2017 elections and decide to start a merger process of the two parties. Had they not made this move, they would have lost badly in the present elections. A political scenario of a three way race in the present election would have benefited the Congress and thus another unstable government, probably based on another kind of alliance.

The Constitution

The year 2015 saw the acceptance of the constitution with 90 per cent parliamentary support. The yearlong boycott of Madheshi parties and the economic blockade of Nepal by India was well fought by the vast majority of Nepal. They succeeded in bringing back the Madheshi parties to main stream politics by making some amendments to the constitution in agreement with those advocating the boycott.

A Positive Development and Real Challenge

The Communist’s alliance landslide victory is a positive development in the South Asian region. It is like a wave of fresh cool air in an over-heated region of the Indian subcontinent. The real challenge begins now. The massive victory has raised expectations. Reforms are on the agenda. However, reforms under capitalism can never be of permanent nature. The capitalist path in the longer run is a road to distraction and losing mass support of the Communist’s ideology. They have to move ahead on the road of parliament to abolishing capitalism and remaining elements of feudal society. They know best how to do it, if they want to do it.

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Farooq Tariq is the national spokesperson, and former general secretary, of Pakistan’s Awami Workers’ Party formed in 2012 by the coming together of three existing parties. He was previously national spokesperson of Labour Party Pakistan.

Note

1. Panchayats are a system of local organization used at village and town level for example in India.

The Communist Party Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist UML) won 80 seats under FPTP while their Left Front partner CPN (Maoist Center) won 36 seats. The ruling Nepali Congress (NC) could gain only 23 seats. The Communists won 116 seats out of 165 in total. Two parties based in Madhes, in southern Nepal, the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJPN) and the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum (SSF), combined to secure 21 seats; other fringe parties won the remaining five seats.

In the proportional system for the 110 seats, UML got 33.25 per cent vote while Congress came second with 32.78 per cent. The Maoist Center got 13.66 per cent votes.

In total, out of the 275 seats in the House of Representatives, the left alliance holds 174 (121 for the CPN-UML and 53 for the Maoists), the NC 63, the RJPN 17, and the SSF 16.

The Congress was at the losing end in the FPTP system as the Communists united and put up joint candidates under a 60/40 formula in favor of UML. It was mainly one-against-one race in the elections under the new 2015 constitution that made the difference in favor of Communists unlike the past parliamentarian practices, when three main parties were contesting against each other during the last 2013 and 2008 general elections.

The newly constituted seven provinces also saw a massive victory for UML. Six out of seven provinces were won over by UML and the process of forming new provincial governments is under way.

The two main parties of Nepal, UML and Maoist Center, had decided prior to the elections, not only to form the alliance but also to merge within six months to form one united Communist party. This was approved very well by the people as this brings the two parties into a binding contract to unite and not just an election alliance.

There were celebrations in the street of the Katmandu after this historic victory of the Communists. This was the first time that Communists have an almost two third majority in Nepal, the most poverty stricken country of South Asia. The UML and Maoist Center have been in power several times since 1994 but always for a short time and as part of coalitions.

The appeal of UML for a stable and strong government worked very well among the Nepali masses who were tired of weak coalition government of opposite ideologies. The Nepali Congress was also taught a lesson for their impression of a pro-Indian party.

CPN-UML chairman Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli (left) shakes hands with the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), Pushpa Kamal Dahal, aka Prachanda. (Source: The Bullet)

The Indian Blockade

India’s blockade of September 2015 was remembered very well by Nepali masses who had to make kilometers of lines to fetch petrol for vehicles after most supplies from India were stopped.

This was after the Madheshi community protested over the issue of constitutional rights. Madheshis are mainly located in Terai area of Nepal and were unhappy with the rights they had within the first constitution of Nepal. The blockade choked imports of not only petroleum, but also medicines and earthquake relief material. The United front of Madheshi parties could win only one province and around 10 per cent of the total votes during the present elections.

During the election campaign, Nepali Congress leaders said that a victory by the left alliance would bring a totalitarian regime to power; that a one party system and age old communism has failed miserably in the world. These arguments failed to impress the general public. Over the last three decades, the CPN-UML has transformed itself into a democratic force; voters were not convinced that its victory would lead to one-party communist rule. UML at best could be termed as left social democrats. They had adopted multi-party system in their constitution.

Women’s Participation

A total of 41 women candidates contested in the first round of elections to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies, in 32 districts out of 75. Of them, 18 women are contesting in the House of Representatives and the rest in the State Assemblies. Only five women won the elections in the FPTP system on the open seats contest. The Nepal constitution guarantee at least 33 per cent of women’s representation in the parliament – that means 91 women in a parliament of 275. Only five were elected, rest of the 86 women would be elected through the proportional system to qualify the general election in accordance with the constitution.

The UML Leadership

The UML is led by KP Sharma Oli (65) who joined the Communist movement at the age of 13. Inspired by Indian Communist leader Charu Majumdar, known as “father of Naxalbari peasant movement of Bengal” he spent fourteen consecutive years in jail from 1973 to 1987. He was elected Member of Parliament for the first time in 1991 then 1994 and 1999. He lost to Maoists in 2008 general elections but won comfortably in 2013 and 2017. He has served in important ministries during the past 21 years and was also Prime Minister of Nepal from October 2015. He resigned in August 2016 after the Maoists ditched the Left Alliance government to join the Congress. Pushpa Kamal Dhar, known as Prachanda, leader of the Maoists, was elected Prime Minister. However, before the present elections, Prachanda opted to form the Left Alliance and won 36 seats in the FPTP system and around 13 per cent of the votes in PR system.

A Short Note on History of Communists

Nepali Communists are not traditional communists. Realizing the negative effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, CPN UML was formed on January, 1991 through the unification of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist). The party has led four governments before the present landslide victory. The UML surprised many internationally, when they took over power for the first time briefly for nine months through elections in 1994 at the time when there was massive propaganda against socialism. Many brushed aside this victory as “communists governing under a king.”

In this present period of right wing surge, it is very pleasant to see that Nepal is a sizable country where Communist parties of various stripes cumulatively enjoy the support of the majority of the country’s voters – even if it is the only remaining one.

However, this is not an accidental landslide victory of the CPN UML and Maoist Center. It took years of hard work with a Nepali touch unlike the other CPs of the region that they were able to keep, sustain, consolidate and muster this mass support of the working class. The Communist Party Nepal formed in 1949, in India, has gone through various phases of development, from being a party in exile to a party with significant presence in every part of Nepal. It has seen dozens of splits within its ranks and has allied to various international trends within the communist movement. However the urge of unity among various factions and groups which identify as Communist was always at the centre of their strategy.

From Maoism to Left social democratic ideology, from armed struggle to parliamentarianism, from war to peace, the Communists of Nepal in various forms were always known as communists. This identity as Communists has been very strong among their ranks and with good reasons. The term never brought them a negative response. It was always a vote winning term.

The predecessors of UML and Maoist Center have always learned to live and survive in most difficult circumstances and keep their support intact. While all political parties were banned between 1960s – 1980s, they managed to work along with the dictates of the King. They worked through Panchayats established as an alternative to parliament¹ and tried to popularize their ideas. The main debate among them was how to be popular among the masses with their own name.

The decade’s long rift between the Kingdom and the Congress, the main party of the bourgeoisie, was very well maneuvered by various groupings of Communists in their favor. They sided one against the other. However, most of them were never afraid to go to jail. And many spent years behind bars.

The Maoists

The Maoists, during 10 years of armed struggle from 1996 to 2006, used a combination of armed attacks on police and official buildings and personnel while negotiating with the government and the King. The rejection of negotiation was not written in the dictionary of their strategy. So was UML leadership who was always ready to find a way out of the crisis.

It was the Maoist determination to abolish the office of the King that won the day after the 2008 parliamentarian elections when Maoist emerged surprisingly as the second largest party trailing behind Congress. This was a great victory for Nepal to get rid of the King through a combined strategy of mass movement and elections.

After abolishing the office of the King, the main challenge was writing a new constitution that could guarantee all the basic rights of all the communities, no matter how small. The challenge was not met without years of negotiations and sacrifices of various governments.

Maoist splits continued during the 2008/2013 power period through coalition governments along opposite parties and fellow Communists. They were bitterly divided on the issue of the path of the ‘revolution’. One faction of Maoism advocated a boycott of 2013 election, a strategy that failed miserably. However the damage was done as Maoists emerged as third party rather than the second position they had before, losing a significant layer of mass support to the UML.

Maoists under the charismatic leadership of Prachanda made various overnight U-turns in terms of forming coalitions and alliances. However, the cleverest timely move by the Maoist Center was to form an election alliance with UML prior to the 2017 elections and decide to start a merger process of the two parties. Had they not made this move, they would have lost badly in the present elections. A political scenario of a three way race in the present election would have benefited the Congress and thus another unstable government, probably based on another kind of alliance.

The Constitution

The year 2015 saw the acceptance of the constitution with 90 per cent parliamentary support. The yearlong boycott of Madheshi parties and the economic blockade of Nepal by India was well fought by the vast majority of Nepal. They succeeded in bringing back the Madheshi parties to main stream politics by making some amendments to the constitution in agreement with those advocating the boycott.

A Positive Development and Real Challenge

The Communist’s alliance landslide victory is a positive development in the South Asian region. It is like a wave of fresh cool air in an over-heated region of the Indian subcontinent. The real challenge begins now. The massive victory has raised expectations. Reforms are on the agenda. However, reforms under capitalism can never be of permanent nature. The capitalist path in the longer run is a road to distraction and losing mass support of the Communist’s ideology. They have to move ahead on the road of parliament to abolishing capitalism and remaining elements of feudal society. They know best how to do it, if they want to do it.

*

Farooq Tariq is the national spokesperson, and former general secretary, of Pakistan’s Awami Workers’ Party formed in 2012 by the coming together of three existing parties. He was previously national spokesperson of Labour Party Pakistan.

Note

1. Panchayats are a system of local organization used at village and town level for example in India.

For over a century, the British Empire exerted control over Asia-Pacific, outright colonising India, Burma, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia while influencing and encroaching upon greater China, Siam and beyond.

It exploited the people and natural resources of the region, fuelled conflict as it waged war with rival European powers seeking to carve out their own colonies in Asia and left an enduring impact on the region, including ethnic and territorial feuds still unfolding today, e.g. the Rohingya crisis in present-day Myanmar.

Rather than make restitution for its decades of war, conquest and exploitation, the United Kingdom today eagerly seeks to reassert itself in the region alongside the United States who has also spent over a century in the region pursuing what US policymakers openly admit is American “primacy.”

The Diplomat, a US-European geopolitical publication focused on Asia-Pacific, described this development in its article, “The British Are Coming (to Asia).”

The article featured a single image, that of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK’s newest warships and its largest. It is one of two “colossal warships” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently pledged to send across the globe to aid Washington in its growing confrontation with Beijing.

The author, US Air Force Major John Wright currently serving as Japan Country Director, International Affairs, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces, Honolulu, Hawaii, attempts to construct a positive argument for the UK’s involvement thousands of miles from its own shores.

The article admits that the US has few capable allies in the region willing to “comply with mutual defence needs beyond their own territory.” It admits that the US has increasingly looked beyond Asia for partners. The UK then, is about as beyond Asia as any potential partner could be.

The article notes that the UK has already deployed warplanes to Japan in addition to the aforementioned future deployment of British warships to the region. It also suggests that:

…the U.K. could revive the old trick of acting as a “fleet in being;” its ability to steam where and when it pleased while possessing no major territory would throw off regional rivals’ military calculus and force them to commit precious reconnaissance assets to monitoring the United Kingdom.

In other words, a European military would be deployed in and harass “rivals” across Asia alongside US warships already engaged in regional meddling. This, the author concludes, “would be a great benefit to stabilising the security troubles of the region.”   

Yet, when considering what actually drives “security troubles of the region,” it is evident that the presence of US forces far beyond US territory, for example, stationed in South Korea and conducting military exercises along North Korea’s borders in a deliberate attempt to provoke Pyongyang is the problem, not the solution. The addition of British warships and aircraft in the region will only further multiply “security troubles” evident in the author’s own comments regarding the need for “regional rivals” to commit to tracking and keeping in check British warships.

Omitted from Major Wright’s nostalgic review of the UK’s historic role in Asia-Pacific was the concept of “gunboat diplomacy,” where the British Empire coerced Asian states into making lopsided concessions to London or face British naval firepower. Chunks of Siam were carved off under threat of British “gunboat diplomacy,” Hong Kong was outright seized by it and other nations likewise were forced by threat of military aggression to make concessions that benefited only the British.

US “primacy” in Asia-Pacific today closely resembles British “gunboat diplomacy.” While literal gunboats training cannons on the capitals of targeted states is no longer feasible, other means of coercion are. These include options categorised under “soft power” including US-European-funded opposition groups which may or may not include armed components. There is also economic warfare. When Thailand ousted US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies from power, the US pursued a campaign of economic sabotage aimed at Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism sector.

The US also employs terrorism as seen in the Philippines where Manila’s failure to heed US demands was swiftly followed by the appearance of militants from the Islamic State (IS) armed and funded by Washington’s allies in Riyadh. The militant group’s sudden appearance pressured Manila to continue accommodating the US military’s presence on its territory.

Of course, just as the British Empire hid naked imperialism behind the fig leaf of “spreading civilisation,” modern-day neo-imperialism hides behind the pretext of bringing “stability” as well as fostering “democracy” and “human rights” to the four corners of the globe. In reality, UK warships confronting “regional rivals” thousands of miles from London is a direct attempt to upend stability in Asia-Pacific. The British imposing their will upon Asia through the threat of military might undermines regional and national self-determination, the very opposite of fostering democracy.  And a nation imposing its will by threat of force is an obvious affront human rights.

Despite these obvious facts, we can expect publications like The Diplomat to continue promoting US-British meddling across Asia-Pacific. We can also expect the many aspects of US-European “soft power” across the region to likewise promote such meddling. However, it should be noted, that Washington’s need to find allies in Asia as far beyond Asia as northwest Europe illustrates America’s waning influence in Asia to begin with. British involvement in Asia-Pacific will only delay the inevitable removal of US influence from the region. The only question is, for how long and at what cost to both the British taxpayers and the people of Asia who must stave off attempts to disrupt, destabilise and destroy their hard-earned independence and achievements post-British Empire.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

All images in this article are from the author.